Welcome again. Time has become like a kind of a strange and very elastic entity, I guess, if that's what it is. It seems like years have passed this week and so many things and feelings and thoughts. So I'm certainly open to all of us speaking together. I thought I would just continue to learn from Suzuki Roshi. and see how much we can apply the teachings to ourselves at times when we're undergoing a great deal of confusion and stress. So why don't I do that? And then I'll open the conversation to everyone. One thing I wanted to remind you of and offer to you all who are coming to this gathering is that I'm planning to offer a... class on the precepts it'll be five sessions one a week on wednesdays starting the 20th of november at four o'clock pacific standard time so it would be um i would like to hear from anyone interested in joining that right now i have about five or six people it'd be nice to have closer to maybe 10 would be nice so we can have a good conversation um so if you've been thinking about bodhisattva precepts and considering

[01:39]

taking the bodhisattva precepts, then that would be a good way to start, is to start to look at them together and think about them. So, again, I'll be doing this on Wednesdays, and I'll probably do it again over the years to come, because I think it's a great thing to do and to support you in your own intention to take vows, particularly That one, the vow to live for the benefit of all beings. Okay. So the lecture that we're looking at this evening is under the section of Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, called Right Understanding. Right Understanding. And this particular lecture is entitled Traditional Zen Spirit. So that's on page 101. Sorry, 1099.

[02:43]

It starts on 99. That was in my copy anyway. So underneath the title of this chapter, of this talk, is a quote from later on in the talk in which Suzuki Roshi says, if you are trying to attain enlightenment, you are creating and being driven by karma. And you are wasting your time on your black cushion. If you are trying to attain enlightenment, you are creating and being driven by karma, and you are wasting your time on your black cushion. So in this talk, you know, I have a strong feeling about this talk. I think Roshi's already gotten it that, you know, the people coming to him are wanting something, wanting to get something out of practice. And so you can feel the energy. as he's getting to know these young students, these young Zen students, these aspirants for enlightenment as they're beginning to share with him their ideas about Zen.

[03:48]

So he's beginning to try to open some doorways to a different understanding of what it is they're doing in their sitting practice or in anything they're doing. So he tells them that the most important thing for their understanding of Zen practice is their physical posture and their breathing. that Zen is not concerned about some deep understanding of Buddhism. Zen is not concerned about some deep understanding of Buddhism. So I found this talk myself to be a really good reminder, particularly because I really do like studying Buddhism, literally studying it, reading books about it, the texts, the sutras, the commentaries. I've done that for a long time. It's something I really, really enjoy doing. And I've done it, endeavoring to learn a lot of stuff, stuff which doesn't seem to be sticking in my head as much as it used to. But that's okay. Both studying and forgetting what you've studied is okay.

[04:52]

So what's not okay, Suzuki Roshi says, is studying in order to get something for ourselves. Engaging in any activity, for that matter, in order to get something for ourselves, is not okay. And yet so much of our human culture has been designed by us to generate either admiration for ourselves on the one hand, or fear of ourselves on the other hand. For us to be notable, important, admired, influential, and perhaps at best unforgettable, right, as the song goes. So as grown-ups, we know that this is a self-centered, way of living our lives, and yet we may not know what the alternative might be. I don't remember anyone telling me there was an alternative to trying to get something for myself. I can remember I was thinking about this, and I thought, I remember when I was in high school, it was pretty powerful.

[05:55]

High school was pretty powerful, but getting ready to leave high school was particularly powerful. And at the graduation ceremony, there were very few of us who were called up in front of the assembly for admiration. There was the homecoming queen and king, there was the student body president, and there was the valedictorian. So later in life, it took me a while to sort this out, I wondered, well, what about the rest of us? What about those of us who remained in the audience? Is there something for us? that isn't gained by means of great beauty, intelligence, popularity, or wealth. You know, is there something else to be had? So it took me a long time, as I said, a great many years, to find a direction for myself that I could align with, you know, my own values that weren't in keeping with what I understood the message from this dominant culture, you know, was sending me, you know.

[07:00]

And so what I found were these teachings attributed to the Buddha, you know, like the ones that Suzuki Rashi is offering in this talk. And yet in many ways, as I first encountered these teachings based on a selfless point of view, it was very hard to understand how to achieve selflessness without some gaining idea, such as the achievement of selflessness. You know, it's kind of a catch-22, right? I remember Trumper Rinpoche, who some of you may know, who are more like my age, from back in the 60s and 70s, the great Tibetan teacher, lived in Colorado, had a great many students. Anyway, Trumper used to call this approach to Buddhist practice spiritual materialism. Spiritual materialism. He has a very good book about that. So I think you've heard me tell this story about Suzuki Roshi as a boy, one that's... I'm very fond of, and he wrote about. So he was a young boy, and he was with his class, and they were sent out into the forest to try and find this particular species of salamander.

[08:08]

So when the young Suzuki found the salamander hiding in the woods, he called out very loudly, I found it, I found it. And so the students came running, and then the teacher came, and he said, Suzuki, we are looking for the salamander, not for you. So it's a story he told on himself. And now as the adult Zen teacher, Suzuki Roshi says in his talk that the way to engage with practice is not goal-oriented, but it's by focusing on the activities of our daily living. Activities like posture and breathing. There's no goal there. Or by focusing on how we treat each other in our passing. as we pass by one another throughout the day, how we care for objects, how we care for all living things. No goal there. So those activities depend not on ambition, but on our faith in the practice itself, which in turn is based on faith in the truth of our Buddha nature.

[09:14]

Having faith in your Buddha nature is the key. A deep faith. in the enlightened nature of reality itself. So in Buddha's world, there isn't anything to acquire or to gain. There's nothing to hold on to. This is also true in the human world, but we don't know that. And that's the hair's breadth deviation between the two worlds. So when we practice meditation or when we study with some idea that we will gain enlightenment from our efforts, we are facing the wrong way. facing into the human world where we are hoping to get something. So Roshi says that many people are practicing Zazen with this idea, this gaining idea. And he says that whether we practice Zazen or not, we have Buddha nature. It's not about Zazen. Zazen is just this little light that we can turn on in order to help us see what's actually so, who we really are.

[10:17]

And because we already have it, or are it, there is enlightenment in our practice from the very beginning. So the real strength of our life, he says, comes from the confidence that we have in our already enlightened nature, and the sincerity with which we practice throughout the day. So Roshi says, the reason we practice Azen, upright sitting, is that we must behave like Buddha. So what did Buddha do? He sat, he walked, he ate, he shared his wisdom and his compassion with all those who he met along the way. No big deal. Just like us. But what gets in our way of living our life as Buddha is this egoistic idea we have about getting something. And it's the egoistic ideas that cover over our Buddha nature, like clouds covering the moon. That's the image used. In Buddhist literature often is there clouds, the clouds of delusional thinking that are covering the moon of enlightened view, which is right there.

[11:27]

It's right there once the clouds have parted, have dispersed. So these ideas, based on a belief in a self, have been given to us. It's not our fault. There's no fault here. There's no one to blame. There's no one to blame. And there's no one. So there's no one to blame. But... We did get this idea somehow along the way, and it's called beginningless. Beginningless. Read Hate and Delusion. So we have a little chant. Some of you know, some of you may be new to, that we chant at the beginning of morning service at Zen Center and the full moon ceremony, which we did here at Enso Village last month. It's called the Repentance, the Confession and Repentance. It's very short, just four lines. We chant it three times through. And it goes, all my ancient twisted karma, all my ancient twisted karma, from beginningless greed, hate, and delusion, born through body, speech, and mind, I now fully avow.

[12:33]

All my ancient twisted karma from beginningless greed, hate, and delusion, born through body, speech, and mind, I now fully avow. So when we chant this verse in all sincerity, which sometimes I do, sometimes I really feel it, sometimes I don't, but anyway, when I do, I'm avowing as in acknowledging or admitting that I'm clouded over by delusional thinking. I know that. I know that. I want to remember that. It's like, oh my, what am I thinking? Is it true? Is it valuable? So this delusional thinking is basically self-centered thinking, you know, thinking that's centered on the delusion of a self. So it's when we have no egoistic views of our life and of our practice in the world that we have Buddha's view of life. The ego is not in the way. that I did this and I do that and I'm this and I'm that, that is quieted down to such a point that you're not even really listening to that little guy anymore, that little ego nerd that's been running around, you know, telling us this and that, shaming us and embarrassing us and making us feel bad about ourselves.

[13:52]

You know, we all have one of those. So until we cut off... the spinning delusional karmic conditioning from our own personal life, which it was formed from, our personal life, it's been formed from this delusional thinking, then we're just being driven and being recreated. It's a repeating pattern by karma. So even though trying to attain enlightenment is simply more karmic activity, this is what the Roshi is referring to. As a result of that, we create more karmic activity in our wish to become awakened. It's just another spin of the samsaric wheel. So just to repeat the sentence at the beginning of the talk, if you are trying to attain enlightenment, you are creating and being driven by karma, and you are wasting your time on your black cushion. So unless we have the right understanding of practice as an expression,

[14:53]

of our original enlightenment, we will treat our posture and our breathing as if they were means to some distant goal, some method. If I just count my breathing, then I'll wake up. Actually, you can wake up to the fact you're breathing, and that would be good enough. And to the fact that you have an upright posture that you can tend to all through the day. You can wake up to those. Roshi says that if this is our understanding, that our breathing and our posture is a means to get something, then we would be better off taking drugs instead of sitting upright in the zendo. He's talking to a lot of folks back in the 60s who were indeed doing that. In fact, they'd show up in the zendo having done that. So he's saying, well, go right in and do that because that would be better for you than sitting here in the zendo thinking that what you're doing here, is to get something for yourself.

[15:56]

If practice is a means to attain enlightenment, then there is no means to attain enlightenment. So don't waste your time. So sometimes when I read this kind of teaching from Suzuki Roshi, he's mostly pretty gentle. He's kind of a gentle being. But I've heard a number of stories about the times when he wasn't so gentle. In fact, he was very strong and emphatic. about what he was trying to get across to these young students who were showing up, you know, mostly hippies, a lot of hippies. So sometimes I'm really impressed and surprised by how fierce he could be in confronting the reluctance of his students to give up their competitive and self-centered indulgences. And he wanted so much to give them, to give us the right orientation to the... ancient wisdom teachings of the Buddha ancestors. So I appreciated in the next section of this talk of his turning again toward the familiar Zen instruction of opening our eyes to what it is we are doing at the present moment.

[17:07]

The greatest safety there is in this world is in the present moment. Right now, we're okay. So there's no way for us to conjure up a goal when we focus on the present moment. There are only the sensory cues that draw us into intimate relationship with the world around us. You know, with the songs of the birds, with the bright full moon, with cookies baking in the oven. It's in this moment that we make our sincere effort to live in enlightenment. So, if we get too excited about some lofty view of achieving enlightenment, then we miss the enlightenment that is arriving in every moment. Our effort is not to become free of our karmic conditioning, but rather to be well aware of it. Not to be fooled by ourselves or by anything. So we watch it. We watch ourselves. We watch our mind, our behavior, the way we'd watch a much-loved child. Watching for its safety and for its helping it toward greater understanding and so on.

[18:16]

And making sure it knows that we love it. We love you. We love you, child. Roshi says that even the Buddha lived a karmic life, evidenced by the suffering he felt when his people were attacked by a neighboring king. It was the Buddha's view of life that was stable and free of attachments. He saw his feelings. When they were not so stable, he was upset. But his view was stable. His witnessing, his consciousness is stable, as is yours. Our awareness doesn't move. So it was his view that looked at the suffering of the world, including his own, in a kind of scientific way, Roshi says. He watched himself and others in the same way that he watched stones and plants. There's this familiar Zen saying that comes to mind when I read that. What is it that thus comes? What is this that thus comes? It's a good question for us right now. What is it that thus comes? What is it that we're facing right now?

[19:19]

with this not so stable view of our life. So I want to end my comments this evening with a few paragraphs that were written by Naomi Klein, who's the author of several well-regarded as well as controversial books on social and climate justice. So these are paragraphs from her book called Double Ganger. in which she is quoting art teacher John Berger's response to her studies of what she calls the wacky mirror world of QAnon, and so on. Events in our world that we're familiar with, and conversation that we're familiar with. I have not read Naomi Klein, but I have read John Berger. He's an art critic, and I did enjoy his writing around how to see the world. had us learning to sit, learning to draw, learning to see. That was the name of a workshop that we gave at Tassahara as we were, you know, learning to, literally learning to draw by learning to see and by learning to sit.

[20:24]

I mean, this is what artists have in common with meditators, you know, really paying attention to what's there in our minds or in front of our eyes. So here's these paragraphs. She says, in the torrent of disconnected facts that make up our feeds, you know, what feeds us, the news feeds, the role of the researcher analyst is playing to try to create some sense or some ordering of events, some mapping of the power. You know, where's the power? The most meaningful response in my writing life came from the loveliest of literary mapmakers, John Berger. When I sent him, The Shock Doctrine in Galilee. So that's another book she wrote called The Shock Doctrine. So she'd sent him, John Berger, the galleys of her book, and he responded in this way. Many people have said they found the book enraging, but his response was very different. He wrote that for him, the book provokes and instills a calm.

[21:29]

When people in societies enter into a state of shock, they lose their identities and their footing. And he observed, Hence, calm is a form of resistance. Calm is a form of resistance. I think about those words often. Again, this is Naomi speaking. Calm is not a replacement for righteous rage or fury at injustice, both of which are powerful drivers for necessary change, she says. But calm is the precondition for focus, for the capacity to prioritize. If shock induced a loss of identity, then calm is the condition under which we return to ourselves, to our sanity. Berger helped me to see that the search for calm is why I write, to tame the chaos in my surroundings and in my own mind, and I hope in the minds of my readers as well. The information is almost always distressing, and to many, shocking.

[22:33]

But in my view, the goal should never be to put readers into a state of shock. It should be to pull them out of it. So that's our work. That's our work too, to help pull ourselves and others out of shock. You know, to remind ourselves to breathe and to align our posture as best we can into an upright seated position and to find the calm at the center of our existence. And then for a while anyway, that may be the very best we can do. So before opening the screen to all of you and the conversation, I want to show you a little video that I found. Maybe you've all seen it, but anyway, I just refound it. It came across my screen recently, and I want to play it for it because it's kind of like really good medicine. So let's see if I can do that. I have it. Let's see how this goes.

[23:35]

Can you see this little guy? Yeah? Yeah. Okay. Here we go. Singing sweet songs. Melody blowing through. And they said, this message is you. They said, don't worry about a thing. Because every one of it is going to be all right. So that's my message to you.

[24:41]

Maybe so, that every little thing is going to be all right. So, let me... Karina, thank you. Great. Welcome. Good to see you all. Good to see you all. I'm just going to glance around the room to see if I have any new folks to welcome. There's Helene and Stephen. Stephen, are you new to us? Anyway, welcome. If so, mucho. Griffin, Echo, Jerry, Kakwan, Lisa, Tim, Drew, under the name of Vermont Insight, Amr, Millicent, hi Millicent, welcome, Cynthia, Kate, little Kate, Michael, Shozan, Paul and Kate, Carmina and Maryam, Marie, hello Marie, Senko, Kathy, Gary, Melissa, Annette, Meredith, Tom, Linda, and Genshin.

[25:45]

So, wonderful. Very good to see you all. And Helene. I'm just wondering if you received my emails about the precepts class? I did. In fact, the people I received so far who've said they were interested, Tom, I knew that, Amr, Tim, Helene, and Kathy. And so anyone else who's interested, just let me know, and then you can tune in, and I'll figure out how to get you the link, because it won't be this one. It'll be my private one. Yeah, Helene? If I can't make it at 4 o'clock because of my job, that's what I wrote you about, that I can't make that time. Well, I recorded them last time. So even though you wouldn't be able to be part of the conversation, you could hear the presentation about the precepts that I'll be giving.

[26:47]

Okay. Welcome. How's everyone doing? Yeah, you don't look too happy. Are you worried about a thing? Yeah, I would imagine. Would anyone like to share? Please. I saw Cynthia's hand, Cynthia. I saw Jerry's hand too. Oh, hi, Fu. Hi, Cynthia. I think it was last week where you said, or one of your talks, just this is it. And so I've been repeating that to myself. And it seems to be the wisdom that I'm going to be carrying around with me. It's just this is what it is.

[27:49]

And now it's our job to navigate it with skill. And I'm very grateful that you mentioned that the skill that we might want to develop at the moment is reconnecting with our sense of calm, which is there and always is there for us. Yeah. That was it. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. There's a story you probably know too about the woman whose baby had died and she brought the baby to the Buddha because someone said to her, she'd lost her mind in her grief and she wouldn't put the baby down. She kept carrying this baby. And so her, loved one said to her, go see the Buddha. I think he can bring the baby back to life. So she goes and finds the Buddha and said, will you bring my baby back to life? And he said, I will when you bring me a mustard seed from a household where no one has ever died.

[28:50]

And so she went around from house to house and eventually came back and said, there's no such household. And then she put the baby down. And as the Buddha said, regained her sanity. So We're all in need of, if we haven't lost it already, we need to regain our sanity. We need to maintain our calm understanding of what's actually happening and where and how we can participate. But without the calm, I think we're just kind of adding to the flames or the fear and the anger and so on. I know from the 60s that didn't help. We went through a lot of that when I was young, and it didn't really help. It just kind of made us all even more upset. That's why I went to a monastery. I've got to get out of here. I can't live in this world. Fortunately, I didn't leave the world.

[29:51]

My mom would call and say, when are you coming back to the world? I'd say, Mom, I'm in the world. I haven't gone anywhere. But it certainly was a different way. of trying to address my own suffering. And so there's always that. There's always the monastery. Traditional solution for a lot of humans. Anyone else? Oh, yeah, Jerry, you wanted to say something. Thank you. I also was in the streets in the 60s, and I agree with you. We couldn't see it then, but it's very true. it feels like a very tender time and a lot of uncertainty. And I've stopped watching all the news because it would just stir my mind up and I'll get more reactive than I wish to be. Robert Reich, the former labor

[30:58]

a head of labor under the Clinton administration who lives here in Berkeley, said a few days ago, we have to realize now that many people are going to be in a lot of pain for many years, and we need to reach out to them and support them. I thought that was quite an extraordinary, and I think true, observation. I'm also finding in this class, and it's reinforcing it, that I'm being very deliberate about entering some conflicts that I've had this week with a lot of slowness and compassion for the person I'm talking to so I don't kill them on the phone. And it's actually been quite wonderful to have this additional motivation. which I normally don't have.

[32:01]

Yeah, that's good. That's wonderful. Thank you for telling us that. You're welcome. Mm. Isn't cool. Hi, Fu, everyone. Yeah, so last week, I was like watching the numbers on the internet, and I got pretty sad. And I kind of stopped watching it, so I started Googling. And I stumbled on this talk by Gail Fronstow, your friend, I believe. And there's a talk he gave just the night, maybe before the election. And there's something he said there, like kind of stopped me. He said, are we like paying too much attention to who is going to be the president? He's saying, like, basically, like, I was trying to think about why he said that.

[33:03]

He's like, all our problems, maybe our suffering, our inner problem, that's not his words, but that's my understanding. It's like, it won't be solved by the result. So I started to, like, yeah, no matter who got elected, is that going to solve the human suffering, right? I don't know. I'm like in between what he said. I know the experiences are real for people. Like there are going to be people who are like heartbroken, right? And I know, in fact, some of the teachers of my daughter's high school, they just couldn't go to work for a few days. They're like heartbroken. And those experiences are real. But then I think Gil Fransdahl is saying it's not solving. Like the result is not that like for our practice. It doesn't matter that much. It kind of, like, makes me feel a little more lighthearted, on the other hand.

[34:03]

So I'm kind of, like, tortured between those. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I think this is coming to mind now. The practice is a long game. It's not a short game. It's lifelong. And, you know, each of us, we're not kids. We're not kids. So we've been through many things. You know, many unbelievable events. You know, starting, I was born in 1948 and learned about the Second World War as a child, and I was horrified. I mean, I think there's no way we can't be horrified at looking at the facts of our human life over the many years. And then the assassinations, and then the assassinations, and then on and on and on. Wars and... You know, that's what the story of my, all cultures are carrying, those scars.

[35:07]

And the Buddhist line, I remember someone saying, if you look at the artwork through the centuries, Asian artwork, you'll see the Buddhist monks appearing. They all look alike. You know, they're hairstyles. And they're clothing. Centuries are going high. You can still spot this kind of thread of intention. to try to understand, you know, the deeper truths than the ones that are, you know, causing so much pain. And I noticed for myself that I was probably, how would you compare our pain, but it was a tremendous amount of pain the night of the counting. And I couldn't sleep and I just thought, couldn't make it go away. Couldn't change the outcome. I had no power. I was powerless. And then I woke up in the morning and I felt this enthusiasm because I feel like that's my life commitment is to meet suffering. I am vowed to meet suffering, so here it comes, you know?

[36:12]

And I think it's true. There's going to be a lot of suffering for a lot of people for a long time, no matter which way it goes. If it goes the other way, it would have been the same thing, you know? Yeah, yes. Yeah. We had to kind of figure out this splitting that is really killing us. And what would the healing be? I'm very grateful for all of the inspiration that some of the writers have said about we need to look at ourselves and our assumptions about our position in society and our privileges and the elites and how we've all been relatively successful in the world. And what about those other people? Have you forgotten about them? And it's kind of embarrassing to do self-evaluation, you know, to try to figure out what was the message that just came through. And I really want to study the message deeply and honestly and not knowing I already know the answer.

[37:16]

I don't know. No one seems to know, but people are throwing a lot of stuff out for themselves. Let's be really caring about our studies of what's going on in our culture, in the world. You know, you're in Singapore, right? And your teachers are grief-stricken. And our friends in Ireland are grief-stricken. So this is a world event. It's not just, you know, our country, this country. Anyway, thank you for letting me know. Also about the... the point that Gil's making there. Yeah. Keep at your heart. Keep looking at your own intention. Yeah. Stay close and stay calm. Yeah. I guess one more question, Fu. So people do have Buddha nature, right? That's what we think and believe. Like people have the potential to wake up. Is that what we mean by Buddha nature? Like the ability to wake up?

[38:18]

You're already awake. You're already conscious. It's what you're conscious about. It's the object of your consciousness that's confusing you. When you focus on your breathing, you're not so confused. Or when you're walking, you're the fourth. You're aware of kind of vastness and the breeze and so on and so forth. And that's so confused. But when we're thinking, when we get confused, is when we're... caught up in certain kinds of karmic thinking. And so, you know, it's just clouds covering the moon. The Buddha nature is always there. Your consciousness is always clean and pure and clear and transparent. But we've got all this stuff on the mirror, you know? It clouds our ability to see clearly. That's the teaching. Yeah. So without this practice, like most people, can we assume, are just delusional?

[39:22]

I'm just getting very disappointed in human nature now. Well, you can understand them if you understand yourself. I understand that it's mostly delusional. You know, I had to swallow that one a long time ago, but I keep swallowing it. It's like, oh my God, I get so quick. It just... Like little weeds, mind weeds, right? They call them mind weeds. They just keep sprouting up all the time. And I can mow them down and mow them down. So it's an ongoing process of paying attention to what's being produced in your mind about what you think is outside of yourself. It's them. It's that. You know, it's like, well, it's what you think of them in that, actually, which is more intimate. you have access to that. So, you know, staying close to your thinking, staying close to your feelings, and working to be calm. Come back to your sanity.

[40:25]

Yeah. And then for people who are really, really delusional, like, maybe this somehow relieves some of the hate naturally we might have for those people, like, They actually can have Buddha nature, but it's just too difficult. It's too hard without practice there. They don't know. It's hard. It's very hard. It's hard for us, right? It's hard for us. Yeah. We're clever people, I would imagine. All of you here are very clever. And, you know, we can't just knock it out. No. Delusion are just more stubborn than any other part of me, you know. And so there's a kind of ongoing... Intention. Practices daily. It's all day long. Every day. No time off. It's not just Saturday and then you're done. All day long. Every day. Paying attention. And enacting your vow to live for the benefit of others. Yeah.

[41:30]

Thank you, Fu. Thanks. Thank you. Halim. Oh, sorry. Griffin. There's a line, a little line here. Hello, Griffin. Good evening. Whenever I hear that line, you're wasting your time on your black cushion, it's haunting to me. Because I have been tricked over and over and even spent decades of seeing that My best, purest practice at some point gets absorbed into my ego, sort of a practice habit, a practice person. And it may at some point, you know, be true, but then it goes through the machinery and

[42:39]

you know, eventually I'm repeating something mechanical and wasting my time on that black cushion. And it's not a lack of confidence in original pure Buddha nature. had experiences from childhood, near-death experiences, and not being able to save those I love most. It's a deep longing to be connected with or to rejoin, you know, that that takes it out of... the moment and makes me waste my time and my cushion. Yeah.

[43:45]

Should I respond now? Yeah. I remember something that Reb said to me many years ago when I said something similar to what you just said, you know, I just feel like I'm just wasting my time in this practice. I'm just one big ego, one big selfish blob sitting there. I said, all these years. And he said, well, it kept you out of trouble. So, you know, humor is the other great salvation. You know, it's the other thing that can help us to recover our sanity is to have some perspective on ourselves, you know, to have some, some, like the ego is the big me, right? So the big me, the laughing big me is liberated. It's the sober one, you know, the one that's serious about itself. You know, that's the one we have to really catch in action and try to bring it some humor, some lightness, some gentleness, some calm.

[44:54]

Keep coming back, you know, to our true nature. It's ongoing. There's no end to it. You're not going to get anywhere. There's nowhere to get. But you can keep finding those moments. seeing those spots like they do on the grass, you know, when you see the lights, you see the reflection of that true love that's there in this life. So you just keep looking, keep looking. You know, it's always there. So we're with you. You're not alone. You got a lot of company wasting time on those black cushions. Thank you, Griffin. Okay, Lisa. San, beloved sangha. So, I'm not sort of interested in thinking about the quote on calm.

[45:56]

And calm and equanimity, distinguishing that from denial. How do you be sure that it's calm and not just your head in the sand? Ask me. How do you? Am I calm? Am I calm? Am I in denial? Let's talk about that. What you're up to, my dear? What's running through your head? Oh, I don't want to talk about that. Okay, you're in denial. So there are ways of testing for these things, and that's why we have each other to check in with, right?

[46:58]

Don't practice alone. Zen is not a solo practice. It's an us practice. It's a we practice. It's communal practice. So each of us takes turns, you know, being the one who needs a little support, and then we give others support, and back and forth, and we're kind of all running around, being of service to one another in whatever ways we can. So people will help you, you know. Denial is denying help, denying that you need help, and that you're doing it on your own. That's ego. Self-do it. But asking for help, that's a pretty good sign that you're really searching. What is it that thus comes? The doubting and questioning. Yes, curiosity. Actually, they're not unskillful. No, they're necessary. And they're the way in. The way in to whatever's troubling us is inquiry.

[48:03]

Inquiring mind is the name of a magazine. Inquiring mind. Thank you. You're welcome. Helene. You are muted. God, I was doing so well. I could tell. It looked really good. Whatever you were saying, it looks really good. It was just coming right out. It was like I wasn't nervous. Nothing. Okay. Thank you very much, Fu. And it's great to see everyone in our Sangha. And especially after Tuesday, it's great to connect with like-minded people. And I have to say that as soon as the results started becoming clear, all that I kept saying to myself was was you're going to have to take this in stride and one step at a time.

[49:08]

And in speaking of calmness, it has seemed to me that in calmness, you find solutions. And if you're freaking out, you're not going to have a solution. So that calmness... is a good place to go, but it's also acceptance without acquiescence. And my feeling is that when we know what to do, we will be able to do it. I think that what we have to do has not become clear yet, but it will become clear because of all of the... the resistance and the protest to the mistreatment of immigrants, to the LBGT community, to many, many people who are going to be suffering.

[50:20]

And I think, for me, the idea is To come back to my sitting, come back to my breathing, and know that when it's time, I will do something. It just isn't time right now. We're still processing the whole thing, and we don't know yet what's going to happen exactly. Or even if we do know what's going to happen, it hasn't happened yet. So we really can't react to it. Like, it's still in the future. So it's just... Anyway, that is just how I'm dealing with the thing with some hope to work my way through this, that we all work our way through this, that...

[51:29]

We will be called upon to do some work with regard to all that is happening. And whether it's protesting or resistance in various kinds of ways, we're going to have to do that. And it scares me because I think even in a women's march, there's a possibility that the military might be called out. I mean, I don't have... any faith in the... Well, it's like humanism is anathema to evangelical Christianity. It's kind of like the... Like you should be God-centered instead of human-centered.

[52:33]

Helene? Yeah. I want to remind you where you started your point about sticking one step at a time. Yes. You know, I think that was really wise. And I think as you're hearing perhaps yourself, it's very easy to get drawn into that other stuff. You know, the fear of the future. Right. So I think you wisely said, we're not there yet. When we get there one step at a time, hopefully together, we will have a way of remaining calm and safe and caring and so on, which is the role that Buddhists have taken throughout history. That's our job. There are lots of stories about that. The ones who show up who are calm, like during the Vietnam War, when the boats were trying to escape, you know, they were overcrowded. If there was a monk on a boat, it had a greater likelihood of making it on the water, on the open water than the ones where everyone was frightened and jumping around and so on.

[53:45]

So our job is to be that quiet, calm presence available, not somewhere else. Right. In the boat with everybody. Right. And holding our center. Right. Staying awake. So I think when you get there, when we get there, when we get there, I hope we're ready to do our job. Right. The one job. I often say to people, you know, you don't want firemen arriving at your house, your burning house, hysterical. And they aren't. Because they're trained. They're trained for calm. And they're trained for... handling hoses and ladders and protecting each other and saving us. So, you know, we want to be like that, like firemen. We want to be skillful and we want to be centered and we want to be calm so we can do our work and not just get swept away with the energy of the events because there will be energy.

[54:52]

Yeah. So please take care of yourself, and we'll all do our best to take care of you as well. Okay? Okay. Okay. Thank you for bringing me back to where I started. You're welcome. Millicent, welcome. Hello, Sue. Hello, everyone. very much affected by the last conversation with you, Helene and Yufu. For those of you who don't know me, there might be one or two. I come from the other side of the world. This isn't where I put my hand up. I do have a question to ask you through.

[55:56]

It feels trivial almost, but I will ask it. But last year we had a referendum in this country asking the citizens, would we recognise the place and history of the Indigenous people here in our constitution? A large majority of my fellow citizens here in Australia said, no, no, no, we won't. And the results of your election have raised my response to that again. But that was last year, and I've learnt a lot from the response of the Indigenous people to this insult. And what they did was hunker down.

[57:00]

They went off air. They took care of each other very quietly. And a bit like you've just said, Fu and Helene, as opportunities arose, they became out again. With great wisdom and kindness and forgiveness. Anyway, one of the things from the Indigenous people was gratitude to the large minority of my fellow citizens who said, yes, yes. So I've had this... gratitude to you Americans, about two and a half times the entire population of Australia who voted for progressive kindness.

[58:03]

Thank you. There's a lot of you. It's a good reminder. Sometimes we feel alone. There's lots of us who are like-hearted, not like-minded, but like-hearted. Yeah. I've been terrifically helped in my response to your elections, and you think, look, I'm far away, but one of the effects of what's happened in your country is that it's unleashed the dogs of war, and the same statements and the same misinformation and the same anger is being aroused in my country. So we are all in this together. But I have been, in my practice, I have been tremendously supported by the response.

[59:18]

coming out of, well, in particular, I've been tremendously supported and helped by a statement by David Zimmerman. I feel it has guided me. He's reminded me of my vows and guided me towards So here's my question for you. Sorry about all this stuff. He writes, we have an innate capacity to know and transform our minds and character, healing them from the poisons of greed, hate and delusion. Electing to do this is perhaps the most powerful choice we can make.

[60:21]

Now, the theme of your talk today from Suzuki Roshi was kind of like spiritual ambition, you know, an ambition to get enlightened and to get it for myself, basically. But he says, We can elect to know and transform our minds and character. Now, how do I do that without ambition? How do I make this most important choice without wanting to get there? Well, I told you, Ayesha Zikorshi told you, you're already there. If you understand that you are Buddha incarnate, we're all Buddha incarnate, and we're just a little confused about that. Nobody told us that. Nobody told me that until very late in life. How would that have been if as a child, you know, as a brownie and a Girl Scout, I'd been told, you're Buddha, you're awake, you're an awakened being, you're an enlightened being, you're a holiness on this earth, you're a gift to this world.

[61:42]

All of you, not just you, not just you three who are so obviously special. So there's this very difficult assignment to accept that you are that and that the work is really seeing what it is that's blocking your perception of that. I get that. Yeah. That's my task, and we recite it, you know, that we study the self and then the self drops away. But how can I... It's never there in the first place. Sure. Okay. All right. Go ahead. So in my aspiration and my electing to know and transform my mind and character, How can I, knowing that it's simply a matter of hoping to make the clouds a bit thinner, a bit wispier, how can I do that without wanting it?

[62:52]

I don't know. I think you start off by wanting it, by greed. I think greed is the driver for our practice. It's our delusions that drive us. that brought me into the Zen Center. So that's not a bad thing. It's just that's the thing, as Disco said to us, it's not what you came here to get. It's what you're going to lose. So we arrived fully bowed with greed, hate, and delusion. Knock, knock, knock. Let's end. I'm going to sit here. I'm a sickie. I need to go to the hospital. So they let us in. And then we sat there and was like, now what? What's next? Okay. Breakfast. Yes. Yes. Sweeping. Yes. Cleaning the tile.

[63:57]

Yeah. Without a little sneaky thought around the back about I'm getting better. Oh, boy, I did a nice job in that tile, didn't I? Yes. Did you see it? Yeah. You did, huh? Good. Yeah, and it's sneaky, but you have to love that one. It's not a matter of getting rid of her. I wanted to kill her off my early years of practice. I wanted, my name was Nancy. How's that? a trick i wanted her dead because she was just into parties and you know and stupidity really driving too fast and being too whatever hysterical you know i wanted her gone because i began to see the calm abiding that was possible when you sit long periods of zazen you get kind of like a little concentrated And I wanted her gone. And I told her that.

[64:59]

My name is Foo. Not Nancy. And she talked to me eventually. She said, you know what? I'm your joy. I'm your happiness. I'm the reason you love life. You really want me to go? Should we make a little deal here? Together? Yeah. Yes, I feel very fond of that sort of wild, sweet, idealistic, silly, foolish past. It's the... It's... Yes. Yes, my question is just how to... Keep on breathing. Keep on making the tea. Keep on pulling out the weeds. Keep on listening to each other as kindly as we can without some sneaky hope of improving.

[66:06]

Oh, let her in. Let that little improvement project in. She's so lonely out there. She's in too. Everything's included. It's an all-inclusive universe. We're not trying to get rid of things that we don't like. We're trying to understand them. You know, to know them. We're scientists. We're studying the self. We're not dissecting the self. We're trying to understand it, you know. Oh, there's that sneaky little thing coming in the back door. Hi, I see you. I know you. Thank you so much. I've taken too much time. Thank you so much. Okay, Jerry, please. You're muted, Jerry. Indeed I was.

[67:08]

The last couple of minutes of conversation have really addressed what I was going to say, I wanted to actually thank Griffin and Millicent because they reminded me of myself and this whole project to improve myself. And I was reminded of some teaching I got years ago, which is that ambition, I think this came from Trungpa Rinpoche actually, one of his books, Ambition is a commitment to be present. It's not to have a goal of fixing something. And you were saying this for the last two minutes. It's like, do the dance. Don't avoid the dance. When I hear the kind of negative voices that Griffin was speaking about in terms of her being on this black cushion,

[68:14]

You know, I have those voices as well. And I find that if I welcome them, and if I, as I've learned from one of my great teachers, John Wellwood, if I find that there's some little piece of truth in it, the whole thing is not true. It's a distortion. But what gives it fuel is often some little piece of truth. And I may not know what that is. But my, you know, as we often say, I vow to, the vows that we say after a Dharma talk, I vow to face whatever's present. And that is, that's difficult. And it also can be very, very opening. Well, that's pretty much the definition of life.

[69:18]

Facing what's present. Because there's something present. As long as we're alive, there's some presence for us. That's what it means, you know, to be aware, to be sentient. So what's confusing to us, maybe unlike the banana slug and the butterfly and the swallows, is our conceptualizations. Our emotionalized conceptualizations about what's going on. Yeah. And we're very, we make amazing stories. Yes. The whole election is an amazing story that people are telling about what's true and what's not true and who's right and who's wrong. I mean, it's just a fabrication. And yet we're all kind of involved in it, yeah. We've woven the fabric for centuries. It's often negative and we often turn it against ourselves. We do. So we're called on to sobriety in the midst of Good word. Sober up, you know. Sober up.

[70:23]

Yeah. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you, Jerry. Talk on. Hi, Fu. Hello, Sangha. Thank you so much for your talk and everyone for being here. Um, I'm not sure, uh, how many of you may know, but I'm, uh, often I I'm a consultant management consultant. So I traveled to different, um, manufacturing plants and work, uh, usually in the Midwest area and, and sort of, um, in those sorts of environments. And I would say how there is refuge in the present moment and engaging fully with remembering what you said, Fu, that I believe your therapist told you of human first and how

[71:44]

Powerful is the word that I would want to say, but doesn't necessarily feel correct. But a smile and a hello to whoever is passing can be. And how the practice of bowing the same way to whoever you face, there really is. There's a reason I think why these customs and our forms have kept for so many, so many, many years. And that we say this same thing, it seems like, right? To be in the present moment and to remember the interconnectedness of our nature, right? And I think if we pay attention to the moment, to whatever it is that's facing us, there is some refuge in a true center of calm and how the panic and the anger and the grief very real in the moment uh quickly compound when we let that slip away into our our minds and our thoughts which is so easy but but like you once said our senses are are calling us back are asking us to come back and and i think now that um

[73:17]

I'm back to traveling. I have some cameras in, in the house with my baby son now for almost four months old. So I try to check in and big brother. And I, when I'm on the plane, a lot of times on those Mondays where it's the most sad, I, I watch and I remember that life goes on, right? That something has to happen. And we, need to do something, whether it's get up and cook, whatever it is, but I think when we're so caught up in our minds, it's easy for us to forget that that is the only true thing is whatever it is, that's right here, what's the next thing we're going to say, or what we're going to do? And how are we going to do that? Right? I think that's where the change changes the entire direction. I always like to think that I used to be so focused on whatever it was that was far ahead, that I would just trip with what was right, right in front of me, right, that log right in front of me.

[74:30]

And the moment that I started paying attention to just, well, not successfully, let me say, started trying to pay attention to just the next step. I've noticed that the direction that I go perhaps, I hope causes less suffering in the world. So as difficult as it is to remember to bow the same way and remember human first and how it's all us. Like you said last talk, Fu, what do we do? How do we respond to someone who is just a really a big jerk. And he said, Well, I remember that I'm just a big jerk too. So thank you for the practice. And, and I hope together we continue to support each other and to heal and to find that, that oneness that's really right there.

[75:37]

But us humans, Thank you. I'm very happy to know you're flying around the Midwest. I'm all around. I'm hearing and seeing things. The practice is just in my own... Yeah. But I have all of this at the same time. It may seem so lonely, but again, just a good morning. We all get up and have breakfast and want to be safe, right? Want to eat. And we all get so deluded and in our own bubbles of thought. And so how do we remember that waterfall, right? We're all ending up in the same river, so might as well find a way to get along instead of pushing each other out of the way. Totally. Just keep waving and smiling.

[76:38]

Exactly. Yeah. Be kind. I like the Dalai Lama's statement again and again. Our religion is kindness. Yes. Don't always feel that way, but somehow to come. Difficult. Yes, right. And it's hugely important. I mean, it's so important, as Suzuki Rishi says, that we shouldn't take it too seriously. Okay, well, thank you all. I really am grateful that you're all here and that we have this time to be together. And I do invite you again to contact me if you would like to participate in the pre-sip class and let me know. Do you have a way of letting me know? If anyone wants to know how to let me know, Kakwan, can you put my email address into the chat? Oh, let me see. I think I may need to be made a co-host or... Yeah, because I can only send it to you or to Zendo Events right now.

[77:46]

Oh, Karina can do it. Karina, will you do that? Are you doing it? She's trying to. Okay, I'm going to send it to Karina here. There we go. Because you're host, Karina. Okay. Oh, yeah, there it is. There it is. Except you spelled it wrong, my darling. Don't swear. People are listening. F-U-R-Y-U. I always thought of you as Fury. Yeah. Thank you, Fu. It's Tom talking here. No image at the moment. Hi. So we said November 20th, not this week, next. That's right. I was going to try this week, but I haven't got it together.

[78:47]

So it's going to be the 20th. I also wanted to make sure people had a chance to sign up if they wanted to, or just show up if you wanted to. Oh, good. This is good. I will figure out how to... Oh, I know. You all who want to do this, send me your email, and then I can send you the link to my Zoom room, which is where the class will happen. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Does that make sense? Yes. Okay. Good. Yeah. Hang on. I'm hanging. What? How do we locate the taped recordings, the recordings of the? I will let you know. Okay. Once they're made. Okay. So remind my tech person to record those would be another step. Thank you for reminding me. Did you do it again? Oh, my God. Can I get a new tech person?

[79:49]

Is this possible? Any of you guys available? I think it's autocorrecting. So make sure to press the X. Yeah, it may be. Or you can copy and paste. I pasted. I pasted it to... Yeah, two Zendo events. I sent it to the chat. There it is. There it is. It's missing .org, but other than that, yes. .org, the end of that. And if any of you want to study precepts, this is the barrier that you will have to cross, is to put the .org at the end of that email. Applications are open. All right. All right. All right. Well, thank you, everybody. I'll give you my email again next week, just in case. All right. Thank you again. Have a good night. Thank you. Thank you, Tom. And everyone's welcome to unmute and say good night if you like.

[80:51]

Thank you. Good night. Good night, everyone. Thank you. Good night. Be well. Good night. Good morning. Good morning, too. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning, Singapore. Bye. Thank you. Take care. You too, everyone. Take care. Blessings. Bye.

[81:17]

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