So many years ago, when my daughter was starting school, I used to like to go and sit in the class and watch the little kids. And one of her classes, I think it was first grade, the teachers had the children write the rules for how they behaved. And they were all posted around in the room. And the rules were, use your words. everybody can play, no name-calling, no hitting, and ask for help. So I thought that was a really good set of rules for anybody, kids and grown-ups as well. And one of the neatest things was that when the kids would go out in the playground, if there were a group of children playing and someone came up to them and said, can I play, and one of the kids said no, then the other kids would say, everybody can play.

[01:01]

That's a rule. So I think the rules are really important in supporting our life. What are the rules? How are we going to play together? So last summer, after our Shingi review at Green Gulch Farm, there were some, I don't know what to call them exactly, conflicts, civil war, something going on in the kitchen. The groups of people were really mad at each other. And so the practice leaders asked me if I would talk about the shingi and the rules and try to quiet things down a little bit. So what I decided to do was have the community at that time write their own rules, like the kids had done. And they were so beautiful, what came out of that, that I posted them on the window of my office, and they're still there. If you're ever at Gringoltshire, you can read them. Quite wonderful. So I'm going to have us do that too.

[02:03]

And that's the event part later. But before that, I thought I would say some more things about precepts and about how we practice with the Buddha's rules or his guidelines for our life of peaceful abiding. So precepts are basically intended to illuminate the imaginary line that we actually believe separates us. from everything around us. It's as though you could draw a dotted line around the contours of your body and then cut it out. And that's me. That's me. And then we imagine that the me that's been cut out plus everything else is what we mean by the universe. It's the formula that each of us imagines. Which is, if you think about it, that's probably not true. Seems a little strange. In fact, it's kind of unimaginable what would happen if you cut out a me and separated from the rest of the universe.

[03:09]

What would be left of you without color or sound or smell or friends or vacations or all the things you know that connects you to everything else, that are everything, that are me. So we might as well be dead if we're separate. But even that's hard to imagine, being dead, although we can imagine it. We heard a vivid story about imagining being dead, jumping off a 101-story building. Probably you'd be dead if you hit the ground from that height, very likely. But what happened instead? He woke up. And that's what happens to all of us. We can imagine being dead, but so far anyway, we've all woken up. But even though we've woken up from imagining our death, we're afraid of it. It drives our lives, the fear of death. If any of you have studied the 12-fold chain, some of you from Greenwich I know have because I've made you do that, but the 12-fold chain of Dependent Core Rising is being held by this kind of monstrous-looking character with fangs and claws.

[04:27]

And that's, in one story anyway, that's Lord Yama, the Lord of Death. And the whole wheel is called the wheel of birth and death, and it revolves around this fear we have, it drives us, that we're going to be cut out. We're going to be eliminated, and we're going to lose all those things that we depend on for our very life. So, the strategy that all of us have come up with, world-round, is is to make a deal with the other, with the universe. And the deal that we've made is that, basically, I'll be okay, and so will my family and my friends, and maybe even my community, if I get a little more of everything than everybody else. It's what we call a hoarding. I'm going to start gathering lots of walnuts and hide them in my little stump of tree there. Nobody else can... and have them and then I'll do fine.

[05:28]

I'll be fine. So, you know, that's an okay strategy. As we see around the world, people are hoarding vast amounts of money and land and resources and they're keeping them for themselves and they're making sure no one else can get them and they have guns and they have tanks and they have bank accounts in the Cayman Islands. So, you know, This seems to be kind of crazy, if you think about it. Doing it, I think we're all doing it, but when we think about it, it's totally crazy. I actually met two people years ago. I was sent by the Zen Center to be the attendant, the Anja, for a woman named Nancy Wilson Ross, who lived on the East Coast and was a friend of a great many well-known people with names like Rockefeller and... I forget. Anyway, you know all those names.

[06:29]

Anyway, Carnegie. She had descendants of the founders of those dynasties, family dynasties, mostly ladies, would meet together with her in a book club at the Rockefeller Mansion in New York City. So I got to drive her there and eat lunch at this huge table. And they were really kind of goofy, those ladies, although charming. But they're just like everybody, of course. They don't look different. They don't act different. I actually said that to Nancy. I said, boy, they're just like my mom's friends. And she said, how dare you? I said, my mom's really nice. I don't have a lot of money, but they're nice people. Anyway, so part of our time together, she asked me to drive her to the airport. We were down in Florida at that point to meet her friends, Paul and Bunny. And so we got to the airport, and there's this huge roar. And this is a little airport, mostly Piper Cubs.

[07:30]

And in comes a jet plane, a giant jet plane, a big jet plane. The only thing on it was, on the tail, it said 1927. And then Paul and Bunny came down the stairs of the plane, and they were nice-looking people, small, I mean, proportion to the plane, you know, human-sized. And we shook hands, and then Paul said, I said, what is the 1927? He said, oh, that's the year I graduated from Yale. So his name was Paul Mellon. And they were going off to their very own island in the Caribbean with Nancy. They were taking her for a holiday. And I thought it was utterly crazy that these two people had their own island, their own jet plane, and that they were, you know, flying around with all that fuel. Utterly crazy. And yet, what is utterly crazy has become utterly normal. So, this approach of hoarding, when undertaken by 8 billion people, is a disaster in the making.

[08:43]

In fact, it's already being made, as we all know. An ecological disaster of the first order is in process. We are, like bread mold, eating all of the bread. And once that happens, there's no more bread mold. Just black dust. So I'm afraid. I'm afraid of being cut out, that life's going to be cut out of the universe, our little blue-green planet. I am afraid of that. Makes me unhappy, even though I probably will be long gone by the time it's black dust. But still... I don't want that for this beautiful place to be harmed in that way. I really don't. And I know you don't. I know that. And yet it's going to get harder and harder for us to find non-toxic soil or breathable air, clean water. It's getting harder and harder. Or food, a place to live, housing.

[09:44]

Eight billion people hoarding is... Serious problem. And actually, there's going to be a lot more than that very soon. So I know this is getting really depressing, so I'm going to change the subject soon. But before I do, I wanted to mention that it's not my fault. I'm just one person. And also, what can one person do with such a big problem? And there's the other problem. that each one of us, as a cutout, doesn't think it's our fault or our responsibility. You know, what can I do? What can one little cutout do? So this is our challenge. How are we going to come up with a response to what we are doing together? How are we going to... Get this scarf off. So...

[10:47]

I think the first step is that we have to accept responsibility for the mess that we're making. You know, step number one, it's our responsibility. Fault or not, it doesn't matter. It's our responsibility. And the second step is that we're going to have to find a way to cooperate in taking care of it all. We're kind of doing this on this microscopic level here at Tassajara. You know, we're recycling, we're putting our cups back in where they belong, we're sharing food. We're collectively taking care of this place. And we're practicing, learning how to do that better and better and better. And we all need to do it. If any one of us isn't helping, it shows. That thing remains there on the rock, whatever that is you left there. Lost and found. Reb said to me, I don't like lost and found announcements. And I said, why? And he said, because I don't think Zen students should be losing things. Oh, that's kind of harsh. Anyway. My teacher.

[11:52]

So it seems to me that finding a better way, solving this problem, is something that the Buddha undertook thousands of years ago because the problem was already happening. It was well underway, hoarding. His parents were a king and a queen. They were hoarders of the first order. And he was a prince. So they had more than anybody else. So his response was to leave the palace and to go off into the forest and spend many long years seeking a resolution to the bloodshed and to the accumulation of more than others by the privileged few. This is the cause of suffering. His own heart was broken by the pain of the world. So he kind of made a guinea pig of himself, and he studied himself as a case in point. The problem is humans, and I'm a human, so what is it that I'm doing?

[12:54]

Why is it that I'm causing this terrible suffering to the world, to myself? And so it wasn't until the morning of the seventh day of his seven-day seshin that he came to realize the truth of who he was. that he wasn't separate, he wasn't outside of anything else. In fact, he saw his own miraculous face reflected. He saw it reflected in the star. He saw it reflected in an overhanging branch from the tree he was sitting under. And he saw it reflected in a lovely young woman carrying a jar of water and walking down the path. He saw it in the creek and he saw it in the birds and the grass. That was himself. That was his face. He saw his face was everything, everything around him. Shifting the perspective from the cutout, from the me as an isolated and cramped in, contracted self, to my actual face is everything around me.

[14:00]

This is my face, my true face. Opposite world, inside out. So he knew he wasn't alone and he knew there was no thing outside of himself. So he recommended this opposite world to his disciples that rather than devoting ourselves to our own welfare and hoarding for ourselves, that we devote ourselves to others. I think you may know that story, the difference between heaven and hell. Do you all know that story? It has to do with chopsticks? No? Yes, no? Anyway, so in heaven, no, in hell, There's a huge banquet table, and there's lots of food, and everyone has a set of chopsticks that are three feet long. So they can't eat. That's hell. In heaven, same thing, same setup, except they're feeding each other. That's heaven. Simple. It's just a change in perspective, you know, from self-concern to self-concern, true self-concern.

[15:08]

You as self. World as self. Joanna Macy's book is World as Lover, World as Self. So this overcoming this idea that you're a separate self involves basically renouncing self-concern, self-conceit, self-love, and ignorance. These are the four self-clingings. And it's a radical act. It's a radical act. to turn yourself inside out, to turn the other way. The Revolutionary Act. And I think we need a revolution, actually. Pretty quick. Non-violent. Some problems with what the Marxists were doing. If you've ever read the manifesto, there was a lot of violence recommended. They're not going to give up their property if we don't kill them. And so the fear and reaction to that idea of a communal life was...

[16:09]

we'll kill you first. We haven't stopped fighting yet about the idea of a communal collective life as opposed to individual self-capitalist, me and mine first life. And that's the war that's going on right now in our world. It's two big ideas. Self and sharing. Mine and everybody's. Somebody said once, it's like the mother-father thing, you know, that dad is going to try and protect you. and provide, and so on, which is a good thing. And the mom is kind of into getting everybody some food. So there's this... That's not a male-female. It's not a gender thing. It's just an attitude. You want to protect, you want to make sure you've got enough, and then you want to share. But one side without the other is just pure poison. So... Diverting the flow of our ambition away from accumulating more and more and more toward preserving resources, as I say, is a radical act.

[17:14]

And it has a lot to do with the accumulation of cargo. And I don't know how many of you have read Jared Diamond's book, Guns, Germ, and Steel. Have any of you read it? Some of you read it? Yeah. I recommend it for those of you who haven't. You don't have to read the whole thing. Just the first chapter will give you his basic thesis. So this book starts with a question he was asked by a New Guinea Highlander who he meets out in the forest. And there's Jared Diamond in his REI where, you know, he's got all the gear and his water bottle and, you know, walkie-talkie and everything. And the Highlander, who's in a loincloth with a spear, says to him, how did you people get all the cargo? And so this is the question that drives his looking into, well, how did we get all the cargo? We, whoever it is, with all the cargo. How did we get all the cargo? And what he discovers, I think he makes a pretty good case for it, is it was just luck. It was just luck. Certain people ended up in the Indus River Valley, where all the domesticatable animals, pretty much, had accumulated, and all the domesticatable plants.

[18:25]

So the wheat and the corn and the grass, not corn, the wheat and other things, barley maybe, and then the chickens and the cows and everything. So you couldn't domesticate a grizzly bear. So there were certain places on the earth where there were not domesticatable animals. And places where they ate them all, like they ate those big birds, emu? Emu. They ate all the emu and then ended up having to forage because they'd eaten the one domesticatable animal that might have provided them with food. So anyway, it was just luck. Luck and hoarding, Tombo. And so... When you're lucky and you hoard, you can create an empire. Because having enough food means you can have more babies. And when you have more babies, you have more people, you need more food, so you've got to spread out. So the history of every human empire is spreading out until, like bread mold, they run out of people to steal food from, and then they shrink. And then another group takes them. So you can just see it as a kind of over-time-lapse photograph of this bread mold thing we do.

[19:30]

taking more than our share, and then we run out and we shrink. Pretty crazy. So what did the Buddha teach us to do as an alternative? Well, he said, don't steal, don't lie, don't kill. Don't put toxins on yourself or anybody else. Don't disrespect, don't brag, don't hoard, don't hate anybody. Precepts. Self and other. Precepts are basically a kind of trellis that we use while we still think there is another out there. We basically take on a promise to the other that I think is there. This document, this item I'm wearing is a promise I'm making to you as other that I will not kill you. I won't steal your things. I won't lie to you. I won't sexualize you I won't slander you it's the best I can do for now you know as humans we have to try something do something to break the spell I heard once a friend told me that in Jewish households when you have guests for dinner that there's a policy or a practice that family holds back family holds back meaning

[21:00]

When there are others there who need nourishment or need food, you wait until everyone else has been fed. Then you eat. Family hold back. So that's our practice. We want to be last. Bodhisattva has crossed the line last. And once everyone else is gone, then we can go too. But that's our vow. When we take these vows, I find Jukai to be one of, among the many lovely things we do, one of the loveliest. Because there's a point in the ceremony, people have invited their families, they've invited their friends, the community is there, and they are so sincere. It's the most sincere moment I think most people have is when they enter into ceremonial space and having asked and having considered this acceptance of the Bodhisattva precepts. And so for just a moment, the whole space opens and you can actually feel the heart of the world, of creation itself.

[22:13]

You can see it right there. It's so warm and so loving and so inclusive of everyone and everything. And creation itself, she smiles back for a change in admiration for us. We say that in the ceremony. All Buddhas and ancestors throughout the universe are chanting and dancing and throwing flower petals in celebration of this wondrous occasion of these little humans taking the precepts on planet Earth. So the precepts basically are also a kind of holding pattern around this idea we have that there's an other... until we wake up to the fact that there actually is no other. And not only that, there's no self. This is the big leap. This is the challenge. Awake. No self, no other. What have I been dreaming?

[23:14]

I've been dreaming that I am dreaming. So, you know, we have to kind of... use this, almost like a pacifier or something, we're kind of using these skillful means to keep us from doing harm while we're coming to the realization that we're not going to harm something that really is us in this biggest sense. Why would I kill myself or steal from myself? There's no sense in it. There's no sense in it at all. So eventually the precepts are not necessary. But not for us. We've still got our training meals. And we're going to need them for probably a long time to come. I really appreciated Shohako Okumura was at Green Gulch giving a course for five days.

[24:17]

It was wonderful. He's a marvelous teacher for those of you who have had the privilege of sitting and listening to him teach. Anyway, he pointed out that the three pure precepts, doing good, avoiding evil, and purifying the mind, contain the two sets of primary teachings, the relative truth and the ultimate truth. Just those three precepts have both. And the way he had explained it is that doing good and avoiding evil requires us to discriminate. We actually have to know the difference between good and evil, or between right and wrong. between self and other. And we have to make good choices. So that's the practice. That's the training wheels. So the first and second of the pure precepts are the relative truth. It's about our relationships. How we take care of that dotted line that both seems to separate but also connect us to everything else. The third pure precept, purify the mind, is that there is no self and other.

[25:21]

There is no right and but that one's dangerous. You have to earn your way to that understanding. If you try to start there, you're basically falling into nihilism, which is also called the Zen sickness, and it's the hardest thing to cure. If you really think there's no self, no other, and I'm sorry you're having a problem with me, you have a big problem. Remember, you know, imaging St. Sebastian, like, when you actually fall into a nihilistic trance, it's as though these arrows, St. Sebastian was full of arrows, right? They shot him, he was a martyr. Anyway, all those arrows are being held out. You're in this little sphere of this belief in your own enlightenment. Good to go. So there's just, it's kind of like all those satellites circling the earth, just arrows all hanging out there, away from you. But when you realize that you're delusional,

[26:25]

They all come in at the same time. Very painful waking up. Because you begin to review the things you've done, the way you've behaved. You begin to review the first and second of the pure precepts. I haven't been doing good and I haven't been avoiding evil. I've actually been kind of, you know, I should be ashamed. I am ashamed. So we have confession and repentance. We have this opportunity to... to re-enter again and again into a life of practice. There's no, you know, you don't qualify. We all qualify. We just have to, as Okamura said, a billion times. You're not enlightened once. You're enlightened every time you remember. Every time you remember. And you're not every time you forget. You forget? Delusional. Sentient being. You remember? Buddha. Off and on. Off and on. Off and on. A billion times on every step, every moment. Either you do follow precepts and you understand you're not separate, or you don't.

[27:29]

You forget. That's okay. It's not a fault. It's just the way it is. So practice is continuous. 10,000 mile iron road. Purifying the mind requires us to see no self, no other, and to recognize that whatever we're thinking is highly suspect. In fact, just about all of it is just a tune that's running through our heads, a noise. Thinking is really just a very minor portion of life itself, and not the most interesting part. But we get really distracted by our thinking. We spend a lot of time, oh, I'm thinking this, I'm thinking this, I'm rotten, I'm terrible, they're rotten, they're terrible, you know, on and on and on. Anyway... I do, too. I do, too. Only sinners in this boat. So while we're waiting to become enlightened, I thought we should write some guidelines for ourselves, you know?

[28:37]

And when I went to visit the farm crew last summer... I don't know if any of you were on the farm crew last summer. Hey, Kringle. Yay, Nathan. Who else was there? Hi, Sarah. Hi. Well, we sat around the redwood table and I asked people what they'd learned. And everyone said something wonderful that they'd learned over the six months of the apprenticeship. And one of the people said, well, I learned some farming, but actually I think what you're teaching here is how to live and work together. Sangha treasure. And that really resonated for me. I thought, I think that's true. I think that's what we're really teaching. We're emphasizing the Sangha treasure. how to live and work together. And we start there. So the first step in writing guidelines of any kind for any enterprise is a mission statement. What's your goal? What are you trying to accomplish?

[29:39]

If you don't know where you're going, then what you're doing is probably just going around in circles. So Zen Center has a mission statement. Did you know that? You did? Did anybody not know that? Are you surprised? It's kind of strange. Well, we do. And it's lovely. We don't often read it. It's written at the top of the bylaws, corporate papers, sort of like the Constitution. But every now and then, the board of directors reviews the mission statement because it is the North Star by which we navigate this vast compound called the Zen Center. I mean, otherwise, we sort of drift over here. Like, there's so many good things to do. There's bread and there's flowers and there's making cheese. We can do so many things, you know, with our labor and our intelligence and just make a wonderful whatever of ourselves. But then what's our mission statement? What is it we came here to do?

[30:41]

And how are we going to accomplish it? So here's the mission statement of the San Francisco Zen Center. The purpose of the Zen Center is to express... make accessible and embody the wisdom and compassion of the Buddha. The ideals are based on the example of the Buddha and guided by the teachings and the lineage of the Soto school as conveyed to us by our founder, Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, and other Buddhist teachers. Our central value is to express the non-duality of practice and awakening through the practice of Zen, and the 16 Bodhisattva precepts. Zen Center acknowledges and values equally the expression of the practice in formal settings and in daily life. Thus, we affirm both lay and monastic practice as expressions of the Bodhisattva way.

[31:41]

Is that okay? Okay, it's a mission statement? That's the mission statement. I don't think so. Now, have they got that lei? Is Leslie here? It's been that for a long time, hasn't it? Yeah. She's a missionary. She's one of the first. 1971, right? Yeah. At least that one. So, I thought before we write our own shingi, and that's what I want to do with us, is this is the event part. I want us to break into groups of six, and I hope there's some paper. And pencils. Yay, Aaron, thank you. So each group take a piece of paper and a pencil and you'll write a mission statement for Tassajara for this 97th Anga. And you'll write a guideline. How are you going to accomplish your mission statement? Okay. Good. So before we do that, I would like us to chant the Bodhisattva precepts because we haven't done that yet together.

[32:46]

And Linda Ruth was so kind to give me a card which my assistant up in the city laminated. So I can have this with me during the full moon ceremony. So I'm going to do this as a call and response. Oh, and I wanted to mention a little tidbit or recommendation, I don't know what to call it. But, you know, as I'm being given so much time to speak to you and, you know... I was going to say, it's not my fault. But anyway, it's not my fault. But anyway, I do have a lot of time to speak, and so occasionally I want to mention some points of practice that I've noticed, as I said in my first talk, that I would like to offer direct, not challenge, but suggestions. You don't have to take them. Or maybe you can't take them, and that's fine too. I'm not going to come around later and say... I thought I told you. So it's not like that, really, I promise you. These are just things I've studied or tried to study or tried to learn, doing all the things you all do.

[33:47]

So this one's for the Kokyos. First time I was Kokyo during the full moon ceremony, I was so afraid. I went into Buddha Hall in the city center, and here's what it sounded like. Oh, my ancient and twisted karma. And the congregation was so wonderful, they went... I'm not kidding. It was... I don't know why I didn't run away, but it really was just awful. I mean, for me, everyone else was so kind. Oh, you did so great. That's called ruinous empathy. No, I didn't. Anyway, it was a long time ago. I've recovered, sort of. So what I want to say to the Kokios is... about your pitch. If you start off, because I'm going to do it right now, I'm going to start off with a pitch. And if you guys don't join me, which you probably won't, I'm going to join you. So rather than try to fight with the congregation, because they will win, always, just, you know, try something.

[34:55]

And then if they go somewhere else, join them, if you can. Some people, I know it's difficult to hear the differences in pitches, and that's fine, and that's, there's no criticism about it. So I'm going to do it now, and please chant after me. I take refuge in Buddha. I take refuge in Dharma. I take refuge in Dharma. I take refuge in Sangha. I vow to embrace and sustain right conduct. I vow to embrace and sustain all good.

[36:06]

I vow to embrace and sustain all good. I vow to embrace and sustain all good. I vow not to kill I vow not to take what is not given I vow not to misuse sexuality I vow not to misuse sexuality I vow to refrain from false speech I vow to refrain from intoxicants I vow not to slander

[37:13]

I vow not to slander I vow not to praise self at the expense of others I vow not to praise self at the expense of others I vow not to be possessive of anything I vow not to be possessive of anything I vow not to harbor ill will I vow not to part real will I vow not to disparage the triple treasure I vow not to disparage the triple treasure Thank you.

[38:01]

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