Good morning. I feel wired for sound, but I don't know if it helps my projection. Can you hear me in the back? Barely. I have a little bit of a cold, so any assistance is gratefully expected. But also, put your hand up if you have trouble hearing me and I'll see what I can do. Here we are in a Buddhist sardine can. A can of Buddhists. A can of sardines. I don't know, anyway. As some of you know, a few of us are spending this weekend in a retreat focusing on living and dying.

[01:09]

And so we have been attending to meditation on contemplation of the impermanent nature of everything. And making some effort to do that in detail. So I want to speak this morning in the context of this retreat that we're doing, which will continue until the end of the day. For me, this is a continuation of a retreat on living and dying, which has been going on for a while. I was in Minnesota for the last week of Kadagiri Roshi's life, and was fortunate to be able to sit with him while he was dying and also during the week after that. And I noticed that I have some reluctance to re-emerge in the world of activity

[02:20]

and speaking and doing. So I'm particularly grateful, personally, for being able to spend these two days together looking at these essential issues, which we can so easily turn away from. What I want to talk about this morning is the possibility of considering that our lives provide for us the arena for change in the doorway of death. That is, the way we die, the mind we have at the moment of death is absolutely, in every way, the consequence of the detail of our daily lives. And within that framework, I'd like us to look together a little bit at three points of focus.

[03:26]

That is, the cultivation of clear motivation or clear intention, and doing that, in particular, every day, for both the short view and the long view. The cultivation of dropping aversion, or at least changing our response when aversion arises. And the cultivation of non-possessiveness. That these three focal points can help us open up the detail of our daily life in a way that is highly relevant to our attention with the inevitability of our dying, and making some different kind of relationship with the fact that it's out of our control.

[04:30]

The kind of suffering that arises when we turn away from attention to this level of the detail of our mind and the way our lives go. If you were an archer, you would understand that if you want to change the way the arrow goes, the path of the arrow, you're going to do that before you release the arrow from your bow, not after. So that's what it's like in our lives. If we wait until the moment of death, we've waited until after the arrow has left the bow. Now on the bulletin board next to the obituary for Katagiri Roshi is one of my favorite photographs of Suzuki Roshi

[05:40]

with a great quote, I think, which he says, Life is like a boat that sets sail for the sea and sinks. It's great. I just finished a retreat on a practice that one can do for the moment of death, and the teacher who was leading this particular retreat said, We are like renters in a house, but we have no long-term lease, and we in fact will be unexpectedly evicted. I think for any of us who are tenants without a lease or who have been, we know what it feels like to be helpless in the face of being asked to live from the place we call home.

[06:48]

And isn't that exactly how we feel about our bodies, about our lives? I don't want to be evicted. Go knock on somebody else's door. I'm not ready. I want to live to be 150. So if I look at this focal point of motivation, and I pay attention to my own experience and that of others, what I notice is a big difference in the lives of those people and in my own life when I drop my focusing on me, mine, I want, I don't want, when I stop putting at the center of my universe saving myself from suffering,

[07:51]

saving myself from whatever it is I want to be saved from, and commit myself to the conservation of a life devoted to helping others. And by that I certainly don't mean leaving myself off the list, but I mean getting myself off of the center of the universe spot. I remember one time hearing His Holiness the Dalai Lama say, Have you ever known a generous person who was unhappy? And I remind myself of that question in the way I answer it pretty often, because in fact I don't think I've ever known anyone who was generous who was unhappy. And in moments of deep unhappiness,

[08:57]

one of the ways I notice that my experience, my world, my mind changes, is when I begin to pay attention to the larger picture, when I'm willing to see the world around me and the suffering of others with some interest and compassion and some dedication to this path which talks about the cultivation of enlightenment for the sake of all beings, called bodhicitta, the cultivation of that mind which seeks enlightenment for the sake of all beings. There is very particular language in this discussion of the arising of bodhicitta. Enlightenment is sometimes described as the cultivation of some capacity

[10:01]

which is like the sun. The sun comes out, we have a wonderful sunny day today, and the sun warms everything without any particular effort on the sun's part. It is in the nature of the sun that there is warmth arising, reflected off of stones or the roof of the building or my back as I sit in a sunny spot in the garden. So this effort to cultivate a deep capacity for being awake is an effort to cultivate capacity which will be of benefit to others out of the essential, fundamental nature of our being. For a long time this vow, this bodhisattva vow,

[11:07]

which is at the center of the particular path of Buddhism that those of us who practice here at Green Gulch are following, the Mahayana path, for a long time this motivation or intention seemed quite abstract to me, and so I would recite this vow of dedication to seek enlightenment for the sake of all beings in a way that for a long time felt like I was just going through the motions. But at some point I really began to understand, mostly from the great benefit of being around other beings who have made a similar dedication, whose realization is palpable simply from being in their presence, that it is possible to do,

[12:11]

and that maybe, although it's very difficult, it is possible to do in a single lifetime. That is, of course, what the whole story about Shakyamuni Buddha is about, the demonstration that it is possible to cultivate enlightenment in a single lifetime. So part of my daily practice of stating clear motivation, clear intention, includes my noticing that I have a great opportunity, having been born as a human being, having been born under circumstances where I have enough to eat and a place to live and good spiritual friends, very good spiritual friends, great fortune in having good teachers,

[13:11]

that I have the energy and capacity and leisure to practice, and that this is a remarkable collection of opportunities. So part of my statement of my motivation in the morning when I wake up, in the midst of my grumbling over having been wakened during the night with the dog yelping, grumbling to myself because this morning my head is stopped up and I can't breathe, and then somewhere in the middle of the waking up grumbling I remember, what is my intention for today? What is my motivation for today and for this month, for this next year, and to the best of my ability in my life?

[14:16]

This is how I understand this encouragement to pay attention to where I am placing the arrow in my bow before I release it rather than afterwards. As I have said to some of you before, Peter Drucker, whom some of you know in the context of his instructions on how to be a good business person, talks in very clear ways about clear intention. He is talking about it in service of being an effective, successful business person. I think it applies absolutely in this realm of preparing or cultivating my mind to be fully awake and ready for that moment when death will come. Since I know that it will come and I must remind myself every day,

[15:25]

I do not know when or how. So another way of talking about motivation is to talk about the cultivation of loving-kindness, the cultivation of compassion, the cultivation of selflessness, non-possessiveness, dropping to the best of my ability, moment by moment, my habit of self-clinging. All the texts that I have been reading recently on how to prepare to die well, calmly and awake and with stability and fearlessness, they all talk about how the practice of bodhicitta,

[16:33]

this commitment to practice for the sake of all beings, and the cultivation of virtue, by which I understand us to mean the cultivation of kindness and compassion and selflessness, acts as a kind of energy or force field in our lives that carries us in the direction of the kind of mind I hope to cultivate at the moment of death, so that the doorway to death is not a collection of fears, habits of controlling that which I can't control, fighting the truth of things as they are, etc., etc., etc. My great teacher in this regard is my mother, who is, I think, eighty-four.

[17:35]

She's not quite sure herself. We've known each other quite a while. And I watch her in her old age, full of fear and trembling. I watch her grasping, trying to hold what she cannot hold, fighting her helplessness, reenacting moment by moment her habit for control, because that is what she has rehearsed all of her life, her habit of paranoia and suspicion, her habit of, I don't like, I don't want. And out of my compassion for her suffering, I also feel enormous gratitude,

[18:39]

because she, out of that suffering, is helping me understand how today I can rehearse letting go, being willing to be helpless when that's, in fact, what I am, noticing the difference between what I can change and what I can't, understanding that it is in the nature of things that with every day, the oil in the lamp of my life is diminished a little bit more. As I reach for my eyeglasses to read the telephone number in the phone book, to treat that diminishing of the physical capacity of sight as a reminder not to waste time and to be grateful for the sight that I have, which allows me to enjoy the garden and the birds,

[19:42]

so that I'm not focused on my grouchiness because I have to ask some stranger on the street to come into the phone book and read the telephone number for me when I've forgotten my eyeglasses. Oh, here is a chance for me to notice a moment in which I am dependent on the kindness of others. How fortunate I am to have this opportunity. So we have this practice of virtue and the cultivation of bodhicitta, the cultivation of compassion and love, and always to keep remembering and noticing in particular detail the impermanent nature of things.

[20:47]

Yesterday, when we were out doing walking meditation, I was standing by the edge of the pond, and if you go out after lecture, you may see our impermanence moderator, a common egret who has been gorging himself on frogs, living and dying right there just outside the door. Yesterday, when I was watching him, he had eaten so many frogs, he had this enormous bulge in the middle of his neck, and it didn't seem to want to go down, and when he tried to get it to come back up, it just was there. So he was doing this kind of... And then he'd sort of struggle to swallow, and this enormous lump just sat there. And I thought of all the times my family and friends

[21:54]

have screamed at me for belting down my hamburger. Where did it go? It was just on your plate. He does not know about chewing your food 50 times before you swallow it. And, of course, after a little while, he just went back to spearing frogs and swallowing them. And as I was standing there watching him yesterday, there was the sound of sirens coming down the canyon, two of the emergency trucks that we call forth with 911, and we could all hear the siren coming for a long time. And what I noticed was a kind of fear arising. What's it about? Is my house on fire? Is my husband and my child, are they all right?

[22:59]

And after the trucks went by and came to the bottom of the hill and the sirens stopped, I said to my friend Martha, they've come to our neighborhood. They're not going on up the road because the road is blocked. This is in our own backyard. What has happened? So someone walking up the ridge on the south end of the beach had a heart attack. Who was it? Was it my friend? Was it my husband? Maybe I'll call home and find out. But the line is busy. I thought, well, it's pretty unlikely, but I noticed this quality of mind, fear and clinging, which did not subside until I went home

[24:06]

and peered in through the gate and saw my husband standing in the garden filling the bird feeders. And that fear of dying for ourselves or our loved ones comes up so quickly. What is our relationship to that around which we have this clustering of clinging, of attachment, of possessiveness? So this is another point of noting, of practicing. What I want to suggest to myself and to all of us is not so much that we try to make the fear go away, but that we imagine that we can practice, that we can cultivate a different response when fear arises. When we notice aversion, when we notice clinging,

[25:13]

what we can do is to pay attention to the detail of what's arising and imagine the possibility of not being led around by the nose by that fear or aversion. One of the ways of doing that is to focus ourselves in the moment. Where am I standing or sitting? What is the detail in my physical body? How's my stomach? Where's my breath? There are such wonderful stories of people who have practiced that cultivation of staying in the moment, grounding oneself in the moment. I remember one time when we first were settling into the building

[26:14]

in San Francisco, Zen Center's home on Page Street. And the neighborhood was at the time quite difficult, as it still is. And this one morning, this was during the time when Suzuki Roshi was still alive, and this one morning, a young man somehow got in the front door and into the building, whose mind was very disturbed. And he exuded anger and some capacity for violence. And a number of people in the building tried to get him to leave, which of course just made him more intent on being in the building. At some point, Suzuki Roshi wandered into the midst of this scene, and he walked up to this young man and began talking to him, stood right in front of him,

[27:16]

looked at the flower on the bush in the courtyard, talked to him about what he had on, how he was feeling, paying attention to the detail of his body and his breath. And after a little while, they began walking together. The young man got quite involved in the conversation with Suzuki Roshi. And so he just walked with Suzuki Roshi. And as they were talking to each other, Suzuki Roshi opened the front doorknob and opened the door, and they stepped out onto the front porch. And at some point, Suzuki Roshi said, Well, I have to go now. And he bowed, and he walked back in and shut the door. There's a famous story about a man who is on the police force in New York,

[28:28]

which some of you may know. He's been with this section of the police department that is responsible for people who are threatening suicide by jumping off of bridges and the 34th floor of this and that building, etc. And this particular man is actually rather famous because he's been doing this work for a very long time, a number of years, and has never lost anyone. And what he does is he gets out there on the ledge with the person, and he says, Hi, my name is Jim, and you and I are sitting here on this ledge on the 34th floor of a building on 5th Avenue or wherever it is. And you have on brown pants and a gray sweater,

[29:31]

and your hair is long, and I have on blue pants and a black sweater, and your wife and children are standing in the hall just inside the window. And the temperature is 55 degrees, and the wind is blowing. And he just focuses in very specific detail on the situation the two of them are in. And out of that groundedness in the situation as it is, somehow he makes a connection with the other person, which makes it possible for some connection enough to crawl back in through the window rather than jumping. It's a wonderful story.

[30:36]

But what I wonder is, how can we do that for ourselves? Because, of course, if we can practice that way of working with ourselves, especially when I want and I don't want arises, we then have cultivated a way of responding to whatever arises in the mind, which makes us able to relate to another person in that same place. And, of course, what I'm talking about is practicing with ourselves in the midst of our daily life, wherever we are, whatever the circumstances of our lives may be, that someone who has shaved their head or wears robes or has taken a vow not to ever cut their hair or whatever it is that we think gives that person permission to have a spiritual life,

[31:40]

an inner life, to be on this path called cultivating the mind of the Bodhisattva. It has nothing to do with those externals. It has everything to do with what is inside. And each of us can be responsible for practicing states of mind which are conducive to virtue, to liberation from our suffering. We have that capacity. It is, in fact, the only thing that we can change in the world, is our own inner response, our mind, responding to the arising, moment by moment, of things as they are, not things as we wish they were or wish they weren't. So, for me, when fear arises, for example,

[32:42]

do I just let my mind go off on a kind of fantasy of horrors and imaginings? Or can I focus on the moment and attend to the detail of where I am and what is happening and from that place proceed, not telling my fear, Oh, you shouldn't be here, you should go away, but responding to whatever feeling arises with kindliness, with attention, and with a willingness to not take it quite so seriously because my view, my lens, can be a little wider. Thank you. One of the other images that came up in this retreat that I recently finished

[33:47]

was a description of our lives being like a snowball rolling downhill, picking up more snow, getting bigger and bigger. So the question is, is the snow that we pick up, making the ball bigger and bigger, characterized by virtue or non-virtue? It has everything to do with the state of mind and the action that follows from the state of mind, one picky moment after another. And if we decide that we'll cultivate virtue, we'll cultivate love and compassion and non-possessiveness next week or next year or when we retire, we'll never get around to it. We'll just keep practicing the habits that we learned growing up,

[34:50]

that we learned without paying attention to what we learned, just being alive, hanging out. I think in the culture that we live in, the practice of non-possessiveness is particularly difficult. There are so many wonderful things to possess. When we sit down quietly and follow our breathing, in that moment-by-moment attention on the breath, we have this great opportunity to practice letting go, focusing on the exhalation, not in any way being in control of the next inhalation, but just letting the breath be as it is, following it, hanging out with the space at the end of the exhalation, letting that be a kind of rehearsal of a minor dying,

[35:54]

practicing the mind that is familiar with letting go. How much of our negative response to things is a negative response to that which is unfamiliar? And so many of the practices around dying have to do with making it more familiar. The things I'm afraid of, I tend to keep general and at a distance, and they get to be monstrous. The minute I turn towards whatever I'm afraid of and I get to know it in detail, my response begins to shift and change. The old expression about the devil I know and the devil I don't know. I can actually hang out with the devil I know, but, oh my, the devil I don't know.

[37:01]

Looks like he's about five stories high at least. We sometimes talk about the sufferings in our lives and in the lives of others being the consequence of the three poisons of the mind. And we recite them over and over again, greed, hate, and delusion, greed, hate, and delusion. And we say, but it's true. Greed, possessiveness, hate or aversion, delusion, fantasy, dreaming. What is its antidote? Cultivating, practicing, looking at things as they are, moment by moment, not waiting until somebody gives us permission to do it,

[38:04]

but understanding that we have the opportunity to practice with ourselves, with the lives that we have and the nature that we have, moment by moment. That we have certain negative habits, that there's a way of releasing that quality which is like the sun, beneficial, without making any effort, simply being awake. And that a lot of our work is uncovering, taking off layers of unwholesome habit. And there's no way of doing it except from the inside out. No one else will know what our effort and intention is in the same way that we will. We can help each other, we can keep each other company, but when it gets right down to it, each of us must do this attending

[39:05]

in detail with ourselves, with our minds, our states of mind. So, that's what comes up for me this morning. I want to say how much I appreciate the fact that we have this wonderful place to gather, to see each other, to practice together, to help ourselves and each other to remember our deepest intention, what Suzuki Roshi used to call

[40:07]

our heart's inmost request. Isn't that nice? He used to also talk about cultivating a grandmother's heart. And for me that means a heart of friendliness and gentleness with everything, including whatever arises in my mind, in my response, in the detail of my life, which I don't like, which I'm afraid of, which I judge, that only by turning towards all of it can I begin to cultivate what we describe as virtue, love and compassion, non-possessiveness. So, I want to say thank you to all of us

[41:13]

and to the causes and conditions that bring us to be able to enjoy Green Gulch together. George and the cosmos. But all of us, we're very lucky to have this wonderful place where we can be a little bit quiet and let ourselves remember our deepest intention and to keep that capacity on the map, so to speak, for everyone in the world, to let this cultivation of bodhicitta ooze out from this beautiful valley on this spring day and have that capacity for the mind that seeks enlightenment or liberation

[42:15]

for the sake of all beings extend everywhere without exception and to be willing to even include the corners of the world where it isn't so pretty or beautiful or safe that we can include in our hearts all beings and all things. So, please, take a little while this morning and today to stay present with yourself and I will try to do that for myself, willing to pay attention to what arises, not deleting any of it and understanding that we are all capable of being free, being ready to die at any moment

[43:18]

in a way that makes our life vivid. So, knowing we're on the boat that sets sail to sea and will sink doesn't mean spending all of the time worrying about when we would sink, but enjoying the beautiful ocean and the sky and the wind and the sails right now. The accumulation of moment-by-moment presence in that way is pretty remarkable. I know that from having been around a few people who have lived that way. And what I have to remember, what we all have to remember is it's not exceptional except in the doing of it. Thank you very much.

[44:19]

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