Have any of you ever been frightened? I came in this morning and I realized it was a kid's talk and I wasn't ready for it. Can you imagine? So what I did was I asked for help. I asked Quang to look up a poem and he printed it out. And it's called disobedience. But it's an example of parents being disobedient. It goes, James James Harrison Harrison Weatherby George Dupree took great care of his mother, though he was only three. James James said to his mother, Mother, he said, said he, you must never go down to the end of the town if you don't go down with me. Have you warned your parents about that?

[01:02]

James James Harrison's mother put on a golden gown. James James Harrison's mother drove to the end of the town. James James Harrison's mother said to herself, said she, I can go right down to the end of the town and be back in time for tea. King John put up a notice. Lost or stolen or strayed. James James Harrison's Morrison's mother seems to have been mislaid. Last seen, vaguely wandering quite of her own accord, she tried to go down to the end of the town, 40 shillings reward. Morrison, Morrison, commonly known as Jim, told his other relations not to blame him. James James said to his mother, mother he said, said he, you must never go down to the end of the town without consulting me. James James Morrison's mother, hasn't been heard of since. King John said he was sorry, so did the Queen and Prince. King John, somebody told me, said to the man he knew, if people go down to the end of the town, well, what can anyone do?

[02:13]

Now then, very softly, J.J.M.M.W.G.Dupi took great care his M, though he was only three. J.J. said to his M, M he said, said he, you must never go down to the end of the town if you don't go down with me. You think you can tell your parents that? And the other thing is if you get frightened, you can ask for help. It's okay to be frightened, but you need some help then sometimes. Can you do that? Thank you. Bye.

[03:18]

Bye. Bye-bye. Now we can go into the rarely met with bit. Thank you. Egoa Kua, my notion. It is really beautiful if you give it out every once in a while. And when it's your task, it can be done with the Dharma.

[04:18]

It is really in that way. It is not without the good thing that was. Let me see and listen to. Remember and accept. I love Tathagata's words. Now comes the easy part. Oman said Medicine and disease cure each other. The whole world is medicine. What is the self? Medicine and disease cure each other.

[05:27]

The whole world is medicine. What is the self? There's a very famous Chinese story about a farmer. The farmer has a great stallion. And the stallion runs away. And everyone in the neighborhood says, Oh, I'm so sorry. What a misfortune.

[06:30]

And the farmer said, Is that so? A couple of weeks later, the horse comes back with another horse following it. So now he has two horses. And people say, what luck. Is that so? The farmer has a son, and the son trying to break in the new horse falls down and breaks his leg. townspeople said, what a misfortune. Is that so? Soon after that, the army of the king, of the emperor came through and conscripted all the young men, except for his son, whose leg was broken. They were very lucky. Is that so? Sometimes we think that we're in a bad position in our life.

[07:51]

But are we? Or sometimes we think things are going really well. But are they? The great Chinese poet, Xu Tung Po, wrote in his journal. Well, first of all, Xu Tangpo got the highest civil service score and got placed very high in the Chinese government. And he soon became the emperor's advisor. Good luck, huh? In fact, he found the best thing. He would get up early in the morning, get dressed, wait on the porch for the emperor's carriage to come pick him up, sit in meditation, and nod off.

[08:59]

That was the high point of his day. He was advised to the emperor for quite a while, but then the emperor got displeased with him and sent him in exile. Bad luck. One desires pleasures and fears a hard life. These are sentiments one entertains before leading the so-called pleasurable or hard life. After one is in it, one tries to think of the envy and the fear and finds that they are gone. then where are the pleasurable and unpleasurable thoughts after they are passed? They seem to be like a sound, a shadow, a breeze, or a dream.

[10:05]

Even these four things are somehow more tangible. Besides, how is one ever going to find happiness by countering one illusion with another illusion? I wish that I could express this deep truth to you, but I cannot. How is one ever going to find happiness by countering one illusion with another illusion? Good question. So in the pointer to the medicine and disease cure each other. The whole world is medicine. What is the self? The point or introduction to the story begins. Clear-eyed practitioners have no nests.

[11:09]

tale of two cities, Dickens starts off, it was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Talking about now, what do you think? When people ask me about how Zen Center is doing, I usually think of that. It's the worst of times and the best of times. What makes it the worst of times is if you're frozen by fear. What makes it the best of times if you're stirred to courage? Nelson Mandela was put in prison for a number of years, and he had the following hanging on his cell.

[12:45]

Out of the night that covers me, black as the pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be for my unconquerable soul. In the fell clutch of circumstance, I have not winced nor cried out loud. Under the bludgeonings of chance, my head is bloodied but unbowed. Beyond this path, this place of wrath and tears, looms but the horror of the shade, and yet the menace of the years finds and shall find me unafraid. It matters now not how straight the gate, how charged with punishments the scroll. I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul. of the Christian emphasis there, but there's something to it. And I'll read one more poem and then I'll just talk.

[13:53]

This is A.E. Hausman. Terence, this is stupid stuff. You eat your victuals fast enough. There can't be much amiss as clear to see the rate you drink your beer. But, O God, the verse you make, it gives a chap the bellyache. The cow, the old cow, she is dead. It sleeps well, the horned head. We, poor lads, tis our town now to hear such tunes as kill the cow. Pretty friendships tis to rhyme, your friends to death before their time. Moping melancholy mad, come pipe a dance to, a tune to dance to, lad. Why, if tis dancing you would be, there's brisker pipes than poetry. Say, for what were hop yards meant, and why was Burton built on Trent? While many appear of England bruise. Lively are hop than the muse.

[15:09]

And malt does more than Milton can to justify God's way to man. Ale man ails the stuff to drink for fellows whom it hurts to think. Look into the pewter pot to see the world as the world's not. And faith this pleasant tilt has passed. The mischief is that it will not last. I have been to Ludlow Fair and left my necktime God knows where and carried halfway home or near pints and quarts of Ludlow beer. And the world seemed none so bad, and I myself a sterling lad. And down in lovely muck-eyed lane, happy till I woke again. And I saw the morning sky, hi-ho, the tale was all a lie. The world it was, the old world yet. I was I, my things were wet. And nothing now remained to do, but begin the game anew. Therefore, since the world has still much good, but much less good than ill, And while the sun and moon endure, luck's a chance, but trouble's sure.

[16:12]

I'd face it as a wise man would, and train for ill and not for good. Tis true, the stuff I bring for sale is not so brisk a pale as ale. Brisk a brew as ale. Out of a stem that scored a hand, I wrung it in a weary land. But take it if the smack is sour, the better for the embittered hour. It should do good to heart and head when your soul is in my soul's stead. And I will friend you, if I may, in the dark and cloudy day. There was a king reigned in the east. There were kings will sit to feast. They get their fill before they think with poisoned meat and poisoned drink. He gathered all the springs to birth from the many venomed earth. First a little, then some more, he sampled all her killing store. An easy, smiling, seasoned sound sate the king when high healths went round.

[17:14]

They put arsenic in his meat and stared aghast to watch him eat. They poured strychnine in his cup and shook to see him drink it up. They shook, they stared as whites their shirt. Then it was their poison hurt. I tell the tale that I heard told Mithridates he died old. So I have Parkinson's disease. Bad luck, huh?

[18:21]

But I could take it as bad luck or good luck or no luck at all. I'm struck by how much we're all We resist things. Whatever it is, we resist it. I resist things that I like, not only the things that I dislike. And I think there's lack of courage in that, or the first is not courage initially. I don't know, the people who I admire, when times are tough, they just keep going. They don't get revved up or revved down. They just meet the moment.

[19:22]

Courage to meet the moment. There's a book in that, Mark. I had one small of what turned out to be courage, but didn't seem so at the time, was when I was working as a social worker in New York in 1970s. That was 1960s, actually. I was on the softball team, and we finished the game, and I was a little disheveled, and I walked home. I was doing a mantra, may all beings be happy. And a woman on the street harangued me for the way I looked.

[20:33]

But I was into the mantra and I said, good morning. And she said, at least you're polite. We didn't talk much longer than that, but the whole situation, the whole day got turned around. Zen Center went through a kind of crisis over 25 years ago. People commented that they didn't feel like they could talk, that they would be judged. I'm not sure that's the institution's fault or the individual's fault. Or no fault at all.

[21:37]

To have the courage to be who you are, whether it be mistaken or not. course we should try not to make mistakes, and when we make mistakes and recognize it, we should do something different. But Dogen once said, the life of practice is one continuous mistake. If it is, you may as well be courageous with your mistake. sometimes make the mistake of listening to the news on the radio or TV. Is it the worst of times or the best of times? Thanks for the cue.

[22:55]

okay to be who you are. It's okay to be mistaken. And we should try not to make mistakes. But often we don't know if something's a mistake or not. What is medicine and what is the cure? And what's the disease? Chemotherapy is getting poisoned to heal. Taking meditation as a flight away may look right, but it's not. James Morrison, Morrison, whether it be George Dupree, took great care of his mother, though he was only three.

[24:21]

And what good did it do? She got lost anyway. But I think the heart of practice is courage to meet what comes to you and do the best you can. Too often we resist whatever comes to us and try to move it to the side so we don't meet it head-on. And of course sometimes it's wise not to meet something head-on, but you should meet it sometime. The problem with meaning things too directly is there's a kind of objectification, which may not be quite right.

[25:34]

But subjectification isn't any better. I was reading about what we don't talk about at Zen Center, which is what happened in the 1980s. I recently read some stuff again and I realized why we don't talk about it. Because it's so complicated. It's so entwined and everyone who was there felt like they could be judged. But I think that's okay, we can be judged. They met many things head-on, but there's still things that were unresolved from that time. But it'll be met sometime or other.

[26:39]

The founders of our country came up with a brilliant document and idea, but they couldn't deal with slavery. country is based on many noble ideas and is a great improvement over what happened before. But it had its mistakes. I think part of being courageous is not to demonize. Nelson Mandela would ask after the his jailer's kids, how they were doing when he overheard that they were sick. And last night I happened to turn on the last part of Mahatma Gandhi.

[27:45]

He probably made a lot of mistakes, but... great heart. So whatever happens, there's a cure in it itself. The disease is its own cure. You don't have to go running somewhere else to find something. In a way, medicine knows this in the homeopathy, you take the smallest particle, the smallest dilution of what causes something, and it's the most powerful antidote to it. Sometimes we think Zen Center is about or was about democratization, feminization, and laitization.

[29:11]

But those are not answers either. No matter what we do today, there will be something to do tomorrow. can't hold the way that things are. We have to hold the way things are, but they're different all the time. In 1996 or so, at Tassahara, we had a I don't know what year it was, but it was some year. It was some anniversary of the purchase of Tassajara, the 25th year, the 30th year, something like that. We had this big ceremony. And it was in the spring.

[30:14]

And it was in deer fly season. Deer flies are the things that bite. They're really a pain in the neck. They're very irritating. The weather was beautiful down there. And everybody made comments to Suzuki Roshi and how grateful they were to him. And I thank the deer flies for showing us how easily irritated we are. Me too. I don't know. It seems like sometimes we have this really fantasy view of life.

[31:14]

I'm always reminded of Kategoroshi when he'd been in Minnesota for a while and they were about to do a big fundraiser for him. They got a nice haul and filled it with flowers and had great food. And they wheeled him out to say a few beautiful words and hope that they can get contributions. Katagiri Roshi didn't mail it in. He turned to them and said, you're all going to die. That was the highest teachings. But they couldn't get out of there fast enough. The first class I ever... listed to teach at Zen Center was called Not Zen. I thought, what could be more Zen than Not Zen? It was so Zen nobody signed up for it.

[32:19]

LAUGHTER The kids lecture is sometimes the most frightening lecture you have to give. Because they're not interested in your agenda. And we're all kids too. So to meet things directly, and dual track. Watch where your ideas are coming from and where the outside ideas are coming from. From growing up, we have some habitual ideas, and then we project them out into the society, and sometimes it goes the other way around.

[33:38]

I was editor of The Window for many years, and I once got a whole bunch of written material from Tom Cleary, the great Buddhist scholar and translator, and I picked out certain stories. And he said, you picked out all the same kind of stories, and you just didn't look at the others. So I didn't know that. I said, tell me which stories I picked. He said, I picked the democratization stories, the equal stories, not the up and down stories. That was very useful for me to know. Now, it may be better for a community to be one way or another, but I should know what my tendencies are outside of what's good for the community. people over here.

[34:50]

So my sermon for today is learn what your truth is and speak it. And speak it in a way that it can best be heard and which does not say that anybody else is wrong. Some people find it easy to be courageous by disparaging other people's points of view. In fact, that seems to be most of American politics. You see how everybody else is wrong. And of course, everyone is right to some extent. There's some truth at the basis of whatever anybody says. So I'd like to encourage all of you to make one scream with me.

[36:11]

And you're screaming for whatever you want to scream for. Or you don't have to scream at all. One, two. Ah! That's pretty good. You were warmed up. see if we can do a little bit better. One, two. Thank you.

[36:43]

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