the pet
so many people
where do they all come from
welcome to green gulch
i'm guy gun
you die young book
my official position here is
unequivocally old fart on campus
and i have all the privileges thereon to
the
scoop
i like it
zen as cool
would anybody ever tell you that same as cool
you will find ecstatic people in said
who you dancing is are in a very cool cold climate people
have you grow born in the wintertime here
casa horrors is the place where you should be in the dark of the year
how many people have been there and does her in the dark of the year the northern antarctica
it is to say the least elemental
i have never encountered darkness
go into that canyon in the los padres national forest for the time of the sources
as i've ever ever seen it
for felt it covered
as i have or did there
it doesn't take months stretch with the imagination to
feel
how it must have been for our common ancestry back and
no knows when and how far back in this case
you know hemisphere
what's called and there's only a little fire together wrong
what the return of the lake
the night for beginning to wane and the day force beginning to
to grow had that feeling
of assurance and
hope and faith what's the bit like
mr was carried out in our blood
hmm
he's not the mystery why
we have so many
celebrations
holika christmas
rojas secession and his like enlightenment time
hello those maybe or symbolizing that sense of the dark knight
the extreme of the light
the extreme edge of things
he spoke to turn and the night movie will come back again the see code in capricorn will claim from them
the lowest part of the ocean to the highest mountain all those symbols that we have generated the time
to commemorate that moment
this hemisphere when things become enlightened again

where do you know it's also very stressful time of year long i think just for that reason and also because i even before we were encumbered with lots of rituals about by and spending and giving
ah just the
the absence of light viagra absence of the spectrum of the sun so actual condition was has a name window tennis
when will you don't get the full light spectrum in the wintertime the northern hemisphere there's a kind of depression that comes along with it when measured scientifically so must be so
we feel it you feel that to the national time for interning for introspection for
crawling up close to the fire lighting candles snuggling up hibernating
instead we got if we get up even earlier so we get out on the road together christmas shopping done gets exhausting them
to the recipes we have to do in the wider world we don't take into account so much the rhythm of the season itself which says slowdown things are dying and the new a new beginning
the course we could have a new beginning of a year around the equinoxes to and and we do spring with the life-force games over the dark forces the type of cursor
mom resurrection
finally the latest resurrected all in the darkness we have those ceremonies like easter thought
and in some cultures i guess actually are awesome becomes the beginning of the year which the the day for finally is overcome by the night for and could be printed word again
but it seems more natural that in the rhythms of our life the season of the year the time that we would
that will sure there was a completion of cycle has ended
before full turn have something in her life would be a time of reckoning a time of low paying our debts cleaning your house clean and both a metaphorical and will turn this the word and we do
quite naturally do little things patch up old quo
in other words drop away some of the superfluous baggage that we have accumulated over time for the glue his last cycle is last turn the wheel of
of my life of the four seasons
when an end in the actually ritualized new beginning
together
time have taken vows to people
good time to dig in bottles actually to take guy we don't have so many wedding is maybe in the wintertime as we do in the summer but it's a great time run the winter solstice
ah featuring i get brighter right
where in you
six months away you want to go into decline of the sun people think about that today
but you have to a pang of those old sorcerer illusion
alchemists to remember these ancient truth is

hmm
noel and of course it's it's also that i worry we make what we call resolutions we resolve to change in they usually usually resolutions about him in self improvement most of us don't make resolutions to be worse
i'm going to be a bigger asshole this year than they've ever been before i promise you
we are usually say that would make some effort in the other direction
now maybe in a perverse moment or so we might feel like doing it actually but for the most part we try to be positive vows to standing there
so-called wholesome bowers
you're for to prove that we can keep them
life is bigger than our mouths that are conditioning is stronger than our momentary wow
in the dark in here but it's a worthy practice
in fact that's true of all of our vows that we take we take vows here all the time and every morning we also swear in front of one another that all arrange and twisted karma from getting his greed hate and delusion we not fully of our point to body speech and mind especially speech we now allow
we try but poor man when was shakespeare said man but man poor man most ignorant about which is most assuredly his glassy essence
like an angry a play such an past the tricks before i haven't as make the angels weep
wonderful way of saying that part of so he vowed to to be a little better figure closer to the angels even i do that
what was mark twain said we should we actually should follow the rules when we're young just so we can bring him with impunity when we get older particularly he said when we elected to office
ah
if i were to sum up
everything i've learned and say is possible to find the quintessential
word sentence phrase
that would encapsulate the teaching or the
truth
the heartfelt center of your life
after years of practice and after being alive quite a while what would it be
and so simple for me it's so simple and it's so obvious
it's something that everyone has heard and it's something that grandma probably said you when you are sniffling and complaining
just being alive to see now
just being alive is a civic the roshi is said that to my teacher my route teacher foods mel weitzman progress christendom
now when mel was going through a particularly bad time he said that suzuki roshi just came up looked in his face and said to him at that moment a moment the dark and the year for him
everything had gone into darkness
just mckenna said just be a lie is enough
head of course if you've ever come out of dangerous operation or
hum
had a real scare
then on the edge of looking into the jaws of death in the sense and has been snatched back into life somehow
for this for a moment as you come back in just being alive is enough
i don't know which is the most optimal word in there just simply or alive accord with the word enough that he knows the rumba
he was a survey taken once not so long ago was elected survey of them people's needs money wise i think i've told you this do
roy
but i only have a certain number of story so i have to repeat them
those stories of stick in our minds and this one always sticks in my life because i think it points up the so-called first noble truth which he said life is
river with dissatisfaction with conditioned existence is ribbon dissatisfaction
who's that distribute people on the street from rather well off the upper middle class at least been ritually
this isn't a day when a close and billionaires were still considered rich
ah down to people who run them weights and so on and it came out that all of them thought they would be finally secure and happy with twenty percent more
it's not bad eighty percent is pretty good
eighty percent of my life is pretty good but there's justice
if i just had a look at twenty percent war and things would be fine
twenty percent more health twenty percent more money twenty percent more faith twenty percent more fidelity respect new neighbor but anyway twenty percent more and the physical or psychological and moral plane
and i would be i would be nirvana i would be an uneasy street and be in the catbird seat with that
just being alive is not enough let's face it
i might think so for a few moments
and i might really appreciate my life
for those moments
but sooner or later and sooner probably more than later
there will be something that's not quite right
and i go searching for what it is that i need to fulfill myself with
just being alive there's not enough
and of course it's a relative thing isn't it if you're out in the cold without any clothes just being alive in fact dying very slowly of a tortuous disease just being alive obviously try to tell that to somebody die like that and hospice hey just being alive is enough right
maybe maybe not
now used to worry about the fact that i don't live my life that way
particular in the dark of the year metaphorically speaking
when are they think the sun was ever gonna come back
in fact part of they didn't want to suddenly come back what the state this all over again
to keep going in spite of losing everybody and everything keep going
to tell me is a why watch for
what's the use
well gonna die anyway where will get sick and die and the world has never changed and blah blah while we know that
it's true
he's been line is not enough like them
highway for the late to come back
and lo and behold i come back
i didn't see me doing thing about it but i don't feel that way a few days later than i felt when few weeks later few months later as i felt at that moment something has shifted
something is always always shifted
as we've gone are three hundred and sixty degree journey around the sun
and it's journey in it's orbits in our galaxy and it's orbits and midst of other infinite orbits
particle spinning and space
why isn't it enough just to be a lie
we wouldn't be sitting in it did talking about this if it was wouldn't be
well maybe we do maybe it would maybe this is part of just being alive when i think get together
we're sure each other and just being alive is enough
his interesting also in the sand particularly i think a suzuki roshi presented it and as we chant here in one of the
ha

to come a treatise actually it's called a merging a difference immunity or sand okay emerging a different community
the it talks about her life without litres you cannot be darkness and without darkness it can be likened to say that the same thing we can imagine light without dark and dark without life and millions and zan or in in some of the later buddhist teachings during a symbolized the unconscious
the the undifferentiated continuum if you wanna call it where you can find distinction between things objects
i'm corresponds to i unconsciously
and as a healthy thing is the growth of for everything
for where everything is in state
and is preparing to burst forth again it's very healthy place to go through the dark
it was it also true in my psychological life when it was a dark night of the soul and nothing work
and life did not feel just as such being enough
make her laugh with data

when i was hard on myself as i will say before because i couldn't keep in stick them to speak
alive enough before me as a continuous mantra way of life until i realized that just part of being alive is the fact and of course everything's constantly falling apart
and we're constantly putting it back together
the is obvious is that is to us sometimes somebody has to actually say that
i once worked in a residential treatment center for youngsters as a counselor and thirty years ago
and we'll do we have a terrible time is of course with disturbed young people when we were in erotic herself as a staff who we had a psychologist psychiatrist who oversaw our work
and i can remember very clearly saying and what of our staff meeting so that was
he filled with high tension
it's always falling apart and he said well of course it isn't as your job and my job to put it back together
what kind of creates a little bit of stress in our life
it is always falling apart it was also fallen apart is his idea that i can always be aware of the fact that just being alive is enough that to will come and go to it's dark and light curry
it's it's all right to forget our resolutions it's all right
nike we keep the precepts
it's all right to fail so right the eccentric
i understand also that suzuki roshi one of the first ways he said that he met a person was too
no movies and involved with was to can stimulate a little mischief
pick up a little mischief in the person
it doesn't sell a zen master and symmetric noise thinker somebody who is involved in the cloth wants to come and clean up your act
a good little boy and girl when he said no no
crystal little mischief and then you can see people are
what they do the worst way to treat them mr dolan
the second worst way even more common in a try to control them the best ways to watch them watch one them
when he was ever wants to also concur with that and said there isn't all of this an irreducible element of grass committee
we can be church and zen those who place to be edified by by some ideas of herself will we also need to remember is untenable
aspect of myself that doesn't quite fit in
to the schema of
whatever is
manifesting as a way to be
when we have to honor that
hi
just being alive is not enough
now for just being alive is enough
whistler is a time of death and rebirth
maybe you are an international scale
he better be the political slogan for in the coming election just being alive as enough live and let live
it doesn't doesn't get votes
of course is falling apart
since the port a time comes
when life is an order just life but no escape time comes when like as an order just life
no escapes
doesn't it
if you said long enough doing nothing and crossing your legs and watching the world and funny duke
no space that sooner or later you will have gone through body will change in every dimension of conscious of may be possible within the framework of your psychology
can all at once you simply be sitting there and noticing things exactly as they are the foil is just the floral pavilion looks it was very undramatic
it has no movie at all
the ordinary beyond ordinary
and the so real
well you know what i like having twelve percent left over
i can't wait to get after time later even then to let that go to get up the town's i get back into two opposite frame of mind why is that
wasn't a dust day asking who said he reprove a perfect
we can build a tower with great power to the heavens and five
wouldn't we out of sheer perversity to prove that we could knock it down
who knows that element in us
in trade instead of trying to control that and
he or ignore that
he watch it using
here's a poem by a great zaborska
the polish poet woman who won the nobel prize
the navy sometime
because his called the real world
the real world doesn't take flight the way dreams do
no muffled voice no doorbell can dispel it
no shriek no crash can cut it short
images and dreams are hazy and ambiguous and can generally be explained in many different ways
reality means reality
that's a tougher nut to crack
dreams have keys the real world opens on its own and can't be shut
report cards stars poor from them butterflies and flat iron warmer shower down
headless cats and shards of clouds together they form what can't be solved
within a streams couldn't exist without us without us dreams couldn't exist no one on whom the real world depends is still unknown and the products of his insomnia are available to anyone who wakes up
dreams are crazy it's the real world that's insane
if only in its stubbornness with which it sticks to the current of events
in dreams and our recently deceased are still alive in privy council no less and restored to the full bloom of youth the real world lays the courts in front of this the rural world it doesn't blink an eye
dreams are featherweight and memory can shake them off with ease the real world doesn't have to fear forgetfulness
yes tough customer it sits on our shoulders ways on our hearts tumbles to our feet there's no escaping it it tags along each time we flee and there's no stop along our escape route where reality isn't expecting us
that's kind of hard law paul
this reality with the hard edge to it
but it is the place i believe
i'm finally say this i had to say my final words even now just being alive is enough just that way
but then there's my story says my maybe neurosis
there is no ultimate truth said buddha at least says the commentators
his i understanding
it's just in this context process and interpretation
which is what we're doing right now
in the dark of year
have we make resolution with coming turn of the wheel
how many this will be sitting there next year
hi my favorite death poll over there
zen master knows and masters supposed to be the desk to humor they don't die of a polish and for years
anna
but my favorite one is i don't want to die
he screamed it out i don't want to die and a students were really upset with him
there is en masse to say that if he doesn't want to die
good he's done you know
part and parcel of the whole show that just dying as enough
no he didn't want to
i hope that honest
how can do in several bones several parts of zen stories and then
gonna with a daughter need to cry and cry when the bandit scanlon killed him
he told him they give up one of the monks who they're looking for i guess here
then abandoned before it became a monk
and he wouldn't do the habit wouldn't give them up and saw the they said well then if you are him and they kill gondola with god go with stab he let out a scream that could be heard all of a southern china and move by
is in all heard a scream
the i woke up in the midst of it at that moment
the who dies when got to screens and he asked herself
historic makes me wonder if said
fellow who are they wanted
maybe i'm
her politics or religion is the last refuge of scoundrels
oh
what if it's true what about we've tried everything nothing worked with funny
come to god
when supposed to talk until eleven i'm sorry if there's long pauses i
you have to understand that this talk
actually we have a talk now that the to can keep you busy because what's really happening is that warming it a huge kettle of water for tea
and it takes forty minutes
and if i stop before the forty minutes i'll hear about it
they didn't get the t in time because teigen they wanted this twenty minute talks and back
one i'm desperately trying to think of anecdotes to plug up the time
just being alive is not quite enough it's too much
i didn't mean it

hmm
twenty percent more
put it was a more while
time for nothing
maybe you know some good story
well i'm always on the side of the eccentric and
and for every the microwave one of my body software pharaohs and i'm always quoting by to a some our coaches something from right way and that kind of fits and what i'm talking about
he's talking about keeping the rules when you're young so you can break him and when you're older and he said i only have one rule myself i i never spoke with the one cigar at a time
and he said i always buy
the cheapest brand it's five dollars a barrel noli said no as five fifty ago
now five fifty a barrel he said that that includes of the barrel
he said a man he thought by eccentric he said a man or woman a person who tries to carry a cat home by the tail is getting two or three times more immediate experience and a person who'd only theorize about them
that the person who was doing so would not likely ever repeat that experience again it would not grow them are doubtful
by say if he wants to let him it's not easy being eccentric
so sometimes when we covered the zendo on cold mornings in the dark of the year i think about that is kind of like carrying the kehoe by the tail
and i think that's what we do it early in the morning and it's cold in the dark of the year when any normal person and
when normal neurosis would get up with the sun we we get up three hours before the sun even comes up
if you don't think that test you
i invite you to come and try it in fact we have six or eight or ten people with us right now we're doing a workshop and were actually trying it out altogether getting up early in the morning and coming here is it so the end and and they're actually paid to do it
so it must be valuable
yep
well i'm sorry you expected to hear the dharma today but you know the other thing i must tell you i stood on with the dharma is
damn it
i don't i don't but i do know that whatever it is it must have something to do with me
in the life just has oliver
he's a fair assumption
who should i test it i'll go see the teacher and ask him or her
later
as my wife
that's my wife
i do ask your later and go she liked the teacher i go and ask her she'll say twenty percent more
hi
next week however the be real speaker here to answer your question
can promise you who is it
norman
norman is a dear fellow and a great zen teacher and is my teacher is an infected gave me this role
and i hope i'm not embarrassed me him by wearing it up here today
if i am i'm sorry on
that you can't control your
devotees
he's a great poet or when fissure by the way create modern post-modern port i really believe that he has a great influenza poetry

and when we know
three minutes
then are you getting up to are you leaving

then people always cool camper cool cupboard
yeah well they aren't till they blow up
a real blow up or up and actually send people home blog very often the when they do
he doesn't grow deborah doubtful is the cat again
it's like a boiler you know this as supposed to be like you were this huge border we build up all this pressure and as and zazen as kind of the escape without someone who worked there pressure
who picked up with pink petcock
and then it all at once with doesn't not get out and thousands who will sit down and meetings we have to work with her
the the excess we have access for each other and wasn't used up and says it
this not going to the office
well it's time
and thank you for sitting here at indulging me
you know in america is in most countries are you think i could have got up and just read a lecture and and everybody would are in japan for example they would understand that in england for example but in america with also was the entertain people
we can entertainers i'm not very good one but i'm working on it working on it and if we can ask me to give a target
i learned something about it being an entertainer
in with something me unbeknownst myself actually be said that will have some influence on someone else's life and later date currency you know you said something was changed my whole life i think all and yeah you said just being alive is enough
and one of everything went to hell i remember them and a helpful so no
thank you