Good morning, distinguished ladies and gentlemen of the young set. A couple of weeks ago I went to a lecture given by Peter Matheson. Peter Matheson is an explorer and an author and also, incidentally, a Zen priest and an old Dharma comrade of mine from many years ago, studying together in New York with Tetsugan Glassman. And, you know what, the topic of his lecture was tigers, tigers. So I want to talk a little bit about tigers, because I learned some things about them from Peter. Anybody here ever seen a tiger?

[01:05]

Ever seen a tiger? Yeah? Tigers are very impressive. Peter said that tigers are the largest cats, bigger than lions. Did you know? Bigger than lions. And I think that there are, I forget if there's five or eight different races of tigers, but the biggest of the races, the Siberian tiger, weighs over a thousand pounds. Imagine a house cat, a thousand pounds. He said that tigers are pretty much exactly the same as your average house cat. He said their behavior, the way they approach the world, is pretty much the same.

[02:05]

He said, but since nobody understands their house cat, people don't really understand tigers either. But these are huge, you know, imposing, powerful and scary creatures, these tigers. Enormously fast, really, really powerful, and tigers have a great range, a great habitat. Quite a bit of the world is tiger habitat, through China, through India, through the wastes of Siberia, the Himalayan plateaus in Africa. Although we don't have tigers in North America, throughout most of the rest of the world, excluding North America and Western Europe, there are tigers. Tigers are not afraid of people.

[03:08]

They're not impressed one way or the other. In fact, tigers are one creature that will attack human beings if they feel the need to, and eat them. So all over the world, throughout history, where there have been tigers, local peoples have respected tigers a great deal, because they think that the tigers, they're not they themselves, but the tigers are the masters of the forests. So Peter said in his lecture that the best tiger story he ever read was the story of Dersu Uzala. And Dersu Uzala was a book written by an explorer, and the great Japanese film director,

[04:19]

Akira Kurosawa, made a film called Dersu Uzala, about this person named Dersu Uzala. And I'm going to tell you the story of the film, okay? And you can rent it, you can get your parents to get it from the video store, so you can watch this film. It's truly a great film. It takes place about a hundred years ago in Siberia, and there's a Russian captain who has a band of soldiers, and he's exploring the uncharted, vast landscape of Siberia for the Russians. And along the course of their expedition, they think they see a bear coming toward them, but it's actually this little roly-poly guy named Dersu Uzala, who is a Goldie, G-O-L-D-I, Goldie, one of the many, many, many, many tribes and clans of people all over the world

[05:23]

who we never heard of. So many kinds of people, you know? We know about two or three of them, but there's many, many kinds of people. And this guy is a Goldie. I never heard of Goldies. Did you ever hear of Goldies? I always thought they were like little brownies that you eat. No. This guy is a Goldie, and he looks kind of like, I would say, a cross between an Eskimo and a Chinese. He has a very broad face with tiny slits of eyes, and he's quite small and roly-poly, but very, very sturdy, even though he's old. He hikes along with the best of them, carrying everything he owns on his back, and he's an excellent shot because he's a hunter. He lives in the forests. Long time before that, when he was young, he had had a wife and children, but they got ill and died.

[06:24]

So for almost all his adult life, he just lives by himself in the forest, hunting and traveling from place to place and sometimes building a small cabin to live in. So the captain of the Russian expedition invites Dersu Usala to be the guide for the expedition, and he agrees to do it. And they have many, many fabulous adventures together. And the movie was filmed in Siberia, so you see amazing sights and landscapes. One time Dersu Usala was caught in a raging river, and they were rushing around. They couldn't figure out how to get him out, and he said, chop down a tree. So they had to chop down a tree and hurl a tree out to him and pull him in on a chopped down tree. But the most harrowing adventure of all was when he and the captain went out by themselves

[07:29]

to explore a vast frozen lake in the tundra, and they got lost from their companions. And night was coming, the sun was about to set, and they would surely freeze if they stayed overnight on this frozen lake. So Dersu Usala said, we have to work fast and collect grasses, because by the sides of the lake there was grasses. And there's a very moving scene where the two of them, all you can hear on the soundtrack is the swish of knives cutting the grasses and the sound of the breathing of the captain and Dersu Usala as they chop, [...] chop grasses, because they have to make a huge pile of grass, big enough almost like to have a small house, because the only way that they would be able to survive is to make a big mound of grass

[08:31]

and burrow inside of it and sleep next to each other inside this little house of grass. And the captain collapses in exhaustion, but they survive. The next morning they wake up in the midst of this. The sun comes up and they find their companions and they get out of that one. Where does the tiger come in? Well, in the springtime they're in the forest and they keep being pursued, followed by a tiger. And whenever the tiger, they don't see the tiger, but Dersu Usala knows the ways of the forest very well and sees the tracks and understands what's going on. And he always talks to the tiger, you know, in a very loud voice.

[09:35]

He says, Tiger, you better go away, otherwise these humans are going to shoot you. And the tiger stays away. But finally, we see the tiger. And you can see from above the tiger coming closer and the men scattered around trying to see him. And Dersu Usala says, Tiger, you better go away or humans are going to shoot you. But this time the tiger doesn't go away. And it's a beautiful tiger, so powerful, dwarfing the people, much, much bigger than the people. And when Dersu Usala, who is very close to the tiger, maybe just as close as I am to you, when he sees the tiger suddenly face to face,

[10:38]

he becomes startled, and his gun goes off, and he shoots the tiger. And the tiger runs away, but Dersu Usala says, Tigers always run and keep running until they die. I killed the tiger. He knew that he killed the tiger. So he was very, very upset about it, because to the Goldie people, the tiger is a very close friend of the spirit of the forest. And if you kill a tiger, the forest spirit will not be happy about you and will not want you to live in the forest anymore. So Dersu Usala, who before this was a very kind and sweet person, becomes more and more irritable, and then suddenly realizes, when he tries to shoot a boar,

[11:39]

that he can't see it, that his eyesight is going bad. And so he can't live in the forest anymore, and he goes to live with the captain and his family in the town where they live. And he tries his best to live inside of a house, but it's so hard for him to live in the city without any animals, without feeling the air around him. Finally, he goes back to the forest to live, and after a short while, he's killed. Now we have something that we call, what do we call it, the world economy, or what do they call it, the global economy?

[12:41]

Because of the global economy, now large companies are more and more controlling local economies. So in places where there are tigers, people are very, very poor, and they actually can't afford any longer to respect tigers and other wild animals in the way that Dersu Usala did. And a lot of times, poor people in these areas have no choice but to sell wild animals and wild animal parts for money, so that they can survive. Peter Matheson said that the illegal traffic worldwide in wild animals and wild animal parts is the second largest international element of the world economy behind narcotics. Narcotics is first, and then comes traffic in wild animals,

[13:46]

and third comes arms sales. Wild animal selling this is more than arms throughout the world economy. Tigers are prized throughout Asia for their properties and medicinal qualities in their skins and so on, so they're very valuable to be sold. And because of this, and also because of the destruction of the habitat of the tigers, they need a huge area, a huge area to roam in, unbroken, you know, by human habitation. Because of this, Peter says that tigers are surely to become extinct. It's virtually unthinkable that they will not become extinct in our lifetimes, and several of the eight races of tigers are already extinct. So that's what I wanted to say to you children.

[14:53]

Be sure to go to the zoo and see a tiger soon. Get your parents to take you to a zoo and see a tiger, and when you see a tiger, know that there are still some tigers who are roaming free in their own homes, but that by the time you grow up, there will only be tigers in zoos. And so when you see the tigers, you should be sad thinking of this. So will you go to the zoo? Will you get someone to take you to the zoo? Even if you saw a tiger before, maybe now seeing it, knowing the story of Dersu Uzala and knowing that tigers are going to be extinct, maybe it will feel different to see them. Thank you for coming and being so well behaved and making such little amount of noise. It's very good, very impressive. Thanks.

[15:59]

Bye. Bye. So, all over the world, species are dying.

[17:41]

They are disappearing. And we're watching and doing what we can do to prevent this. Of course, throughout the history of our planet, species have always disappeared. And long before the age of industrialization, people have been responsible for doing in various insect and animal, particularly mammal species, birds. But now I think we know that it's necessary for us to grieve over each and every species that's lost a creature that will never, ever appear again.

[18:43]

That, you know, incredible forces of chance and fate and creativity have produced a particular creature and that these forces will never come again in that way. And now the creature is gone. No species, and I think this is especially true of large mammals and especially maybe of the tiger, no species is only itself. Every species also exists as an important factor in the world of many other species. And for humans, I really feel that the birds and the fish and the big mammals are creatures not only of our physical world,

[19:47]

but are also creatures of our dreams. You see how children love animals. Why do children have such a special feeling for animals? Because children's world is closer to a dream world. And the animals express some deep part of our psyches. So when we lose a species on the planet, it's not only the species that we're losing, we're also literally losing a part of our own human capacity to imagine and understand some aspect of our world. We can't even explain this. Tigers are awesome, unchained wildness. And if you see a tiger, it's very viscerally obvious

[20:56]

that one has to respect the power of this animal and to forget about our human world long enough to realize that over most of the world where we could go, most of the territory and area of this planet where we could go, it's the way of the tiger that rules, not our human way. And it's necessary for us to be able to see ourselves as creatures who have a place among all the vast forces of nature. We've created a human world so thorough-going that we forget in the midst of it that it's surrounded by a vastly larger world. Our human world so inures us to self-preoccupation

[22:02]

that we forget what the world is. And this narrow-minded self-preoccupation is the great cause of our suffering. The way of the tiger is the way of belonging with full vitality to a place. Tigers know their place so thoroughly and depend on it so completely that a tiger is almost unimaginable outside of its true habitat. So when you see a tiger in a zoo, you know, it's always a very sad thing because it's almost not really a tiger, you know, outside of its habitat, outside of its real life. In the old sutras, the ones that recount stories of Buddhist time,

[23:07]

tigers are often mentioned, actually. It was one of the hazards of meditation practice. Truly, it's often mentioned that the monks would be fearful of tigers when sitting out in the open under trees to meditate. And many stories of the ancient Chan masters in the old days in China also mention tigers, lots of lore about tigers. There's a very famous Zen picture that you often see reproduced of an old Zen master leaning on his elbow, sleeping on the head of a tiger, on a tiger's head, you know, as the tiger is also sleeping. And we're animals, too, of course. And even though we have the capacity for abstract thought,

[24:14]

still, we will never go beyond our rootedness in our bodies. And in the places where we live. And again, if we forget about this, we are in danger of losing our deep dream life, the real texture of being human, and also we will lose the life on our planet. Now, we have been at Green Gulch now almost 25 years. We're going to have our 25th year anniversary soon. And for 25 years we've been trying to come to know Green Gulch, this watershed, this valley, as our place, and to belong to it in a vital way. It takes a great deal of sensitivity and commitment

[25:18]

to know a place well. And to try one's best to take care of it. It takes many years of seeing the changes in the weather, many years of looking out at landscapes, of observing things and struggling and making mistakes, and of establishing one's own human style of living, appropriate in response to the place where we live. To me, this is part and parcel of Buddhist practice, to look around at one's place, to understand how thoroughly one depends on it, and to be as intelligent as possible in cooperating with it. And it's hard to know what that means.

[26:22]

Sometimes that means just leaving things alone, and sometimes that means being proactive and doing something. If we're alive, we do affect the place we live, no matter how lightly we live on it. So we have to be attentive to that, and sensitive about it. In twenty-five years, we have buried in this Green Gulch Earth now a number of our best friends and teachers, fellow practitioners, so that now when we look at the hillsides, at certain trees, certain stones, we recall people who aren't with us anymore,

[27:25]

and we recall stories of struggles and times gone by in this place. So little by little, I think, it is coming home to us that we belong to this land, not the other way around. And we realize that we have to release ourselves to it and humble ourselves to it, and embrace ourselves before it more and more each year. Maybe some of you were with us earlier, not actually, we're in a new month, right? Last month, early last month, February, when Gary Snyder and his wife Carol Cota were here visiting us.

[28:27]

And I'm thinking about a lot of these things because I was so affected by their visit. As you know, Gary has been probably one of the leading voices in the world over the last 25, 30, 40 years for reminding us to look around and have respect for our place and to find a way to belong to it. And our place doesn't just mean our house and our lawn, you know. Our place means our region, our watershed, all the creatures in it, and not just the natural world, but understanding the natural world to include the human world, larger. So for us, also our place is the city, San Francisco and other cities in Marin, the people in them, Marin City, Canal District.

[29:34]

When they were here, they presented me with a limited edition little book that they had done together. And it included a really wonderful piece by Carol on this point. Carol Cota is a Japanese-American woman I don't know if she's the third or fourth generation of her family born in America. But even though her family has been here for a long time, she reflects in her essay on how hard it has been for her personally to feel a real sense of belonging in America because of her racial heritage. And in the essay she talks about how she finally discovered through her own concrete experiences of living on the land where she lives that when you feel a sense of real belonging to your place

[30:41]

with full vitality and full commitment, then ethnic differences no longer have to be a source of conflict and identity confusion. Because when we own where we are, then it doesn't matter where we came from or what our style is. So I just want to read you a little tiny part because I think it's very beautiful how she puts this. Her essay is called Dancing in the Borderland Finding Our Common Ground in America. She says, Our families fortify us in an embrace that comes down through our grandmothers and grandfathers whoever and wherever they were. Our ethnicity gives us a style, a way of seeing things, adornment, comfort, stories. What I like about the California multicultural curriculum is the public acknowledgement

[31:42]

that there's more than one outstanding way to do things. But for diversity, it doesn't go far enough. For citizenship into the next decade, the next century and beyond, it doesn't go far enough. Children need to learn the most basic facts of their lives. Where do they live? Who else, human and non-human, lives here? Who else used to live here? Where does their water come from? Where does their waste go? What kind of energy fuels their lives? Such place-based teachings can be shared by all ethnicities. They are a gift to the newcomer and the newcomer's child. The playing field is leveled. The history of the old-timers from Europe isn't as intimidating when compared to the 10,000-year inhabitation of Native Americans and the million-year lineages of plants and animals. If there's a place we can work together over the long haul,

[32:45]

it's on the shared home ground. To know and love a place inclusive of the urban, suburban, rural, and wild landscapes is to have physical daily reassurance that whatever the politics of the state, an older community of animals, plants, rocks, water, and people exists right where we live. So the question is, how do we cultivate this sense of belonging? This actual feel for and respect for our place. And I think there's more to it than meets the eye. Because it takes not only finding an understanding of our place outwardly, but also finding a solid, rock-bottom place within, coming to the bottom of identity

[33:49]

and breaking through to a connecting openness in freedom. Without this, it's too easy to forget that we belong to a place and begin to think that the place belongs to us. And love, as we've seen so much throughout history, easily slides into divisiveness and attachment, and localism becomes a self-justifying patriotism or a narrow-mindedness. Our mind is and must be placed. Our mind is part of our place because there's no place that we can apprehend as human beings without mind.

[34:52]

And there is no mind in the sky and floating in the air. Mind is always placed. The full title of the Mindfulness Sutra is the Sutra on the Four Foundations of Mindfulness. In this word, that's translated usually foundation, upasthana, actually basically means place. The four places of mindfulness the body, the feelings, the mental states, and the patterns of mental states. Mindfulness is always anchored in place. Breath and body, awareness of breath and body, have to be taken as actual physical locations, actual concrete grounds for our minds to find themselves.

[35:53]

And through the process of working in this placed, concrete way, through the craft, the daily craft of being aware of our breath and body, aware of our feelings, aware of what arises in the mind, through the daily craft of this practice, we come to see for sure, and personally, that the mind is non-different from the world. And practice anchors us just as firmly in place in the middle of our lives as streams and mountains mark the boundaries of regions. With our sitting practice, and with an appreciation of the teachings, not as ideologies,

[36:57]

but as they actually are in our lives, through our own experience, we come into a true sense of deeply belonging to our own lives, not as possessions, not as ornaments, not as identities, but as sacred trusts. And the longer I go on practicing Buddhadharma, the more clear it is to me that we humans are in desperate need of a way, a path, to come back over and over again to a basic sanity that is deeper than ego and wider than personal identity. Because if we don't have some way

[38:02]

that we are devoted to, that we give ourselves to, it's too easy to go off. Because ego is too quick and clever and full of too many tricks and disguises. We're so smart, we fool ourselves, you know. In the old Buddhist literature, ego is personified as the Lord Mara, the evil one, you know. Who has great powers and many, many allies, but also lots of disguises, lots of tricks, lots of wiles. And it's only with devotion to something that cuts through this, that is basic enough and straightforward enough

[39:05]

to cut through all this, can we come to the other side and find a real sense of true belonging in our lives with a real vitality and courage. So I'd like to, in the light of this, bring up one of the old cases from the Chinese ancestors, which appears as the 85th case in the Blue Cliff Record. A monk came to the place of the hermit of Dongfeng and asked, if you suddenly encountered a tiger here, what then? The hermit made a tiger's roar. The monk then made a gesture of fright

[40:06]

The hermit laughed aloud. The monk said, You old thief! The hermit said, What can you do about me? The monk gave up. The hermit said, This is all right, but these two wicked thieves only knew how to cover their ears to steal the bell. So that's the case, case 85. Well, this doesn't sound like your typical religious dialogue, does it? When these old Chan guys got together, the sparks would fly. And their understanding of their practice

[41:17]

was full of abandon and courage and depth. No polite debate here. They were willing, on a moment's notice, to become a tiger or be eaten by a tiger, to enter into the realm of action and danger, which is always present, all the time. The realm of action and danger, which is also the realm of good humor and freedom and fun. In Zen, teaching and studying doesn't take place in the world of thoughts and ideas. It takes place through embodiment and through action. Meeting the challenges of our life without holding back and without holding on to attachment or identity is the way that we train each other.

[42:18]

And it's always surprising and always very, very simple, really, and very concrete. In commenting on this case, the commentator says, "'Haven't you heard how great Master Yun Mun said, "'Foot travelers don't just wander over the country idly, "'just wanting to pick up and hold on to idle words. "'As soon as some old teacher's mouth moves, "'you immediately ask about Chan and ask about Tao, "'ask about transcendence and accommodation, "'ask about how and what. "'You make great volumes of commentaries "'which you stuff into your bellies, "'pondering and calculating. "'Wherever you go, you put your heads together by the stove "'in threes and fives, babbling on and on. "'These, you say, are words of eloquence. "'These, words in reference to the self. "'These, words from within the essence. "'You try to comprehend

[43:22]

"'the old fathers and mothers of your house. "'Once you have gobbled down your meal, "'you only speak of dreams and say, "'I have understood the Buddha Dharma. "'You should know that if you go foot-traveling this way, "'you will never be done.'" You know, foot-traveling was the pilgrimage walks that the monks would take from monastery to monastery, trying to test their understanding and learn more from each different teacher. So if you go foot-traveling, looking for words, looking for thoughts and ideas about the Dharma, you'll never get anywhere. The hermit and the monk avoided this parlor Zen and their way was more immediate and more scary. But don't forget,

[44:24]

Sui Dao criticizes them. This is all right, but these two wicked thieves only knew how to cover their ears and steal the bell. So they didn't go quite far enough. And to explain where they should have gone Sui Dao writes a poem. "'If you don't grab it when you see it, "'you'll think about it a thousand miles away. "'Fine stripes, "'but he hasn't got claws and teeth. "'Haven't you seen the sudden encounter "'on Mount Dasyong, "'where the light shakes the earth? "'The great people of power see or not? "'They take the tiger's tail "'and grab the tiger's whiskers.'"

[45:27]

In a commentary on the poem, these lines about Bai Zhang and Huang Bo were a great pair of Chan friends in those old days. Bai Zhang was the teacher and Huang Bo was the student. Huang Bo was supposed to be this great hulking guy, a really huge guy. And there are many stories about the two of them. And they almost all have the same kind of move where Bai Zhang is sort of testing everybody in the congregation. Huang Bo usually cuts through all that and gets to the bottom of it. And then Huang Bo will say something like, "'Well, come here and I'll discuss that with you further.'" And then Huang Bo walks up to him and hits him, usually what happens. And Bai Zhang is delighted by being hit in this way by Huang Bo

[46:42]

and always says, "'Oh, that Huang Bo is terrific. "'He hit me before I had a chance to hit him.'" So this story is similar to that. It goes like this. One day Bai Zhang asked Huang Bo, "'Where are you coming from?' And Bo said, "'From down the mountain.'" Zhang said, "'See any tigers?' Bo then made a tiger's roar. Zhang apparently was at the time chopping wood. He had an axe by his side and he made a gesture of chopping with the axe. But before he could finish the gesture, Bo grabbed his hand and held it fast and slapped him and then went away.

[47:44]

That evening, Bai Zhang went up into the hall to give his dharma talk and he said, "'Down Dazhong Mountain there's a tiger. "'All of you must watch out for him "'when you're going and coming. "'Today I myself have been bitten by him.'" So there's a tiger at Green Gulch. It's true. Watch out for her. Be careful. But if you meet her, apply energy right now or lose your life. These old stories often appear to be, and they're sometimes referred to as

[48:50]

dharma combat. As though somebody was trying to prove right or wrong. Somebody was going to win or lose. But it's not about right or wrong or winning or losing. I think Suedo criticizes the monk and the hermit because they didn't apply enough vitality. They didn't go forward. They didn't come forward into each other's lives. They hung back a little bit by comparison with Huang Bo and Bai Zhang. So it isn't a question of being right or wrong or understanding or not understanding. It's simply a matter of bringing our full vitality and entering totally into the conditions of our life without any holding back. And this is our problem.

[49:54]

Over and over again we fall into right and wrong and good and bad and winning and losing. Worthy and unworthy. And in this way we take this vast habitat and we make it into a small world that confines us. If we can find our true place we find it on our cushion through bitter experience. If we can find that true place and penetrate our mind to the very bottom and throw it away and sweep away everything along with it and just let things come forth and be themselves as they come one after another then it will be easy for us

[50:59]

to act with full authority and confidence in our lives, in our places, come what may. And we do this not because it's Zen or because it's right for us to do this or good for us to do this or helpful for us to do it. We do it because, well, that's what tigers do. So, that's all I have to say this morning. Thank you very much for listening. May our adventure... Well, good morning again everybody and now we have a chance to discuss or

[52:01]

just chat about whatever is on your mind, yeah? Sort of in conjunction with what you spoke about, what are your feelings or beliefs about spirit or soul of non-human life forms, plants, animals, various sorts? What are my beliefs about spirit or soul of non-human creatures, animals and plants and so on? Well, as you know, Buddhism is famous for not having a doctrine of a soul. That's one of the distinguishing characteristics actually of Buddha's thought is that he didn't, depending on how you want to look at it, he either said there was no such thing or he said that

[53:03]

he didn't want to talk about it because he didn't think it was helpful to talk about it. So that's how I feel. I certainly feel as if being is being and things that are are, right? And everything that is has value. So I don't think that just the way that I live my life and the way that I think of things, I don't think that some person has more value than another person and any person has more value than a tree and a tree has more value than a grass or something like that. I don't think of the world that way. I think that one is, sees that for one's own happiness non-harming of other creatures is important

[54:06]

and that just means whatever creature is in front of you. And all creatures are important, it seems to me. And that even extends to rocks and pieces of lumber and roof tiles and stuff like that. So whether or not all these things have souls or spirits, I don't know. But they have value, certainly. Yeah, I think that's more what I intended better than what I said. But then I have a hard time figuring out boundaries because I'm adamant about not eating meat and about avoiding animal products in general. And yet I'll comb fleas off of my cat and kill him. Or I will get overwhelmed by amputations in my house, I think. I mean, really, inherently there's no way to get out of it alive, right?

[55:07]

There's no way to get out of it and be perfect. I lived my life, I was perfect, I died. No, nobody can say that. Everybody in the course of a lifetime will kill things, will make mistakes, will cause harm. That's, I think we accept that. And then we try our best to be as harmless as possible to the best of our capacity to do so now, knowing that it will never be perfect. So, yeah, where do you draw the line? We can never come to a place where we're going to... That's why we can't be self-righteous in our practice. It's always self-righteousness is just stupidity. It's like thinking somehow that we could get it to where we had it down. Now I have it down and everybody who doesn't have it down as much as me, I am better than they are. Well, we never have it down, that's the thing,

[56:08]

is that we never do. We're always off balance in the midst of one mistake or another. And so, and we're always trying to do our best now and always recognizing that that's what everybody else is trying to do too. Even though they may be at a stage in their journey in which their violations seem to be very gross, you know, still they're not so much different from the way we are. So it never makes any sense to condemn anybody. So I also don't eat meat or fish, but I don't consider myself to be somehow holy for that reason. It's just a personal preference that I've come to, you know, through my living. And I know that my life is taking other life all the time.

[57:10]

The short version of our meal chant says, We venerate the three treasures and give thanks for this food, the work of many people, and the suffering of other forms of life. Because we know that in living, we're taking life all the time. So, we do our best. Yes, Patricia? Yeah. Yeah. Uh,

[58:29]

on this television was a piece that for me was deeply, deeply invasive and carried a wrong message and wrong meaning to a tiger. A mother tiger, a female tiger, was giving birth at New England. And in the footage was the tiger actually giving birth in that moment with bright lights from the camera of the tiger's female attendant and the camera person. And the tiger was moving between this regard for this horrific bright light,

[59:30]

the sensations in its body, and then the actual birth of its offspring and parents. One watching that saw the offspring and the whole tension between life, privacy, invasion, public honor. And I so lived by this. This commodifying of life and of pizzazz of animal fullness. And I just found myself thinking about it several days after. What would it have meant to respect the animal in its sacred form of giving birth such that the public

[60:32]

could know about the offspring? What is the command of Rush to get this kind of action? Then the recent magazine called Orion just came out and addresses this whole issue of animal and human relationship and the question of invasion into the alien world. And I don't know, I think we need to look at this. But, you know, I couldn't help but mention this in the spirit of your talk with respect to humankind, but also sharing this horrific kind of need that you know, it's not a surprise

[61:32]

that this happens. It's part of what gets sold. But I'm not so sure it is sort of I don't know, it's multifaceted. So anyway, and I feel very sad about the fact that the way that the title is written is absent of not only habitat, but how is it? Well, most naturalists and scientists that I've heard speak to these issues usually usually are very positive on the issue of, I guess they call it now, ecotourism. Because

[62:33]

the conventional wisdom is that that is the one alternative. In other words, the big problem turns out to be economics. That because of economics production goes on in habitats all over the world. So the solution to that, that's being proposed, is that, well, if there's just as much money or more money in ecotourism, in other words, we preserve creatures and habitats and then people come to view them, then that's preferable. So we should be promoting ecotourism, they say, and we should be promoting all sorts of information about these creatures so that people will be interested in them and will want to travel all over and see them and so forth. So most people who study these things say that. But I

[63:36]

myself share your feeling. I never, to me, it doesn't seem right that people should be going around gawking at different animals in their own habitats even, you know, to see how they live and so forth and so on. Although, of course, most of the groups that do ecotourism are very good and try to do it in such a way that it has the least impact on habitats and environments, the least impact for the biggest amount of money. Still, it just seems like, you know, it just never didn't feel right to me, myself. But that's what people say. So probably somebody would say, well, yes, it's really... And, you know, in this case, the particular example that you gave, is it necessary to film the birth of a tiger? Maybe not. Maybe you could, like you say, two weeks later film the cute tiger cubs and show them

[64:36]

on TV so people will want to go and visit the zoo or whatever it is. But, yes, I feel that way, myself. Like I say, not wanting to disturb. It's not my place, you know. But, you see, we don't like the realities because the reality is that we should all be living close together in high-rise buildings. We should be. We should. That's ecological, architectural thought now is saying we shouldn't be having these nice places where we spread out all over the place. That's what happens. That's what breaks up habitat. Everybody has their house and everybody wants land around it and so on. You can't have that. People should be, in fact, crowded together in densities. That's much better. Use less land. Go up and don't have so much. And then there can be big open spaces for other creatures. So we

[65:37]

have to think about these things, you know. Because we really want to have everybody have this dream in their mind of how there's only a few people around and we're one of them. You know. And we have our nice little backyard with tigers in it and lots of space and lots of land all around and not too many people around. And that's what everybody thinks. That's a great idea for them. And then pretty soon there's no more space left. And nobody wants to live in those messy cities with buildings one on top of the other and take railroads instead of cars. Who wants that? Here in the county this is being studied and proposed and nobody wants it. They all want to be able to go on the freeway because I want to be able to leave when I feel like going. Not to wait for the train, you know. It's very inconvenient. So it's a problem. And it's... I don't know how... what's going to happen here, but it seems as if circumstances

[66:38]

are out of control to the extent that there's going to be further great losses ahead. There's no way out of it, I don't think. Yes, Martin? Well, I went to Thailand last week, the last week, and I thanked. And by the way, I found out last Sunday that there was another green gulch and my wife's child was bothering me during the night. I thought I had sprained it so I went hiking on Saturday and my dog had a lot of ticks and since the tick was the dog and it was one on me so I tried to get it out and I ended up in the Marine General last morning. Oh my goodness. The tick bite, huh? So, they had a surgeon and I got some stitches and

[67:39]

good heavens. And they said it was very remote and there was no Lyme disease in the area. As soon as she said Lyme disease, my mind just went out. So I didn't find any. Oh, that's good. But the time it needed that was my mortality. I was just like that. I had no control. No. Out of nowhere. Yeah, that's what happens. Yep, that's true. You think you got it all figured out, but you don't. Yes? There's something that I did that was very hurtful. I'm very aware and I believe that you said something today

[68:42]

about that dog. About reducing our own suffering. I wondered if you could say more about that. I'm trying to. I know there's limits of what I can do. But I'm trying to also make myself accept that. I'm wondering if you could say that. Thank you. She's saying that she feels that she was responsible for an action that hurt another person. And it's very upsetting. And how can we practice with this? How can we reduce our own suffering, particularly in a case like this

[69:43]

where our actions have harmed another person? And then she mentioned that she has done what she could to repair the damage. Well, for a long time, through the fall, I have been thinking about forgiveness, you know, and meditating on forgiveness and speaking a lot about the practice of forgiveness. Because, as I was saying earlier, our life is this way. It's very imperfect. The more that we look, the more deeply we look, the more we are aware of how much we take life, how much we harm others. If we could be superficial, maybe we could think, oh, we're doing great, you know, we're really good people and we're not hurting anybody, and so on.

[70:44]

But the deeper you look, the more you see that that isn't really true. So it's necessary for us to practice, to have an active, a very active practice of forgiveness. To be able to really look at what we have done, all the ways, not only in which we've done things that were harmful, but all the ways in which we have failed to do things that could alleviate suffering. Failed to do things that could help other people, just because we were too preoccupied with ourselves, or too busy, or not enough courage, or not enough vision, or whatever. So I think we have to reflect on these things, and own up to it, and admit it. And we have a wonderful verse, you know, there's an ancient, ancient practice in Buddhism, the practice

[71:46]

of confession. And the verse of confession goes, which we recite every morning, you know, after meditation practice, we recite, All my ancient, twisted karma from beginningless greed, hate, and delusion, born through body, speech, and mind, I now, in this present moment, fully acknowledge and give over. So this is a kind of a way of contemplating the endlessness, you know, of our wrong action. So we bring it up, we contemplate it, and we really try to cultivate in this present moment, the intention to really let go of that. And then, after we chant that,

[72:47]

we chant the triple refuge, having avowed all these activities, acknowledged them, and grieved over them, and avowed them, I now set my intention to practice in accord with Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha, you know, with a truer, more humane way of living. And I dedicate myself to trying to make that effort today. And tomorrow, I'm going to do the same thing. Because tomorrow, there'll be more karma to avow and a deeper commitment to try to make. So it's a process, you know. We have to see our life as a process of awakening. And we have to have times when we really reflect and take stock of ourselves and own and honor what we've done and let go of it. Owning and honoring it is the first step. If we don't do that, we can't get anywhere.

[73:48]

But if we only do that, and we don't say, and I'm also going to commit myself to a different way of life, and I'm going to do whatever I can do this day to act in accord with that, then our avowal doesn't really amount to much. So that's the endless process over and over and over again of training ourselves. And then the more we do that, the more, the next time we have a chance to act to harm others, we won't. At least not in that same way. Maybe we'll uncover more subtle ways in which we have failed to act for the benefit of others, or in which we have acted to the detriment of others. And then when we discover and understand those ways, then we'll let go of them too. And it's difficult, you know. It takes a lot of courage not to favor oneself over others. It actually takes a lot of courage and vision, and most of us don't really know how to do it.

[74:49]

So that's why we support each other in the practice, and that's why we make all the efforts that we do, so that we can expand our ability to see these things and act on them. So, little by little. And our great failures are the moments when we learn the most. That's when we really learn from where we fail. So they're important. Yes, over. ... Yeah.

[75:59]

That's right. And certainly in the case of harming another person, we do all that we can to make it up, if it's possible. Yeah. ... ... ... The question I have, though...

[77:09]

... When we talk about the old cases, I'm always in a tension about that, when the story of the cases is used in lectures, which is that we're talking about them. Yeah, it's when they're supposed to be spoken of, these old cases are supposed to be spoken of only in a special kind of a lecture called a taisho, and a taisho isn't really a lecture, it means presenting the shout. So the sense in which we speak of those stories is not to analyze them and explain them, but rather simply to bring them up and hang them in the air for the students to see them, so

[78:09]

that the students can penetrate the story personally. So, that's the point of bringing the story up. I imagine growling at you in the dead of the night. Yeah. Well, I would have growled back. Growl! Yes? It's been a couple weeks in Hawaii, and I was fortunate to be able to go up into the crater of Maui and see the habitat of the old, the native forest, what remains of the native And I see a lot of, well, the ranger that led the tour said that some of the native birds are coming back into the population. They've done certain things, like fencing, to keep the wild animals out.

[79:13]

And so the habitat, like you were talking about, starts to come back. That's one of the worst instances of loss of habitat anywhere in the world, is the birds. Hawaiian birds, they're almost all gone. Eighty percent of them are gone. But I got to see two of them clearly, and I was told that the song of a couple of others were good signs. Oh, that's nice, yeah. That's nice, yeah. That's great. Yes? You never know, though. Ego and big mind.

[80:35]

Ego, it's a force that comes back. And it seems when I come here or different places and hear talks, I just feel like I'm hearing this real truth that I just want to, like, go with. And then, you know, within an hour, I'm forgetting what I heard. And I feel like my ego is just eating up this stuff and using it in a different way. Yeah, I know, I know. And it's like, gosh, should I write stuff down? But then I'm writing it down, and I'm missing the next thing. And I just wonder if you can tell me more about that. I know, well, sometimes, you know, I honestly, and I often say this, I'm honestly embarrassed to be sitting up here talking about Zen practice, because it is so simple and so simple-mindedly stupid thing that it's unbelievable that we should have to go on and on and on about it.

[81:39]

You know? And really, you know, like, I often, like, you know, I'll give a talk and I'll say, well, there it is, what do you know? I gave the same talk again. It's the same talk, you know? It's the same thing, because there's only one little thing. But as you point out, it is so hard to get it and remember it. So we have to keep going over it and [...] over it, because we just can't seem to remember. Even though it's eating us alive, you know, we forget and we can't seem to remember. So it is hard, and you can't really think your way into it. So that's why, and I always say the same thing in all my talks, I always say, sit, don't I? I mean, everybody says that around here, right? Because it's the only way. You just have to sit and [...] sit. And even though sitting is totally stupid and doesn't do any good in a way, you know,

[82:42]

from the standpoint of anything we can accumulate or point to, still it's the only way that I have ever seen that we can finally just let go of our folly, you know, and just allow ourselves to be our life. Because that's all we have to do, is just be our life. And yet we persist in making something of our life every single minute. We really do. It's truly awesome. I mean, the awesomeness of human ignorance is every bit as impressive as any tiger you ever saw. It is. You know, it really is. It's impressive. So we have to keep going back and just sitting there and, you know, being with our posture and being with our breath and watching things come into mind and then letting go and just being content to be there, you know.

[83:43]

And every now and then, when I get to do Zazen, which is rare in my life, actually, I'm astonished, you know, by it. Like the other day, you know, I got to do a little Zazen. And I was sitting there. And it was just so astonishing to me, the idea that, wow, just sit here and there's no time. There's no time, you know. There's nobody here. There's no person here. There's no me or anything. There's just existence. And that's all there ever is. And the rest of it we're just putting on top of that. So to realize that and feel that and know that that's really the case, that's really how it is, is absolutely essential. Because anything, you're absolutely right, you know, certainly we can make all sorts of fancy structures out of Zen.

[84:46]

Sure, ego will take anything and make it into something worthwhile for itself. But when it comes to sitting, sitting is just sitting. And so it's really worthwhile to sit and come back to that and have that there in your life as a reminder, to come back to zero and just let everything go. Because, like Martin was reminding us earlier, one fine day we really will be gone. That's it, you know. And what are we going to do then? Yeah, are we ready to let go of everything? So I think sitting, that's the only thing. And that's why we're always having sitting every day

[85:52]

and we have the one-day sitting and the beginner sitting and the Ed Brown sitting and the upside-down sitting and the right-side-up sitting and the long sitting, the short sitting, the purple sitting, the green sitting, the good sitting, the bad sitting, any kind of sitting that anybody could ever have, we would try to have that so that everybody could come and sit whenever they need to sit, that it's there, and that we would continue this, that we would continue to do it, no matter what happens, that we would continue to sit and offer that, and that everything else that we do is all about telling people, don't forget, this is about sitting too and so is that and so is this and so is that and so, like that. So little by little we train ourselves. You have to be very diligent, I think. You sit and then you realize that when you get up, it's not the end of sitting. And you realize that every moment of your life is just like sitting. What are you going to do now? Are you going to grab something and shake it around in your confusion

[86:53]

or are you going to just be there with it and let it come and go and go straight ahead? So then you train yourself based on the sitting practice, day by [...] day. You train yourself knowing that it's not about being perfect and it's not about, hey, look at me, I figured out Zen. It's just about living authentically, now and [...] then it's never going to end until it ends and when it ends, forget it. It doesn't make any difference anymore. And you're willing to keep going every step of the way up to and including that one. So there's not much to it, really. I mean, it's not a big thing and it's not very glamorous, really. But it's so easy to forget. It's prodigious. When I heard that Gary Snyder's wife had this problem about

[88:03]

where she belonged, it touched me very much to the point that I missed the general sense of what you read. And if you would remember, would you remember the... Well, I can't remember exactly what it says, but... But the general... Yeah, yeah. Well, Carol is Japanese-American, so first of all, there's racism. She tells one story in her essay about somebody, she's on the street protesting some dam or something like that and some guy, a local person says to her something like, why don't you go back where you came from? And she says, well, probably my people have been living here longer than his people have. This probably was true. But nevertheless, because she has an Asian face, people can say to her, go back where you come from or you're not really part of this place. So she has that problem. And then she also has the problem of actually being Japanese,

[89:07]

of a Japanese ancestry and feeling that Japan and the Japanese landscape and way of life is also a part of who she is, so it's confusing. So then she writes that, in the end, when we... So she says, it's great that we have different backgrounds. And she says, ethnicities are, each one is a different style and a different outstanding way of doing things. And it's good that there are these different styles and these different outstanding ways of doing things. And we should honor them. She said, but doing that alone won't be enough for us to be good citizens in the future. In order for us to really be good citizens together in the future, we will have to do that and know the place where we live, know the people who live there now, the different kinds of people who live there now,

[90:09]

and the kinds of people who lived there in the past, and the history of the place, and the animals, and the plants. And she said, you know, she said, I might be upset by the fact that some Europeans will tell me they've been here longer than I have, but think of the native peoples who were here for thousands and thousands of years longer than the Europeans in the million-year plant and animal cycles that preceded them. So we have to all share in that and root ourselves in that. And when we do that, she said, then we'll learn how to be citizens together in a place, honoring the place and not seeing our ethnic differences as being so primary and so confusing. So more or less, that's what she said. You know, I have this problem for quite some time that, you know, aside from being Chilean, my grandfather is from Palestine. So as I was a little kid, I heard Arabian music and dancing and things like that.

[91:10]

So I come here and I've been here so many years that also I'm a Californian, you know, 17, 18 years that I've been living here. So I had this discussion with my therapist, and he said, you have to honor, you know, your Arabian part and your Chilean part and what you have here, which I've been practicing. But also he talks about getting a bigger picture than that, thinking that you're a child of the universe. And I've been practicing that...

[91:45]

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