Good morning. Yesterday someone said they hoped it would rain today because it's very compatible with a one-day sitting to sit inside while the rain is going on outside. And when it's a beautiful day, sometimes we feel, gee, what am I doing all cooped up in here and you feel, one might feel drawn to go out, take a walk and go down to the beach and it may set up a kind of, oh, maybe this was a mistake, I shouldn't have signed up for this one, I should have waited until February or something. So I can't tell what it's going to do, it started out pretty beautiful and it's fogging

[01:05]

up so we might get some rain. Anyway, this, you know, for a one-day sitting I always feel like I would like to talk more briefly because I feel people sign up and really want to sit mostly for the day and it's a short day, we stop at six, we don't have evening sittings, and with breaks and tea and meals, it may not seem like very much sitting, so I always like a briefer talk personally on a one-day sitting day. But I also know Dharma Talk can be encouraging and it's always encouraging to me to hear Dharma Talks, including my own, if they can encourage me to.

[02:05]

So I think what's on my mind is old age, sickness and death, partially this is an ongoing theme that's always on my mind, but in particular now with our good friend Jerry Fuller being so sick out at Green Gulch, and also the fact that my dad recently had a stroke and I have been back visiting and spending a lot of time in the hospital. So this theme is particularly up for me. I flew to Chicago and I had to stop down in St. Paul, Minneapolis and change planes and that's where I come from, St. Paul, and I saw as we flew into the airport, we went over

[03:12]

the Mississippi River and it was partially frozen, it wasn't all completely thawed, so there were sections with ice and other sections that were flowing and probably underneath it's all flowing. And I just being, just having this visual, this visual object engendered all sorts of sort of emotional responses. And walking around the airport, listening to those Minnesotan accents was quite enjoyable and it reminded me of Katagiri Roshi and visiting with him in Minneapolis, which I think in

[04:12]

my visits back there I would often try and visit with him. So I took the opportunity to study from his book, Return to Silence, and I happened to open it to a page wherein he was speaking about the three kinds of thirsting desire. So, one of the Four Noble Truths, the first of the Four Noble Truths is that, well we often say life is suffering, but that's not quite exactly accurate, it's the five grasping skandhas are suffering. But the basic truth that there is suffering in our lives, this is a holy truth, these

[05:14]

are the Four Noble Truths or holy truths, and so it's something that can't be gotten away from, the suffering in our lives. And it comes in various forms, the physical suffering of old age, sickness and death, the emotional suffering, mostly by being forced to be with people you don't love and being separated from those that you do love. And then the third is a radical suffering, which is a deep suffering from understanding that transiency, impermanence. So, the thirsting, this thirsting and craving desire comes also in threes, the three kinds

[06:15]

of thirsting desire, which are based on ignorance, and the first one is the thirsting desire of continuously wanting to please ourselves. I found that very, spoke to me very strongly, the kind of unending relentless pursuit of pleasure, you know, and in a one day sitting where we're asked to sit still and not read and not chat or talk unless it's work related, we may not like that, you know, one may be irritated by that, or even sitting still, one may feel like you want to start fidgeting

[07:15]

or moving, not necessarily, or it might be out of pain or discomfort, but if you sit still long enough there will be some discomfort, so not liking that, and then wanting over and over to find some way to please ourselves, this continuous thing. I remember once when I first began practicing, Zen Tatsu Baker said to try as a practice to go out, like go downtown San Francisco or around with no money in your pocket, just go out and see what that feels like, which I tried, and it's very interesting, you know, to find yourself, oh gee, I'd like to stop in for a cup of coffee, or get a little piece of cake over at this bakery, or do this, do that, just, and not being able to kind of, as a practice, putting yourself in a situation where you can't necessarily satisfy these

[08:17]

desires, to see, to work with it in a different way, so the thirsting desire pulls you towards wanting to satisfy the desire over and over again, over and over again, and desires are inexhaustible, you know, so it's never ending, and yet we keep, and I keep, getting fooled into thinking, oh, that's going to, that'll be nice, that'll make me feel better, or something, very brief, it's often, you know, momentary, so it tends to drain us and pull us away from looking at the thirsting desire itself, it pulls us into wanting to satisfy the desire, and getting involved in the means to satisfy it, rather than turning and looking at this

[09:19]

unending thirsting desire which comes up over and over, the one out of the three, the first one of continuously trying to please ourselves. So today, bearing this in mind, I'd like to ask us all to look at this particular aspect of thirsting desire, the first kind, and see where it comes up for you, and I think in one day sitting there's not, it's not easy to necessarily fulfill these desires for a piece of chocolate cake or something, so you have a chance to look at the thirsting desire rather than going after the desire itself.

[10:19]

So you can watch it arise, and kind of have its day, and then when does it fade away, you know, conditions change, and the desire also fades away too, it's not this lasting thing that's going to last forever and ever, it has a beginning, a middle, and an end, and a kind of duration, and then it goes too, so you get a chance to see that. The second thirsting desire is the thirsting desire for continuing our life, to not end, to have our life continue on, and that is based on fear, and Kadagiri Roshi, I think, wrote this book when he was sick, he had cancer, very painful kind of cancer at the end of

[11:23]

his life, and he, you know, is wrestling with this fear about death, and feeling that Zazen practice is a help, and yet at a certain point he says, screaming for help from Zazen or Buddha or Avalokiteshvara, somebody, who's going to help me, you know, actually that coming up too, even though after years and years of practice there was a great understanding and settling still at the bottom, feeling this fear arising and knowing, you know, that it is based on this thirsting desire for our life to continue on. So you know, my understanding from visiting with Jerry and hearing people talk about how

[12:40]

he's facing this difficult illness is very inspiring. As he said, after 27 years of Zazen, you know, he's facing this with calm and a settledness, it's very inspiring to be with him. The third kind of thirsting desire is a desire for power and prosperity, and this also has to do with this to continue on after you die, that your name will be remembered and people won't forget you, and you know, I think this is a very deep fantasy about what are people going to say at my funeral, what you'll achieve, wouldn't it be great if you could be there? And it reminded me of Tom Sawyer, the book Tom Sawyer, where they enact that Tom Sawyer

[13:47]

and Joe Harper and Huck Finn, just to remind you, run away to do camp, not exactly camping, sort of pirating on an island, and the townsfolk and their parents and families think they've drowned, which is how they meant it to seem, and they're having a grand old time swimming and catching fish on this island, and then they realize Tom actually sneaks into town because he actually feels bad for his Aunt Polly, because she's so sad, and he's just about to tell her that we're okay, but he hears that their funeral's going to be on Sunday and he just can't bear giving up this idea of them hiding in the choir and listening to their own funeral, which is what they do, they go up there and they listen to it, and everybody says, and everyone's crying, and they're crying, it's just so sad, and then

[14:48]

they end up marching down the church, you know, they come up from down the aisle, you know, and everybody just loves them up in a million pieces, and oh, it was such a victory, you know. This is really a fantasy that must be very deep, and it's related to this thirsting to desire for, you know, continuation of one's power and prosperity and good things, you know, they don't fall away, they last. So these are all in the realm of thirsting desire. Now, human beings live in the desire realm, we live in the Kamaloka, there's three realms, there's the desire realm, the form realm, rupa, and arupya, the formless realm, and where human beings have their life is in this desire realm, this is where we live. So this thirsting desire

[15:53]

and this suffering, this is a given, this is part of the scenery of our lives. So how do we transform it, because we can't get rid of it, it's just getting yourself to think that desires are not going, that they're exhaustible, that they're going to stop and you're going to be sitting here in the human realm, the Kamaloka, without desires. This is a fable. So how do we take this desire that we have and turn it towards the benefit of others is a trick, you might say. So this, our work is cut out for us, so to be able to turn and look at the thirsting desire rather than trying to, I keep getting caught on this word here, to fulfill it, I guess, fulfill the desire or

[17:01]

go after the object that looks like it will fulfill the desire, to drop that activity and look at this thirsting desire and transform it. So for example, in taking care of someone who's sick, let's say, one has this like for me, for example, going to the hospital to see my dad is not fun, it's not a lot of fun, although maybe some people do find it fun, but for me, just the kind of person I am, there's a lot of unpleasant visibles, unpleasant audibles, unpleasant smellables, there's a lot of unpleasant objects of sensation and also unpleasant

[18:04]

mind objects too, you know, what's going to happen and fears. So, and along with that is this wanting to be with someone and not abandon someone, so you, one enters that situation, even with all the unpleasant audibles and smellables and so forth, and through your desire, really, to not abandon beings and be with this person and express your love, you move into that realm of the hospital room or the sick room, and not kidding yourself that, this is for me anyway, I can't kid myself that, sorry, is it off? It's okay? Can you hear me? I can't kid myself that I like it,

[19:25]

you know, but there is a desire actually in there that has to be acknowledged, which is to be with this person, and so this is a desire too, but it's turned towards a practice and not abandoning beings. You know, there's this marvelous, these marvelous healthcare workers in the hospital that you come upon who are cheerful, they know their stuff, they know how to do this medical event, and this is what they do all day, this is their workplace, you know, and I was so inspired by these people. Kind of, I think the cheerful, just the cheerful everydayness of their work

[20:27]

was very helpful for me. So this to me is a transformation of desire. Now, if you go overboard in that, like, I'm going to come in there and make it all better, make it right, and help this person through it, and you know, then it can be turned back into more of the thirsting desire for power and prosperity, for continuing your own self and your own importance, you know, and the first one of continuously seeking pleasure. So it's really negotiating a fine line, this desire from thirsting desire transmuting it, and then when have you gone too far, and it's back to thirsting desire. So I think there's

[21:29]

there is a, this is not a, it's not necessarily a lot of signposts, you may fall off the edge of this negotiating road here. And an example that Kadagiri Roshi gave was planting trees, where you take this desire for all three, you know, pleasure, not dying, and power and prosperity, and you take all those and do something like plant trees, which is transforming this for the benefit of others. So there's many ways to use this holy truth of this kind of thirsting desire and suffering and transform it.

[22:34]

So the other thing I wanted to talk about was this phenomena that I experienced of, I guess it's what I'm attributed to is the two truths, which is a teaching that we've been exposed to in the last couple months. The two truths are, the first truth is the conventional truth of objects and things and the world and all phenomena, which is conventionally agreed upon. We agree to call this as avatam, someone else may call this something else, but we're calling it as avatam, that's something we agree on. And our world is like that, it's an agreed upon world, but we forget that, we forget that we call one thing food that somebody else may not call food, someone else may call this a holy substance not to be eaten. So we have these agreed upon conventions,

[23:54]

which change according to culture. There's the truth of that, that's the conventional truth, and then there's the ultimate truth, and there's only one ultimate truth, which is the emptiness or the lack of inherent existence of things. So you have the conventional truth and the ultimate truth, and everything is conventional truth except one thing, which is emptiness. Now the kind of thing I've been working with is the fact that these two truths are occasioned, I guess, or come forth in the same entity. So it's not that the ultimate truth is kind of stored somewhere else and the conventional truth is all we have, you've got to get to the ultimate truth, but the conventional truth itself, the emptiness of the conventional

[25:00]

truth is its ultimate truth. So they occur in the same entity. So this little packet here is conventionally an envelope, we call this an envelope of some kind with a snap, that's its conventional truth, and the emptiness of it is its ultimate truth. So they both occur in the same phenomena, both the conventional and the ultimate come up in the same entity. And they're the same in the same way that two horns of a bull are different. The way two horns of a bull are different, one comes over here and one comes over here, but they're kind of connected and they're both on the bull's head, but they're different. In that same way that they're different, the conventional and the ultimate are the same. Did you follow that?

[26:04]

In the same way that bull's horns are different, nominally different, but they come from the same entity. So the conventional and the ultimate are like that, they are within the same entity. So somehow this particular truth of the two truths has been kind of leaping up at me, and we chant a chant called the Song of the Jeweled Mirror Samadhi, and it starts out, the teaching of thusness has been intimately communicated between Buddhas and ancestors. Now you have it, so keep it well. Filling a silver bowl with snow, hiding a heron in the moonlight, when you array them, they're not the same. When you mix them, you know where they are. And that's the two truths right in there, which is the teaching of thusness, that

[27:12]

this is the way, this is our world, I guess you could say, that it has this conventional and ultimate that are like snow in a silver bowl. They're completely kind of in one entity, and yet there's snow and there's silver bowl. When you array them, they're not exactly the same, but when you mix them, snow in a silver bowl, you know where you are. So for me, why this has come home to me or why I keep seeing it or why I want to talk about it is, you know, there's a quote that when Dogen, I think, came back, I think it's Dogen, when he

[28:16]

came back from China and he was asked what he learned, he said, eyes horizontal and nose vertical. And I remember thinking for years, actually, that's a pretty random thing to say, or what is that all about? Eyes horizontal, nose vertical. And my friend Robert Lyttle, who always jokes around, said when a Martian came back, he said, eyes vertical, nose horizontal. Anyway, this is what he learned, this is what he learned, this is what his enlightenment was, you know, eyes horizontal, nose vertical. And that's been such an enigma for me, you know, this mysterious, yeah, eyes are horizontal, so what? You know, nose vertical, yeah, okay, so then what? Tell me more, you know. But recently, I have seen it as this is the two truths right

[29:18]

there, that it's just eyes horizontal, nose vertical, this is the conventional truth, and there is no inherent truth behind that. The fact that that's all, that things are just the way they are with no kind of, with nothing more that's kind of backing it up as the ultimate, the ultimate truth is that it's eyes horizontal, nose vertical, and that's it. There ain't no more than that. And the emptiness of phenomena is their ultimate truth, but the emptiness is right within. The emptiness is that all things come together to make this phenomena, to create this phenomena. It doesn't have its own inherent existence all by itself. Now, the belief that we do

[30:22]

have inherent existence all by ourselves is intimately connected with this fear, these fears of you know, dying and not getting our pleasure, you know, and this relentless pursuit of pleasure and wanting power and prosperity because we believe that there's separate entities that have existence inherently. So somehow to relax into, I don't know why I'm using the word relax, but to relax into the conventional as just simply the conventional that we agreed on. Now, this was very strongly brought home to me when I went back for this visit and was with my family for about a week,

[31:23]

and when I'm with my family, I am treated in a certain way, I am a certain way. They think of me as tall. I'm almost 5'3", but I grew up in my family thinking I was very tall, because everybody else is shorter. My mom's 4'11", my sister's five feet, my other sister is 5'1", and I was about 5'3", so I was tall and thin. I was in my family until I got outside. Now, Fusan, who lives here, is about 5'9", maybe 5'8". She always thought of herself as very short, because all her brothers and sisters were much taller than she was, so she has the, when she goes out into the world, she thinks short, and when I go out in the world, I think tall, or I did for a number of years, and when I go back home, there I am again, tall, and I feel tall. Well, what is tallness? What is shortness? What is fatness and thinness?

[32:25]

This is the conventional truth. This is conditioned, and when we believe I am a tall person or I am a fast runner, which I also thought I was, because I beat everybody in sixth grade, but then when I went to junior high, I was not a fast runner anymore. A lot more people could run a lot faster. So our world is like this. It's constantly shifting, and we're one way, we're tall, we're short, we're big, what are we? This is our conventional. If we get stuck in thinking I am yadda yadda, then there's lots of problems that come up, and I do have these ideas in mind, who I am and what I am and why aren't they treating me better because I'm such and such. Well, these kinds of thoughts are very fixed and kind of rigid

[33:32]

and cause enormous amount of pain and suffering. So to kind of get in the swing, I guess, of the conventional is, I'm finding it to be rather, I feel sort of light, kind of light and loose when I bear this in mind, the conventional truth, and that it's the lack of inherent existence in all these phenomena is its ultimate truth. So I offer this to you for the day, for the sitting, to turn over in any way you wish in your mind. Now, I brought something to read which somehow this reminded me of the conventional truth. I was recently, a couple months ago,

[34:35]

interviewed by a Japanese radio station. A radio, well, actually a magazine crew had come out here to do an article about food in Zen monasteries, and they interviewed Lee in the kitchen, and they talked with me about the guest student program, and I guess it came out in a travel magazine. And then some people got word about that and wanted to interview me about the guest student program on Japanese radio. So they did a hookup, and it was 2 o'clock in the afternoon here, and it was 10 o'clock the next morning that I was speaking on the radio on this morning show. And afterwards, I found out that the name of the show, this morning show, was Zip Morning Buzz. That was the show. So this is the humor there is, you know, that take a few kind of neat English words and you string them together, and that's Zip Morning Buzz. So I wanted to read you some

[35:37]

more of that type of where you, you know, where the conventional, when it gets kind of turned around, can be rather humorous. These are a collection of signs and notices written in English that were discovered throughout the world. This is from the Atni reader, Maxine. This is in a Paris hotel elevator. Please leave your values at the front desk. In a hotel in Athens, visitors are expected to complain at the office between the hours of 9 and 11 a.m. daily. Outside a Hong Kong tailor shop, ladies may have a fit upstairs. In a Zurich hotel, because of the impropriety of entertaining guests of the opposite sex in the

[36:38]

bedroom, it is suggested that the lobby be used for this purpose. In the lobby of a Moscow hotel across from a Russian Orthodox monastery, you are welcome to visit the cemetery where famous Russian Orthodox monks are buried. Russian and Soviet composers, artists, and writers are buried daily except Thursday. In an Austrian hotel catering to skiers, not to perambulate the corridors in the hours of repose in the boots of ascension. On the menu of a Swiss restaurant, our wines leave you nothing to hope for. In a Bangkok dry cleaners, drop your trousers here for best results. This is in a Rhodes tailor shop. Order your summer's suit. Because it's big rush,

[37:51]

we will execute customers in strict rotation. In a Bucharest hotel lobby, the lift is being fixed for the next day. During that time, we regret that you will be unbearable. Shall I go on? There's just a few more. In an advertisement by a Hong Kong dentist, teeth extracted by the latest Methodists. I like this. In a Yugoslavian hotel, the flattening of underwear with pleasure is the job of the chambermaid. In a Rome laundry, ladies, leave your clothes here and spend the afternoon having a good time. Let's see. From a brochure of a car rental firm in Tokyo. When passenger of foot heave in sight, tootle the horn. Trumpet him melodiously at first,

[38:56]

but if he still obstacles your passage, then tootle him with vigor. In a Copenhagen airport, we take your bags and send them in all directions. And this is the last one. Please do not, this is in a Budapest zoo, please do not feed the animals. If you have any suitable food, give it to the guard on duty. Somehow this, to me, is the conventional truth, you know? And that life is kind of like that, you know? And we get stuck, one gets stuck in, or more too rigid, but... So, I think that's all I have for today. So I hope everyone has a calm,

[39:59]

settled sitting the rest of the day. Thank you very much.

[40:04]

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