Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Green Goats Farm for this morning if this is your first time. And there's a lot that it isn't. Thank you very much for being here with me this morning. So this morning, my talk is about identity. And it's a pretty complex subject. The identity I mean here is not what's on your driver's license. It's not merely about your work or your profession or your personal history. It's more about how you feel about yourself, the self you live with all the time, the inner self, the imagined self, the feeling self. In Buddhist practice, we say there is no self.

[01:01]

There is the conventional self, the one I just spoke of, and our social status, our age, our address, sex, and so on. But there is no fixed self, no ultimate or autonomous or permanent self. Part of meditation practice is to try to find a fixed, permanent self in order to realize it's a kind of will-of-the-wisp, a thingless thing impossible to pin down. And yet, and this is the point I'd like to make, even if we find that to be true, we often still feel anxious and unsure of what we are or who we are or how to be. We see how others define us largely knowing that it can shape our identity. the way we see and feel about ourselves.

[02:02]

In other words, personal identity is a social construct based on the prevailing values of society and the family we grew up in. And those values are given form and ritualized through stages of life ceremonies. This brings to mention to what we call rites of passage ceremonies. All of us go through a number of days starting at birth. Then there are the birthdays, religious ceremonies like confirmation and bar mitzvahs, and ordinations, graduation ceremonies, marriage ceremonies, retirement ceremonies, to name the most common ones. We recognize the significance of turning 18 and 21 years of age as stepping stones into adulthood. At each stage, our identity is affirmed, our social status is acknowledged.

[03:04]

And at each stage, we take on more responsibility and begin to feel valued according to how well we are seen to perform these tasks. A number of years ago, Zen Center started a program for young people 12 or 13 years of age called The Coming of Age. These young people who sign up for it spend one year with two mentors for each group. They meet monthly and create an environment which it is safe for them to talk about their lives openly, to express their dreams, their fears, their problems without being judged as good or bad. One of our former Abbots, Norman Fisher, who helped start and facilitate this program, wrote a book about the experience of a coming-of-age boys' group called Taking Our Places, The Buddha's Path to Growing Up. It's a book worthy to read at any age because there's many times... I see Joyce nodding over there because she read it later and said this was good.

[04:20]

But today, the parents are here on the front row, many of them, for the boys that are going to have this commencement ceremony that will be attended by family and friends and their mentors. And if you have a time, we're actually going to bring these boys in here, have a ritual, and then all turn around after their ceremony is through and bow to them to acknowledge their coming of age. If you have some extra time. You're warmly invited to attend it with us to see this experience. I'm taking this time to say this because it helped me to reflect on the power ceremonies can have in our lives that can directly influence our sense of ourselves, our identity, and our values. Through practice, we slowly learn to unravel the tangled strands that make up our self-image. Through the help of our mentors, we may gain a wholesome sense of self-worth.

[05:22]

We may learn how to view the world and ourselves differently, with fewer fixed ideas, with more openness and compassion. And in saying this, I must admit that at least in my experience, so many of us have a lower opinion of ourselves than we'd like to admit. In the years that I've been doing practice discussion with my teachers, as well as with those who come to me as a practice leader, the theme I so often hear is in three simple words, not good enough. So I'd like to suggest something this morning. I'd like to invite everyone in this room to turn that around and say to yourself, I am perfect just as I am. Let's make this a moment, just a moment for rites of passage, accepting exactly who we are or feel we are as we sit here together today.

[06:32]

I am perfect just as I am. That's our mantra this morning. And if you don't want to do that, great. That's also part of this perfection that you are. All of our lives, someone has been guiding us and telling us how we should live. Our family, friends, teachers, bosses, our church, politicians, self-improvement books and programs, and above all, ourselves. The truth is that we've learned to beat ourselves and one another over and over again about our shoulds and should nots. Deep down, we feel that we're not okay the way we are. We feel that we need to improve, to do better, be better, to change ourselves. We are a driven people, we Americans, even in our recreation.

[07:40]

And if not ambitious and goal-oriented, we often feel guilty. There's a nagging suspicion that we're not okay, not good enough, that we could be, should be better. Try harder in our endless rounds of tasks and responsibilities. Exerting total effort, the power motive is a theme drummed into us from early childhood. We build our ideas around success, of being successful, be it financially, creatively, spiritually, or socially. We want to be accomplished people and recognized as such. We want to be recognized for our talents or for whom or what we think we are as one with our accomplishments. We often hear it from all sides.

[08:46]

There's some truth to it. We do have advantages and are privileged and therefore should live up to our promise, should cultivate and realize our potential in order to lead happy, productive lives. The idea that a success is to lead a happy, productive life is what I'm speaking of. Nearly everyone I hear from thinks deep inside that they're lazy and should be working harder somehow. I think we're easily exploited through our feelings of guilt for not being or doing enough. Perhaps we can turn that around. Perhaps we could think this is enough. Just as I suggested earlier about being perfect, the Zen teacher Sherry Huber said, Has a book out, I couldn't quite remember the title, You're Perfect As You Are, and we think, yeah, but, and sincerely doubt it.

[09:56]

Or we're kind of intrigued to look at it a little bit more. Oh, what kind of check mark can I make in that book? Yes, no, yes, no. Suzuki Roshi also said pretty much the same thing, but with a little twist. You're perfect, and you can use a little improvement. But here's the catch. And we nod and thinking, yeah, true. But here's the catch. I can use more than just a little improvement. You can even hear the same should, should not message implied in what I'm saying here. There's a value system that I'm saying, well, you know, do this, do that, do this, do that. I'm making a statement about a condition to which I feel very prone and vulnerable to. What I realize in all of my years of practice is how seldom I feel okay about who I am just as I am.

[10:56]

That's why on this day of taking our places, I'm asking us to drop our self-critical, judgmental mindset. I'm asking each and every one of us here to give ourselves a break, a respite, and treat who we feel we are as being perfectly fine, regardless of what's going in our lives that feel otherwise. I'd like to stress it again how important I feel that this is a time. Oh, oops, maybe you can open the doorbell. How'd you get in? For those listening on the tape, it's a blue jay right up in the window. These windows don't open. Oh, you know, if you go up, why don't you open up on the corner?

[11:59]

See if it'll come out that way. I'm not sure if we'd scare them. Do you want to get up there, Jeremy? I mean, I'm not sure if it'll scare me. Yeah. Yeah. So maybe you could open that just very carefully on that side screen. There you go. Wow. That was fun. Come on. Well? Did he go? No. He's on the sprinkler pipe.

[13:06]

Well. Excuse me. He's perfect just the way he is. It's true. Well, that kind of changed the mood. Sorry, Valerie. I think sometimes one of the important things to remember in this is we don't, even if we think we do, we don't know the big picture and that everything may be perfect just as it is. I would say that almost everyone in this room could say that it's an amazingly difficult time in their life that they didn't think they would get through, that the benefit that came out of that difficult time was a growth time that they could have never had without that. That's certainly true in my life, that a number of years ago, if someone had told me I would be a Buddhist priest sitting up talking at Green Gulch Farm when I first came here, I would have said, really?

[14:11]

I don't think so. I can't imagine that. Do you remember in the mid-60s, for those of you that are closer to my age, there was a popular book that came out and said, I'm okay, you're okay? Then another book came out on its heels, a satire titled I'm Okay and You're Not So Hot. This one was equally or more popular than the first one. Yet it would be more to the fact this is just the opposite of how we feel. You're okay, but I'm not so hot. How many times have you said that when someone else has responded to you and you said, no, no, no, no. Back in the 50s, according to my husband, there was a very popular book about kids titled, Where Did You Go? Nowhere. What Did You Do? Nothing. It was by an author looking back on his own childhood in the 30s when life seemed less rushed and there was a time in the daily routine to enjoy doing nothing special.

[15:20]

On a hammock, filling leisure hours however you liked, just being a kid. I don't know exactly when that changed, but it's hard to imagine a book like that being written today. The subject would be more like how to design your own time to your best advantage. In other words, how not to waste a single moment on things that don't work out to further our personal ambition and our collective future welfare. I also want to be clear about that. I'm not up here advocating that we turn back the clock to a simpler time in our history, even if we could. And I'm not saying we should be lazy or ignore our commitments and responsibilities or the political or environmental situations. Not at all. or that we should play dumb to the nature of the times we must live in and the demands that are made on us to simply survive. Naturally, we want to succeed in whatever we do and help our kids do the same.

[16:24]

Even monks want that. All of us have some goal in mind or are searching for one and strive to attain it, whether it's to make money, or to become enlightened, or to master a discipline. Living in a highly complex and increasingly competitive society like ours makes this desire feel like an absolute must. In our technological world of today, the earlier you start training for your future, the better off you'll be. Otherwise, you might be considered the modern version of a pariah, the social outcast. One of the things that I was reading, I think it was in the New Yorker, was the drug of choice these days among high school and college students is Ritalin. That was such a shock to me. When my sons were little, Ritalin was the drug used to treat children suffering from ADD, attention deficit disorder, to help them to concentrate and to focus.

[17:34]

It's called a neuroenhancer. Today, high school and college kids take it to help them study more effectively and pass examinations. And the big question around it has become, should it be okay to prescribe it for students? That's really, that was really terrifying for me to read. It was for those, it was for children that had a hard time concentrating, and even as young adults, but But now the article indicated this was a way to help them compete. It's a prescription drug. It's legal so far. And evidently a lot of people feel strongly that it can enhance one's study and working ability and should therefore be used. It helps students get better test scores because it helps them to focus their minds and to concentrate. And then using it gives them an advantage. So not to allow someone to take it would be put him or her at a disadvantage, but we don't see the parallel of the stress that we're putting on ourselves.

[18:46]

It's not known also what the long-term effects will be. Yet the sooner that we know we may find ourselves, including neuroenhancers, along with our morning vitamins and soy milk. We could get to that type of thing, that we better take something to make us better so we can compete and we can be something so we can buy things. There's a little problem in that. So if you're someone who has a low self-image due to substandard academic or work performance in a society that values power and success, you need all the help that you can. That's the pitch. And we're askew. There's something askew. Because we feel guilty and stressed out for not keeping up and proving you too are capable of being a success. And where does that word come from and what does it mean to you? Does it mean a title? Does it mean an accomplishment?

[19:55]

There's goals. Those are important goals. important things in our life, but that's striving. You can almost feel your hands getting rigid and your body getting rigid because you've got to do it, got to be it. Or maybe you don't care about being a success, but still you feel you want to feel you are somebody, that you're okay. You do want to feel good about yourself naturally. So you are urged and you urge yourself to buckle down and get to work and prove to yourself and others that you have the right stuff. That's the message most of us have grown up with and are hearing even louder these days. We live under tremendous pressure to prove ourselves and feeling stressed out about that has become part of our commonality. Our sense of self, our identity,

[20:56]

Is he flying? Did he fly out? Oh, great. So our sense of ourself and our identity is under constant assault. On top of that, in living in a world of such rapid change, nothing feels certain or grounded. The rules surrounding the game of ordinary life have become ever more complex. Small wonder... that many of us don't feel we can measure up, and therefore we feel we're lacking. Not only in our social setting and our status, but as people, as human beings. Under conditions such as these, it's easy to fall prey to anxiety, self-doubt, even self-loathing. We might find ourselves waking up in the middle of the night besieged with worry and woe. We lie there hatching plans and brimpsing against life.

[21:58]

Struggle as we might, we feel that we're not doing enough. We hear that little voice saying over and over, do better, do a little more. If it's not material success and their benefits we're after, then it's the spiritual benefits for ourselves and others. We might be motivated to put our ambition to work in the name of practice and as a means to assure up a weak sense of self-worth. That's not a gift, and it could be a gift. We might manipulate ourselves with all kinds of strategies in order to overcome our own so-called hang-ups, our perceived selfishness, our weaknesses. We might practice hoping that it will bring more peace and satisfaction, even enlightenment. Maybe we think of enlightenment as a state of ultimate protection from pain, from fear and anxiety. We may strive to become successful Buddhists the same way as we strove to become successful students and business people and marriage partners.

[23:09]

Again, we put our ambition to work. We watch ourselves like hawks, constantly measuring our practices and our progress, feeling we're not quite there yet. It just goes slightly over the top, working tremendously hard at it to make the grade. Only to find ourselves getting discouraged, depressed, our practice never quite measuring up to some idea or ideal we've had about it. that feeling of not good enough. We look for a new way to see ourselves, a new identity, and it's often not working as we had hoped. We think it's our fault, the result of some weakness in our character. And gradually our practice, too, becomes another source of suffering. Putting the head on top of the head is an expression you hear often in Buddhism, and that's what I'm speaking about.

[24:12]

I'm also not saying that effort isn't required in our life of practice. Effort is necessary. I'm just emphasizing an attitude towards ourselves. An attitude we pick up unconsciously that is mostly learned and more often than not that leaves us feeling inadequate or simply lost. Inadequate or simply lost. There's a New Yorker cartoon in a recent issue showing a couple on a couch watching TV. And the narrator is saying, this week on the amazing Race to Enlightenment, can Jim and Susie achieve right mindfulness? And will Barb and Candy be eliminated for relentless clinging to the self? There you have it in a nutshell. Buddhism seen as a game show with a prize for the winning contestant. Our effort to let go of our attachments can, in fact, become another powerful attachment.

[25:18]

And as I saw that cartoon, it reminded me of my days in the business world and how from a young woman, I mean, in my early 20s, I was influenced by self-promotion messages of people like Dale Carnegie who said, believe that you will succeed and you will. It's believing your personality is your most valuable asset. provided you think positively. Be comfortable with who you are and exude self-confidence. Then people will trust you and buy what you represent. In our consumer culture, when buying and selling is the name of the game, you succeed by being yourself. But what is that self? It's made up of so many things. But if we both want success on believing in your identity and the way you think about yourself, on finding a story about yourself that works for you in a positive way, you have to look at all of these things, but you have a chance to find a sense of being upright in the middle of whatever is coming forth, however it is in this time.

[26:32]

I'm obviously not looking down on my nose at this approach as I have this type of personality. I claim to be the token extrovert of Green Gulch Farm. There might be one or two more, but I'm one of them. So I'm not really criticizing any way of being. But I'm saying pretty much the same thing by promoting the idea that we are okay just as we are. And while that could be a sales pitch also, I'm accepting on who we are as we are right now, whether positive or negative, as the perfection of the universe itself. And again, I'm saying this because we so often look at our life as a problem to be solved rather than an experience to be lived. We look at our life as a problem to be solved. rather than as an experience to be lived. I think that's the twist I'm trying to say.

[27:41]

All that we are, all of the things that we are, can we see it as an experience to be lived? Another thing that I've noticed is how hard it is to receive praise. More often than not, we feel unworthy of praise. We seem to receive blame or the mention of our shortcomings easier than praise. If someone finds fault with us, it's so uncomfortable to hear, but probably we accepted it as at least partially true. If somebody tells us we're wonderful and praises us openly, we feel even more uncomfortable and think to ourselves, oh, if they only knew the real me. Well, the real me is in there. And the real me, we bring our hands together. Every time we do this, when we bow, we're bringing the light and the dark together.

[28:44]

We're acknowledging those two sides of ourselves. And I invite you, when it sounds a little imbalanced, no matter where you are, to just take your hands quietly and bring them together, understanding light and dark are together. So being told you're perfect isn't something that we hear very often. When I tell Marge how grateful I am and how wonderful she is that she's ever so faithful about the love, she goes like this. She does that. If I tell Jeremy what a wonderful mind he has and how he can just recapture everything in memory, he just, he squints his eyes. If I tell Julian how grateful I am that he's been coming here for 10 years to help me all those years on maintenance, and that I can call him up and say, Julian, I have a problem.

[29:46]

Antonio, when he comes here, and helps Joyce when he comes here, all of you that are in the room, all the parents that are in the room, and at any time, Marjorie, with the work that she's doing, if I say, and the fact that she comes here. Cindy, the fact that she's ever faithful about coming up to help and volunteer. I could go through almost so many people in this room. Andrea, the same way of coming. Catherine, when she comes and helps. I could just go through everybody in this room that I know, and all of you kind of do some part of like, oh, don't say that, okay? And I'm just inviting you to... Put your hands together and say, there are two sides to me, and I acknowledge them, and I accept them, and they're perfect just as they are. Is that a deal? So we don't really know who or what we are in any final sense of the words, and this is my favorite quote.

[30:50]

Rumi said, if you try to define me in words, You will starve yourself of yourself. If you try to nail me down in a box of cold words, that box will be a coffin. Because I don't know who I am. I am an astounding, lucid confusion. I'd like to read that again. If you try to define me in words, you will starve yourself of yourself. If you try to nail me down in a box of cold words, that box will be a coffin because I don't know who I am. I am an astounding, lucid confusion.

[31:53]

We are good enough. We are perfect no matter what. I hope we can believe this, if only for a few moments. And I'd like to close with from the Zen Master Ling Ji, who said, if you could clearly see that this mind of yours is actually non-existent, you would wake up and never be be disturbed by any circumstance. Shall I read it again? If you could see that this mind of yours is actually non-existent, you would wake up and never be disturbed by any circumstance. May it be so for all of us. Thank you very much for listening.

[32:53]

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