This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. I think the title of my talk today is What Are We Doing Here? Or What Are We Doing? anywhere. People sometimes say, why do you come to practice? Why do we come to practice? And there are various reasons that people come to this practice. Some people say because of suffering. Suffering brings us to practice. Some people say I come to be enlightened.

[01:01]

Some people say, I come to get my head straight. Some people say, it makes my legs stronger. There are various reasons. But at some point, I think all those reasons are valid for bringing us to this place. But actually, the real reasons that we come is revealed to us as we practice. Those reasons are not unreasonable, but when I came to practice, although I had suffering as part of our life, probably the major part, separate often because even though we don't know that that's what's happening.

[02:03]

You know, the old refrigerators used to make a lot of racket, you know, but you get used to it and you don't hear it. But when the refrigerator goes off, there's this wonderful silence. So I think... continuum of suffering is there underneath everything, but we don't notice until the refrigerator goes off. So, I had my share, of course, and I also, I was not interested in enlightenment, actually. I thought to claim enlightenment was a kind of arrogance. Because before I started to practice, enlightenment seemed like a person cannot know everything.

[03:16]

A person cannot be omniscient. So I can't say that I was brought up Jewish but I appeared as a Jew when I was born. And I didn't have the upbringing, but it was always there. It's always there within me. So later in my early 20s, I studied Judaism and gaining knowledge in that system God was enlightened, but people were not. So it was an arrogance to reclaim enlightenment. But I had always, when I heard the word meditation as a child, it rang a bell with me.

[04:20]

I think that when I was very little, I used to sit in the rocking chair and stuck my fingers. That was a kind of meditation for me. Also, when I was young, I lived in Southern California, and my mother used to take me to Venice Beach, which now it's a skating rink. At that time, it was really the beach and the pier. So I used to fish with a little drop line off the pier. And I watched the water flowing back and forth. The various shapes that the water would take all day long, day after day. So it was a kind of meditation. And it put me into a certain kind of state. So meditation was something that I always... rang a bell with me.

[05:22]

So when somebody took me to Sokoji Temple in San Francisco in 1964, I sat down and somebody came up behind me and showed me and just kind of manipulated my body into the Zazen position. And I just felt, I felt at home. And often people say, when I came, as soon as I came to Zazen, as soon as I sat down in Zazen, I felt that I had come home. And that's exactly the way I felt. I didn't feel that I wanted to get rid of suffering or get enlightened. I just felt that I had finally found my true home, which we are all seeking. No matter what we think we're seeking, we're seeking something beyond what we think we're seeking.

[06:23]

Suzuki Roshi, our teacher, used to say, talk about our inmost request. I like to think of four stages of our life. Everyone can relate to this in a different way, and maybe not at all, but we're born, we can relate to that. And we have our childhood, and we have a kind of purity, a purity as a baby up to a certain age. And then we start needing, being needy in a different way as we discover the world in a larger way.

[07:33]

And then it's easy to get lost in that because desire is a great motivator. Everything is subject to desire. In Buddhism, you know, desire has a bad name if you don't understand it. Because desire leads to suffering. That's the second noble truth. Life is subject to suffering. And why? Because of desire. We say delusion, but actually it's called desire. So desire is not bad. all good. Desire is just desire. It's just the motivation to fulfill our feelings, our thoughts, our emotions, to connect in a way that is fulfilling, which fully fills us.

[08:40]

So we go up various avenues desire leads us up various avenues and most of them in the end are not completely fulfilling. So we call this the world of delusion in which our desires lead us up various avenues which miss the point. There's always something missing. So in our Buddhadharma, after we have gone up those various roads, which are called vain strivings, we feel this need to do something. We feel a need to find...

[09:45]

the true way, so to speak. I don't want to be, you know, preaching, but... And then we look for various ways to find a way that goes through the maze and it's called the true way. So we call that way-seeking mind, which becomes awakened at some point. The way-seeking mind, you can also say, the mind-seeking way. Or you can say, the way-seeking way. Or you can say, the mind-seeking mind. We say, Buddha seeks Buddha. That's our practice. Buddha seeks Buddha. The way seeks the way. The mind seeks the way. And the way seeks true mind. So this is all leading up to the story of the prodigal son or the prodigal daughter.

[11:01]

There's a Buddhist story in the Lotus Sutra about the way the prodigal son, prodigal has the meaning of wasting your life. That's a prodigal. Points to. A near do well. Never do well. A youth who leaves home to find their way but spends their inheritance, wastes their inheritance and they find themselves a pauper and they start looking through garbage cans for food. So this story of the prodigal son in the Lotus Sutra is the story of a youth that runs away from home.

[12:06]

He doesn't have a mother. He has a father. And his father is really distraught that his son man away. The father in the meantime becomes very wealthy. Matter of fact, he becomes the wealthiest man in the land, according to the story. And the son squanders whatever he could get from the father and finds himself destitute And so he wanders around for a long time, and finally he ends up at this estate, this very wealthy estate, and it's described as only Indians can describe, East Indians can describe something, and in a very exaggerated way with jewels and all this.

[13:08]

So the son passes by the gate, and he sees this old man But he doesn't recognize that that's his father. But his father recognizes him. So he asked some of his courtiers to go out and apprehend this young man. He says, go on and don't let him escape. But don't tell him anything. Just say, we'd like you to work for us. And so the son is really scared, you know, and he's thinking, oh my God, you know, what are they going to do to make me a slave or whatever? He said, we'll pay you, don't worry, we'll give you a good wage. So they take him to the stables and he becomes a stable boy.

[14:11]

So... time goes by, the father doesn't want to reveal himself. He wants the son to come up from the bottom and not just suddenly say, oh, you're my son, you're my business. So this is very interesting because he wants the son to find his own way within his province. So this is Buddhist practice. Buddhist practice is actually very simple. In Buddhist practice, we don't try to get something. Buddhist practice is how we let go of everything. People say, I've been practicing here for 10 years.

[15:16]

and I haven't gotten anything. And then we say, congratulations. So, I'm going to read you a little story within the story. But before I read that story, there was a master, Yunnan, Chinese Zen master, very well known. He said, within this mountain of form is a jewel. Within this mountain of form is a jewel. Your practice is to discover this jewel. He also said, each one has their own light. Every one of you has your own light.

[16:17]

When you go to seek for it, it's dark, dark, dark, and you can't find it. All you can do, you can be it, but you can't see it. If you try to see it, it doesn't reveal itself to you. But if you be it, there it is. I don't know if you understand this, There are, you know, people, most of us, who want something, but we don't necessarily want to have to earn it. We say, if you want the tiger's cub, you have to enter the tiger's cave. So these are the things that make The simple things that make Zen or Buddhism difficult.

[17:25]

The simplicity and directness of our practice is what makes it difficult because we always want to complicate everything. So this is the little story within the story. There was a very well-known Zen master in the Tang Dynasty, the ninth century. Dao Wu was his name. Dao Wu, Dao Wu's way of teaching can be gathered from how he dealt with his disciple, Lung Tan. Lung Tan was a little boy. This is the first part of the ninth century. Long Tan, the boy, came from a poor family who made their living by selling pastry, little pastries, sometimes called mind refreshers.

[18:35]

Tao Wu knew him as a boy and recognized in him great spiritual potentialities. He housed Lung Tan's family in a hut belonging to the monastery. To show his gratitude, Lung Tan made a daily offering of ten little cakes to the master. The master accepted the cakes, but every day he consumed only nine and returned the remaining one to Lung Tan, saying, This is my gift to you in order to prosper your descendants. One day, Lung Tan became curious, saying to himself, I bring him the cakes. How is it then that he returns one of them to me as a present? Can there be some secret meaning here? And so the young boy made bold to put the question before the master, and the master said, What's wrong?

[19:45]

What wrong is there to restore to you what originally belonged to you. So Lung Tan apprehended the hidden meaning and decided to be his novice, a novice with him, attending upon the master with great diligence. After some time, Lung Tan said to the master, Since I came here, I have not received any essential instructions on the mind from you. This is mind-seeking mind. And the master replied, Ever since you came, I have not ceased for a moment to give you essential instructions about the mind. More mystified than ever, the disciple asked, On what points have you instructed me? And the master replied, Whenever you bring me the tea, I take it from your hands. Whenever you serve a meal, I accept it and eat it.

[20:54]

Whenever you bow to me, I bow back to you with my head and I lower my head in response. At what points have I failed to show you the essence of mine? Lungton lowered his head and remained silent for a long time. The Master said, for true perception, you must see right on the spot. As soon as you begin to ponder and reflect, you miss it. This always makes it very emotional. Because there's such a simple, truthful way to express our practice. the father and the son gradually grow together.

[22:15]

And then they have the meeting of minds. Meeting of minds means like one cup of water poured into another cup of water. It's all just water. So they meet in this profound way. And then the son inherits from the father the father says, has a big feast, and he says, this is really my real son, and he gives him all of the wealth. So this is kind of metaphorical, of course, because nobody gives anybody anything. As Master Everyone has their own light.

[23:30]

How to bring forth each person's light. This is our inheritance. Our inheritance is already within us. We can't get something that we don't already have. It's impossible. So what we receive from a teacher is our own true self. not something that the teacher gives to the student. The teacher walks the student over the head or something like that, and the student wakes up to his own inheritance, the jewel, which has always been there. So this is how we observe our practice. Enlightenment is important, freedom from suffering is important, but suffering is also important, and delusion is also important, and having nothing is also really important.

[25:01]

In the Bible, there is a prodigal son story, which you're probably more familiar with. The father has two sons, more complicated, and the older son and the younger son. The older son usually gets the inheritance in those old days. in biblical days, the older son would get the inheritance and the younger son would get something. So the father gives the inheritance to the older son who splits and goes away and becomes a pauper because he gambles it all away. And then he finds his way back

[26:01]

And the father accepts him unconditionally and the younger son is really angry about that. He says, I stayed here with you doing all the, you know, supporting you and your life and all that. And here comes the prodigal and you just accept him and, you know, and so the father has to negotiate all this with the two boys. convinced the younger son, the older son, or the younger son, I can't remember which was which, the one that stayed home to accept the portion of his inheritance. So, life is not always fair. I think this is something, we have a big problem with this. Sometimes life is really fair, and sometimes it's not fair, and sometimes it's neither fair nor not fair.

[27:05]

That's where the Dharma is. Life is not always fair, and no matter how much we wish it to be fair, it's not fair. Sometimes people say, why were we born if we have to die? Life's not fair. They say that life's not fair. But it's not fair or not fair. Fair and not fair is just ideas that we have. Create. Because I didn't get something I wanted. We didn't get what we wanted. So life's not fair. No, it's not fair. True. But sometimes it is fair. It's both fair and not fair. And neither fair nor not fair. So... To me, that's the kind of meaning of that second story. But what each one gets is what each one, I don't want to say deserves, but what each one gets is what each one gets.

[28:17]

When we're born, we're each handed a little present, a little envelope, and we open it up and it says, this is your destiny. Fill it out. It will be filled according to how you live your life. When we come to a point where we have to make choices, we have to make choices all the time, but which way to go? we're very fortunate that we can make a choice to turn our desire into way-seeking mind. So desire, coming back to desire, is not good or bad. But when we run after things that have no true value, we say, that's bad desire.

[29:29]

We call it desire. But when we... take a path which is beneficial, that has real true meaning, we call desire way-seeking mind instead of desire. So desire is not good or bad, but how we use it, this is something that's given to us and the way we use it, squandering means the way we use desire. We can use it this way or we can use it that way. It's the key to our life. So we have to decide certain things. And when we come to a place where we know that it's beneficial, take it. I remember it was myself as an example. I had studied, I was always interested in spiritual endeavors, but I also, you know,

[30:34]

did a lot of destructive activity back in the 60s and 50s. And when I finally came to this practice, I knew, I said to myself, if I don't do this right now, I'll miss it entirely until the next time it comes around 20 hundred billion times years from now. So it's good to be able to move when the moment is right. That's another big part of our practice is knowing exactly when to move and how to move at just the right time. That's very important. So that's why our practice is living one moment at a time.

[31:41]

That's what our practice is, living one moment at a time. And when you're sitting in Zazen, you're living your life one moment at a time consciously. This breath, inhaling, exhaling, inhaling, exhaling. Very boring, except If you don't need anything, it's nirvana. If you need something, you miss it. So I'll close with one other little story which I like to tell.

[32:47]

It's a Aesop's fable. Once upon a time there was a farmer and he had two daughters and two sons. In the story it says three sons, but you can't say that nowadays. But two daughters and two sons. And he brought them together. He was very old. And he said, kids, I'm about ready to go. And you will inherit, when I go, you will inherit all this wonderful land that I have, that we have. But I want to let you know that on this, somewhere, there's a treasure hidden. And then he died.

[33:50]

So the kid said, well, let's start digging. So they dug, and they dug up the whole thing. This was a long time ago, and all they had was shovels. And they dug up the whole thing. No, no treasure. So I said, well, okay. Then they planted and so forth. And then they said, let's try one more time. So they dug up again. They said, oh, this is futile. But then they said, well, one more time. They dug up three times the whole thing. And then they said, okay, it's time to plant. So they planted and when the spring came, They had the most wonderful crops, you know, the places just bursting with treasure. So that's my story. Before you go, I wanted everyone to know that tomorrow

[35:08]

So she turns 89. And I thought we could sing to you. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday, dear soul. Happy birthday to you. That's the end. The end of this little drama. For more information, visit sfzc.org and click Giving.

[36:30]

May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[36:34]

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