Just now, I was going to come over here, you know, and I turned out the lights in my cabin, and then I couldn't find the door. But after stumbling over a few things and bumping my shins, I discovered it finally. So here I am. You know, this is a good example of, Dogen Zenji said, everything is encouraging us to attain enlightenment. Don't you think that was some good encouragement? To bump into something and find your way in the dark. He said, you know, mountains and rivers, earth and sky are encouraging us to wake up, to attain enlightenment. He could have added, you know, any number of things, teapots, compost, friends, enemies, heat, cold.

[01:08]

This week we're doing a Zen and cooking workshop, so I tend to emphasize various things. But this is one of the things that everything is an object for possible awakening, or for our direct experience. So, you know, we practice Zen in order to practice experiencing life, our world, directly. Directly means to experience something, you know, we say, don't seek outside yourself. But also, to experience something directly is to experience something outside your understanding or previous experience. So not to know already what something is or who someone is, or who you are, and have everything fixed in place through your understanding.

[02:16]

So usually we taste something and our object of tasting something is, do I like it or not? Is it good or bad? Is it right or wrong? So we don't very often taste something and, you know, just with what does this taste like? What is this like? What is, you know, what is it to be alive? And before we actually have the direct experience, pretty quickly we're thinking, you know, and judging it. And then the more we think and judge, it's good, it's bad, I like it, I don't like it, the less we actually sense the object of our experience. So it's kind of a shame, don't you think? So, you know, this is pretty simple with vegetables. It's a little more challenging, obviously, with people or with you yourself.

[03:24]

You know, classically in Buddhism we say, if there's someone you like, you should remind yourself to see if you can notice some faults. You know, if you've fallen in love. If you find yourself hating somebody, why don't you look for virtue? Because otherwise you'll just go on seeing the things you don't like because you already decided this is someone I don't like. So we're cautioned to look beyond, you know, what we already think. Anyway, there's a Persian poet named Hafiz, for instance, and he said, Today the vegetables are asking to be cut by someone singing God's name. How does Hafiz know such top secret information? Because once we were all tomatoes, onions, potatoes and zucchini.

[04:29]

So we have this kind of feeling then, you know, that how we treat anything is how you treat yourself. And you will reveal yourself to yourself and to others by how you take care of vegetables or teapots or dishes or cups or grounds, tables, chairs, people. How you take care of things is, you know, something about who you are and you reveal yourself to yourself and to others. And our idea in Zen practice then is to practice, you know, treating things like the vegetables, chanting God's name, singing God's name. And treating things, you know, directly, sincerely, before we have some idea of I like this, I don't like this. Can we actually take an interest in it, look at it, see something, know something, taste something, meet something? Or will we go on hiding or trying to find some way to avoid meeting anybody because it would be embarrassing or we might see something we don't.

[05:39]

We don't like, we don't, we think it's bad or hateful. Because as soon as you meet anything, you'll take the chance that what you're meeting might not be so good. So most of us, you know, a good deal of the time, you know, I don't know, maybe not in this room, you know, we're, this is an initiated group. You don't just show up here at Tassajara for no reason. You don't walk off the street, you know, 42nd Avenue, New York into Tassajara. But, you know, American culture generally emphasizes never having to relate to anything. Never having to meet anything. You wouldn't have to meet an onion because you can microwave your dinner. And, you know, even 10 or 15 years ago, the Wall Street Journal said that 25 or 30% of Americans weren't ever having dinner together anymore, families. And talking with some of the women in the workshop, they said, they're the only ones they know.

[06:43]

Their daughters and sons, you know, their friends, nobody else's mother and parents cook. They never have dinners together. So the way it's done, you know, according to the Wall Street Journal article was, you know, somebody stocks the cupboards and then you have to have food that can be prepared during station breaks, you know. And everybody in the family has their own TV. So you don't even have to talk about which channel to watch. This is, you know, America. This is something about our background or the tendency of any of us. We may not, you know, live it in quite such an exaggerated form, but that's our tendency. So it's kind of sad, you know, when families don't eat together and when people don't cook. When will you actually meet or connect with your own life, with others and with yourself? And, you know, how will you ever be able to nourish anyone or support or know someone?

[07:49]

How will you ever be able to love or be loved if you don't actually meet something other than you that's actually outside there? And, you know, we'll have various characteristics. Sweet, sour, salty, bitter, peppery, you know, hot, cold, crunchy, juicy. You know, there's a lot of stuff out there. And, you know, mostly before we meet something, we have some idea and so we put the idea on the object. And then we say, I love you. Or I hate you. And we haven't even met the, you know, the other. We haven't even, you know, actually tasted or known or, you know, encountered something outside. So this is, you know, a big challenge for us in Zen practice or, you know, any of us in our life. Just to taste things, to know things directly, immediately. I brought my T-shirt. I was thinking about wearing it, but then I thought, I'll go with the traditional outfit.

[08:52]

I just recently got a T-shirt. It has a, can you see it? It's a picture of Kokopelli. I just found out about Kokopelli and Kokopelli has this, you know, punch back and then the flute. Can you see it? Huh? Huh? Yeah, so apparently the reason Kokopelli is all bent over is because he's carrying, I'm not sure if it's he or she, but, you know, he, she is carrying the burden of the world, the weight of the world on his back. And then he's nonetheless playing music. So I thought, that's pretty nice. Most of us, if we are carrying the burden and the weight of the world, you know, we forget the music part. And we think we have to throw off the weight of the world in order to have the music. So this is, you know, pretty inspiring, I think. And it reminded me of, you know, there are various burdens in our life and it reminded me of what is, I think, probably the heaviest burden.

[10:07]

Which has been mentioned to my group this morning, but, you know, the heaviest burden is not liking yourself, hating yourself. There's a lot of burdens, but that's the heaviest one, I think. And, you know, the Dalai Lama, for instance, you know, his brother, when his brother was interviewed, said, what was, was asked, you know, what surprised your brother the most? What surprised your brother, the Dalai Lama, the most? And he said, Westerners, Western people hate themselves so much. Very deeply and intensely. And it's kind of ingrained in Western culture. And then when you hate yourself, then you try to do something to earn love. Or acceptance or appreciation. You try to have, you know, creative imagination, energy, you know, vitality. You try to do these things and accomplish things and produce and perform and accomplish. Until it's good enough that you can finally say, oh, great.

[11:11]

And you look for a way for other people to say how great it is. And maybe if it was great enough, and they, other people admired you enough, you could finally like yourself. But, of course, it never works, does it? We all know plenty of successful people and accomplished people, and they go on, right on hating themselves. Because as soon as you accomplish something, obviously you're only as good as your last meal then. You know, you're only as good as your last performance. It's not something that you have to keep. So, you know, our tendency in life is to chase after something. A love affair, an accomplishment, an attainment. You know, some of us, if I could just get enlightened, boy, I could love somebody like that. I could love somebody who was enlightened. Now, this kind of person that I am, who's kind of an extraordinary person, I couldn't love somebody like that. I couldn't actually like somebody like that. This is the kind of idea we have, that, you know, our standard for what we could appreciate or love is very high.

[12:18]

So, this is the big burden we have. And usually this is the kind of burden that makes us small, you know, in our life. And sometimes, you know, we don't notice how much we hate ourselves until, you know, we... you know, have a problem doing something. Years ago when, you know, of course here in the winter time we were serving each other in the meditation hall. Food. I used to do it every day because when I was working in the kitchen, we didn't understand the concept of having other people take turns doing the serving. So, we not only cooked the food, we served the food. So, I got to serve food every day, three times a day most days. And it was very interesting because, you know, there wasn't anybody that I particularly liked.

[13:28]

You know, one person after another they were greedy, or careless, or slow, or too quick. They weren't appreciative. They were angry. They were disrespectful. And then I used to be very careful serving Suzuki Roshi. I thought he was pretty nice. And his bowl just seemed to appear, and he didn't seem to be moving quickly, and it didn't seem to be very ordinary. And he would bow, and he'd put out his bowl, and I'd serve the food, and he would say thank you. I mean, we have a sign where you raise your hand when you have enough food. So, he'd raise his hand, having enough food, and take his bowl back and bow. And he seemed like this really nice person. So, I was pretty careful serving him.

[14:37]

And from other people I thought, I don't, you know, I'm not going to be careful with these people. They don't deserve it. Of course, at some point, you know, it begins to sort of slip in, like, who is it who's like that? And why would you be busy finding fault with everybody else? And could that be like something that you do too? Is that what you do to yourself all day long? Find something wrong with yourself? Uh-oh, you were just greedy. Oh, you were just unkind. Oh, you were just too hasty. Oh, you're kind of idle now. You should be enjoying this more. So, one thing after another, is it a problem? So, I started noticing how, of course, usually to find out something about ourself, you know, we need to do it to someone else.

[15:41]

We project it on someone else and then at some point we have to re-own it. So, this is kind of like, you know, it doesn't taste very good generally. You know, when you have to eat your stuff like this. Anyway, I started noticing how much I hated myself. And I've gone on hating myself, you know, pretty good. I do pretty well at this. This is a tremendous burden and then no matter how much people like you, it doesn't matter. No matter how much you've accomplished, it doesn't matter. Because, you know, they're just stupid. They don't know any better. They don't know you well enough. They just like everybody. They're not very discriminating. They're just being nice to you to butter you up for something, you know, that they want. I mean, you know, you can dismiss it.

[16:44]

But there's not ever going to be any evidence finally that's good enough. So, there's a saying in the Diamond Sutra, a bodhisattva should raise a thought that's unsupported by anything. Unsupported by sight, sound, smells, taste, touch, objects of mind, dharma, no dharma. And the thought that's unsupported by anything is, you know, what a wonderful person you are. And the thought, this is the thought that you could actually accept yourself. And nothing out there in the world is ever going to. You know, we say in Zen that everything is encouraging you to attain enlightenment. Everything is encouraging you actually to finally accept yourself. To accept yourself is to, you know, like you actually move into your body and you reside here. Instead of like, you can, it's pretty easy to shift your awareness either forward in time or back in time.

[17:47]

Not be, have your awareness right here in time. It's pretty easy to shift your awareness just a little bit away from your physical body. To have your awareness, your consciousness out of alignment with your structure. That's pretty easy to do. Pretty easy to spatially displace, pretty easy to temporally displace. To project yourself into the future when something will be much better. To project yourself into the past when it was either better or much worse. You know, and to project yourself into another place where it would be better. And not bother about showing up here because you wouldn't want to hang out with the person that you actually think of yourself as being. This is, I find, you know, I found for many years now and I didn't always understand what it was, but this is a tremendous burden. To live like this. And you can actually, you know, we actually decide over and over again then.

[18:49]

I would like to, you know, be home, at home in my own body, in my own mind. You know, sensing, tasting, smelling, touching. Awakening with everything in my life. Meeting people, connecting with people. Meeting myself, knowing myself, being comfortable in my own being. Not rejecting myself moment after moment. Not finding moment after moment something wrong, something not good enough. Could I just actually appreciate the taste of what it is to be me and to be here and now. And so we, you know, we have various ways to practice this. We do meditation. And we see if we can just breathe and be who we are in this moment. And even though we say, you know, there's nothing to attain. There's nothing to, you know, you don't, it's not useful to have some gaining idea of something that you're trying to get.

[19:57]

As soon as you have a gaining idea, of course, you look at your experience now. Is this the thing I'm trying to gain? No. Okay. Skip that. Is this the thing I'm trying to gain? Oh, well, dismiss that. Is this what I'm trying to gain? Then you spend your whole life rejecting every moment of your experience because it wasn't what you set out to gain. Why would you do such a thing to yourself? So we say skip the gaining idea. And just breathe and enjoy your breath and be, you know, let yourself inhale and exhale. If you think something, why don't you notice and be with your thought. And if you feel something, feel your feeling. And be at home here. This is, anyway, obviously it's difficult or we wouldn't need to encourage ourselves and support each other to do this kind of work. Or make this, have this kind of intention to arrive where we are. Doing what we're doing. You know, living the life we're living.

[21:01]

Okay. And then we also do things, whether it's in the practice period or the summer, you know, we serve food to one another. And, you know, how we do something or we cook or we take care of the cabins or the grounds or, you know, we have families and, you know, we cook or clean or do various things in our life. And all of our lives are pretty challenging. There's no life that's not without its challenge. But if you spend your time looking for something that will finally let you love yourself, you know, there's nothing out there. This is well-known concept in Zen or in any number of things, you know, to chase after things, you will never get what you're chasing after. And the simple thing to do is finally just touch your own heart. And you can do this also by touching and connecting with, you know, vegetables, cutting vegetables, singing God's name.

[22:12]

Or to, you know, meet people and serve people. You know, or to clean dishes. This is the way we take care of our life. And we actually can do something which is a way of appreciating, you know, our life here. And it's interesting, you know, Zen has this kind of emphasis and Suzuki Roshi used to talk about it of, you know, experiencing things directly or expressing yourself fully. And, you know, he would say that, but, you know, our idea of freedom may be different than yours. You know, our idea of expressing yourself fully is different than usual idea. For the Zen person, you know, idea of expressing yourself fully is to cross your legs and sit with your back straight and be still.

[23:20]

And this is freedom or expressing yourself fully. He said you think, you know, and it will be a big mistake, you think the way to express yourself fully is to do whatever you want. Act however you feel, however you please. And you think this is freedom and you think, you know. But when you don't know what to do and you're trying to come up with something to do that would be, reflect well enough on you finally that you could like yourself. And, you know, you try to come up with something to do that is going to allow you to actually finally like yourself. And then, but you can't do it. And because you don't know what to do, he said you'll be confused. So actually your confusion shows up. And you're wanting to prove something in what you're doing shows up in what you do. And you're wanting to impress others shows up in how you do it. And it turns out you're performing.

[24:21]

In performance, you know, no matter how good your performance is, actually good performers know that the audience never sees them. The audience has not a clue about who the person is because the audience is completely involved in the performance and the person himself is unseen. So if you're good at performance and you look at it in your life, those are the people like you think, oh well look at them, they know how to perform. Nobody sees them. It's terrible pain, you know, you think like that would be great. Anyway, so idea then is why don't you do zazen and within a form or practice that, you know, it's already established what to do, you can express yourself fully. You can express, you can be completely yourself within that form because you know what to do. When you know what to do and you do it, then you can be completely yourself and you reveal yourself completely in any case.

[25:27]

But when you know what to do and you do it, then, you know, your kindness will show or your, you know, your fear will show, your strength will show, your sincerity will show. You're completely revealed. And we understand this, you know, this as freedom because your freedom is that you can do this activity rather than chase after something and be propelled. You're not free when actually you're propelled into various activities chasing after various things. That's not freedom. It's being caught, you know, up in chasing after things. This is a little bit, you know, difficult concept to explain, but I've tried. Take a shot. But he would say, you know, Suzuki Rishi would say, when I watch you sitting in meditation, I know who you are.

[26:34]

If you're singing or dancing or making a big noise, I don't know who you are. When you're all doing the same thing, then who each of you is, you know, is very distinctive. If you're all doing something else, I can't tell. You're all doing something different. Does it make sense? You know, when you have everybody doing the same thing, whether it's sitting or working in the kitchen or, you know, doing something, the same kind of thing, then each person in that situation, one person is calm, another person is agitated, another person... And you can see it very clearly because they're doing the same activity. So this is the way we reveal ourselves to, you know, ourself and to one another because we do something over and over again, the same kind of thing. And we notice how, you know, we find some problem about it and how we, you know, other people or ourself. So coming back to the zendo, which I realized I didn't finish, but it occurred to me that, you know, why don't I treat everybody the way I treat Suzuki Rishi?

[27:43]

Do you think that, and I thought, isn't everybody Suzuki Rishi? And I think this is true. You know, this is to say that each of us is actually a wonderful person. And we don't, you know, ourself appreciate it and we find some problem with ourself and some reason to reject ourself. And there's a certain history to this, but anyway, on the other hand, each of us is Suzuki Rishi. In our inmost being, we're both someone with, you know, we say ordinary person and also Buddha. So I started seeing if I could serve each person as though they were Suzuki Rishi, a really nice person.

[28:57]

And I went a little bit slower. It took me a little while. And then I found that I could do that. And to treat each person that way is then, you know, to treat yourself that way. Most of the time you may be seeing some problem with yourself, but to take care of vegetables or to take care of serving people. This is also taking care of yourself or being kind to yourself, respecting yourself, honoring yourself, appreciating yourself. This is, and we understand it then, when you treat something else that way, that's treating yourself that way, that's you yourself. So Suzuki Rishi, one of the first things he told me about cooking, when you're cooking, you're not just cooking, you're working on yourself, you're working on other people. This is how we do it, because we understand like this, you know, we think like this. Sometimes there's, I want to be sure I don't talk too long.

[30:14]

I want to say just a little bit more about, you know, not liking yourself. You know, usually in order to like yourself or to accept yourself, accept yourself is a little like not quite having to like yourself. That might be a little challenging. You know, to stop being hard on yourself. There's nobody else. Finally, it doesn't matter whether somebody else likes you or doesn't like you or, you know, loves you or doesn't love you. What finally matters, I mean, it's a support or help if you feel someone's love. But finally, you know, what matters is to you, can you accept yourself? Are you willing to be you and to have this life? So usually it involves some forgiveness. You know, you forgive yourself or you forgive your mother or father.

[31:29]

There's some letting go, you know. But anyway. Okay. I want to come back then to, you know, everything is encouraging us to wake up. Everything is encouraging us. If you look at an onion, an onion is very sincere. It's not trying to be an eggplant. It doesn't mind being, you know, an onion. It doesn't say, I don't like, you know, making people cry. I'm upset about this. I'd rather be a carrot. It exactly expresses being an onion. You know,

[32:33]

produce is like this, you know, carrots are like this, potatoes are like this. If you walk out on the path, you know, and you look at the sycamore tree or, you know, the branch of the tree and you see the leaves there in the air, they're, they're so carefully and sincerely who they are, expressing themselves fully being just what they are. Very, you know, they're ordinary and they don't mind being a leaf, part of the tree. And the air is just fine being air. And things are there, you know, with us. And we can be with them. And we can experience things directly, immediately. Tasting, touching, knowing, sensing. And, you know, at some point it's very sweet,

[33:36]

you know, and wonderful. Because we're able to let things touch us. We're able to meet things, to, you know, be intimate with things. When I was the cook here, we used to work rather hard. We worked very long hours. For a while I was the tenso, the guest cook and the baker. We had two guest cooks, I think, but I was one of them, and the tenso and the baker. Sometimes I would work, you know, for a month or so without a day off. I don't know, you know, now if I look back, you know, what was that? Maybe you only do that if you hate yourself so much.

[34:40]

But one of the things that used to encourage me, I used to look up on the shelf and there were these battered teapots. We used to have these aluminum teapots that come from Japan. Some of them are silver and some of them are kind of a gold color. They're actually aluminum. And, you know, we say in Zen, carry one thing with two hands. And the teapots have a beautiful graceful curving handle with a little bamboo stripping that goes around the top. And these teapots are nice and round, ample. Nowadays, you know, there's a lot of teapots that are, you know, they're kind of more sleek and stylish and kind of pretentious. I'm a classy kind of a teapot, don't you know? But these teapots aren't like that. You know, they're just kind of like, I'm a little teapot. They're round and, you know, they're not sleek or sassy or stylish. They're just round and ample and gracious. And we say carry one thing with two hands.

[35:51]

But, you know, people are always in a hurry. So, especially after they're empty, you grab two pots in one hand and two pots in the other and walk back to the kitchen. And then when you wash them, the teapots bang into each other then. And pretty soon they have all these dents. And they look kind of beaten up. But I used to look up at them on the shelf there and see they seemed so sincere and so ready to serve even though they were banged up. So ready to have tea in them again. And I thought, I would think to myself, if you can do it, I can too. This is the way, you know, things encourage us. This is a matter of sincerity, you know. Sincerity is to be without wax. The wax is what you can use to fill in the cracks and make yourself look...

[36:54]

You know, if you fill in the sculpture with sculpture, if you fill in the cracks with wax, that's the sere. And then it will be perfect. Because the blemishes and defects are filled in and smoothed over. So to be sincere is to be without the wax and, you know, your difficulty and cracks and crevices and blemishes show. And, you know, this is not... You know, mostly we think of hiding all of this in order to finally measure up and be acceptable. So we're actually studying how to love something with blemishes. You know, this is Zen practice. How to love something that has blemishes and defects and cracks. To appreciate, you know, a dented teapot or a person, you know, who has problems or difficulties. And to take care of that person or to serve that person, to honor that person.

[37:57]

Whether that person is you or someone else. Well, I have a lot more to talk about, so I'm going to continue on Wednesday. I wanted to tell you, I use this poem sometimes, a poem by Rumi. It's in that book, One-Handed Basket Weaving. One-Handed Basket Weaving is about the... It's a mystic who was walking by the orchard right after the thieves had been buying Silvan a bunch of food and they grabbed him. Something like this is the story. And then his hand was cut off. And after that, you know, he used to weave with one hand and nobody knew how it was done. Somebody peeked in and, you know, there was invisible hands doing the work with him.

[39:04]

Uh-huh. Uh-huh. When you do something, you know, sincerely with your whole body and mind, there are invisible hands that help you. There's no doubt about it. You know, in Buddhism, you know, we understand it to be Buddhism, Bodhisattvas, but you can call it what you want, you know. So you have invisible help. When you're right in the middle of your life, and sensing things, and tasting things, and knowing things, and being touched by your life, then you have a lot of help. Anyway, the poem by Rumi is called Story Water. So if I end with this tonight, then I can start with it on Wednesday, how about that? Story Water is, a story is like water you heat for your bath, it takes messages from

[40:11]

the fire to your skin, it lets them meet, and it cleans you. A story is like water you heat for your bath, it takes messages from the fire to your skin, it lets them meet, and it cleans you. Very few of us can sit down directly in the fire like Abraham or a salamander. We need intermediaries. A feeling of fullness comes, but usually it takes some bread to bring it. Beauty surrounds us, but usually we need to walk in a garden to know it. The body itself is a screen to shield and partially reveal the light that's blazing inside your presence. The body itself is a screen to shield and partially reveal the light that's blazing inside your presence.

[41:12]

Water stories the body, all the things we do, hide and show what's hidden. Study them and enjoy this being washed with a secret we sometimes know and then not. All the things we do are mediums which hide and show what's hidden. Study them and enjoy this being washed with a secret you sometimes know and then not. This is not so different, I think, and everything is encouraging us to wake up, to be enlightened, to be in the midst of our life, meeting and facing and touching and knowing and sensing. And finally, you know, just right here in the middle of our life we accept ourselves

[42:17]

and you can breathe right into your own heart, however painful it is or sad it is from having been rejected for so long. You can breathe into your own heart and you can breathe into your own lungs, into your own body and be right with yourself. And you can be right with the things of your life, the ground and sky, the mountains and the water, the air. Thank you very much.

[42:55]

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