Good morning. This is my first lecture at Green Gulch, and I think I'm a little nervous, can you tell? This lectern is very large. I think I'll just move it to the side. I've been asked to speak at Green Gulch over the years, but I've always felt that

[01:03]

I wanted to be out here more before I spoke out here, and now that I'm living here I feel that it's time. This is a very large assembly, and it reminds me of a story about Cary Grant, who's one of my favorite actors, and after his acting career was over he gave evening talks and people asked him questions, and lots of people came, it was a big crowd, and one woman was nervous and she wanted to ask him a question, and she said, she said, I want you to know you're a big fan of mine, and he said, and Cary Grant said, yes, I am, and that's how

[02:11]

I feel about all of you. So this is my debut, and I just wanted to read something that Emily Post says, advice to the debutante. Emily Post is a very compassionate person, if you ever read Emily Post, she has wonderful things to say. This is what she says to the debutante, the secret of popularity is unconsciousness of self, enthusiastic interest in almost anything that turns up, and inward generosity of thought and impulse outwardly expressed in good manners. Emily Post, Daiyosho. For how many of you is this your first time at Green Gulch?

[03:17]

And how many people just like your second or, okay. I often wonder about how people are doing who first, this is their first experience, whether it all seems very strange or extraordinary, and I had an experience of the same thing the other day when I went to find out about a group that my son was very interested in joining called the Cub Scouts, and we went to a meeting, and it was very unusual for me. We started out with the Pledge of Allegiance, which I hadn't done in a long time, and my kids hadn't done ever, because of the schools they've gone to and all, they don't, they

[04:23]

And, but everyone else seemed very much at ease, and I realized, this is just ordinary, this is just regular old stuff, but it seems unusual to me, and what we're doing now seems like regular old stuff to me, but it may seem very unusual to many of you, so what's extraordinary and what's ordinary, you can't really say what is and what isn't. Anything that will stick, that is. So I'm very, very happy to have moved with my family to Green Gulch. We moved at the end of July, and I've been very happy to be out here in this extraordinary place called Green Gulch, which is nothing special, actually, but very unusual at the

[05:34]

same time. So it's been kind of these months, it's been like a honeymoon a little bit, because I've been so happy to be here, coming from having lived in the city for quite a long time. So this honeymoon hasn't really ended, the honeymoon. One thing about Green Gulch is, speaking of moons, is that you can actually see the moon when you're out here, because there's darkness when night comes, it gets pretty dark at Green Gulch, there's just little lights that light the footpaths, and there's a time when lights are supposed to be out, people go to bed early, and just like at Tassajara also, you get to see the night sky. In the city, with all the lights of the city, you can go for quite a long time without seeing

[06:38]

stars, and if your house isn't angled quite right, you may not see the moon for, you know, years. And many, actually many children in the inner city have never seen the night sky, many people. So at Green Gulch, we have the, it's funny to call it a luxury, but we have the ability to see the moon and the stars. And in autumn, the moon, the harvest moon is particularly acclaimed. I've been trying to study why that is, why the autumn moon, sometimes, I'm not sure if it's the angle or what, but it comes up looking very big, shine on, shine on harvest moon. There's lots of poems about the autumn moon. So all of this is very ordinary and extraordinary at the same time.

[07:48]

There's a poem that Dogen Zenji wrote, he actually wrote a number of poems about the moon, and this one is called Unusual Expression, and here it is, flowers in spring, cuckoos in summer, moon in autumn, snow in winter, serene and cool. So are those things unusual expressions? What are those things? And our Zen practice is appreciating just those things that are part of our life. How is it that we can appreciate the moon in autumn?

[08:54]

The moon figured in one of the first stories that I heard about Zen practice that really caught me, maybe some of you have heard it also, it had to do with the moon is in the sky and there's a finger pointing at the moon, and don't look at the finger, don't get caught looking at the finger, but look at the moon, and it shines down on the water, this is kind of the parts of the story, shines down on the water, and when the water is very, very calm, the moon shines exactly, you know, is fully reflected perfectly on the water. So I understood my task as calming the waters so that the moon would reflect itself perfectly. So that was a very, and not to get caught with the finger, which is, you know, the stories and the admonitions and all the formalities, not to let that get in the way.

[10:06]

So I think this is a very helpful story for me to work on what I understood as calming the waters. Have some of you heard that story? There's a book called Moon in a Dew Drop. This is writings of Dogen, Moon in a Dew Drop, which in that story of the moon shining down on the water, I always thought of it as a big giant ocean with the moon on it, but also the moon shines in a little tiny dew drop all the same, and it's reflected perfectly in the dew drop. I guess a dew drop doesn't really get too turbulent, does it? Anyway, so it can be a vast ocean reflecting or a teeny dew drop. And what is this moon, what are we talking about? Well, the moon is an expression of the fully realized,

[11:21]

fully real, full realization. Now, in olden times, in ancient times, the moon was the first way by which our foremothers and forefathers reckoned time, that they looked to the moon. The most ancient calendars are lunar calendars, and there's an old ancient carving, it's called Venus of Lauselle, maybe some of you are familiar with it, it's a bas-relief in a cave, Paleolithic, and it was carved around between 20,000 B.C. and 18,000 B.C., and it's a goddess figure, and she's carrying, let's see, in her right hand a bull's horn, which is shaped like the crescent moon, and her other hand is pointing, or pointing on her belly, and on the bull's horn

[12:27]

are 13 notches for the 13 lunar moons, the 13 moons of the year, the lunar calendar, and she's connecting her own creative force and fertility with the moon and its phases. So, it's a very powerful figure, and it's so old, it's hard to imagine 20,000 years B.C., but the root of the word moon has to do with all sorts of measurement, actually the word measurement, moon and month, metric, semester, menopause, menarche, all those words come from the same root, which comes from the moon, all these ways of cutting up our time and space and measuring,

[13:33]

engaging, the source of that is the moon. And we can become quite caught up in measuring and timing things, and what time is it, and got to get going, and schedules, and all those things, so much so that we miss the autumn moon. Now there's also, this is Miss Manners, not Emily Post, but I just recently found out that there's certain times when you weren't supposed to wear a watch, and one of those places was at a ball, in the drawing room, there's not supposed to be a clock or in the ballroom, and you're not supposed to wear a watch to the dance, and I think that's so

[14:35]

you can just lose yourself in the evening, not worry about time, who cares if it's midnight or three o'clock, you just dance until there's holes in your shoes, so no one was supposed to wear watches, and that's where the pocket watch was invented, and the pocket watch was invented for the bracelet watch that had a little thing that clipped down so you couldn't tell it was a watch, it looked like a bracelet. So just to enjoy yourself and have pleasure and forget about time, you know, there's some other places where we don't wear watches as well, one of those other places is in the tea room, and we have a tea house here with a traditional tea room inside, and you're not supposed to wear actually watches or any kind of jewelry, even wedding rings, and when you go in the tea room, time stops, you leave those concerns outside the tea room,

[15:42]

and you just enter thoroughly the extraordinary and ordinary event of making a cup of tea and having a cup of tea with your friends. The practice of tea is, the tea people say that tea is Zen, there's no difference, and I think Zen people might say, you can practice Zen without doing tea, but I don't know if tea people would say you can practice tea without Zen, I'm not sure it goes that way, but I'm, this is another reason why I'm happy to be I'm taking tea classes again, and this practice is, you know, some of you may be familiar with it, but you do all these activities with cloths and utensils and cleaning and cleaning the utensils,

[16:45]

making tea, cleaning up, all these simple, simple things, and you take care of each one thoroughly and with nothing else in mind, and why do you do it? You don't do it for any reason, you do it for the pleasure of doing it, you do it to express your human life, to express the extraordinary and ordinary human life, and it's the detail with which you can focus and attend to this is marvelous, and it's for pleasure, it's for you, it's for you to enjoy. Right now in autumn, autumn is the season, in fact it's happening this week, where the summer tea tea fire situation, which is a raised fire where coals are, is taken away, and the sunken,

[17:47]

I don't know the name of it actually, somebody can help me with it, but anyway, the sunken one is brought in, and for the winter teas, as it gets colder and darker, people move closer to the fire, so if you're doing tea all year round, each season has its own expression, and autumn has a kind of poignancy to it, it's, summer is over, the harvest is in, it's getting colder and darker, and last week when we came in on the altar, or the tokonoma, the place in the tea room where there's flowers, there was flowers that had autumn leaves that were a little bit dried, and some grasses that were a little old, and a orangish flower that just spoke to the waning light, so it's a kind of poignant time of year, and if we allow ourselves the time to feel that,

[18:54]

we can find that. Last week we said goodbye to Suzuki Roshi's wife, whose name, we called her Oksan, which means Honorable Wife, and she lived at Zen Center for 30 years, she was a tea teacher, and she finally decided to go back to Japan, and she left on Monday, we saw her off, and she's the kind of person who, in these kinds of situations where there are crowds of people who are going to be missing her and love her, and she knew what to do, she sang a farewell song on a night where we had a ceremony at Zen Center, she sang an old Japanese fishing song with gusto, and waited while Tenshin-san cried the tears he had to cry, and accepted her gift,

[20:07]

and actually wove the whole thing together with consciousness of who she was and who we were, and saying goodbye on Monday, when we arrived we pulled up, a lot of people came from Green Gulch, we pulled up and she was out on the front steps in front of Zen Center singing another farewell song with a kind of glee club of friends who were joining in, and then off to the airport and hugs to everyone, even strangers, and little words of farewell to each person, and she just worked the crowd, that sounds disrespectful, but she just didn't leave anyone out, she went from one person to the other until it was finally time to board the plane, and then she waved her bouquet, and waved it until the last possible, and then all you could see was her bouquet off to the airplane, and it was very thoroughly done, and nothing left.

[21:09]

So it's fitting that she would go in autumn, somehow it's it's leave taking in autumn seems right. She did have one farewell party from her tea friends that Fu told me about, the director of Green Gulch who is a tea student of Oksan's, and she went to her tea class with these women she's been practicing tea with, and having this tea and sweets for about over 25 years, and she was head guest, and they were all seated, and when the person offering tea came in with the tea bowl, they all burst into tears, knowing this was their last tea together. So in the tea room, as in any endeavor, anything you're actually putting full attention into,

[22:35]

you may find that that's all you need to do, you don't need anything other than fully doing what you're doing. And in Zen practice, to completely do what you need to do, to completely throw yourself into your activity with no traces is enough. If you're doing your Zen practice, there's a practice period going on here at Green Gulch that also just started, and if you find you're doing your Zen practice for approval or to be looked on as a real good student or a dutiful daughter or a good boy, you'll get very tired of it at a certain point and say, I'm not going to do this anymore. First of all, it's not so much fun, and that stuff gets stale. Doing something for approval gets stale after a time. So to do it just to do it for the pleasure actually of doing it, like a sport, is closer to the feeling of

[23:48]

Zen practice. And if someone should praise you in the middle of your doing it just to do it thoroughly, that can throw you off sometimes. Of course, in the tea room, if you're doing something and someone is praising the implements or the tea cakes and then you have to respond to that, you may forget what the next thing is because praise can throw you off. And there's Zen stories where the monk understands something and the Zen teacher gives a commendation. And one story, the monk puts his hands over his ears and kind of runs out of the room like, I don't want to hear it. It's enough to just completely understand. You don't have to add frosting to the cake. Ed Brown told an interesting story about these dogs who are trained to be sheep herding dogs, and they are excellent sheep herders and keep the sheep in line. But when their trainer or when

[24:55]

their master begins to praise them, they get all mixed up and dizzy and kind of let the sheep go running all over the place. So you get thrown off course. And either he or Rip said, because it's just a conversation we're having, that the best kind of praise that doesn't throw you off course is for someone to ask to work with you, to ask you to work with them, or for you to ask to work with somebody. That kind of praise is fully affirming and validating and confirming, and it doesn't throw you off. It's like, all right, let's do it. And praise comes from the root that means price, or price and precious and appreciate. But there can be a kind of hook maybe in praise sometimes. So you have to be careful if someone's flattering or praising unduly. But there is a kind of warm feeling that comes over you when you get praised.

[26:05]

I'm not saying never to praise. That would be taking it too far. Although there are some, you know, like the Little House on the Prairie books, Ma and Pa never praise Laura and Mary ever, no matter what they do, because they're afraid to spoil their children. So that's going too far. But just to know for your own self how praise can throw you off, and to look at whether are we, am I doing this so that someone will say, hey, you're great at that, or am I doing it to do it? You know, that story that I first was drawn to about the moon in the water, actually, there's more to that story I'm finding, excuse me, than I first thought. You know, I actually first thought that the water needed to be completely

[27:12]

smooth, that the effort was to make this water smooth, whatever that meant, you know, really calm and composed, and some idea of never getting flustered, and that was true understanding or something. But actually I feel like it's a wider, there's a, that's, it's too narrow right now for me, and for you, if you know it's good for you, no. And the, there's a poem that Dogen wrote, which, it's called Anzen Practice. Now let's see if I can recite it. I can't. The moon abiding in the midst of serene mind, billows, breaks in light, into

[28:12]

light. I'll do it again. The moon abiding in the midst of serene mind, billows, break into light. So, the moon shines down on both serene and calm, unwavy oceans, and it shines down on wavy, billowing, and breaking into myriads of droplets of water, and, and what? And what is that? Is that not Zen practice? This poem is called Anzen Practice. So to get stuck in, you know, serene, you know, perfectly round moons, reflected from perfectly round moons is, may not be wide enough, and I want to read this story. This is from a fascicle

[29:22]

called One Bright Pearl. So the pearl and the moon have been associated, they look alike, right? And in ancient times, the pearl is the oldest gem we have, the oldest known gem. The first ones gems were pearls, and they are the symbol of the moon. So there's a fascicle, fascicle is a funny word, but it means like a little essay, and that's my bookmark. This fascicle is called One Bright Pearl, and it, in it, it tells the story of a teacher named Gensha, and he was a fisherman, and fished, and just did that for years and years until he decided to practice Zen, and he went to Mount Seppo and met a master there and practiced with

[30:25]

him, and at a certain point he decided he was going to leave and go traveling and visit some other teachers, and when he was leaving he stubbed his toe on a rock really badly, and it began to bleed and was extremely painful, and then quite unexpectedly he had a sudden self-realization, and this is what he said, this body does not exist, he cried, where is the pain coming from? And after he said this he immediately returned to his master Seppo, and Seppo said, did you go on a pilgrimage just to cut your foot and have a hard time? And then Gensha said, please don't kid me, I just thought that was so great, please don't kid me, just look, don't give me any problems about this, this is important, you know, and Seppo was, Seppo liked the answer too, Seppo was greatly pleased with that answer and told him, what you have just said should be spoken by everyone, but they lack your

[31:30]

sincerity, which is quite a praise I think, why don't you continue your visit to other masters? And Gensha replied, Bodhidharma didn't come to China, and the second patriarch didn't go to India, and Seppo praised this answer. So this kind of honesty between them was wonderful. So Gensha is the one, his way of, when he explained Buddhist teachings, what he always said and only said was the entire universe is one bright pearl. And I wanted to say something about pearls before I read the second little part of the story. Pearls are, you know, there used to be natural pearls that would be found in oysters, and then since the 60s, mostly there's cultured pearls, you don't find natural pearls very much at all,

[32:36]

and the natural pearl was caused by the accidental insertion into a mollusk, into a mussel or an oyster, of some kind of irritant. Now I always used to think it was sand that got in there, but it's actually most usually a little worm, and also can be a little fish, a little, other different little things go in there, but a parasitic worm, and this is an irritant, and then the mollusk begins to cover around and around this irritant that then becomes the nucleus, it covers around with a substance called nacre, n-a-c-r-e, and this nacre, you know, spins around, around, that's the pearly substance that we know about, and in cultured pearls they put the irritant in, you know, the different sizes. So the pearl, the pearls are known, the most beautiful pearls are beautiful because of what they call luster,

[33:44]

and luster of a pearl is not just the surface shininess of a pearl, but it's the glow from within all these layers of nacre, so if a pearl is truly lustrous it seems to be glowing from within, and the glow is, it's not just a flat kind of white pearly color, it has to do with the contrast of dark within the light, there's a dark kind of nucleus core, and that contrast between the dark and the light is what makes pearls truly lustrous, the most lustrous have this contrast of dark within light. So, and the longer the irritant is in, the more nacre is spun around it, and in cultured pearls now they take them out a little bit too soon, and the nacre is kind of thin, it breaks off, or can't chip and peel, but I think of practice almost like this, where you kind of, you're inside

[34:54]

the oyster, in the oyster bed, you know, with some irritant, some kind of pain, and you just work on it, and that gets, that turns into a beautiful jewel that is the symbol of purity, the pearl. So, one bright pearl is what Gensho called the whole universe, he said the whole universe is one bright pearl, and he always would say that, so once a monk asked him, I've heard you teach that the entire universe is one bright pearl, how should we interpret that? Gensho told him, the entire universe is one bright pearl, what is there to interpret or understand? The following day, the master himself questioned the monk,

[35:54]

so he went back to the same guy and said, the entire universe is one bright pearl, what is your understanding of that? And the monk replied, the entire universe is one bright pearl, what is there to understand? And Gensho said, you now know that even in the black mountain cave of demons, complete freedom is working. The black mountain cave of demons is, the footnote says, the lowest state of unenlightenment. So here's this monk kind of repeating back what the teacher said, you know, well, he said it was this, so I'll say it back, see if that works, you know. And in some way, Gensho, you know, did it work or didn't it work? Was that was that suitable? Was that the full expression of the full moon expression of this monk? Just as, let's see if I can say this, I'll try.

[37:02]

Just as a pearl that doesn't have so much nacre on it, you know, maybe isn't quite as lustrous as the other ones, maybe has some flaws and bumps and stuff, even that pearl is, is the one bright pearl, is the universe. And so this monk who kind of gave, he gave his answer, you know, he gave it a try. And in essence, that too is a perfect, perfect reply, and is fully free and operating, even in, as he calls it, the cave, the black mountain cave of demons. So even if your pearl isn't in the oyster that long, what if it got taken out or there was pollution in the water and there's all sorts of troubles? Even that pearl, it's like the pearl

[38:08]

with the thick luster is really the beauty. But even the one with the thin nacre, that chips and all, is still one bright pearl. And that moon shines, mix it all together, the moon shines down all those pearls equally, right? And whether it's perfectly, perfectly reflected or whether it billows in light. That was the main point I wanted to tell you. I don't know if you got it. I don't know if it came across. So this is all to say that I hope everybody practices Zazen and sits still. The Dogen Zenji was sick right about this time of year, it was in the autumn when he died, and

[39:12]

he was very ill and went to kind of take care of, get some medicine and so forth. By the way, pearls, the man who invented cultured pearls in the big industry is a Japanese man, Mikimoto. And he, at 94, he said, I owe my good health and longevity to the fact that every day I eat two pearls and have since I've been 20 years old. So they're very high in calcium. Anyway, Dogen, he was very sick and went to get medicine and try to take care of it, get some medical help. Anyway, he wrote this poem a week before he died in autumn. In autumn, even though I may see it again, how can I sleep with the moon this evening?

[40:16]

In autumn, even though I may see it again, how can I sleep with the moon this evening? Thank you very much. Say or talk about. I did want to mention one thing that I forgot to say, which was that another place where we don't wear watches, this is one of the main things, is in the zendo. You're asked not to wear a watch in the zendo. And it's sort of like being in the ballroom where you can just forget about the time. And, you know, one of the admonitions for Zazen is to, you know, drop aside all cares about worldly matters in your business and this and that and just go in the zendo and sit.

[41:29]

So the wearing a watch, I think, is part of that. I forgot to say that. We also don't have any casinos in Las Vegas. Oh, that's interesting. That's what you can't tell if it's three o'clock in the morning or... That's right. Yeah, it's all the same. Even if it has a really nice black face like this. Right. Sorry. Even if it's got a pearl on it. Yes. Yeah, I saw your vision about when there is a disturbance that we work on this problem and we create this pearl. And I was trying to vision what is that we do when there is a disturbance and we stagger it away. We don't want to see it. We somehow...

[42:34]

It hurts us so much that we don't want to deal with it. And sometimes those problems could come from your childhood and they get in such a dark room way behind that we don't see it until something really bad happens. So I was trying to get a vision of what is that we do when we have that sort of disturbance and we don't work on it. We just... Yeah. Well, as you were talking, the image that came to me was a kind of cement room, sort of a cement compartment where it's blocked off in thick cement somewhere. But as we all know, cement can be broken by little plants. So it does, it's not... You can't actually cement it off necessarily forever. And also to use that cement and keep that room airtight and all, it takes an enormous amount of energy that gets siphoned off to keep it. So

[43:43]

that's the image I have of when we do that, what it looks like. Does that accord with... Yeah. It feels good. I was thinking that maybe that cavity that you say that leaks through the cement could be our dreams. Yeah, yeah. So maybe we have to pay attention to our dreams. I think that's... Because maybe that's the crack in the cement. I think our dreams also are actions of body, speech, and mind, things that seem to come from nowhere, some kind of out of left field, offhand comment you make to someone or feeling that comes over you or fear or all sorts of stuff that you can't get a sense of what it's all about is also, I think, the cracks. You can follow those. They're like clues. You can follow those back to... Working with dreams is a very powerful way to kind of get into the cement room, I think.

[44:54]

Thank you. Yes. Yes. Nervousness? Do you do public speaking? Do you do public speaking? Yes. Yes. Well, I've been lecturing since 1980, and I've given, I know, over 100 lectures in various places. And every time I have... I know this about people who are on the stage also who have to go out and perform. There's a kind of... What is it called? Stage fright? Is that what it is? Stage fright. And no matter how seasoned or professional someone is, some people have it every time. So now I just... So what it feels like is I can't eat, you know, and I shake and my mouth

[46:02]

is dry. All the regular things. What else? What? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Kind of draw a blank. But I know now that this is just my way of preparing. I see it as my way of fully preparing to present what I want to present. My body goes... Body and mind goes into this state, and it's very embarrassing. Or I'm not so embarrassed about it anymore. It used to be very embarrassing. Because in the city, you put on the little microphone, and they have it on right from the start. And then you start the chant, and your voice would be over the microphone going, me... Very shaky. Everybody can tell how nervous you are. But they don't turn it on now until after the chant. So I just trust it, actually, as this is the way that I prepare. And it looks like this, and there's nothing I can do about it. And it's okay with me.

[47:05]

You know, Suzuki Roshi had a nervous cough. Do you know this story? He lectured, and he would do this. And he said, I have a nervous cough. And I remember thinking, how can a Zen master have a nervous cough? It doesn't make sense. But actually, that's like thinking the pearl has to be flawless. And actually, our life isn't like that. And I think there's a tendency to get off into wanting everything to be really perfect and full self-confidence, no nervousness. But the actual perfection is who you are. And if that means you have a nervous cough, or then that's who you are. And there's something very calming, actually, about settling into your own whatever it is, nervousness, or it has its own stability, almost.

[48:05]

Don't you have thoughts? Let's say, I shouldn't feel like that. But I used to a lot. It's like, you shouldn't be speaking, they shouldn't ask you to talk because you're not ready, this proves it, and all that stuff, you know, very self-denigrating and self-critical, really strong. And yet, what's happening, Walter? Fine. So I'm kind of, I don't, I think that comes up, and I kind of, those kinds of thoughts will kind of go through, but I don't pay much attention. It's sort of like, oh, yeah, says who or something, you know, and just kind of continue. But the shaking, I don't, did you see my hands? They're shaking a little, you know, trying to get the mudra, and the thumbs kind of. Wasn't that bad? You didn't see that? Um, could you start speaking right before? Go ahead.

[49:10]

Oh, well, what I think about when I read something, I always think about what I read many years ago about the Buddha, the quote from Shakyamuni Buddha, that if a man or a woman follows his teaching and has faith in who he says he was, enlightened, the Buddha, fully awakened, being fully perfected, and keeps the five precepts, that they'll have a good rebirth. And I always think of that, the reason I think of that is, it seems like most religions don't talk about enlightenment very much. But the Buddhist teaching really emphasizes that. But I was talking to a Christian many years ago, and he was saying, he studied the Bible, where are these two paths, the path of salvation through merit, and the path of salvation through awakening. But he said, in the Bible, it's kind of all mixed up. And anyway, the reason I asked that was, I think that that's an important issue in terms of what's actually happening. So could you say something about that? How do you

[50:17]

how do you do you think about that? Or how do you relate to that? I'm not sure I understood your question, Pascal. I'm not so familiar with the Bible. So I don't know about the Christian path, those two paths. And, you know, I don't know what you're asking exactly. What I think about rebirth, or... Like Dogen says, enlightenment is practice, you know. So we have this, you know, like, this is a really evolved tradition. It's very highly evolved. So there's so much happening, even though we're not doing much, but there's so much. I guess what I'm asking is, like, how is the power of the transmission from Shakyamuni Buddha to Dogen, through Japan, to here, and to our actual practice? Like, why should I come here? Why should anybody come here? Besides, it's a great place. I mean, I could go to the beach, but what's the religious significance? I guess that's what I'm kind of thinking.

[51:18]

Is there dispensation in terms of just our attending, like, good merit, like a lot of religions talk about good merit? Or is there, like... So I guess what I'm saying is, like, what about the effort to practice, to become enlightened? That's what I'm saying. I'm actually thinking about that. I'm not trying to give you a hard time. Yeah, okay. I don't have much of an answer besides, um, I hope people come here because they find it speaks to their life, you know? Whether it's a great place or not a great place, that it somehow touches what needs to be touched, and nobody knows exactly how that happens, or why, or wherefore, but you know. If it's touched, you know. And so you keep coming back. So... There was a question right behind you.

[52:19]

I was just going to add to the discussion on fear. I like the advice that I read recently from Tom. He said that when you have that fear, you should just greet it. You should say, hello, fear. There you are again. It's good to see you come around here. Just sort of recognize your fear in that way, and your fear will be a lot less scary, I guess. I think that's true. Yeah. Laura? Um, at the beginning of your talk, you mentioned the moon shining on the calm water, and that that had been an ideal of yours, or a notion that appealed to you, and that later your view of that broadened to include the turbulent water, the difficulties, and so on. And when this gentleman was talking about the darker places, and you were saying the zendo is a place to... You can go in there and forget all about your worries and cares, and just put those things aside and sit. So I noticed that when I'm having a difficult time,

[53:23]

or when there's something really deeply troubling me, when I go in to sit, it's very hard for me to leave that outside. So when you talk about working with the difficulty, I don't think you mean going into the zendo and thinking about it, but I do find myself thinking about a difficulty when I sit. And so could you say something about what you mean by working with the difficulty, or including the troubled waters in the pearl? I think that's true. If you do have some trouble that's going on, deep kind of trouble, you can't leave it with your shoes and step in. You can't do it. I think the dropping aside worldly affairs is sort of like going through your schedule, planning your wedding, and that kind of thing. I have a

[54:32]

bride's place we're going to wear, and food, and that kind of thing, you leave outside with your shoes. But some of these other kinds of difficulties, they can't be dropped. They have a hold of you. Plus also when you sit, some troubles that you didn't even know you had will come through the cement, come right through the cement and right into your living room there, unbidden. So you have those that bubble up as well. So the question of how you work with those, is that the question, how you work with those, the difficulties? Well, I think the main thing is to not try to get rid of them, not try to push them away. And part of that is I should be like the calm waters. Why am I? I'm a terrible Zen student.

[55:32]

I've been practicing all these years, and it's not smooth water here. So then you add to the basic difficulty of whatever is going on in one's life, a kind of added layer of self-criticism and self-flagellation, or whatever you want to say of how terrible you are, because you can't let go of this difficulty. So that whole layer of suffering, that kind of secondary suffering, is really not necessary. The suffering of our lives, loss of our loved ones and sickness, and all the things that we are subject to as human beings, which we cannot get out of, which we can't get rid of, it comes with birth, all those things. To not push them away is the main practice, to actually stay close.

[56:35]

I don't feel that's a stagnant thing, what I just said. Actually, by staying close, you see what needs to be done, or where you can help, or who might be able to help you, by staying with it. But if the effort is to either, I shouldn't be feeling this way because I'm more mature than that, or something like that, or I don't want to think about these, and forcing yourself to think of other things, or divert your attention by various means, then it just compounds. So when we're doing meditation, we're concentrating on our breathing, and sometimes I get messages through the lectures that we're giving ourselves a break from all these problems, just by concentrating inside of us. Sometimes I get the message that if a problem comes in, in your meditation, you can focus on that.

[57:42]

Would that mean that if something goes through this crack, and during the course of our meditation, here we are, concentrating on our breathing, and it comes in there, it would be a good idea to just focus on that, and try to see ramifications and understanding, and that way we're working in that problem? I wouldn't say necessarily to do that in zazen, but to note, to note it, and to do that kind of thing later, about analyzing it, looking at it. If it comes in during zazen, it's like, uh-huh, you know, I really do feel horrible about whatever. But to get off on that, and then you can get lost in that. So that's not necessary. The working on it is to acknowledge it, actually, to know it, to know that that happened, rather than... See, we can do a really fast two-step to get away from unpleasant thoughts.

[58:46]

For years, I had involuntary movement in zazen, where I did a kind of... I won't show you what I did, but anyway, I did a kind of big, wild, back-and-forth movement that I couldn't stop. Some people can attest to it. Yes, were you there? And the bell would ring after a period of 40 minutes of this kind of thing, and I wouldn't think about the rest of the day. Dee-dee-dee-dee, doing my job, da-da-da. Then I'd go back into the zendo, and start this kind of thing again. So there was a real... It's like what was going on in zazen, and the rest of my life, was very compartmentalized, another way of compartmentalizing. So what comes up in zazen, you needn't sort of work on it in that way there, but to know... Actually, some people, because a lot of stuff was coming up, would jot down, had a little notebook. Now, I think you

[59:52]

should talk with somebody before you bring a notebook into the zendo, but there'd be big things bubbling up, and it would be so distracting and upsetting that they'd want to work on it in zazen, but they just made a note of it. Some of you who sit at home may want to do that, if that's happening to you, some kind of bubbling up of a lot of stuff. And then later, you can really take a look at what's going on. There was somebody over here. There was a game a few years ago that had one of the clues in the game was twist and turn those passages, start and twist and turn those passages. I sometimes find that I'm in there before I know it, and then to get in touch with the calmness or whatever it takes to come out of that, it's like I have to be aware of it when I'm in there, and that's the thing I'd like to have that bell or something, you know, bring me back. And I find my mind enjoys it, I think.

[60:54]

You know, it likes, it seems to like pursuing it. The twisty turny? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Well, it's very captivating, you know. What did you say about the calmness? Well, sometimes it seems like it's a high speed, you know. Yeah. I don't, at a point it gets non-enjoyable, you know, even the mind doesn't wait. Well, the calm, the calm doesn't come from saying I must be calm in here, you know. The calm comes from knowing exactly where you are, and just like the nervousness, I am completely nervous right now. Boy, am I nervous. Then you're right home, you know, and you know where you are, and when you know that, there's a calmness which comes out of that. It's like the pearl, the luster of it is from the inner, the inner layers, you know.

[61:58]

It's not a shiny surface thing. So, you know, when you were describing these twisty turnies, I was picturing those pasta noodles that are all, um, picturing those guys. Does this happen in Zazen, what you're describing, or is it? Well, I've never, uh, I've only, I've never gotten very far into it because of this, you know. Into Zazen, you've never, uh-huh. Because it's more comfortable for me. And while I'm saying it should always be comfortable, Zazen? Yeah. Oh, no. When I first got to Zen Center, I asked someone, oh, I heard two things. One, somebody said, I feel the greatest in my life when I'm sitting Zazen. I, that's when I feel the best. And somebody else said, I feel the worst in my life when I'm sitting Zazen. It was like, I thought, which way, what's a woman to do, you know? I actually thought, this is, how could this be?

[63:02]

But actually, I think that's true. Zazen is so wide, you know, it's, it can't be, you can't say Zazen is one thing or another. I mean, yes, it's called the comfortable practice. I think that's, uh, this posture is called the comfortable practice. And I think in some ways, cross-legged posture, which holds your back up and keeps your spine elongated and allows your belly to have a full breath. And, and you can sit this way for hours and hours because your vertebrae are stacked and all that. Yes, it is the comfortable posture, but Zazen has the full range of human experience from ecstasy to in a hell realm. All can happen within Zazen. So you, you don't have to have any preconceived ideas of how it's supposed to be. You just pick a practice like counting your breath and you do that with full body and mind. And then, then when the twisty turny, then you know, oh, I'm going down the twisty turny row

[64:07]

back to number one, you know, back to my breath and posture, posture and breath, posture first, breath. Uh, then you see very clearly when you're going down, when you're back, when you're drawn off again, when you went down a whole bunch of passages and then it's like, oh, where am I? Number one. So don't, I think it's, I do feel like there's a tendency for me to, to get caught in that it's supposed to be this a certain way. And if it isn't, I'm probably doing it wrong. I might as well forget it. Okay. Let's see. Go ahead. Um, that just reminded me of a sense that I've had that, um, not so much in Zazen, but just in my life. And when I allow myself to go into the twisty turny paths, part of the, part of what feels liberating and freeing eventually is the sense that I can bring myself out of them,

[65:11]

that I can go deeply into them and also know that I can come out the other side. And that that is really essentially how I go through that process. And there's something, as you described this process of sitting and, and letting yourself be with whatever comes up and then bringing yourself back. That feels like a real mastery to me. And that feels like it would make sense. It's interesting how you say mastery, because that happens like billions of times during Zazen, that same thing. It's almost, could be almost moment by moment. And, and that Zazen, you know, it's not like you're doing it wrong. You know, that is the process. When you said that's how you grow, I had this image of, you know, when little kids are learning to walk and they fall, they fall a lot, they fall on their knees,

[66:13]

that impact actually helps the bones grow. The, it's actually necessary, that falling, that impact to, um, help develop. That's incredible. Yeah. Um, yeah, I have a couple of things that I'd like for you to talk about. One of them is about wanting this whole thing with, I want, I want, I want, and people always wanting. And, uh, obviously two people are together and, uh, they're very independent. You know, they have their own set of ways of, and obviously I figured out that, uh, two people are the type of people that are wanting people, uh, you know, I mean what they want, obviously they're not going to work out. But, uh, I, I figure, uh, if you let another person have what they want to a certain point to where if I give up my wanting, because I know that's

[67:16]

being in self, uh, my being indifferent, uh, by not stating what I want, if I say, well, whatever you want, that's fine. And, uh, um, I mean, that was kind of confusing too. And then I, I, I started thinking, well, uh, why should that person always get what they want? Was waiting for that. Yeah. And eventually it's like this person thinks, well, you know, I don't really care because one way or another I'm indifferent, you know? And so this is kind of a vicious cycle there with that whole scene. And then another thing that I'd like to talk about is that, um, um, she says, well, you're just too intense. You're just too analytical. You're just

[68:17]

too, you know, and I've gotten to the point to where I don't want to beat around. I mean, we come here, I come here to get a direct experience. I won't say knowledge, but direct experience of what my life is and what it's all about. And I don't want to beat around the bush anymore. So should I, do I need to be more superficial? Let me see if I can restate the first thing. Um, did everybody hear what he said? So you have two people who have desires, right? About various things and they, um, you know, it's back and forth who, who wants this, who's the strongest, who's more aggressive in their desires. And sometimes you give up, sometimes you say, no, I want it. Anyway, it's that, but it sounded like you took the tack of whatever you want, whatever you want to,

[69:19]

to save yourself from disagreement, maybe you're fighting about it or, oh, fighting a Sisyphus battle, pushing the boulder up the end. Yeah. Does that sound familiar? Yeah. So, you know, desires, one of the, the four Bodhisattva vows is desires are inexhaustible. I vow to put an end to them. You know how we chant that? So it's a very useful thing to remember and to memorize because, you know, you're looking through a catalog right before bed, you know, L.L. Bean. Gee, that would, that really looks great. Oh, I think I do need turtlenecks. I'll get about four. Let's see, what are the colors? It's just, it's just produce. You just produce desires for whatever you see. If it's, if you throw the catalog away, you wouldn't think about it again. You know, that's usually what happens if

[70:20]

you don't get on the phone. And in the mall or at the grocery store, have you ever gone to the grocery store without a plan? Whatever it is, desires are inexhaustible in every aspect. That's the human condition. Desires are inexhaustible. I vow to put an end to them. What's putting an end to them? Knowing very thoroughly that you desire one thing or another. Not necessarily getting that thing. The getting the thing or not doesn't put an end to the desire. The desire will just come up again. Just knowing that you want it to be a certain way, really bad, or want a certain thing. That is the putting an end to the desire. So if you're interested in putting an end to desire, because it does cause an enormous, you know, this, in the 12 links of causation, one of them is craving, ignorance, karmic formations, consciousness, name and form,

[71:27]

sixth sense feel, contact feeling, craving. After feeling comes craving, and right after craving comes grasping. But right in between craving and grasping, you can crave as much as you want, but you don't have to grasp. You really don't have to call the 800 number and order. Whatever. So craving is, it's this thirst that we have for lots of stuff, new experiences and tangible stuff, and not to have pain, but the grasping is the, so right in there, you know, is the kind of, there's a breath right in there between grasping and craving. Between craving and grasping. So with a relationship, you know, they're so complicated, so complicated, I don't know what relationship you're talking about, but if you're linked, you know, this is the image, if we're talking about images of a beautiful relationship,

[72:31]

you know, the two people come together and they make, you know, they're, they bow together, this is their life, and they both stand and can do things on their own, and they come together, this is what they make. That's a wonderful image, sort of rather than one of these, you know, it can, you know, you're hooked and you're caught and it's fraught. So, you know, these can be untangled, you know, and then be like that, they really can, it takes a lot of work, or you may feel it can't be untangled, we're too, we're just, it's not going to work and, and you decide not to stay together or something. But anyway, as you said, to always be the one to do anything, the dishes, or giving up what you want, or taking the garbage out, or doing the kids, or whatever it is, if it's always you at a certain point, you begin to resent it and feel trod upon, and there's all that stuff that comes up. So,

[73:37]

so it's, it's a flowing thing between two people, you know, sometimes it doesn't matter so much, other times you really feel strong. I mean, well, there's no formula, there's no formula, so if you're in a formulaic kind of always giving over, pretty soon you're going to begin to resent it, you know, because it's not, it's not really what's working. What about trying to be direct with everybody as opposed to being, yeah. Well, I don't know, this thing about analytical, you're too analytical and you're too, what was the other thing? Intense. Intense. I don't think the, the antidote to analyticalness and intenseness is superficiality, you know, to try and be more superficial. It's like somebody once said to me, they didn't say to me, but they said it's someone who was about to give a dharma talk, they had heard this person before and they said, as they went in and tell Sara, they said, couldn't you make your talk a little more deep? And the person giving the talk was, you know, well, she was very, she was sort of mortified,

[74:46]

you know, but, you know, you make your talk, you do the best you can. If someone feels it was a deep talk and really hit them, other people thought that was very superficial. You do, you express to the best of your ability and if someone says it's one thing or another, I don't know, you can't. It's their understanding. It's their understanding. I think for you, if you feel caught in a particular mode all the time, then you have to find out what, how you can express your full body, you know. It might be, you might explore different ways because you want to, not because somebody else says you're too such and such. I have a question. If your experience is craving right now, what practice can you recommend to keep you from grasping? Keep you from grasping is to know your craving. So, like right now, some of you are dying to

[75:50]

get out of this room. It's hot, you've heard enough, you've been practicing all morning and it's time to go, right? So, to know that and decide that's right or that works or, but you might say, no, it'll be rude to leave in the middle, I'll wait. You know, it's to know what it is that you're about right now is, I mean, I'm not saying that you never grasp. I mean, you have to have a sympathy on occasion. You know, I mean, our life is a series of, but actually this is, let me see if I can say this. Grasping things, this is from a poem, grasping things is basically delusion, okay? So, this has to do with the objects out here, like this cup, my taking up this cup is no grasping and no drinking of tea. This is,

[76:52]

because why? Because the teaching is that the objects, there are no objects out there outside of the moon mind, the full moon mind, okay? And the moonlight, this is the moonlight from the moon, this full moon mind, this moonlight shines out there on all these, what we seem to see as things out there, but those things are, you know how it is when it's a moonlit night and everything's all shimmery and pretty and covers everything, those, what we think of as things out there is the moonlight, is your own light. So, grasping things is basically delusion, means you can't actually grasp anything outside yourself. This is, this is one of the main, ahem, main teachings. The main teaching is that there is no outside yourself. And so, and so we can do things like have a cup of tea and a conversation,

[77:59]

but you don't have to get it and get it in your pocket and take it home. There is no, there is no, that's where the precepts of, precepts come from seeing, like the taking what is not giving, that there is no stealing actually. And if you know that, then you don't steal, you know, you can't actually get anything. Anyway, so moonlight illuminates all, your own moonlight as the full moon mind illuminates these objects that are actually not objects outside of you. They are the moonlight, your own moonlight. So the admonition, and some people are working on this from a class, is to turn the light back and look at the mind that thinks in this way. Turn the light back and look at this mind. Turn your own, this is the moonlight shining back. So the moon and the moonlight, it's all, um, this is a, this is an instruction, a Zen instruction to turn that light back. So grasping and craving,

[79:07]

grasping things is basically delusion. Um, I, I want to go back to the, the unruffled surface of the water. Yes. It's actually another kind of craving. To have unruffled? Yeah. Yeah, it is. And it's, uh, it's, uh, it's an aspiration that makes enormous sense to us. But it's also quickly becomes a standard by which we assess our progress towards something that we feel will relieve us from the burden of being human. And, uh, and we begin to say, as I said to myself coming across the bridge today, I got angry at somebody who cut me off and I, you know, I wanted to avenge myself. For about four minutes I drove along, you know, full of, um, plans for, um, passing this person and pulling on them anyway.

[80:10]

And then I said to myself, and, and, and you're on your way to Greenville. Why don't you just go home and watch the football game? You're kind of a stupid person. You don't, you don't get it. So I think the standard of this, this, when, when aspiration becomes the dimension, the other dimension shows up, the benchmark by which you have fallen short of perfect wisdom. You begin to be angry at yourself and attach to the feeling that you resist. So I had the feeling that you had, that you were describing in sitting sunset this morning. I thought the anger came back and I thought, it's a, it makes as much sense for me to resist this as to resist being Hungarian. It's there. The anger for the guy cutting you off. I didn't put it there. I know where it comes from. Um, it's not my fault, um, et cetera. And I think that's a very blissful condition to be in. Provided you understand, you know, you don't, you're not, you're not doing anything.

[81:17]

You know, you're not, I'm not in control of all this. I'm not, uh, I think I have to relinquish the notion that I can, if I do the right thing often enough as severely enough as I can, which I think is, that's a trap. Thank you. That was very nicely put. Very nicely put. I, you know, I, I know a number of people who've stopped sitting and they, the thought of going into the Zendo kind of, they begin to be kind of nauseous. The reason is that for years and years they went in there to be perfect, you know, to be, but perfect meaning this kind of unruffled, uh, not perfect in the sense of whole, you know,

[82:24]

their light and dark sides, the dark within the pearl that makes it lustrous, you know, the dark and light. It was to be one-sided and, and that's, that's a, an actual vengeful action against yourself to, to do that to yourself. And I, it's a shame, I think, that, you know, someone doesn't say something. That's where it's very helpful to have good Dharma friends who say, you are getting off, you know, and you can almost smell it, you know, you can almost tell when someone's really got this perfect Little Miss Bodhisattva. Actually, that was something somebody called me once, Little Miss Bodhisattva. And I got it, actually, when they said it, I thank, um, thank everybody that this person did say that, because it was like,

[83:25]

I saw what she meant, Little Miss Bodhisattva, and I was caught in that completely, being, you know, having the best gassho, the best, fingers together and no air. Now, I gassho, I mean, I may, it may look the same, but I know the, the difference, you know, of doing it for approval, doing it to be the shining one, you know, and it's, um, it will, it will send your practice down some other way. Now, I say that, and then I step back and say, even that, you know, if, even that trying and going the wrong way and getting lost in the maze is your practice, you know, is your attempt and your, so it's not like you're a horrible person or something, but you may need some help, you know, getting the ox to kind of stay, stay in the front yard.

[84:28]

Um, yeah, I've sort of forgotten what I was going to say, but it started, I think I was, what I was trying to say was that it's hard for me to speak to, um, whether it's one person or not, because every time, to me, when you speak, it's a risk, because someone will totally misinterpret your intention, they will totally misinterpret the literal from the story aspect or the second meaning, or they will read into it a meaning that you never intended, or, and so it's, it truly is always a risk, whether you're speaking to one or five hundred, and at times in my life when I have spoken to many people, I would have afterwards 25 different understandings of what I said, and none of them were what I meant, and, and so it's always a risk to speak, and, um,

[85:37]

and also you're going to, you might offend someone. I, I offend people a lot, and, and that, um, actually I sort of stopped caring too much, which is not polite, I mean, it's like not Emily Post, and what he was saying about the deep water, uh, I've always been afraid to get in that deep water, because then you're caught in this, it's not a cage like Red was talking about, you're caught in this mass of humanity that truly is not going to understand this little drop of water, or care much, and I think that in a way that's why we escape into poetry, and words, I think that's why we do, because we don't want to be in that

[86:39]

mass, and you don't know when they'll all turn on you, as has happened historically over and over, and so I don't know why I didn't want to talk about this, but what I was going to ask, what I started first to say a long time ago was to ask, this man talked about the two ways of carrying water and chopping wood at an enlightenment, it, it, it reminded me of the, the Christian Mary and Martha, Martha served Christ by doing, and Mary simply by her presence, by her loving, and it seems to me that there's a, it's not the same, because it's, but it is the same, it's carrying water and, and doing, but in Buddhism you have to do both, you have to be enlightened when you carry the water, and chop wood, and so whether you're

[87:45]

sitting sasen, or whether you're walking around in the world, it would seem to me that it's just a minute by minute ritual of it. Every day, like, remember when he crossed the bridge, you know, you just constantly, every day, like, remember when he crossed the bridge, you know, you just constantly,

[88:06]

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