2004.05.01-serial.00024

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EB-00024
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You kind of get inoculated after a while or ... Do you know if the recorder is on, if
this is working now?
Do we have any idea it's working?
Okay.
And is the microphone in a good place, can you tell?
I have no idea whether I'll ever listen to this, but I find it interesting to listen
to my talks sometimes and just, you know, to study up.
I have various things to talk about, but first I was ... I came in here and went to
Offer Incense in the other room and I was remembering ... And you see, I tend to trust
things that occur to me before talks.
So as I was coming into the room and going up to the altar to offer incense, I was remembering
working with Suzuki Roshi on rocks, and I learned a few things.
And I realized that I may be my teacher's disciple.
This morning I was talking with many of you about cutting and how to cut and to study
how to do something in a way that's truly easy, as opposed to making extra effort to
do the same amount of work.
And just now when I was walking, I was remembering how Suzuki Roshi, when we worked on rocks,
most of us Westerners, we try to move the rocks with brute force.
And he would take this little bar, you know, and pivot it just so and move it.
I said, no, no, no, no, just ... So it's the same principle, you know.
Why make it hard when you could ... If you apply the ... If you study what is the point,
what is the pivot?
What do things pivot on?
Where, if you exert a small or exact kind of effort, it has a big result.
So this is ... I realized what I want to talk about today.
So wasn't that nice?
It occurred to me just in time.
Have a seat.
Welcome.
And, you know, there's a certain aesthetic to things too.
And so, you know, and each of us is kind of developing our own aesthetic.
There's not just one aesthetic that is for everybody.
And part of what I do when I teach cooking is to share my aesthetic, which doesn't mean
that that's the aesthetic you should have.
It means that this is my aesthetic and then, you know, you can develop yours.
What ends up being important to you and which differences make a difference to you?
And so, anyway, another thing that I learned about rock work with Suzuki Roshi was that
he wasn't ... what do you call that?
It's where you're ... you want to make it exactly exact.
Huh?
Perfectionistic.
Perfectionistic.
He wasn't a perfectionist.
He wanted the rocks to fit and the rocks to work and the wall to stay in place, but he
wasn't trying to make it perfect and exactly, you know, and a kind of fastidious.
And so, we would get a rock into place and think, oh gosh, that doesn't quite fit.
And so, then we would move it and then chisel off a high place on the rock and then it would
fit or there'd be a little gap and he would take a small stone and push it in there, tap
it in.
So, I was actually, before I worked with him, much more ... I wanted things to be, you know,
much more meticulous.
Anyway, I wanted to read you a story here from the Tenzo Kyokan, the instructions for
the Tenzo, the head cook.
Most of you have probably heard this story, but some of these things, bear repeating at
least for the sake of a little talk.
During my stay on Mount Tien Tong, a priest named Yong from Qingyuan Prefecture held the
position of Tenzo.
One day after the noon meal while I was walking along the eastern covered walkway to a sub-temple
called Chao Ran Hut, he was in front of the Buddha hall drying some mushrooms in the sun.
He had a bamboo stick in his hand and no hat on his head.
The sun was very hot, scorching the pavement.
It looked very painful.
His backbone was bent like a bow and his eyebrows were white as a crane.
I went up to the Tenzo and asked, how long have you been a monk?
68 years, he replied.
That's how long he'd been a monk.
So, we've got to add another 10 or 12 anyway for how old this person was.
Why don't you let a helper do it?
Others are not me.
Reverend sir, you follow regulations exactly, but as the sun is so hot right now, why do
you work so hard as this?
Until when should I wait?
Sometimes that's translated, it's really hot, couldn't you do this later?
And then he says, that wouldn't be now.
So I stopped talking.
As I was walking further along the covered walkway, I thought about how important the
Tenzo's position is.
So, I don't know, this story is one that of course struck me, working in the kitchen
and continues to strike me.
It's quite an example of the concept in Zen or Buddhism of fulfilling one's position.
We each have our own position, which in one sense is me being me, and we're fulfilling
our own life.
And then on the other hand, what do I do to fulfill my life?
And then there's also fulfilling the position in terms of various relationships.
So there's some, we each have some position.
Those of you who are at Tassajara, you're in some position in terms of the various activities
for the summer, and then there's also a position in relationship, position in family.
So, fulfilling the position of being a parent or a brother or a sister.
And so, we're studying how to be in the various positions we're in.
How do we do that?
And it's not always so.
The book of Suzuki Roshi's lectures, he says, no one else is going to do your position but
you.
It's very much like this.
So one of his lectures, he says, the teaching, all of the teaching of Buddhism is just for
you, for each one of us.
And no one else is going to fulfill your life for you.
You either fulfill your life or fulfill your position or carry yourself forward or allow
things to come forward in your life so that you move forward in your life or you don't.
That's the way it works.
I one time thought, I for a while thought, we hear the expression like, and Suzuki Roshi
used it a lot, to practice without any idea of gain.
To do things without thinking like, what do I get out of this?
Which is of course what everybody asks you when, if you've just started meditation and
you've been meditating for six months or a year and then you see some old friends or
you see your parents and they say, so what are you doing?
You say, well, I've been practicing meditation.
They say, well, what do you get out of it?
And then it's very hard to explain, well, what I get out of it is not having to worry
about what I get out of it.
And just to be able to do something and throw myself into it without that kind of concern.
So this is that kind of idea.
So Suzuki Roshi would mention that we're practicing without an idea of gain, whether it's meditation
or the work we're doing.
And there's various ideas of gain, of gaining approval or respect or appreciation or thanks
or gratitude or a job well done or something that reflects well on me, depending on how
I do what I do, it would reflect well on me.
This is a very interesting thing, finally, but I said to Suzuki Roshi once, I don't
know about this, how to do things without an idea of gain.
And he said, you need to be working on something and going forward.
And I said, but I thought we were going to practice without any gain.
And he said, if you're not going forward, you're going backwards downhill.
So this is interesting, what is the difference between working on something and focused and
energized and today I'm talking about sharpness, so keen.
What is it that brings some keenness into your life, which is different than gain?
Which is something to do with fulfilling my position, fulfilling me, fulfilling what life
is asking of me, responding to things.
Over the last year, last July, my mom died.
And the last several months before she died, this is my second mother who had been my
mom for 51 years.
So then there was a lot to do, taking care of her and getting her doctor's appointments
and getting her medications and putting them in the different pillboxes for each day of
the week and many, many things.
It's fulfilling a position.
Some people, and I would hear these horror stories of every so often somebody would say,
you are such a good son.
And I was just doing this stuff and they'd say, no.
Some people, they take their parents' money and put them in a home someplace and never
visit them.
And then they use the money to buy their house or to live on.
And it's actually not that uncommon.
So again, anyway, we're studying how to be in the position of me and fulfill the roles,
the various positions that I'm in.
Just as an aside, or just to finish up one of my asides here, maybe most of my talk is
asides, but when I first started cooking, I had definitely gaining ideas.
I definitely wanted people to like the food and I was very concerned about it.
And little by little, I got sort of over it.
But it was challenging because, and it's very painful because when I made the oatmeal, when
the oatmeal was kind of runny, people came into the kitchen and said, we're working very
hard.
That's when we were digging the septic tank by hand outside the kitchen.
Every day, four or five or six people shoveling pickaxes.
Now we just rent a backhoe for the afternoon.
That was like three or four months.
And the guys would come in and say, the oatmeal needs to be thick.
We're doing a lot of physical labor.
You really should be able to chew it.
And we need some substance.
It's hard to do that kind of work on oatmeal anyway.
And in those days, it wasn't as well understood that you don't just go directly into the kitchen
and mouth off.
So then if the oatmeal was thicker, a different group of people came into the kitchen and
said, this is breakfast.
Breakfast should be light and easy to digest.
It should be well cooked and moist and very soft so that it's not a big weight or challenge
for our digestion.
And then if you put raisins in the oatmeal, then the macrobiotics would come to the kitchen.
Why are you poisoning us?
Because sugar is like poison in that world, even in the form of raisins, let alone in
the form of sugar.
So it's very challenging to please people.
And then some people like spicy food, and some people like plain food, and on and on.
It's endless.
So what do you do?
And at one point, I got to thinking about it, I realized, I want people to like the food.
And then I realized at some point, that doesn't exactly mean they like me.
But I thought, if they like the food, that's as though they like me.
Because we identify...
Some people say men are better at this than women, to identify with one's performance.
If you perform well, and you get approval for your performance, then that goes to show
that you're okay.
But actually, of course, it doesn't show anything about you, it just shows your performance.
So, you know, sometimes performers, of course, are very lonely, because nobody knows you.
They just know your performance.
And they say, the food was great.
And then they want you to repeat your performance or outdo yourself.
So it's very challenging to keep making a better performance.
Then I thought, well, what do I care about this for, whether people like me or don't
like me?
And I thought, well, if they liked me, then maybe I could like me.
Maybe if I got enough evidence that other people like me, I could agree to like me too.
And that's when I realized, I guess I don't like myself.
Sometimes this is kind of a surprise.
Some of us know better that we're not particularly fond of ourselves.
But I thought, you get evidence.
Well, it turns out, of course, there's never enough evidence that you could like yourself.
And at some point, you just have to lighten up and say, oh, okay, here I am.
Cut finger and all.
I'm supposed to be the teacher, whack.
And you know, we're kind of who we are and up in front of everybody.
You know, we're all appearing in the world, we're all in front of one another.
And people can say good things and bad things and positive things and negative things.
But it's kind of like, okay, here I am.
So that's also, by the way, called sincerity.
Sincerity is that you agree to be seen with all the blemishes.
And Zen, as much as anything, emphasizes sincere effort.
You know, honest, sincere effort where people see what you do and there's various problems.
Because sincere is the without, S-I-N is without, like sans in French.
And then sere is wax.
It's without wax, which you can use to fill in the little blemishes in your sculpture.
Or you can clip out a part of a coin and fill it in with a little wax and collect.
Apparently people did this in the old days.
And then you can collect the metal.
So sincere is, you know, the lines show.
You haven't had a facelift.
You haven't covered everything up.
You're not sort of like hiding and doing a performance for everybody.
You know, you're just making an honest, sincere effort and working at something.
Anyway, part of what strikes me about the story about the mushrooms,
so here's somebody who says, why don't you have others do it?
Well, they're not me.
And what I wanted to bring up today, you see, is about sharpening knives,
because at 4.30 I'm going to do a little knife sharpening demonstration
and some of us will practice a little bit.
And this is the kind of thing that it's really unlikely that others are going to do it for you.
I don't know, somehow that just seems to be the way it works.
So if you want to have a sharp knife in your life, it's like you've got to take responsibility.
Now maybe taking responsibility means you find somebody that you trust the way that they sharpen knives
and you pay them.
But at some point it's also like you could decide, I want a sharp knife,
I'm going to, this is fulfilling my position, you know, I'm going to do this,
I'm going to undertake this and I'm going to find out how to do it and I'm going to work at it.
And there's a quality in that also, of course, of...
At some point it's going to have to be now.
But of course this isn't just knife sharpening,
but there's certain things that we tend to avoid in our lives
or don't get around to or postpone or put off.
And we have this same kind of spirit, for instance, here at Tassajara,
of course, like getting to meditation.
It's at a certain time and we say, let's all agree, I'm going to show up in time.
I'm going to show up there, I'm making that commitment.
So there's something about that that you see has to do with sharpness.
This kind of commitment of I'm going to be at a certain place, at a certain time, doing a certain thing.
So...
And this is very...
This, of course, is very interesting to me.
Sometimes if people ask me what is Zen, that's what I tell them.
Doing a certain thing, at a certain time, in a certain place.
That you undertake to do that.
Each certain thing, each certain time, each certain place.
So, in thinking about what sharpness is or what allows a knife to be sharp,
it occurred to me when I was thinking about this that a large part of this is that
it's necessary for your mind to be keen or sharp.
And then you can get the knife to be keen or sharp.
Am I making sense here?
This is not just metaphorically, but then there's a kind of literalness to this.
So I want to say just a few words about what this sharpness involves.
The keenness is...
Keen is maybe enthusiastic, interested, energized.
There's a quality...
Buddhism sometimes mentions the quality of investigation.
Or I call it sometimes just finding out how to do something.
There's a kind of quality of...
And there's a basic quality here at the very foundation of Buddhism, which is
life doesn't work.
I'm going to find out how to live with that fact.
Life doesn't work the way I'd like it to work.
Life is way more difficult and way more challenging than I thought it was going to be
when I agreed to come out of the bardo into this human realm.
And I thought it was...
The bardo, they have great advertising. It's like all the new car ads.
Out in the bardo there, you're watching the new car ads.
The car is going down the road.
There's never a lot of traffic in the new car.
You're never stuck in traffic in the new car ads.
So there you are out there in the bardo.
Get a life. Get a life. It's great. You'll love it.
When you're out in the bardo, you're not thinking really clearly.
For the most part.
So here we are.
And it's not working out quite the way we thought.
That's how we ended up at Tassajara.
Tassajara.
But there's this quality of, it doesn't work.
I'm going to figure out how to live with this.
How I'm going to live considering that
what I thought I could accomplish, what I thought I could do,
all the things I thought I could have,
the things I thought I could avoid.
I'm not successful at all my strategies.
What am I going to do?
Well, I'll figure this out.
I'll get to the bottom of this.
I'll untangle the tangle.
This is one of the classic expressions.
I'm going to untangle the tangle.
Life is all knotted up.
It's kind of unworkable.
I'll figure it out.
I'll sort things out.
I'm going to get to the bottom of this.
Basically, find out how to live with things being impermanent.
No self.
Painful or dissatisfying.
Unsatisfying.
Different kind of subject, but anyway.
There's a similar sense here of
I'm going to figure this out.
I'll do this.
I'm going to take this on.
I don't know how to do this.
I'll figure out how to do this.
I'll work at making something happen.
In a way, this is also
agreeing to do something in your life
that's inconceivable that you haven't done before.
None of us have done this moment.
I show up here agreeing to
find my talk.
It's this talk I haven't given before.
Then you show up here
listening.
What haven't I heard before?
What am I going to do with this?
Why am I here?
How do I make this work for myself?
Sharpening.
There's a quad.
You see, this is different.
To have some keenness
about doing it
and finding out how to do it
is different than
boy, this is a dull thing to be doing.
This is so boring.
Sitting here sharpening a knife
and nothing seems to be happening.
Oh well.
So now I lose interest
because I'm working at something
and nothing is happening.
I'm working at it and nothing is happening.
This is stupid and I'm out of here.
I'm going to do something
where it's more obvious that something is happening
and I get something done.
Of course, the knife still isn't sharp, but
oh well.
Do you understand this?
So there's a kind of keenness
that you bring to an activity
which then makes the activity alive or sharp.
There's a kind of sharpness there or keenness.
Now the other qualities of sharpness
that go into when you actually sharpen the knife,
there's this keenness or interest
or investigation or finding out.
Then there's a kind of quality of focus.
You focus on the activity you're involved in
and you focus on doing it
and then you watch how does this work.
Is this working or not?
What are the indications of how I'm doing?
So there's observing what happens
as you focus and work at something.
There's observation,
checking the results
and then there's a continued kind of concentration.
Basically, this is a quality
that you could call absorption.
You take your awareness
and you're applying it to an activity
and in doing that,
there can also be then joy
and pleasure or ease.
When there's focus,
which is when you're engaged in what you're doing
and there's a kind of steadiness
and continuing and perseverance, patience.
You work at something,
you observe the results,
you adjust your effort,
you continue to work at it.
And then that's ongoing.
Some people describe this as
ships going at sea
and they're always adjusting their course.
And to stay on course,
you have to actually keep adjusting your course.
So what I try to teach people in Sharpening a Knife
is not so much like exactly how to do it
but there's a certain understanding you can have
and then there's observing the results
and then there's continuing your effort
and sustaining something long enough
that sharpness results.
This is not complicated
but it's interesting how rarely
people take this on.
I want to say just a little bit more about sharpness
because metaphorically in Buddhism
sharpness is to be able to cut this from that.
It's discrimination.
Separating this from that.
What is enlightenment?
What is delusion?
About the same thing.
Some Zen teachers say
different words for the same thing.
Your own inward bright awareness.
Your own luminous presence.
But anyway, wisdom is separating this from that
or discrimination separates this from that.
Partly what we're endeavoring to do
in terms of practice
is to be able to accurately separate this from that
or at least a bit more accurately.
Suzuki Roshi said
usually when we discriminate
the basis for discrimination is something personal or self.
I like that.
I don't like that.
That's good.
That's bad.
So usually our discrimination is around me.
And so he said
we're studying how to have discrimination
that's more free of me.
Maybe it's never completely free of me
but it's more free of me.
So if you study how to make a knife sharp
that's not about
I like doing this.
I don't like doing this.
I'm interested.
I'm not interested.
It's just like I'm going to give myself to this
and make this work.
And so the basis for wisdom in Buddhism
wisdom is said to be
sometimes people call wisdom
to discriminate accurately
based on non-discrimination.
Or to have discrimination
that's based on something other than just self.
And even that discrimination of course is
we say tentative.
Not final or fixed.
So we're studying how to both
discriminate and also to let go of discrimination.
But that's another subject
which we're not going to get into this afternoon.
But we try to see things both ways.
This is completely important
and who cares?
Anyway.
I think I've probably talked enough.
But I thought if you have any interests
or responses to what I've been saying
I'm happy to visit with you for a few more minutes.
Maybe another ten minutes.
Anything you're particularly interested in
or struck by what I said
or it makes sense
or it doesn't make sense
I don't know.
Put you all to sleep, huh?
My dear, yes?
Marco?
Oh, the meal offering?
Yeah.
Yeah.
I was telling the guest cooks that when I was
when I was Tenzo
last summer somebody said to me
Ed, were you ever a guest cook?
And I'm like
I think that's probably before you were born.
But when I was Tenzo
we make these food offerings
which we then offer to the Buddha before the meal.
And
I thought for years
this is really stupid
and I have more important things to do with my life
than make up little bowls of food for the Buddha
who doesn't even seem to be interested in it one way or another.
And it never says great soup
or love the rice or anything.
It's kind of strange.
Or
there's something kind of non-relational about this.
Or
one way
I offer the food to Buddha and
and Bill Kwong was down here at one point when I was Tenzo
and he was so careful
and conscientious about
putting the food and
and so
well, I mean, it's just obvious.
He wasn't like me, like
this kind of distaste or
you know, disgruntled
you know, quality of
alright, I'll do that.
And I did this, you know, for years.
But he was so easy about it
and so careful and
and then it was only about like 15 years
after I'd been Tenzo.
I thought, wow
isn't that amazing?
What a
what a wonderful thing.
You can
you can put the food in the dishes
you can offer to the Buddha
you can bow
and then you just turn and walk away
and you've done your job
as the cook.
And then you let people
have whatever experience of it they have
because there's no way to control that.
Some people will like it
some people won't like it
some people are pleased
other people aren't.
You know, there's just no telling.
And as soon as you try to control
somebody else's response to you
oh boy
this is, you know
heavy.
I could tell you a lot about that but
it's otherwise known as, you know
marriage, relationship
you know, parents and children
we get involved in trying to control one another
and how they respond to us.
Because if
if I loved you, you wouldn't behave
if, you know, if you realized how much I love you
you wouldn't behave like that.
And
etc.
All of these kind of things, right?
And
shouldn't your love make a difference to people?
So, you know
cheer up, I love you.
Don't be sad.
I love you.
Anyway, there's a lot of those.
So, you just
as a cook, you just serve the food
you bow.
And
so
this is
that food
and, you know
the activities of our life
within our
it's more like offerings.
It's an offering
it's a gift
or it's a giving
of our time and effort
as opposed to
let's see what kind of
transaction I can make here.
You know, what am I
I'm going to do this if I get back
the appropriate exchange.
So
one of the nice things about being here at Tessahara
is we're not involved in the market economy.
It's not like
anybody's here
to do, you know
for
a job.
I'm doing this, you know
to get paid.
So, we're already involved
we're already in this sort of thing
I'm doing this to
you know, as my offering to the community.
We say that in the ceremony of the day
for the departing monk.
You know
having contributed their effort
to the community
to the well-being of the community.
So, it's pretty sweet.
That's pretty nice.
Um
Yes, Jackie?
It's very much like
when you get to the point
where you don't need anything back
from the patients.
It's just how
do what you do for them.
It becomes like this
very clean one-way transaction.
They're not required
they're busy trying to get well
Yeah
and they're not required
to give them anything back.
Right.
It's really wonderful.
Yeah.
It's a wonderful offering.
And it takes about
13 years to get there.
Oh, well.
Well, thank you again for being here.
And I appreciate
you know, part of what I appreciate
being here at Tassara is
because I feel people's
sincere effort.
And I'd like to
you know, if I can encourage that
and
but who knows
put the talk out there
and
and you
do something with it or not
or we don't even know.
So it's kind of mysterious.
But
I
and you know, it's
it's a bit challenging for me
from time to time because I
I don't necessarily feel that
you know, what I have to offer
is especially important or valuable.
But on the other hand
it's my position.
It's becoming my position.
I'm more of an elder now.
It's come to that.
In spite of myself.
Oh, well.
So
anyway, thank you.
Blessings.
So
some of you may like to come.
I know my group
we're going to meet at 4.30
in the student eating area
and do a little
I'm going to demonstrate
and talk about knife sharpening.
And if some of
there are others of you
who have the time
in your day today
and want to come by
you're welcome to.
at least some of us
will have a chance to practice
for a few minutes.
Thank you.