I love to taste the truth, the love to try to judge the words. Good morning. We've come a long way toward beginning our new Zen Do. And next week we actually start working on Zen Do. And I want to thank everybody for their effort.

[01:03]

I want to thank you all for your effort in making this Zendo, new Zendo project come about. And for your generosity and donations and helping us organize the work and get the whole thing together. So next week, we start the demolition, start taking things apart. And I think when we start to put it back together the way we want to, then we'll have a ceremony. Alan Block, a long time ago, brought back a little box of nails from the old zendo at Tassajara that burned down so that we could put those nails into our zendo when we start.

[02:13]

So we'll have a ceremony and hammer some of those nails in when we start putting it back together again. So there's going to be a lot of work going on in the next three months, maybe more than three months. We'd like to finish, to start Zen Do and then finish in three months. That's ideal. Ideal, but everything always takes longer than you expect it to. And everything is always more expensive than you expect it to be. Those are two irrefutable laws of working projects. So I want to talk a little bit about work, our attitude toward work, and how we can participate.

[03:20]

This kind of project for us is a, we don't have an emperor to hire a bunch of carpenters to build our zendo for us. And whatever we do, we pretty much have to do through our own efforts. And to me, that's a great advantage. I wouldn't want someone else to come and build a zendo for us. And I wouldn't want someone to come and have some kind of authority or power to tell us what to do and how to do it. The whole practice here arises from our own sense of Buddhism and through our activity. So whatever we have is the result of our

[04:22]

combined effort. So building the Zenda will also be part of our combined effort these next three months. And we have pretty well, things pretty well figured out how we're going to go about doing it. And some of our carpenters are going to be paid to supervise, more than just supervise. They will do most of the work. When we built, when we worked on the house over here, everybody worked for almost nothing. That was a wonderful contribution. And it was hours and hours of work. Two years, it took two years to get that building completed. And But this time, our carpenters will be paid.

[05:24]

But they'll need the help of the Sangha to do the work. They will do the skilled work, most of the skilled work. But the Sangha itself, everybody will be able to participate if we want to. There's not only work, there's cooking for the crews, which is work, and removing nails from boards, and taking old material out to the dumpster. Lots of work that's associated with the building, which those carpenters, if they had to do all that work, they'd never get the building built.

[06:32]

So there's a lot of associated activities which the sangha can do to see that the zendo gets built. It takes the pressure off those carpenters and allows them to really do the work that they can do. So for me, this kind of activity of everybody sharing in the building of our zendo is, to me, that's practice. And it's an opportunity for the active side of our practice together. When we think about practicing together, we always think about sitting. That's what we seem to emphasize. And we don't always have an opportunity to practice actively together, the active side.

[07:37]

So our active side is usually by ourself in the world. In a lay practice, this is usually so. In a monk's practice, the monks all practice working together. in one place. And so the two sides of sitting practice and activity practice are very obvious. But it's not so obvious to us always. That's why our work periods on Saturday morning are very valuable for practice. I wish that we could all participate in work period on Saturday morning. Because it looks like there are a lot of things to be done. And it's just, you know, work. I mean, we work all week. You know, why should we come to the Zen Center and work too? But our practice, work practice, has two sides.

[08:39]

One side is utilitarian. And the other side is how we actualize ourself as practice. how we actualize our activity as Sazen. And together, those two sides are, they're not really two things, but we separate them in order to be able to talk about the various factors, in order to explain the nature of work So, mostly, when we think about work, we think about the utilitarian side of work. There's something that has to be done, so we do it. And if it doesn't have to be done, we don't do it. That's simple logic. But the other side of our practice for Buddhists, for a Zen student, is that work actualizes our life.

[09:49]

Activity brings us to life, and we bring life to activity. And without activity, without actualizing ourself through work, it's pretty hard to know ourself. It's pretty hard to realize ourselves. Mostly we try to actualize ourselves through thinking. And we tend to feel that working is a lower form of activity. If you look at the world and the way it goes, It goes that way. The lower forms of activity are ditch digging and garbage collecting and so forth.

[10:58]

And then gradually you come up to the higher forms of thinking and mathematics and philosophy and diplomacy and so forth and science. So thinking is on top and working is on the bottom. But for a Zen student, working is very important. Using the whole body and mind in an activity is more important than any one isolated aspect of our activity. So when we think about how we get a job in the world, what our career in the world will be, then we have the hierarchy of activities.

[12:01]

And the physical activities are on the lower end of the scale, and the mental activities are on the upper end of the scale. And so we tend to go for one or the other. tend to isolate ourselves on one side of the scale or the other. But for a Zen student, the whole mind and body is important. So when we sit Zazen, it's an activity of the whole body and mind. Even though our thinking isn't abstract, our whole body and mind is completely concentrated in unity from the toes to the top of the head and consciousness and intentions.

[13:06]

So thinking, of course, is a very important activity. And manual work is an important activity, but one isn't any more important than the other in our practice. So whatever we do, that's the most important thing. What we're doing is the most important thing. If we have to think things out, then that's the most important thing. If we have to dig a hole, then that's the most important thing. So it's not that some things are more important than others, but what we happen to be doing is the most important thing. So that we can actualize ourself no matter what we're doing. We can bring the world to life no matter what we're doing. And we can bring ourself to life through the activity.

[14:09]

That's why we talk about not having any preference. We train ourselves in non-preference. If someone, unfortunately, we can't do that so well. In Zen Center, San Francisco Zen Center, the carpenters are, if you have talent as a carpenter, you're always favored as a carpenter. And it's very, takes a long time before you can do something else. because there's so much building, you know, and the material, the utilitarian side is favored. Everybody understands that. But ideally, if you're a carpenter, you should maybe be doing something else in order to practice non-preference. If you're always

[15:13]

going toward the thing that is your talent, reinforcing your talent. It's not bad to reinforce your talent, but if you're always reinforcing your talent by neglecting the other side, or if you're emphasizing your ear by neglecting your toe, then you should pay more attention to your toe in order to balance your whole being. So people who start to practice Zen, where there's no need to utilize their talent, always find themselves in an awkward position, having to stumble through some kind of work that they're not used to, or using some part of their body or mind that they're not used to using, and feeling way down on the scale.

[16:26]

But, you know, I was such a great something before I got here, and now I'm nothing. So we feel that way. We feel, now I'm nothing. All these people that I felt superior to are now my superiors. And they're telling me what to do. So finding yourself in that position is very unsettling, to say the least. But within the realm of practice, we always find ourselves, or should find ourselves in that position. At some point, we have to find ourselves in that position. And then, you know, we have to do something. So, Zen practice is always unsettling us. If you feel unsettled, you feel that you've been moved off your position, or moved out of your security, or asked to do something that

[17:40]

feels funny. You can feel that you're really practicing. You can say to yourself, but this is really practice. I see. I see where I am. This is really practice. If you don't see that, you're still practicing, but you just don't understand it. So, you know, we kind of alternate. If we're always in an unsettled position, it's not so good. So then we find a kind of way to settle into practice, and we feel pretty good again. You know, we start feeling pretty good again. And then something comes and unsettles us. We're put in some place where we don't know what to do so well. Some way that we don't know how to handle ourselves so well. And then we have to deal with that situation. So we're always being pushed into a situation that's unfamiliar and it's hard to deal with.

[18:45]

And we have to find ourself in that situation. We complain, we threaten to leave, feel that we're being beat up or something. But we should know, we should understand that that's part of practice. Very vital part of practice. As soon as we have some feeling of security, something will come and unsettle us. So, training in Zen is how to be settled. How to settle. How to know how to be settled when everything is being pulled out from under you. constantly being put in a position that is threatening or is unsettling.

[20:03]

Threatening is a little too strong. Unsettling. So we can't find security except in our deepest self. If we look for security in some way other than through finding it in our deepest self on each moment and through each moment's activity then you know you have to practice more so we're always practicing we're always in that situation and if we think that we have some security That's a false notion. So in ordinary activity, we can go along for a long time thinking that we have security until something comes along and unsettles us.

[21:14]

But in Zen practice, we're always expecting to be unsettled. We should always be expecting to be unsettled. And not just go along blindly, thinking that this is it. Thinking that you have it. Oh, I finally have it. Oh, I finally got it. Oh, I'm finally feeling comfortable. I feel comfortable here, as in practice. As soon as you feel that way, you know that there's something wrong. But if you have the true comfort, that's OK. True comfort means that no matter what happens, you don't lose it. If you lose it, you know you don't have it. Do you know what I mean by if you lose it? If you lose yourself, you know that you don't have it. You haven't. You're not settled yet. So what we settle on is not the security

[22:20]

that we think we have, but always on ourself. It's like when you throw the cat, the cat always lands on his feet. Take the cat and you can throw the cat as far as you want, the cat always lands on his feet. The cat falls down from the top of the building, always on his feet. That means that the cat, the cat owns nothing. The cat doesn't care about you. It doesn't care about anything. Building bears down, doesn't care. But the cat always lands on his feet. So a cat is a very good example for our practice. Lots of inner security. So in our work, to get back to our work, we try not to discriminate.

[23:47]

If you start discriminating or preferring one thing over another, you kind of put yourself in a funny position to be thrown off. Put yourself in a... As soon as you start preferring something too much. I mean, of course we all want something. But if you hang on to your preference too much, and what you want is taken away from you, then you start crying, you know. Start. But it doesn't do any good. It doesn't help. So sometimes, you know, it looks like our practice is to be cold. It's such a cold way, you know. Not to have grief. It's not, you know, that we don't have grief or feel in the way ordinary people feel.

[24:59]

You know, if you don't have this kind of preference, if you don't hang on to preference, not too attached to things, not too attached to your own desire, then you may not feel the same kind of sorrow that people ordinarily feel when things disappear from us or from this world. But You know, if someone dies, you feel that. And when people are hurt, we are very sympathetic with that. And we should be able to take people's suffering into ourself. If we really have a good sense of non-attachment. We can take people's suffering into ourself very easily and we can suffer with them because we have plenty of room to take their suffering in and then put it down.

[26:11]

If you really have, really empty, you can take someone's suffering in and suffer with them and really feel that suffering and then you can take it out and go about continue your life. You're not caught by their suffering or your suffering, but you can feel it. You can be it with them and participate completely in that way. So, you know, Avalokiteshvara hears all the cries of the world, suffers all the suffering of the world, takes in all the suffering of the world, but still isn't destroyed by it, and is always present.

[27:14]

So in our work, we try to be just open, completely open to whatever is presented to us. And then we try to make our work harmonious with all the work around us. So during a sasheen, a work period, it always has a wonderful feeling to it. Because we've been sitting, our mind is already open to non-preference. And then when we go to work, we carry that mind with us, that openness and willingness to just do the next thing, just do what's necessary. And it's a wonderful experience of working in harmony with everything. Somehow you don't mind what you have to do, it doesn't matter. just moving, just moving with things in a harmonious way is very fulfilling.

[28:40]

Next week, actually, we're going to have a Work Sashim. And a Work Sashim, we usually have a Work Sashim when, sometimes we have a Work Sashim when there's a big project or when there's an accumulation of work, maybe during the spring or in the summer. And it looks like, oh, we're going to have a work session because there's all this work to do. And that's usually the reason, the excuse for it. But the other side of that is that it gives us an opportunity to practice our practice in an opportunity to practice the other side of practice, which is activity together. We sit less than we work.

[29:50]

And although we get something done, which we need to get done, we also experience that how to really work as zenki. Zenki is something like, one translation is like total dynamic working, total dynamic activity. where our activity, we actualize the activity and the activity actualizes us, and our activity is universal. Digging a hole is universal activity.

[30:54]

That means the activity of the universe. We tend to think of our work as my work, I'm doing this, but Zenki is more the universe and I are doing this work, or the universe as me, or myself as the universe is working. When we really have emptiness, when we're really empty, No matter what we do, it's the most wonderful work. So it helps to get us out of our usual ways of thinking about work and activity.

[31:56]

When we're children, our motivation, before, let's say, before eight, our motivations are always very pure and full of enthusiasm. We're just full of enthusiasm for the world and for activity. And, you know, you see the faces of little kids and they're very bright and they just want to learn the next thing and want to do the next thing just for the fun of it. But as they get older, they start to look for reasons. And as we become more and more educated, we refine our reasons. And we'll only do certain things for certain reasons. And by the time we get out of college, we've been educated to find our reason in... The greatest reason for working is to make money.

[33:05]

And money is a wonderful factor, one of the factors in our... as a reward for our work. There are many rewards for work and many factors that go into reasoning about work. One is the satisfaction of the work, and another reason is that the work itself gets done and satisfies other people. And another reason is that we make some living from it, and we're paid in money. There are lots of different reasons for doing something, and money is one of them. But what happens is that it becomes unbalanced. And instead of balancing all those factors so that money is one of them, and maybe satisfaction is another, or using your talent and ability in the right way is another, the money becomes unbalanced, overbalanced.

[34:27]

And most people feel they have to make work for money. You can't work for enjoyment. That's not one of the acceptable... It's a kind of lower acceptable factor, but it's not considered really acceptable as a primary reason tertiary reason, maybe. I mean, if you get it, it's good. You're lucky. Or for another reason that's not considered valid is to do something because the thing needs to be done. So more and more, we have as our goal money. And that has become such an accepted factor that it's really hard to separate that out

[35:29]

from when we want to do pure activity. So we need to learn how to come back to our child's mind again and just be able to do pure activity, to do activity together for its enjoyment or its rewards, which are not just money or material rewards. Benjamin Franklin said, time is money.

[36:35]

I think it was Benjamin Franklin. Time is money. And money is time. And to a certain extent, that's true. I mean, it's a very profound statement. But if we only believe that, if we believe that that's the only truth, we get attached to that truth. And we can't move in other directions. So we're really bound by that truth. Time is money. But time is all kinds of things. And time is ourself. And time is satisfaction. And time is living. Life is time, and time is life. Not just money.

[37:37]

Time is satisfaction in innumerable ways. Time is using ourself in innumerable ways. So, when all the money goes into one pot gets drawn off by one segment of society, then everybody's scrambling for it. When it's evenly distributed, it just becomes another factor of our life. And we use it, and it helps us, and we can live our life pretty easily. you know, in the 50s and the 60s, although there was, you know, there were always imbalances, things were pretty stable, you know, up until the gas crisis, things were pretty stable, you know, you could go along pretty well without having to worry too much about, I mean, unless you like to worry about money, you go along pretty well, pretty well without having to worry about it.

[38:53]

And you could balance your life out and people could do much more, much more freedom because the money was more evenly distributed between everybody. But now it's, you know, very unbalanced. Everybody's scrambling for it. So it makes it more difficult, much more difficult to have any kind of freedom. But we do have choices in this kind of situation. We can either scramble after more money or else not use so much. Now worldly activity, I mean worldly attitude is when there's less money you go scrambling after more. But a boobst attitude or practice attitude is in order to keep yourself from scrambling and in order to allow yourself to practice, you just use less.

[39:59]

That's another way. So you allow your life to become a little more austere. Actually, none of us live an austere life. I think it's pretty hard to live an austere life in America, by austere standards. you know, instead of spending more money, you just spend less money. And it becomes a kind of challenge to be able to live within a certain kind of limit. And if you purposefully do that, then your life becomes enriched by it. But if you think that you don't have enough, then you feel poor. Wealth and poverty are in our mind, except in the most extreme cases.

[41:05]

Wealth and poverty is a state of mind, definitely a state of mind. If you try to see how well you can get along by spending as little as possible, That's a way of life, a very rich way of life, because it enriches all of your activity. You have to find how to be satisfied with what you have, and therefore your life as it is becomes richer. But if you feel that you never have enough stuff to enrich your life, then that's poverty. You feel poor, then that's poverty. If you feel wealthy, then you're wealthy. But it doesn't have anything to do with how much you have or don't have. So it's really important how we look on our, the attitude we take toward

[42:22]

what we have and what satisfies us, and what the real meaning of our activity is. What's the real meaning of our activity? So building a zendo is a wonderful way for us all to interact and do something for ourselves and for each other and for people who we don't even know. It's really a benevolent act

[43:28]

benevolent thing to do, to participate in that kind of project. Bill asked me to tell you that when we participate, to be careful how we do things. Because with a lot of work going on, construction and so forth, it's easy to Unless you're very careful, you might get hurt in some way. So he's warned us about that. And I think that's a good warning. We should really practice mindfulness when we work. Carefulness and mindfulness. And the best way to do that is to know who you're working for. If you come to work, say on a Saturday or a Sunday, and someone asks you to do something, you should try to be as careful as possible and listen to that person.

[44:49]

Just try to do work with everybody as harmoniously as possible. It's not real dangerous. Not a real dangerous job, but whenever there's work, there's always possibility of problems. So that should be part of our practice. A real, real a big part of our practice, how to be careful, how to be aware of what's going on around you, not just be blinded by your own narrow activity, but to have an awareness of what's going on around you. So that when you do work with other people, you're an asset and not a drain, not draining other people's attention, that they're always worried about you. So in a sense, when we work together like this, we learn how to work.

[46:08]

We should be learning work habits, good work habits. If we learn poor work habits from the beginning, then our work will never be satisfactory. No matter what we do, our work is always unsatisfactory. If you find that you have bad work habits, it's a big help to you, to everybody. If you recognize that, if someone says, you really have bad work habits, you should take it to heart and say, well, how can I change my work habits? That would make you an angel. If you said, gee, how can I change my bad work habits? You'd be the most wonderful student in the world. Show me how. But we usually say, what do you mean I have no idea?

[47:09]

I can do all that. The best way to learn is, even if we're criticized for something that we think we're great at, to say, oh, I'm sorry, show me how to do it. And then the person will show you how to do it, but you may be better at it than they are. Then you say, well, okay. Then you show them that you can do it quite well without antagonizing them or without bringing up something from yourself. Because as soon as you start to defend yourself, you're lost. for many reasons. You are lost when you start to defend yourself, start to defend your position. So, best attitude, you know, is to always be open to new ways, actually, of doing things.

[48:12]

Say, oh, is that so? Show me, please show me. And then the person will learn that you know more just by your knowing how, just by your doing something well. So the truth always comes out in the end, anyway. We must be patient. But to just be open to change and to learning something new is a wonderful attitude. So if we learn the right kind of work habits, It just makes our life much more harmonious together. And ways of going about doing things, certain kinds of procedures. I think on this kind of job, there is that opportunity to learn good work habits and to help each other in that way.

[49:23]

And it also, you know, Zen center always has a certain kind of style that is apparent. Sometimes it's obvious, sometimes it's subtle. But it's a certain way of working with things and handling yourself and working with others that's very compassionate. and very astute. We usually try to do things with good taste and with care. Nowadays, it's hard to do things with care because, as I mentioned before, the monetary value of things, time is money and materials are money. Time and materials are money. So, with that in mind, we try to do everything as fast as we can so that things don't cost as much.

[50:31]

And so we... But something costs, and the cost of that kind of activity is the quality. We give up quality in order to do something quickly and efficiently, somewhat efficiently. So we lose real efficiency and we lose quality because we're always trying to do everything too quickly. and in the most cheapest way. So, we can't, you know, always afford to buy the most wonderful materials. But our attitude should be, this is what we have to work with. Let's work with this, whether it's the best material or not the best material or maybe poor material. But this is what we have to work with. Let's work with this the best way we can. What's the best way that we can work with what we've got? And so it's the same attitude to ourselves.

[51:36]

This, me, is all I've got to work with. So how can I work with that the best way I can? So in the same way that we handle ourself, we handle other things. We don't say, gee, I wish we had something better. I wish I was better, or I wish we had more, da, da, da. We just take what we've got and use it as fully as possible. If we have that kind of attitude, that's our Zen attitude, Zen practice. Dogen says we should be able to build a 16 foot high Buddha with a blade of grass.

[52:54]

Do you have a question? You said at one point in the lecture, you know, you take on the work and then you have to do something. I don't remember exactly what point I said exactly what you said, but... We were talking about non-preference, and then you have the thing, okay, and now you have to do something. That's all. You just do what you have to do. Just turning your attention to it. Just turning yourself to that thing. I want to do it or I don't want to do it.

[54:21]

Just do what you have to do. Just fulfill yourself through that activity. And fulfill that through you. It's difficult when you're standing outside deciding. But once you do something, it's easy. The most difficult part is the separation between yourself and the activity. That's what we call difficulty. As soon as there's no separation between ourself and the activity, then we don't talk about problems. There's no such thing as easy and difficult. We do say, you know, this is easy and this is difficult, but actually, once you are one with what you're doing, There's no easy or difficult. We don't talk about easy and difficult. What is it that happens that puts a separation between certain kinds of activity and yourself?

[55:29]

And for myself, I don't always know what it is I'm going. I think I want to do something and I get there and boom, you know, ah, just, oh, you're somewhere and I cannot get back. And other things I'm completely into. Preference. It's very physical. Yeah, it's a big problem. That's why we have to practice. If it wasn't a problem, we wouldn't have to practice. That's why it's such a big, that's why it's such a central part of practice. If it wasn't a problem, you know, it wouldn't make any difference. We'd go on to do something else, think about something else. Well, we had a discussion at a resident meeting this last week, and we were talking about what it's like to be in therapy, to go to a therapist, psychotherapy, and how that's different from Zen practice.

[56:34]

And a common element of the people who had been in therapy was they felt that therapy helped them to know their preferences, more to get in touch with what their preferences really were, which is kind of what it seems like you were saying, that you don't know sometimes what... it surprises you that certain things give you a hard time, because you don't know so well what your preferences really are, maybe. And... I'm wondering about the differences between those two ways of approaching preference. It seems like in Zen you would suggest letting go of your preferences or just dropping them. And in therapy it seems like it's more becoming aware of your preferences and somehow acting on them.

[57:39]

So I'd like to hear what you think. about that and also what somebody who's involved in therapy thinks about that. It's a big subject that we're going to study soon. But in Zen, we don't think about what our preference is. We just act. If you mull it over, as soon as you start mulling it over, Then you get further and further away from it. Then you say, well, I like this. I don't like that. But I really like this. But I want that. But I don't want... That's some other kind of practice. Zen practice is whatever is in front of you, you act on it. You can say, I don't want it. You always have a choice. I'll do it or I won't do it. But then, that's your choice. And you should know what your choice is.

[58:40]

And then you know what to do. Knowing how to decide something. A moment's hesitation and you're lost. So if you sit down and start mulling it over, you're off on cloud nine. It's different, you know. It's really two different things. One is to It's not wrong to do that, but it's not what we're talking about.

[59:51]

We all have preferences. You cannot live in this world without preference. So, it's not just a philosophical question, and it's not just a question of this or that. It's a koan. The subject of preference, or non-preference, is a koan. And it's at the root of our practice. It's the very thing that's at the root of our practice. Preference or non-preference. And it's the biggest koan that we have. So it's not really something for discussion. We can discuss it this way. But it's not really a matter of discussion. It's a matter of actualizing it and realizing it. And the more we discuss it, the further we get away from it. There's nothing wrong with therapy. There's nothing wrong with you know, all psychology and so forth, but that's not the point here.

[61:16]

The point here is to actualize, not to discuss, not to intellectualize it. Well, I see the almost diametrically opposed approaches. Our approach in the West is to analyze and to separate things out, and the Eastern approach is more towards synthesis. These two are just the expressions of those different attitudes. And while it can be useful, And sometimes it's absolutely necessary to be able to separate and know what your preferences are.

[62:18]

That may be the first necessary step before you can go the second step and act on non-preference. Yeah, that's why, you know, a while back I said there's a preliminary practice and then actual practice. And the preliminary practice is before you decide what you're doing, you find out how to decide. But once you decide what you're doing, then you should know what you're doing and act on that.

[62:54]

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