Good morning. Good morning. Wow, I'm really surprised. I'm delighted to see all of you. I got a few tears in my eyes coming... Oh. It wasn't to me, was it? Coming up to the altar, I began practicing in this room Long time ago. And my first day of practice was through these doors. So I'm going to start again. It moves me deeply to be here. To feel so much gratitude. So I want to welcome all of you to the... Lesbian, Gay, Transgender, Bisexual Pride Month in the United States of America.

[01:11]

This month was proclaimed by the President of the United States. Did you know that? The month of June. So I know there's a lot of preparation going on. There's a float that I saw some greenery being put into a truck at Green Gulch, and I know our flatbed is involved, and there's a big banner, which you may have seen last year. It says, we're here, we're queer, we're Buddha. Now, this banner lives in the basement at Green Gulch Farm, and it's unfurrowed. And it's the first thing the guest students see when they... Go to their dormitories. The only other sign is Zen Center at the top of the row. Anyway, I think I was invited here today because my community imagines that I am a lesbian.

[02:20]

Don't you? No. Well, you know me too well. Not exactly. Well, before I say whether I am or not, I want to tell you a story about something that happened to me at Tassahara many years ago when I was the head cook there, the Tenzo. There was a young man on my crew, on the crew, who was very surly. whenever I spoke to him. And finally, I assumed it was something I'd done because he was pretty nice to other people. So I asked him what was going on. And he said, I don't like taking orders from women. And I said, quite sincerely, you think I'm a woman?

[03:23]

So I think all of my life I've had difficulty with the names that I've been given. My parents called me Nancy. This never worked for me. And then I married a man named Gilbert Small and then I was Nancy Small. This is true. I'm not trying to tell jokes. So I was really relieved when I came to Zen Center and began hearing these teaching stories in which the very act of naming was called into question. A serious question. And I found a lot of encouragement in that. For once I felt Oh, somebody understands what I'm feeling. I think you all by now have heard the story of Bodhidharma and Emperor Wu.

[04:31]

Bodhidharma had doksan with the emperor, and the emperor first asked the dharma question, what is the highest meaning of the holy truths? And Bodhidharma replied, vast emptiness, nothing holy. I don't know what the Emperor was feeling. I do know he was a pious Buddhist. He built many temples, ordained many monks and nuns. So then he said to Bodhidharma, who are you facing me? And Bodhidharma said, don't know. So this is what I want to talk about today. I want to talk about names and words and the thoughts from which names and words arise. And I want to begin with another Zen story about a monk and a Zen master and a cat.

[05:40]

So the monk pointed at the cat and he said to the master, I call this a cat. What do you call it? And the master said, You call this a cat. Do you understand? Does anybody understand? Paul, do you understand? So the thing I like about Zen stories is that they disturb that part of my brain that wants to know things. that wants to understand what's going on. You know, they kind of have some kind of epilepsy. What? And while that part of my brain is all engaged in trying to understand, another kind of knowledge can slip in around the side. That's my theory anyway. A more direct and intuitive knowledge of what is going on here.

[06:45]

I don't know. So we better be careful. So this is the reason I'm going to use this story as a kind of jumping-off place to talk about what it means to be awake. I think you all know that the word Buddha means the Awakened One. And it's a name he was called by those who encountered him. And it has something to do with what they saw and what they saw. felt about his actions and his speech, how he ate his lunch, how he walked, his deportment, his kindness, his wisdom, the awakened one. So, since that time, I think Buddhists have basically been people who want to understand what it means to be awake.

[07:49]

and who would like to realize that for themselves, which is not so easy, and it's also not so easy to talk about that. But I'm going to do that anyway. And I would like to start with what I think of as the beginning, at least for me, which is the day that I was born. That was the day on which I was physically separated from the mothership and took my first inhalation, probably in terror. Babies cry. And from that day on, there has been our first day and then we start counting, right? And our second day and our third day. So the first day became yesterday and the third day is tomorrow and in between is today, right?

[08:55]

We all know this. And the way we mark these days is by the time that we spend asleep. So last night I went to bed and fell asleep and I woke up and it was today. And that now is yesterday. And I will go to sleep tonight and wake up tomorrow, I presume. Right? Common speech. Common understanding. Now the funny thing is, if you stay awake all night and try to spot that moment in which tomorrow transforms into today, you won't see anything at all. You won't hear anything at all, and you won't smell anything at all. because it doesn't really happen. We made it up. We invented it. And then we made precision watches in order to track it.

[10:02]

And calendars, and apparently this has a lot to do with the agricultural revolution, because people needed to go to work. And I'm not kidding you. That's where time comes from. We have to go to work. So, basically what's happening is it's like the magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat. It's so quick and it's so apparently true that we don't even question what's going on. But in fact, if we were to stay awake one of those sleepless nights and really observe what's happening, what would we actually see? We'd see light fading into darkness and then light would come back and fade into darkness and so on and so on.

[11:06]

Some kind of almost regular succession. And that's all that we'd see. But out of the mystery of that, because we're humans and because we can, we start to make up stories. And there have been lots of stories about what's going on between the light and the dark. The chariot of the sun. The turtle carrying the earth across the skies. So I wanted to read one particular lovely story, which is from the book of Genesis. probably familiar to many of you. In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void, and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a mighty wind swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, Let there be light.

[12:07]

And there was light. And God saw that the light was good. and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light day, and the darkness he called night. And there was evening, and there was morning, the first day. So I think this is a very sweet and lovely story, and unfortunately for many people it doesn't really satisfy as explanation of what's going on for some people it does but for many the problem is the problem of God the creator and for others the problem is the conflict with science astronomy Copernicus all of that I think he was burned wasn't he for telling this story

[13:12]

of the earth and the sun. So for others, for example, my sister, Janice, who was born blind, the problem is light and dark itself. What relevance is color to someone without eyes? I remember saying to her when I was little, It was on a long drive we were taking as a family to Texas. And I said to my sister, is it dark being blind? And she said, no, it's not dark. She said, you should try imagining looking at the world with your feet. You know, and I did try. And it had that same kind of effect, that kind of epilepsy. that these Zen stories have, you know, like, whoa, I don't understand.

[14:15]

But I knew. I have feet. Look at the world with your feet. So, I think it helps us to understand this story that I told about the cat. You know, I call that a cat. What do you call it? You call it a cat. You call it a cat. You call it a rainbow. So what's happening here is that the teacher is directing the student back into his own thoughts, onto his own mind, his own process, and his own beliefs about what is so. And we begin to see how we're dreaming, the names of things, the meaning of things. And that's okay. I mean, that's alright. Dreaming's okay. It kind of fills the space. But the problem is that we believe what we're thinking.

[15:17]

I mean, I do anyway. I actually think that what I'm thinking is true. And I've gotten into many fights about that. I'm right, and you're wrong. So this is the problem, that we actually believe what we think is true otherwise what would be the problem in calling it a cat or in calling myself a lesbian it's okay particularly if any of us is able to stop simply at the mere concept of cat or of lesbian or anything else cheese but we go on from there we elaborate you know I don't like cheese I'm allergic to cats, and I won't tell you how I feel about lesbians. So this is the way that we get ourselves into this pickle, through thinking, this whirl of thoughts and elaborations.

[16:29]

And as a result of this whirl, we spend less and less time relating to the object itself. Who are you? facing me? Don't know. Who do you think I am? When my partner and dear friend, Grace, woke up from a coma, I think, I don't know, maybe some of you, I'm sure some of you don't know. My life isn't that well broadcast. But anyway, my partner, Grace, was in a rather terrible automobile accident. almost two years ago on the Golden Gate Bridge, head-on collision. And she was in a coma for several months, and she is still in a lot of pain and doing lots of rehab, and it's going to be a long, long process. Lifelong, I'm sure. She's conscious. She's got her mind pretty well intact. A little bit of little holes here and there, but she doesn't mind them quite so much.

[17:36]

They're kind of fun. But anyway, so when she woke up from her coma, her first audible words to me were, how's the dog? So the dog was in the car, and so was our daughter. And they were both pretty much okay, unlike Grace, who was really badly hurt. So I was just overjoyed that she was awake. And, you know, in my enthusiasm, I said, do you want me to go get the dog? And she said, no. And I thought, oh, she is back and fully human. The word dog is enough for her. She doesn't need the dog, right? At least not then. So anyway, what the Buddha called this world of thinking and elaboration was samsara. And samsara means... endless circling, samsara, samsara.

[18:41]

And along with this world comes a tremendous amount of suffering. We suffer from this world, this way of thinking. So I hope that by these few examples you can see that what the Buddha woke up from was actually the stories that he'd been telling about himself and about the world around him. And in his newly awakened vision, he said the following, which to me is one of the best statements in all of Buddhism. It's from the Dhammapada. You may have heard it. 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. He beat me. She robbed me.

[19:44]

They cheated me. They don't like me. Those who think such thoughts will not be free from hate. She beat me. They robbed me. He cheated me. They don't like me. Those who think not such thoughts will be free from hate because hate is not conquered by hate Hate is conquered by love. This is the eternal law. Many do not know that we are here in this world to live in harmony with each other. Those who know this do not fight against each other. So this is a very different story of creation. It's the story of the creation of delusion, of stories themselves. And without a story, in those rare moments of silence and peace, the depth and the mystery of life is instantly revealed.

[20:47]

When the magician has vanished, so has the trick. Vast emptiness, nothing holy. Nirvana means blown out. Blown your mind. But that is not the end of the story, in fact it's just the beginning of a new story. A story in which stories are thoroughly understood, the power of them, the danger of them. So this is the ground of knowledge for practice. Once Shakyamuni Buddha woke up, he saw no others, and therefore quite naturally he took care of everything and everyone. Host and guest, not two. So if this possibility of waking up sounds good to you, which I hope it does, then we have a long established program here, which we have imported from India through China and Japan to California.

[22:03]

And we say that it's the Buddha's very own. which may just be propaganda. And the only way you will know is whether it's of any use to you or not. As my grandma used to say, the proof is in the pudding. So, the first step in our program is for you to be convinced that dreaming is the source of your suffering. That what we are today comes from our thoughts of yesterday. And that our present thoughts will build our life of tomorrow. And that our thoughts and our life is a creation of the mind. So that's step one. Believing that is so. You know, once you take that step, then the next step is relatively easy.

[23:04]

All you have to do is tune in to what you're thinking. Which I want to invite you to do right now. Just for a moment, if you would be so kind as to close your eyes, I will be quiet. And please notice what you're thinking. I don't know about you, but I ran through about 10 different possibilities.

[24:10]

The siren really started to generate some ideas. I wonder what happened. Somebody's hurt. I noticed that my heart's beating faster than normal. And that I was worried about you if I was keeping you too long. Thinking. And I'm sure if we went around the room... you all would come up with quite different and unique reports on yourselves. So I imagine this is not the first time that you've noticed that you're thinking. And perhaps you've even noticed that what you're thinking is fairly random and at times just totally weird. It's like, you know, first you're back in high school and then you're waiting for lunch and then you're reviewing a conversation you had with your mother when you were 12 and, you know, on and on and on.

[25:18]

It's just all over the map, right? There's the oil, birds covered with oil and we can do many things very quickly. It's like this little radio program, you know. Very random, very quick. So, I think it's, as I said, I don't think it's so bad that we're thinking. I think that's okay. But there are certain kinds of thoughts we do which are cruel and disturbing and undermining of one another, of ourselves. And I think as members of the lesbian, gay, transgender, bisexual community, We know how dangerous that really can be and so do African-American people and Native American people and so do women and so do men and so do Palestinians and so do Israelis and so on and so on.

[26:27]

This is very dangerous, this kind of thinking. And this is the kind of thinking that the Buddha sought to silence and quell Cruelty. The particular method that the Buddha used for exploring his own mind was to simply sit down in a quiet place under a tree and he sat upright and he sat still and then he very meticulously took himself apart. Eyes, ears, nose, Tongue, body, mind. And then the workings of the mind. Karmic formations. Sense organs. Consciousness. Feelings. Uh-oh. Now it's getting thick.

[27:28]

I like it. I don't like it. I'm not sure. Desire. And watch as his mind spun. This is samsara. Around and around and around. But he didn't move. So there are many ways to take ourselves apart. You know, we have psychology and philosophy and anatomy, chemistry, poetry. We can analyze ourselves in many different ways. And we do. So I want to propose just two basic elements for us to look at today. One being the subject, me, and the other being the object. That would be all of you and everything that I see and feel and hear and so on.

[28:35]

So me and you, these two elements of existence. So basically the way it works is that you are made up of nameable parts that I have been trained to identify. And I have also been supplied with a handy little pointer. So I can point at Daigan and Mukugyo and the glass of water. And female. I'm guessing now. Male. Straight. I don't know. I'm guessing. What do I know? But I can do it anyway. I can point and I can name. Light, ceiling, floor. Dharma talk.

[29:36]

Those are the objects of my awareness. And then there's the subject. That would be me. And from the point of view of the subject, which as far as I know is the only point of view there is, everything and everyone is an object of my awareness. You're out there. And at the same time, if I try to imagine being a subject without my objects, I don't even, I can't even conceive of any way to exist. It'd be like looking at the world with my feet and not having feet. So this distinction between the subject and the object, just like the distinction we made between daytime and nighttime, is made up.

[30:50]

I'm making it up. It's not really there. I'll never find it. I'll never find that place where I end and you begin. So the problem for us is that even though we make it up, we stand by it. We stand by it. Those are not my bombs going off in Afghanistan. Those are not my bombs. That is not my oil spilling into the Gulf of Mexico. It's not my fault that Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany. It's not my fault. Nothing to do with me. Right? But for a Buddha, in fact, there is nothing that isn't part of themself.

[31:51]

That they are not responsible to, not necessarily for, but to, to respond to that which is not separate from me. That is me, those poor birds. That's me covered in oil, unable to breathe. Those are my children being killed or beaten for who they love. So the Buddha calls on us to study this trick of the mind, to study it deeply and thoroughly. You know, it's a cheap trick. We have to see through it. Our very lives depend on it and the lives of everyone depend on it. We depend on each other. We all have to wake up. There's no other choice. And I think this gesture that the Buddha teaches us, you know, subject and object, not separate.

[32:58]

Once the Buddha awakened under the tree and he became aware that he and the world were not two things. It was just one reality, one universe. He said, I and all beings are awakened at the same time. I and all beings are awakened at the same time. And that realization made him extremely happy. I don't know if you... have already heard, but the product of Buddhist practice is joy. Did you hear that? Do you know that? Sometimes it's hard to tell. I walked into a staff meeting at Green Gulch and this is not, you know, to say anything ill of this staff of Green Gulch, but I was supposed to report on something I was doing and I walked into the room and It was scary.

[34:11]

They were all sitting there looking like, you know, Dutch burgers or something like that. Everyone was in black. They were not smiling at me. I mean, these are my friends. I know these people, you know. 20, 30 years we've been together. And I finally, my heart started to pound. I was like, God, what's going to happen to me? And I said to them, are you all right? And they said, it's not personal, Fu. We're used to each other. You know, it's like, okay. And then we all smiled and it was better. We need to be careful around here. We don't look so friendly. I've heard that before. So the Buddha was happy. He was a happy guy. And so he went next door to teach happiness and joy and freedom and love. Kindness. Sharing your toys.

[35:14]

When my daughter started preschool in Mill Valley, there was a wonderful thing that the teachers did with the kids. They had them come up with the rules for the class. So then the rules were put on the walls in great big letters. And it was like, no name calling. That's good. No pushing. No biting. And my favorite one of all was, everybody can play. That's a rule. And the kids would enforce that rule. And these are little guys, you know, and some kid would come up and say, you can't play. And the other kids would say, everybody can play. That's a rule. And this was the rule of Shakyamuni Buddha as well. Everybody can play. Hmm? used to that now unfortunately the converse is also true you know that if we don't see that there is no gap then the gap actually can grow wider and we can become more separate from one another more alienated from our lives from the world so on this is terrible pain terrible suffering

[36:55]

Not belonging is the worst kind of suffering for any human being. To believe you don't belong. It's how we torture people. Isolate them. So this gap has a lot of potency. There's the potency for reconnection and there's the potency for greater alienation. So I think this is something we've been trained. This greater alienation is something I was actually trained to do in my years of schooling. Maybe not, it wasn't intentional, I don't think, but who knows. You know, we were trained to compete with each other. We were trained to win, to be on the winning team, to get the best grades, and to dress the best.

[37:58]

In fact, we had big pictures in our yearbook. People were voted best of various things. Best looking, most popular, best dressed, best looking couple, right? Most intelligent, most likely to succeed. I don't know if they still do that in yearbooks anymore, but it was very popular in the 1960s. And if you weren't chosen as the best, then that made you, guess what? A loser. You were a loser. And you were voted off the island. But unfortunately, the island is a planet and there is nowhere for us to go. So what are we going to do? And I have to admit, I have ingrained in me this competitive and comparative...

[39:02]

way of thinking. I don't like it. I don't like it when it comes up, and there it is. How am I doing? How do I look? What do people think of me? Am I doing okay? It's insidious. I once heard about a story from the Navajo. We were visiting them a few years back. privilege of going to the Navajo land. And apparently the missionaries had tried to teach the Navajo kids some games and one of the games was racing across the finish line. So they lined up all the kids and they said, okay, now you run as fast as you can and whoever crosses the line first wins. So the kids all lined up and they ran real fast and the older kids stopped before they crossed the line and waited for the little kids to catch up. They didn't seem to get it.

[40:04]

They said, but that's not fair. We can run faster. So what is it that we've forgotten to teach our children about what's fair, what's kind? I heard about a film, I'm sorry I haven't seen it yet, but maybe some of you have, called The Race to Nowhere. Has anyone seen The Race to Nowhere? No? Oh. Well, it's supposed to be really good, and it's about what parents are doing to their children these days in encouraging them to succeed and to join the best teams and to get the best grades and get into the best colleges and so on. And at each point along the way, the children, their stress is getting greater and greater and greater. And in fact, there isn't anywhere to go. And then what? And then you get a job? At a bank? I mean, it's failing? And then you're fired?

[41:07]

So the whole system is kind of eating up the kids. Particularly in these affluent communities. The race to nowhere. So I think it would be good if we all begin to turn this energy inward toward these other kinds of lines, not the finish line, but the lines that we have drawn within ourselves, dividing ourselves apart, into parts, and separating ourselves from others, thinking ill of ourselves. All of these illusory lines And that we begin stitching ourselves back together again. That's what we do when we make these robes. First they're a whole cloth, and then we cut them up to little pieces. And then we sew them back together again in the form of the Buddha's Aum, the awakened one.

[42:10]

And we wear them, wrap our bodies in this teaching. And we say this wonderful verse, Namokie Butsu. Namokie Butsu. There's no other time. Namokie Butsu. No other person. Namokie Butsu. No other place. Namokie Butsu. Just this one vow to live for the benefit of all beings. So the last thing I want to say is that I don't think it's really that unfamiliar for us to wake up from our dreams. It's just that we aren't taught how to value that. We aren't taught that it's good to slow down, to really look clearly, to see what's in front of our eyes. Who are you facing me, little flower? Lovely sunrise?

[43:11]

And it's not so uncommon in our society to make fun of those who slow down. Maybe it's okay for little kids and old people, but those of us in between get honked at if we slow down. Tailgated. Get off the road. I hate that. I really hate that. It brings out this really revenge thing. I want to do something. I don't know. Usually I just pull over, let them go, I wave with all my fingers. So I often recommend to people that they slow down, that this is actually a revolutionary act. If you've ever tried walking slowly downtown, you'll know exactly what I mean. People will think you're either crazy or you've lost your job. So in our meditation practice, we cultivate spaciousness.

[44:26]

And we cultivate a feeling of presence and vastness and being awake. This is our field of enterprise. How to elongate the experience that we have within our own minds, of our own bodies, like mind yoga. More space inside. So when you slow down, then you can look. And when you look, you can see. And what you see will blow your mind. And when you look and when you see... with that kind of curiosity, then I think the whole world just dissolves into a kind of wonder. So I wanted to finish with this poem from the Book of Serenity.

[45:29]

This is case 33. When first ascending the tears of waves, clouds and thunder accompany. Leaping up magnificently, look! at the great function. With a burnt tail, she clearly crosses the gate of you. The beautiful fish won't agree to be sunk in a pickle jar. An old mature man does not startle the crowd. Someone used to facing a great adversary has no fear from the start. Floating, floating, just as light as five ounces. Massive, massive, heavier than even a thousand tons. Sang Shen exalted fame over the four seas. Who again was his peer? Shui Feng stands alone.

[46:30]

The eight winds blowing do not move him. So the last thing I want to say before I forget, is that I've been asked by my beloved colleague and friend, Nancy Petron, where is she? Was that something, huh? I didn't even see you there. Got me. Where is she? Looking, looking. Nancy asked me if I would be kind enough to say something about what she's been asked to do for all of us which is to encourage every one of us to become real members of Zen Center. It's a relationship and it's a relationship of support and it's a possibility that each of us can do really to help keep this place here.

[47:33]

So Nancy speaks of this And I'm going to let her do that after I leave. So I just kept my promise, didn't I? I did say, oh, that's right. Well, I didn't keep my promise. You're welcome. Thank you all very much.

[47:56]

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