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 by people like you. I encourage Jimmy Hendrix. Happy New Year, first of all, although it's not quite New Year's yet. But... So this is a really funny time of year. I think what starts happening is we start to feel like we're getting a little bit of our life back because we've passed the winter solstice and we're starting to get a little bit of day back and there's obviously this big New Year's holiday and so on and so everybody starts to expand a little bit.

[01:00]

And there's a lot of, there's this feeling of renewal and new opportunity, and so what people generally tend to do is they generally tend to make vows. And either formally, some people write them down on paper, some people make them secretly, there's all sorts of things you can do. to make vows and they're generally vows of self-improvement. I will be kinder to my children this year. I will go to the gym at least once a week. And those are all wonderful things actually. The remarkable thing about, I mean, maybe it's always been like this, I don't know, because I've never lived in any other cultural moment, but the remarkable thing about our current cultural moment is that we're kind of a cultural self-improvement, right?

[02:16]

Everyone's, all you have to do is go to a bookstore and walk up and down the self-help aisle to realize that we're a cultural self-improvement. There's... self-improvement in business, self-improvement in the home, self-improvement for self-improvement sake, let's not forget self-improvement in romantic relationships. There's a tremendous amount of that and also improving your romantic relationship by improving the other person. That's the other way people try to improve their lot in life is by improving their spouse or significant other. I think that's a wonderful thing, and I think what it speaks to, in fact, is this conviction that we carry with us, that everyone carries with them, that it's possible to live kind of an improved life, and I'll get into what I mean by that in a little bit, but the other thing that's happened is that

[03:29]

As a result of this, at least in the West, the word Zen has really gotten everywhere. I was reading, in fact, a self-improvement book the other day. It was a parenting book, and it's a really great book, actually. It's called Mama Zen by Karen Miller. My wife, who's not a Zen student, but kind of can't help but... hear a little bit about it every now and again for me. Picked it up, and the funny thing about it is it's a really fantastic parenting book. So if anybody wants a great parenting book, I've now plugged the book, and Karen Miller didn't pay me a dime. But one of the things she does at the beginning is she spends a little time, I think she felt a little guilty about writing a book kind of popular book and putting Zen on the cover of the book because she felt like she was falling into the same trap that everyone else falls into, right?

[04:36]

And she said, oh, you know, in the introduction, there's all these people using Zen and advertising. And I mean, so I don't know if any of you noticed, but in the last month or so, I noticed this because I was shuttling back and forth to... in the practice period here when I was just so, but there are these giant kiosk ads downtown for a liquor called Zen, which totally rocks, right? And even if the ads don't use the word Zen, there was also an ad I noticed around the same time for... some kind of whiskey, and it had this really kind of great look, and he wasn't really handsome, but he looked really serious and soulful, and he kind of had a three-day stubble on, and it was a real kind of serious black and white photo, and the entire copy of the ad was, I think it was like authenticity or something like that, which is, all of which is great, but I mean, it's easy to, it's,

[05:42]

It's easy to put this stuff down, but the truth is, it really does just point to this notion that everyone has a hunger for this kind of, for freedom, actually, from their own suffering, from the bind that our society has managed to get itself into, from All of the stuff that we've carried with us ever since, clearly, before the Buddha sat down and cooked up the Four Noble Truths, because he was just pointing to a current phenomenon. And that was 2,500 years ago. I mean, that's a remarkable thing. But people have this aspiration, and it really has kind of dug itself into society. And the way you can tell that is that Advertising doesn't work unless it connects, right? And the way in which it's connecting is people are... When you see a sign that says authenticity, you think, huh, authenticity, yeah.

[06:47]

And, you know, okay, so it's a liquor ad, but still. So, yeah, so we certainly make these vows of self-improvement. And I think... I think by now everyone has had at least some experience with what doesn't work about making vows. There's a whole sub-genre of humor that has to do with people not living up to their New Year's resolutions. People tell a lot of jokes about it around this time of year. The most both kind of chilling and beautiful expression I ever heard of it was, I used to spend a lot of time at one period of my life in these sort of AA and Al-Anon groups.

[07:49]

One time one guy said, he said, sobriety without higher power is nothing but white knuckles. he said it like he meant it and like he really knew what he was talking about. The language in that is this kind of AA language and that might not be the language that Zen students would use or like, who knows. But I think the underlying message there is it doesn't work Usually, although every now and again, you talk to somebody for whom this has worked, but no matter how intensely you make a vow, if you expect that what that vow is going to do is change you of its own accord instantly and irrevocably, chances are you're in for a disappointment. In fact, you might not find that it was so easy to go to the gym at least once a week because...

[09:02]

All the same stuff that was happening in your life in November is going to be happening in your life in February and so on. It's a hard thing. And no matter how deeply you felt the vow on December 29th or New Year's Eve or something like that when you were making it, that depth of feeling doesn't necessarily help in the day-to-day process of... taking care of everything you have to do and getting to the gym every, you know, at least every seven days, right? Or I think you would hope probably more frequently than that when you're making the vow, right? So that doesn't work very well. But nonetheless, people feel this this need, this desire to make these vows and live up to them.

[10:06]

And that's a laudable and wonderful thing and reflects in some ways our deepest aspiration for our life. Even if getting to the gym every seven days isn't the pinnacle achievement of my life, it reflects some heartfelt desire, heartfelt wish, aspiration for self-improvement in me that is worth honoring. So what kind of does work for vows? Well, the interesting thing about vows and Zen is that you almost always vowed in Buddhism to do something impossible. So there's a number of these like Dharma gates are boundless. I vow to enter them. Or beings are numberless. I vow to save them. Right there, you kind of have to give up on something.

[11:13]

And what you have to give up on is the notion that this is something that you're going to just say now and then go do it. It really, really doesn't work that way. There's a wonderful expression in, I think it's in a, I think it was written down by Dogen, although somebody should correct me on that if I'm wrong.

[11:39]

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