Katsahara is for me a lot like coming home since I spent so much time here in my youth. I guess I'm not young anymore, I like to think I am. So every so often, you know, I remember the story about the monk who said to his teacher, what about the people who leave the monastery and don't come back? And the teacher said, well, they're ungrateful asses. And the monk said, well, what about the people who leave the monastery and return? And he said, well, they remember the benefits. And the monk said, well, what are the benefits? And the teacher said, heat in the summer and cold in the winter. It's hard to remember these things, you know, how blessed our life is.

[01:11]

They were here at all. So anyway, tonight I wanted to talk with you about some of the benefits of practice. And, you know, for instance, I guess it's been about a year and a half now. My computer, my PC was breaking down and one of my students gives advice about computers and fixing them and how to use them. So it was kind of nice because I could call him up and then he had it set up so my computer, so he could use my computer from his computer. And so then if something was haywire with my computer, he could be doing my computer, you know, at a distance and fix it. That was pretty nice. But there came a point where it seemed like it wasn't going to work anymore.

[02:18]

And he said, you might think about getting an Apple. And if you're going to get an Apple, you might want to go by the store, the Apple store in Korda Madera in the shopping mall. Well, I spent 20 years at the Zen Center, you know, practicing Zen and here at Tassajara and Green Gulch and the city center. And, you know, I haven't spent much time at malls. And after, you know, like after I'd been here at Tassajara for a number of years and then, you know, you go out and then you go into a store and there's like, it's all toilet paper. Pretty much as far as the eye can see. And I wonder, well, what kind do I buy? And people said, Ed, you're not watching enough television. But this is so, I don't spend much time in malls.

[03:24]

But I went to the Korda Madera mall and I eventually found the Apple store. And you get, you find one of those signs that say you are here and then it shows you where the stores are and you figure out where to go. But there was construction, you know, so I got a little bit lost. But eventually, I got over to the Apple store. And even from outside the Apple store, it's pretty intense. And the window is, the window is all kind of pink with pink balloons or something. And it was because they have a pink nano iPod. And you might want one. Eventually, I got a pink nano iPod. So, I went into the store. And in this store, it's, there's a lot of energy in the store.

[04:26]

People are so excited. And there's all these people, you know, they have these demo machines in there. And they have the big screen because now you can get your television over your Apple or movies downloaded from Apple. So, they have a big, you know, high definition or whatever it is, television that shows you what you could be watching at home. And everybody is so excited. And they're just, you just feel it in the store. It's just like, and I'm like, and I don't know what to think. I don't know what I'm doing there, you know. My computer person told me to go in and have a look around. So, after a while, I'm walking around the store. And a woman comes up to me and she says, may I help you? And I said, well, I don't know. I'm actually feeling rather overwhelmed by the energy in the store.

[05:29]

And she said, have you tried meditation? And I said, it's really helped me, she said. I said, you know, I've been doing meditation for, you know, 40 years at that point or 42 years or whatever. I said, yeah, I've done a little meditation. Maybe I haven't done enough. And I said, so, and who do you study with? And she started telling me about her teacher and various things. So, anyway, I managed to get out of the store. And then a little bit later, my computer really did break down and I needed another computer. So, my computer, I think of him as computer guru, you know, came with me.

[06:38]

And he said, I will go with you to the Apple store and, you know, sit with you and be with you while we go through this. And so, we went to the Apple store together and then there's a bench outside the Apple store. And he said, now, let's sit down here on the bench before we go into the store. We can kind of get ourselves together, okay, and get centered. Now, let's think about what we want to do when we're in there. So, we made a plan. And with his help, I ended up buying, I did buy an Apple computer and a pink Nano iPod and a monster. That's the thing, the little tape thing that goes in your cassette player in your car so you can plug your Nano iPod into the tape player in the car because the CD player in

[07:40]

my car was broken anyway and so forth. So, that's one example of, you know, the benefits. One of the benefits of meditation apparently is that it makes you unsuited for modern American life. And spending very much time at malls. I don't know, maybe there are other meditators that it's helped, you know, do this. So, while we're, anyway, I could go on about this, but let me go on to my second story about the benefits of meditation. This one's a little more, you know, complicated, a little more real life, you know. So, a number of years ago, I met Maureen Stewart Roshi, and I think I met her here at Tassajara. I gave her a ride into Tassajara.

[08:43]

I was with my daughter, Lycan, and Lycan was about eight. And Maureen's husband was with her. Maureen and I were sitting in the front seat of my Honda Prelude, you know, silver gray or blue, you know. And Maureen was sitting on the right. It's a kind of sporty car. And her husband was sitting right behind her on the right, and my daughter was sitting in the back seat on the left. And I could tell, looking in the rear view mirror, he was not happy coming over the Tassar Road. And at one point, my daughter said to him, you don't say much, do you? And he didn't say much. But anyway, I got to know Maureen Stewart from that visiting with her in the car on the drive in here. And then she gave a lecture or two here, and then I would go and visit her. And she was, at that point, head of the Cambridge Buddhist, no, the Cambridge, anyway, in Cambridge,

[09:51]

a Zen center, Spark Street. And I would visit her when I was in Boston. It wasn't very far, actually, from the Nithyananda Institute, which, anyway, I only have until 920. So excuse me. So I would visit Maureen there. And Maureen was, you know, not only a Zen teacher, but she was, had been in her life an extraordinary concert pianist and actually had toured in Europe and various things. So sometimes she would, there was one time especially that I was kind of depressed. And she said, Ed, let me play for you. And she played this incredible, you know, piano concertos and things. Anyway, at one point, Maureen and I were visiting, and she said, she was telling me about how she had finally gotten divorced. And she said that her husband had been an art professor at, like, Vassar or Smith, a

[10:57]

woman's college, and that he kind of had a tendency to have affairs with his students rather regularly. And she was not particularly happy about this. But he would say to her, Maureen, you're a Zen priest. You know, you should be compassionate and understanding, and you should be accepting. And, you know, this really shouldn't disturb you, you know, since you've meditated as much as you have. And she would tell him, you know, I'm not always going to put up with this. And then one day she said, I'm not putting up with this anymore. We're getting divorced. And he said, what? And she said, I told you. It's been a number of years now, and I've decided we're getting divorced.

[11:57]

And he said, Maureen, you know, you're a Zen teacher. You need to be more compassionate and understanding and accepting of me and, you know, my human nature. And you should be happy for me that... So he was busy telling her what she should feel considering that she was a Buddhist priest. And they'd been practicing Buddhism for all these years. And she said, it's because I'm a Buddhist priest that I know what I feel. And I don't like this. And I find it, you know, upsetting. I'm not happy with it. And because I practiced as much as I have, I know what I feel. And I also know that it's not up to you to tell me what I should be feeling.

[13:01]

We're getting divorced. And, you know, eventually he said, oh, I've stopped. And, you know, please. And various things. Anyway, so well composed. And practice must be good for something, or they wouldn't continue to study with you. So please tell me how this can be a help. And the Buddha said, well, once in a while for some people, it's a help with the 84th problem. So then, of course, as you might be wondering, you know, the layperson said, and what is that 84th problem? And the Buddha said, the 84th problem is that you don't want to have any problems at all. And it's, you know, this 84th problem that's especially challenging.

[14:21]

I don't know about you, but I'm special. So maybe it's okay for other people to have 83 problems. But what would I want with 83 problems? This is, and you know, we actually in Zen practice, one of the most, you know, if not the most, this is the most important. You know, you find out how to have problems, how to have difficulties, and how to work with your problems, how to work with your difficulties, how to live with them, how to see them through, how to, you know, have the problem finally. Rather than, you know, saying, no, I'm fine.

[15:28]

They say that, I was reading an article in the Atlantic Monthly recently, which was about the study that somebody started with Harvard. Men who were in their 20s back in the 30s or 40s or something, they're now in their 80s and 90s, the ones that have lived. And they've been studied exhaustively over the years. And so they've studied, you know, what, you know, what leads to happiness. And, but at one point it said that, you know, lots of times Americans won't acknowledge their problems. How are you? Fine. And people can have cancer or, you know, have a death in the family, and they're not going to tell you. Because you don't, you don't want to upset other people. You want to protect them from your pain. Or you want to protect yourself from your pain.

[16:32]

And then so much of the time society is saying, get over it. What's wrong with you? What, you have a problem? So there's not a lot of support to actually have problems and difficulties. And Zen can be a wonderful place to have problems and difficulties. But it's not easy to sit. And you will have some problems doing it. Anyway, it said that some of the happiest people in the world are in Denmark. And if somebody says, how are you? They say, things could be worse. So then as time goes on, it's always better than that. Apparently it works for them.

[17:36]

I'm going to get out my watch so I, sorry, don't go over time. So there's different ways this manifests. You know, one of the things we do is to try to establish, you know, we hear that it's possible to, you know, somehow be detached. We, it's detached or you can have equanimity or there'll be some way that your problems will not be quite so annoying or difficult or painful.

[18:42]

And then we tend to set up some kind of strategy or plan to you know, make this come true for us. And one of the common ways to do this is to imagine a mind that's unaffected by these things, by the problems, unaffected. You know, this is like untouched by them or, you know, it's a kind of, and oftentimes, especially if you do spiritual practice or yoga, you can believe if I do spiritual practice or yoga, I can, I will be immune. You know, I won't have the problems that other people have who don't do this special practice that I do. Is this true? Suddenly your husband is faithful because you're doing spiritual practice.

[19:46]

So we set up this kind of mind that's going to be immune or safe or secure. And then, you know, we want to see how we can help. How well are we doing at that? You know, every so often we check, is my mind still at ease? And, you know, so pretty soon, you know, we tend to like, we want to keep the problems under a way because otherwise they might actually get to us and upset us. And then we wouldn't have our ease and well-being and, you know, good nature. In order to do that, unfortunately, you know, you need to be kind of on guard. And watchful and suspicious about what might get to you and what, you know, what's lurking. So you've already lost your composure. And then when you, when something does get to you, it's a terrible blow because you, you weren't going to, this wasn't going to happen to you. I know about this. So, big sections of my life, I've found, you know,

[21:03]

that I still had problems and it was so distressing. What's wrong with me? And, you know, I got after 20 years of practice at Zen Center, I'm out in the world and I try to earn a living and I have to have a car and groceries are $100 a bag. And, you know, there's traffic. And I couldn't understand, I don't know how people do it. And I've been meditating. I don't know how you, how do you people do it out there? You know, I don't get it. And for about 10 years after I left Zen Center, I thought, I should just go back to Tosahara. I am not suited for this world. I don't belong here. So eventually I decided to have problems little by little.

[22:10]

And then people were also telling me, Ed, if you hadn't already spent 20 years at the Zen Center, we would be suggesting to you to go to one. You are a mess. And maybe I still am. I don't know, you know. Enlightenment and delusion, birth and death, Buddhas and sentient beings. Dogen says when all things are Buddhadharma, when you see the true nature of things, there's birth and death, Buddhas and sentient beings, practice, realization and delusion. This is the world we live in. This is reality. And is it possible to sit with that?

[23:25]

Is my time up already? No, I have a question. Oh, okay. We talked about getting real the other day. Yeah. Can I get real with you for a moment? Yes, please. Sure. You started the talk with people who leave the monastery and are ungrateful asses. And I wondered how the benefits of your practice informed the note that you wrote to the guests. Any expression is not a complete one. And I shared something of, as I said in the note, something of my passion and something of my understanding. And what the note didn't express was,

[24:31]

thank you for your effort. Thank you for your sincerity, your good heartedness. And here are some things I would like to bring up with you. So it was not as carefully and written as it could have been. And another piece of that is that I've been practicing Zen and cooking for 44 years.

[25:38]

And it's less than this many times that anyone from Zen Center, that Zen Center asked me, would you work with us? Would you share something of your passion and your understanding and your skills with us? Would you share something with us? Would you come and work with us? Zen Center does not ask me to do that. And I don't know how to do that. Say, if you wanted, I would love to come and work with you and to be in good harmonious relationship with you. And so at some point I feel... So what you also hear in that then is that I'm hurt. I thought maybe you didn't know how much we actually do appreciate it.

[26:44]

Yeah, that is part of it. Yes. Thank you. So this year I come, I'm often sort of struck by... If I'm in the kitchen, I almost don't want to go in the kitchen because I feel so strongly about I'm not wasting food. And when I'm at home, I clean out every dish, every pot with a rubber spatula. I wash the pot with a little tiny bit of water. It all goes into soup, it goes into bread. I often have in the morning for breakfast, leftover soup. Everything is eaten. Almost nothing gets discarded. I use every piece of every vegetable except for the

[27:46]

I cut off the tiniest bit of the end for the stem, the tiniest bit of the end for the root. I cut it very close. I use my hand. I guide the knife. I do all these things so precisely. I go to Europe and I teach people this. I say, this is for me, Zen. This is not wasting. This is caring for food. This is caring for food as though it was your own eyesight. And people in Europe invite me. They say, please come and teach us. And Zen Center doesn't invite me. And at some point, I wish I could say something. And I don't know how to say something always so skillfully or kindly. So I was trying to share something of my passion. And something of my wish to work with people and share what I have to offer.

[28:49]

So, and I do, you know, and I, as I said, you know, I, when I'm here at Tassajara, I, I feel like I'm in the midst of tremendous, you know, good heartedness, sincerity. People are working so hard. People are, and this year especially, people are bringing up questions and interests and folk, you know, and, you know, as you did, people are asking me about things. And it's, it's very gratifying. So if there's other ways in which I can be of service or benefit, I'd be happy to do that. Okay. 920. Thank you.

[29:41]

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