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yea

good money

so today is
i can hear me
yes do that
today's the last day the real last day of the millennium
and
tonight is new years eve
that
where the desk

goodbye
okay well
so tonight is new years eve and i don't know what your plans are i know a number of you will be coming out to bring out for a quiet simple
ah sitting that last from restarted eight o'clock and goes through to the night and
different activities including noodle slurping
i guess noodles slurping is a traditional japanese practice continues with long life and long noodles and music so will be doing that and will also be launching lotus boats and pond
and w a big bonfire and hot drink after the night where you can offer into the fire things thoughts
ah an actual physical things to what you want to burn up and let go up
i saw this is that this is a tradition on new year's event
and then i don't think there's room anymore to take more but some people are stay the night which is very nice they won't have to drive home you probably can stay put in the zendo
and tomorrow morning will greet the new year by visiting all the different altars and offering incense and making a toast for the new year so that's that's i new a celebration
hey simple and it doesn't take much you know doesn't take other than our bodies and
a place to sit
a little fire near near and that's about it
so this is the end of the holiday season and i perhaps many of you a very happy that it has come to an end there's been a lot of
hardy perhaps and gift giving and receiving traveling and
ah
just about finished
it was thirty years ago tomorrow january first that i came to san francisco zen center three hundred page street to i didn't know at the time but to stay with for a long time and
the other day before i came on in a couple days before i i left from st paul to come to san francisco i had what was called them when i called a bedroom sale which is i put all my possessions out in my bedroom out on a bandanna
dresser and and then had my sisters my true sister's coming choose anything they wanted to take it was my bedroom sale so like a garage sale but ah and and they chose various items
promise me that they would give them back every time i would ask for it
and were very nervous about it what am i doing and my mother was being nervous also
why is she giving on in her watch
and her earring you send all these different donation
but i was coming to the san francisco zen center to one practice zazen and
that's all i need it i didn't need any of these extras
so i'm the one hand i was very idealistic about my practice any
how it was going to take care of everything and all by unhappiness and all my depression and all everything and
so i was looking forward to this with great high hopes and on the other hand there was a lot of fear from the family members what has she gotten into what is this place coat or a
strange group of people what are they doing in it was pretty new at that time wasn't so mainstream as it is now
and one of the things i really appreciated about sense in it is that there was no proselytizing i just learn how to pronounce that word eight for years have been a press tour enticing the container but it's proselytizing and it comes from the were proselyte
and a proselyte is a stranger class like is a stranger ah or one who ah
comes to a place comes from the route one who comes to a place where a stranger and also a religious convert is a proselyte so i did feel like a stranger
coming to practice and maybe many of you also feel like strangers or that this is a kind of strange place in many ways i someone recently was mentioning how you know we don't take neither case and that that's unusual in this stage
that's a little either ah so what kind of place doesn't take anything nowadays
so the root of that wordpress proselytes is used to go one who comes to a place a stranger for being a stranger and then coming to a place and not feel like anyone was proselytizing try to convert me trying to change me and versions
to turn around with to change there was just a practice that was offered
zazi an
neil practices
ceremonies
and work practice and all these different practices but nobody was exerting any pressure on me which was very freeing and very ah
allow me to find my own way what was important to me what were my own cues that i could go
file all my unknown
so maybe you feel that way to that coming to bring out or san francisco cents center no one's proselytizing but we are having a conversation
ah together
so this conversation
the the word conversation and convert turns out comes on are also very connected conversation is to engage with speech i thoughts and feelings is conversation and to converse
and part of that the root of that is to turn so if we're really engaged with each other about what matters to us and our thoughts and feelings there may be
a conversion other may be attorney but it has said away without proselytizing without anyone trying to turn any one one way or the other branches through contact through intimacy through
exchange
two conversation then there may be this turning turning towards
so
in this conversation on what is it that allows people to stay and practice over time mrs part of the conversation or right now having at zen center how is it what is it what are the causes and conditions for someone to want to come and practice
over time either residential or in their own lives and if we knew what those causes and conditions were could we helped create them
ha or make them more accessible or let people know that those causes and conditions are here to getting word out in some way not proselytizing the just making accessible
and it's very hard to the land and what is it that allows someone to practice over time and continuing the practice or to want to come and stay residential he as someone said as a lifer
you know long time
but whenever we if you look at and what what the elements are
nothing holds for each person each person is unique green case-by-case uniquely themselves
and it's mysterious how it is that someone has affinity over time
and how it is at someone
individuate in such a way that they they turn in another direction
so it's very mysterious
the word mysterious needs to shut your mouth
keep your mouth shut
we don't really know we can't really say so we continue our conversation and so this you can think of this talk as just part of the conversation that more all in together
so i'm
i wanted to talk a little bit about especially at this time of year about consumerism consumer mentality
and how that relates to one he understanding of her practice so
my daughter just came back from my college and she mentioned how simple arm
holiday period was this year she's just felt it wasn't very materialistic a very consumer oriented we visited some family and friends and have some solid kind of people evenings and the gifts that we exchanged were relatively low
key and the decorations
in the house or rounding out for kind of low key and it felt very grounded to her the simple
so
ah so i'm just a little bit of about
consumerism per say the word consume me too
ah completely take up or obtaining and destroy also like
food when you consume it it's completely to transform
and
there's this was one of the gifts for this how they can't because psychology restoring the earth healing the mind and i just wanted to read something from an essay called are we happy yet
i'm talking about consumption
and green so consumption in the united states has
ah it's become be
primary goal of our economic policy and after world war two this is a quote from victor lmao
who was a young
ah
a retailing analyst
so this is a coat after soon after over to sit in the fifties are enormously productive economy demands that we make consumption our way of life that we can avert
the buying and use of goods into rituals that we seek our spiritual satisfaction our ego satisfaction in consumption we need things consumed burned up worn out replaced and discarded and an ever increasing rate
so this person is basically saying that
ah in clay south
our spiritual life our relationships are satisfactions human satisfactions her spiritual satisfaction we make the consumption of goods into rituals now this i think we're familiar with this how this has become
ah you know so much of what's going on and the hello the harness the the emptiness of it and term and using the word emptiness as backwardness in terms of trying to satisfy ourselves through more and more and more consumption and
and be but it's like some sarah were part of some sour or the the endless wheel of suffering is the fact that part of subside is fooling ourselves that if we just got a little bit more have tried a little bit harder
double their income
got a new outfits a new friend a new relationship and so forth then we would find satisfaction and be happy part of some site is that that way of thinking that is the some sark way of thinking and we have fooled by over and over
over again and begin
the city
in a renewed you know with a renewed effort looking for this way to satisfy ourselves and it's the same with consumption the yeah going after material goods
ah
and then we have we get the material goods let's say i'm talking about a certain segment of the population
and then we'll find that will the satisfaction was in there it was all
ah
i kind of big disappointment and so we think well there we need it wasn't that we need to get the next thing in the next day and and we go round and round on this some side consumption
how turning meal
so recently seven came to speak with me are in one on one interview and they said for this year's eve and going to make a resolution i'm going to do some things that really helped me that i find really satisfying
it's more regular on sundays i love coming but i don't i don't make it a regular things i wanna do that i want to spend more time by the ocean and i mentioned well you can do those two things together you to take a walk
combine those but that and i also want to see friends and like to see more my friends were often so these are the new year's resolutions and other problem with new year's resolutions is when we set up a kind of resolution in a big way there's a kind of
shadow to it
they get set up maybe in the unconscious
you know some resistance about doing that great big change in our lives so that route new year's resolutions just like diet plans you know will really they often don't work so how is it that we can make changes in our lives that are small and
meaningful an ongoing and continued
rather then the giant changes that are bound to
fall apart
and also there's been studies of these are kind of odd studies about what makes people happy you know out
and
often what actually makes people happy in necessity and we have yet in this
polls and software
have to do with
things that do not need to be consumed in the usual way being destroyed the things that made people happy and spiritual practice
relationships with family and friends
news it
being in nature
literature
sports education learning something new
ah you know finding out about something
very simple simple things that i ah sustainable you know sustainable overtime in all cultures dance is a none of these kinds of things i would actually make people happy a relatively speaking they they don't have much to do with
actual wealth or consuming
so how is it that we can turn our lives and i think we know this you have these kinds of human activities this is not a surprise and yet
in our culture we are often so we're driven to keep up with longer work hours less time for these kinds of activities that we call leisure and
leisure become so expensive that you know we've gotta do something with our leisure time we can't just let it you know we can't just take a walk you can do something because it's so precious the a kind of
i'd wave at that
the very thing that was supposed to help us have more leisure to do these things that matter to us those that time gets withered away and shrinking
so in this new year two thousand and one the year of the snake
it occurred to me that you know the two thousand and one space odyssey and some i saw my my two thousand and one snape odyssey for this year two thousand and one snake addison what what are those things in our life that are renewing transforming self renewing the snake
by the way is some
the snake loses its skin and is connected with from ancient times am
self renewal and transformation the snake is also connected with the moon in many ancient religious ah
iconography because the moon also renews itself you know it it grows and diminishes and then there's this dark time and then it comes back again so the snake and the moon are completely connected in
ah
ancient religions and down in the united states the
native americans have found that were around ohio what's now ohio
com p m
andina tried who lived from about eight hundred b c to nine hundred a d created these earth mounds you're probably familiar with him but there's one earth magnets called the snake earth mound and it's or the serpent mound and it stretches for one thousand four hundred feet
and snakes around this earth mound and around the yeah what they call the cosmic a the snake lays eggs that are perfectly round and white like the moon so there's a kind of a cluster of associations from the at the natural world and a symbolic
lee that connect the snake with
he new of transformation and board and wisdom the moon a snake and feminine goddess ah religions and wisdom axes all clustered together
so this is the year the snake so what
what might be our
we know this year
to continue in a transformation of or conversion a turning towards that is meaningful that comes from i did this human
needs
kind of rebirth
you know we we talk about
our practice periods aren't times when we
have long longer extended emphasis on the schedule of sitting meditation and
rosendo as the center of the hub of life to was always the center of the hub of life but there are times when people come from outside to participate with us called practice periods and we sometimes talk about those as putting a snake in a bamboo to clean snake and a bamboo shoots a here
you have this snake that has this enormous energy and vitality and wisdom and yet the sometimes just state by the way comes from the word that and crawling and be in snail comes from the same route so the snake
can go all over the place and in this kind of energy can be and ah form can be can formless lee all over
and there may be troubling you know lots of trouble that someone can get into with this kind of energy so we put the snake into the bamboo to of the street bamboo tube is the schedule of the practice period the schedule of
any kind of schedule you may create a self doesn't have to be a then centers traditional
schedule whatever schedule you make for yourself of doing those things that really matter to get really are
kind to yourself transform him self renewing
nurturing can be a bamboo tube and when you put the snake in the state goes through and yet
continues to move in a habitual way and pump pump pump into the size of the bamboo tube which can hurt
you get that bruise
but the bamboo to tube as a container can hold us where we can learn what's going on where we why don't we let's what's her tendency why do we keep bumping that same old elbow the same old way can we learn from them
so in this year of the snake this this image of putting a snake in a bamboo tube what bamboo tubes
are coming up for you naturally
what are you drawn towards that you know between i
ha not hello
bad actually
sustain you and help you
and help others around you
so this is a kind of snake wisdom
whether you have the snake
ha
this some
consumerism and materialism is not just connected up with goods and services
and new this a new that you can take that same kind of mine is some sorry didn't mind and even know who we may let go of lot of things and a lot of interest or or things just don't interest us anymore in that realm you may use that same kind of thinking and
spiritual to practice this you've probably heard of the book from the seventies called spiritual materialism by chewing gum or the shape compact than the same which was always felt a really wonderful title in a very kind of a wake-up kind of oh yeah you know let's not kid ourselves here
what may i be doing that's just the same pattern the same bumping into the but just a new container
am using that kind of thinking of can i get more of fill in the blink of the spiritual life
that's really based on of greediness or ah the belief that if i can just yet
more of this
then or i could just accomplished this kind of practice this stage of practice then i would be satisfied but that's the same kind of ah
circular thinking just implied in more subtle realms
and i think it gets more dangerous because from for someone looking he only makes it all our a marvelous practitioner you are and you know what kind of idealized transference are sent via i have a lot of projection about those people who are doing this practice
and looking a certain way by virtue of outward signs and and yet
there may be just as much attachment greed
going after trying to get
things to satisfy something
but just using different unit so i think that's something it's a very important point to well remember in your spiritual practice because we can get off
very easily in that way
so what is
what is right effort you know doesn't practice practicing are sitting meditation practice or any of the other myriad practices what is right effort
this a a term called to target and garba to togheter is an epitaph or an another name used for the buddha already awakened one go to togheter is the best com one
the one who is
arriving at this moment awake and aware thus come
and garba is a sanskrit word that has a lot of different meetings
but am that they seem to be ah
he also a cluster of meetings so the garba is a covering
it's also sometimes used as matrix
or womb
and also fetus or embryo he had both some garba as wound an embryo
also a helix depends how you pronounce it that's the i'm cup like
leaves or petals of a blossom bet out our around the m inner parts of the flower that's garba also in sanskrit prick what's inside of the flower
so list to target and garba the buddha warm or
embryo or
ah it's also from techtarget and garba from this
i'm teaching it around the to target to garba also came in the chinese japanese ah
development of the same to target the government came return buddha nature buddha to buddha nature so the teaching of fatality garber or
buddha nature is that each and every me into every person has or is to target to go into has is to target to gab a meeting there is to target to or buddha
within or
if if we start talking about within and without it begins to get very set in our minds but is
already
each person is already buddha to togheter and but there's this garba or this covering
of our delusions are our belief in our separate self or as small mine or egoistic ideas so that it's not have realized
but i know teaching is that each person is to target a ganda or buddha nature
but the embryo or the embryos is that everything is easy
but it isn't fully realized yet it isn't fully born
so this sitting with that kind of faith or sitting zazen practicing with this face it there already is buddha nature there's nothing we have to go searching after or trying to get
because that kind of thinking just sends us off around and around ah in an unsatisfying
i turn of this we'll have sad
with our own practice
this is what situation cause gaming idea
sitting with dating idea
and
it's just as in consumerism that the aspect of consumers and that is destroying our world destroying the earth
even that same way this gaming idea can destroy our practice actually
ha
you can eat away at our practice
it can cause ah
our relations with one another to become this harmonious
so i for me this is a very important point to look at what is right after what is sitting or doing are practicing any practice
with the understanding with the faith you might say
that
to target the garver buddha nature he is there right now it doesn't have to be gotten from outside you can't get it from outside there is no outside from which to go to get it to bring in the family jewels are already in the family you can bring them in from outside that's it
another image of this to time to grab that it's like a dual vienna
in dust heat for or like a golden nugget all wrapped up in rags and ease of the images that are used for to target the garbage and that can have it and karma sutra is all these different similes of what he says to drive home this point that this is already there this is your birthright this is our birthright
so city with that kind of
faith i been using the weren't fate right now somehow with the map faith or that understand me he is sitting with right effort rather than that consumer my oh okay and then if you miss betty period two thousand and then mrs going to happen and then i'll get to this stage
in that stating
ah and yet i think you know thirty years ago and i came in the door as zen center i don't think it would have been possible for me to come in the door without some idea that this practice was gonna help me somehow that if someone were to tell me about the accident i did hear about boudin
nature and what i heard it it was like it was like the good news you know it was like
good news chariots cover you know it was just like this was
amazing grace you know to hear that this was possible but he felt very very far away although something resonated within me
that there was that i could drop is kind of worldly chasing and running and trying to get better
ha
that i already was there was buddha nature already there i i just have to realize it
oh there's this quote from an advertising agent in this essay
ah that a job of the advertising agency
this is girl b url puppet head of the allied stores corporation put it forty years ago it is our job to make women unhappy with what they have
and and so if you're born with you know blonde hair short hair curly hair straight hair doesn't matter it is our job to make you unhappy with what you have
you know
too big too small to that too late to whatever and so that we can get those products that will ah
so
to drop that to drop that and drop into
ha we have everything we need and i'm not done
this is not too
the minish the enormous need that many many many people millions of people have in this world
i feel like the fact that you're all here listening means that ah
you have
enough to get you up with the morning and dressed and out here somehow to listen to this time to go for a walk
so i don't mean to
minimize the need in this world
but it turns out that this happiness does not depend on ah relative wealth actually it will fix it has to do with other
that are human relationships and these other
areas of her life
so since zero she out
he talks about this this point in many different places about gaining idea but it this one
lecture in the windmill from ninety nine spring summer
he talks about being warm hearted
you may think the you need to be warm hearted and cut we need to be warm hearted and kind with ourselves guess this this my that goes round and round trying to get more things is not very kind to the world and to our own psyche and our own reality of our own life is not warm-hearted in time
it's always say your neck you don't have what it takes you're not good enough you have got to try harder and get working and it doesn't leave any room you know this is that kind so you may think you are very warm hurting but when you try to understand how warm you cannot actually measure the
temperature of your feeling
yet when you see yourself in the near or water with warm feeling that is actually you and whatever you do you are there
this is sam
this is
looking at the whole world and everything that we seen as our own big mind as our own as a reflection of our own thus come one the to togheter and when you look that way look at yourself and the whole world that way with war
i'm feeling and kindness there is nothing to get there is nothing you need to bring him
this am
in nineteen seventy one when i came that first year since a commercial was still alive and living at page street and i remember
going up to the roof guy and down
three hundred page street there's a a garden and i was up there just looking out over the city and and wandering around in sussex where she came up just all by himself he and i thought out
now now's my chance the zen masters com
so i was kind of
i don't know what i was really ready for some corn to happen like any man i did what happened was
you pointed
he pointed to this that there's windows kind of windbreak up and move can is windows have been pointed to the window and he said look and i like
am i and i didn't see the i just saw the window
an in san francisco and i i sent the buildings in signal look look and i worked and i was just straining and struggling what is he asked me to look at you know this is my chance don't blow it girl you know
and i i would say everything's you mean that mean that i was looking through the window out in the san francisco so bad over there and he said no good and then finally had to tell me that the reflection and there was them
there was a like a wind chime that had a little
moving little italy back on the bottom that was being reflected on the window and a very beautiful way and he said the reflection but i had there was the reflection on the window but i had been looking right through it out somewhere out into san francisco is that that so this
so this thing i wrote you sit at a red to just asking the little out of context but i had one to tell that story when towson looked in the river and saw his reflection he was enlightened this is one of our ancestors and suzuki roshi about that moment when when he sees cars and sees himself and
says i now am not get it now is me
and also if you look outside yourself
that's not it you can never find it that way if you seek outside yourself
i am now
it it now is not need wherever i go i encounter it so
and that to corner that poem suzuki roshi she says actually you are in the river you may say that it is just a shadow or a reflection but if you see carefully with warm hearted feeling that is new so that reminded me of this experience you may say or the
in fact i did say was quite in the saudis district reflection of this little paper thing on the bottom of the wintertime why is the point of the south
because i was trying to
get something more there was there had to be something behind what he was doing but he was just pointing out this reflection
that was beautiful
and catching the light
you may say that is just a shadow or reflection but if you see carefully with warm hearted feeling that is you
so is still a call on from what he was pointing out for the like been there but i my vow is with full confidence to sit knowing that
that is me
and these vows have enormous as opposed to these new year's resolutions vows have enormous power but very very subtle they we actually talk about that the inner cellular changes that happen when you make vows and
avec vous like receiving precepts
it's done it's obvious to be moved by or that's a subtle material and it and there's a change in a very subtle way to to can't actually see necessarily or some amazing radiant or com after a wonderful ceremony but the changes
happened inside and very subtle and these that doesn't set up as i was saved this counter resistance that's as there can get it you know i'm going to have whatever i want you know ah it's it's so subtle that that doesn't yet
hi
created and constipated
i was listening to npr about a moving cost this program a violinist who had a very good violinist who bought from a violinist who had muscular dystrophy whose name i can remember to some of the rain
st in jacqueline du pre and she had a stradivarius she had to and he bought one her purse better various violence and was playing one of the pieces that she always played and he said that rin
played it differently than
he said the molecular structure of the violin the would molecules after being played over and over this contact or whatever everywhere
conveys can use it
in a very particular way different from another instance the molecules are actually changed by the plane and it's and i thought publish not be hooked by various new it's so settled but you can probably with some kind of machine measure how but he could tell
from his plane how different it was and it's the same with our vows he made these vows and it's like more like stradivarius violins know and he made these vows take these valves you see
given received his vows and there are changes that are made very subtly and these i like kernis and help us to settle ourselves settled will need to sell and where this
turning of this endless we'll begins to turn other way turn back the other way
this is conversion this is true conversion
this is our own inner thorough thorough turning
so a year the snake i invite you all to
i use this place to come here come here often
come here to to do the things that are satisfying this wonderful ways you can participate here
we invite you to participate in working in the garden helping out in the kitchen helping by just coming on sundays but but to become involved in many different ways it may not seem like it's open for they you're not invaded because
because of this not proselytizing
well you know but i just want to extend this invitation to everyone to ah
take care of this place and take care of yourself by to get taken care of his place so that and ten
maintain and sustain buddha dhamma
forever
have seen it
ne on tension