Good morning. But the last year I've been asking myself, how can Zen practice, you know, this heritage that's come to us, how can it be most relevant and applicable to our urban lives. So I've been asking myself that and then seeing how that would manifest itself in the things I teach, the practices I do myself, the way I respond to other situations and life circumstances. So today's talk is part of my continuing saga.

[01:02]

on that question. What I think I'm gonna talk about is, in Buddhist terms, taking refuge in Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. And it might not seem like that to you in the least, but so what? Recently I was traveling. I was giving teaching, leading a Shashi, a meditation intensive. And in the middle of the intensive, the person who planned the intensive had also planned a television interview. Just walked in and said, you're doing a television interview today at 1 45. So I did a television interview and the television crew We're having a late lunch, so the clock was ticking.

[02:05]

Now to be back in the Zen door at 2.15. And for those of you who know Zen, following the schedule is what we do. Finally they arrived, and of course they had to set up the lighting and the sound and all this stuff. And by this time, when they arrived, they arrived at 5 of 2. And they were a little flustered. And before they arrived, I was thinking, well, this is very interesting. This was in Europe. I wonder what they're going to ask. I wonder what's interesting. It was in a country called Slovenia, and I was thinking, what kind of questions would somebody in Slovenia ask and put on television?

[03:07]

And then they arrived, and they were a little flustered about being late. And the lighting man was mostly just worried about the lighting. That's really what all he was concerned about. And the signed man... I was not only worried about this sign, but he seemed to keep tripping over himself. Like he put a mic like this on me. And then as he was walking away, he caught the cord with his foot and like ripped it off again. And the three other guys all looked at him like, could you get it right for once? They asked me a number of questions, mostly very difficult questions because they were so simple. They were like, what is Zen? To me, that's like asking, what is it to be alive?

[04:11]

It's like, well, what can you say? You could say a thousand things, you could say nothing. Anyway, they did ask me one question that I thought was a great question, and that was, So you've been meditating for 30 years. What's it like when you meditate? That is a great question. I thought it was a great question because something about putting me on the spot or something about give a real answer, you know? Don't just give us some Buddhist phrase or some clever remark, you know?

[05:15]

Tell us what's it like, you know? really appreciated that. What it reminded me of was that once I saw this video on the Dalai Lama, and I forget what the whole video was about. Interestingly enough, I forget what the whole video was about except for this vignette, where he was walking from a building to a car, and a reporter stuck a mic. right in his face and said, it's your birthday today. And he said, yes. He says, what do you want for your birthday? And the thing that really struck me was the way the Dalai Lama just like drew to a complete halt. Like he was obviously off to somewhere, you know, probably something very important or whatever. But he drew to a complete halt, stopped, and really took the question in.

[06:24]

It's like, do I want? What do I want from this life? Now, today, here. And then he answered. I can't quite remember, but I think he said something like, for everybody to be happy. But actually when he said it, it looked like he really meant it. But something about How do we let ourselves be brought to a halt? How do we let the situation, the moment, the question, the request, draw us to a halt and invite ourselves to be deeply in touch? What is going on right now? What is it I want to say?

[07:26]

Who am I? What is in this moment, in this extraordinary situation, what is the expression of my precious human life? And it's interesting because I can't quite remember what I said to those that TV camera crew. I think I said something like this. Well, you know, after all these years, it's not that every time I sit, my mind falls into a deep calm and a deep concentration. But it's something about how whatever it is, is related to. You know, it's something about

[08:26]

not being so fooled or so captivated or so desperate about how this moment has to be. A tolerance, a patience, a willingness to let it be what it is. And I think this has something to do with... Taking refuge in Buddha. You know, being awake, being authentic, being engaged in the moment. And how do we let the world invite us to do that? And how do we meet that invitation the world is always offering? I'm going to read a poem that I think I read the last time I gave a talk. But Lucy said, don't worry, nobody will remember anyway.

[09:31]

It doesn't have to be the blue iris. It could be weeds in a vacant lot or a few small stones. Or somebody asking you, what do you want for your birthday? Or what happens when you do zaza? Or whatever. Any moment, every moment is giving us a request, an opportunity to meet it. Every situation, every interaction. How do we, literally, how do we realize that? How do we tune into it? How do we take it beyond maybe an interesting idea or an appealing idea?

[10:38]

How do we take it from there into a way that we engage life? So here's the rest of Mary Oliver's poem. It doesn't have to be the blue iris. It doesn't have to be some exquisite event. It could be weeds in a vacant lot or a few small stones. Just pay attention. I would say there's different kinds of attributes that come into play. In a way, this is talking about how can we disentangle from our preoccupation, our intrigue with life, as we're experiencing it. And whether it stirs in us a deep yearning or whether it stirs in us a deep anxiety or fear or sadness or resentment or whatever it stirs in us, it's not so much, can we obliterate that?

[11:48]

Can we stop it? Can we suppress it? But somehow, as another poet says, Even though we fear death, can we still love life? Even though we have our human response and we have our tendency to be utterly intrigued in our own preoccupations, can we let something else happen too? Can we go, can we be bigger than that? On the level of what you might call consciousness, attention, awareness, and energy. There's something about habit mind, habit emotions, habit patterns of thought.

[12:55]

They're a little bit like a default mode. It's like your screensaver. When you're not using your computer, it goes into screensaver. It's like when we're not authentically engaging directly what's happening, we go into default mode. We go into, we just replay old patterns. And the challenge is can we come into direct mode, direct experiencing? Can this be a moment that's not just a replay, that literally can be met as it is? No matter how many times someone's asked you, what do you want for your birthday, can this be an occasion to meet that question like you've never heard it before? say that requires a certain kind of energy and it's interesting because it's not simply concentration it's not just a physical energy it's more like a disposition it's more like a shift of heart

[14:27]

Sometimes when I teach workshops, I say to people, imagine you're dying. Imagine the people you love are coming to talk to you for the last time. What's the last thing you want to say to them? No? It's like, huh, okay. You know, it's like when we take it in, when we take it for real, there's a kind of a rising energy. It's a different engagement from how are you? I'm fine. How are you? I'm fine too. It's sort of just going through a nicety. That kind of shift, you know, it's not concentration.

[15:40]

But it is in a way, because when you let the shift happen, you're in the moment. It's a kind of a shift of heart that enables, that initiates a kind of energy, a kind of attentiveness, a kind of engagement. So part of the challenge of Zazen, is even though there is the challenge of posture, the challenge of attending the breath, the challenge of trying to control monkey mind. That is a bigger challenge. There's a challenge of this shift of heart. Can this moment be a moment that's never happened before? Can this moment be your whole life? Can this moment, can authentic being, be more important than replaying all the tapes, all the habits of thought and feeling.

[16:44]

That kind of shift. That's the request of zazen. And then what is not zazen? Where is your life not asking you? When you're making your last statements to the people that are significant to you, do you want to be present for them or do you just want to kind of mumble like some old cliche? And by the way, how do you know you're going to live longer than today? How do you know that this next interaction you're going to have with these people isn't going to be the last? This kind of shift that in a very interesting way brings our life to life.

[17:49]

It enlivens. the language of spirituality you know across our globe you know this and sometimes in spiritual language it's talked about as letting something die so we can fully live die before you die ironic but one of the most intimate acts How beautiful did that appear that I died a thousand times. The prophet Muhammad said, die before you die.

[18:54]

Have wings that feared ever touched the sun? I was born when all at once that which I feared I could love. That which I feared, I could love. That which I desired, I could release. That nagging anxiety, I could let it soften. That resentment, I could forgive. So I would say this. Taking refuge in Buddha in the context of Zen practice is that we hold this request in our hearts and minds and let the world teach us how to answer it.

[20:02]

And it teaches us both when we do and when we don't. And the interesting proposition there is that we're more curious about the engagement, about the process of engaging, about the consequence of engaging, that we're more curious about that than we are about some kind of accomplishment. Did I get the right answer? Did I give those television interviewers A response that made me look good. That when it's on television, people will say, wow, look at that Zen guy. The truth is, people, they make up their own story of who we are anyway.

[21:10]

You think you're fabulous. Somebody out there is thinking, who's that? Or maybe they're so caught up in their own stuff they don't even notice who you are. But something about the process, something about commitment to authentic being means more to you than filling some contrived agenda. Oh, if I do this, then will I finally get what I want? Maybe, maybe not. Something will happen. And the process of this authentic engagement, it offers us an extraordinary valuable, for our human life, an extraordinary valuable attribute. It's like our human life becomes enriching, even when we don't get what we want.

[22:12]

I would say this is like the second taking refuge in Dharma. It's a second kind of shift. The first kind of shift is the shift of the heart. And the second kind of shift is this teaching to learning rather than determined effort to fulfill our agendas about what we want and what we don't want. can bring awareness to our life and when we can see what's going on. Even our so-called failures, even when you mumble out a response or miss an opportunity to interact or hang up the phone without having said what was in your heart and really asking to be said.

[23:26]

Any of those can be a teaching. What was going on? How come this was sitting on my heart, waiting to be said, and I just didn't said? What was that about? And it requires of us certain kind of trust and respect for who we are. Like in a way that our self-worth is not contingent upon our own version of success. That our self-worth, I mean, kind of an odd phrase in a spiritual practice that says there's no self, right? Self-worth in as much as a sense of trusting our own being.

[24:35]

That kind of self-worth. A self-worth that's saying being authentic. Trusting our own sincerity of engagement. Trusting our own innate wisdom. That kind of self-worth. Not a self-worth based on, well, I'm a wonderful person and I'm better than that person over there, even if I'm not wonderful. Or I'm a terrible person, you know, and I need, you know, I need to succeed to overcome that deficit. A kind of self-worth that can succeed and fail and go, hmm, look at that. Isn't that interesting? Like when I gave that television interview, in the back of my mind, by the time we returned to the questions, it was five after two, and I had to be back in the Zen do at 2.15.

[25:53]

And so I kind of... It's more like question response, question response. So I went through all their questions in like in a matter of minutes. And then I thought, hmm, maybe I could have gone a little slower. But I didn't. I did exactly what I did. We do exactly what we do. We feel exactly what we feel. think exactly what we think, whether we like it or not, whether we approve of it or not, whether the world claps or jeers. We are who we are. And in Zen terms, this capacity to look at it and learn from it is called way-seeking mind.

[26:56]

It's learning how to practice. What about that? And in the process of way seeking mind, we learn. We learn how to be a friend. We learn how to be a co worker. We learn how to be a lover. We learn how to be a Dharma brother or sister. how to be a member of society. We learn how to be ourselves. We learn how to be present, upright, and balanced in our own body.

[27:58]

We learn how to cultivate the capacity to hold our own emotional response. We learn how to relate to emotions in a way that isn't just contracting. or suppressing, but acknowledging without being swept away by them. We learn how to live. In Zen we say, everything to learn, nothing to know. It's not a process of accomplishing or accumulating facts. It's this wonderful adventure, this wonderful investigation. Mary Oliver says, Don't try.

[29:13]

to make it elaborate. Often the things we learn are embarrassingly simple. Mary Oliver says, don't try to make it elaborate. This is not a contest, but a doorway into things. As we let ourselves be taught, as we learn how to live, we start to feel grateful.

[30:24]

Even for our own so-called failures, even for our own so-called difficult interactions. As you start to discover the patience, the kindness, the skillfulness of working with your own personality, your own so-called limitations. You learn something about how to live with everybody else's limitations. You learn something about tolerance, about acceptance of who we all are. And there's something Something about just watching a camera crew go through their own little piece of theater.

[31:34]

You know, noticing the awkward sign guy, the preoccupation of the light guy. The way in which for the guy with the camera, everything is just a picture. purposefulness of the guy with the questions. It was his show that was on the TV. He wanted this to be good. That's what it looked like. The flicker of annoyance on his face when the audio guy tripped over his own mic and pulled it off my lapel. And stumbled as he tried to put it back on. I thought, hmm, I wonder will they hire him for the next assignment.

[32:41]

I hope he's on contract. The world becomes a more interesting place when we let it teach us. As Mary Oliver says, it isn't a contest, but a doorway into thanks and a silence in which another voice may speak. In Zen we call it original mind. It's like... It's like something in this knows how to live.

[33:46]

Something in this knows how to practice. Like for many years, I was working with people in drug rehab. I very quickly discovered They didn't need to hear the ins and outs of drug rehab. They knew it better than I did. They heard them all. All the admonitions, all the skillful thoughts and practices. What they needed was a process for tuning into them. A process for keeping them in the foreground of their mind when other things bombarded them. I would say we're all the same. But this other voice that Mary Oliver is talking about is something we already know. We already know we're going to die.

[34:50]

We already know that what we say, those last words we speak to the people we love that are significant to us, That's a powerful, meaningful communication. We already know, we don't know when that moment, when that interaction is going to happen. But something about being tuned into that, something about letting that stay alive and not just get buried underneath layers of preoccupation and distraction, And that's the process of practice. That's the process of way seeking mind. How do I do that? Do I do it by offering incense to a Buddha figure or a Christ figure or whatever?

[35:56]

each time I bow to my cushion before I meditate. How do I do it? Exploring our own personal involvement and how to turn back to what we already know. This is taking refuge in Dharma. for taking refuge in Sangha. I have to say, this is one that really intrigues me.

[37:03]

Because when you look at Buddhism and Zen too, The archetype of the renunciate, you know, withdraw from the world, is very strong. But I would say that's not what we're doing. We're not withdrawing from the world. So the challenge for us is to bring these attributes that are engendered by taking refuge in Buddha and taking refuge in Dharma, bring them into the world. How can we be in the world that, as the start of the precepts say, that at least don't do harm. Don't make things worse. And can you offer something up? Can you do good? Can you at least smile?

[38:05]

If you can't think of something helpful to say, can you at least give the person a friendly pat on the shoulder? How do we engage environmental issues, political issues, human rights issues, the social welfare issues? of our city and our society. How do we use our clout as consumers, as people who spend money and buy goods? How can we do that in a way that doesn't set the global corporate power on a rampage? that's eating up our planet and creating vast inequities between the haves and the have nots.

[39:18]

I would say that each of us has a stake in this. And I think part of our challenges is that we feel overwhelmed. I try to think about how much money Exxon is making a quarter I think they made 14.6 billion dollars last quarter it's amazing to me and maybe all I can do is make sure I don't have lights burning in my apartment when they don't need to be It lets me know that I am part of this planet, I'm part of this world, that I can contribute, that I can engage, that I can bring into being the values that Buddha and Dharma have taught me.

[40:41]

You know, classically speaking in Zen, we talk about Realization beyond words. Buddha. Letting that realization beyond words illuminate karmic life. Dharma. The illumination of karmic life gives rise to insight. How to live. How to be. How to relate. Then actualize it. It's not an abstract theoretical event. There's a more thorough learning when we do it. Okay, well, that's what you've realized. Now be it. Now live it. Now do it. And wherever and however you are. And I would say from a Zen perspective,

[41:50]

Global War means just another con. It's a kind of interesting one because as far as we can figure out right now, it involves every single one of us. And maybe it's a little dramatic to say it's a matter of life and death, but I think that can be argued. This is that our practice, that trusting our own capacity to be Buddha, that trusting our own capacity to realize the nature of what is and our own capacity to live it, that's the spirit with which we take on.

[42:52]

Being alive. And that we make our contribution. A year ago I was at Tassajara and I just finished teaching a workshop on socially engaged Buddhism. And this idea of a kind of hopelessness these things are too fast and too out of control they do anything and I have to say my deep response was of course we don't know what's going to happen next but what else can we do except bring forth our own deepest truth.

[43:57]

And if we're not living our deepest truth in the most authentic way we can, what are we doing? And what makes life more fun, more adventurous than living the truth? What's more enriching, informative, enjoyable than living our deepest truth? And of course, this is everything from how we sit in Zazen to how we respond to each other as a Sangha, to how we take on these colossal challenges of our global living. I mean, how amazing now that our sense of being one society, that we all have now the same problem, the same problems. How challenging for us as privileged people from the so-called developed world that we also have the poignancy of knowing exactly how many people in the world are going to starve to death today.

[45:10]

Of knowing that our very reasonably priced sneakers are made literally at the cost of someone else's quality of life somewhere in the heartland of China or Bangladesh or wherever the latest cheap labor is now. From the point of view of practice, even though this is awkward, it offers us the greatest gift there is that we can be conscious. that we can engage, that we can let it stop us the way the Dalai Lama is stopped by someone saying, what do you want for your birthday? What do you want for your birthday? What do you want for everybody on the planet for the next hundred generations? That's my three minutes on sangha.

[46:30]

Maybe I'll read another poem rather than end on that scary note. So it's kindness. That's the name of this poem. And of course the wind is the energy of life that's flowing through us and everything. A person born blind can easily deny the magnificence of seeing a landscape. It's easy to deny all the wonders if you can't touch them. taste them, smell them, or hear them. But one day, the wind will show its kindness and remove the tiny patches that cover your eyes.

[47:36]

And you will see God more clearly than you've ever seen yourself. Thank you.

[47:44]

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