I vow to taste the truth of the darkest words. Good morning. Morning. Nice to be in this room again. We have to accept that in this world there are millions and millions of objects and that each one, respectively, is the entire world. This is where the study of Buddhism begins. Some years ago I read a book

[01:04]

by Lawrence Vanderpost called The Heart of the Hunter. And in this book he told a lot of stories about the Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert. And one story that particularly stuck with me was a time that he had gone, Vanderpost had gone with a large crew of cameramen and their plan was to photograph and record the daily life of the Bushmen. So they arrived at the canyon where the Bushmen were camped and Vanderpost had come with a huge amount of equipment. He had several Land Rovers filled with tents and medicine, guns, cameras, and so on. So it took them all of the day to unpack. And then they started filming the Bushmen.

[02:12]

And two or three days after they'd been there, late one night, van der Post stepped back from the fire of his own camp. And he walked out into the desert and looked back and he was struck by the contrast between where he was staying and the Bushmen. His own friends were gathered around a huge bonfire and they were drinking and they were laughing and talking very loudly and their equipment was spread over a large area And each tent had a lamp so that there was lots of light. The Bushmen, on the other hand, had very small lean-to's made of brush. And they were sitting in front of the lean-to's quietly.

[03:17]

Their only possessions were spears and digging sticks. And each person had a leather strap. with ostrich eggs attached to it for carrying water. Now, in front of each limtu was a small fire, just enough for heat and light, so that the effect of the bushman's camp was like a reflection of the night sky. So the next day, Van Der Post went by himself back to the Bushman's campsite. And he went without any equipment. And he went alone. And this time he walked in very quietly and respectfully. And when he approached, an old woman gestured for him to come into her ninth.

[04:26]

And then she started to smooth the sand around the fire and apologized that her house was untidy. So then she signaled for him to sit down and she offered him a drink of water. So what I want to talk about this morning is stuff. Millions and millions of objects which have come to fill our lives and overflow from our lives. Mountains of things that we can point to and say, these are mine. When I thought about this, I realized I didn't really want to be strict about, with myself or with anybody, about material things.

[05:32]

That's not so interesting. But what I would like is to come to appreciate and actually take care of things which have come to dwell in my life. You know, how to find some deeper understanding of our relationship, the relationship between ourselves and the world around us. I began thinking about stuff, well over the years I've gone through various cycles of getting rid of everything, having it all come back again. Last year I moved from San Francisco to Green Gulch and While I was moving, I realized that these heavy boxes were filled with books that I'd never read, clothes that I'd never wear. I had skis, a Dutch oven, a flute that I don't know how to play.

[06:36]

So I started wondering, you know, what is this? What is this stuff? And I remembered that one of the reasons I'd gone to a monastery in the first place was that I had failed to find any satisfaction from my relationship to the material world. Just before I came to Zen Center, I had been living in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. And every day I drove home on the Teton Village Road And in front of my car were the Grand Tetons, probably the most beautiful mountains in the whole universe. And I realized one day that I was having absolutely no reaction to them. I felt like I was trapped in a postcard. To carry yourself forward and experience myriad things is delusion.

[07:48]

that myriad things come forth and experience themselves is awakening. What the Buddha saw when he looked at the world was that everything was completely perfect and that everyone was already enlightened, just that they didn't know it. So I wonder, how do we see like this? According to the teaching, the first step in beginning to see is to closely observe your own body and mind. To come home, turn on the lights, and start to look around. And meditation is very useful for this purpose. You begin to carefully and thoroughly investigate what it is that we're calling a human being.

[09:04]

What is this thing? What's going on? I think one of the things you may have already noticed is that The way our bodies are organized, it's very natural for us to place our attention outward and forward. You know, our hands, our ears, our eyes, everything is going this way. Our legs. So, as a result, we rarely consider what's happening behind our backs or above our heads. below our feet. And there's nothing wrong with that except that it's a limited view. So a great deal of our life is spent operating from a limited view. So the Buddha's main, his life teaching was how to help people get past this limited point of view.

[10:18]

How to expand their awareness. To consider what they normally don't consider. Add the missing pieces. About five or six years ago I was visiting a friend of mine who was living at the Cambridge Buddhist Association, which is a very small sangha in Boston. And my friend invited me to sit a half day sitting with her. She was studying with Maureen Stewart Roshi, who died about this time last year. Kind of a tremendous person, spirit, if any of you met her, she was a pretty amazing lady. So there were about five of us sitting that day, and we all were in a row together, and I happened to be next to Maureen, who was sitting on my right, and facing in the direction of my ears.

[11:25]

So about two or three periods into the day, I was getting more and more relaxed. And I relaxed to the point where I fell asleep. And then suddenly this very strong voice said, open your eyes. Look at the leaves on the tree. I had no doubt that she was talking to me. So I opened my eyes, and sure enough, there was this beautiful tree right in front of me, just through the window. And it was covered with millions of new spring leaves. And I thought, it was completely amazing. Where did that come from? I think one of the difficulties in the process of waking up is that it's very subtle.

[12:37]

And the subtlety has to do with the fact that it's all obvious. That what you're being invited to meet is the very simple and plain workings of your own body and mind. which are going on all the time. Now, is it possible for us to learn to bring our attention and our affection to something that's already there, to something that's already happening? I read an article that said that in traditional Japanese monasteries the monks would meditate in the morning until they heard the first bird begin to sing. And then they would go to work and at the end of the day they would begin to meditate again when the last bird was quiet.

[13:50]

This is pretty subtle. This is a quote from Suzuki Roshi's book. If you practice Zazen, you are Buddha. Or even though you don't practice Zazen, you are Buddha. We ourselves are Buddha. It's nothing interesting. It's too common. Enlightenment is to know how important it is to do common things and to be interested in something very usual, like drinking water. When you're interested in something new, different or powerful, you are repeating the same mistake over and over again. That is how we human beings become lost in our curiosity. This way or that way. So that is why I tell you to stay here. Before you are interested in something unusual, you should be a usual person.

[14:55]

And you should have strong confidence in yourself. So during zazen it's ordinary experiences that become the focus of our attention. A bird singing. A pain in our lower back. Someone coughing. Someone sneezing. Inhalation. Exhalation. The important thing is not to get too interested or caught by what's happening. To allow what arises to come and allow it to go. You don't go after it and you don't try to stop it. Just like clouds in the sky. It is not really so easy to do that. And I think it takes a lot of time and a lot of effort to just be able to sit quietly

[16:01]

But maybe that's okay, because if it were easy, I don't think we would appreciate it very much. In Zazen, what we're doing is training our bodies. We train our bodies to sit up straight, and we train our bodies to be comfortable. One of the nice things about training your body is that your body remembers what it learns a lot longer than your conscious mind. I think we all know that pretty well. All the things we learned when we were children, we still can do pretty well. Tie our shoes, drink out of a cup, walk. Zen practice has a lot to do with training your body, your physical body, and a lot of repetition. Do things over and over and over again.

[17:05]

So every day we get up, we sit zazen, we chant, and we bow. Over and over. Until it becomes ordinary. Like brushing your teeth in the morning. The mind that results from this practice is an open mind, a mind that is flexible and ready for whatever comes into it. And with this open and ready mind, we stand up, turn around, and face the world of objects. We meet our stuff, maybe for the first time. the more you look into your own body and mind. The more you're not quite sure what it is that's in front of you. You don't really know, what is this? How did it come to be?

[18:06]

Who made it? I think if we're very lucky that Eventually, the tiny details of our life become joyful and interesting to us. But actually, we have an alert and an awake relationship with the things that we touch and things that we see. One by one, one after the other, very carefully turning An important point is that when you approach the world, whatever you touch, it's important not to go too fast, not to hurry.

[19:12]

Pacing and balance are extremely vital for our happiness. I think most of us tend to carry our heads out ahead of our bodies, as though we can get to where we're going before our feet. So part of balance is to get your head back on your spine, to allow yourself to get to where you are, to be where you are, everything at the same time. There really isn't any choice anymore. You can't be anywhere else. You can only be here. So whatever we touch, we bring our life to that thing.

[20:21]

Child, piano, computer. What you see and what you hear and what you feel, you bring to life with your hands. It's very much like being God. That's what we are. We're transmitters of life, of life energy. I have one last story. I lived for a year with an old woman whose name was Nancy Wilson Ross, back in her house in Long Island. She was a friend of Zen Center's and Zen Center had asked me to go back and stay with her. She was about 80 years old at the time.

[21:24]

Nancy had written a lot of books about Buddhism and had been very involved in New York society when she was a young woman in her thirties and forties and fifties. But when I knew her she lived pretty much alone and a few old friends who were still alive would come by. And pretty often Nancy would go out for a walk and she'd take her cane and she'd take her garden clippers. And as we walked, she'd snip berries and branches, things, and she'd hand them to me to carry back to the house. And then she'd spend several hours making these arrangements, very beautiful arrangements, and put them around the house. I think she had 20 of them or something. And then, as time went by, they'd kind of droop, and I'd clean them up and take them away, and she'd do it again.

[22:31]

So finally, I asked her, you know, why do you go to so much trouble? There's no one coming. There's no company. And she said, Nance, that's my name too, she said, Nance, these aren't for company. These are for us. So Buddhism isn't about finding a new reality to replace this crummy reality. It's really finding a way to appreciate how vast and wonderful this reality truly is. to see how the details of our daily life are at the same time sacred and mysterious.

[23:40]

Do you have some questions or things you'd like to talk about? Please. I was, last night, despairing over the way I spend my days. I work at the university and it's been very hectic in its promotions and fellowships, deadlines. And I really had this awful picture of myself and everyone around me, all the professors, the staff, just involved in this

[24:56]

this sort of awful game of moving pieces of paper from one place to another and helping other people get the right words and the right pieces of paper to another office and sitting in front of these little screens all day. I'm sure we've all experienced this where I don't know what my question is. My question is how to live in that. How to really be present in this world which so often seems to discourage or to encourage being compulsive.

[26:09]

Well, one of the big words in Buddhism is renunciation. And I think I'm beginning to understand more that that means renouncing the compulsion and the force of the stream that's coming at you, that seems how it's going. kind of feeling, that you actually push against it. Renunciation is pushing back against the tide with the force of your own will and your own life. And it doesn't mean a joyless or an angry pushing back, but just pushing back. For me, sitting zazen is one of those ways to push back.

[27:19]

The invitation is to keep going all day long, 26 hours a day, you just keep moving and keep your list, checking off all those little things you've got to get done. So to actually stop and not do that, to take your shoes off and come in here, to me that's... It's quite a radical thing to do. And it is hard to make a new habit out of not cooperating with what's going on. So you actually have to work at it. You have to make another effort, kind of a counter-effort. But I think a lot of us would tell you or suggest to you that it's worth it. it's worth it to really try to find that place where you can stop and let it flow over the top of your head.

[28:23]

You just raised something, an interesting question. As if you're not going to I think there's different ways that you can approach your life or any situation. One is to cooperate. From a Buddhist point of view, it's to cooperate completely. And another is not to cooperate. It's very tricky ground there, I think. Because... You know, if you're working in a busy office, things are very hectic, and you're sitting very quietly away from the flow of those things, then you are not engaged in the activity of the moment. So it's a question for me, it's like, how do you find some stillness

[29:36]

even in the midst of yourself participating in the energy as it's going along. And that has other implications about our society, but that's really subtle, I think. That's really hard to do. Well, there's kind of a dual reality, in a sense, although I wouldn't really say that, but in a sense you can say, it's as though, one description I like is that Your feet are on the bottom of the ocean, and your head is above the waves. So, you're right there with all this stuff, but at the same time, you're walking on the bottom of the ocean. That you know this is a show. Right. It's an illusion. And it's wonderful, you know. When you're caught by it, it's when you forget that it's a show, and you become sort of part of the show. And you lose yourself in the drama, and so on.

[30:42]

So, it's not so easy to do that, to stay in touch with the one who's not busy. Right. And again, it's subtle. It's very subtle. And that's why it's very easy to get knocked off. And you have to keep bringing yourself back to that subtle awareness. That made me think of, actually, when you said the word renunciation, I thought for a moment, what does this word mean? Does it mean, does the root of this mean to say again? Maybe so. Maybe say it again in a slightly different way. I think what you're renouncing is samsara, which is the same thing as embracing awakening, or embracing No illusion. Not being fooled by anything. One image I...

[32:02]

often like is the idea that when you inhale, your entire life arises on your inhalation, and your entire life descends on your exhalation. And that it's like a little boat on the ocean. It's going up and down. So it's, you know, if you can remember you're on the ocean, It's kind of wonderful. But if you just get caught in the boat, you know, it seems very small and very dangerous. I wonder if you fall in the ocean. Well, it's okay. That's where you came from. But I think we get a little lost with the boat, a little bit too much forgetting where we came from and where we're going. And it's every moment is this way. Everything that's ever happened is already stopped.

[33:08]

If it didn't, this couldn't happen. It would be quite a traffic jam. So it's all gone. Simultaneously with the new creation, everything is destroyed. And that's really how it's going. We haven't gotten to the future and the past has disappeared. So where are we? And it's always like that. A little bit in relation to what Anne said about being aware that one is engaged with other people in very difficult, compulsive activities, and also the unusual aspect, the kindness comes up in that. And, of course, part of the stuff that you've been talking about is our views. that we just are so entangled in the stuff of our views and other people's views. And we've been talking in this Sangha quite a lot in the last weeks about men and women, war and peace.

[34:14]

And of course those are the two big loaded baskets of views. And it's been quite difficult And also quite gratifying is my sense has been that in the midst of the difficulty and all the various confusions and afflictive emotions that arise, you get a sense of us being kind of lost together. And if you feel lost in the same boat with other people, Not so bad. Maybe it's only quite good. Unless you start fighting with one another. Unless the bugs start fighting around you. Yeah. So it's that dangerous. I live in a very big boat, in which that happens. Our big Zen center is over there, across the ocean.

[35:18]

Yeah, it's really impossible. I was struck by your observations of carrying these heavy boxes of things that you are no longer using and how you've, over the years, sort of tried to get rid of things and then kind of come back maybe at a different point. I'm very fortunate that I live in an extremely small house right now. But it's stuffed, I have to admit.

[36:24]

There's no more room. Sometimes I think, when I try not to be too hard on myself, I think, well, I'm kind of like a bird, you know, I just keep bringing all these old things, feathers and things, and sticking them here and there. And they're not useful objects, particularly. Did you hold the nest together? They hold the nest together. I don't know if any of you know Dan Welch. He was a Zen student in the old Zen Center. And when I moved into Zen Center, he looked at my pile. And he said, three moves are as good as a fire. He was wrong. I think that's why I've opted to try to learn how to appreciate them and how to take care of them, you know, because I can't seem to stay away from them.

[37:27]

And it was very instructive to me after everything was gone. to be available. I read an article after this story I read about Van der Post going to see the Bushmen.

[39:03]

I read another kind of follow-up article about where the Bushmen are today. And they have discovered trunks. So they no longer move. They don't travel anymore. And they used to follow... What they would do is when the weather would begin to change, they would follow the sound of the thunder. So they just always would be where the rain was. But now they live in these little tin shacks on the edge of the desert, and they get government money, and they can't move because they have these heavy trunks. So, anyway. It's our human dilemma. I really liked what you said about our eyes and our senses being going forward and they're being

[40:11]

get in touch with some of that stuff or what it might be and how it influences you? Well, I think the nature of our... the way our minds tend to work is that we... we tend to settle for that which we can know or that which we can verify with one of our senses. And we can get very puffed up about that, you know. this is the truth and it says so right here and so on and so forth. There's a way that we use our minds to validate this particular narrow gauge of reality. And it's really hard to get off that. We're taught it. We're taught it in school. We're taught a certain way of thinking about the truth or what is. I was talking to a friend who was saying that You know, there's two kinds of science. There's the science where you spend all your whole day in the library reading about the migratory patterns of geese, and then there's the science where you go out and follow them, and you don't know what you're seeing, you don't know what they're doing, and why are they taking off right now, and what... You know, there's this kind of great mysterious thing, which is not really anything to do with what's in the books.

[41:41]

You know, it's like the finger in the moon. So it's not to say there's something bad about the book's part, but rather forgetting to appreciate the other side of it, which is more like what's behind your back or what's over your head. And it helps to consider and to be accepting of the fact that that's the stuff you don't know. Can you actually allow all the things that you don't know to be part of every moment? The majority of what you're walking through is, I don't know. I don't know what I'm doing, I don't know who I am, I don't know where I am, I don't know what's going on, and I don't know what's coming next. And that's the fact. But that's not such a comfortable fact. So we tend to get to a very narrow train or track, you know, so we can be comfortable.

[42:42]

So it's kind of risky to be so stupid, you know, to be so lost, in a way. But it's the fools, it's kind of the wise fool dilemma where you, which you gain this tremendous sense of wonder or, you know, the big wow, It's really... You don't have anything to lose. Nothing to lose, yeah. All that, yeah. You get all that. It's tremendous. How do we start?

[43:53]

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