There's a famous early sutra of Buddhism that we've often studied, in which people in a village are confused about what to do spiritually, how to practice spiritually, what to believe, who to trust, and so on. So, they ask the Buddha about this, and the Buddha tells them that they shouldn't believe something just because it's a tradition, and they shouldn't believe it because the person who tells them is impressive or they want to follow that person. They should only believe it when they themselves test it out, when they know for themselves that it's true. If something proves true in their own experience, they can trust it, they can believe it, otherwise

[01:03]

forget it or accept it provisionally until you can prove it with your own experience. So, today we're all here together to work with our bodies and minds and to find out each one for ourselves what is really true, what is really right for us. If the teachings of Shakyamuni Buddha are really true, we will confirm them for ourselves, and if the teachings of Shakyamuni Buddha are untrue or are in need of revision, we will find that out too. So, my job today is not really so much to tell you anything, but mainly to encourage you in this effort, to encourage you to make the strongest possible effort that you can make today,

[02:06]

to actually see your life for yourself. And I think we are all aware of how easy it is to deceive ourselves, how easy it is to be lazy, or just to simply lack the courage necessary to look thoroughly enough. So, I want to spur all of you on to make that kind of effort, that kind of serious effort, not to give in to laziness and self-deception, and not to fool yourself somehow into thinking that you are somehow incapable on this very day of realizing for yourself the truths that the Buddha taught and then going beyond those truths. We're in practice period now and nobody is supposed to leave the valley, but I've been cheating a lot, I confess.

[03:09]

And I've left the valley more than once. Sometimes it's in the line of duty, other times it's just fooling around. I confess, this is true. And I went to the movies. So, I saw this movie called Secrets and Lies, and those of you who aren't able to go to the movies, I'll tell you a little bit about the movie so you know what you're missing, and you can obsess about how much you'd like to go to the movies. And those of you who can go to the movies, you can go and see this movie if you already haven't seen it. The name of the movie is Secrets and Lies. Maybe some of you have already seen it. You know it's probably a pretty good movie because it's not that popular. In the theater where I saw it, there were three theaters, and two theaters had this other movie in it,

[04:16]

and one theater had this movie. So it was half as popular as the other movie. Anyway, this was a really wonderful movie. In a way, the first part of the movie was unpleasant, because the characters in the movie were unpleasant people. They were really sort of physically ugly. You know, no Hollywood stars at all. It was an English movie, so all the people were English actors and actresses, and none of them were attractive people particularly. And not only were they not attractive people, but they were also particularly ugly, because in the movie they were full of ugliness inside themselves, and every character in the movie hated every other character. And so the director skillfully, and the actresses and actors skillfully portrayed this sort of inner and outer ugliness. And the way they treated each other, and the way they repeated themselves over and over again

[05:20]

in their nastiness, it was very effective and hard to take. You didn't want to be there exactly. And the reason why in the movie they were so ugly and they were so mean to each other is because they had secrets and lies that they were keeping from each other. And because of the secrets and lies that were never revealed, each one of the characters had a very heavy heart, and almost like an infection in their soul that was eating away at them, and they were taking it out on each other, abusing each other and failing to have any consideration for each other. It was really bad, actually. Now in the movie there were two characters who were not quite, they were involved in this as well to some extent, but their commitment was to see through it. They wanted to see the truth, get to the bottom of whatever these secrets and lies were.

[06:26]

And it was interesting in the movie, in a fit of symbolism I suppose, the director made both characters, they had professions that involved the eyes. One was an optometrist, and she was trying to get people to see better, and there's one scene where she said, is this blurry, you know how the optometrists put these little lenses in front of your eyes? She was a black woman, an optometrist, and she was just interested in seeing what was true. And the guy was a man, a white man, and he was a portrait photographer, and so he was always concerned with seeing things as they were through the lens of his camera. And some of the most interesting parts of the movie were just him taking pictures of all these different people, you know, married couples, and families, and children, and animals,

[07:27]

and all sorts of odd and funny people who were just really revealed in about one moment on the screen through the eye of the camera. So, I'm not going to give away the whole plot or anything, just in case you see this movie, but in the end, all the secrets and lies get revealed. They all come out. And, of course, it turns out that they weren't all that bad. And, in fact, the people found that it was really liberating for them to let out the lies and secrets that they had been keeping for so long at such an enormous cost to their personal lives, to their souls. And once the lies and secrets are out, they start treating each other better, and then they start looking beautiful.

[08:27]

So these same characters that literally appear on the screen to be quite ugly because of their facial expressions and the way that they are conducting themselves now literally are transformed and are very appealing characters. It's interesting how somehow they managed to convey that, that they really became attractive and beautiful people, and you enjoyed seeing them on the screen. And at the end of the movie, in the last shot, the three of the women who formerly were torturing each other in different ways were sitting, just resting in the backyard, saying, Gee, isn't this the life? This is great. Just being together in the sun. So that's how the movie ended. Let me read you a quotation from the teacher of mindfulness, John Kabat-Zinn, who has really and truly brought

[09:34]

the practice of Buddhist mindfulness to bear in the world at large, helping mostly medical patients with chronic pain and illness to find a way to live more comfortably through practicing mindfulness. He says, the hallmark of mindfulness is purposeful, non-reactive, non-judgmental attentiveness in the present moment, sustained over time. Its ongoing practice lets people see what is on their own minds without editing or censoring, without taking anything for granted, without intellectualizing and without getting habitually derailed by one's own thoughts and emotions. It includes an intentional accepting of each moment as it unfolds.

[10:36]

Mindfulness is a way of being, a way to relate to one's own body and all of one's experiences, a way to navigate life's ups and downs with varying degrees of grace, a sense of humor and wisdom. That's a pretty good definition of mindfulness. He's worked for many, many years to understand and be able to speak about mindfulness in a clear way and with everyday language. Purposeful, non-reactive, non-judgmental attentiveness in the present moment, sustained over time, a practice that lets people see their own minds without editing or censoring, without taking anything for granted, without intellectualizing and without getting habitually derailed by one's own thoughts and emotions. He goes on to say, a prime example is its use with people with chronic pain conditions

[11:42]

that have not responded sufficiently to traditional medical treatments as a complement to those approaches. By making room inwardly for the experience of pain and by learning that it is possible to cultivate calm and equanimity in the presence of intense sensations, many people are able to develop effective strategies for living with chronic pain and the limitations it may impose on one's body. By making room inwardly for the experience of pain and by learning that it is possible to cultivate calm and equanimity in the presence of intense sensations, people can live with great chronic physical difficulty. And he's proven this over and over again

[12:44]

and even has surveys and statistics showing quite extraordinary results. And I've been to his clinics and been quite amazed to find ordinary people who would never dream of studying Zen sitting together and turning to Dharma. It's quite amazing. As with chronic physical pain, so also with psychological pain and also with spiritual pain. Spiritual pain? What is that? Spiritual pain is this subtle but pervasive pain that we feel when we realize that on the deepest level

[13:46]

our lives feel separate and incomplete and unfulfilled. Our lives don't feel authentic, don't feel true. Perhaps we can escape, for a while at least, physical pain or psychological pain, but spiritual pain is inescapable. Even though we may have times in our lives when we are enthusiastically doing this and that and don't feel it, eventually we will feel it. It's interesting, I have a friend who is a psychologist and he's active in psychological, what do you call it, different professional groups. And he managed to...

[14:51]

I guess if anybody is a psychologist in here, you know this much better than me, but there's some sort of a book or something, official listing of the names of different psychological disorders. And he was successful on his committees, in his professional groups for the first time, including in those lists of different psychological syndromes, the fact that there are spiritual disorders or problems which were never before recognized as such. Sometimes spiritual pain can cause psychological pain and then that can cause physical pain. Sometimes there's psychological pain that overrides an underlying spiritual pain. And of course these three things are not exactly so separate, but it's useful to distinguish between them

[15:57]

just so that we can understand something. So anyway, even if all conditions are perfect and we have a great physical and psychological connection, psychological health, if we look closely we may find that something is missing or something feels that it's missing. And this goes with the territory of being a human being. There is no way to be a human being without acknowledging and noticing that this is the case. We all know this, otherwise we wouldn't be here, I think. We know that there is no alternative to this process of opening up our eyes and our hearts,

[16:59]

no alternative to this process of disclosing, opening up to all of our secrets and lies, just looking deeply at our own lives for ourselves and through the process of looking deeply, healing ourselves. And then as a part, as a natural part of that process of healing ourselves, dedicating our lives to benefiting others. And so as I've been saying in my various classes and talks during the practice period, it is absolutely necessary that we include everything, leaving nothing out,

[18:03]

permit everything, allow everything in our lives to come forward. And I don't say this is an easy thing, sometimes it's quite hard, but it's the only thing that in the end will give us a real peace. The truth of the matter is that for each one of us, our destiny is to lose everything, to lose everything that we hold in our lives. And any effort to prevent that will always be unsuccessful, at best, and twisted and unhappy at worst. But when we turn toward our lives and are really willing to look and see

[19:07]

what our lives actually are, and we're willing to include everything, and let go of everything, then we can really live lives that are wide and deep and that can be of service to others. So today, with a great deal of good fortune, we are able to sit together all day long to come back, moment after moment, period of zazen after period of zazen, to the bare and basic facts of our humanness. Of course, all of us have various things swirling about in our minds, various habitual worries and fears,

[20:08]

various kinds of thoughts and emotions, various strategies of avoidance and confusion and distraction, and there is no way that this is going to magically go away. It would be nice to think, as many non-meditators think, that you just sit down and all of your problems go away, and you just blissfully, peacefully enjoy yourself. But a lot of the times it really isn't that way, is it? So we have no choice but to be with all of that which arises in our minds. In each and every period we have to begin the period with the strongest possible commitment to ourselves

[21:12]

to be serious about our practice and to come back over and over again to the basic fact of posture and breath. Committing ourselves to be serious, to sit still, not to wiggle around inside or outside, to just come back to breathing, to make the effort to be totally with each and every breath from beginning to end as it comes rising and falling in the belly. So this is our commitment, this is our determination, and we're serious about it, and we come back to it over and over and over again. So the idea is to make that commitment and hold to it and not to be that interested in the usual stuff that's swirling around in our minds.

[22:14]

I mean, life is really fascinating, you know, and our life, our individual life is really fascinating. But we ourselves are not that fascinating. There's a lot of repetition in there, you know. After a while, it's not that fascinating. And if we get fascinated with ourselves, then we get bamboozled by ourselves. So when this various stuff comes up in our mind, we can pay attention to it, we can notice it's there, we can honor it and give it room to be there and include it. But this doesn't mean that we chase it. Honoring it and giving it space means letting it go and coming back to our fundamental commitment to just be present with breath and posture. We don't overtax what's in our mind. We don't labor it too much.

[23:18]

We just come back and come back and come back and let everything pass away as everything normally will, definitely will, if we're just present. If we can do that, after a while, the swirl very well might settle down and the mind can become calmer and more focused and powerfully present. And then, it's very possible that those parts of our mind that are usually inaccessible to us because they are hiding behind our various habits and swirling thoughts, now may become suddenly accessible, which might be good news or bad news,

[24:22]

depending on what it is that we suddenly have access to. It could be something very discouraging and disappointing or even horrifying. But anyway, whether it's good news or bad news, it's always good news because our fundamental job in Zazen practice is to allow everything to open up to all the secrets and lies. And this is always definitely healing, even though it may be a struggle and seem quite painful at first. And the reason why it appears to be painful and unpleasant is because we're afraid of it. And the reason why we're afraid of it is because we have been carefully trained over a lifetime to be afraid of it. But there is actually nothing to be afraid of.

[25:24]

There is nothing to be afraid of. So maybe while we are sitting we can let go of all our fears and face all our habits and face, as I'm saying, what is behind our habits, this deepest and most fundamental pattern of opening and closing that constitutes our life in karma. And maybe we can let go of even that and simply sit, settled and present. Without much distraction. Just breathing. Just sitting. Just present. Just what is. If you sit like that,

[26:29]

you may well notice that you want to distract yourself. That the impulse to create some kind of distraction, because we're nervous just to be alive in that simple way, that impulse is very strong. We would like it if there was something more to it than enlightenment. Something more than just nirvana. Is that all? So we manufacture something, we cook up something right away. Some issue, some problem, some pressing matter, or even just some snatch of a song or goodness knows what, for fear that we should just be there. And then we might even get lucky and go beyond even that and just be there and not trick ourselves.

[27:34]

Then maybe we will be able to appreciate powerfully and personally Dogen Zenji's words that things advance and confirm the self is enlightenment. Anyway, all of this is just words. Which have the disadvantage of making things seem other than they are. But anyway, we can sit in this way and let go of our feeling of separation from things and the world. Lose our sense of feeling we must hold onto ourselves out of fear and just release everything. And see how it is that once everything is released, how each and everything flows, just appears simply and magnificently as it is.

[28:41]

That each and everything, inside and outside, is absolutely complete. Each and everything contains all things. Not a single thing that needs improvement or fixing. And then we can know for sure and personally that there is a life in the middle of our life that we share with all things that exist a basic and very, very simple ever-ongoing life that is whole and healthy and happy all the time no matter what problems we might have. A life that is always connected in these basic and simple ways to everything. That there is nothing that we need, that we don't have

[29:49]

no one we have to be, that we aren't and nowhere we need to go but right wherever we are. That we can trust completely our own life this life that has been given to us uniquely somehow through the vast wisdom of the universe and that we can trust even our own confusion and delusion because we know that it is rooted and springs forth from this deeper life. And then we will want to live in such a way that every day we can keep in touch with this deeper life. We will want to live in such a way that we can share the fruits of this life with others.

[30:55]

So I want to not waste any more of your time with my words and my lecture but I'll just end with this poem of Rilke that some of you heard already which reminds me of what I'm trying to say. How surely gravity's law strong as an ocean current takes hold of even the smallest thing and pulls it toward the heart of the world. Each thing, each stone, blossom, child is held in place. Only we in our arrogance push out beyond what we each belong to for some empty freedom. If we surrendered to earth's intelligence we could rise up rooted

[32:02]

like trees. Instead we entangle ourselves in knots of our own making and struggle lonely and confused. So like children we begin again to learn from the things because they are in God's heart. They have never left him. This is what the things can teach us. To fall patiently to trust our heaviness. Even a bird has to do that before he can fly. How surely gravity's law strong as an ocean current takes hold of even the smallest thing and pulls it toward the heart of the world. Each thing, each stone, blossom, child is held in place. Only we in our arrogance push out beyond what we each belong to for some empty freedom. If we surrendered to earth's intelligence we could rise up rooted like trees.

[33:05]

Instead we entangle ourselves in knots of our own making and struggle lonely and confused. So like children we begin again to learn from the things because they are in God's heart and have never left God. This is what the things can teach us. To fall patiently to trust our heaviness. Even a bird has to do that before it can fly. So please don't look for something. Don't allow yourself to be entangled in knots and knots. Sit with the gravity that holds everything on this earth in place. Feel it inspiring your body and be rooted like a tree on your cushion

[34:17]

in the simplicity of this life that all creatures share together. Be willing to be that simple. Thank you very much. May our intention

[34:36]

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