Good morning. I don't know most of you here, so my name is Tia, and I'm a high school teacher. I teach at a high school. Can you hear me? No? Yes? I'm a high school teacher. My name is Tia. I don't know most of you. I'm happy to be here. I don't talk much anymore at Zen Center, so I was thinking, well, what would be the most important thing to talk about? And I couldn't decide. But recently, you know, it's May, so June, our seniors are going to graduate from high school and

[01:02]

I read to them a speech, a commencement speech that was given at Kenyon College in 2005 by David Foster Wallace. And I edited it for them and read it to them because our school practice is paying attention. And I thought I would read it to you so I'm going to because it is about paying attention and it is about choice and it is about the most important thing so I thought we'd start there to add something.

[02:04]

The choice that will be clear about what he's talking about in his little talk is the choice between coming from an egoic mind, a mind focused and not just focused but coming from a mind of self as opposed to coming from something deeper that is our true nature. And that is the most important thing. There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way who nods at them and says, warning, how's the water? And the two young fish swim on for a bit and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, what the hell is water? I don't know. If you learn that I plan to present myself here as a wise older fish, explaining what water is to you younger fish, please don't be.

[03:08]

I am not the wise old fish. The point of the fish story is merely that the most obvious, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about. Because a really significant education isn't really about the capacity to think, but rather about the choice of what to think about. Please don't worry that I'm getting ready to lecture you about compassion or other directedness or all the so-called virtues. This is not a matter of virtue. It's a matter of my choosing to do the work of somehow altering or getting free of my natural hardwired default setting, which is to be deeply and literally self-centered and to see and interpret everything through the lens of self. And probably the most dangerous thing about an academic education is that it enables a tendency to over-intellectualize stuff, to get lost in abstract argument inside my head, instead of simply paying attention to what is going on right in front of me, paying attention to what is going on inside me.

[04:14]

As I'm sure you know by now, it is extremely difficult to stay alert and attentive. instead of getting hypnotized by the constant monologue inside your own head may be happening now. The rule is being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed. Think of the real cliche. LAUGHTER And mine, being an excellent servant, but a terrible master. By low example, let's say it's an average adult day, and you get up in the morning to go to a challenging white-collar college graduate job, and you work hard for eight or ten hours, and at the end of the day you're tired and somewhat stressed, and all you want to do is go home and have a good supper and maybe unwind for an hour. And we hit the sack early because, of course, you have to get up the next day and do it all over again.

[05:17]

But then we remember there's no food at home if you haven't had time to shop this week because of your challenging job. And so now, after work, you have to get in your car and drive to the supermarket. It's the end of the road day, and traffic is apt to be very bad. So getting to the store takes way longer than it should. And when you finally get there, the supermarket is very crowded because, of course, it's a time of day when all other people with jobs also try to squeeze in some grocery shopping. And the store is hideous little bit and infused with soul-killing music or corporate pop, and it's pretty much the last place you want to be. But you can't just get in and out quickly. You have to wander all over the huge overworld stores confusing aisles to find the stuff you want. And you have to maneuver your junkie cart through all these other tired, hurried people with carts. And eventually you get all your dinner supplies, except now it turns out that there aren't enough checkout lanes open, even though it's the end of the day rush. So the checkout line is incredibly long, which is stupid and infuriating. But anyway, we finally went through the checkout lines front, and you pay for your food, and you get told,

[06:22]

Have a nice day. In a verse, that is absolutely a bliss of death. And we will have to drive all the way home through slow, heavy SUV, intense rush hour traffic, etc., etc., etc. Everyone here has done this, of course, but it hasn't yet been part of your graduates' actual life routine. Day, after week, after month, after year. But it will be. Laughter I'm running low, dreary, annoying, seamless, and meaningless routines besides. But that is not the point. The point is that petty frustrating crap like this is exactly where the work of choosing is going to come in. Because the traffic jams and crowded aisles and long checkout lines give me time to think. And if I don't make a conscious decision about how to think and what to pay attention to, I'm going to be pissed and miserable every time I have to shop. Because my natural default setting is the certainty that situations like this are really all about me, about my hungriness, my fatigue, my desire to just get home.

[07:32]

And it's going to seem for all the world like everybody else is just in my way. And who are all those people in my way? And look at how repulsive most of them are and how stupid and coward-like and dread-eyed and non-human they seem in the checkout line. But how annoying and rude it is that people are talking loudly on cell phones in the middle of the line. And look at how deeply and personally unfair this all is. You get the idea. If I choose to focus, it may, it may, this way, it may be fine. Lots of us do. Except thinking this way is my natural default setting. It's the automatic way that I experience the burning, frustrating, crowded parts of adult life when I'm operating on the automatic, unconscious belief that I am the center of the world and that my immediate needs and feelings are what should determine the world's priorities. The fear is that, of course, there are totally different ways to think about these kinds of situations.

[08:39]

In this traffic, all these vehicles stopped and idling in my way. It's not impossible that some of these people in SUVs have been in horrible utter accidents in the past and now find driving so terrifying that their therapist has all but ordered them to get a huge, heavy SUV so they can feel safe enough to drive. Or that the Hummer that just cut me off is merely being driven by a father whose little child is hurt or sick in the seat next to him. And he's trying to get this kid to the hospital. And he's in a bigger, more legitimate hurry than I am. It is actually I who am in his way. Or I can choose to force myself to consider the likelihood that everyone else in the supermarket's checkout line is just as bored and frustrating as I am. And that some of these people probably have harder, more tedious and painful lives than I do. Again... Please don't think that I'm giving you moral advice or that I'm saying you're supposed to think this way or that anyone expects you to just automatically do it because it's hard.

[09:40]

It takes will and effort. And if you are like me, some days you won't be able to do it or you just flat out won't want to. But most days, if you're aware enough to give yourself a choice, you can choose to look differently at this dead-eyed, over-made-up lady who just screamed at her kid in the checkout line. Remember, she's not usually like this. Remember, she's been at three straight nights holding the hand of a husband who is dying of bone cancer. Remember, this fellow lady was the low-roach clerk at the motor vehicle department who just yesterday helped drift spats resolve a horrific, infuriating, red-toe problem through some small act of bureaucratic kindness. Of course, none of this is likely, but it's also... But it's also not impossible. It depends what we want to consider. If you're automatically sure that you know what reality is, and you are operating on your default setting, then you, like me, probably won't consider possibilities that aren't annoying and miserable.

[10:48]

But if you really learn how to pay attention, then you will know there are other options. It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, hot, slow, consumer hell type situation as not only meaningful, but sacred, on fire, with the same force that made the stars, love, fellowship, and the mystical oneness of all things, deep down. Not that mystical stuff is necessarily true. The only thing that's capital T true is that you get to decide how you're going to try to see it. So you get to consider what has meaning and what doesn't. You get to decide what to worship. Because here's something else that's weird but true. In the global-day transfers of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshiping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship.

[11:49]

And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of God or spiritual type thing to worship, be it Josie or Allah or Yahweh or the Rook and Mother Goddess or the Four Noble Truths or some inviolable set of ethical principles, is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough. Never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure, and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It's been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables, the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness. Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out.

[12:55]

But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they're evil or sinful. It's that they're unconscious. They are default settings. They're the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value. without ever being fully aware that that's what you're doing. And the so-called ruler world will not discourage you from operating on your default settings because the so-called ruler world of men and money and power hums merely along in a pool of fear and anger, frustration and craving and the worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom all to be lords of our own tiny skull-sized kingdoms alone at the center of all creation.

[14:01]

This kind of freedom has much to recommend it, but of course there are all different kinds of freedom. and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much about in the great outside world of wanting. The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad, petty, unsexy ways every day. That is real freedom. That is being educated and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had and lost some infinite thing. I know that this stuff probably doesn't sound fun and breezy or grandly inspirational, the way a commencement speech is supposed to sound.

[15:07]

What it is, as far as I can see, is the capital T truth with a whole lot of rhetorical niceties stripped away. You are, of course, free to think of it whatever you wish, but please don't just dismiss it. None of this stuff is really about morality or religion or dogma or big fancy questions of life after death. The capital T truth is about life before death. is about the real value of a real education, which has almost nothing to do with knowledge and everything to do with simple awareness. Awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us all the time, that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over, this is water. This is water. It is unimaginably hard to do this. To stay conscious and alive in the adult world day in and day out.

[16:11]

Which means yet another grand cliché turns out to be true. Your education really is the dad of a lifetime. And it commences now. And I wish you way more than luck. is about choice choosing what we pay attention to because what we pay attention to is what we become and we are lucky in Buddhism because Buddhism has a very clear sight sighting of what is this basic truth and it gives us tools and it gives us teachers to point the way through lineage of more than

[17:30]

2,500 years of an alive lineage, warm hand to warm hand, so that if we fall off the road, there will be somebody there who says, no, no, no, no, this way, this way, keep going, this way, pay attention to this. suffering in life. There is suffering in life. We can't avoid it. It's how we respond to that truth that is key.

[18:31]

There is at a very deep level a sense of dis-ease a sense of not enough, a sense of something lacking. There is a reason why we suffer this sense. And the reason is grasping. We grasp after what is impermanent We grasp after what we cannot hold on to. Everything is in constant flux. It arises out of emptiness, co-created, and it dissolves. It returns to itself in emptiness.

[19:37]

It is this emptiness that Buddhism clearly points to. And that it is not hidden. It is manifest around us all the time. And everything around us is teaching this truth. We can understand it easily when we look outside of ourselves and see that everything arises depending on everything else. We can easily accept this. But when we turn and look toward ourselves, it's a little bit more difficult.

[20:55]

am only this co-created, empty of a separate, unchanging self event? Do you mean that in my meditation, when I am still and stable and able to use the mind to really look deeply, that the sense of me this idea of me is only an idea arising out of emptiness dissolving back into emptiness then who am I? If I'm not my body no control there if I'm not my thoughts No control there. If I'm not my emotions, no control there.

[22:02]

Maybe there isn't anyone in there pulling the levers, like in The Wizard of Oz. And Buddhism gives us tools, meditation being the primary one. so that we can sit and quiet the mind. There are, well, before I say that, let me say this. When we sit, and Soto Zen has really a problem with this, okay? When we sit, we actually do need to be present. And we do need to use effort, especially in the beginning. have enough concentration for the mind to be able to quiet itself. If we lose too much concentration, that is not the way.

[23:07]

It doesn't serve us. If we suppress thought in that way, it's not helpful. If we don't have enough concentration, which often is the case in Soto Zen, we end up sitting in a very nice vaguely blissful, vaguely pleasant, but rather fuzzy state of mind that is not useful. The mind needs to be stable yet bright in zazen. And when that happens, we can either sit in just sitting, The instructions there are don't do anything. But be careful there. You have to be really clear what that is. Or you can use the mind as a tool to investigate.

[24:07]

Am I really in there? Look. Again and again and again. Until you're sure. Does everything really change? Look again and again and again until you're really sure. Is everything really empty of an essential, unchanging core? Look again and again and again until you're sure. If you have insight or any kind of realization, and there will be, the key is, can you live that understanding?

[25:23]

If you really see that everything changes, what does that mean in your life? And why are we trying to hold on to things? If you see that there really is no separation, then when a sense of separation actually occurs, can you catch it? Whether it's separation from your partner, a tree, a little worm going the wrong way on the earth, take care of it. A bodhisattva practice is on that edge where separation occurs. If you see clearly how suffering arises, then choose whatever is causing the suffering.

[26:29]

Choose which is a clinging, the mind is clinging to something. Let go. And if there is struggle, if there is fighting anywhere outside of you, or within, stop fighting. It's possible. Can we stop grasping after the egoic mind? Can we stop living from the sense the self-centered sense of me that's yammering away in our minds all the time it's a question and it's a choice are we living from our default setting or can we live from a deeper place of connectedness of silence

[27:40]

in a meeting and there's energy around some idea can you stop can you let go of that energy and come from a place of stillness or at work or with your family and can we see what is around us all the time Nothing is hidden. It's teaching us all the time. What you are looking at is what you are. What I am looking at is what I am. three five the truth you search for cannot be grasped as night advances a bright moon illuminates the whole ocean the dragon's jewels are found in every wave looking at the moon it is here in this wave

[29:18]

And the next. This is water. This is water.

[29:32]

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