Today I'm going to talk about the unsurpassed, penetrating and perfect dharma of fundraising. Money is dharma. In case you didn't know, you may have thought it was something else. This afternoon we're going to have a Fundraising Fund, as you saw when you came in, the setup outside. So this is one of our annual fundraising events. So I'm going to talk a little bit about the history of fundraising. Berkley Zen Center.

[01:07]

Back in 1967, when we started, we didn't have any money and we rented, we had a very big house for kind of a quasi-Victorian house on Dwight Way. The rent was $30 a month. When I went to the gas station to get gas, I just got a dollar's worth of gas. It was never filled up. It was just a dollar's worth of gas. Four gallons at 25 cents a gallon. That wasn't so long ago. And so I decided that people would pay $5 a month in dues if they could afford it.

[02:11]

I have my bank here. Here's our first bank. Balkan Sobrani smoking mixture. In those days, actually most people smoked. And I remember the slow... So that's our first bank. And that's where I kept the money, the dues, and then I just used it to buy food and stuff. We didn't really have much money.

[03:18]

But that was okay, because it didn't cost much to live in those days. You could get along with almost nothing. I never counted my money. If I had some money in my pocket, I always had enough, strangely enough. So I never mimped that much, pay the rent, buy some food. So one day, I never thought about incorporating the Zen Center, because I thought, incorporating the Zen Center? That sounds really strange to me at that time. But then one day I thought, well, I think since everybody's, all Zen centers are incorporated, I should incorporate too. And then we got together a board of directors and actually had a bank account, put the money in the bank account.

[04:24]

And then I had free room and board. a month stipend, which lasted a long time, even up to when we moved here. So we didn't really need much money at that time. But once we moved here, it was a whole different thing. We were looking for a place to establish what would be our own place because we were paying rent and we couldn't really, you know, it was a wonderful zendo we had, but So I rode my bike all around town for months looking for a place to buy, even though we didn't have any money. I didn't know how we were going to do that. But someone who was actually a member here for a while, a nurse, she knew the man who had this place, four buildings, two lots, $225, I mean $1,000.

[05:26]

And he wanted to sell it to us. So we said, let's buy it. And so, well, how are we going to do that? So at that time, I don't know if you remember Est. Werner Erhard invited priests and psychiatrists to come and have a weekend. And it cost everybody. It didn't cost us anything. It was free. But ordinarily it would cost $200 to do the training. And that was an enormous amount of money in those days. $200 to do something like that. You know, we go out and spend $100 on a meal for four people or something and don't think anything of it. In those days, $25 Anyway, so I thought, well, if he can do that, I can do that.

[06:38]

So I asked everybody to submit $200 for our campaign, and that stimulated interest. I think if you're going to raise money, you have to stimulate interest. So I got everybody some people contributed less, but we got something to go on. And then people gave us loans. That was unsecured loans. $80,000 unsecured loan, which is very risky. But people believed in us. The members believed in us. My idea was to have a grassroots Zendo. I didn't want to collect money from outside. I wasn't interested in going to big donors and getting money. I felt that if the members are really sincere and interested in making this thing happen, that the members will support it.

[07:51]

That's always been my philosophy. So, we actually came up with a down payment. And we bought this place. And then we had to have Zendo. Well, this building was originally a house. And there was a wall going down the length of the building. It was two apartments. And we wanted this to be Zendo. But in order to have this be Zendo, you cannot take living space. off of the housing rolls in Berkeley without replacing it with something else because of the tight rentals. You can't build anywhere in Berkeley to speak of. So we had to substitute some other place in order to turn this into Zendo.

[08:58]

The building next door had a basement which was about five and a half feet high. And so my idea anyway was to raise it up in the beginning and build apartments underneath. So we had all this wrangling with the city, but the city approved us raising up that building. So the movers came in. lifted up the building and the building was up there and still on pilings for a long time while we worked on the Zendo. And we had carpenters at that time. This is an interesting thing, you know, when you need something, when your practice is sincere and you need something, something appears to help. That's always been, I have total faith in that. So we had a lot of carpenters at the time. And the carpenters, we had to pay them.

[10:04]

So we had to collect money to pay them, but people were willing to do that. And we built the zendo. This floor, all of this cedar that you see in zendo, one of the carpenters and I went down and bought some rough cedar planks. and third grade. And we took it all to the mill and we saw every piece milled, sliced this way because the boards were about this thick. And when we sliced them, they were a little less than three quarters. And so we put in all of this, all these boards, worked on it, the whole saga was working on making this happen.

[11:06]

Fitting those pieces, that line, see how nicely they fit together? Sometimes one board, two coming together, took all day to match. It looks easy, well, but they don't act that easily. So it was a labor of love and Then we had to work on that building. And so we put up the walls and put up the framing. We dug down for the foundation. Everybody's out there with pickaxes digging on three feet to pour the foundation. And we dug for the foundation, poured the foundation, put up the structure, lowered the building down, and it took about two years to outfit the apartments downstairs.

[12:18]

So that was our trade-off. There was a lot of drama going on all that time, which I'll spare you. Bill Milligan and Connie were living up in that building at the time. And they had a ladder. And the building was... You put a marble on the floor and it goes... And so they hauled their groceries, you know, up the ladder and with a rope and stuff. And then Bill poured all the concrete. So it was create the Zendo and those apartments next door. And people always were very generous in, the Sango, very generous in supporting that. We had some outside support, but not much.

[13:26]

One of my cohorts contributed $25,000, and that was a huge, and you contributed $1,000 No, I'm not raising my hand. Thank you for remembering. What I wanted to remember is my favorite memory of this is the Karmapa came to visit us. The other Tibetan top man. I used to like the Karmapa, only the other traditions. And there was this whole fleet of limousines with little flags, and umbrellas, and saffron monks, and people in jackets with little emblems, and so on. And the Karnapa, of the whole thing, what he was fascinated with was the building up on stilts. And he didn't speak English, but he That was a great event.

[14:38]

Because the Zendo, well, the Zendo was here. It used to be in the community room before, well, we were building it, believe it or not. And the Kama became the guards. They called them the something guards, the Garuda guards or the Dharma guards. And they were all dressed up in suits and ties and limousines parked all down the street. And the Karmapa, he was a great guy. He came in with his retinue and they had his chair. They had a little bubble like, you know, this is his atmosphere. And they placed the atmosphere inside the building, inside the room. My wife wanted to serve him tea, but they wouldn't let her because they had to serve him tea. She was very pissed off.

[15:43]

The sangha has always been very generous to me. I never asked for money. But the Sangha always provides money. Here's when my philosophy was that I never wanted to nickel and dime people, like, you know, get money out of people. I never wanted to do that. And so we always existed on a kind of bare subsistence level. And we never have had a financial problem that we couldn't deal with easily. I swear. in forty-five years? I don't know how long it's been. Sixty-seven? Seventy-six? Getting close to fifty. How many? Getting close to fifty. Getting close to fifty years. If you've ever had a financial, a real financial crisis, I would say. Problems come and go, but you know, you deal with those. And I attribute it to not worrying about money, for one thing,

[16:51]

I never worried about money. Even when I was advocate of the San Francisco Zen Center, they go through all their tribulations about money, which is difficult because they have three practice places to support. But I never worried about the money. They wouldn't let me. You see, you don't have to worry about fundraising. But I never worried about it. But everything works. But whenever we needed something, and I asked Sangha to support whatever we needed, everybody just comes through. Because we never ask much of people, and they're always willing to give. So I think that's just great.

[17:52]

And we've always supported ourselves that way. We have four buildings here to support. And we have two teachers who have salaries, and an office manager. So those are the three supported positions. And so part of our fundraising that we do now is for the three positions. and for our remodeling and our maintenance, capital maintenance. So painting the buildings, keeping up the dry rod, replacing this and that. And recently we've been dealing with how to remodel the kitchen so it works better.

[18:55]

and how to use the porch, the back porch, so that it's not just the porch, but it actually adds to the space of the kitchen. And we're so fortunate to have a couple of architects. We just happen to have a couple of architects who are giving their time and expertise to making all this work. So, that building over there, that's the building that's always needed the most attention. These four buildings were removed from the playground over there, across the street on And that one is the one that always needs the most attention.

[20:05]

So we're remodeling the downstairs. We've already done a lot of remodeling for the community room, but now the kitchen and the back porch. So that'll make access and storage a lot more convenient. during sushi and you know it's this traffic problem. So I don't know if that will ever be eliminated. So that's kind of what one project that we're really intent on fundraising for. So we've divided our fundraising efforts into two parts.

[21:11]

One part, one year we fundraise for the building expense, and one year we fundraise for the teacher expense. So this time it's for the teacher expense. Yes. We just happen to have this really tremendous board of directors who are mostly professional people. A lot of them are professional people. And they know how to manage money, stuff like that, which scares me a little bit. I'll tell you why that scares me. Because we've always done so well. with hand-to-mouth. And so the board likes to plan for the future.

[22:20]

Planning for the future is not something that I'm interested in, except that I think we should keep going in order to support the future. our practice is sincere now, the future will take care of itself. That's just the trust I have. And so I have a little bit of interplay with the usual way of making something work with money and my way of making something work without money. And so, but it works well. We're very well integrated. I'm well integrated with the board and I respect the board's need and wishes to do this. But I don't want to see that too. It's nice to be financially secure, I agree with that, but not too secure.

[23:45]

I think we, you know, we should have money, but we should not depend on money too much. We should depend on our practice. We should depend on the seriousness or the integrity of our practice. If our practice has integrity, I really believe that the universe will support us. So, I remember Suzuki Roshi giving a talk one time on money, a really good talk. He talked about how money is not clean or dirty. Money is just money and it's needed. It's the exchange value that makes everything work. It's kind of like the blood that runs through your veins, in a way. It makes things work. And so he said, well, so give me your money.

[24:49]

That was the last sentence. So give me your money. People, in those days, people used to think, young people used to think, you don't need money. Buddha is free, you know. God is free. Why should we have to pay money for religious practice?" And Suzuki Roshi didn't like that. He said, you have to contribute something. You have to contribute something for the support of the place and the people you're practicing with. If everybody is contributing, you should contribute as well. So, so far, it's always worked. So I really appreciate it, the way the board has taken this seriously.

[25:58]

Do you have any questions? So you were saying about how the universe works through the market forces in some way, this exchange value. So how is that similar or different to what you also often talk about in terms of the greed of the financial system? Well, the greed of the financial system works against us. The proper flow of money works for everybody. Our body-mind is a microcosm of the universe. Our country is a microcosm of the universe. The world is a microcosm of the universe.

[27:12]

If you look at the body as an example, when all of the parts are balanced, we're healthy. When parts are not balanced, we're unhealthy. So, when the flow of money is passing through all the parts of the country, so it's limited to the country, that's like the body being healthy. And as we know, the body is totally unhealthy. I mean, we're dying. The planet's dying. Do you know? I just found out yesterday that Fukushima is far worse than anybody thinks. I mean, it's going to poison the world if it's not taken care of. So plenty of money going into that. Plenty of people are starving to death on the other side.

[28:14]

So we have reckless use of money. Totally reckless use of money. And money should be flowing through the society so that everyone is supported. And then we're healthy. So, but in our case, there's something about the Dharma that if we practice the Dharma sincerely, we will be supported. This has got to be, this is the priest's way of living. You know, in the old days, the monks would go into town with their bowl. And if they didn't get anything, they wouldn't eat.

[29:16]

So, why would they be supported? Just because they're monks. Because, as we say in the meal chant, I hope that my virtue and practice deserve this meal. So, if a monk's virtue and practice is sincere, somebody will put some food in the bowl. And I can't tell you how that works, but it works. If he's not sincere, he won't get anything. He may, he may not. Or even if you are sincere, you may not. You can't count on it, but you trust it. There has to be some trust. Otherwise, we're always scrambling for to assuage our insecurity. The most wealthy people must be totally insecure.

[30:18]

Otherwise, why would you need so much? So, I kind of pity them. The people that are most secure are the ones who trust the universe to support them. but through their virtue and practice. This is Dogen's. Also talked about this. There's just enough food to feed you. There's just enough to support you. And that Oryoki bowl that we eat with is called the bowl of just enough. So what I think about often is if we want to do something, we can do it.

[31:33]

Like Obama. this 15-minute talk on the telephone. I don't know if you heard about that. The new president of Iran and Obama had a 15-minute talk while the new president of Iran was going back to the airport. And they had a nice congenial talk. Why? Because they wanted to. Why are things not working? Because people don't want them to. People don't want things to work. That's why it's not working. If we want it to work, it'll work. If we want Iran and the United States to have a good relationship, it'll work because we want it to.

[32:36]

If you want something to work, it will work. You can make it work. It's as simple as that. But the reason things don't work is because people don't want them to work. People are funny. Anyway, I think that the Zen Center has always been supportive. because people want it to work. It's as simple as that. If we don't want it to work, it won't happen. There's always an exception. I was just responding to the question that came, well maybe that was wrong. You know, it just brought up some some problems about the money system.

[33:38]

So actually, I was going to support what you were saying. But our situation is relatively simple. So you can say if we want something to work, we can make it work. And in the world, things don't work. And it's largely because people with a lot of money don't want them to work. So money is not simple. Money is complicated. Just like our body is complicated. Billions of cells. I mean, that's simple. And I think often why we get sick is because we're stopping something from working. When things are flowing... Yeah, you're right. people that they don't want to be. So a lot of people, 1% have all the money and 99% don't.

[34:44]

That's sickness. That's real, real sickness. Imbalance. I don't know what they expect to do in the end. It boggles the mind. So people need power because they are insecure. They need money because they're insecure. And they can just order everybody around. Make their own world order. That's what's happening. But it's backfiring. It's bound to backfire. I've always trusted that. I see people doing pretty terrible things, but you can't do anything about it. But if you just wait with some patience, it will change. with patience and then you have to be ready to act when things change.

[35:52]

For the monk who is out there with his bowl and knowing that he has no control over the filling of this bowl. It's one thing to trust that it will be filled, but what is the practice of seeing it empty and not knowing if it's ever going to be filled again? And then you can do some soul searching, maybe. But ultimately, it's like today, there's something. Tomorrow, there's nothing. Maybe the next day, there's something. I think there have been long periods in the history of people.

[37:04]

Sometimes they ate, and sometimes they didn't. We have a supply of things to eat, and whether we had money or not, you know, we can always dive into a dumpster, right? But there were times when people just didn't have anything to eat, so they didn't eat for a long time. And then when the food came, and there's this Irish author who was popular a few years ago, wonderful brogue about the difference between America and Ireland. He said, when we were growing up in Ireland, if we had a cup of tea and a little biscuit in the morning, that was wonderful. And then he talked about little Johnny in America, his mother saying, eat your hamburger, Johnny.

[38:06]

He said, I don't want my hamburger, Mama. And he'd done this wonderful brogue. the spoiled brat and the person who really needs something appreciating what they have. So it's good to not have something for a while so you really appreciate it when you do have it. A lot of our needs are supplied, but So that affects us. We live in a cornucopia of the world in Berkeley. The Berkeley Bowl and the moderate market. We're just so spoiled. We can just go in and keep buying peaches.

[39:08]

So, the wonderful thing about our practice is on Saturday morning, we can eat with oreoki and appreciate our food. I'm just a bear, you know. Rice, a little fruit, and something else. And appreciate it. And we chant. a long chant before we eat, even though we're hungry, we do the chanting. So, if we can appreciate everything in that way, even though we're in the midst of this problem of too much, we can survive.

[40:07]

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