Good morning. As I was musing about what to talk about, I was thinking, well, I should say something pertinent, relevant to this time of year, you know, the end of the year holiday season. Yeah. Maybe it's helpful for us to remind ourselves, even just intellectually, that there's parts of the world where the notion of Christmas and the holiday season and buying endless things on the internet has no relevance. Can you imagine that?

[01:02]

There's places on this planet. where browsing the internet has no relevance. So I was saying to myself, now there must be a theme in there that I could give a talk on. But my mind kept going in a different direction. But before I go in a different direction, I'll offer you this. My niece, who has a daughter who's 12. When her daughter was about six, she sent me an email and she said, her daughter's asking about God. And what would I say? And without thinking about it too much, but thinking about it some, I wrote this back. Well, I don't know if there's a God. I mean, what are we talking about when we say God?

[02:03]

You want it a little bit louder? Does that help? Okay. I don't know if there's a God, but I know for sure there's a Santa Claus. How could all this end-of-the-year extravaganza happen? unless collectively we didn't take something as real, as purposeful, as something that should be attended to, that we allow it to influence what we do, how we think, how we behave. Many years ago, we started

[03:09]

celebration for the children who live at a homeless shelter down the street. And it was my role then to orchestrate such things. And the first year we did it, there was about eight kids. And then the second year, there was about 20. And then within five years, there was 200. And we had moved it from the back of the dining room to a hall that was given to us for the afternoon. And we had 10 Santa Clauses. And I had been inducted into one of the extraordinary things that happens in San Francisco. The firemen at Christmas time go around collecting toys. Or, I don't know, maybe they're just the fire stations or repositories where you can bring your toys.

[04:12]

But I was taken to this warehouse. And I went in, and there was a mountain of toys. And the person said, take whatever you want. See, there really is a Santa Claus. And then that Christmas party became its own thing, and we went back to our little thing. And that's happening this afternoon. And you're welcome to come if you want. Almost every year, in fact, so far every year, Santa Claus comes. He comes dying in the fire escape. Cynics might say, well, he just comes from the first floor up down to the second floor down to this floor.

[05:15]

But romantics might say, no, he arrived on a sleigh. So what's real? What guides our life? What do we infuse with... the energy of our being. That we create and it creates us. One of the things I do, and I was doing it yesterday, was I helped to teach a course for Buddhist chaplains. And each month we offer a story. And here was one of the stories. I'll tell you the story and see what you make of it.

[06:20]

The great thing about stories is they don't have a single way of relating to them. we create the moral of the story and in a way it creates us or it influences us. So here's the story. There was a monk in the 18th century in Japan, Ryokan. I'm going to read one of his poems. Ryokan was beloved as this extraordinary simple being who never took on any kind of title, never became abbot or teacher of any monasteries or temples, but just wandered around. And I strongly recommend, if you're so inclined, to read his poetry.

[07:28]

It's kind of whimsical and heartfelt in equal measure. So this father comes to real kind to tell him about the trouble he's having with his son, who is a teenager. It's an interesting thing being a teenager, that betwixt and between. You're not a child, you're not an adult, and you're some of both. you're rediscovering and recalibrating what is real. It seems to me something drives you to test the boundaries, to assert your own version of reality with a dose of cynicism.

[08:34]

So the man was having troubles with his son. And he said to Ryokan, would you talk to him? So they agreed that the father would bring the son to Ryokan and they would have tea. And so the father brought the son to Ryokan and they had tea. and they made pleasant conversation. Maybe they talked about the weather, maybe they talked about Santa Claus, or whatever. Never seemed that they got down to the nitty-gritty. What exactly is he doing wrong, and how does that make you feel, and who should apologize to who, and who's right and who's wrong?

[09:43]

I never got anywhere near any of that. They just seemed to talk about how on a Saturday morning in the winter the sun shines across the tatami. And then that was it. Tea was over. And Ryokan said, okay. Thank you very much. You can leave. And the father's perplexed, he's like, what? We didn't deal with anything. And they're putting on their shoes, and the son is putting on his shoes when he notices a drop of water hitting his shoe. And he's startled, and he looks up, and Ril Khan's crying. and they put on their shoes, and they leave.

[10:48]

And then a couple of weeks later, the father comes back, the real kind, and he says, I don't know what happened that day, but my son totally changed. All the issues between us just disappeared, you know? Ah. there's something in him, reset, and he's like a different person. So I ask you, what does your mind make of that? I listened to this for an interpretation someone gave me recently.

[11:49]

I said, well, Ryokan was so frustrated and so perplexed, he couldn't think of anything to say. And he was sitting there thinking, I should be saying something. I should say something wise. but he couldn't think of anything. And then, so eventually, in utter exasperation, he said, okay, we're done. And they were getting up to leave, and he was so exasperated at his own futility with the situation, he started to cry. How about that interpretation? Did that one come up for you? How about this for a notion?

[12:58]

The interpretation that you come up with speaks loudly of who you are, of how you engage the world? What's important in life? What you hope for in relationships? What is real and what's not real? I read in a book that, as a real kind, wandered around Japan. He was known for rolling up the sleeves of his robes and playing with the children and spending the whole afternoon running around laughing and joking and behaving like a child.

[14:14]

and then going back to his little hut in the evening. And sometimes he wrote a lot of poetry. An evening dream. Everything an illusion. I can't explain clearly even one part of what I saw. And yet in the dream, it seemed as if truth were in front of my eyes. This morning, awake, is it not the same dream? And this what? What is this existence we're living? And how does the descriptors of it come into being? If you speak of delusions, everything becomes a delusion. If you speak the truth, everything becomes truth.

[15:22]

Beyond the truth, there's no delusion. Beyond delusion, there's no special truth. Followers of the Buddha way, why do you so earnestly seek the truth somewhere else? Look for delusion and truth in the bottom of your own hearts. Maybe in the excesses that we collectively create at this time of year, there's some great gift that Santa Claus, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, however you want to name it, is offering us. What's at the bottom of our hearts?

[16:26]

In my version of this story, as you can probably tell by now, Ril Khan's the hero. Is there a better kind of hero than one who doesn't want to control, doesn't make demands, has magical powers to say nothing and say everything? Part of the spirit, part of the ethos of Zen is this getting to the delusions and truths at the bottom of your heart.

[17:42]

And maybe even more mysterious to not separate them out and say, okay, well, these are unwelcome delusions. And these are sacred truths. But more to see, we're part of a co-creation. We create Santa Claus, and Santa Claus creates us. And each of us mysteriously capable of a courageous generosity. And each of us completely capable of a tight-fisted stinginess.

[18:51]

In the early Buddhist suttas it says, the antidote to fear is generosity. Santa Claus comes to help us recover from the way the long dark nights are frightening us. And yet in the long dark night, something very important happens. The way that spring is preceded by winter. There's some way to contact the bottom of our hearts, something needs to hold still. Something needs to not be consumed in restlessness and agitation.

[20:02]

Here's a wonderful story someone told me recently. He said, he and his husband were driving somewhere. And he said to his partner, he said, why don't we go this way? Because at this time of day, we can avoid the traffic and we'll get there to this appointment on time. And his husband went the other way. And they ran into the traffic, and they didn't get the right time. And he said, he was more than a little pissed. You know, I told him, don't go that way. And did he listen to me? No, he didn't. And was I right? Apparently, yes, I was. He said, and then I started to think, as he was settling in to a self-righteous sullenness, I will just sit here in the glory of being right and be resentful and sullen.

[21:37]

I've earned it. And he said he noticed, yeah, and I've rehearsed it. I've done it many times. And I don't like it. It hurts. And it doesn't fix anything. It doesn't resolve anything. It doesn't create connection. It doesn't create communication. And he said, I'd like to be able to say, I turned to him and said, and then he modeled what he might have said. You know, when you did that, after what I said, and hadn't even addressed what I had suggested, when you did that, it hurt me.

[22:44]

I was hurt by that. I felt dismissed. I felt that my contribution was not valuable. And we agreed. That would have been a lovely thing to say. In contrast to maybe the sullenness The sitting there, resenting. Or possibly an explosion of anger. Jump out of the car and storm off. We create reality and reality creates us.

[23:47]

The dance is going on all the time. And we can let others be almost like a puppet in the theater of it. We just turn them into an object because really all we need them for is to play out the theater we've rehearsed many times. Or we can try to see it and go beyond that version of reality. Beyond fixed ideas, some truth. But not the truth. But beyond delusions, Israel says,

[24:53]

there is no special truth. Then hopefully, as we make our skillful pronouncement, albeit of our own hurt, hopefully then we're willing to listen to what comes next from the other person. That we invite the person to be alive and join us in aliveness. the mysterious dance that we do with each other. Is God real? Is Santa Claus real?

[25:55]

And we look at how many responses there are to those questions. what is, you know, in our own being, what is real? What version of that has some resonance, some sense of accuracy or validity that you can live by it? Not as a, as real comes, not as a special truth, but as going beyond getting stuck in the delusions. Because it's always, you know, then you say this to someone else, and then hopefully they speak back to you. You've started something.

[27:07]

It continues. Then they say back to you, Well, I thought Rio Khan was just totally frustrated, and he was crying with frustration. They didn't explain to me how Rio Khan crying with frustration transformed the life of the teenager. Still, there's always loose ends to tie up. Let me offer you another poem. coming at the same thing in a slightly different way. This is by Pablo Neruda. He, Chilean poet, who loved the sea. And fortunately for him, Chile is one long, thin country with a lot of coastline and a lot of sea. I need the sea because it teaches me.

[28:12]

I don't know if I learn music or awareness, if it's a single wave or a vast existence. The fact is, in some magnetic way, I move in the university of the waves. What if you thought of your life like that? I'm in the sea of existence. I don't know if I'm learning music or awareness or how to be me, how to be something other than stuck in me, how to be willing to be thoroughly alone, how to be willing to be thoroughly connected to everything. Am I a single wave or part of a vast existence of a sea?

[29:33]

What it's taught me before, I keep. It's air, it's ceaseless wind, water and sand. He edited that quite a bit. Try to bring across one. Here's what he says about himself. It seems a small thing for a young man to have come here to live with his own fire. Nevertheless, the pulse which rose and fell in its abyss, the crackling of the blue cold, the gradual whirring away of the star, the soft unfolding of the wave, squandering snow with its foam the quiet power out there sure as the stone shrine in the depths replaced my world in which were growing stubborn sorrows gathering oblivion and my life changed suddenly and i took the side of pure movement

[30:50]

whatever cultural concoction we're in the throes of. I remember once deciding I would watch the Super Bowl. I had no idea they had so many ads in it. I thought I wasn't sure whether the best part of it... Was the creativity of the ads? Or these two teams of highly athletic men smashing each other? Very skillful in discovering. Not sure what to do with that cultural concoction. we call part of the world we live in.

[32:14]

And we do live in it. Each of us, in our own way, pulling out of it what we consider to be important, significant. and often not even recognizing the pieces we're pulling out. Dare I say there may be people in the room who see the headlines about a very significant publicly elected official. and yet give what he has to say, time and energy, even just to disagree vehemently.

[33:25]

You know, in Buddhism, we have something we call... dependent core rising. And the danger of it is it can either sound you know, cerebral and irrelevant or are some way the language of the enlightened mind. But it's what we're doing all the time. One way or another. When we sit sullenly in the car seat after having been greatly offended by someone not listening to what we said. Or where they were moved to go and buy some gifts.

[34:42]

and to feel a kind of inner expansion as we watch the looks on the faces of the people who receive them. What world shall we participate in creating? As Pablo Neruda says, I don't know if I learn music or awareness. I don't know if it's a matter of dancing with existence or confronting my own stuckness and habits. I don't even know if it's an either or. There's something about coming alive.

[35:47]

So that's my Christmas story. I'd encourage you to make up your own. What ending would you like it to have? And the little girl who asked about God is now the ripe old age of 12 and has long since dismissed such questions and moved on to more lofty things like what it is to be cool with your friends. our latest passions. And here we are in our world, deluged with all sorts of information, images of our world.

[37:20]

Pablo Neruda says in another poem he says one of his great enjoyments was to return to the sea. To return to the particular wave and the vast ocean. I need the sea because it teaches me. I don't know if I learn music or awareness, if it's a single wave or a vast existence. The fact is that until I fall asleep in some magnetic way, I move in the university of the waves. What it taught me before, I keep. It's air, ceaseless wind, water and sand. It seems a small thing for a young man to have come here to live with his own fire.

[38:34]

Nevertheless, the pulse which rose and fell in its abyss, the crackling of the blue cold, the gradual wearing away of a star, the soft unfolding of the wave, squandering snow on its foam, the quiet power out there, sure, as a stone shrine in the depths, replaced my world in which was growing stubborn sorrow and gathering oblivion. And my life changed suddenly, and I took the side of pure movement. Enjoy your story. May it support you and support everybody else.

[39:42]

Thank you.

[39:44]

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