Let's see. Power on. On. All right. On? Not on. On? Good morning. Good morning. It's a beautiful morning. Isn't it beautiful? It's really pretty. If I say it wrong enough, I want to totally give my talk. I don't know very many people here, it turns out. Can you still hear me?

[01:04]

OK. I don't know many people here, so I'll introduce you. This is our practice here at CSI. Yeah. I was going to say my name. My name is Tia, yes. Tia, yes. And my name is, my diamond name is Dancing Thunder, Servant of Truth. And yeah, I'll know it even still. All right, all right. Okay. My name is Dancing Thunder, servant of truth. I'm the new Tanto here. Tanto means tan. It means head of the tan, the tan of the seats in the Zen though. So Tanto means head of the tan or head of the practice here. And, um, When Branch, a while ago, asked me to talk, give a talk, I said I was going to introduce myself because I was new here.

[02:09]

And she said, no, why don't you give your teaching? She said, I laughed. I said, I'll teach you. Thank you, Branch. And so I really started thinking about it. I was trying to think, well, what would it do? And what would I actually say that would be that important? Because actually, fundamentally, I feel like there is nothing to say. And the most... I was, well, I'll say, I'm not going to edit. I will say what I was thinking. The most wonderful place is a place of really deep and vast silence. And from that place, there is nothing to say. To settle in that place is a great relief. However, We do speak, and there is suffering, and so when asked, one responds, and in this case I must say something.

[03:15]

So what I chose in thinking, what I chose to talk about was something like the dream of the self, which I feel is... It's fundamental, don't you think? It's a fundamental teaching and one that is our, should be actually, here's a should for you today, should be our practice, our focus in our practice. And out of which, this place of no-self, out of which compassion comes, true compassion comes. Because compassion from a place of the self is only self-serving, ultimately. Compassion from a place of no-self benefits all beings. So today I want to look a little bit about this no-self. Is that the sun or you can't hear me? Sun, I can't. So I also wanted to take the opportunity to thank people for the transition from Green Gulch to here.

[04:28]

My welcome at the city center so far has been very kind. and very helpful, so I really appreciate that. And I did want to say that. And the other thing I wanted to say in way of introduction to myself is that, just for your information, I started sitting in 1967 in Los Angeles. And in 1968, I met Suzuki Roshi and then started coming up from Los Angeles here in this building to have duksan with him. And I have altogether lived for almost 11 years at Tassajara, which is our monastic retreat. And I've also lived for a while in Minneapolis with Ketagiri Roshi and Trungpa at Rocky Mountain Dharma Center, a Tibetan teacher, and also have some experience in Vipassana in Barrie in Massachusetts. But yesterday in service right here where I was doing service, I had the thought that this is my home.

[05:39]

I felt like I was coming home to this place. And it surprised me because I hadn't been here since the early 80s. And I've been living mostly in the country and not in a city. So I was really surprised. But this was my entrance home. And so I feel home, and I'm happy to be here. However, I do have a transition, a kind of initiation transition, and I want to share it with you. The first thing that happened when I was here was that my car got broken into. The window was smashed, the radio was ripped out, there were wires all over the place, my Mac writer was gone, my really good sunglasses were stolen, a real jacket and a real blanket, among other things, were taken. And when I went to the car and looked, it was, of course, So I looked, and it was just a mess. It was really ugly. And my first thought was, don't touch anything, because the police are sure they're going to want to come and take fingerprints.

[06:54]

And of course, the moment I thought that, I thought, that's ridiculous. So then from that point on, I sort of put on my Simi herb a little bit. And that was my first kind of initiation. My second initiation was caught at the other end of the spectrum, like the Tuesday. Last Tuesday, I think it was, I went to the opera. I saw The Marriage of Figaro, Mozart's Marriage of Figaro. And it was fabulous, just fabulous. Of course, I love music anyway, but it was really good. And for the first time they've had, that I've seen, they've had super titles on top of the story, so we could actually follow the story as you were listening to Misa. I was totally engaged. These wonderful costumes and emotions were happening, and it's a fun and complex kind of story, and it was really wonderful. So that was a kind of another kind of initiation. And in fact, the illusion, I was so totally into it, I was completely over it. It was a four-hour lecture.

[07:54]

I mean, a four-hour... LAUGHTER Well, and there it was because the next day, and here's the really interesting part, the next day I was at practice committee, right, and they were in their costumes, you know, shirts, hats, and they're little boobs, and it was just as complex emotional as that. And I thought, well, what is the illusion? Is it last night or is it this morning? So that was another initiation. And then the initiation actually that was the most significant was the following day I sat Tungario, Day of Tungario, which... which is really the most important initiation because it is there that we really find that, in fact, both the meeting and the opera are both dreams, are both a kind of an illusion.

[09:06]

Both are transparent, ungraspable, and without independent existence. And now comes my favorite part of the talk this morning. This is a quote from Shakespeare from The Tempest. I'm sure you'll recognize it. This is how Shakespeare tells it. Our revels now are ended. Views are actors, as I foretold you. We're all spirits and are melted into air, into thin air. And like the boastless fabric of this vision, the cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, the solemn temples, the great globe itself, yea, all which it inherit shall dissolve. And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, we've not a rack behind. We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.

[10:22]

This quicksilver world, this world of apparent reality so rich in joy and sorrow, we believe to be substantial. And therein lies our anguish. We solidify and cling to our points of view, our judgments, our objects of desire. And as we know, the most damning belief is the one in our own vaunted selves. At this point, I could talk about non-duality and no separation and two truths and so on and so forth, but I just want to talk about this little saying from Zimbabwe. If you can walk, you can dance. And if you can talk, you can sing. In fact, when I was teaching music in Africa, it was actually Kenya, not Zimbabwe, there was a game that people would play.

[11:36]

They were in these concentric circles. And in the midst of these circles, there would be singing and so forth. And in the midst of the circle, somebody would go to the middle of the circle, and they would dance. And then the outside people, they would clap. And I couldn't tell for ages what in the world they were clapping about, because they weren't clapping for the person I thought was the best dancer. Not at all. So I couldn't figure it out. But then after a while, when I was there for a long time, I got to know the people. It was easy to tell. They were dancing for the person, they were clapping for the person who was dancing, who was the most, not dancing necessarily, or whatever they were doing, that showed who they were the most. It was really great. So they applaud the person who was being the most themselves in that situation. It's great. It's totally great. But anyway, I think actually, you know, Blanche talks about that all the time. Being yourself is the most important thing. So what I want to do is I want us to sing a little bit.

[12:40]

So what we will do is we're going to sing Ro Ro Ro Ye Boot, which anybody has? Am I roasting too much time? I think so. Shall I begin? So now we're going to divide it right in the middle. You can choose what side you want to be on, Jeff. You can choose, and we'll start on this side, okay? One, two, ready. Row, row, row, row, row. Shining down the stream. [...] Very good.

[13:45]

Very good. Okay, now we're going to do it in third parts, but you have to really be listening. Here's the most important thing about life. No, just a minute. I'm moving. You've got to hold your tune, okay? You can't not know your own tune. Yes, it's about life. You have to really... No, I'm serious. You have to really be who you are. You have to really hold your clothes. In a relationship, it's the same thing, right? You can't dominate the other person. That's not a relationship. And you can't limp out either, you know, always acquiescing to whatever the other person wants. No good, right? Now, you have to hold your own tune. Then, when you show your own tune, then you have to really listen to the other person so that we can get together. So, four parts, okay? You can choose, and you can choose right in there, okay? Okay? One, two, three. Where? Where? I don't even have time to finish my talk.

[15:07]

I had, you know, six minutes. I better hurry. But I've only told the most important thing. I was just going to tell you how to practice with it, so... Here, the thing about, the reason why I wanted you guys to see, because really, think about this boat situation, this Mary, [...] life is just a dream. There is, life is just a dream, okay? So there are two kinds of dream boats, kind of, that were rolling down the stream. One boat... I'm serious. One boat is the dream boat of my dreams. This is my dream. I want this. I want this. This person is my dream. I want that person. That's my dream boat. I want that person. One of the boats is a ranting boat.

[16:07]

One of the boats is wanting, and through this wanting, we grasp. And after grasping, in fact, not after grasping, grasping itself is suffering. Not after grasping. Grasping itself is suffering. So the wanting boat, the grasping boat, is one of these boats, one kind of boat. The other kind of boat is the boat that is this illusory, this ungraspability, this kind of, that at the end of the Diamond Sutra, which we recited, I think, yesterday, here, for service, at the end of the Diamond Sutra, it says how we are to understand what we think of as substantial things, including our ideas and thoughts, okay? So here's what it says we are to understand things. As a fault of vision, a ramp, a mock show, dew drops or a bubble, a dream, a lightning flash or a cloud, so should one view what is conditioned.

[17:15]

Now, there's nothing wrong with the boat of grasping. It's just that if you grasp all the time, first of all, you suffer, and ultimately so do other people. There's nothing actually wrong with it. It's just that the consequences for your life are really different, grasping and not grasping. In fact, even if you grasp after religious experiences, okay, it's the same thing. So... Yeah, it's the same. Yeah, it's the same thing. Well, you know, we can talk about that more. That's okay. That's a really good example of a certain kind of impulsive, right? Let's go. We can talk about that more, okay? So anyway, the thing is that we forget the groundlessness underneath the grasping.

[18:27]

So in Zen Mind Beginners, I'm skipping all of my talk because we've only got like 15 minutes, because Suzuki Roshi in Zen Mind Beginners was a wonderful fascicle called attachment non-attachment and this is about beyond grasping or not grasping or attachment and non-attachment and what is my favorite one in the whole book what it says is that actually it's okay to grasp if you are not grasping let me explain it to you if you're fully one with grasping grasping is fulfilled in the non-duality, sitting settled in grasping, then you can have space around it. And then you don't have to actually manifest the grasping. You just sit and feel what it feels like to grasping. So if you don't hold on and actually do the activity, you have freedom in the grasping.

[19:30]

It's non-dual grasping. That's Buddha's grasping. And that's what he talks about in this fascicle. It's not easy. It's very difficult to understand. But it really is true. It's the same as with desire, sexual feelings, and so on and so forth. We think all the time. We have a sexual feeling and we're immediately compelled, propelled to do something very difficult to take care of. But if you really, really can settle and be still, and then let's do that feeling, it's fulfilled. Desire is fulfilled in itself. I know, the first time I heard that, I thought, that is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. Well, it's true. It's completely true. If you really sit in it, desire is filled in itself. Because it's just a feeling. The problem is that we feel like our feelings are too much for ourselves. And in the beginning, it's true. That's why you have to sit.

[20:30]

Because when you sit, you sit there and all your feelings and thoughts come up, blah, blah, blah, and you don't do anything with it. You don't push it. You know this. You don't push them away. You don't grasp them. You're told this constantly all the time. You can just sit there and feel it. And as you do that year after year after year, the feelings that you deal with get deeper and deeper and deeper. And you have to deal with the ones that for you are the really stronger difficulties in your life. And what happens is you begin to see the dependent color rising. If I'm using words that you don't understand, we could talk about it over there. You get to see how they're corroded by all of everything. And then, for some reason or another, it allows you some freedom from them, actually, because you know you're going to end up suffering, really. And you can sit there with the ones that are the most, and deeper, deeper, deeper ones that you're the most afraid of, that have been controlling your life all the time, like doubt, failure.

[21:35]

knowledge, you know, grasping after images, feelings of lack, feelings that your life aren't enough. The things that for real are deep down in there, you learn to see how they arise. Actually, you see how the self arises. The self is the grasping. It is the failure. It is the doubt. That is what the self is. That's how it makes itself up. It is the struggle. The self, the definition of the self is struggle. That's why if you seek, you're fighting all the time. And your little self, Suzuki Roshi calls it the small self, your small self is very happy with your struggling. Bob gave a really good talk about it the other day. It was exactly what I'm saying. The struggle itself is what is the suffering. But we don't believe it. So we can't just let go of the struggle.

[22:40]

We can't let go of the seeking. We think we really have got it now. I'm going to make myself better. Or I've really got it now. I'm going to do this religious life. I'm going to be awoke. I'm going to be enlightened. Everything's going to be fine. You know who's talking? You know who's saying that? That's your little conditioned mind. self that frankly i'm sorry to say but i'm gonna say it i'm sorry to say this but it's true i'm gonna say i'm and it's gonna come right out of my mouth it doesn't give a damn about you It doesn't. It doesn't care if you are suffering. It doesn't care if you hurt. It really does not care. It wants to be alive. And what I mean by it is I mean the sense of separation that we feel. And it will take anything. It will take the religious life. It will take being a good person.

[23:42]

It will take having status. It will take being a flower. It will take your happiness. It will take everything to keep itself going so that it doesn't die. Because in order to really experience this being, not experience, it's not an experience. In order to be, because of experience, you're still separate from the experience, right? There's a you and your experience. That's why religious experience is just great. It gives you a kind of a... It gives you an idea, but you have to integrate it. I'm getting off my track. So in experience, you're still separate. So it'll even take experience, because it wants to live. Because when this little separate feeling sense dies, then you're just alive. That's all. It's kind of boring. Oh. We don't have all the stories that you're used to telling yourself, the excitement of your life, your achievements, your whatever it is, you know?

[24:47]

No, you don't have it anymore. You're just doing life. You're present, right? And it's fabulous. It's wonderful. Sometimes it's great, right? And sometimes it's not so great. So what? No problem. Not a problem. So rather than the middle of your problem, if you're completely aware, and don't make up a story about it, don't separate yourself from it, but just completely be your problem. It's not a problem anymore. I used to see Suzuki Roshi up there at Blanche and I were talking the other day about that room. It's a potent room. Potent room. May I call you Blanche? Thank you. I respect very much the position of Blanche as an abbess, Zen center. It's a wonderful thing. Anyway, we're in that room, and I am past menopause now, so if I have a thought and I don't immediately say what that thought is, I have forgotten the thought.

[25:51]

And I'm like, am I wrong? So that thought was completely, what was that thought? And now I know where I meant that one. What was I talking about? Thank you. Thank you. Suzuki Roshi. And what was the justice for that? Oh, no problems. Thank you very much. I used to go to them. I used to go to Suzuki Roshi and the books on them. I was the most, not the most, but one of the most neurotic people around. I applied. In 1971, I applied to go to Tassajara. I'm a little bit too proud of this, I'm afraid. I can screw it myself. Puzzle up, right? What am I puzzling about? I'm puzzling about my shoulder. That's my thing, right? So what happened in 1971, I applied to go to Tassajara and I was rejected. That's what I'm proud of. Isn't that rude?

[26:55]

That's bizarre. Well, in 1971, I was rejected. So I, you know, I must have been real. That's my paper. It says I was real. So anyway, I was bringing this very twisted and twined problems. I had real, you know, problems then, real difficulties. I thought I did. Yeah, I did. I did. I had problems. And I used to go to him in this room. I used to go to him in the room. And I would bring him these real difficult situations. And, listen, as I was talking with him, they disappeared. Because he was... so settled, you know, so deeply settled, it was so vast, the non-self or the emptiness, I'll use that word, the emptiness of his being, that whatever your problems, you know, there was nothing to reverberate on.

[28:08]

There was no wall there. They just went into this hole and disappeared, kind of like, isn't that so? And so where were they, you know? And I wouldn't feel them at all when I was with them. It was a tremendous sense of peace that you could sense, feel. This is not the talk that I was going to give, so I don't know where to pick it up now. I'll tell you what, for me, some of the things we can't do, I don't know what I was talking about too much. unless you're present. And of course, we have all of those reasons. The small self has all those reasons why it's not going to let you be present, right? You're going to be restless, and you're going to be seeking, and you're going to be distracted, and whatever it is. You're going to be doing all these things to prevent you from being present, to notice that all you have to do is be present in your life, and that's enough.

[29:12]

Right? So... You must be present, you must be mindful, and you must be present. And the best way to practice doing that is in the zendo. Because the things that prevent you from being, all the hindrances, the doubt, restlessness, greed, hate, and delusion, the sense of a separate self, all come up during zazen, and you practice not doing anything with them so that you can be present in your life. Besides, why wouldn't you want to be present? Well, I know why, but why wouldn't you want to be present in your life? Because if you're not present in your life, you miss your life. Really. I mean, you've missed it. Goodbye. It's over. And your life, you're going to die those little deaths all day long. I remember... Katagiri Roshi used to say to me all the time, not I, he was talking, he said, you, you are responsible for making your life alive.

[30:17]

Nobody else. You are responsible for making your life alive. Nobody else. So it's about zazen. And it's about doing zazen together. Not that you can't do it alone in your house. I was in for years by myself. And it's a very, very, very wonderful way to practice. But it's helpful to sit with other people because it encourages you and it's easier. In fact, it's easier. So I am here. to sit zazen with whoever wants to sit zazen and also to walk with you through whatever comes up in your life that makes it difficult for you to do that, for you to settle in your life, to settle in your life, to deeply settle in your own life.

[31:17]

I'm gonna throw, I'm gonna not even look at this anymore and just So let's see, what else do I want to say? You know, It's actually interesting for me to be back in the city. I now live in an apartment. I haven't lived in an apartment by myself for 30-some years. And I have a kitchen and a bathroom. And I have my flute again, which I haven't played in a very long time. And I exercise sometimes and so on. And I lived that kind of life a long time ago. And I know what it's like to live that kind of life.

[32:24]

And it wasn't enough. It was the thing that I most wanted to do, music. I was doing music. And I was doing music. And I loved it completely. So I didn't understand why it wasn't enough. So now I have an opportunity to be in almost exactly the same situation. The only difference is that I have a different relationship with my mind. It's the only difference. And I'm wondering, actually, if my life will be enough. Just this. Just this. So sitting in the midst of problems that are problems for sure and no problems, being aware, present and aware in the middle of our life without doing anything about it, not pushing it away, not making it better.

[33:39]

This awareness, this non-dual, no-self awareness is the ground of everything. It is what Zazen is about. It's what our Soto Zen way is about. So those of you who are part of the Sangha at the city center, Please accept me joining you to do this practice together. I'm looking forward to it and looking forward to meeting you. And at this point I would like to dedicate this talk to the end of struggle and to the end of suffering for ourselves and for all beings. And please help me to do this with you.

[34:52]

Make me walk my talk. And if I can help you in some way, it will be my joy to do that. So let's practice together.

[35:07]

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