Oh, good morning. I want to start by reading the koan that Sojourn Roshi read yesterday, and I want to include the verse, and then we'll see how much I talk about it. I'm not sure. So this is case 12 from the Book of Serenity. Dijon planting the fields. Scholars plow with the pen. Orators plow with the tongue. We patch-robed mendicants. That's us, you guys. We don't get to say, oh, that's those monks in China or something. We're Zen students. lazily watch a white ox on open ground, not paying attention to the rootless, auspicious grass."

[01:03]

The rootless, auspicious grass. How to pass the days. Dijong asked Suishan, where do you come from? Suishan said, from the South. How is Buddhism in the South these days? There's extensive discussion. But Dijon said, how can that compare to me here planting the fields and making rice to eat? Zuishan said, what can you do about the world? Dijon said, what do you call the world? And the verse. Source and explanation variously are all made up. Passing to ear from mouth, it comes apart. Planting fields, making rice, ordinary household matters, only those who have investigated to the full would know.

[02:10]

Having investigated to the full, you clearly know there's nothing to seek. Zifang, after all, didn't care to be enfifed as a marquis. Forgetting his state, he returned, same as fish and birds, washing his feet in the Kanglong River, the hazy waters of autumn. Enfifed as a marquis would mean like, you know, made or anointed or whatever as a noble guy. So I asked a question of Suzuki Roshi the other night. I think so. During the annual memorial. I mean, asking a question of Sojin Roshi is sort of like asking Suzuki Roshi, but I did ask the guy in the picture.

[03:20]

And I don't remember it exactly, but it was along the lines of, there's so much pain and suffering in the world, in Chad, and Somalia, and in Darfur, and Iraq, and Iran, and Afghanistan, and Louisiana, and Southern Mexico, and Bangladesh, and Burma, and I can't even read the newspaper. And my question, is this practice enough? Oh, I said I have this idea about practice. I confess I have an idea about practice, one of many. One idea that I have about practice is that it helps me to be able to look at reality. And then I ended with, is it enough? Is this practice enough? And we've been sort of turning that here and there, off and on, for the last few days.

[04:30]

And Sojin Roshi addressed it yesterday and brought up this koan. For me, that question had nothing to do with, well, not much, it didn't have to do so much with what to do. It had to do with, can I trust this practice? Can I trust this practice? Is it enough? I do find myself, I actually, I do read the paper to some extent. What triggered that question to some extent was somebody coming to me in practice discussion and telling me they don't read the paper anymore. They realize they just, they read the human interest stories. Of which, of course, there are quite a few in the Chronicle these days. At any rate, then they didn't read the news and it was just too overwhelming and they felt paralyzed and didn't do anything because there was just too much.

[05:36]

So I kind of gave this person support and gave them some wise advice about, you know, choose something. Rumi says, right, pick anything, stop window shopping, pick anything, but do pick something and do it wholeheartedly. So fine. So they went away. And then I started thinking. I'm not reading the paper that much. Who am I? I'm giving advice. Am I taking it? Am I taking it? What's my practice here? Because I lecture about this sort of thing all the time. Every time there's a new disaster, then I lecture about paying attention and being willing to look at what's happening. the corrosive power of hating. So am I walking the walk or just talking the talk?

[06:42]

And so that was kind of, it's been eating at me, I guess. We do a check-in at Clearwater in Vallejo, we do a check-in before we do the full moon ceremony, and that's what I, confessed that Wednesday night. So is it enough? Is this practice enough? Can I trust it? And what do I mean by that, of course? ask me five minutes later and I'll probably give a little different answer, but something about, am I willing to sit still in the middle of reality? Am I willing to keep my eyes open? Am I willing to practice renunciation over and over and over again?

[07:44]

I think our practice is a lot about renunciation. It's a word we don't use very much. It's got a lot of baggage. However, it's a useful word. there was a piece I saw somewhere by Ajahn Amaro recently about how in the West we don't talk about renunciation so much. And I think he was addressing the Vipassana community from his Theravadan monastic stance. And he talked about it in terms of monastic practice. And I think that it doesn't have to be monastic practice. We don't do monastic practice so much. We may do it for a while, but we come out of monastic practice. But the renunciation, I think, continues. And when I say renunciation, I mean letting go, moment after moment, letting go of any idea of what practice is, letting go of a train of thought,

[08:54]

when you do zazen, right, over and over and over again, letting go of torturing yourself about when the bell's going to ring, whether the timekeeper fell asleep or not, or what's for dinner, or letting go of the delicious thoughts, the lustful thoughts, the sexual fantasies. I'm sure none of you ever had sexual fantasies. planning vacations, letting go of that, that's renunciation. Sometimes it's bigger. When I was thinking about whether, not even thinking about, I was sitting with whether I completely wanted to be a priest or not, after I finally got around to actually asking Sojourn out loud.

[09:56]

And he helped me kind of deepen the question and sit with it, stay with it, keep practicing with it, right? Keep facing it, sitting down in the middle of my reality. And it got to the point where I felt like I didn't have an inch of ground to stand on. And it got to the point where it wasn't even about wanting to be useful even. And I went and I saw him in Doksan and I said, but I'm still, I know that I'm projecting onto this, but I'm still attached to my hair. I don't want to cut my hair off. And he sort of laughed. And then we talked about something else. And at the end of that, Doksan, he looked at me and he said, you know, one way to make a decision is to act as if you already had made that decision. For example, You could cut your hair."

[11:02]

And I said something extremely rude and obscene and kind of doubled over. I said, was that an enlightenment experience? I thought of that last night. Oh, that's the kind of thing, you know, not the, well, probably including the rude words, but the doubling over, the words weren't things that I thought of. It was the F word. And you. And we laughed. And I left. This is all, this really is about renunciation. I'm getting there. And then I, it was in the summer at Tassajara, and I guess I wasn't on or something anyway, I went up to the Zendo, just by myself, and I sat. Because I had not said, yes, I will, or maybe I did say, yes, I will, but it wasn't, because that is my practice when he tells me stuff like that, but I hadn't gotten there yet.

[12:04]

So I went up and I sat in the zendo, I sat by myself up there, and I got, I sat in just for a little bit, I got quiet, and I burst into tears. And I cried for a minute or so and then there was just this incredible feeling of lightness and joy and a sense almost of floating, you know like a leaf floats when there's not wind and it just sort of just floats down weightless really, just about like that, feeling like that. And then it was over, that was it. I didn't think about it, but when I did go find my friend Tia and ask her to cut my hair, buzz my head, basically. It was easy. It was joyous. And that's renunciation to me.

[13:08]

Not that it's always easy to get there, but that real renunciation, there is an ease to it, there's a joy to it. And if there isn't, then we haven't done our homework completely. And I think that applies in Sashin. It's not always easy to sit still when your back hurts, your legs hurt, your hips hurt, whatever. But we do it together and there's an energy that comes up. We support each other. We can feel it from one another. And we're willing to do that work. And there is a joy to it. You may not feel it all the time. I imagine you don't feel it all the time.

[14:10]

But it's there, it's here, it's here for us. I'm certainly feeling it, this Sashin. And there can be a kind of a fierce joy and that willingness to keep coming back, you know, to open your eyes, not to doze off, not go into that delicious space with your eyes closed, but to actually keep your eyes open and to keep coming back, to notice when you distract yourself by however you distract yourself. We each have our own way, right? I complain, I'm so sorry to say. I engage in the, what is it, the burdensome and worrisome practice of judging. That's a close enough quote from the Hsinchu and Ming. And during Sashin, you helped me notice that I'm doing it and ask myself, why am I, why are you distracting yourself?

[15:19]

Why are you torturing yourself? What are you doing? and come back to my breath and the wall. And whatever may rise organically but not as a brain event. And there is a joy in that. And there's a joy in the world when when you go outside and you see the drops of water from this blessed rain, sparkling on the bare trees, or you see the sunlight on the trees now, on the pine trees. And the wonderful sort of scraggly gardens, the winter gardens.

[16:21]

I don't know if you ever come up on Tamar and Jim's porch and look into the vegetable garden next door. I think there's one tiny little tomato left on the vine. So this practice, this practice of renunciation it's not just in zazen, it's in the world, it's in our lives. letting go of ideas, letting go of hope, letting go of optimism. I heard somebody once who came from a lineage different from ours, he said, well, isn't the Dharma always tending towards the good? And I thought... And... I asked Shohaku Okamura about it, actually.

[17:24]

I didn't know, I couldn't think what exactly I should have responded to this person. Probably at the time, nothing was appropriate, so that's probably just as well. But at any rate, he said, the Dharma is beyond good and bad, and I think that's true. It's beyond pessimism and optimism, war and peace. Can I trust it? What choice do I have?" Sojin Roshi said, I forget exactly how you said it, either you or Raul, I think you said, anyway, that once you start, how do you stop? We can't really stop. We get addicted to paying attention. Sit down, get quiet, pay attention. That's another definition of practice. Sit down, get quiet, pay attention. Get up, stay quiet, pay attention.

[18:25]

And I do deeply trust it. Just sometimes, like with my question to Suzuki Roshu, sometimes I need to complain, sometimes I need to confess, sometimes I need to not read the paper for a little while. or not very carefully. Sometimes I don't listen to Democracy Now. Sometimes I only read the back of the magazine in The Nation. I think we have to just practice. We do what we do. I talked about something like this, I don't know, what was it, two or three weeks ago here. We each of us have to do ourselves.

[19:35]

We have to do you. You really don't have any choice. There may not be a self there. There may just be a coming together of causes and conditions expressing itself to but we experience ourselves as having selves and each of us different. So we need to just do it. Just do it. I'm sorry, I sound like a Nike ad. Just do you, you could say. But no hope, no expectation. just wholeheartedly do it. I've been thinking about it in terms of ceremonies. What's that? Well, there's a man that's been coming in the morning at Clearwater for a few months now, and he doesn't like ritual particularly and so on, and we did a well-being

[20:45]

Service, that's what I confessed, isn't it? We did a well-being service. I forgot. I have lots to confess. We did a well-being service, chanted the Enmei Juku Kannon Gyo. Well, to me, that means a lot. That means I send all my good wishes, I invoke the compassion of the universe, and I offer it to you for your well-being. It's my heart to your heart. It means a lot to me. But I gave it that meaning. So we gave it that meaning and people down the ages, but in some sense it's just somebody's idea of beauty, that's all. We could chant something else and call it that. And the next day it was time to do a memorial service really for a man, Dick Catalano, who died about a month ago now. And he and I were the only people there.

[21:52]

The usual Don wasn't there, and he doesn't know how to do the bells or anything, and he never heard of the Dayi Shindirani, that's for sure. And I chickened out, I didn't do it. I apologized to Dick later. After he left, then I chanted for Dick, and then we actually did it the next morning. But I realized, I give the Dayi Shindirani this meaning. The Dayi Shindirani means something about wishing you well in this transition, whatever you are, whatever it means, whatever continuity there may be in some, whatever this nexus of energy, bundle of skandhas or whatever, whatever it is, I invoke great compassion for you and for all of us involved in whoever's just died, right, the family and friends and so on. Well, he hasn't given it this meaning, of course, At any rate, we make up our lives and we give them meaning.

[23:07]

We don't have to believe in it completely. Let's not concretize it. Let's not grasp onto it. Let's remember that it's empty and that emptiness is not a thing. But it's still worthwhile, it's still important, it's still our practice to wholeheartedly do. In Dogen's wonderful phrase, to devotedly do. Just devotedly do. Refrain from and devotedly do. Refrain from believing in it. Refrain from adding anything extra. Renounce your attachment. and just devotedly do. Sobhika does the crosses. Meili did work in the jails and in the prisons, and every day she sat down and wrote letters to Congress people and presidents and things like that, every day.

[24:21]

Sojin does Zen teacher, and he goes to demonstrations. Allen's in Burma. I go out to San Quentin. I went to the jails with Maile, and I do prison work. Leslie teaches kids, and, I guess, sort of represents kids with disabilities in the schools. Is that close enough? Raoul works with troubled people in San Francisco. I mean, on and on, right? So we do this. Our cooks cook. Paul keeps an eye on them. And on the process, and so on. It's really important to devotedly do. It's more fun to.

[25:24]

And I think that's our practice. But no pessimism, no optimism. Just do it. If you're a peace activist, work for peace, but no hope. Sojin Roshi said yesterday, it's not going to end war. You know, Mara came to the Buddha and said, please, please, I want to stop. How come I have to be the bad guy all the time? And Buddha said, they're there, offered him a cup of tea, and said, it's your job. So, we each do it our own way, but the introduction says, scholars plow with the pen, orators plow with the tongue. So, Vaika plows with the crosses, and with hospice work, and so on. And always, we Zen students lazily watch a white ox.

[26:26]

lazily watch a white ox not paying attention to the rootless, auspicious grass." Rootless, rootless, rootless, auspicious grass. It's just auspicious. Just do it. He said, go out into the world with gift-bestowing hands. Rootless. A bodhisattva who unsupported gives a gift. It's the Diamond Sutra. I think I talked about that before. Can we be bodhisattvas, rootless bodhisattvas, just ... no idea of giving, just ... So we sit and we sit and we hurt and we cry and we complain And whatever comes up, comes up. The dramas on the cushions.

[27:30]

Just devotedly do. Fully investigate. Investigate fully. Having investigated to the full, you clearly know there's nothing to seek. Doesn't matter whatever world, your world. just devotedly do. Would you like to add anything or subtract anything or say anything? Oh, it's fief, okay. A fiefdom, so he was offered a fiefdom, right. Uh-huh.

[28:48]

Uh-huh. No, if it's right, die. Over and over. Yeah. What can you do? What's the wonderful, the title of Kadagiri's, I think it's the first book, is it, You Have to Say Something? Oh, and the second book is You Have to Say Something. Yes, and the practice is not asking or not separating. Then in some sense, what is the end of the shin-shin-ming? What is it? Words! There aren't any words. I said I was going to stop talking.

[29:54]

I've been talking about the shin-shin-ming for a couple of months now and I keep saying, stop. Baika. I'm sorry, just a second. Were you, was that, were you done? So, Jiroshi, were you done? Yeah, Baika. I never know because I don't do it here often enough, so I always think, well, did I miss something? So far, hey.

[30:54]

You're quite welcome. Thank you very much. May it continue. They do that thing. Thank you for your talk. I appreciate the acknowledgement and a completion or a balance to ritual of the Sangha.

[31:59]

The people who devotedly pay attention to what they purchase, where they pay attention to what they eat and use, and throw away where it came from, where it goes. The incredible generosity and love that goes into this week. And when Sojin said, you know, you can't just throw You know, there's so many things that do work that we can support and keep looking for strategic means.

[33:14]

And without hope that it's going to change anything, but that it sure is things that help a lot of lives and resources. I just want to thank everybody here for what they do. And thank you. Yeah, go. Can you say a little more about hope? Like, hope is a great gift to gift people. Well, Well, I'm talking about the kind where we have, what do you call it, anticipation kind of hope or expectation kind of hope to

[34:21]

you know, go down to New Orleans and help people rebuild their houses, I suppose is giving them a kind of hope. And I'm not talking about that kind of thing. But so often when we talk about giving somebody hope, you know, it's like pitying them. It's got an aspect of condescension. It certainly has an aspect of separation. So my sense is that when we just sit still and allow the flower of our life force to bloom with nothing extra, that then compassion arises naturally. Because we know connection then. We know there aren't boundaries. So, you know, if you cut yourself, you'd bandage it up, right?

[35:29]

So, somebody in Bangladesh is not separate from you, so you go bandage it up if that's what's in front of you, and for some people that is, even, you know, here, that is what's right in front of them. So you just do it, you just respond, you just devotedly do without calling it hope or anything, not even compassion. I don't know if you were here the other day, I gave this, it's out, I'm pretty sure it's in the compassion part in the Four Brahma-Viharas and the Vasudhi-Magga. And he says that Buddha says, you're not my disciple if you're in a boat with some other people and the sea pirate comes and says, I want one of you, and you are not my disciple if you step forward and say, take me. And the way I understand that these days is you just step forward.

[36:33]

But it's not because you see yourself as, you don't see yourself as separate from the others in the boat. So it's not a matter of taking me, it's just, it's just a gesture. Which even gestures have words in some sense, but less so, it's just a gesture. So that's the kind of thing I'm thinking in terms of when I say give up hope. Yeah, it's extra. Okay, one, two, and then we should stop. I'm thinking about what? Oh, yes. It was almost as long as yours. And about faith instead of hope. So I'm wondering if you check my work here today. Renunciation, I always want to know when someone uses a word like that, like renunciating what?

[37:40]

What are we refraining from? And so is the refraining the refraining from acting out, or avoiding the feeling that arose, the grief, that what you did was lynched her, that you sat on a cushion and cried, without doing anything, and on the other side, there was a leaf floating, and that that, that what we have is the faith in that transformation, and that in the burning throat, that the refraining Well, there's not a one thing, but I'm refraining from adding anything extra to the extent I can, and devotedly do being willing to sit still for whatever the experience is. Yes. but without adding anything, without it being a brain event.

[38:45]

You can tell the difference when you're telling yourself a story and it's arising out of your head. The sixth ancestor says, don't activate thoughts. You can tell, if you're sitting quietly, you can tell the difference. But there are other times when something really arises organically, either in pictures or a physical experience or sometimes a thought. So can you extend that to the action of going to New Orleans and building a house without that extra? In terms of the analogy that you were just talking about with coal. Well, that's our, yes, you can. And we do that from time to time. And then other times we fail. And there was no use beating yourself up about it. We just fail because we're human beings and we're ego driven and greed, hate and delusion are right in the middle.

[39:46]

And so we confess and we let it go and we go on. And maybe we don't do it again, do it the next time. And then sometimes after, you know, you don't notice that you're doing it without ego involvement until later, because you're not separating from the experience, you know, and then later you sort of think, oh, oh, I just did that, oh, I just did it, it just was easy, and just happened, and that we have that experience, and certainly could be going down to New Orleans. One of you guys had your hand up, yeah. Well, about hope and its various nuances, one thing Right next to that is despair and giving up.

[41:09]

I'm thinking, here's an example. And there's another candidate who is kind of up and coming. He said, well, let's, I don't know that we should bother, because they can't be counted on, and they don't necessarily do everything right. And that kind of, you know, when it's so clear in a person's mind that you want it to have this effect, and if it doesn't happen, then you throw them out. That can, I think, be very problematic, and I think myself that a lot of the problem that one runs into there is the belief somehow that we really do see all the connections.

[42:15]

And I think so often we don't. And I know one of the things some of us say a lot is, as we used to say on the farm, we just have to keep throwing mud at the wall and some of it sticks. And you don't know what's going to stick and what isn't. So you have a certain kind of generic hope Anyway, enough of this. Enough is enough. Just sit down, get quiet, and pay attention. And Judy will keep on doing, Judy. And I'm very grateful that you do.

[42:54]

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