There's two seats over there. There's room over here. We can share our cushions. Yep, snuggle up. Sort of related to what I'd like to talk about this morning anyway, snuggling up. Dharma friendship begins with snuggling up, or maybe not. It's amazing, all sorts of room shows up. There's some mats right here. There are two seats over there for anybody who wants to sit in a chair. As I think some of you know, we've been worried for some time about what to do

[01:21]

with the number of us who gather on Sunday morning. Maybe the solution is a tent, because with a tent all you do is just take the walls down. Now all we need is a, you know those little sponge flowers you get in Chinatown that you put in water and they expand? We have to figure out how to get them smaller again and then apply the technology to our cars. I was recently at Spirit Rock and they figured out what to do about the cars, and I actually think we should do it here, although I know they'll be screaming and yelling. Any car that has five people in it doesn't pay for parking, and any car that doesn't have five people in it pays $10. And there was lots of screaming and yelling, but boy, everybody is carpooling and getting to know each other. They have designated places where you rendezvous to meet potential carpoolers,

[02:23]

and it's actually worked out pretty well, and I think we're going to have to do something like that. It's the cars that are the problem. And on top of that, there are 50-plus of us who may not have been here, except that this weekend a group of us are working with recovery as spiritual path, looking at what I would call the yoga of recovery work. So I want to speak in the context of the work that we're doing in that workshop and hope that as the rest of you eavesdrop, you may find what I have to say useful or relevant. As someone said yesterday, maybe we're all recovering from something, so perhaps the theme of recovery or healing or wholesomeness, coming to wholesomeness,

[03:26]

is in fact highly relevant for every one of us. If the Buddha is teaching on the Four Noble Truths, in particular the First Noble Truth, namely that the fact of suffering is accurate, and I certainly think it is, then we're all in the same business. So let me set the stage a little bit before I focus on the theme for this morning. The word recovery has two basic senses. My dear husband, who is a language freak, did etymologies for us, and I'd like to refer to those. Recovery in contemporary usage has two principal meanings. One sense is to get back, and the second sense is to uncover again or anew.

[04:33]

So if we take this get back sense of recovery, we're talking about the restoration of something which belongs to the subject and has been separated from the subject. For example, the roof from a house through annual, seasonal wear and tear, or the sudden forces of a hurricane, or native and natural self-confidence from a person who grew up in an abusive and demeaning family system, or a sense of integral selfness from someone who grew up without developing a healthy system of personal boundaries, or a feeling of connection with other beings or between body and soul. The term recover points to the reassemblage, to putting back together parts, perceptions, emotions, relations which belong together naturally and which we feel were and are meant to be together originally and in any healthy, well-balanced, organic relationship.

[05:37]

To cover again or anew comes from a different linguistic lineage. To cover wholly, entirely, and thoroughly. So the words that we've been working with this weekend are the words of recovery, sacred, and healing. And I've, when I've talked here before, have talked about what is involved in and referenced by this word healing. And of course the related words, the words that belong to the same group etymologically with healing are words like hail, whole, health, salutary, safe, save, and salvation. Hail, heal, whole.

[06:45]

Wholeness is strong and central in the cluster of related words to which healing belongs. The being whom we describe as whole has both arms and legs, all the limbs and organs and faculties in a literal physical sense. But the word has a psychological and spiritual dimension as well. To be whole, to be in sound health in the broadest sense suggests that the individual so described is integrated and at one with himself or herself. When we are touched harmfully, we lose some part of ourselves, be that blood and flesh to a physical wound or psychological well-being to family abuse or peace of mind to afflictive emotions that sweep us away. The touch or contact that harms diminishes our wholeness, sometimes to the point of obliteration, and healing restores wholeness. When we are not at one,

[07:50]

when our body, mind, and relationships are ill or damaged or have been harmfully touched, some vital part or vital quality of well-being is separated from us. We could say it is othered or elsewhered. So healing involves recovering and reintegrating capacities we have estranged. However, the estrangement may have occurred quickly or slowly, willingly or against our will. So there is this sense of recovery work as being that work of making whole or returning to wholeness. I want to read a quote. It's actually a quote from Lama Yeshe who was a wonderful teacher, taught hundreds and thousands of Westerners very effectively during the time of his life.

[08:51]

And he is, of course, in this quote referring to the words of the Buddha, the historical Buddha. Dwelling deep within our heart and within the hearts of all beings, without exception, is an inexhaustible source of love and wisdom. And the ultimate purpose of all spiritual practices, whether they are called Buddhist or not, is to uncover and make contact with this essentially pure nature. So one of the possibilities that I would like to suggest for our consideration this morning is that what we are talking about when we talk about a path of recovery may in fact, if this description of our essential nature, if this is correct, it may be as much a process of uncovering the layers of obscurations and obstacles and accumulations of unwholesome thoughts and experiences

[09:56]

that get layered over our essential nature in a way as to have it become virtually hidden from us and from others. It makes me think of barnacles and the posts on piers going out into the ocean that get encrusted with layer upon layer upon layer of hard shell and incrustations and layers of growth and material of all sorts that become so hard and impenetrable as to appear impenetrable. In the work that comes out of the whole path that is described by Alcoholics Anonymous and what we know these days as 12-step work, there is a lot of reference in the steps, the 12 steps, and in the path of recovery

[10:57]

as it is articulated in this tradition, to higher power. And the talk about turning our will over to God, turning to and giving over to a higher power is often for many people problematic. So I want to this morning talk a little bit about what I think is being referenced here, but from a Buddhist standpoint, from a Buddhist point of view. And I'd like to say as an aside that I think as I work myself with the language of the 12 steps, I think that what we have here is a tradition which assumes a kind of initiation so that the language of the 12 steps to really be useful and workable in someone's life has to be what a friend of mine would call unpacked, and that there's a way in which one has to be initiated

[11:59]

so that the layers and depths of insight and meaning and teaching that are implied in the 12 steps open up over some long period of time. And of course, in the Buddhist tradition and in the tradition which we follow here on the path of Soto Zen is very explicitly laid out as a path in which there are various initiations. Ways of being introduced to the path and stepping onto the path so that there is some informing in the very process of initiation as well as in one's daily practice as it grows out of various initiations. I'm thinking about this a lot these days because we've had recently the Bodhisattva ceremony, the ceremony in which one takes or goes for refuge in Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha

[13:01]

and takes the three pure and ten grave precepts as a path for living one's life and practice. And there are several more, two more that I know of, ceremonies involving this taking of the refuge and precept vows and the Bodhisattva vow, one that I will be doing a week from now and one that Mel Weitzman will be doing this summer. And I think that in taking the Bodhisattva vow and in doing what we call going for refuge, we are, in fact, acting, in a way, out of our understanding about what in Twelve-Step Work is referred to as acknowledging and relating to a higher power. One of the obstacles, I think, to this word higher is that we immediately think of the vertical, hierarchical implications.

[14:04]

And all our stuff as Americans around authority and hierarchy comes up. And we do indeed have some baggage culturally with hierarchy and authority. But I think that there is a way in which one can think about that which is higher in the sense of what happens when we do something like walk up Mount Tam. And when we get up to the higher elevations, we can see more. We see more of the surrounding landscape. And if it's a clear day, we can actually see the other two sacred mountains in this region, Mount Diablo and St. Helena. We have a sense of the watershed that we live in. We have a sense of the environment that we live in, both the so-called natural environment and that aspect of our environment, which is the consequence of our human life,

[15:07]

highways and houses and office buildings and all the rest of it. The path of wholeness, as we talk about it in the Buddhist tradition, the whole process of waking up is the process of the wholeness that arises when we see things as they are and when we are not fighting with things as they are. When we have some engagement, some relationship with things as they are, which is accurate and with which we have some quality of ease and relationship. At the heart of these two practice paths, that of 12-step recovery work and that of the Buddhadharma, at the core is some teaching,

[16:10]

both overt and covert, about relationship and connection. In 12-step work, there is a very strong emphasis on the fellowship of practitioners, if you will, on the path of recovery. And so a very strong emphasis on going to meetings, on having friendships within the fellowship, having a sponsor, having someone whom the practitioner allows to know oneself, to know my story fully, with whom I am willing to be more rather than less revealed. And that is, of course, absolutely at the center of our practice tradition as Zen practitioners. Our relationships with each other as Sangha members, that is, as members of the community of practitioners, is critical and, in fact, described as one of the three treasures,

[17:12]

part of what we take or go for refuge in is Sangha or the community of practitioners. There is implicit in the practice of meditation the assumption that one will have a relationship or relationships with spiritual friends and that one will have a relationship with a spiritual friend whom one will be open with and will be able to work with in the mode of teaching teacher or as a guide. I like the term spiritual friendship because I think that it helps us get away from the kind of alarm and baggage that comes up when we talk about teacher and student. Because, of course, inherent in that relationship is that the teacher may be teaching the student, but also it is clear that the student will teach the teacher. Wendell Berry has a wonderful essay

[18:23]

in his collection of essays called Standing by Words where he talks about what he describes as accountable language, language which is ordinary, as he puts it, language which is understood by anyone, just ordinary, regular people, the so-called man or woman on the street, language which the speaker is willing to stand behind, not take back after you've said something, oh, I didn't mean that, an example of language which is not accountable language, and language which the speaker is willing to stand behind. So it always interests me when we talk about the 12 steps or when we talk about the precepts or we talk about taking refuge, to what degree is the language that we use in describing the 12 steps or the precepts or the refuges

[19:23]

accessible in some ordinary, everyday way, and to what degree is the teaching inherent in these lists hidden, and is there a way we can keep refining the language we use so that we enhance and open up the accessibility and our understanding at a number of levels. So when we talk about going for refuge, I think there's a way in which what we really are talking about is acknowledging the sources of refuge that we have in this description of Buddha as the perfect teacher, Dharma as the perfect teaching or the true teaching, and Sangha as the perfect life, the community of practitioners and the life we have together. So the refuge vows are explicitly, I take refuge in Buddha, I take refuge in Dharma,

[20:25]

I take refuge in Sangha, I take refuge in Buddha as perfect teacher, I take refuge in Dharma as perfect teaching, and I take refuge in Sangha as the perfect life. Now I have completely taken refuge in Buddha, now I have completely taken refuge in Dharma, now I have completely taken refuge in Sangha. And there is in this recitation of these refuge vows some sense of acknowledging that I am part of a bigger truth or realm, that I'm not the center of the universe, either negatively or positively. I'm not the center of the universe because I'm the gift to you all, nor am I the center of the universe, which is a big piece of shit, which is just the negative form of being the center of the universe, the me, [...] me self-clinging business

[21:29]

that gets us into so much suffering. Understanding that we are in the world of beings with the qualities of interdependence and interconnectedness, and in fact the core teaching in the Buddha Dharma is on the nature of reality as that there is nothing that exists with inherent self-existence, independent selfness, and on the positive side, if you will, that existence in this realm is described most accurately in terms of interconnectedness and interdependence. So one of the practices for uncovering, coming back to being in touch with the fact of our connectedness, our interdependence with all things and all beings, is to do a daily meditation. Whenever we sit down for a meal,

[22:30]

to take some particular item of food on the plate before us and take a few moments and ask ourselves, how did this bowl of soup or salad or piece of bread come to be here on this particular plate this morning or this afternoon or this evening? And to quite literally go back as far as we can so that we consider all of the elements and aspects that bring this food to us. We say a meal chant before we eat. We venerate the three treasures and give thanks for this meal, the work of many people and the suffering of every form of life. Or in the longer form of the chant, we talk about 72 labors brought us this food. May we know how it comes to us. May we understand and remember the part that is played with the bread that has to do with the earth itself,

[23:34]

the rain and the sun, the planting of the wheat and the tending of the plants and the harvesting, the driving the truck that takes the crop to where it will be processed, ground for flour. If we're lucky in our eating lunch at Green Gulch, the flour was taken to some store somewhere and somebody here caused this flour to somehow get here. And then there are some people who did the work of baking the bread or the muffins. Many beings, many aspects that bring the bread to be on our plate. And, of course, we take it for granted. Some years ago when we had a relationship with a community in East Oakland, we used to have periodically children from the black community in East Oakland come here for outings.

[24:36]

And for virtually all of the people who came on those outings, the outings were their first trip across either the Golden Gate Bridge or the San Rafael Richmond Bridge. And for the children, it was the first time they had any notion that the food wasn't grown at Safeway. But I think we all, in the rush of our lives, forget about, in fact, where the food came from. And what I know for myself is that when I do this meditation on how the food on my plate came to me, it helps me uncover all of what obscures my knowing how I'm connected to all beings and all things. Because I literally would not live if it were not for the work and kindness of all beings and all things. It's true with what we wear. It's true with the car we drive. It's true of literally every detail of our daily lives.

[25:40]

So when we feel disconnected and isolated, it's because there has been this covering over of the fact of connectedness. So part of what I am proposing is that recovery work, as we are talking about it this weekend, and as people doing 12-step recovery work talk about all the time, may be actually thought about as the work of uncovering, in this sense. We may absolutely experience ourselves as isolated and lonely. And what I'm proposing is that the yoga of this work is to do practices that help us come back to our direct apprehension of the connectedness which is in existence, in place, is the fact of our lives, even though we may not see or experience it. I also know that out of the process of doing practices

[26:54]

like this kind of meditation on where did my food or my clothes or the car or the road I drive on or the tent we're sitting in or this beautiful jewel called Gringulch, where did each of these aspects of my daily life come from, that when I do this kind of practice, when I do this kind of yoga of uncovering and acknowledging, coming awake to the fact of connectedness, what begins to arise is a possibility of trust and confidence in my ability to be whole, in my ability to trust the world that I begin to see slowly, more and more accurately. Of course, for many of us, we get frustrated and impatient because we want this process to go quickly. And we forget how long it took us to cover over what we're now practicing to uncover or reestablish.

[27:58]

It may be, in fact, that the uncovering has taken place not even just in our lifetime but over many lifetimes, that the covering over is part of our inheritance from the families and cultures that we have grown up in. So if it took me 50-plus years to learn some habit about forgetfulness or not knowing, not trusting, for example, maybe it will take me more than a few days or a week to cultivate the antidote state of mind and experience. If, for example, I have spent 30 or 40 or 50 or 60 or 70 years learning how to survive by not telling the truth because telling the truth would lead to suffering and perhaps possible harm

[29:02]

and maybe even the end of my life, perhaps it will take me some long while to learn how to not lie. And I may have to do it very patiently and kindly. My friend Paul Ehrlich, who is here for our workshop this weekend and who has been doing recovery work with himself and with others for many years, told me a few days ago that in the world of recovery there is this description of the heart of the work of recovery in the 12-step tradition described as how, H-O-W, H being for the practice of honesty, O for the practice of open-mindedness,

[30:03]

and W for the practice of willingness. It strikes me as resonating deeply and significantly with the teachings in the Buddhadharma. I sometimes think if I was sent to a desert island, as I've said to you before, and I could only have one of the Ten Grave Precepts, I think the one that I would choose would be the one about a disciple of the Buddha does not lie. Because there is a way in which all of the other precepts actually may emerge from that one. It's so fundamental. And so much of our Dharma practice is about the cultivation of open-mindedness or, if you will, open-heartedness. Perhaps saying the same thing, since this is where the mind is located, the heart-mind.

[31:04]

And I would propose that when we talk about willingness, maybe what we're talking about is cultivating our capacity for allowing, allowing things to be as they are, which arises out of the practice of non-possessiveness. So in the path that is set down in our tradition, the precepts, the Three Pure and the Ten Grave Precepts, are the basis for the way we live our lives, both in terms of training and instruction, and also as a description of the life that we aspire to in taking the Bodhisattva vow, seeking to cultivate ourselves as Bodhisattvas, as enlightened or realized beings, for the sake of all beings, including ourselves. So our path is of taking refuge,

[32:08]

that is, of acknowledging that we exist in this big-mind way, taking refuge in Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha, and living our lives based on the Three Pure and the Ten Grave Precepts. I recently, I'm always interested in how the precepts are translated, because there are small differences from one lineage to another. The heart teaching or statement of the precepts is consistently the same, but the language may be a little bit different. So the translation of the Three Pure Precepts from my teacher, Kadagiri Roshi, describes the Three Pure Precepts as the cultivation of purity of heart.

[33:11]

And so I take vows for the cultivation of purity of heart, to abstain from unwholesomeness, to do that which is wholesome, and to act in order to benefit all beings. The five root precepts of the grave precepts that you find in the declaration or statement of the precepts in all of the Buddhist traditions and lineages begins with the one about not taking life, not intentionally causing harm, not lying, not taking that which is not given, not engaging in sexual or sensual misconduct, and not intoxicating mind or body of self or others. And then the remaining five grave precepts which vary from one tradition to another, but which in our lineage we translate as not speaking ill of others,

[34:14]

not praising ourselves while we slander others, not being possessive of anything, not even the truth, not harboring ill will, and not abusing or causing harm to the three treasures of Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. There is an image which is used in some of the sutras of a great net, a great vast net. And of course the nature of a net is that where the threads come together there are little knots, so there are these intersections of the threads that make the net. And we might think of ourselves, each one of us, as one of those little knots or intersections of all of the strands that make the net, the great vast net of the universe.

[35:15]

And so each of us is a kind of center, but not the only center. There isn't one center, there are these innumerable centers to this great vast net of the universe. So when we talk about Big Mind, we talk about that mind which is able to see that great vast world that we live in, in this way of understanding that there isn't one center, and yet we are all a kind of microcosm, interconnected, every one of us connected to every one of us, with every being. So when I went to sit down in the seat here at the beginning of my talk this morning, there was an ant on the floor.

[36:18]

Could I step in such a way that I would not step on the ant and crush it? When we were before lecture doing some walking meditation in the garden, could we walk carefully? I remembered as we were walking this morning, going walking one time with our friend and my dear teacher Tara Rinpoche, where we were visiting at the Kamaldali Hermitage down in Big Sur, and he didn't walk on the asphalt paths, and I asked him later why that was. He just walked on the grassy areas alongside the paths. He said, well, if I walked on the paths, which were very hard, and I stepped on a bug, I would be likely to kill the bug. But if I walked on the grass, the bug had a chance. Maybe if there was a little give, I wouldn't squash the bug. I might frighten it or cause it some harm, but there's some chance that it could scoot in among the blades of grass and escape being killed by my foot coming down to the surface of the earth.

[37:21]

How often, when we go walking, do we think about all the critters that we're stepping on? The very fact of our being alive, we take life. Can we understand that and accept the web, the great chain of being that we are part of that supports our lives and take life as little as possible, understanding that there's a way in which this precept is virtually impossible to keep? And, of course, when we understand our connection with each other and with all beings in the world, then what arises is an enormous sense of connectedness and gratitude. I brought this painting of the Buddha as healer

[38:25]

or the Medicine Buddha, as he is sometimes referred to, because I think that the notion of the Buddha as a great doctor is very useful and helpful in the context of our conversation about wholesomeness or the path of recovery or the path of waking up. Because, of course, this description of the Buddha as a great doctor is that, as the great doctor, what he can do is to provide us with medicine. That is in the form of teachings. But he cannot heal any one of us. That is the work that each one of us must do. He can't make me take my cod liver oil. And, in fact, if he does, a friend of mine recently told me about her experience being in a hospital

[39:28]

where she was given some medicine because she was thought to be unsound in mind. She said, I just put the pills under my tongue and then when they weren't looking I spit them out. So much for being force-fed medicine. When I was a kid and my mother used to give me cod liver oil, I would go, pffft. So what little bit got down my gullet probably didn't do me much good anyway. So I'd like to close by offering this verse, which is really a verse about the Buddha as the great doctor. The Buddhas cannot wash our sins away with water, nor can they remove our sufferings with their hands. They cannot transfer their insights to us.

[40:31]

All they can do is teach the Dharma. I am my own protector. Thank you very much. Your intention...

[40:58]

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