...to taste the truth of what it is worth. Good morning. Good morning. ... What we are today comes from our thoughts of yesterday,

[01:03]

and our present thoughts create our life of tomorrow. Our life is the creation of our mind. If a man or a woman speaks or acts with an impure mind, suffering follows them, as the wheel of the cart follows the beast that draws the cart. If a man or a woman speaks or acts with a pure mind, joy follows them as their own shadow. He insulted me. She hurt me. He defeated me. She robbed me. Those who think such thoughts will not be free from hate. She insulted me. He hurt me. She defeated me. He robbed me. Those who think not such thoughts will be free from hate. For hate is not conquered by hate. Hate is conquered by love. This is a law eternal. Many do not know that we are here in this world to live in harmony. Those who know this do not fight against each other.

[02:07]

Some months ago, Paul Haller, who is the head of practice here at the City Center, asked me if I would give a talk here. And I said, sure, I'd be glad to do that. I thanked him. A long time went by, and then he asked me again, and he gave me a piece of paper with some dates on it. So I picked the last date on the list. And it so happened that a good friend of mine died, and the funeral was on the same date that I chose, so I had to cancel. And then I said to Paul, well, I'll get back to you. And a long time went by, so he gave me another piece of paper with some dates, and the last one on the list was December 28th. So I wrote it down, and here I am. The reason I bring this up is that

[03:14]

I realized in going through this dance with Paul that I had some resistance to giving a talk here. And the closer the time came to giving the talk, the stronger I felt that resistance. I really felt it coming down the stairs just now. So what that all did was force me to look at the stories I'd been telling myself about this building, and in particular about this room. And I began to realize that there are ghosts in this room for me. And some of them you probably can't see, most of you who are new, but those of you who are a little older, maybe you can see some of the same ghosts that I see. Ghosts of students who were here and have gone, and then there's this succession of teachers. I think the biggest spook at Zen Center is Suzuki Roshi.

[04:19]

Have you heard of him? Well, his picture's on all the walls, you know. And we chant his name daily in service, and we do a monthly memorial, and we do a yearly memorial. We have videos and lecture tapes. I noticed his shadow's even nailed to the wall, you know, kind of like Tinkerbell. We got him. But the bigger ghost for me is the one whose name we don't mention. And whose pictures are not on the walls. And whose lecture tapes used to be stored in a closet upstairs, but I just stopped by there a little while ago this morning, and they're gone. I don't know where they've gone. So I thought it would be interesting for me to say his name this morning. His name is Richard Baker. Richard Baker.

[05:22]

We didn't call him Richard Baker. We called him Baker Roshi. Like one word, Baker Roshi. Or Roshi. We've even done away with that word at Zen Center now. We have Rab and Blanche and Norman and Mel. So I wanted to say that Baker Roshi was my teacher for seven years at Zen Center. In fact, at that time, Baker Roshi and Zen Center were kind of like one thing. And everyone here was a student of Baker Roshi. So when he left, a big hole opened up in my abdomen. And I remember deciding at the time that I wasn't going to fill that hole ever again. And it was a very painful thing. For me.

[06:25]

But I've actually found that it's been very valuable to have a hole where I used to imagine there was something there. So anyway, these are the thoughts that occurred to me when I was asked to give a talk at the City Center. What we are today comes from our thoughts of yesterday. And our present thoughts build our life of tomorrow. Our life is a creation of our mind. So what I just told you is a story. It's a story about me that I happen to believe, but nevertheless, it's just a story. Kind of like a hairball that came up and out. So I got to look at it, and then I got to show it to you. So what I want to talk about this morning is hairballs.

[07:27]

And how important it is for us to get them up and out. All of the ideas we have about ourselves, all of the ideas we have about other people, all of the ideas we've had or have ever had about the world, about what's right and wrong, what's pure and impure, and so on. And I understand that there's a lot of reluctance to actually look at a hairball. I share that reluctance. We'd prefer to treat it the way the cat does, you know, just leave it there for somebody else to clean up. And this is one of the reasons that we encourage each other to practice, because it's not our way to clean up after ourselves. I know this firsthand by, I have a three-year-old at home. It's just not our way. She likes to just run through the space and leave a long trail behind her.

[08:31]

Well, we've all done the same thing throughout our lives. There's a trail of debris. All our relations to our family and our friends and old lovers and our jobs and our schooling. The way that we treat objects. The way we've treated the air and the earth and the water. Altogether, we've made quite a big mess. So the wisdom of our founder, Shakyamuni Buddha, another old spook, was to sit still and to face the mess directly. To really look closely at the contents of his mind. To watch how the thoughts are produced and how they entangle with one another, one after the other, creating a chain. And the chain making a wheel,

[09:32]

and the wheel going round and round and round, over and over. Wheel of birth and death. We're all stuck on that wheel. He was just like us. But he sat still and he watched. And he saw how it worked. And that was the content of his enlightenment, was seeing how it worked. So, these nasty little balls that form inside of us are called in Buddhist jargon, drishti, or views. And correct views are actually foundational to our liberation. I think for most of you who've studied a little bit of Buddhism, or maybe a lot of Buddhism, you know what the Four Noble Truths are. You've heard of them. The first one is suffering. The second one is the cause of suffering,

[10:33]

which is ignorant clinging. The third one is the cessation of suffering. And the fourth is the cause of the cessation of suffering. So, these are two pairs, actually. A result, suffering, and its cause, clinging. The result, cessation of suffering, and its cause, the Eightfold Path. So, the Eightfold Path begins with... I'm not going to go through all eight. Begins with... The first fold is right view. Right view. Very important. Right at the top. How you understand the world. Unfortunately, we are rather simple-minded creatures at the core. And what we tend to do is think of the world in twos. It's called dualistic thinking.

[11:36]

I think it has something to do with having two arms. And that's why we count in tens. It's no coincidence. So, dualistic thinking is when we set up the world as though there were just two choices. Is or isn't. Right or wrong. Black or white. Pure or impure. So, what we do when we look into our hairball is to go, oh, yuck. I can't believe it. It's terrible. I'm going to change myself right now, once and for all. I've been bad and now I'm going to be good. Well, I don't know if you do that, but that's what I do. So, this is called the Buddhist makeover. And we've all tried it to various degrees of success. One time or another, I'm sure. And it's kind of like having an interior decorator come into your house

[12:38]

and throw out all your stuff and then repaint the walls and put in color-coded furnishings and drapes and carpets. And then you come in and you hang up your new views on the wall. You know, right conduct, right speech, right intention, mindfulness. You have a Zafu for those spontaneous urges to sit. It's all set up and it's very beautiful. And we love to invite our friends over to our new room. How do I look? Unfortunately, it's not so easy. And redecorating actually sets us way back from where we need to be. And in fact, not only that, it creates a new hairball. Really pretty one. But this one is very hard to get rid of. And it kind of sticks in our throats and makes it hard to breathe. It's called Zen practice.

[13:39]

I want to read a quote from Master Mulan about this problem. He says, To observe the regulations and keep to the rules is tying oneself without a rope. To act freely and unrestrainedly, just as one wishes, is to do what heretics and demons would do. To recognize mind and purify it is the false Zen of silent sitting. To give reign to oneself and ignore interrelating conditions is to fall into the abyss. To be alert and never ambiguous is to wear chains and an iron yoke. To think of good and evil belongs to heaven and hell. To have a Buddha view and a Dharma view is to be confined in two iron mountains. She who realizes it as soon as thought arises is one who exhausts her energy. To sit blankly in quietism is the practice of the dead. If one proceeds, he will go astray from the principle.

[14:45]

If one retreats, he will be against the truth. If one neither progresses nor retreats, he is a dead man breathing. Now tell me, what will you do? Here's the answer. Work hard and be sure to attain it in this lifetime lest you have eternal regret. So, what is right view? And how can we possibly cultivate it without irritating Master Mu Man? Well, I really don't know. But I have thought about it. And I want to share with you some of what I've thought. A couple of years ago, I gave a class on Buddhist history. And in studying for that class, I began to think of practice as a process rather than a thing that you do

[15:47]

or a thing that you have done and now you've done it and there it is. But it's something that's in motion, it's moving. And the image that I liked of that process was being like each of us in a little boat out on the bay. And at first I saw these little boats kind of comically with some people rowing backwards and some, you know, falling in the water and other people yelling for help and then there's those people who just row right along, you know, at great speed. I hate those guys. And so I had this kind of sense of all these little boats practicing together. And then I thought I liked another image even better which was of a great sailing ship and that all of us are on this ship together. And the same things are happening. People are bumping into each other and falling overboard and so on. But actually there are consequences for the whole ship. And together we practice.

[16:50]

Together we form community, Sangha. And that's what our practice is. It's all of us together. Not any one of us. Alone. And the ship, you know, is very dynamic. It moves and it responds to changes in the weather. You know, I hear there's a great storm coming in today. It makes me nervous. And the waves change and the boat responds to the waves. It responds to the skill of the crew and to the skill of the captain and so on. So the more I read about Buddhism, the more I came to see this ship as manifesting in the form of a conversation. And this conversation has been going on for millennia, back and forth, back and forth.

[17:51]

And each of the practitioners, each of the sailors has tried to manifest their understanding and to express it. And then someone else responds. And another responds. And so we have the great debates of Buddhist history. The Hinayana versus the Mahayana. And the Vajrayana versus the Hinayana and the Mahayana. And then there's the sudden and the gradual enlightenment debate. And there's the ordination of women. There's laymen and priests. Rinzai Soto. And then we have our modern day conversation too about farming out at Green Gulch and sitting Zazen. Who's going to win? The workers or the sitters? Back and forth. And of course at any given time, any one of us is leaning too far one way or the other. You know, somebody's too loose. Somebody else is too strict.

[18:54]

Somebody's too arrogant. So this is, I think, why we argue all the time. Have you noticed? If you stick around here long enough, you'll notice. It's all we do, argue. No, no, it's not like that. It's like this, back and forth. And I think it's really very kind. You know, we're just trying to right each other's wrongs. Get back to middle. Just briefly. And off we go again. Fortunately, really, it's only just the wind blowing and filling the sails so that the ship can get out of the harbor. You know, ships are safe in harbors, but that's not what they're built for. They're built for the open ocean. So I actually think that Zen Center is really better called Zen Centering. It's what we need to be doing. We need to be moving. There really isn't any static place

[19:55]

or any position where you can stand and judge or praise. Oh, we can do that, but, you know, it's just the wind. But, of course, when the wind blows particularly hard or very cold, it bites, and we're hurt by that. We take it very personally, particularly when the criticism is coming at us. I'm pretty good at sending it out that way, but I don't like it when it comes this way. Not at all. So, you know, I understand that we have this problem, but I also heard one time that the best way to locate your ego, yourself, is to be falsely accused. There it is. There she is. I didn't do that. I didn't take your zafu. Pop. You know, right there. You can see it, yeah. It's embarrassing.

[20:56]

There's a great story that Reb likes to tell about a monk who was accused by a village girl of fathering her child. So her father, very irate, went to the monk with the infant in hand and said, you know, you rotten monk, you did this terrible thing to my daughter, and now you take care of this baby. And the monk said, Is that so? And took the baby. And he cared for the baby, and so on. And then a year later, the girl repented, and she told her father, well, actually it wasn't the monk, it was the boy next door. And so the father went back to the monk, and was so sorry, and how praised what a wonderful monk he was, and what great care he had taken care of his grandchild, and could he please have the baby back. And the monk said, Is that so? And returned the baby to the man. So this Buddhist journey that we're on is,

[22:10]

you can imagine that it has a purpose, actually. There's kind of a point to our effort here. And the point is awakening, or liberation. Unlike science and philosophy, which try to help us to better understand the world, or to have some basis for judging false and true, Buddhism really doesn't care so much about that. What it cares about is why we suffer, why humans suffer, and how to alleviate that suffering. That's really the only point. And for us these days, there are lots of guides and lots of charts and maps and so on that we can refer to to help us in our efforts. You know, if you go down to the library here, you can see all kinds of books and things. Many great teachers, particularly in the Bay Area, there are Buddhists everywhere. So we have lots of help. Not so much like the young Buddha, Shakyamuni Buddha. He didn't have a lot of clues about what to do.

[23:14]

He just sat down and hit upon the right combination. And I want to remind myself that when I think about maps or guides, that I don't want to be too literal. You know, that a map often will have very distinct landmarks that are named, and destinations that are named, you know, Hong Kong and Moscow and so on. You probably decide where you're going before you set out on the voyage. But our voyage is not quite like that. Our voyage is one that's in constant flux, and that the destination has no name. It's not graspable. What we're trying to accomplish cannot be held. And we use words like thus, present moment. Now, where could that possibly be?

[24:15]

What are they talking about? So for the Buddha to arrive at that place, that destination, was through a route called the Middle Way. The Middle Way, which is also called Reconciling Differences, Reconciling Extremes. So I wanted to say a little bit about what Reconciling Extremes is. It's sort of been what I've been talking about, but I'm going to say a little more about that. One of the first actions that the Buddha took in establishing the Sangha, the first Sangha, was to ordain one of the ascetics, the first of the ascetics, whose name was Kondana. And Kondana is distinguished by being the first one to understand the Buddha's teaching. In fact, his name means the one who knows. So what's important about the Buddha is not his enlightenment, even though that's what we get excited about.

[25:17]

What's important about the Buddha was that he was a teacher, and he taught others how to find their way. That's why we care about him. Because he was a teacher. And so Kondana was a good student, and he learned what the Buddha taught, and was ordained, and that was the beginning of the Sangha. And what Kondana, what's reported in the old text that Kondana said to express his understanding was that all that is subject to arising is subject to cessation. And Buddha said, you got it. So this is the fundamental insight of the teaching of the Middle Way. And later on, in another text, it explains that

[26:18]

the Enlightened One, seeing how the world arises, now you see it, rejects the teaching and rejects the idea of non-being. And seeing how the world perishes, now you don't, rejects the idea of being. Okay? So it's neither existence nor non-existence. We need to hold these both. It's kind of a juggling act, and it's dynamic. On one side, on the existence side, if you just hold that one up, you tend to posit eternal truth, like a god, something like that. If you just hold up the other side, the isn't side, then you tend to fall into nihilism, like, there's nothing there. It's almost like the hallelujah side

[27:21]

and the woe is me side. And we know people that are on one side or the other. But our job as Buddhists is to keep both sides up. That's reconciling differences, the middle way. So by not dropping either view, we more completely express the paradox of our human nature. It's really tempting to drop one or the other. I feel that all the time, and I can see how I do that all the time, dropping one or the other. But if you do that, if you drop one, then what you do is you end up blinding yourself in one eye. And then you have no depth perception. So in Zen, we express this understanding with our entire bodies. In our Zazen practice, we rock back and forth looking for center.

[28:22]

Front and back. Where is center? Where is it? And then we find it. It's kind of there. And that's where you settle. And that's where you watch the arising and the perishing of all things. And then you get up and you go about your day. So I want to suggest that our effort in practice is the middle way to find this path that goes between the extremes over and over again. Just like this great ship. Back and forth, back and forth. We just keep on sailing. That's all. Together. I'd like to end with a quote from Suzuki Roshi, a great folk. It may be enlightenment

[29:28]

but it's not always so. An enlightened person does not ignore things and does not stick to things. They don't stick to the truth either. There is no truth that is different from each being. Being itself is the truth. Thank you very much.

[29:46]

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