Good evening, how are you doing? How are you doing, sir? Late coming? Oh, I brought a poem. On my way down here yesterday, somebody gave me a poem, so you can be among the first to hear it. It's by W.S. Merwin. As far as you know, W.S. Merwin was a student of Trungpa Rinpoche's for a while there. He's a Tibetan Buddhist.

[01:00]

The title of the poem is called Two Waiting. You spend so much of your time, can you hear me all right? You spend so much of your time expecting to become someone else, always someone who will be different, someone to whom a moment, whatever moment it may be, at last has come, and who has been met and transformed into no longer being you, and so has forgotten you, at last. Meanwhile, in your life, you hardly notice the world around you, lights changing, sirens dying along the buildings, your eyes intent on a sight you do not yet see, not yet there

[02:07]

as long as you are only yourself, with whom, as you recall, you were never happy to ever be left alone with, well, to be left alone with for long, something like that. Have you noticed how happy you are being left alone, like when you sit here in the zendo? Most of us aren't that happy to be left here alone by ourselves, but that's why we sit here with each other, I guess. Anyway, I sort of like this. It reminds me of, you know, most of us as Zen students, we're aiming to be someone else. Wouldn't that be great? Someone who is buoyant, cheerful, energetic, wholehearted, devoted, mindful, enthusiastic, compassionate, wise, splendid, beyond measure, who everyone could adulate and adore, and

[03:14]

maybe even you yourself, you might finally like yourself if you finally measured up to the standards you've set that are so nice and high and elevated that you can aim for. Wouldn't that be nice? So how are you doing at becoming someone else? Succeed? Or, you know, at some point you might decide, huh, maybe this isn't such a good idea to try to be someone else. Why don't I see it? I could be me. This is, you know, important kind of pivotal turning point in one's practice. Suzuki Roshi, you know, said, when you are you, Zen is Zen. Now I was just down in Tassajara a couple of weeks ago, and at work meeting there was

[04:19]

an announcement that there was one shelf in the bookstore that was on sale, that was approaching already, you know, a couple of weeks ago, the end of the summer guest season, and now there might even be two or three shelves on sale, you know, because it's even closer to the end of the summer guest season. So I looked at the shelf, and there was one book I thought I'd get. It was Zen's Chinese Heritage. You just met Andy Ferguson. He was here a couple of weeks ago, I guess, because that's when he was at Tassajara. So I had the book around my cabin for a few days, and then I took off the plastic wrap and took it down with me to the pool, you know, do a little Zen reading down at the pool. I'm not just completely wasting my time, you know, lying around in the sun indulging or, you know, relaxing or something like that. I mean, you know, making good use of my time, you know. For instance, of course, I have in the recent yoga journal that just came out, there's a

[05:22]

column I did on coffee meditation. You know, why not, you know, rather than all those years at Zen Center, I raced through the coffee to get to meditation on time, you know, because it's so annoying to have to wait, you know, to meditate. If you get there late, you know, they lock the door for a while, and then you have to go around to the back door, and then there's all this stuff that happens, and you wait five or ten minutes out there in the cold, you know. And then you have to stand there, one of the late comers, you know, for the head priest to see, you know, as they tour the Zendo in the morning. So once I got out, you know, of being an institutionalized person, and, you know, got out on my own, I started taking my time with coffee, but then, you know, if you take that much time with coffee, you don't have time to meditate anymore before you need to do other things

[06:27]

with your day, so why not bring the coffee with you to your Zafu, you know, so that, and you can have your coffee, you preheat the cup, and you have very hot coffee, and you can have, I mean, at Tassarat, how many times can you have a cup of really decent hot coffee? I mean, it just doesn't, you know, it's hard. And now there's more electricity, so I have a little, tiny, low-voltage, you know, electric, not kettle really, you know, just a hot pot, it's a Franzuse, anyway. So now, in certain cabins at Tassarat, I can make very hot coffee in the morning, but in those days, there was no way, and you had to make your coffee with this tepid water that had been in your thermos overnight, and then always, you know, somebody ahead of you in the line at the coffee machine, you know, drained the thing with their, you know, filling up, you know, three hot water bottles, or whatever they were doing, or the, you know,

[07:31]

the geisha for the abbot came and filled up these giant thermoses, you know, the elephant thermoses, because the abbot needs, you know, dozens of these things, you know, to serve tea to the attendants, or who knows what they're doing. But anyway, hot cup, hot coffee, heat the half and half, you have a lid, and then you can just bring it, and then after you get your legs crossed, you know, you want to sit, you want to sit very still, so that you don't knock over your coffee. And then, if you get at all distracted, you know, have a sip of coffee. And taste, and savor, and appreciate, and enjoy the coffee, the taste of coffee. And then come back to your breath, and do the same with your breath, taste and savor

[08:32]

and enjoy your breath. And if you have a thought, oh, oh yes, coffee. So it all becomes part of, you know, coming back to being here, now, present. And so, anyway, so here I was at Tassajara, and I went down to the pool, and I got out my new book, and right away, I got really annoyed. I mean, once again, I have to look up these tables of like, how do you pronounce Chinese, you know, E is uh, and you know, U, I, and way, A, and you know, they, and then you have to, you know, X is S-H, and Z is C-H, and you know, whatever, I don't know. And you have to keep studying up on these things, so you have some idea of how to pronounce

[09:35]

these people's names. And then, you know, most of the stories are kind of way obtuse and weird, and you don't know what they're about, and I'm not a student of these things. And then, I came across this one magnificent quote by the Zen teacher, D, Sean, D-E, D, D-Sean, I don't know, something like that, anyway. And he says, Shakyamuni Buddha is nothing but a piece of dried dung, dried excrement, and, you know, Samantabhadra and Manjushri Bodhisattva are nothing but excrement carriers. And he goes on and on like this, berating all kinds of people, like I'm doing tonight. And then at the end it says, and the sutras and shastras are nothing but grave-guarding ghosts. And I thought, ooh, I'm in the right tradition, I have ancestors.

[10:40]

And right in the middle of this whole paragraph of berating, you know, everybody and everything, and it says, realizing the mystery is nothing but breaking through to grab one's ordinary life. Wow, I thought that was good. So, why wait, you know, to become somebody else? Why not break through and grab your ordinary life, you know? You could have it right now, except, well, is it good enough? Is it okay to feel, have feelings, to be sad, to be confused, to be depressed? You know, is it all right to have needs, or to want something, or to be less than giving, or to be completely selfless, to not be quite completely selfless?

[11:50]

Is it okay? Or ooh, is there something wrong with me that I need to fix? So, how much do you want to, you know, how long would you like to go on hiding, you see? Now, or would you like to pop out there and reveal yourself to yourself and others, and finally, me, meet you and be you? So, you know, the poem that comes at the end of the lecture, I'll give it to you now. Why wait? Derek Walcott has this just little poem. Do you know that poem, Love After Love? One day, you, with elation, meet yourself arriving at your own door, in your own mirror. Each will smile at the other's greeting, saying, sit here, eat.

[12:56]

You will love again the stranger who was yourself. Give back your heart to the stranger who's loved you all your life, whom you ignored for another who knows you by heart. Take down the photographs, the desperate notes. Peel your image back from the mirror and sit, feast, feast on your life. A little different feeling, isn't it, than waiting to become someone else? Maybe if you practice Zen hard enough. So, there's this wonderful Zen story, too, you know. It's actually a real-life koan. You know, the two monks who were walking along, Ching Ying and Da Fu or somebody. I can't keep track of all these Chinese names, I'm sorry.

[13:57]

But they're walking along and one of them says, this is the summit of the mystic peak. What do you think? Is it? Is this the summit of the mystic peak? Where we are now, where you are? Or are you trying to get there from here? What is this place? The other monk says, yes, indeed, isn't it a pity? I take that to mean he agrees. This is the summit of the mystic peak. And isn't it a pity that it's not any better than this? Now, I don't know, maybe there's some other esoteric meaning to this, but, you know. But, you know, what the commentary says is a lot of people lose their heads trying to get to the summit from here.

[15:01]

Chasing after some better experience than they're having now. Because, after all, we have standards. And maybe finally you would meet yourself arriving. You would be willing to meet yourself arriving if it was kind of a rather nicer person than you are right now. So, and then, you know, there's a wonderful little story about Zhao Zhou, who's another very famous Zen teacher in China. Who, golden light came out of his mouth when he talked. And a monk once asked Zhao Zhou, so how do I get to the summit of the mystic peak? Zhao Zhou said, I won't tell you. This is one of the most famous, enlightened, brilliant Zen teachers in all of China ever.

[16:07]

And he's not going to tell us. How do I get to the summit of the mystic peak? Of course, the monk wants to know, why not? Why won't you tell me? And Zhao Zhou said, if I told you, you would go on thinking that right now you were on level ground. What place did you think it was, you see? So, this brings us now, this is my introduction to my talk, which is called, I have two titles for it. Maria asked me this afternoon, so what is the title of your talk? I don't make up titles for my talks, so I had to make up one on the spot. It's about the heart of enjoyment. And then I was, I don't know where I noticed it, but Dogen Zenji, he's the founder of our school in Japan.

[17:13]

So we like him a lot. Even if he happens to cart around dried dung. So I would like to give you a piece of Dogen for your compost pile. Dogen, you know, said about the meditation we do, the Zazen I teach is not learning meditation. You know, we're not the school that gives you a lot of techniques. People sometimes say, oh Zen, you have so many forms. But actually, nobody tells you a thing about how to meditate. Cross your legs, straighten your back, you know, lengthen your neck, keep your eyes open, hold your hands like this, figure it out. And then you make up all these kind of things that you think you ought to be doing.

[18:16]

Oh, I better quiet my mind. I better calm my thoughts. I better, you know, why don't I empty everything? Why don't I this? Why don't I that? And you dream up something to do, and then you try to do what you just dreamed up. And then if you do that well, you say, I success. And then usually you can't do it very well, and who cares, because it was just something you dreamed up anyway. And, you know, as Suzuki said, you like to measure yourself, don't you? So you need a scale for that. And if you have a scale, you'll probably come up not looking very good. You know, you'll find some way to measure yourself. And even if you come out good, it's just within the realm of what's measurable. Why would you want to limit yourself to being in the realm of what's measurable when you could dwell in the immeasurable? So why make up little things to do? Why not just go ahead and do the inconceivable? Why would you limit yourself to trying to do what you just conceived of?

[19:19]

And thinking that what you just conceived of was this wonderful thing that if you actually could do what you conceived of, you would get a lot of Zen brownie points and be acceptable and finally approvable. And I could like myself if I had that many Zen brownie points. I mean, this is spiritual practice. After all, you ought to accumulate something from it, right? Now, we're still aiming for enjoyment. Okay, I'm going to get there. Don't worry. I think I'll get there probably. So, Dogen said that the meditation the Zazen I teach is not learning meditation. We're not going to try to teach you a lot of techniques. Thomas More says the same thing in his books, Care of the Soul and Soulmates. His book about Soulmates, he says the key here in relationship, he says there's a lot of good techniques you could learn. There's a lot of skills. You could study communication and you could, you know, there's a lot of therapies you could do

[20:24]

and you could try to make things work according to some idea you have of what working would be. Or, he says, you could develop and cultivate and greatly widen your poetic imagination to include what your relationship is. Rather than saying, this is outside of what I call relationship. So, I have to reign it in and bring it back in to what I would call relationship and keep it within my conception of what working would be and what relationship would be. I better get it back in here. So, why not, he says, you know, work on expanding your poetic imagination. Now, as far as I'm concerned, that's Zen. But, you know, and that's not any different than breaking through to grab an ordinary life, right? Ordinary life isn't just an ordinary life. It's owning your own poetic imagination rather than letting the culture own it.

[21:29]

You know, this is a culture, this is capitalism. So, you really shouldn't have any pleasure in your life or know how to enjoy anything or have any pleasure and then we'll sell you entertainment. Work hard, you know, effort, effort more. Anyway, so back to Dogen. Okay, I'll just go through, I'm going to get past the first sentence this time. The Zazen I speak of is not learning meditation, not learning, you know, techniques, how to meditate according to some idea. It is the Dharma gate of enjoyment. It used to say with Dr. Abbe, the Dharma gate of, what was it? Bliss and repose? The Dharma gate of bliss and repose. So, when Kaz and I were looking at this a while back, you know, Kaz decided,

[22:35]

this is enjoyment. The Dharma gate of enjoyment. It is the practice realization of totally culminated enlightenment. The Dharma gate of enjoyment. This is, so, this is the other title for my talk. The Dharma gate of enjoyment. So, let's start with Dogen to make this authentic Buddhism. Certified dried dung. As opposed to Ed Brown just spewed out, you know, all this stuff and, you know, got sort of verbal diarrhea and then he was calling it Buddhism. I think it was just his idea. And how could you be sure, you know, like the person who wrote that poem

[23:36]

and the poem is, is this a poem or did I just make it up? Right? Okay. Now, so, not only did Dogen say enjoyment, this is the Dharma gate of enjoyment. Then, enjoyment is also one of the five factors of absorption. If you want to concentrate, you better have some enjoyment in there. I'm going to talk more about that if I get to it. And then, enjoyment is also one of the seven wings. I don't know, that's kind of a strange number of wings to have. Seven wings, but they're called wings. The seven wings of enlightenment. Enlightenment somehow has seven wings. You would think for wings, you'd want, you know, an even number. But, but I guess one of the wings of enlightenment.

[24:41]

Little tail wing in the back. So, before we go further, what about, what if I tell you what enjoyment is in Buddhism? Before we get too far afield here. So that you, well, anyway, to help expound, elucidate the Dharma here. Enjoyment in Buddhism is when you let something touch your heart. Your heart connects with something. You let your heart, your mind, your awareness resonate with or be moved by the object of awareness. You let yourself be touched by something. So, you could be moved or touched by inhalation, exhalation, by feeling happy, by feeling sad.

[25:53]

This is the opposite of, you know, this morning somebody was mentioning her nephew or somebody who's done some Goenka, Vipassana meditation. And now he has successfully distanced himself from his feelings. He doesn't have to have them anymore. Thank God. So, this does not have much to do with, not the kind of joy we're talking about tonight. Of, your heart connects with something. You connect with the object of awareness. So, what you see, you resonate, your awareness resonates with it. What you hear, the sound, your awareness resonates with it. It doesn't, your awareness doesn't go like, oh, that sound is disturbing to me. I need to empty my mind. Oh, this is so distracting. And then what are you doing with all that that you just were doing about complaining about the sound? Was that helping you to concentrate? And then you could go on and on with that.

[26:57]

Oh, I am so distracted now. This is such a shame. I am not getting anywhere at, you know, this meditation plan I set out on of staying with my breath. Or whatever it is you set out to do, you know. I'm not getting very far with that, etc. So, then the sound, you go off on all kinds of things. Can't those people shut up? And then blah, [...] blah. So, you could just resonate with the sound. Your awareness resonates with the sound and you don't have to think anything about it. Or with your thinking. Dogen says, thinking is already enlightenment, but you were looking somewhere else. So, you thought and you said, this thinking can't be enlightenment. I have to get rid of this thinking to get the enlightenment. And of course, Dogen says, enlightenment has no defining characteristics.

[27:58]

So, you wouldn't know it when you had it anyway. Because, you know, which characteristics were looking for to certify that the experience you were having was enlightenment? It can't be established or produced. Anyway, let's not do that tonight. That's a different talk. Enjoyment. So, when you let your heart connect with something, whether it's a sensory experience, or a feeling, or a sensation, a thought. So, this is also, by the way, William Blake, who said, in a rather Buddhist fashion, you know. All of creation will appear infinite and holy, whereas now it appears finite and so corrupt. This will come to pass by an improvement in sensual enjoyment. The Dharma gate of enjoyment. First of all, we'll have to set aside the notion, he said, that people have a soul separate from their bodies.

[29:10]

When the doors of perception are cleansed, everything will appear as it is. Have you heard that before any place? As it is? Only Blake gives this wonderful twist to it. Because usually Buddhists say everything is suffering, you know, it's all suffering. And when you see things as they are, you will realize how much suffering it is. So, Blake says, when the doors of perception are cleansed, everything will appear as it is. Infinite, an improvement in sensual enjoyment. Now, this is, you know, Thich Nhat Hanh has taught enjoy your breath for years. He says, please enjoy your breath. Why don't you practice smiling? He tried that at Zen Center many years ago, you know. After two or three times at Zen Center, he decided not to come back. Because people at Zen Center say, suppose I don't feel like smiling.

[30:17]

And he tried to say, you could have a slight smile for somebody who doesn't feel like smiling. You could have a slight smile for somebody who's angry. You could have a slight smile for somebody who just can't smile. You could have an ordinary life, you know, with ordinary feelings. And have a slight smile for that person who's so ordinary and hasn't, you know, gotten very far as far as getting to the summit of the mystic peak. And you could actually be touched and resonate with this person that you are. Rather than abandoning yourself because you're not good enough. Distancing your heart from yourself, you know, because you're not good enough. Because you don't measure up. So, enjoyment here is this quality of connecting.

[31:21]

It involves connection, that you connect with the object of awareness. Usually, you see, our tendency is to separate from the object of awareness. And I'm going to maintain my individuality and my separateness because there's some sanctity here. And then I, with the illusion of self and separateness, I can maintain control. And I can fix things. And if I just let myself be touched by anything that comes along, who knows what I'm in for. And it could hurt and be painful and difficult. So, I'm going to make sure that whatever I connect with, it's good stuff. And it's not going to be a problem. How well has that worked? And then how much do you connect with? And then how lonely do you feel? You see? It doesn't work very well. It doesn't work at all. You see, you can't sort of spend your life not connecting with things until finally, I'm sure this is something I can trust and is safe. And finally, I, oh, okay, I'll connect with it. This is a big problem with the same with relationship and intimacy.

[32:25]

As soon as you have intimacy, as soon as you have connection, you're not you anymore. You're not in charge. You're not in control. Who knows what will happen? And then you try to control the other person and they try to control you. And then you blame the other person for your feelings because you're making me mad. And you're making me depressed. And you need to get your act together. So that I don't feel what I'm feeling because I'm not going to take responsibility for my feeling. It's your fault. Anyway, that's another lecture too. We're not going there. All right. So enjoyment. Do you have some feeling about enjoyment? What I'm talking about? Did you actually connect to something your heart or awareness resonates with or is moved by, is touched? And you could let yourself be touched. And you could connect. So we don't, it's not clear to us that connection is where there's joy or is connection a threat. Is connection mean that you could be attacked?

[33:26]

You know, that something will impinge on you because you're so connected. You know, you could be, something will get to you that you didn't want to have get to you. You better be careful about that. So mostly we, so enjoyment right away is a way of saying let's not, let's just try out not having these careful boundaries. And maintaining our separate self the way we usually do. Why don't we just connect with something and seeing if we can resonate and be with and meet and be met. Touch and be touched. Know and be known. And then, that's reality. You know, that actually we're all already one with things. And we go ahead and do that. And it's called enjoyment, actually. So this kind of enjoyment is not dependent on controlling your experience so that you get pleasurable experiences and not painful ones.

[34:30]

That's mostly our strategy, right? So with that as a strategy, then there's not much you can enjoy because you have to spend most of your time being very guarded and careful about what gets close to you and what doesn't. So how much pleasure can you have when you're being that guarded? Sorry. So this is our usual idea of enjoyment is that you would control objects and events and manipulate and coerce yourself, too. Tell your body and mind what it should be producing and what it shouldn't be producing. What it should be giving you and what it shouldn't be giving you. I don't want that pain. I want that pleasure. Stop that. Go to your room. Anyway. There's various strategies, you know, distancing yourself from yourself and then trying to get your body, your mind to do what you tell it.

[35:36]

Coercive strategies. Rather than meeting yourself, being yourself, realizing yourself, being intimate with yourself, enjoying yourself. Or enjoying, you know, whether we call it self or other, enjoying things, enjoying sensations, feelings, perceptions, impulses, consciousness, connection, connecting, resonating, being moved, touched. So as you know, this kind of talk makes people generally uncomfortable, you know, especially around Zen groups. Zen people are into efforting. Need to effort more. Try harder. Of course, I mean, in spite of the fact that there's these stories, you know, if I devote myself for Zen, how many years is it until I get enlightened? Oh, ten. Well, if I really, really devote myself and the teacher says, oh, well, then it'll take 20.

[36:41]

And what about if I really try hard? Oh, well, then it'll be 30. Anyway, there's plenty of stories like this. You know, the harder you try, you know, the more you effort, actually, the less you sense. The more you effort, the less sensual enjoyment you will have, the less you sense. You're busy going someplace. It's like the W.S. Merwin poem. The more you effort, your efforting is to get somewhere. So how much can you sense about, you know, he says, you know, the sirens, the sounds. How many of them do you hear? You know, how much do you feel? No, you're busy going someplace. You don't have time to feel things. So this is food, too, you know. We were talking about it before, you know, that how much enjoyment can you have when you're eating, you know, clean burning, high octane, you know, the food that you should have and get it down and get on to more important things in your life. You know, the stuff that you could really do to accomplish something, you know, and food, like, why would you take time to enjoy it?

[37:45]

No, you want to eat it fast and do something else while you're doing it because food is so unenjoyable in and of itself. So why don't you watch television while you're at it so that at least you could entertain yourself while you're eating because food is just not very pleasurable now, is it? Especially probably the way you prepare it. No, I don't know. I just mean generally, no, we don't. Like Alice Waters has, you know, Alice Waters is the same thing, I mean, and she's part of this, you know, slow food movement now. What were all those important things you were doing rather than chopping up your own garlic and using, you know, desiccated garlic powder that, you know, tastes barely anything like garlic, you know, to season your things with? Why don't you use some garlic and, you know, pulverize it, you know, in your mortar and pestle? What were all those important things you were doing? Watching television? Reading the newspapers? What were they?

[38:48]

Oh, I've got to get on. I've got to get through my day so I can watch TV. Anyway. I mean, you know, my talk's about over so, you know, I'm just barely getting started, obviously. So I want to mention a couple more things, but, you know, one of the things, you know, so I started to tell you that Zen people, like, they're not very good with this enjoyment business on the whole, or they don't acknowledge being very good with it. Secretly, a lot of Zen people are very good at the enjoyment business, but they don't generally tend to talk about it or acknowledge, like, this would be a good way to practice or live. You know, practice is more about efforting, but this enjoyment, and, you know, enjoyment's a little scary, like that joke about the Buddhists, you know, or the Baptists. Why don't Baptists make love standing up? It might lead to dancing.

[39:56]

This is different, you know, the Zen student one is, they, you know, why doesn't the, why did the Zen, the Zen student didn't take Novocain when he had his root canal, you know? This is a Zen student thing, too, because, you know, he wanted to transcend dental medication. But, all right, so enjoyment, so is that one of the factors of absorption, enjoyment, you know, it really is helpful, because if you're enjoying the object of awareness, you're resonating and being moved and touched by the object of awareness, why would you go anywhere else? We think you would concentrate by effort, but when you try to concentrate just by effort, your awareness starts looking around for some enjoyment. So, when you're not enjoying the object of awareness, including that in your concentration, you know, your body, mind, being, consciousness is not stupid.

[41:15]

Well, if he, she, the person who thinks he's in charge here isn't going to allow any enjoyment, isn't going to, you know, well, let's just look for it somewhere else. Maybe we'll daydream a bit, maybe we'll dream up fantasies, let's go looking for some enjoyment, why don't we? We're out of here, over the wall, you know, down the street, you know, slip out the door when they're not watching, maybe when he's a little tired, maybe when there's a little pain, oh, hey, let's go for the enjoyment now. So, you know, our awareness is not, I mean, thank goodness, right? Our awareness is already liberated. It's too smart for all these plans we have for it. You need to pay attention to your breath. So, you know, we say, pay attention to your breath, we don't say, enjoy your breath. I mean, so, you know, Thich Nhat Hanh, I asked him, why do you keep telling people, enjoy your breath?

[42:18]

I mean, don't you want to teach about mindfulness or, you know, compassion or wisdom? It's what you people need. Oh, man. So, I want to, just briefly anyway, explain to you that enjoyment, and this is relating back to the Baptist thing, but enjoyment, you know, fails not because enjoyment isn't wholesome, virtuous, a Dharmagate to, you know, the Dharmagate of this school, you know. It's because, you know, mostly we don't have enough devotion to enjoyment. You know, it's very difficult practice. It's not at all easy. Because, you know, you could, as soon as you start to enjoy something, you go right over to excitement, greed, lust.

[43:22]

You know, and then you go to, oh, shame, guilt, horrible. And then you don't sort of, it doesn't occur to you like, I could aim again for enjoyment. No, I better not even go near enjoyment because I might go over to, ah, bottomless pit of desire. Wouldn't want to go there. So, I better just get small and not, you know, not even go near enjoyment. Just effort along for that distant place where I don't have desires, where I don't want anything, where nothing matters. It's all empty. Whoa. Whoa. I don't know, somewhere, let's go for it. And we don't even know what we're going for, but, you know, we're going to not do that enjoyment thing because it could easily.

[44:25]

And those things are different. You know, there's a difference between enjoyment. Enjoyment means you connect. You actually sense. I've studied this a lot with eating, you know. And, well, because it's my life and it's my business and it's my job and, you know, it's my, you know, it's life. Where are you going to study it? I mean, there's a lot of places you can study it. You can study it most every moment, but food is a great place. And, you know, I aim for enjoyment and by golly, you know, it's very easy to go over to, for me, it's very easy to go over to excitement. And you start eating faster. And it's very exciting. And then you're not really tasting and savoring and enjoying anything, but you're consuming and you're using the object of awareness to produce this. That's excitement. That's not enjoyment. Enjoyment, you would actually have to eat more slowly.

[45:26]

You would actually have to taste and savor and chew and swallow and be with. And by the way, you know, many people have found that it's almost impossible to enjoy manufactured products. Consider, for instance, the difference between, you know, some of my most enjoyable food experiences have been picking berries out in the sunshine. Most recently, I did a chef's walk at Earthbound Farms, the benefit for the Monterey Bay, your somewhat of companion Zen group. And there were these incredible raspberries there that were like the size of strawberries or something. And they were so good. And, you know, and they're the sort of thing like, whoa, I mean, like I was just thinking like you sort of take them and you put them in somebody else's mouth.

[46:29]

They're so good. You don't do that with pop tarts. You know, taste this. You don't do it with potato chips. You know, you don't do it with Oreo cookies. I got people carefully tasting, you know, food one time, potato chips. We did this, you know, the ceremony of eating just one potato chip. And then we did, you know, eating one orange segment. And then this group of people, they wouldn't even eat an Oreo cookie, most of them. I said, no way. I don't know. I thought they could at least taste it. And, of course, I don't make, when we do the ceremony of eating one potato chip, because, you know, these are Zen students, you know, some people say, suppose I don't feel like eating one potato chip. Then I tell them, well, why don't you do the ceremony of not eating one potato chip.

[47:31]

So the ceremony of eating just one potato chip is a non-dual ceremony, you know. So you could do the ceremony of listening to the rest of the room eat one potato chip. Or you can do the ceremony of not eating one potato chip. You know, okay, but you're part of the ceremony, you're here. Or you could do the ceremony of leaving the room. So that you are not part of this event at all. And then you'll be part of the event by leaving the event. You can't get away. But my point here is that enjoyment, you know, is connecting. And then, you know, it's like, this is so good. And so enjoyment is not excitement. And greed or lust is where you try to get rid of and, you know, get past this moment of experience so you can get more of the experience that you're not having.

[48:35]

It comes up when you do oreoki, you know. If one of the bowls in oreoki tastes really good, you have to get rid of what's in that bowl in order to have seconds. So you want to eat that bowl really fast and get rid of it so you can have more of what's really good. And then you have to eat that really fast so that you can get your bowl empty so you can clean them. Or you're going to be sitting there, what, you're going to be sitting there savoring your food while the rest of the room is sitting there with their bowls all clean? You can't do it. And the classic story about this, as far as I'm concerned, is this Vipassana teacher, James Perez, said he watched his two-year-old son eating strawberries one time. He had a strawberry in his mouth, a strawberry in each hand, and a bowl of strawberries there. And James, at one point, took the bowl of strawberries away from him. He still had strawberries in his mouth, strawberries in each hand, and he started screaming. He was being deprived. Now he doesn't have the strawberries in his mouth, he doesn't have the strawberries in either hand.

[49:41]

He's unhappy when actually everything is right there. So anyway, for greed or lust, you try to get rid of this present moment to get on to the next moment. You're in a rush to get to the next moment, which would be so delicious if you could just get rid of this moment. So let's rush through it and get on to what we're not experiencing and have more of it. And I know it can be very consuming, very engaging, very gripping, but it's not enjoyment. Okay, so enjoyment is a study. Most of us are way less than necessary, we're just not devoted enough. This is very similar to Carlos Castaneda, who said that Don Juan's teaching was that discipline is the sorcerous art of being able to experience awe. You think discipline is to make yourself do this or that. No, it's awesome. Awesome is like seeing things when the doors of perception are cleansed, you will see everything as it is, infinite.

[50:49]

That's awe. When you sense and you have sensual enjoyment, it's awesome, it's vast. Okay, anyway, so it's necessary to clarify these things. And yes, this is not a practice for just any person off the street. The other thing that I want to be sure you understand, the Yoga Journal has this column called Eating Wisely. Okay, now, what's the usual idea of eating wisely? I'm going to explain it to you in brief. The usual idea of eating wisely is, I don't know what to eat, and I certainly wouldn't trust enjoyment to teach me anything about it, because we're not going there, because if I enjoyed my food, I'd just be a blimp.

[51:53]

People have no confidence. People have not developed, cultivated their confidence and trust in enjoyment. They're just not going to go there. So, if you can't figure it out for yourself, what are you going to do? You get somebody else's wise choices. No fat, no meat, no dairy, whatever it is, and these are the wise choices, and if you're wise, you'll do what we tell you. Now, how wise is it to just do what you're told? And, how many times have you been able to? No, doing what you're told, trying to follow these wise choices is a way to keep yourself perpetually a child. Pretending that you're an adult making wise choices, when really you're just doing what you were told, or rebelling against what you were told to do, that's called being a child. A grown-up actually tastes things and tries things,

[52:55]

and kind of starts to sort things out. You don't just do what you're told. That's not an adult, that's a child. How wise would it be to give up your capacity to investigate, discover, enjoy, realize, try out, and to give up all of your enjoyment, your capacity to investigate? That's another, by the way, investigation, usually it's investigation of dharmas, but investigation, discovery, play, joy, these are all the things that you would give up just to follow the wise choices that somebody else says are the wise ones, and you're too stupid to figure it out, so just do what we tell you. And then, do you feel happy when you do that? No, you usually feel resentful. Who are they to tell me? Why don't I get to enjoy anything or try out anything? Why do I just have to do what I'm told all the time? And then if you succeed at it, then you just say, well, look at them, they're not doing it the way that I'm doing it. I can do it better than they can following these wise choices,

[53:57]

and those people are so bad, they're not following those wise choices, and when I can't follow the wise choices, I'm so bad, and it's so sinful to have chocolate cake, and you hear all this horrible stuff. It's painful. I find it painful to hear all that stuff. What about your being, your bliss, your joy, your life? Why not have an ordinary life, you see, where you try things and you experiment and you taste and you savor, and then your choice comes out of your experience, because you're paying enough attention to and connecting enough with your experience to know your experience well enough that you can trust. You develop and trust your own sensibility, your own heart, your capacity to find your way in your life, rather than thinking, I can't find my way, I just need to do what I'm told. And if this Zen thing isn't, if I can't follow this Zen program,

[54:58]

well, I'll just go and find some other program that's a better program for me. But this is an awesome program, because in the long run, this is about breaking through to grab an ordinary life. So get on with it. All right. I've managed to just wallow away the whole hour here, so you have no time to ask questions. Sorry about that. So I did have one other announcement. On Friday, I'm going to Mount Madonna for a Zen and Yoga workshop. So if any of you have a free weekend, Friday to Monday, we're having Zen and Yoga. And Patricia is teaching yoga with me. Now it's the SEU, I think, the Spousal Equivalency Unit. Patricia and I, my beautiful yoga goddess.

[56:08]

Anyway, we're doing a Zen and Yoga workshop. And then Mary, who's sitting over here in the back, Mary, who teaches yoga here in Santa Cruz, is coming to teach yoga with me starting Monday. And then Patricia is going home, and Mary is going to come and teach yoga with me. So you can come Friday to Monday, or you can come up for a whole week of Zen and Yoga and enjoyment. We're going to do enjoyment, too, because I'm into enjoyment these days. And once in a while, you go over into greed or lust. Okay, okay. We'll see if we can have a safety net for you. They have lots of nice things up there. They have pretty good vegetarian food. They often have very low fat, but they leave out this cruet, or whatever it is, of olive oil, so you can douse your food with it if you want. And they have butter, too, and peanut butter, and sesame butter, and they have lots of nice things that you can put on your food.

[57:13]

They keep it pretty plain. But anyway, I put some flyers outside. So if you're interested, pick up a flyer. Come and Zen. Oh, we call it Yo-Zen nowadays. Come and do Yo-Zen. Not just ordinary Zen, but Yo-Zen. We decided to do Yo-Zen rather than Zen-Ga. This seemed more euphonious. Anyway, well, oh, one last thing I do want to say. When I was at Spirit Rock a week or so ago, and Jack Kornfeld invited me to do the Monday night talk there. So about twice a year I go and do that. So I did that and then somebody came up to me afterwards Oh, that talk was just awesome. It wasn't this talk, not quite But it was an earlier version of this talk

[58:17]

You know and it didn't have like the Zen stuff, you know, I had the Zen stuff because this is a Zen group, you know Because I'm aiming to connect With you, you know receive you Connect with you respond to You rather than just give you a you know, my talk, you know word for word or something. So But what I want to mention so somebody came and said what an awesome talk. That was just terrific Every word you said is just spoken right to me But you know, there were a couple women that I was sitting next to and they were saying to each other I just don't get it And I don't know what they were just not getting No, I don't know what they were just not getting you know, but but if But if there if you get it fine, if you don't get it, don't worry, you know, don't worry if you don't get it It's okay with me. Just you know set it aside If you haven't set it aside yet drop it in the you know

[59:20]

They you know, like it was some more of that dried dung stuff in the garden out there in the garden It'll be good for the plants and then you know, just shake it off. I don't get it. Okay, you know Like I don't get most of those obtuse Zen stories in Andy Ferguson's book and then Andy Ferguson came up to me You know the next morning at breakfast and he said hi. I'm Andy Ferguson. Oh, I just got your book Will you sign it for me and So I Got Andy Ferguson to sign my book. I Have a genuine saying copy. So anyway, you know for whatever use it is you can have it You know the stuff we've talked about tonight and you know, if it's of no use don't worry about it Because something will come along and you know Whatever I mean, you know, you don't have to you don't have to take what I say and carry it around With you right as though it was some and then you know, is it as though it was some piece of dung that you were You know, it's like you may as well come up with your own stuff, you know moment after moment rather than my stuff

[60:29]

I mean, I think that's one of the great things about Zen. And so anyway poetic imagination. There you go So if this works with your poetic imagination or inspires it fine if not find something that does and thank you very much and And I'll be around I guess we're gonna have tea or if you want those who would like you're invited for tea and Cookies and goodies and what-have-you. I don't know the usual. Yes. All right, and you could enjoy it Or you can enjoy just leaving, you know, it's okay Thank you Hey number

[61:07]

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