This morning I want to [laughter] talk about the precept of not taking what’s not given, sometimes referred to as not stealing. Don’t steal. 

In our meal chant, at some point in the meal chant it says, “Innumerable labors brought us this food. We should know how it comes to us. Receiving this offering, we should consider whether our virtue and practice deserve it.” This is very important for us to understand.

Originally in Buddhism, when a monk is ordained, he gave up everything. He or she, either as a monk or a nun, gave up everything, and had three robes and a bowl, and couldn’t carry money. A monk was not allowed to have, to possess money or carry it around, or carry any leftover food or any provisions. So a monk’s life was to live from day to day, just live from the time of dawn to dusk, one day. Each day would take care of itself.

The monk’s career was to practice for everyone, for the benefit of, the enlightenment of everyone. Part of their life was to take their bowl and to beg for their meal. There was no other way of support. No money, no bed, no possessions of any kind, just three robes and a bowl. So a monk was completely at the mercy of people’s generosity. If you were a monk, and your practice wasn’t so good, maybe you would just starve to death.The sutra says, “we should look at ourself”. Does our practice and virtue deserve this meal? Is what we’re doing worth people feeding us? Why should people go out of their way to feed us? 

This kind of attitude, nothing belongs to us, we don’t own anything, our whole life’s practice and energy is directed toward how to become one with this universe, how to realize our oneness with this universe. If we realize our oneness with this universe, we will always be supported. This is basic Buddhist understanding. With this kind of understanding, it means, how do we find our place in this universe? How do we find our true place in this universe? If we know where are and what our place is, everything will come to us that we need. If we don’t know who we are, or know what our place is, then we always feel that there is something lacking, or something owed to us, or something we should have that we don’t have. When we feel that there is something  we should have that we don’t have, and we feel that we deserve something, or we want to take something, if we can’t have it, then we’ll take it. 

So the idea of taking something that is not ours is produced. We call it stealing. So stealing is not only confined to objects. It’s a very deep-seated need, if we don’t have what we need, both physically and psychically or spiritually. Sometimes we feel cheated. You know. if you are completely one with this universe and know your place, there’s no way you can be cheated, and no way you can feel left out. 

So our life is based more on money and possessions than in Buddha’s time. In Buddha’s time, the monks couldn’t carry money, and even today, Theravada monks don’t carry money, don’t have any possessions, and lay people feed them and give them everything they need. Give them their robes and they repay the lay people in some way by perfecting their practice. Their whole life depends on their virtue.

Our practice, in America, or even later, in any country, is very diverse. Sometimes we feel, well, lay people…I wonder what we think, actually! Nowadays, a priest or a monk can carry money and have possessions, even become married and have children, have families. Lay people have lots of possessions and bank accounts and well-paying jobs. We may tend to forget the underlying basis of what we depend on. Actually, I think it’s good that we have this kind of problem. If you take everything away, that’s one kind of problem. But it’s fairly simple and straightforward. But if you have to deal with the burden of possessions and money and desire, it’s much more difficult. It’s possible but it’s much more difficult, and we have to really look at what is ours and what is not ours, and how we handle what’s given to us. Each one of us has some different set of possessions and needs and ways of dealing with what we have. But basically the attitude is not different. Since nothing belongs to us, everything that we have is just something that’s given to our care, something that we take care of. But we think that it’s mine. This is where the problem arises. We all have something to take care of here.You take care of this. You take care of a million dollars, You take care of this house. You take care of this woman. You take care of this man. You take care of this baby. And we think, Oh! It’s mine! But actually, nothing belongs to us, in that sense. Everything belongs to us in a true sense, to take care of, not to possess.

Once we start appropriating (this is me, this is mine), we start to have big problems. Our practice, you know,  is to always remain unburdened, and to help other people remain unburdened. Help each other to remain unburdened. It doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t take care of what we have, but we shouldn’t get the feeling that it belongs to me (this is mine) and identify with what belongs to me.

This is how we know whether or not we have true practice. I don’t think that you should give up your million dollars or your Cadillac [laughs] or your children or your wife or…Our practice, you know, is to learn to take care of what we have in a proper way. Money, you know, there’s so much money in the world, even though they keep printing more. There’s an allotted amount of money in the world to balance the amount of people and their needs [laughs] and everyone shares that money. We all share that money, and ideally, it should all be shared equally, according to various needs of people. But what happens is that some of it gets a big pile that accumulates over here, and over here there’s hardly anything to go around because the people over here feels that it belongs to them, this is mine.  The more the people over here collect it, and the more over here the people don’t have it, then someone thinks, well, we need more money. We need to print more money. So more money keeps being printed and the game gets lost. We keep losing the meaning of the game because we just keep putting more in there, and then it keeps going over here, anyway…

There’s actually a law against hoarding. It’s not just morally bad for us, because it means that it’s a kind of monetary constipation. The only way that [laughs] money means anything is when it moves. So it moves around. It moves from me to you and from you to me and from everyone to everyone and helps us to move in the world. We always keep it moving, just like our system. When it’s moving, when money is moving freely and equally, the system works. When our blood is flowing evenly and smoothly, our system works. But when it starts to get unbalanced, we all suffer. So it’s actually against the law to hoard, because everyone knows this. If you’re caught with an enormous amount of money which you’re hoarding, technically you should be put in jail, because it doesn’t belong to you. It’s really stealing. Sometimes, you know, we feel that something is owed to us, and if it’s not given to us, we’re going to take it anyway. If you work for a big outfit, an impersonal corporation, it’s easy to feel: They’ve got so much that if I take it, if I take some for myself, they’re not going to miss it, and they owe it to me anyway. They’re so rich and I’m so poor. They don’t really pay me enough anyway. So I’ll take this stuff, and it will make up for what they don’t give me. But that’s actually stealing, even though we may feel justified or want to do that, it’s really stealing. It doesn’t hurt the corporation, actually, if you do it. But it hurts your own sense of what’s right. 

When we were in the hospital with the baby (I have to confess this), they have all these little shirts for the babies, and they have the diapers and they have little boxes of kleenexes, and it’s just an unending supply of this stuff. When they take a little shirt off the baby, they just throw it in the wastebasket. So when we left the hospital, I thought, Oh, I want to take one of these shirts, you know! Let’s take the baby with this shirt on [laughs/laughter]! And then, I was cleaning up the table there, and here were these kleenex boxes that were kind of opened and hardly used. Let’s throw them in too! [laughs] But then when I got home I thought, this is really stealing. Of course, it doesn’t mean anything, you know! So what? There’s just, there’s just an unending supply of this stuff. And they just throw this stuff in the wastebasket. It doesn’t matter so much from that point of view, but for me, it was really stealing. 

The problem that we have is that we don’t know when we’re doing something. It’s not that it was so bad, you know, but I felt justified in doing it. The thing is to know what we’re doing. Okay, if I steal, I should know I’m stealing. Good or bad, I should know it and then decide what to do. Usually, my own mind, it’s not so subtle, not subtle enough to be able to always make that decision. 

If you give $500 to the Zen Center, you should cut that off. Just go on in exactly the same way that you were practicing before. If you say, “I gave $500 to the Zen Center! How come they’re not treating me so well?” This is stealing. I really gave it, but I have a string. I have something attached to that gift. It’s not free. I gave so much time and effort, how come I’m not treated better? How come I can’t have certain things that I want? Where is my reward? We really get into a lot of trouble this way. Where is my reward for what I’m giving? If we want some material reward, if we expect something, we get into a lot of trouble. If we do expect something, we should say,”I expect something!” from the beginning. Then, you know what you’re doing. But if you don’t know what you’re doing, you get into a lot of trouble. Not knowing what you’re doing means, you give something, but underneath, you want something for what you gave. So it’s better to know what you’re doing, to know, to say something right away. If you give something to Zen Center, we may just say, “Thank you very much.” That’s all.

If you give something to Zen Center, it’s because that’s where it should go. It’s like being in a hospital. Maybe you feel that you’re giving so much, and not getting something in return, so I’ll just take a little, because they owe it to me. It’s better to be…what we appreciate is someone who’s very straightforward. It’s okay to think the way you think and to feel the way you feel, but you should be very straightforward from the beginning. But if you feel, well,  they’ll never understand what I’ve given, or what I’ve gone through, so I’ll just take it from underneath. We don’t appreciate so much that kind of activity. It makes it difficult for everyone. 

The reward for practice, you know, is practice itself. Why we practice is or how we practice is… One moment of practice is practice. We don’t get a reward in heaven or a reward in position or a reward in praise. Our life comes together with itself. We become you. That’s the only purpose of practicing, is for you to become you in a true sense. If you expect something else, you’re on the wrong track. If you're sincere, honest, upright, and your effort is pure effort, you will always be supported, you’ll have everything that you need beyond a doubt, I have no doubt.

So how society works, especially our society, Buddhist society, our sangha society, is a microcosm of the universe, microcosm of the world and society. We create a little society, a [Zen?] society. Sangha is a little society, and our society, sangha society, should be governed by the rules of dharma, true rules, not some rule that give some people some advantage, but rules which equalize so that everyone can share. If we withhold ourself, it’s just like withholding anything. Just like if we hoard ourself, it’s like hoarding money. If we don’t give freely of ourself, or aren’t allowed to give freely of ourself, then we become stagnant, and everybody feels that stagnation. So freely giving is our reward for giving, becoming free is our reward for giving. There’s nothing else to expect.

No need to steal, no need to take something. Just giving without any thought of return. As soon as there’s some thought of return, there’s that hook. Sometimes we may feel, I gave and gave and gave and then nothing, nothing came back. Or I put so much into this, and I don’t get anything in return, you know. [laughs] That’s because of our expectation, because our motive is not so pure. If you don’t have anything and don’t expect anything and just give (sounds like a pitch) [laughs], your life actually will be very happy. You can have a very happy life. I don’t promise you a happy life, but…

I remember at Tassajara in the summertime, the fire watch goes around in the evening seeing that everyone’s out of Tassajara that doesn’t belong there. There’s always some hiker who would want to sleep out on the flats toward the outskirts of Tassajara. We never let anyone sleep out there. And they say, occasionally someone would say, “But this is God’s country! How can you tell me not to sleep there? This country belongs to God! How come I can’t sleep here?” It’s a big koan, that’s right! [laughs] But it’s not really right, you know [laughs]. There’s something wrong with it. Even though everything belongs to us, we can’t just appropriate everything. We can’t just…The opposite of nothing belongs to us is, everything is ours! Oh, everything is mine, so I’ll just go and drive off Joe’s Cadillac [laughs] if everything is ours. Everything is ours to take care of. Everybody’s taking care of something. It’s not ours to appropriate, not ours to just use as we want to. 

You know, in the Bible, I think it’s the Bible, [laughs] the understanding that people have is, and  God gave dominion to man over the world and all the animals and so forth, which is a kind of corruption of the true meaning. The correct understanding is that God gave man dominion over the earth to take care of it. And it’s a keeper and caretaker, gardener, not just to devour it. Because we have that other…people seem to have that other understanding, and feel justified in their greed. We keep trying to bring it back to the original meaning. Our practice is actually to bring it back to that original understanding. We’re not just standing outside and seeing the universe as an object, our play toy, our big apple pie.

If we feel appropriative and justified, then we put ourself in a very deep position where we can’t, you know, we have blindness, and we can’t see what's really right and wrong. If I’m stealing, at least you can see, you know where you’re at. I’m stealing. Okay, good. We appreciate someone who can say, “I’m taking this! I’m stealing.” It may be good or bad, okay, but that person is actually being very honest, and we appreciate someone who’s honest. But, “No, no, I didn’t take it!” Or “No, I’m not stealing!” and you really believe that, that’s a kind of blindness, and it’s very difficult to know what our problem is when we don’t know what we’re doing wrong.

This precept is very important to us. When you give, just give. That’s all. Give and forget. No strings attached means not to be attached to anything. Just these are the things that I have to take care of. Okay, I’ll take care of them as best I can. I’ll take care of a million dollars in the best way I can. I won’t give it away. But what shall I do with it? How can I take care of it?

The main thing for us is our freedom: how to be free in each moment and how to know our place in the universe, how to know how we belong in this universe, and how to play in this universe. Character, in Japanese, character [ju?] means give and receive. It’s the same character for both give and receive. When you are ordained, the ordination teacher puts the character ju on your rakasu, and the character ju means give and receive. Give and receive, same character for both. 

This morning…that’s how I want to end the talk. This morning, we’re going to have a little informal welcoming ceremony for Liz and my son, Daniel, right after the lecture. Everyone’s invited to stay. If you want to say something, you can participate that way. Afterwards we’ll have a little champagne and some treat that Liz made. So I’m going to stop a little bit early and give us a little time to shuffle around, and so forth. [something  from the audience I can’t understand. He responds, Oh yeah.] The ceremony, rather than everybody leaving then coming back, we thought it would be easier if everybody just, everybody who’s going to stay would stay in the zendo, unless they went to the bathroom or something. [something more from the audience, inaudible].