Today's work session was very energetic and very fulfilling. In a way, this kind of work session reminds me of, not completely, but in a way it reminds me of typical day at Tassajara during a training period. Sitting Zazen in the morning, going through the morning schedule, and then working. And then have noon service and lunch in Zendo, a little different. And then working all afternoon. And then having service and dinner. And then Zazen. two periods of Zazen at the end of the evening, and maybe a lecture in the morning, or a period of Zazen, an extra period of Zazen in the morning, and a study period, maybe a half hour, 45 minute study period in the morning.

[01:15]

But the feeling is somewhat the same. It's just a typical day. Maybe the work isn't quite as concentrated because, you know, when you're in a small place, working together, the work becomes very concentrated because the energy is very close. But when the place is bigger, your energy isn't so concentrated as when you're in that small area. So to get so many people in a small area all working, highly concentrated energy and so the feeling is very strong and feels very good. So it's always kind of a wonderful feeling to work like that. And our building is progressing nicely.

[02:22]

or Zendo is progressing nicely. It's coming apart very well. But I have a funny feeling, you know, I have to tell you this, that I have a funny feeling about it. I always, when I see a building, you know, that's been standing for a long time, I have a lot of respect for it. And even if it's a funky building, I have a lot of respect for it, for the fact that it's been up there a long time. And all these individual pieces of material are all working together to hold this building, to make this building into a building. And so I have a lot of respect for each one of those pieces of material that are holding this building together as a building.

[03:27]

You know, first there's a tree. The way we think about things, objects, is very interesting. First there's a tree, what we call a tree. And when we cut down a tree, we say, there's a log. No longer a tree. It's now a log. And then when it goes to the mill, it gets shaped. And then we call it lumber. And then when it comes to someone who uses it, That person shapes it into something. And then it's called a table, or a house, or a chair, or something. And it's no longer a lawn, or a tree.

[04:34]

But somehow, it's the same. Our mind makes it into something else. Our mind transforms. things. And in the end we say it's trash. So in the end, you know, it's useless according to our way of seeing things. And so it gives me a funny feeling in my stomach when I see something like a tree finally ending up in useless transformation into trash. So it makes me feel funny. I think that in our particular age,

[05:43]

our particular day and age, and our society, the way time and money is so valuable, that because we're always doing everything in a hurry, and because everything is so expensive, we tend to ignore a lot of respect for things, because we have to do things in a certain way. And it's inevitable. Even if we try really hard to do something, like save something, if we're taking this house apart, if we try to save something, It doesn't work because of the pressure of just the way things are.

[06:58]

Pressure of time and money. And we all understand that. But it still, I can't help feeling bad about it. It makes me feel bad. I would like to take each piece apart and retain its character. I would like to separate all the pieces one by one and retain all the separate characters of each piece and make them available somewhere else to somebody, if not myself or us, to somebody And so to see us destroy the character of something gives me a lot of pain.

[08:00]

So we have a tool called the Sawzall. It cuts right through the character of everything. That's its function, is to saw right through the character of everything. We have to use it, you know. I don't like to use it so much, but it's expedient, you know, and it gets things done quickly. Someday, I want to build a window, maybe I'll have to do it all by myself, out of found materials, collected materials. found objects, maybe like the Watts Tower. You know the Watts Tower? Watts? On Sunday I went to build a zender like that. Just with cast-off things.

[09:03]

Just taking my time. Just I'm going about it bit by bit, piece by piece. In a sense, you know, we want to get rid of things that are in our way. And it's... When you think about garbage, you know, our waste material, We always have to think about, what are we going to do with this stuff? What are we going to do with garbage? What are we going to do with our feces? Mr. Cracker invented the modern toilet. And it uses anywhere from three to five gallons of water every time it washes away anything that we put in there. It's an enormous amount of water that we waste, or I won't say waste,

[10:14]

That's a kind of judgment that we use. And every time we do that, can you imagine? Sometimes I think about at certain times in the morning when everybody gets up, most people get up, say 8 o'clock, and they all go to the bathroom at once and flush the toilet. That's an enormous amount of water that's being used. But, you know, we have this desire to get rid of everything that we don't like. And in the most, you know, I don't want to look at it. Get rid of it. But we have to really, we should really be able to face it, you know. We should be able to face our garbage. We should be able to... Garbage is just another form that things are taking. Our materials from the house, you know, are just they're going into another form. We understand that.

[11:16]

Even if the materials are not used for something, in a large sense, they're just changing their shape, form, and being recycled. But if we know how to take care of our... how to recycle things, how to reuse, how to make the best use of everything, we can understand form and character. Everything has form and character. And there's nothing really that's in itself bad or useless. And if we You know, learn how to take care of something down to the last, its last use.

[12:22]

To follow something all the way to its resting place. Then we get a better sense of how life works in a complete way. taking care of our garbage, you know, and putting it back into the earth again so that it helps plants grow. Gives you a sense of how things work, how you work, and how you work with things. And we're getting so divorced from that, you know, where society is getting so divorced from how things actually work, how materials work with people and how people work with materials, so that there's a balance of function in this world.

[13:29]

And the only way that we can... we know that, but it's hard to do something Even though we know it, if we make compost out of our garbage, it takes an extra effort because society isn't set up to do that. So everything that we do that is a step in that direction is an extra effort for us. We have to think about it as an extra thing. Instead of putting it down the garbage disposal, which is very easy, We have to think about taking it out to the compost, you know, turning the compost and taking care of it so it doesn't smell and so forth. You can make compost very sweet. It should be very sweet if you do it right. But if we don't make an effort to relate to things in that way, nothing will happen.

[14:38]

You know, we wonder. How are we going to turn the arms race around? We can't even do anything, you know. If we can't do something as simple as just taking care of the things that come into our life, turning ourself around in some way, how can we handle something as huge as, that has so much momentum, as the arms race? I don't know. But I think that we have to think in terms of... We should start thinking in terms of how to really take care of things. How to appreciate the character of each thing. When we learn to appreciate the character of each thing, then somehow our life starts to change, and the way we think changes. And when the way we think changes, then our actions change.

[15:42]

And when our actions change, our life around us starts to change. So in the process of building this zendo, I would like us to think about how we relate to everything, how we take care of things, everything, how we pay respect to our garbage, and how we pay respect to things that we don't need, useless things. You know, in some countries, if a horse defecates on the road and there are two farmers seeing it at the same time, they'll compete with each other as to who gets it.

[17:19]

Because they understand it. And they don't have so much. We have so much stuff, you know. We think. The other day, we were cleaning up after working, and I was sweeping the walk. And so I said to Reed, well, as soon as we sweep it, then I'll wash it down. with the hose, he said, that's wasting water. I said, oh, we got plenty of water. He thought, well, you know, it rained all winter. It rained this winter more than it's ever rained. But still, you know, that doesn't mean that we have more water. We never have enough water. He's really right. It doesn't mean because it rains less when we have water to waste.

[18:25]

So, you know, it's good if we can remind each other about things. It looks like we have an unending supply of building materials. There's always Truett and White, you know. And they're always full of lumber, you know, now. It's interesting, you know, if we go to the grocery store someday and there are only half the items that we have now, you'll feel a strange feeling in your gut. When you see all the shelves well stocked, you feel very secure. But if half of that was gone suddenly, you'd feel very strange. And that can easily happen. So, you know, in a way we live like there's no tomorrow.

[19:48]

Or like everything is in this kind of... because we've always had a full shelf, you know. We think that it'll always be that way. Or that we don't... that we're not part of it. Or that we don't have responsibility for how things go. But I think that For us, we have to live and think and realize that what we see now isn't necessarily the way things will always be. So anyway, I think that if we can cultivate some feeling for the character of things as they are, to appreciate the way the character of things, it will help us to see things more clearly.

[21:18]

So, anyway, that's what we call, if we can do that, that's mindfulness, the most important factor of our practice. Do you have any questions? You've been talking about conserving material so that we just don't throw away something that we don't like.

[23:04]

Can you talk about the same attitude as applied to inner garbage? In Zen mind, beginner's mind, Suzuki Roshi said, your difficulties are like weeds, and you use these weeds as compost. It's like the lotus grows in the mud. exist in muddy water, like a lotus. You know, what I'm talking about is not so much... I know it sounds like I'm talking about conserving, but that's not so much what I mean. What I mean is respect for things.

[24:06]

You know, Dogen, whenever he took a drink of water from a stream always poured half of it back. Not to conserve water, but out of respect. You don't, you know, you don't have to save everything. But somehow if you have a feeling of respect for things, you know what to do with it. You know what to do with things. You know how to behave with things. So, we should also have respect for our feelings and for our mistakes, you know, whatever we do.

[25:10]

And sometimes, you know, we feel terrible about what you may call garbage. Quotes. Garbage. Inner garbage. But, you know, it's ours. It's our garbage. It's my garbage. My mistakes are my mistakes. My bad form is my bad form. And so I have to respect that somehow. I don't have to keep it. But I have to recognize it, you know. And if I try to get rid of it, it doesn't work. We say, you know, you have to have a healthy respect for karma. A healthy respect for karma. And when we do something wrong, the next time we should try to do it right. So that's how we handle our, quote, garbage.

[26:17]

When we do something wrong, the next time we try to do it right. And it's hard, you know? Hard to do something right when we're always doing it wrong because it means we have to turn around. We have to turn ourself around. And it's hard to turn ourself around. It's hard to turn around the arms race. It's hard to turn around our ecological disregard. It's hard to turn around just our anger, you know? or our stupidity or the things that we do over and over again our habit energy hard hard to be self-effacing or hard to be when we want to do something right and we're always doing it wrong it's just hard to turn ourself around and do it right I mean, it is, you know I was talking with somebody recently about his unhappiness with nonviolent people's mushy kind of tolerance of people who are, you think, responsible for the mess that the world is in.

[27:43]

He criticized a non-violent attitude or a non-violent kind of action as being not strong enough, mushy. So it got me thinking, how is... How do we accept the garbage? How do we accept the problems and the problem people? in the world in a way that's strong and really does transform it, isn't simply taking it to the dump. But really, how do you transform what's definitely negative stuff into positive? That's a good question. That's what we should always be working on.

[28:45]

How do you turn, you know, something useless into something useful. But nonviolence, you know. Nina gave me something to read about Vivekananda, something that he said at the World Parliament of Religions in 1892 or so. He was talking about that very thing. He said, if you just want to be non-violent, you know, non-violence can be a kind of cowardice, or it can be a kind of courageous action, and it can go either way. But if it's as a courageous action, it means you could be violent,

[29:48]

But you're not. But you choose to be nonviolent. And it takes more courage to be nonviolent than violent because you really want to be violent. You really want to do something. Whereas the nonviolence that's weak is the nonviolence that would be afraid to do something and just lays back. So that's a kind of passivity. But nonviolence that has courage is when you're capable of all the alternatives and you choose that one. But it means that you're allowing yourself to be violated. You're taking that risk without violating somebody else. using the tactics of your opponent, or using the tactics that you are criticizing.

[30:56]

So there's quite a difference. It's a matter of choice. And you have to have your eyes open when you do that. You have to know that. I used to know that one of the keys to the defense question is a simple recognition that you really can't just take things for granted, whether it's their garbage or our garbage. You have to believe that you really can't just put something away somewhere and it's gone. In a sense, I see violence as a kind of way of believing that illusion, that by dealing with something by force, that you can just, you know, by force put it out of existence.

[32:17]

Yeah. That's just an incorrect view. Yeah. So it's a kind of ignorant view to have, right? So we say it's ignorance. I just want to say one last thing, and that is that, do you know about the black ooze in New York? Well, a few years ago, the tugboats that take garbage, you know, for years and years the tugboats were taking garbage out from New York and dumping it in the ocean. Then barges, barges full of garbage. Then they noticed that a few years ago there was this, what they called the black ooze, was coming in toward New York City. And it was all this garbage that they dumped for years and years. And it turned into this kind of gelatinous mass that was called the black ooze. And it was coming into New York City.

[33:22]

And I never heard what happened. I don't know what happened. Probably breaking it up with nuclear weapons. I'd like to find out what happened to it. But... I don't... I don't know what happened. Effect. Cause and effect. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

[34:45]

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