Good morning, everyone, and especially good morning to the young people who are here this morning. It's good to see you. The first part of the lecture will be for the young people, and the old people can listen if they want. And I have to get closer to this. I'm going to slide off. So... How many of you started school this week? Are some of you going to school? Did you start? Did you go to school? How about you? Next week you start. How about you? Did you start school yet? Well, when I was growing up, we never started school until after Labor Day, which is Monday, and I guess your school is starting after Labor Day. Are there any other kids over here? We all clustered here because I can just...

[01:04]

Turn this way. So do you know that Labor Day is... Anybody? Labor, the word labor means to work, but it usually refers to manual work, like food hard, work with your hands. So we have a special day. It's kind of funny because it's a day of rest, but we call it Labor Day. And nobody... goes to work and school starts after sometimes. So I wanted to tell you a story that you probably know, but it's a story that I like and it's about work and it's about responsibility and it's about relationships and friends, okay? So the name of the story is The Little Red Hen. Do you know that story? Yeah. Some of you know that story. It's an old story. I have that story. Good, good. I had it when I was little too. It's been going on for a long time.

[02:06]

So this is the story. Once upon a time, there lived a little red hen and she had some little chicks and she lived on a farm. And there were other animals on the farm as well. There was a pig and a sheep and a cow. Well one day the little red hen thought, I'm going to plant some wheat and she said who will help me plant the wheat and the sheep said not i not i said the sheep not i said the cow not i said the pig they had other things to do so she said well i guess i'll do it myself and her little chicks went along with her and helped out too and she planted the wheat and To plant the wheat, she had to till the ground and make sure that the soil was good. And there was a lot of wheat there. And she did it herself with help from her chicks.

[03:08]

And then later on, after it was planted, she said, who will help you water the wheat? Not as, said the pig. Not as, said the sheep. Not as, said the cow. Then I guess I'd just do it myself. And her little chicks came along, too, and they helped water. And when you water, after you plant and you water, this happens very quickly. Little tiny weeds grow up. Have you done planting? Have you seen little weeds come up? And you have to hoe and get the weeds. Make sure the weeds don't get so strong. And also bring air into the soil. Who will help me hoe the wheat? Not I said machine. Not I said cow. They all had other things to do. Let her chicks say, well, we'll help. And so they hold the wheat up and down the rows. They all hold their own row. And we do this at Greenbelt Farm where I live.

[04:10]

Every week we go out and the whole community hoes. Well, the wheat came up nice and strong. It was so nicely cared for and watered and hoed. And it got bigger and bigger until it was time to harvest the wheat, to actually cut it and bring it home. And the little red hen said, who will help me harvest the wheat? And what do you think the sheep said? Right, how about the cow? Not I said, how about the pig? Not I said the pig. They had other things to do that day, I guess. So she harvested the wheat and the chicks helped and they brought the wheat home. And then it had to be threshed and taken to the mill. There's grains that have to come off the grass-like fronds, the grass-like plant, and be ground up to make wheat, to make flour. So who will help me take the wheat to the mill and thresh it and grind it up?

[05:16]

Mara, I said the sheep. Mara. Mara, I said the cow. Mara, I said the sheep. Well, I'll have some of the chicks. And off they went with their mom, the little red hen, to the mill. And they threshed and they ground the weeds. And they had beautiful whole wheat flyer, or organic whole wheat flyer. And they brought it home. And they had enough for that whole year of baking. And the little red hen said, cool enough, we baked some bread. And what do you think they'll say? Not I. Believe it or not, they're doing so much fun. But the sheep said, not I. And the cow said, not I. And the pig said, not I. Well, the little chicks had a lot of fun with their mom baking up the bread. Beautiful loaves of bread.

[06:16]

They're made round ones, and they're made longer ones, and they're made baguettes. And they're made rollers, dinner rolls, and clover. They're just all these wonderful things. Not sure. And the smell wafted throughout the firewood. And pretty soon, does that smell good? And the little red hen said, who will help me eat the bread? And what did the sheep say? I would like to help you eat the bread. And the cow said, I'd like to help. I'd like to help. Everybody wanted to help eat the bread. Now the little red hen said, was a wise little red hen. And she, all of them in there had a choice, right? She could say, okay, come on, let's everybody get out the peanut butter and the butter and the jam and honey and we'll have a big snack.

[07:20]

But a little red hen said to them, out of compassion. You didn't help me plant the wheat and you didn't help me water the wheat and you didn't help me hold the wheat and take care of the wheat and thresh it and milk it or even bake the bread. So I think you're not invited to this party. And she and her little chicks had a lovely afternoon Snickersnack and ate lots of fresh bread. And the sheep and the cow and the pig sat very quietly outside of her house and kind of really thought deeply about what had just happened and the consequences of their actions, the results of their actions.

[08:22]

They didn't take any responsibility for the work, and so they didn't get the treat at the end. And that was the Little Red Hand's teaching for those friends of hers, actually. She didn't cut off her friendship. She just responded in that way. That was her accurate response. Okay? So the... In our lives, there's all sorts of times when people say, would everybody want me and volunteers? This will happen at school. Who will erase the rock boards? Everybody want to empty the waste paper baskets today? Who will take attendance or go get the food or snack or who will help? And sometimes we just feel like, I too busy, I don't wanna. I don't wanna. Or Nora Wolt, those are two. Do you know that song? What's your name, little boy? My name is Noah. Noah what?

[09:24]

Little boy Noah went. What's your name, little girl? My name is Ida. Ida what? Little girl. Ida wanna. So there's a tendency to say, Noah went. Ida wanna. Then they come up. And if we can't notice that and then notice, well, what about helping out? Won't that be fun too? Let's try it out. Not all the time. So, and then see what happens. See what happens after you try that. So that's the story for today for the kids. And do you have a program that you're going to? Do you get to go and have a snack? Yeah? Who's going to take you? Okay, off you go. Thank you for coming. Thank you. You're welcome. I know what I'm going to do when I grow up. What?

[10:25]

I'm going to be Elmo. You're going to be what? Elmo. Elmo. Okay. That's great. I don't know who Elmo is. It's true. It's sensible street. Elmo, okay. Yes. Oh, hi. They couldn't make cookies with that. They couldn't make cookies. And a little bit of cookie right now, I think. Yeah. Thank you. I didn't see you over there. Bye-bye. That song, what's your name? It's really, what's your name? Little girl, my name's Ida. Ida what? Little girl, Ida wanna. What's your name? Little boy, my name is Noah. Noah what? Little boy, Noah what? Sort of ends with a Noah won't.

[11:32]

Well, what was I going to talk about today? I wanted to talk about responsibility and responding and compassion and the Bodhisattva of infinite compassion. So I've been very drawn to and I guess attuned to a particular teaching that I came across many years ago and it keeps, I keep, it comes up, you know, how you learn a new word and then, oh, you hear it, it's used, you hear it on the radio or your friend uses it and it's the same with this particular teaching and the teaching is, it's a Japanese phrase, kanodoko, kanodoko, and she

[12:41]

I first came upon it, I actually don't remember, but I found it in Suzuki Roshi. I found it in Dogen. I found it in other sources. And the translation of Kano Doko is something like the Kano is mutual. affinity, spiritual communion, mutual interrelation, and these are all these different translations, responsive communion. Kanahashi-san calls it mutual affinity and interaction, responsive communion, and it's used in a particular teaching called the Shushogi, and the Shushogi is chanted regularly in Soto Zen temples.

[13:50]

We don't chant it here, but it was created by taking paragraphs from Dogen, from the different 95 Dogen Zenji's 95 chapter fascicle work. and pulled out, there's these sections that are pulled out to create a work that he didn't actually write, but it's made up of things that he did write, and some people have difficulty with pulling out things out of context and making a new work. But within that work, there is a section about taking refuge, taking refuge in Buddha, and when we take refuge, the time of taking refuge comes when there is Kano Doko, between the person wanting to take refuge and the Buddha. There's a, this sometimes another translation is resonance of awakening, a kind of, or like two tuning forks hitting the same note.

[14:57]

There's a resonating within oneself in relation to the Buddha or the precepts or a person who's teaching. And this affinity is a felt. It's not an intellectual thing, but it's an actual felt affinity. Kano doko, responsive. And there's a responding in that when you feel this. So this particular teaching has, as I said, I can't, it's got a hold of me. I think it's got a hold on me because I keep seeing it. Now, the other day I was listening on the radio to this interview on NPR with this sea captain. Maybe you know this story, and I've heard it, but it came in in a very, very deep way.

[15:59]

And the story was about this sea captain who was out way in the ocean, about as far away from land as you could be, and he came upon this floating plastic trash, well, this bunch, more than a bunch, it's as big as the state of Texas. And when I Googled it, actually, to find out more, one site said it was big as two states of Texas. And it's made up of, it's almost inconceivable, right? When you think, if any of you have been to Texas or tried to drive from, you know, Austin to San Antonio, anyway, you go for days and you're still in Texas. And this plastic... floating plastic conglomerate is as big as, I'm going to go with my Googling of yesterday, two states of Texas, two Texases, and within this plastic state, there's things coming from the western United States of North America that are

[17:18]

brought out to sea blown from brought by air plastic things and also the east coast of asia and they because of the circular winds and circular currents they've they've come to this place and they're kind of i believe gyrating turning and kind of gathering there and You can't see it from the air, that it's below the surface in many places, although they gathered stuff from it, toys and stuff. But the most insidious part is that these polymers, these plastics, they get smaller and smaller and smaller into molecule size, but they don't biodegrade. and they get smaller and smaller and then fish eat them and bigger fish eat those fish and they become part of the food chain and not only harm all these fish and other creatures, but eventually come into human food chain

[18:37]

And they opened up one of these fish, and there was 82 pieces of this plastic of teeny sizes. So this information, you know, I could barely receive the information. It sounded like something out of science fiction, and yet this is right off our coast. And they don't know what to do about it, and it's getting bigger. You know, it's growing. And it's growing because of us, because of our activity, our human activity, and use of plastics, and how we store or don't store them, and so on and so forth. So I felt this enormous... responsibility.

[19:38]

I felt that right in this two-state large floating plastic junk yard in our ocean was probably something that you know that I was directly responsible for. How could it not be living on the coast of California? And I had you know this You know, this is, what do I do personally? You know, what can I do personally? So I wanted to say something about the word responsibility and respond. The word respond comes from re, or to do something again or anew, and spondere in Latin, which means to promise. So this definition is to make a reply or to answer.

[20:46]

This is to respond, right? To make a reply or an answer, to act in return or in answer. There's something that arises and you act in return. You answer it. This is kano donko, this mutual interaction, this resonance, a sympathetic communion. And the third definition of respond is to react positively or cooperatively. So responding is not, it's different from reacting, which can be, you know, that could be an unhelpful action, whereas responding, usually the feeling of responding is cooperation or Positively, reacting positively. So to sue and reply, to promise in return is the Latin. So what, you know, thinking about responding, to respond to the world, to respond to a call or a cry or a request, what is the request of hearing this news, you know, this...

[22:04]

What is the response to a request of who will help me plant the wheat? What is our response to that? What is our answer? What is our renewed to promise in return, to make a promise in return to a request? And what gets in the way of our responding and our responsibility actually? So the root of this word respond is, the root is spend or spawned. And the root of that means to make an offering, to perform a rite, to engage oneself in a ritual act. So, you know, delving into the word itself, which I really enjoy doing, and I'm always greeted by levels of meaning that help me. To think of responding as renewing a promise and also a ritual offering, making an offering is a response.

[23:16]

Performing a rite, engaging oneself in the ritual of our life, who we are, the actuality of our life, which is not somehow separate from this Texas state of trash and our connection with it. But we, we are, we inter-act, we inter-are, we are interrelated with this horrific, actually, occurrence that is, this is part of who we are too. This is not something that somebody else has got to deal with it. I don't want to hear about it. I can't deal because we have created it. We co-created this. It's a codependently arisen phenomenon, not just theoretical codependence, but we actually helped create it, all of us.

[24:21]

So some of the words connected with this route of respond is sponsor. which if you think about a sponsor, it's someone who makes a promise to you, you know, or sponsor you. Spouse. A spouse is someone that there's a promise with, a betrothal, a plighting, a trough. And then there's despond or despondency. So I was turning that and, you know, what is despond means? You know, despondency is despondency. disheartened, to be disheartened, to be depressed, to be, to lose our confidence and our faith, to be despondent. And the, you know, thinking about what makes us despondent when these promises have been broken, when there is no response, when we're not, when there's a, when there isn't

[25:28]

and a mutual responsiveness, we can become despondent. So other Lokiteshvara, actually, the word of Lokiteshvara or in Japanese and Chinese Kannon and Kuan Yin, within those characters, it's... The word itself means to respond to the cries of the world, to respond, to listen and to hear and to respond. Or the request comes up and the listening comes up at the same time. And in the listening is a response and is responsibility. So there's a koan about kanon or kuan yin.

[26:37]

What does the bodhisattva of great compassion, this kanon, the one who hears the cries of the world, is the bodhisattva of great compassion, which is not separate from the energy of great compassion each of us has. what does the bodhisattva of great compassion do with so many hands and eyes the bodhisattva of great compassion sometimes is shown with a thousand hands and each hand has an eye so these hands are ready to respond with labor you know with a helping hand with hoeing and watering and baking and nursing and architecture and art and doctoring and car mechanics and whatever else, all the work of the world, all the labor of the world, the Bodhisattva of Great Compassion is ready to pitch in.

[27:41]

And on the hand is an eye. On each hand is an eye. So this response is a response of not reactive or out of fear, but a response that has observing, clearly observing, clearly there, clearly attuned. And in that clarity, there's no judgment about who is worthy of responding to. That's one of the beauties of this infinite compassion. There's no... You're not worthy of being responded to. There is no such being. There is no such person, animal or plant who isn't worthy of a full response or a renewed promise or a mutual interaction.

[28:47]

So what does the Bodhisattva of Great Compassion do with so many hands and eyes? This is Dao Wu and his friend said, it's like reaching back for a pillow in the night, in the dark. It's like reaching back for a pillow in the night. And the monk said, how so? And he said, all over the body is hands and eyes. The other teacher said, whose name escapes me, I'm sorry, well that's pretty good but that's only 80%. And he said, well how about you teacher? And he said, throughout the body, hands and eyes.

[29:48]

So one friend said, all over the body, hands and eyes. And his other friends said throughout the body, so not just on the outside, but the inside, which brings up what is inside, what is outside in this kanodoko, or mutual responsiveness, resonating, awakening. So... all over the body, hands and eyes. What does the Bodhisattva compassion, great compassion do with so many hands and eyes? And this image of reaching back for a pillow in the night, which we all do, and what does that pillow feel like on our back, this support, you know, or where we've lost the pillow and we just reach for it without...

[30:53]

without criticizing the pillow for being so far away, without getting annoyed with it. We just reach. We lose the pillow in the night. We don't even realize we're reaching for it. That's just the complete response. We just reach for the pillow. This is, you know, this teaching of what the Bodhisattva of Great Compassion does. They respond as if reaching back for a pillow in the night, in the dark. So for each one of us, what is it that blocks, that gets in the way of our feeling of responsibility and just acting as if just reaching for a pillow in the night? I think for the sheep and the cow and the pig, their priorities, you know, when asked for help, they had different priorities.

[32:07]

And, you know, I left it kind of open. They had things to do, you know. And we can look at our life. And, you know, right now there's the beginning of a year-long non-residential lay practitioner program that's starting this month and there's about 28 people have signed up for this and it was there was notice of it put out in the Sangha I during the summer and a number of people inquired about it and 28 people decided to take a plunge and to try this out for a year and what I realized in reading the applications, the difficulties, the challenges, the enormous responsibilities people have living both residentially and non-residentially, but reading about what people

[33:25]

and hearing from people about their responsibilities. And one person said to me, you know, she was naming all these things, and also the job market, what was going on with her job, and making ends meet, and also cooking, and her relatives being ill, and her kids, and it's just this huge thing. And then she said, oh yeah, and then, you know, People who live residentially, they're called home leavers. They're not home leavers. They've got all the comforts of home. And she was describing her, the difficulties of being a householder, as being almost insurmountable. So the responsibilities that we have for our jobs, our family, our friends, and all the other things we want to do.

[34:26]

So in the application there was, people made a commitment, they made a response, a kind of promise of taking up their life, all the different parts of their life, including their work life, of course, but also making a, environmental kind of promise or response to the environment for the year, some kind of creative expression, exercise, which people want to do and find that often goes to the bottom of the list, creative expression, study time, zazen, daily practice of zazen, some kind of liturgy or a liturgical practice or home altar, having a home altar. All these things, plus doing one-day sittings and seven-day sittings as best they can and retreats.

[35:33]

This is a huge responsibility. And the priorities have to be clear. There has to be clear awareness because otherwise someone asks you to help with something or you kind of want to do something. But if we're unclear about our priorities, then we say, not I, not I, not I, as our perhaps immediate response. So the difficulties of our lives, our sufferings that we have, the difficulties of this particular time in our lives with a lot of insecurity in our occupations and jobs and the economy and the environment. How do we respond in such a way that we have a resonance of awakening where our response is not out of fear or hiding or

[36:48]

confusion, but a real response. I think the last thing I'd just like to say is this, there is a connection between our responsibility and our love, our love for each other, our love for the world, for the environment, and our, you know, to get as close as we can to that love which also includes the pain that we feel when we, when the world is suffering, when our friends and family, when we are suffering, And then a lot of fear comes up and we may want to try and separate ourselves from it, not feel it.

[37:53]

And we do all sorts of stuff in order not to feel. So our responsibility and our kanodoko and our love is all one codependent arising. Just to leave you with another definition of this Kano Doko, deeply felt mutual response and rhythmic, balanced, mutual interchange, which is precisely what the dynamic of responsibility as well as love expresses. Deeply felt mutual response and rhythmic, balanced, mutual interchange. Rhythmic meaning The next moment, it's something else. The next moment, there's the new response. And this is suffused with love.

[39:03]

Okay. Thank you very much. Let me know.

[39:14]

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