Good morning, everyone. Welcome to everyone who's coming to lecture today. My name is Ross, Ross Blum. I've been here for a little over 32 years. And I started practicing in New York with Bernie Glassman 35 years ago. I'm retired from Pete's Coffee and Tea. I worked there for 25 years over the counter. And I've lived here since moving out here from the East Coast. And I devote my life to the practice of supporting Sojo Roshi's teachings that he inherited from Suzuki Roshi's teachings. When I feel low and some sense of despair, I remember that intention to support that practice and it helps me stay on track.

[01:02]

I get the great opportunity to give a talk here every three or four months or so. And I like to tell personal stories, personal accounts of things that have happened to me and things that I draw on in our practice to help support me. And yeah. The volume doesn't go up. The microphone has to go closer to the mouth. Thank you. Again, my name is Ross. So it appears that I'm the featured one today because I'm up here, there's a microphone, it's being recorded and one person is facing all of you, but actually we're all featured today. And it's really important to remember that, that the practice is about this person here. And I hope that my talk is inspiring and encouraging to those.

[02:16]

And we can have a little Q&A afterwards to maybe unpack some of the things I'm going to share. I had the good fortune to go to Vienna and Copenhagen recently, one week each. And it was a really great trip. I really enjoyed myself thoroughly. I traveled by myself, which is my want. So there's an opportunity to come and go on my schedule, not anybody else's. And to have the opportunity to meet people that I might not otherwise because I would be engaged with another traveling partner. So be careful what you wish for. That did happen to me. Time it again over the two weeks and It was actually all well and good. However, a few days before leaving to come back to America in Copenhagen, after a really lovely lunch at a place that I had sourced out on the web and such, I went to this place called Coffee Connection, I think it was called.

[03:28]

It's a little chain outfit in Copenhagen. They do their own coffee roasting and their coffee is pretty tasty. And I sat down, I had my little Copenhagen travel book open, and I finished my coffee and, you know, studying the little book to see what else I could see in the remaining day and a half I was going to be there. And after I finished my coffee, I went up and put my cup and saucer down. And as I was leaving, the woman that I was sitting next to kind of looked up a little bit. And I said, for some reason, I don't know what compelled me, I said, are you American? I noticed that she had been looking at my book while I was studying it, and I didn't engage her, but I did notice that. And so she smiled and said, no, I'm Danish, but I lived in America a number of years. I lived in New York, and I'm an actress, and a conversation ensued from that.

[04:33]

So we talked for about a half hour or so. And my heart was broken, which sounds very dramatic. And I apologize for that. But that's the only way I can describe it. Everyone in this room has practiced with their heart being broken. The forms of that break and the elements of the parts vary from person to person, situation to situation, but basically we all live with broken hearts, which is the first noble truth. Life is askew. Life is difficult. not settled. And I don't like that unsettled feeling, so I want to do something about it. So by and large, the trip was not in that, I was not carrying that sort of feeling of unsettledness during my vacation.

[05:44]

And you just don't know when an opportunity is going to come up. to set you back and humble you. And that's what happened to me on Sunday, the 1st of September. So the details of that conversation and whatnot are not so important. For me, the most important thing was that I'm going along and feeling fine about myself and my life. And I hit a bump. And that's not so unusual. We all hit bumps. However, this bump really hit me deeply. And the quality and depth of that bump and discouragement was really humbling. And I didn't feel it right away.

[06:49]

It came upon me a few hours later as I was walking around. And as a good Zen student, I was thinking about, okay, Ross, what are you hooked on? What are you attached to? Why are you not satisfied? You know, ask the standard questions that we Zen students tend to ask ourselves. And I think the humbling nature for me or the humbling experience that I had over there is that we all have, that even though we've done our homework and we've studied, we've had Dōkasan with Sojin Roshi numerous times, We reavow our commitment to practice the Bodhisattva way as we do in the ceremony just now, but it's not going away.

[07:50]

My discontent and sadness was not going away. I exchanged email addresses with this young lady, her name is Maria, and in trying to find a piece of paper to write down the email address. She said, well, just tell me your email address and I'll write you. So she wrote me and it popped up on my little iPod touch and I printed it out and here it is. Um, hi Ross from Maria with a little smiley face. So that this is the reminder of my, uh, my encounter at the coffee connection. So, I like to have a lot of quiet in my life and equanimity. I don't like the ups and downs and the vacillation of life. I like kind of things even, and I do what I can to keep it that way.

[08:56]

So, karmically, as the universe presents itself, curves are thrown, you know, little things are thrown out for one to trip on. And in my case, mess up my equanimity. But I've been sitting long enough to not blame anyone or anything for that disruption. I just bring it back to myself in my practice, and then I have to practice harder in order to find my balance. You know, as Suzuki Roshi says, we're constantly falling out of balance. and constantly returning into balance. And given the cause and conditions of my life, it's mostly in balance. I have relative good fortune in numerous sort of aspects of my life that a lot of people are challenged by that I

[10:00]

for whatever reasons, don't have. So it's a fairly kind of flat, even, boring life. So this was anything but boring over there, halfway around the world. So before this experience at the coffee shop, I spent a little time in a cemetery just nearby. It's called the Astens Kierkegaard Cemetery. It's a famous cemetery in Copenhagen. It's like a park, really. It's not landscaped like, say, Piedmont Park or Piedmont Cemetery. It's flat. There's a lot of graves there, a lot of old ones. Hans Christian Andersen, Kierkegaard the philosopher is buried there, Niels Bohr is buried there, a number of other people. On the way out, walking out, I look over and there's Ben Webster, the old great saxophone player from the Ellington Band is buried there. So it's like a park.

[11:06]

It's flat. There are benches and pathways. And as many of you know, Copenhagen, Denmark, is filled with bicyclists. There's a huge amount of bicyclists there. They don't wear helmets, by and large. So in the park, there's people riding up and down on bicycles. And there's couples and single people with carriages pushing babies, and it's a very alive place for a place that's actually full of a lot of dead people. And I was really struck by the contrast of death and life, or birth and death, as we talk about in our practice. And so as I was sitting on the bench and observing this activity, my mind started to settle. Thank God. And it wasn't that the sadness that I was feeling and heartbreak and all that dissipated, but it was kind of put back into perspective.

[12:12]

And sitting still, And looking at my greed, ill will, and delusion, and my karmic attachment around relationship and such, it was pretty evident what was going on. And thankfully, I had the opportunity to sit in the cemetery and contemplate my life and the cause and conditions of not only my life, but what had transpired just an hour or so ago. When I started practicing the story of Buddha and his followers, the sittings would sit in the charnel grounds, the places where dead people were placed on funeral pyres and offered to the universe. The idea of meditating in the charnel grounds is an opportunity for people to see the impermanence of life and to get real and get serious about what is the most important thing.

[13:25]

And so, of course, I wasn't in clear view of rotting, you know, decomposing corpses. It was a very beautiful place and the bodies were thankfully out of sight. But all that life and activity around me, is going to change and all those people, babies and bicycles, all those things are going to wind up in landfill and underground at some point. So it was a very awakening experience for me to be in that space and shift my attachment from, I want this, to what do I want? What is realistic in wanting? And so I return to wanting myself and all beings to be happy, which is kind of standard Buddhist wishes, and we recite that in the Veda Sutta on Monday morning.

[14:41]

At the same time, I wanted to honor and fully accept my own unfulfilled desires from this CAFE experience and not spend too much time thinking about which is more important. my personal satisfaction or the world's, you know, happiness. Because I like to be happy. If I'm happy, the world's happy, right? the image of a seesaw came up. And as I think we all probably have been on a seesaw once or twice in our life, you know, it's very fun to be up and down, up and down. And this is our life. We go up, we go down. And unlike a child on a seesaw, as adults, the up and down is not necessarily so fun, especially when we're on the downside. And it's kind of boring if we're just still and the seesaw is balanced.

[15:51]

So we want balance. We want evenness and equanimity. But our life goes like this. And we get, I got caught. in being from up and feeling really great and happy about this vacation I was on to being down and not so happy and wanting to be back up. I usually bring a Dharma book with me when I travel and quite often I never open it up. I feel I should have opened up a little bit, but in any case, I had a fair amount of time on this trip to have my book and open it, so I read it. It's the unborn by Bankei, who lived in Japan in the 1600s. And there's a beautiful calligraphy show at the Berkeley Art Museum, and one of his calligraphies is in there.

[16:55]

I highly recommend going to see that show. It's really beautiful. A lot of famous Hakuin calligraphy there and whatnot. So there are a few passages in this book that I'd like to read to you that were helpful for me. kind of main teaching is the teaching of the unborn, which is another way of saying Buddha mind and stillness and complete acceptance and not thinking, non-thinking, just staying in the unborn. And it was really evident to me that I had gone from the unborn to the born when I lost my balance. The unborn Buddha mind deals freely and spontaneously with anything that presents itself to it.

[18:03]

But if something should happen to make you change the Buddha mind into thought, then you run into trouble and lose that freedom. So in the case of this lady, Maria at the cafe, so we were talking about a half hour and by and large, I was just present and engaging her, asking questions, receiving her responses. She asked me questions. So it was just a back and forth, just a friendly chat, nothing particularly special. We've all been engaged in those sorts of exchanges. And so one could say that I was basically mirroring her and she was mirroring me as we were having this back and forth. Afterwards, when I had thoughts of a further exchange and another opportunity to see her and whatnot before leaving, which didn't happen, then things shifted in my insight for me.

[19:21]

What I was reflecting was not the clear mirror of her, But more about the mirror of my own greed and disappointment and not being present. Kind of garden variety, you know, not getting what one wants. Nothing too special. We've all had those experiences. Recently, I was in conversation with someone and it was a different kind of conversation. It wasn't someone in a cafe that I was having dreams and aspirations for a closer intimate relationship with. We're having a conversation and had the same kind of quality. And I was thinking about this passage about being in the unborn and just listening and going back and forth. And then the conversation was going on a little bit longer than I really wanted to engage in.

[20:24]

And I saw my mind, I felt my mind change and shift. And this freedom that Banke talks about was no longer in my control. I had lost the freedom and lost control. And I was all of a sudden, I want to get the hell out of here. And I didn't like that feeling because I wanted to stay present, but this was what was arising for me. So I, to myself, took some breaths, straightened up my posture a little bit instead of kind of turning to move away. I was able to stay connected to this person. We've all had these experiences where we want to go somewhere and we say, well, actually, you know, I can hang out here and chat for a bit longer about X, Y, and Z. So here's this 300 and some year old text that's popping off the page and helping me now. It's amazing. An old, old text that is helping me right now with my discomfort.

[21:30]

So here's another story. During the Great Retreat of 1690, there was a report that someone had lost some money at the Fudo Hall. When Bankei came and took the teaching seat, a monk came forward and said, I am a disciple of priests so-and-so at such-and-such temple. I have been practicing during this retreat in the Fudo Hall. The monk who sits next to me discovered some of his traveling money had disappeared. Since my seat was next to his, people suspected me. Please master, would you have the matter investigated? You didn't take it, Aspanke? The monk said, at such an unprecedented assembly as this, how could you suggest that I would commit such a shameless act? All right, said Banke. But unless the matter is cleared up, the monk went on, this baseless accusation will follow me wherever I go.

[23:01]

I have trouble. I'll have trouble being admitted to any religious gathering in the country. Please, Master, I'm counting on you to help me. If we decide to look into the matter, I am sure we can find out who the guilty party is. Are you sure you want that?" said Banke. Suddenly the monk began to weep. To do such a thing while listening to you preach the great Dharma every day. The shame I feel for my self-centered partiality is beyond words, he sobbed. So this is a little bit of the realization, this is the flavor of the realization that I had in the cemetery and in my Airbnb, which was,

[24:09]

having 24 hours or so of moving away from my suffering and not having perspective to see a wider view, but just about my own self-interest and selfishness, I was able to see that I was not too unlike this monk who wanted to clear his name, wanted some kind of validation. but there was nobody there to help validate me. I was there by myself. So it, there was a very lonely feeling. Um, it was okay, but it was lonely. You know, in our Sangha, one of the third treasure, we have, uh, a room full of people who are here practicing and supporting themselves and each other.

[25:14]

So when we hear stories about, um, uh, the challenges that arise in our life, we're not alone because there's a good chance that there's a few other people in this room that have suffered similarly. So we actually get, we start, we connect through our suffering. There's compassion or suffering with others because we've had these experiences. And so my sangha, of BCC was way over here in Berkeley and I was way over there in Copenhagen. And so I spent a lot of time sitting and trying to find the uprightness in myself. Because even though we have each other for help and support, just by their physical presence, as well as in conversation over tea, going out and enjoying walks together and all that.

[26:23]

Ultimately, we're left to our own devices and be upright and find our way. So I was talking to someone about this selfishness that I felt that was brought up here in this story from Bankei's time. And they weren't quite buying that selfishness wasn't necessarily a bad thing. Because we talk about don't be selfish and self-centered thinking. So again, as I said at the beginning of my talk, there's a balance between taking care of the self and self-interest and self-centeredness and separating oneself from others in a sense of what am I entitled to.

[27:26]

When we stay in the unborn, there's no such thing as a self. We have thoughts and a self arises and with the self arising is the first link in the causal chain, the 12 links that we work to practice with. So there is a self, but it's the attachment to the self that causes the problem. And I believe that Suzuki Roshi and Soichin Roshi and Bankei Roshi and all the other teachers throughout our practice are talking about selfishness and being careful about being selfish as a warning. that what naturally leads from selfishness or a self-centered thought is a telephone call. It's okay.

[28:30]

And with that, we can start going into a darker, deeper place. So how do we stay above the muck or in the muck? but like a lotus up out of the muck and into the sunlight. And that's an ongoing practice. Its opportunities are endless. I vowed to enter them. And I got the opportunity to enter them in Copenhagen. In the remaining 15 or so minutes, let's talk a little bit about people's experiences around life and disappointment and dealing with the practice that we are vowing to uphold. Please. Questions or comments?

[29:43]

When I hear talks like these or conversations that have to do with something that we want or desire, I get really... I don't even know what the feeling is, but I start feeling like challenging things. allow our relationship to riches be a burden. And I think that when I hear someone talk about, I don't know if this is what you're saying, is that there's this thing that I want or that I long for and I don't have it.

[30:49]

So I need to not want it. And I need to... It's sort of like if something works in your life, if you like riding this kind of bike and that kind of bicycle, it doesn't feel good, and every time you're on that kind of bicycle, it just doesn't feel good riding it, then what's wrong with wanting this other bicycle? And I guess sometimes I think it's hard to tell when there's some dissatisfaction or disappointment, How is it that we're supposed to somehow go on this path to make it, to get rid of the disillusionment, get rid of the feelings, as opposed to maybe that's just not the thing to be in. Like if I have a job and I'm doing this job and I don't like it, I'm not happy, I don't want to feel like, well, you have to stay in it. between it just isn't where I need to be, as opposed to I'm running from something that I should face.

[32:15]

And that happens regularly when I hear certain thoughts. Does that make sense what I'm saying? It does. The only thing that you have to do is die. Everything else is optional. Everything else, I believe, everything else is optional. So you have to die. When I think about that, it frees me up and then I can see that my choices and preferences are just my choices and preferences. It's not a universal thing. It's not a universe thing. It's like I'm making a choice to do this or not do this. Another thing that's helped me is not getting rid of anything but accepting everything. When I want to get rid of a feeling or an old bicycle or something like that, it's just a setup because there's something deeper that I'm not accepting.

[33:21]

It doesn't mean that I don't have preferences for a certain kind of bicycle or a certain kind of restaurant and all the rest of that, but those are ephemeral. Those things are constantly changing. I had been back for a week just sitting Zazen and it was excruciating. It wasn't that I wasn't sitting in Zazen in Europe, but it was like really uncomfortable and I did not like that feeling. I wanted to be comfortable in Zazen. And it took a week. And on the Tuesday, a week after I returned, sitting Zazen, it's like, yeah, this is the feeling I want. This is comfortable. This is easeful. I want this all the time. And it's not that way all the time. And so it's, again, another humbling moment of I don't get what I want all the time. and I have my desires, which are natural, I think, I feel the desires are natural, to want more of that kind of comfort and ease.

[34:24]

If not, then it's kind of like something's a little tweaked if I'm wanting pain and suffering for myself and others. So desires are numberless, as we say it in the four vowels, and desires are natural. But what is the inspiration for the desire? Is my desire something to create wholeness? Is my desire something that is going to benefit others? Or is my desire just because I want it and I don't want to be sick anymore? I want to feel better. You know, there's all these different ways of looking at desire, wholesome desire and unwholesome desire. I went to an exhibit

[35:28]

photography exhibit was a woman photographer who was photographing people that are living in this 1% world of luxury. And we know about that world. We've read about that world. We've even seen it kind of in passing. But this was a whole room full of photographs and commentary of famous people and not famous people kind of exuding this life. And the first picture was a picture of a beautiful, upright woman with presumably her child on a little stuffed animal that she was walking around in. And then there was this Buddha off on the side, sculpture, looking at the two of them. And the Buddha's just kind of like that. And here's this beautiful woman dressed with these fancy clothes. And the sweater that she's wearing, it says, I am luxury. I am luxury.

[36:31]

And I looked at it and it's like, is this a joke or is this something that she believes in and she wants to advertise and share? So for me, I like nice things. I like people that spend time to design and beautify and stuff like that. I'm attached to that kind of world. So for me, it wasn't so abhorrent. If I started looking at what the statement is, well then, of course, that isn't something that feels consistent with what I'm trying to do and what we're trying to do here in practice, which is to maybe lessen the gap of the disparity between rich and poor. But in her world, it was like a celebration of this luxury thing. So after I went through that process, I walked around and I was looking at all these other things, and I started getting sick to my stomach. I had never had that experience before of getting sick and looking at something that was like just this.

[37:36]

And I realized, I'm trying to get back to your question about the desire and wanting to do it a certain way, is that in a conversation, on a television, or looking through a newspaper, we can flip past things. But to actually be immersed in something that is distasteful and something that one doesn't particularly support or want to follow, it's hard to stay present. So I saw what my desire was, which was to get out of this room because I'm suffocating from just still images and text describing a lifestyle that's quite prevalent now. And where was that hook? Was I taking care of myself by wanting to leave the room before examining all this stuff? I'm not so sure, but I definitely reached a threshold there, not to unlike the threshold on the other side, which was this problem of desire that I had for myself.

[38:43]

So there's a saying, the back is as big as the front. So I'm really, I'm pretty aware of my front and what I want and my desires and all that. But the back side, I'm not so aware of. And so I got to see both sides there. I got to see both sides. Linda. Okay. A little louder. Communism, I think there are many things in life. First, I want to thank you for that comment and question.

[39:46]

I'd like to respond to the comment. When I said that everything else is optional, it doesn't mean things don't happen. We have an option of how do we deal with this, and everybody deals with these things that you listed differently, so that there's a potential for response to what goes on, and that varies depending on the person, the cause and conditions of their life. It doesn't mean that it's tough shit. You still have to deal with it. That's what I meant. It's optional as far as how we deal with it. It doesn't mean things don't happen to us. So what broke my heart? I saw and felt that there's a part of me that still desires the intimacy and freshness of another person in a setting that is of my

[40:47]

habits and preference in the casualness of socializing, which I like to do. And I have the good fortune to socialize with lots of people. And that particular experience was the freshness was that there was a Well, two things. One, there wasn't, of course, it was a very short exchange, so there wasn't the, my awareness of who this person actually is. There was just this one side. So I'm sure the, there's, you know, the backside is what, broaden the picture that I was seeing, and it might not have felt the same way. But in the time that we were together, I just felt all this light and life. and commonality around social, political, and diet.

[41:52]

Having lived in New York and my longing for the New York City, you know, life that I left, that I love and get revitalized and recharged every time I go there. So all that stuff came together for me without my necessarily looking for it, but there it was. And by seeing it, then I actually got to see this break or this thing that's in me that I would like to heal in some way. Not that I can't move along as I have for the past 35 years since leaving the East Coast and my relationships and all that. But there's something about that being there and that exchange that just was just full of a lot of life and congruency with my own sensibilities.

[43:03]

Uh-huh. Louder. No, a little louder. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. and I'm still having it. You know, that put an end to it. Yes, true. That's true. So thanks for that. What I've tried to do, and maybe I missed it or wasn't able to express it well enough, was what you said about the regret and wanting to be more Buddhist or Buddhistic.

[44:17]

That was this struggle that I had in that initial couple hours afterwards. But after some time and some study, and just reminders of my practice intention, it kind of came full circle. But saying one side or saying the other side, it includes, but the other side is actually in the shadow. So I've tried to shed light both in the shadow and the light. And well, we all have different responses to when we're witnessing someone share their life with us, what they would like to hear more of or see less of, I think. In response to your question. Yes, thank you.

[45:19]

Yeah, well, it's Part of the heartbreak is reminiscent of years ago, that we all are hurt and we all have had heartbreaks and wounds, and we protect ourselves as a result of that. And with those protections, we don't get to see so close to each other and the intimacy that's there. And thankfully in Zazen there's this peeling away and letting go and a trust that it's actually okay to be in front of a room full of friends and new people that I don't know and just to share what's going on because actually My story is unique only because it happened to me, but everybody has the same story. It's just that the landscape is a little different.

[46:20]

The cast of characters is different. So we're all like, we're all brothers and sisters practicing together. And that for me was like the, one of the biggest things that's, and most validating of things to continue practicing is this thing of just being vulnerable and being open. and sharing our life. As I started, I see the strikers, I want to end. It's a great opportunity to sit up front and share stories with you every few months or so, but we all have stories to share, and there's nothing particularly special about my story. But let's be open and be patient and listen to each other's stories and aspirations and struggles. not do what I was trying to do, which was, you know, move away from that conversation, but actually just stay present and hear what's uplifting for our friends and also what's difficult and we can help each other and support each other and ask questions for clarification that can help illuminate further.

[47:37]

Thank you all.

[47:39]

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