This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. So the name of my talk today is War and Peace. And I think I may have been a little overly ambitious. So please let me know if I leave anything out. So this is the last verse of a poem called Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold.

[01:11]

And it was written in the 1880s. Ah, love, let us be true to one another. For the world which seems to lie before us like a land of dreams, so various, so beautiful, so new, hath really neither joy nor love nor light nor certitude nor peace, nor help for pain. And we are here as on a darkling plain, swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, where ignorant armies clash by night. An old story. So last month, I gave a talk using... the play Into the Woods by Stephen Sondheim as a kind of theme.

[02:12]

And in that play, there are these fairy tale characters who get into lots of mischief together. Love and hate and lying and stealing and slandering and possessiveness and killing. basically what in Buddhism is called upside-down world. Upside-down in the sense that those are behaviors that the Buddha did not engage in and also did not recommend. So at the time of that lecture, which was in the beginning of February, about 23 people and me started on a journey into the woods of our own devising that we call a Zen practice period. And so these folks have made a two-month commitment to take this pilgrimage through their own minds and their own imaginations.

[03:20]

And we're about halfway through, or so we think. So I wanted to give you a little taste of what it's like to take a pilgrimage through a Zen practice period. Each morning, the wake-up bell is rung at about 4.30, and it's very loud, and we wake up. And then about 5 o'clock, we sit zazen in this room for 40 minutes, and we sit five periods of 40 minutes during the day. Two in the morning, two in the evening, and one before dinner. We have three meals. We work for about five hours, more or less in silence. We have a study hour and sometimes a class. And most all of us try to be asleep by 9.15. So at the end of five days of this practice,

[04:28]

routine, we have a special day, Thursday, when we sit all morning and then we mark the end of that day with a ceremony called Nenju. And Nenju, I think, means four and nine. Is that right? No, what does it mean? Oh yeah, what is that? Anyway, it means something that we're going to find out. We have a visiting monk who's from a Heiji. So we've been asking him lots of questions. So look for him at lunch. Anyway, nenju is a ceremony we do that we don't know what it means. But at the end of it, it's basically the end of our work week or our five-day practice week. And after that, we're going to have a day and a half of personal time.

[05:31]

We don't really call it off. It's just personal time. It's unstructured. So my job during the practice period is pretty much like now is to talk. I've done more talking than perhaps in my entire life in the past couple of weeks. So one of the things that... Traditionally, the leader of the practice period says is at the end of Nenju, they stand at the bowing mat right there in front of the altar and say some words. So I'm never sure where these words come from, you know. It seems to me that having a human mind is a lot like listening to an oracle. Mumblings of an oracle, you know. It's hard to tell which things are important and which aren't. But what I said at that occasion two weeks ago was something like, don't imagine that this is almost over.

[06:33]

We have only just begun. Kind of scary, huh? Well, I didn't know why I thought that or why I felt compelled to say it. And it seems to me that that's pretty much what sanity is all about, what we filter. what we don't so anyway words come out of situations that we're in and so oh I wanted to read you a little quote from one of our masters founding masters Dogen about this extraordinary event that we call our human mind he says that not Know that even if all the Buddhas of the Ten Directions, as innumerable as the sands of the river Ganges, exerted their strength and with their wisdom tried to measure the merit of one person's Zazen, they would not be able to fully comprehend it.

[07:39]

If all the Buddhas, as innumerable as the sands of the river Ganges, tried to measure the merit of one person's Zazen, they could not fully comprehend it. No, what I hear this is saying is basically that there is a great vastness between our ears. And that even the Buddhas cannot understand how vast it truly is, the mind, the mind of a human being. And at the same time, we all seem to carry on as if there's nothing strange about that at all. We just go about our day saying things, doing things, responding to our own thoughts and impulses and ideas. So I think part of why I was a little drawn to try to think more about these words that arose in my mind is that they seem like very tiny strings, these voicings.

[08:46]

And very tiny strings of... color and light and sound and taste and that those strings I believe are tied to something much vaster beyond our comprehension and maybe it's more like music than we allow ourselves to see so there is this vastness in music that's beyond the sounds themselves beyond our comprehension So how does this world of ours, which seems to lie before us like a land of dreams, so various, beautiful and new, turn upside down into this darkling plane of terror and strife? How is that possible? I think we've all seen that turning once or twice or maybe multiple times in each of our lives. The world turns upside down. So this is the dilemma of our human life, war and peace, love and hate, right and wrong, good and bad, us and them, heaven and hell.

[10:02]

According to one Buddhist theory that we've been studying here of late, these conscious strings are growing out of an unconscious storehouse. the alaya alaya and the storehouse is basically beyond our comprehension we can't perceive it it's unconscious but it's the result of all our behaviors from past it's been influenced by what choices we've made before and then these seeds of our previous choices sprout into our current conscious consciousness that's the theory So all of human history is nothing more than the accumulation of these influences. You know, altogether we are killing, altogether we are protecting life. And I think we all know there are other string theories.

[11:11]

You know, some people give that which is beyond our comprehension a name. Some people name it God, or some people call it science, or some people... You know, say it's chance. Some people say nothing at all. So I think our bet here at Green Gulch Farm is that we are trying to plant wholesome seeds and to change our old behaviors so that there might be some hope in the future of a better crop, a better harvest for everybody. Down here on the farm, that's what we're doing here. planting seeds as best we can. So anyway, after this ceremony, Nenju, I went over to the dining room for lunch, and on the way I ran into two of the people from the practice period who were talking about what I'd said. And one of them was saying to the other,

[12:17]

Well, that's just the same thing that my sergeant said to me when I was in basic training in the Navy. He said the only difference was the sergeant used a little more colorful language, language I certainly wouldn't share with food. But the intention was the same. And. So I thought about that. You know, I was kind of like, so you guys are really in for it and don't think there's any way out. And I think that's true. That's what I was saying. Don't think there's any way out of the forest, the shadowy forest of the human mind. Where would we go? So... So this got me thinking about some of the parallels between Zen training and military training.

[13:18]

There's a lot of similarities for all of you. There's some folks here who've done both, and they can testify. Somebody called this once Sandal Camp. In Zen lore, there are a number of stories of samurai going to visit Zen masters for advice, particularly on the eve of a great battle. The chances of survival are slim. And they want to know about this issue of birth and death, heaven and hell. And the great death is also a concern for Zen students. The great death in Zen has to do with the death of the personal ego, self-clinging. But either way, I think whether samurai or Zen student, we are really rather frightened of the prospect of death, any of its many forms, although we've all enlisted still.

[14:27]

So one of my favorite stories, which there are a few versions, but this is the one I'm going to tell. So the master is sitting in meditation when the door opens, and the samurai on the eve of battle enters and demands the teacher explain the difference between heaven and hell. The teacher replies, you wouldn't understand if I told you. The samurai becomes enraged and draws his sword. The master then says, that is hell. The samurai pauses, stands quietly, and then resheathes his sword. The master says, that is heaven. The samurai then unfastens his sword and bows down to the teacher asking to be ordained. The teacher says, this is Buddha's way. So one obvious difference between Zen training and military training is the purposes to which the trainee is going to be put.

[15:31]

You know, soldiers are given weapons. The more powerful, the better. And they are trained to use them. And they are trained not to question the use of those weapons. They are trained to follow orders. I remember hearing this NPR interview with the Navy commander, maybe, who was about to fire the first missile on Baghdad from his boat out there in the water. And the interviewer said, do you ever think about what's going to happen when you shoot that missile? And the commander said, yes, ma'am, I do. And she said, and you're going to do it anyway, aren't you? And he said, yes, ma'am, I am. That is hell. So when we're kids, when we're school-aged kids, we learn a lot about a kind of literature called history.

[16:34]

I remember learning first American history and then world history. And world history was really about the division of other countries into Friends of America and those who were not. And they changed, right? First the British weren't, and then they were, and then they weren't. So, I'm not sure what it's based on, but changes all the time. Still changing. So, Still, most history is about armies, movement of armies. And I don't know about your history lessons as children, but when I was learning history back in the 50s and 60s, it was pretty patriotic, as I recall. History that's being written nowadays is really different, and I really like it. I really enjoy rereading what was more likely to have happened.

[17:37]

than what I'd learned as a kid. There were more than one side. Well, of course. Who knew? Anyway, one of the modern rewrites of history that I read not so long ago and really enjoyed was Genghis Khan, The Making of the Modern World. Some of you read that? Some? No? Please do. It is a really great book. Fascinating. You know, I remembered Genghis Khan as this guy way over there somewhere in China, and Marco Polo went, as our representative, to meet with him, this little guy over there, you know, from civilization, and established trade routes and brought back silk. Well, Marco, I mean, Genghis Khan was one of the greatest conquerors of all time. He started off as a herd boy, more or less an orphan, and and very poor, and had a talent for organization, and put together first a small band of brigands, and then a huge band of brigands, 100,000 or so horsemen, who basically conquered China, India, Southeast Asia, Russia, and anything else they wanted.

[18:58]

They were unstoppable force. No one could stop the Mongols. except for one little thing, a tiny little thing, a little bacteria that was riding along with the merchants and the soldiers. It's called Yersinia pestis. And Yersinia pestis created the most notorious disease episode in the history of the world, the bubonic plague. So all these trade routes that they laid down beautifully and controlled All along the way, everybody, almost everybody, died from the plague. And that's how the plague came into Europe, from Asia. So these are unforeseen karmic consequences. 25 million people died of the plague. I don't know how many of you know that little song that we sang as children ring around the rosy, a pocket full of posy.

[20:05]

Ashes, ashes, all fall down. Ring around the rosies, the first sign of plague. Little red circle. Pocket full of pus, posy. Ashes, ashes, all fall down. I sang that as a kid. I had no idea. So why did they do that, these Mongolians? Why did they do that? Well, they did it because they could. And because they were greedy, and greed, hate, and delusion are great motivators for humankind in the upside-down world. So, you know, the point I want to make is that training and discipline can lead to the most effective outcomes, such as the taking over of the entire world. great control, great wealth, and the taking over of other species to provide food and fuel for those who win the day.

[21:16]

It's the story of our history, great empires, great movements of humankind. I was personally born in the trailings of the Second World War. I was born in 1948. And I think that it had the single most influence on my entire life. It explains what I'm doing sitting here and why I'm wearing these clothes. I could hardly bear learning about the horror. You know, those images seep into a child's dreams. So I think, again, I would like to recommend to other books that I... were very useful in helping me to understand us, us humans. One is Guns, Germs, and Steel, and the other is Collapse, both by Jared Diamond. You know, and basically he puts this link between food and population and military conquest at the source of our history, at the core, and how that all works together.

[22:26]

Cargo, the movement of cargo. And when you look at the graphs, it really pretty much looks like the successful conquest of a loaf of bread by bread mold. You know, first there's a little green spot, and then there's a bigger green spot, and then there's a bread-shaped green blob. And then after that, there's just a black smudge. No life left at all. So... Where am I? I am. I am at the point of where we have to choose. We make a choice. A right side up or upside down world. And that's the same place that the samurai stood as he confronted this end master. You know, will my own actions lead me to heaven or will my own actions lead me to hell? Do I even care? And what

[23:28]

of training do I need in order to assure myself of the outcome and then perhaps I don't want to end up all by myself in heaven that sounds like hell so maybe we ought to consider doing this together there's an African saying if you want to go fast go alone if you want to go far go together So how do we decide which way to turn in this great matter of birth and death? It's the most basic question each of us has through all the days of our lives, up until the day we die. And we all are going to die. And we don't like it. And we're afraid of it. And so was Shakyamuni Buddha, which is why he sat down in the first place. He was afraid to die. He was afraid to grow old. He was afraid to get sick and he was afraid to die.

[24:28]

So he sat down to look at the source of his fear and to look at the mechanism by which fear is born. He also had a choice. He was the son of a king. He could have been a king and attacked the neighboring people as his father had done before him. Great bread mold. But he chose to fight the battle in his own mind, in the folds of his own imagination. This is from Zen Master Dogen. Those who want to be free from birth and death should understand the meaning of these words. If you search for a Buddha outside birth and death, it will be like trying to go to the south with your spear heading toward the north. In birth, there is nothing but birth. And in death, there is nothing but death.

[25:30]

Accordingly, when birth comes, face and actualize birth. And when death comes, face and actualize death. Do not avoid them and do not desire them. This birth and this death is the life of Buddha. So, as with all two things, birth and death are conjoined twins. You don't get one without the other. Only birth, no death. Only death, no birth. They come together. Life depends on them. But, you know, we only want birth. We don't want death. We don't like it. We only want birth. We only want to go on living forever, and which means we only want to be young we only want to be safe and we only want our loved ones to be young and safe so basically we just keep saying no to the facts of life no no death no aging no sickness no no no and life just rolls on so this is what the Buddha saw and this is what he understood

[26:54]

As he sat there under the tree, he saw that his mind was screaming, no, no, no, you know, to life, how it is, reality, birth and death. And then he said, I find no evidence for or against anything. find no evidence for or against anything I am NOT against birth I'm not against life I'm not against death I'm not for birth I'm not for life I'm not for death I'm not for or against anything and he also said I have no quarrel with life I am at peace with the way things are so you know this is kind of bitter brew for those of us who are still trying to win who want to get it all, or even anything, you know, anything that won't perish, that won't decay.

[27:56]

We have this deep well of longing for that which does not decay. But also said all conditioned things are impermanent. They're impermanent. They don't last. You know, this is more bitter brew for us. So I... Ask myself, I ask you, what choice do we have in the face of our impending doom? So it's not just the doom that's way off there in the future, so we hope. It's that doom that's happening every moment as the moments go zipping by. Nothing lasts. This morning has already vanished. And soon, lunch will do the same. Just keeps zipping by, right? We don't like it. So we really do have one choice left to us, and fortunately, it's a really good choice.

[29:08]

And that is, and I know you've heard this before, the present moment. The one you're having right now. called the eternal moment. There isn't time to be born. There isn't time to die. And we can live fully and joyfully in the present moment. It's the practice of awakened presence. Awakened presence. This moment. This moment. Just this moment. And it has been rediscovered and reenacted throughout the ages. There are many, many stories of enlightened ones who have rediscovered the present moment as the source of a joyful life. Shakyamuni Buddha held up a flower and the old monk, Mahakashapa, smiled.

[30:08]

I mean, we get it. We do. We just forget. You know, our minds are playing a trick on us that we're separate, that we're alone, that we need things, that we have to get them somehow. You know, it's a trick. And as long as we're falling for that trick, we suffer. But that is the pathway to hell. That illusion of separation. It's a pathway to hell not only for ourselves, but for all of those that we could have come to love. World round. So I have one more samurai story. Samurai enters the Zen master's room and demands that he teach him fearlessness in the face of death. The master says, no.

[31:10]

Pretty brave guys, you know. The samurai pulls his sword, predictably, and growls. Don't you know I am the one who can kill you? And the master replies quietly, don't you know I'm the one who can be killed? So even though I like that story, it's not that appealing as an approach to someone with a sword. I'm not sure I would want to really offer my head as good an answer as that is. So I was very happy to hear another option by a Tibetan master. There's a wonderful teacher named Tara Toku who came here and taught us. And unfortunately, he's passed away. But he lived in Dharamsala because an ignorant army had driven all of his people away from their homeland.

[32:14]

And someone right here in this room said to him, teacher, what should I do when I'm afraid? With his big smile on his face, Tartu said, run. Thank you very much. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our programs are made possible by the donations we receive. Please help us to continue to realize and actualize the practice of giving by offering your financial support. For more information, visit sfzc.org and click giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[33:04]

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