How's the energy in here? Is it? Ben and I were talking about various things we could do. He suggested dancing. He also suggested throwing things. Thank you. Thank you. Better be careful what you say around here. I wanted to talk about obstacles and opportunities. And I think when we pay attention, our lives are filled with obstacles and opportunities.

[01:03]

And from a certain point of view, you might already be thinking, well, from an absolute point of view, what's the difference? There's no difference between an obstacle and an opportunity. We're human beings and we live in a relative world. We live in a world filled with lots of desires and energy and all kinds of obstacles and opportunities. I wanted to start with a deep secret to reveal that I've realized I've never revealed in public before, which is that I'm short. I doubt most of you have noticed. I was thinking that as a child, it was really hard being a short guy that

[02:05]

It was one of the things... I always thought that if I were only taller, life would have been so much different, that women would have flocked around me, that I would have been so popular, would have been great at sports, and that I would have been happy. And that, in some way, I just wanted to be like everyone else. And it seemed like, as the glasses that I was looking through, was that everyone else was taller. I remember... I was probably about 12 or 13 years old when a cousin of mine, my cousin Hank, put his arm around me and said that he wanted to have a heart-to-heart talk. There were very few heart-to-heart talks that I can remember in my childhood, so this was pretty rare. Hank Hank had just become an eye surgeon and he was about my height and he pulled me aside and said I know that it's really hard being short and he said but let me tell you there's an advantage to it and the advantage is that you have to try a little bit harder and that trying a little bit harder can really make a big difference

[03:24]

Actually, sometimes I think that I tell myself that I just haven't hit my growth spurt yet. That it's really just a question of time. My mother promised me that I would be tall, and my mother wouldn't lie to me. I once told my teenage daughter, who I've talked about here some, that that the reason that I don't own a lot of pants is that I'm afraid that I'm going to have a growth spurt and I don't want to have a lot of pants in the house that don't fit me. And she looked at me and she said, really? And I laughed at her. Actually, the moral of this story is that if you can't accept things as they are, a vivid imagination really, really helps.

[04:33]

Actually, the reason that I bring this up is I realize now that I think that almost everyone thinks that is that everyone is either too short or too tall or speaks with an accent or is not pretty or is overweight or is not the right sexual orientation. Everybody has something that we think that we're different or that something lacking. We might think that if this one part of us were only different, life would be so much different. And I think that my cousin Hank gave me a real gift by saying that to remember that it was important to try a little harder. And I think not so much trying to accomplish something or trying for some goal, but to try harder to be who we are, to be our own authentic selves.

[05:55]

Our practice is to completely face ourselves so that we can let go of self-consciousness. This trying harder can be kind of a burden, but it can also be a great opportunity. And it can be a path to accessing some sense about what the absolute is and what our big mind is. Suzuki Roshi often spoke about himself as having to try harder because he was not very smart and that he was always the slowest of the disciples of his teacher and that all of the other students who were smarter, they were all smart enough to leave and that he was the only one to stick around. And so he was kind of talking about the opportunity in being slow. And he also talked about that he felt that he always remembered things better, that though it took him, he had to try harder to learn, but he had a way of really bringing things to heart.

[07:05]

I was thinking, when I was thinking about the topic of obstacles and opportunities, I was thinking of how amazing it is for me to be living in this building. And there's a sign on my door that someone put there that says, have you met your life today? And every day, every time I walk in and out of my room, I read this sign that says, have you met your life today? And I think it's a really good question. If you don't have one of these signs on your door, I highly recommend it. I was also thinking of a... A recent kind of obstacle slash opportunity in my life was my wife asked me to recommend a designer. She had a project she was going to do, and I came up with two different designers, and I kind of said a little bit about what their strengths and weaknesses were, and I emailed it.

[08:12]

And I thought I was emailing it to my wife, but I inadvertently emailed it to one of the designers. and and it wasn't it wasn't that I said I didn't say anything bad but I knew that I knew that this designer was going to be hurt because I kind of was I was I never would have said what I said in this email and I kind of was saying that she was like the second best that she was really good but she was second best and I was mulling I In fact, I remember I kind of talked about this in a small group, and I was mulling about, what am I going to do in this situation? And I walked upstairs, kind of up to my room. Actually, first I decided to stop off at the bathroom and I went in and I peed and I'm walking out of the bathroom thinking about this and a woman walks into the bathroom. And I said, what are you doing in the men's room? And she looks at me and says, this is the women's room.

[09:16]

And so I felt like moment after moment, obstacles and opportunities. A monk asked his teacher, what is the meaning of Bodhidharma coming from the West? And this is, of course, a classic question in Zen. And the teacher replied, I'm stiff from sitting so long. And my interpretation of this is that the student is asking, please explain the effort that we're all making. What's the purpose and meaning of this practice? And the teacher, I believe, is basically saying, there are obstacles. There are difficulties and pain. In this case, the obstacles are stiff legs. And there's opportunities. Opportunities are also these stiff legs.

[10:19]

I was also thinking, I think sometimes since I'm working outside and I have this, at the moment I have this, kind of a dual life, but I talk a little bit about this in terms of my own work practice. And I was remembering, I was thinking of one of the hardest days that I ever had at work. which was there was a time when things were not going well, and sales were not meeting expectations, expenses were surpassing expectations, and it was just really, really grim. And it had been that way for a while. And I didn't see a way out. I remember kind of looking at the numbers, looking at how to pay payroll, how to keep things going.

[11:29]

And I couldn't see any way out of it. And my world actually began to spin. And I remember feeling kind of sick and nauseous. And it was a really terrible feeling. And at the same time, I felt really inspired to somehow find some way out of that. And I eventually did. And I remember it was after that in which I was asked to be on a panel called Business and the Dark Night of the Soul, in which it was really quite an honor to be on this panel. Panel of losers, you know, to talk about... How we had failed at business. But we actually had all pretty much made it through and had some good stories to tell as well. What was ironic was that, little did I know, but things then got much worse.

[12:32]

That things really got bad after that as we tried to become an internet company. And when that crashed, Things were really, really horrible, but I had learned a lot from how bad it was previously. And I had learned that it was okay if the world spun around and I could sit at my desk and cry and people would come over and cry with me. And then we'd kind of say, okay, what do we do now? How do we pick up the pieces? I wanted to tell a Tassajara story, which I think fits in the subject pretty well. I'm sure some of you know this story, but the Tassajara elderberry story, elderberry tea story. Do you guys know that? This must have been the summer of 1983.

[13:33]

I was director that summer at Tatsuhara. And it was just a hot August day. I believe it was August. There was afternoon tea every 3 o'clock to 3.15. I think that still happens these days, but it was always, as usual, an outrageous tea. In fact, I remember the teas were unbelievable. And I remember one day, I'll digress here for one second. I remember these hikers walking in, and they came in during tea time. and they had never been in Tassajara before. They walked in over the mountains, and there they were in their hiking gear, and they were at tea, and at tea was chocolate cake, mounds of chocolate cake, French toast, all kinds of jellies and jams and cookies, and it was just... remember the person, one of the hikers looked at me and said, what is this place? Is this some kind of a cult?

[14:34]

And I said, yes, it's a food cult. But now, after this particular tea, ended and someone came up to me and mentioned that that one of the students was was sick and they just thought that it would be a good thing for me to know that and a few minutes later someone came up to me and said that another person is sick and It seems strange, but you know people get sick at Asahara and then someone else came up to me and said, so-and-so is pretty sick and you should come look at this. And as I was walking down to go meet with the third student, someone else came up to me and said, there's a student who's having trouble breathing. And somehow, I think there were, luckily there were several doctors there who figured out, they figured out pretty quickly that it was some kind of poisoning. And it didn't take a long time to figure out that, I mean, I think we knew that one of the students had made a special tea, had been poisoned.

[15:48]

harvesting elderberries on the ridge above Tassajara and didn't know that the leaves and bark of elderberries are deadly. They're quite poisonous. And inadvertently, some of these leaves and bark had gotten into this tea. And so this was clearly a serious emergency. I remember running to the phone to call a helicopter, which, of course, I had never seen done. We were totally unprepared for it. So cranking on the crank phone to get an operator to connect me with the helicopter emergency crew. And the moment I most remember from this incident was being on the phone with the... Well, there are many moments here, but a key one was where I explained quite excitedly that there was an emergency, there were many people sick, and we needed to get a helicopter into Tassajara right away.

[16:56]

And the response was, how do we get there? And I said, you're kidding. And I explained where Tassajara was. And actually, quite quickly, it seemed like within, it probably was 30 or 45 minutes, which seemed like a long time, but it was relatively short. There was a helicopter hovering above Tassajara. And there was a helicopter site, as probably most of you know, but it was totally untaken care of. And the thought of trying to carry these bodies, these were some large men who were pretty much not able to walk and were going to need to be carried. So I thought, well, maybe it's possible this helicopter could land. in the central area, Tassajara. And I ran up and caught the attention of the person operating the helicopter and suggested that he try and land.

[18:02]

And he came down. And as he came down, you could see he started to wobble because the wind off of the walls was catching him. He ended up going back up. and I pointed over to the helicopter site, and we kind of got, you know, everyone, we had everyone's, as you can imagine, we had everyone's attention at Tassajara, and there were groups of people who were organized to carry people up the narrow winding path up to the top of the helicopter site and loaded in. We loaded five or six people into this helicopter that had landed up on the helicopter site. And the other moment that really jumps out was close the doors and the helicopter's engines rev up. And this driver, the operator, was a Vietnam vet. And it was a great spirit. I mean, they're just right there. But as they started to lift off, this helicopter slid off the side.

[19:02]

It just slid and I was standing on the top watching it go down and my heart sank. And apparently that's how they take off. That's how they learn to do it in Vietnam. They drop down into the valley, and then they come up. It was a startling and beautiful sight. And everything was okay. Everybody was fine. And there were many, many opportunities. One is that we did really get our act together with really taking care of the helicopter site and had formed a relationship with the emergency people and really took some actions But it was pretty amazing. I was also thinking, one of the amazing things about Tassajara is how much we live in nature, the opportunities that living in nature provides, the obstacles and opportunities. I can remember it pouring so hard on a...

[20:06]

on a winter day that we thought that the cabins were going to be blown away. And I can remember standing up by the gate, everyone with their Birkenstocks on, holding these umbrellas and standing in our robes, just waiting for the creek to go down. Do you remember that, T? And I also was thinking of When my wife Lee was pregnant, and we were living in Tassajara, and we went, it must have been the middle of winter, like December or January, that we drove out for our first birthing class. And about a mile up the road as we were driving out, I guess it was shortly after a rainstorm, there was a boulder. There was a boulder in the road that was completely blocking the road. It was probably 10 feet wide and 10 feet high. And we just turned right around.

[21:11]

And I think it was the next day we moved out of Tassajara to Jamesburg and took the opportunity to change our lives. And I began commuting back and forth. Without obstacles and pain, and without difficulty, we can't find true peace and joy. It's difficult to embrace pain, but what choice do we have? Our pain is Buddha's pain. And by embracing pain and facing obstacles, we can also embrace our own joy and our own authenticity. I mentioned in my Way-Seeking Mind talk that when I left Tassajara, I went to business school in New York City. You know, and people often think that because I went to business school, I know a lot about business.

[22:13]

But actually, I hardly learned. The only thing I learned in business school was it kind of gave me the confidence to start a business. And it gave me the confidence to get in lots and lots of trouble. And by starting something, I was able to create many, many obstacles and find many opportunities a person who takes risks and is willing to start things, start and think in a fresh way, the word for that that we often use is an entrepreneur. And I actually think that Buddha was one of the great entrepreneurs that he thought he had the courage to think differently and had the courage and foresight to encourage everybody else to think for themselves. And as I was thinking about this last night, I realized that I think many of our contemporary Zen teachers are actually wonderful entrepreneurs.

[23:24]

I think of Suzuki Roshi and Richard Baker as the entrepreneurship that it took to buy this building and to buy Tassajara and to do the risks that they took and the things that they made happen amidst tremendous obstacles. Bernie Glassman... formed a variety of enterprises in New York, a bakery and homeless shelters and a variety of religious orders. I think of Norman Fisher going out and starting Everyday Zen. I think about Paul kind of forging through and his involvement with hospice, with prisons, and starting all kinds of programs. These are just a few examples. I think many of the senior teachers here are quite entrepreneurial. And I think for a Buddhist, being an entrepreneur means not being attached to results, but doing things from your heart and really seeing what's in your heart and seeing... An entrepreneur is someone who sees the needs of people and sees what the energy is that is in them and in other people

[24:40]

think freely and openly and start things and I'd like to encourage all of you to I think all Zen students should think like entrepreneurs to look at what people's needs are to think for yourself to be willing to do things in new ways to forge new territories And I think it's this entrepreneurial spirit in a way that for many of us is what has drawn us to Zen practice. Another word that I think of that describes what I'm talking about is the word radical. And I was surprised when I looked up the meaning of the word radical, and it means returning to the root. And in some way, Zen practice is a radical form of Buddhism. It's really returning to the root, returning to the root of Zazen practice. So what I'm suggesting tonight is that you all consider being radical entrepreneurs.

[25:46]

Radical in the sense of returning to roots through Zazen practice and through beginning to loosen yourself from habits and thought patterns that are old and habitual and that no longer work. And entrepreneurial in the sense of being willing to to trust yourself completely, to really trust yourself and act on what your heart is telling you. Act on what the needs of people are. The paramitas can be really powerful tools to use in seeing obstacles and in a way turning these obstacles into opportunities. Yesterday I was... I was having lunch with my 19-year-old son and kind of bouncing off the walls. He's taking a year off from college and trying to figure out what to do with his life.

[26:51]

And he's presenting to me all of these opportunities and ideas and kind of getting in his own way and not knowing how to even think about this decision. And I looked at him and I said, can I ask you a question that has nothing to do with what you're thinking about? And I realized that he's been to Tassajara and he's been to Green Gulch and he has some... He sometimes calls himself a Buddhist. But I asked him, I said, do you know anything about Buddhism? Do you know what the life of the Buddha was? And do you know what the Four Noble Truths are? And... And he kind of stopped and he said, no, I don't. And I said, well, can I tell you in five minutes the life of the Buddha and the Four Noble Truths? And I just told him. And he looked at me and said, that was really helpful.

[27:58]

That really helped me. And I felt that I wasn't really trying to. When I looked at it, I felt like I was I was practicing a kind of generosity, I thought, with my son, that I was being myself and presenting things. And actually, in part, I was... Ever since Ben's talk, I've been meaning to have that talk with my son about what's... And I said to him, what's most important? When you're trying to make your decision, really think about what's the most important thing in your life. And... he said he'd really think about it. As I was preparing for this talk, I was thinking about my hike in the Sierras with Steve and with a few other men friends. After walking for about 12 hours, we came to this incredible valley at about 10,000 feet called Evolution Meadow.

[29:12]

And all around us were these towering, beautiful mountains. And many of the mountains were more than 12,000 feet high. And every mountain was a different shape, a different size, a different character. And as I was looking at these mountains, I felt like I just was appreciating each of these mountains just as they were. It didn't matter. The fact that they were all different, completely different feelings and makeups was really beautiful. And really, they were all expressions of nature. They were all earth. They were all from the earth. Just as all of us are we're all beautiful just as we are. That we're all this amazing expression of emptiness or of Buddha mind or of nature. So please, I'd like to encourage everyone to

[30:21]

practice with really seeing what the obstacles are and practice with turning these obstacles into opportunities as ways that we can help ourselves and help other people. Thank you very much.

[30:44]

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