Good evening, everyone. I am speaking about the ten great precepts of tonight, number two, not stealing. Many years ago, I was down and out in Los Angeles, working at everybody's bookshop for one dollar and fifteen cents an hour, which was minimum wage in those days, and living at the nearby YMCA. Sometimes, after supper, I would drop in at a neighborhood bar for a couple of beers,

[01:23]

and one evening, a well-dressed, middle-aged man sat down next to me, very drunk, flashing a wallet stuffed with bills. The bartender served him a drink and then told him to go home and take care of his money. The man told me that he was from Sacramento and asked me to help him get back to his hotel. He wasn't sure about the direction. It was just down the block, so I walked him back to his hotel, and because he seemed to be having trouble walking, I went on upstairs with him to his room, and then he seemed to be getting sick, so I went in with him. He used the bathroom, came out, and without a word, took off his gold cufflinks, took

[02:33]

out his gold watch and his big fat wallet and put them all in the dresser, changed into his pajamas, jumped into bed, and went immediately to sleep, leaving me to make my way out of the hotel alone. Well, I was not tempted to steal his valuables, but I don't know whether or not this was because I was morally strong or because I didn't have the nerve. Certainly, I fantasized for months afterwards about that wallet on the dresser. It would have been so easy to help myself to a year's salary. It can be said that in my mind, I violated the second precept many times during the months

[03:34]

that followed. Looking back on it, I realized that I also stole from myself in the course of the incident. It was generous of me to guide the drunken man back to his hotel, but it was reckless to accompany him to his room. I might better have raised a finger to the night man at the desk, and the hotel people would have seen my companion to bed. I was putting myself, the agent of compassion, in jeopardy quite unnecessarily. I was endangering my ability to help others at a later time. For suppose the drunken man had made some sort of fuss while we were alone in his room, perhaps falsely accused me of something. If I am to have a police record, let it be for something I can justify from the ground

[04:43]

of my dojo. There is another kind of stealing from oneself that happens right in the dojo, and that is the theft of time. Yamamoto Genpo Roshi used to call this the greatest felony of all. We steal time from our practice on the cushions to indulge in all kinds of silly business, and the biological clock ticks away relentlessly. We also take time from our lives as bodhisattvas for all kinds of foolishness, altogether out of proportion to our natural needs for leisure. These are habits, beings with their own life, that we must acknowledge and engage in dialogue.

[05:50]

Time to sit, you can announce, I'll check you later. Fun time with friends and family has its place. Be firm but to be patient, and your time-wasting habits find their outlet in recreational activities. Back to Mu, or back to Shikantaza, back to breath counting, you can announce there on your cushions, and the old nick that wants you to take time to rearrange the furniture in your apartment will go on hold. There is an appropriate time for that kind of visualization also. Still another kind of stealing on your cushions lies in the attitude of expectation.

[06:54]

Practice is a step-by-step process, the perfection of character, as Yamada Roshi has said, but each step is full and complete in itself. When your step is just one of a series and nothing more, then the goal is never reached and your life is wasted. Each breath, each point in the sequence of your count of your breath, each move, that is the Dharma body itself. Don't deprive yourself. Not stealing, like other precepts, describes the mind which comes forth in tune with circumstances

[08:02]

from a position of rest. Bodhidharma said, self-nature is subtle and mysterious. In the realm of the unattainable Dharma, not having thoughts of gaining is called the precept of not stealing. Mind is peace, and because it is peace, it is also broad and generous. There is no thought of obtaining, so there is full appreciation for the thing as it is. Dogenzenji said, the self and the things of the world are just as they are.

[09:09]

The gate of emancipation is open. Just as they are is the realization how stuffed with one hundred dollar bills that wallet is. There is no thought now or later of putting them into my pocket. This is the broad and generous spirit of letting be, the perfection of charity or giving over, the dana paramita. It is also the revolution that overturns conventional behavior. Stealing is a pervasive element of our lives and of the institutions in our society. For example, a large American corporation raises vegetables in the Sahel, near the Sahara Desert.

[10:17]

These vegetables are flown to Europe where they fill the salad bowls of the affluent. The African workers on this giant farm are searched at the end of each day to be sure they are not smuggling vegetables home. Yet the corporation land they cultivate was once their own for gleaning and grazing and now they live at the very edge of starvation. There are many other examples. The economy at home and abroad is manipulated to provide a base of unemployment so that competition for jobs will keep wages at a minimum and stockholders will realize maximum profits. The natural world is exploited for short-term benefit to a fortunate majority.

[11:26]

I have fortunate in quote marks, fortunate minority I should say. While other people, animals, plants and the earth organism itself suffer. A strong case could be made against exploitation economics. At the same time, exploitation is not something outside my mind or yours. Just a few minutes of television is enough to show each of us how easily we are seduced by appeals for consumption. Mahatma Gandhi says, We are not always aware of our real needs and most of us improperly multiply our wants and thus unconsciously make thieves of ourselves. If we devote some thought to the subject,

[12:30]

we shall find that we can get rid of quite a number of our needs, our wants. One who follows the observance of non-stealing will bring about a progressive reduction of his own wants. Much of the distressing poverty in this world has arisen out of the breaches of the principle of non-stealing. Notice that Gandhi does not speak of reducing possessions, though that naturally follows and it certainly did in his case. He speaks of reducing needs and needs arise in the mind. Our world faces the gravest of crises because we have all of us become involved in a conspiracy to deplete irreplaceable resources in order to satisfy needs established in that very depletion process.

[13:37]

As time goes on, oil and minerals will become scarcer and the kind of fascism evident in my example from the Sahel may become more commonplace at home as well as abroad. The Gandhian scholar, Finnish scholar, Unto Tattinen says, There are two ways of avoiding war. One is to satisfy everybody's desire. The other to content oneself with the good. The former is not possible due to the limitations of the world and therefore there remains this second alternative of contentment. Not stealing is contentment.

[14:38]

No thought of obtaining. This starts much deeper in the mind than deciding to do without luxuries. It is none other than the open gate of emancipation. Anuttara samyak sambodhi. The mind that experiences the transparency of all things and their intimate interrelationships. The application of this experience is more than sending an occasional check to charity. Here again Gandhi is instructive. In India we have got three million people who have to be satisfied with one meal a day and that meal consisting of a chapati containing no fat in it and a pinch of salt. You and I have no right to anything that we have

[15:42]

until these three millions are clothed and fed better. You and I who ought to know better must adjust our wants and even undergo voluntary starvation in order that they may be nursed, fed and clothed. And as Gandhi made clear in his own life it is in the social movement to reduce needs that there is hope for political change. Gandhi's communities can inspire our own Dana Paramita Sangha. Some people suppose that because competition and acquisition are used in the exploitation of others enlightened people should seek the ideal of non-competition and non-acquisition. Many years ago Ann Aitken and I were teachers

[16:48]

in a private boarding school which was established on the principles of non-competition. It didn't work. The young people were not stretched. Many became lazy. Others found destructive underground ways of competing. Competition can be very healthy. After all, conversation itself is a kind of competition and at its best in Zen dialogues it saves all beings. When the self is forgotten then the play is the thing and everybody gets high. And as to acquisition Gandhi and the Buddha himself had a few possessions. Competition sharpens our realization

[17:50]

and certain possessions are adjuncts of life. At what point do they go wrong? Well, I'll tell you a story. In Japan, as you know, monks are called onsui, cloud and water and the implication is that they have no home no ego needs and no attachments. However, they do have a few possessions a couple of anthologies of classic Zen cases a set of bowls, toilet articles, robes much as the Buddha did himself. When I visited Ryutaku monastery in 1964 I found the community quite upset because a new monk was compulsively stealing

[18:53]

the few possessions of the other monks. Each day the senior monks held long consultations with the Roshi about this problem. I imagine that the literal position no stealing or he violated the second precept and the Buddha nature position that there is no stealing and nothing to be stolen were argued in these discussions perhaps. But somehow the outcome was the middle way of compassion. A year later I visited the monastery and found the monk still there and the community at peace. I suggest that such a difficult problem

[19:54]

could not have been worked out if the monks had not realized somehow that the thief was one deprived of love and he stole to share what belonged to others in a kind of perverse loyalty. Dana in this case was the acknowledgement of responsibility to a confused fellow monk as well as to personal things. You are my brother and I love you. Each monk was somehow able to say in effect. Thus a pathological destructive drive for love was corrected with no thought of stealing or protected and the Tao was made real. Competition, acquisition and possession

[20:55]

go wrong when compassion is missing, when Dana is disregarded. Zhao Zhou, Zhou Xu, polished his realization in Dharma combat for 20 years in order to prepare himself as an instrument of compassion, declaring generously at the outset that he was open to the teaching of even a 7 year old child. Thus he became one of the greatest Zen teachers. Acquisition and possession are generous when the state of mind is just as it is. The teacher of tea experiences the tea bowl and bows to the venerable kettle. But these days there are few such teachers and tea ceremony is often just a kind of show

[21:58]

with its religious function forgotten. Rilke deplores this same loss in European culture. Even for our grandparents a house, a well, a familiar tower, their very clothes, their coat were infinitely more, infinitely more intimate. Almost everything a vessel in which they found the human and added to the store of the human. Now from America, empty indifferent things are pouring across, sham things, dummy life. A house in the American sense, an American apple or grapevine over there has nothing in common with the house, the fruit, the grape into which went the hopes

[23:01]

and reflections of our forefathers. Live things, things lived and conscient of us are running out and can no longer be replaced. We are perhaps the last still to have known such things. On us rests the memory, not alone of preserving their memory, that would be too little and too unreliable, but their human and laurel value, laurel in the sense of household gods. Pots and pans are Buddha's body announces a sign in some Zen Buddhist monasteries reminding the cooks of just as they are.

[24:05]

Zafus and blankets, hammers and shovels are Buddha's body. I confess I am offended when I see Zoris left every which way at the temple door. I'm sure that doesn't happen here, but it does sometimes at our centers. When I see someone straighten his cushion with his foot, that I'm sure we would never see here. When I see tools left in the rain. Things are altogether faithful. They follow the rules with precision. We owe them benevolence in return. When I first got acquainted with R. H. Blythe, who was the person who first interested me in Zen,

[25:07]

this is one of the first things he said to me. Don't you think that things are faithful? I had no idea what he was talking about. And he quoted me that very sentimental poem by Eugene Field called Little Boy Blue, and maybe you know that poem, how Little Boy Blue went to bed and didn't wake up the next morning. And his little toy dog was covered with dust and little toy soldier covered with rust, and they're faithfully waiting for him there. And then he said, suppose you take this pencil, he took a pencil and stood it on its point, and he said, if you let your fingers go, it will fall over every time. Faithfully following the rules. Carelessness with precious things is a kind of stealing,

[26:13]

but so is the greed of the collector. Once Nakagawa Soenroshi, Ann Aitken and I, visited a Buddhist teacher and healer in Honolulu. She was and is a remarkable personage, very charismatic with a large devoted following and a magnificent temple. But her preoccupation with money flawed her character, and every day she violated the second precept. Knowing that we enjoyed tea ceremony, this teacher led us to her treasury where there were a hundred tea bowls in boxes on shelves along one wall. She took down several, removed them from their boxes, unwrapped them one by one for our admiration. And each time she asked, how much do you suppose that one cost? And then breaking the silence, you know,

[27:19]

she would tell us. So many hundreds of thousands of yen. With such static in our ears, it was difficult to come forth and say each time, what a beautiful bowl. Tea ceremony carried within itself the seeds of its own ruin from the very beginning, for it was a way of poverty for the rich. On the other hand, Zen Buddhism in Asia is dying because its particular way of purity no longer affects the larger community. In the Buddha's time and down through the ages until a century and a half ago, the world outside the monastery walls just was. Despots and benevolent rulers rose and fell,

[28:21]

and the individual dealing with personal difficulties could come to the monastery for a retreat or to become a monk or nun. Today, the poisons of greed, hatred and ignorance fuel industrial and political systems that threaten the very structure of life. Air, water and food are depleted and poisoned, and the machine of death and destruction accelerates. The dojo has always been a retreat and a training center, but now the emphasis must be on training ourselves as a dana paramita community to become a new growth within the shell of the old society. To begin with, this is the perfection of charity

[29:22]

within our own sangha as we take care of each other and encourage each other. Unresolved conflicts within the sangha interrupt the flow of love at its source and mock our volunteer programs in the community. With harmony among ourselves, however, we can find inspiration in the broad sky of samadhi and in the takuhatsu of the Buddha and his successors to reach out to the world. Do you know takuhatsu? Takuhatsu is the trip that monks, and in some cases nuns, usually monks, make outside the monastery in their old robes, accepting rice and money from villagers and townspeople

[30:24]

in order to support their temple. But they chant, you see. Either they chant sutras at the back gate of each house that they come to, or, in other traditions, they walk the streets slowly, just chanting, HO And that very low sound, when chanted by a line of maybe 18 monks, pervades the whole city. You can hear them for blocks, right through the traffic sound. That HO does not mean Dharma, in this case. It means upaya, the HO of HOBE.

[31:25]

Upaya, or... Of course, upaya means skillful means, but it also means compassion. And this is showing the bowl of the Buddha in the world. The Buddha was a wandering saint, and his very presence brought peace to those who met him. Ahimsa was a personal way of life for his sangha, but the Buddha's day is not ours, and we can learn from Gandhi how ancient teachings of nonviolence can be applied in our world of imperialism. We can also learn from and join with other communities of compassion in our own time, groups with concerns that range from civil liberties to peace to ecology, groups which are, in effect, already teaching Dhanaparamita.

[32:34]

Buddhist Dhanaparamita communities are in the vanguard of a nonviolent movement for social change with Christians, Jews, and humanists. But the Bodhidharma and Dogen Zenji delineate the special contribution that Buddhist communities may offer. The broad and generous state of mind which gives rise to Dhanaparamita is the realm of vast emptiness, nothing holy. In Bodhidharma's words, the human condition of the fallen away body and mind. To quote Dogen Zenji, it is the dojo of emptiness, the formless ground where the tea bowl is realized as just that tea bowl, in itself and in symbiosis with every element of the universe,

[33:40]

including oneself. In practical everyday terms, it is where we take care of our friends. This is the miracle of ordinary life for everybody now, for the dojo is at last my home, your home, and the sangha is our community that flows outward in limitless circles from our center of peace. This very place is the lotus land, as Hakuin Zenji said, right now and not yet. And the not yet is our action of bowing to each other and seeking ourselves on our zafus and our work of showing the dharma in a world of crisis. Right. Yes?

[35:10]

You mentioned about a step-by-step process with peace being very much complete. Yes, yes, indeed. We don't talk much in this tradition about the step-by-step process. Could you say to us what the process is? When the Buddha sat down under the Bodhi tree, he was not immediately enlightened. You see, there was a process that went on breath by breath in his samadhi over a period of some time until one morning he looked up and saw the morning star and realized that all beings are the Tathagata. He did not realize that right off the bat. So the point is that everything is full and complete as it is,

[36:19]

but as he explained in that same statement, when he saw the morning star, people cannot acknowledge it because of their delusions and attachments. So our Zen practice is a step-by-step process to realize what has been true from the very beginning. And we are skipping everything if we say glibly that everything is full and complete right now and we don't. And at the same time, we do not realize it. We don't really know it in our gut. We just say it because we read it someplace. This is, as I said, I think the first night, the point of the Koan Mu.

[37:22]

I mean, the preliminary point of the Koan Mu, which I always explain to a student when we begin work on the Mu together, and that is that the monk who asked the question about the dog, you know, has the dog Buddha nature or not, was, it seems, preoccupied with the step-by-step process. He had read in the sutras that all beings have Buddha nature. He was probably reciting such a sutra every day. So he knew very well that according to doctrine all beings are the Tathagata. At the same time, this was only intellectual knowledge. Looking at himself, looking at his fellow monks and so on, he couldn't really accept this. And he was thinking, well, Buddha Shakyamuni,

[38:27]

after long, arduous practice, found Buddha nature. And my teacher, Joshu, he practiced for 40 years with Nansen, and then he went on pilgrimage for another 20 years. It wasn't until he was 80 years old that he was confident enough of his Buddha nature to settle down and begin teaching. So, I don't think I have Buddha nature. And do you mean to tell me that miserable dog has Buddha nature? That's the content of his question. So Joshu said, no. Well, mu means no or nothing in Chinese. In fact, that's the Japanese pronunciation, but I'm told it probably was the Tang Chinese pronunciation also,

[39:29]

although modern Mandarin would pronounce it wu. Mu means no or nothing, but we cannot take that literally. Joshu was showing Buddha nature, right then, full and complete with just that one sound, that one word of a single syllable, mu. But, by his expression, he was teaching that syllable to the monk. In effect, saying, breathe, that mu, the way you count your breaths. And there will be a step-by-step process to realize what has been true from the very beginning. So that's the way it works. There is the world of karma, and there is the world of essence, and these are indeed the same world.

[40:32]

But we must see both clearly, and we must see their unity clearly. And this is the nature of our practice, at least from the point of view of teachers in my own lineage. A very important point, in my opinion. Yes? I mean my question with all respect, in the context of stealing. Of healing? Of stealing, yes. First part of the question is, how do you know that you are right? And the second part of what you say, the second one is, how does one become a Roshi without stealing? Without? Stealing. Stealing? How does one know that one is right?

[41:33]

That is a basic question that is appropriate to this precept, and to all precepts. You see. How does one know that one is right? It seems to me that when one is truly grounded in the very fundamental empty place that is so full of possibilities, that place of peace where there is no longer self-preoccupation, one can say, I will do this, I will not do that. It has nothing to do with any scheme, any moral scheme at all. But in the circumstances, that won't do. Or, that is good.

[42:36]

So, it is a matter of complete freedom being the same thing as complete morality. The two are one. Training and abandon are the same. We find this complementarity everywhere. In athletics, in dance, in painting, in music, everywhere. The musician trains and trains and practices and practices, and one day the music plays the music. You know, freely. Joyously. So, the same thing is true in the moral sphere.

[43:44]

It's a matter of practice on cushions, practice in the world. Gaining confidence. Not egocentric confidence, not confidence that comes with manipulation, you know, but true self-confidence. When I was very young in my practice and first visiting Zen monasteries, I was very struck by the way the senior monks would equate confidence with realization. I thought, my goodness, isn't confidence a kind of ego trip? It took me a while to understand that it wasn't. Not that kind of confidence. Of course, there are boorish, falsely confident priests over there, you know.

[44:49]

But the true kind of confidence I am talking about is not egocentric. Okay for part one? All right. Part two. How can a Roshi get to be... How can someone get to be a Roshi without stealing? Loaded question, isn't it? Okay. I can think of times that I have stolen, you know, obvious examples from my childhood, perhaps less obvious and more painful examples from my adult life. But it seems to me that a Roshi worth his salt is practicing, you see. Not pure, perhaps,

[45:53]

but on the path, inspired by the wonderful example of the Buddha and his marvelous successors. You see. So, if I steal, please excuse me. I'll try not to steal next time. Now, could you tell me a little more about what you meant by the second question? Yes. I think the human is dangerous in the sense that it seems that regardless which direction one looks, whether it be politics or business or religion, it seems that everything, of course everything is selfish in the broad sense. And yesterday or the day before yesterday you mentioned

[46:57]

that a teacher said, or somebody I guess said, that you become a Roshi if you practice for 40 years and only if you're there. Yeah, that was the Theravada monk was speaking. Quite good to start with, but it also seems that regardless of how good a person is, there is a certain Yes. There is a certain arrogance by being Roshi. I mean, in the broad sense, you could be a bishop, a Catholic. It seems that with power, if I can say so, we become, or the person that becomes that high loses its heavy purity. Well, there certainly is a high risk. I know that. And I'm perfectly... Fortunately, I've got a bunch of friends that I work with

[48:05]

that call me on these things. I can remember quite recently somebody saying, boy, you must be really grouchy this morning. So long as there is feedback, and so long as there is openness, this risk is minimized. Unfortunately, it seems that if the person is not powerful enough, there is no feedback. Oh, I don't know. I guess I'm not powerful, because about 1976, we saw the organization of a women's collective in the Diamond Sangha,

[49:05]

and suddenly I was confronted with all my sexist language. And corrected from every side. It seemed to me that I could hardly say a paragraph without somebody piping from the back of the room and piping up and saying, and her, or something like that, you see. It was darned uncomfortable for a while, because, you know, I was already at that time in my late fifties, and a lifetime habit of speaking in a certain way and using certain pronouns, and using the word man, and so on. And it was written into our sutras. So we went through and fixed all the sutras and started Kahawai,

[50:11]

and we started the women's rap group. And I can remember one time walking into the upstairs bedroom at Kokoan for looking for somebody or something, and opening the door, and here the room was just packed with people, all women, you see. And I opened the door, and there was this dead silence. So I said, excuse me, and shut the door, you see. No, I think that... I think that at least it's my ideal to be responsive like this. I like what Kobunchi no Hoshi said, when I meet a student in Doksan, I am meeting my own master. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Could you speak more to the responsibility,

[51:11]

not just of the student and the teacher relationship, but of anyone who is, who is a subordinate in a relationship such as employer-employee, for example, where there is some difference where it seems to me that the prohibition, not to steal, may be practiced particularly in a relationship where there is some apparent power involved. So what's the responsibility of the student? The responsibility of an employee? Yes, or a student, someone who is nominally inferior in a relationship. Okay, I'll try to speak to your question. I'm not quite sure that I have it. Where there is not a culture of trust, then it's jolly difficult. And

[52:13]

this calls for compassionate strategy. And sometimes it doesn't work. I've been an employee in a number of different situations in my working career where I just couldn't communicate with the boss at all. And what's more, he didn't want any communication from me. So what I'm speaking about here is the kind of ideal where there is already a good atmosphere of trust. Now, it is possible, of course, by various means, some of them rather roundabout, to get in a position where you can reach the boss,

[53:17]

through a secretary or something, to get the word to the boss. But it's not that satisfactory to do it like that. There are all kinds of difficult problems of communication in the world. And, of course, all kinds of stealing. Picking a flower is a kind of stealing, really. I can remember D.T. Suzuki pulling carrots from his garden. See? His hand is up like this while he's pulling up the carrots. Excuse me. So, gosh-oy to the carrots as he's pulling them up. Now, I'm not sure that I really responded to your question, so could you... Is there anything that you would like to rephrase?

[54:22]

The reference to compassionate strategy is helpful. I'm particularly interested in the situation where the party to a relationship seems hostile to the feedback. And forcing it feels like a sort of trespass. Yes. In itself a violation. I think so. I think so. I think so. But I think also that no situation is really hopeless. And so it's a kind of challenge to find a really good way to communicate. So long as one retains the investment in the relationship. If this is your job and you know you're umpty-umpty years old and you're not likely to get another job and this is the only one you have and so you have to

[55:24]

have to communicate, then you're likely to give it more attention and care than if you could just drop it and go away and try something else. Is that helpful? Thank you. Okay. Yes. Yeah. I was wondering if I could recognize like a one step of the path at a given time that you're feeling for yourself in your various ways what should one's response be? It seems like if you try to correct that you know you're making a further trespass and you're stepping out of the moment or you know should one on the other hand like appreciate this act of stealing and like what it is? Yes. The way I teach

[56:26]

the practice of move for example is when you notice that you are straying you see you suddenly find yourself rearranging the furniture in your apartment or whatever at that moment you do not say oh, there I go again what's the matter with me? Why can't I concentrate on move? See? You try to avoid that. You find yourself straying and you notice oh! See? There's nothing in between. No intermediate movement at all. So just the monitor somehow is able to remind you you know look what you're doing so there's no self-recrimination

[57:28]

and there is no added distraction there of self-criticism or punishment or anything like that. Yes. I want to talk about possession. Yes. Because it sounds like you were talking about Gandhi and emphasis on not owning anything but I feel that having possession can be a path to know yourself and see things more clearly. Tonight after dinner I'm looking at a magazine called Art Sensual Digest which is a sort of very high-class federal open garden and it has pictures of beautiful gardens and apartments and homes. And from one point of view if you look at that magazine and say this is a magazine about possession because most of the places are quite expensive places. From another point of view if you read what people are saying about their garden or their house it's a magazine about precision and balance

[58:31]

and each of these places is quite different from each other but the one theme that keeps coming up is the person's sense of precision and their sense of wanting to connect it's like their something that they make when you put together a garden that it's actually something you can give to somebody else who walks through the garden even if it's maintained even 20 years after you die. So I feel it can be a real act of generosity and also that it can be a way that you're seeing yourself and not in an egocentric sense but that you are really developing something quite deep and quite clear and I want you to comment on that. Yes. My comment would be that that all this caution about possessions

[59:32]

needs to be enriched if I can use the expression with the kind of comment that you make that we must not be over-literal and I came over on the airplane with a man that that talked to me about his collection of Gandhara Buddhas and I'm on this mileage plus scam of United Airlines and so so many trips I can ride first class and stretch out my legs. I don't know if that's a kind of stealing or not but anyway, that's what I do. And obviously very, very wealthy old man just chattering away about his collection of Gandhara Buddhas to me

[60:40]

and how he sold one of them to Frank Sinatra in the days when Gandhara Buddhas were were, you know, not so expensive and now it's worth 30 times what he sold that Buddha to Frank Sinatra for. Well he loves those Buddhas obviously and he's a lifetime collector of Oriental art and in a way a kind of stealing and yet here he is he inherited all this wealth and he I'm sure his apartment is or his house is like a a beautiful museum and when we look at the De Young Museum

[61:44]

or any other great museum the Honolulu Academy of Arts is an example of somebody's somebody's wealth you know gathered in very dubious ways is responsible for collecting all this this beautiful art and and giving it to us for our pleasure. So no matter what one says as I said the first night about the precepts you know they can be shown it can be shown that they are not to be taken literally all the time but the literal instruction can be very helpful. I agree with you about the gardens and all. I

[62:50]

I dropped a strong hint that if you wanted to get some tax exemption you know I knew about this really great little little Buddhist society in Hawaii that would be glad to have a Gandhara Buddha I don't know if it took somebody yes Here are two versions relevant to this question the first one is sort of the narrow version which is if it's possible to pursue a career in the meditative field without dispute associated with that metaphor which came up in my mind which is if we eat delicious abundant food how would you of course this is the question that tormented Simone Weil

[63:50]

and she died an anorexic she determined that she would not eat any more than the poorest peasant suffering under World War II and she died so somehow one has to find a middle way here and I agree that the that the the practice of eating consistent practice of eating expensive food is a kind of stealing I think it is just as as an expensive lifestyle generally surely is a kind of stealing surely with the with the understanding you know that one might establish a museum and offer everybody a delectation or a beautiful garden

[64:52]

now I answered your second question first the first question was about how to make a living in this competitive society I forget where it appears in my essays maybe I covered it already where I said there is such a thing as honest business I can't remember just I've given these tay shows several times recently and I can't remember whether I already said it or whether I'm going to say it there is such a thing as honest business there's a good book by that name published right here in San Francisco and there is such a thing as an unusual advertising agency that chooses clients with discrimination you know and refuses to to handle a TV account or something like that there are such agencies

[65:54]

and there are attorneys like Bob Gnaizda you know who devote themselves to public interest cases and doctors that practice in the slums and practically give away their services and so on so it is indeed possible to work in the competitive world without stealing as a service you know you're honestly selling a service and your profit feeds your family and just where you draw the line is going to be an individual matter tell you a story during the Vietnam War

[66:55]

um I was rather a rather strict in in avoiding things that had to do with the war and I was also rather a strict vegetarian at that time I'm still a vegetarian but I'm not strict and I resolved that I would wear a cloth belt and these new shoes that were coming out at that time made of Naugahyde that's right Naugahyde until I found out that Naugahyde was made by United Rubber which had this giant contract in Vietnam for napalm so I've gone back to wearing leather shoes for a reason I still carry a cloth wallet

[67:56]

but and I try to avoid wearing a belt but I do have a leather belt but I wear leather shoes what the hell you know we have to make our way in the world as best we can using our best judgment and if we become over-preoccupied with these questions we can't move is that ok? ask me something else ask me something else if I haven't completely spoken to your question that's true

[69:04]

and true for many people that's a hard question, isn't it? anybody have some ideas on that question? oh the question is the statement is if I succeed in my occupation many people will have to fail and I said that's true true for many people how come how come many people have to fail? well there's only I presume it's the field of academia and publishing and so on there's only so much money for publishing and there's only so much money for for the for the new

[70:06]

there's only one slot see, for the for the professor and many people vying for that slot and I have I have the feeling that this is all right that in some sense to the to the strong goes the victory to the talented goes the position to the to the articulate goes the publication rights and so on that when one is full of a certain kind of potential you know, what do you do? do you teach on the street corner? do you publish in mimeograph form? I think you you submit your application

[71:07]

and if you're accepted you say thank you very much I think there's a world of difference between this and the kind of grasping and elbowing aside that goes with the with the acquisitive spirit in our in our society in other words there are plenty of niches for the truly talented person who who need not to be so concerned about others who are less talented I'll say what I need to say OK I remember in the past year's talk

[72:10]

in this new state to be effective some of the great barriers to practice include talent to be well well I don't know it kind of goes against my instincts and I suppose this is because I come from a lay lineage but when a student comes to me and says I really feel moved to go back to graduate school and get my doctorate and do thus and so I say by all means by all means one of our our senior people at Maui was gone for five years in New York getting his doctorate in psychology and now he's back

[73:11]

he's practicing psychology there practicing therapy there in Maui and he's very active in the zenta I think these things happen naturally and it's it's artificial to say no you must do only this only this what about all that what about all that potential what happens to that the Catholics are good model for us you know with the monks who are talented in painting painting with the monks who are talented in music doing the music and so on yes it seems to me that if someone succeeds in a career

[74:11]

then they are in a position to help other people I mean if you're a writer and you get a name as a writer you can recommend other writers to your publisher and he'll have to listen he'll have to listen if you're a you can turn that success if you're worried about it you're not only in a position to teach others but you yourself are fulfilled you see I've been reading a lot lately in in a field of psychology and Buddhism and one article I read recently said you can't be nobody until you're somebody in other words your your personhood must be fulfilled before you can really learn to forget yourself if it isn't fulfilled you're feeling incomplete and so you're you're holding on to something and the

[75:13]

the analogy I use in taking the path is the diver on the high board if she is not completely trained and therefore completely confident she can't let herself go she can't dive in so really you have to be fulfilled before you can be unfilled I believe this very firmly I was I was talking the other night about how it is possible to go along in your practice and make real progress but it's maybe all on the surface because there's there's a whole story underneath using the story in double meaning that that isn't told and it isn't known it's all dark down there ok

[76:19]

yes I'm a little lost and you said that's not fair it seems that there's more to the question actually because it seems that there it seems that there's a distinction I've met many people who have been so successful but maybe they weren't so successful what does that mean and did you say someone is a spin or isn't that denying isn't that the same idea in your mind that someone that you're denying something denying yes yes yes I view I view a successful person as one who has who is in a place really to start paying back what they have been given not someone who is I'm not I don't I don't think

[77:21]

that someone is successful just because he or she is president of a company or something like that but someone who is fulfilled I've known I know successful people who aren't making any money at all you know and who are completely unknown but but they have mastered something they have mastered something in their lives their lives are fulfilled this is what I would call success now I think the question was simply about what what happens if I get a certain job see other people won't get that job I mean

[78:27]

I can't imagine things because I'm here with other people I'm here for I'm I can't that's what I don't know oh I see well I think the point is the same as Gandhi's point you see that when we eat at a very affluent and gourmet sort of level then we are depriving others it's that kind of point you see but I'm not sure that the that the analogy is is a sound one because if I'm really qualified for that job in all nature and training

[79:28]

then that's where I should be you know yes are we on the same wavelength here sorry all right the time is just about up okay all right thank you very much everybody thank you

[79:58]

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