Okay, here we go. Lots of wires here today. Okay. I'm not sure what it is that I always feel a little mischievous coming whenever I walk into a Zen center. I've also learned I have to be a little careful of what I say. I can't remember. My first talk here, someone threw a Zafu at me. I don't remember why. So please, hold on to your Zafus. And I also, I really love the process of, in a way, preparing for these talks is part of giving the talks.

[01:08]

And it's very rich. And I was kind of surprised a little bit at one of the things that came up for me that I hadn't thought of in a long time. And I don't think that my family even knows this about me, that my nickname when I was in third grade was Mischievous Mark. And I was thinking about that this morning. And I looked up the word mischievous. And I was really surprised to see that the root meaning of the word mischievous is, see, I wrote it down here. It means coming to grief is what the word mischievous means. And that the definitions of the word mischievous range from causing harm to being very, very playful and causing joy or creating joy. And I thought it was a really amazing paradox.

[02:11]

And again, reminds me of this, there's an expression that if it's not paradoxical, it's not true. And in this context of thinking about my own life and childhood, again, this idea of it was a way, I think it was a way for me to touch and get in touch with some of the grief that I was feeling. And also as a way of expressing joy, we're all intertwined. This is a strange way of introducing what I want to talk about, which is the practice. There's a practice period here. This is the second week, and people in this practice period are studying the paramitas or the perfections, or otherwise called this crossing over to the other shore. And the paramita I want to talk about, which is kind of continuing on what Christina spoke about last Saturday,

[03:13]

is the practice of generosity. I think that you can never talk too much or practice too much this particular practice of generosity or giving. And again, just a quick review. The six paramitas are generosity, morality or ethical conduct, patience, energy, meditation, and wisdom. And it's sometimes said that to practice any one of these is to practice all six. And it's often said that it's no accident that generosity is the first one. And I also wanted to kind of weave into this talk Suzuki Roshi's presence and bring in some things that Suzuki Roshi had to say about generosity. Well, I just remembered a...

[04:27]

Well, I'll read this by Suzuki Roshi first. It says, every existence in nature, every existence in the human world, every cultural work that we create is something that was given or is being given to us. But as everything is originally one, we are, in actuality, giving out everything. Moment after moment, we are creating something, and this is the joy of our life. This point to me is so amazing and profound and simple, and yet it's so elusive. This idea, this remembering that we really were given everything, that our bodies and minds and hands and eyes, these were given to us. And even to say that they were given doesn't quite do it justice.

[05:34]

But to live with that spirit or to understand that all of these things were given to us and that everything we do is giving, is creating. Every breath is every thought, every idea, every look of compassion or connection that we have is a gift. This paramita is called dana prajna paramita. Dana is the word for giving or generosity. Prajna is the word for wisdom. And paramita is sometimes translated as perfection, but also translated as this crossing over to the other shore.

[06:35]

But as Suzuki Roshi talks about that, this crossing over to the other shore isn't something in the future. It's with every breath, with every moment, with every step. I'll read two other short quotes of Suzuki Roshi's about this. He says, if you understand dana prajna paramita, you will understand how it is we create so many problems for ourselves. Of course, to live is to create problems. If we did not appear in this world, our parents would have no difficulty with us. And one other thing that he says, Suzuki Roshi, we should do, and this I thought was also quite wonderful, we should do something new. To do something new, of course, we must know our past. But we should not keep holding on to anything we have done.

[07:39]

We should only reflect on it. And again, I think, very simple, very profound concept of what does it mean to do something new? And that spirit of, because so often we're caught by our ideas and fears and wants and clinging, and you can see it in our sitting practice. Often it's same old tape, same old tape over and over again. It is one of the wonderful things about sitting seshins, is that we do by day three or day four just get so tired of the same old tape, of the story of who we say that we are, that every once in a while it makes room for something new, some new thought, some new way of taking care of our breath.

[08:43]

So I want to encourage all of you to practice, to really take on this practice of generosity and take on, to experiment with it, not only in our zazen practice, in our meditation practice, but that's one place to allow each breath to be new. Imagine each breath as being new. And in our lives, in our relationships and in our work, I was thinking, there was a time, it was a few weeks ago, I noticed I was surprised at how many things in my life, well, first of all, I noticed how many things in our world seem to be a complete mess, that from the war in Iraq and the tsunami,

[09:47]

it's hard to read the paper, it's hard to see just how many things seem to not be going well on a global level. And at the same time I was noticing in my own life how many things, there seemed to be a period when lots of things were going wrong, that I came out of a restaurant and saw that my tire looked a little flat and I took it to the gas station and discovered two nails, two very different nails almost side by side in my tire. And then I came home and discovered that my furnace wasn't working and I called the PG&E guy and he came and he discovered that the deck that you have to get onto to go to the furnace was rotten, that one of the boards was rotten. And he said that normally he might not, do I need to speak louder? That normally he wouldn't have fixed it, but he was kind enough to get onto this precarious deck.

[10:52]

And I got a call from the bank saying that one of my checks had bounced, that I had made some, and all these things seemed to be happening. Fortunately I picked up a, I was reading, I don't remember where I read this, I think it may have been in actually one of Annie Lamont's writings that she talked about seeing that an assistant to the Dalai Lama said that when a lot of things seem to be going wrong all at the same time, that in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition that this can be a sign that there's something really wonderful waiting to be born, that there's something waiting to emerge, and that all of these things, I thought this was a very generous explanation, how this fits into this topic, but that what I really liked about this particular Tibetan explanation

[12:00]

is that a lot of things going wrong are a way to distract you, a way to, so that you don't get in the way of what it is that wants to be born, that wants to emerge. And a few days after I read this and was thinking about this, I had lunch with a friend of mine. I've been having, one of the things I've been doing in my life which I've been highly recommending is the art of lunch. I may have recommended this before here, but again I've been having lots and lots of lunches with amazing people, and I've noticed that you can call up almost anyone and offer to take them out to lunch. And everybody says yes. And it's kind of this practice of generosity, of taking people to lunch. I was joking with my teenage daughter

[13:07]

that it's one of the books that's on my line-up to write, and the title for this book is Lunch. Now that the book Blink has done so well, it's proven the concept that one-word titles are very popular. But I took this person to lunch, and actually I was waiting for him in this restaurant in Berkeley, and I was waiting about 15 minutes, and he didn't appear. And I got up and called him on my cell phone, and he's like, oh, I'm so sorry, I'll be right there. And so he came and he sat down and apologised profusely, said he had screwed up, that somehow he had put it on the calendar in the wrong place. And this was a CEO of a pretty large successful company, a man in his 60s, and he said that lots of things seemed to be going wrong in his life,

[14:09]

that it's just like he's losing things, and he's just not used to that at all. And I explained this Tibetan Buddhist concept about things waiting to be born, that this was a sign, and he was very sceptical. He said, I don't believe in this new age kind of stuff, this is just this rational issue. And we went on and had a very nice lunch. And when we were finished, as we were getting up, as he was pushing his chair back, his umbrella dropped, and he bent down to pick up his umbrella, and he knocked over the glass of water that was on the table and spilled it on the woman sitting next to us. And as he was cleaning up the water on the woman's pants next to us, I knew that something very beautiful was waiting.

[15:12]

And I realized, too, that in part of... The other thing I want to talk about, the other side of generosity, and this is one of the really interesting things about the practice of generosity in the Buddhist tradition, is what's called giving the gift of fearlessness. And I think that's a very, very beautiful practice. And I was thinking about, again, coming back to my own process of preparing for these talks, I usually start feeling a lot of fear about a week before. And it's actually quite wonderful because it changes my consciousness. I start thinking about what it is I want to say, what it is I can give.

[16:25]

And is it possible to say something that actually would be helpful to people? And I notice that my body starts to change about a week before, and it gets worse and worse as the time comes before these talks. I won't even tell you how many times I went to the bathroom this morning. But then another part of my process is that I usually prepare a lot. In fact, I usually write out what I'm going to say as a way, it's a kind of protection from my own fear. If I have it all written out, then I just have to read it. But I've noticed it doesn't feel very good to do that. And it even reminded me of when I was in high school, I was captain of my high school wrestling team,

[17:28]

and this whole idea of fear and not being afraid and winning and losing were very, very important issues for me that I was exploring as a teenager. And I can remember being ahead in a wrestling match and just kind of clamping down and holding on in order to win. Because if I were just continuing to wrestle, there'd be that chance that maybe something would go wrong and I might lose. If I was ahead, I could just kind of clamp down and hold on and win. And I can remember walking off the mat at the end of a match winning and really feeling bad. And I decided that in some way the best way for me to prepare for these talks was to not prepare.

[18:30]

And so that's how I've prepared for this talk. So my apologies. But my teenage daughter, I was telling her about this, and she said, that's good, Dad. She gave me permission and said it's really a good thing to feel nervous. Yeah, so this giving the gift of fearlessness, one of the things that I've been... I've started once again taking improv classes, like there's not enough times in my life for me to feel terrified and completely dumb. But I needed to create one more place in my life. And improv classes are... I highly recommend them, very beautiful practice.

[19:36]

And one of the things that... I know I've talked a little bit about this, but I've discovered some new things. But some of the things that I've discovered about improv that are helpful in practice, and particularly, I think, in this practicing with generosity, is that in improv practice, first of all, you can't make mistakes. There's no such thing as a mistake. The rules are that you accept all offers. Again, a wonderful practice of generosity. So whatever it is that comes your way, in this case, this is kind of radical acceptance, someone might start talking to you on stage as though you're the father or the mother or an alien, and you accept it. So you just accept whatever it is that comes your way. And that the idea of improv is to not try and look good,

[20:45]

not to try and stand out or be clever or funny, but to actually help other people, to make it easy for other people to be whatever they need to do, whatever their role is. But the lesson that I've learned recently, which surprised me, was this idea of commitment. Once you go in a certain direction in improv, so once you're being a certain character, to just completely commit to being that character. And it's harder than you might think, because it's very easy to kind of step out of character or to judge it as, oh, this isn't going where I want it to go, but to commit. And this commitment is to fully be there and be asking, what's next? Just be curious about what's next

[21:47]

and to trust whatever it is, what's next. And again, this is so much like Zazen practice, like our meditation practice, that, again, it's a simple point, but it's very easy to sit down on the cushion and to not commit. And what would it be like to actually be so generous with yourself that you are committing, that you're really there? Or in your relationships, in the people that you're with at work, or whatever it is you're doing, to not be thinking about something else or what else is there, but to actually commit completely to what's right there? Yeah, there's this wonderful...

[22:47]

One of my favourite Zen koans, which also is really about this practice of giving the gift of fearlessness, is the... How do you step from the top of a 100-foot pole? And this is one of those classic Zen stories about commitment. It says, you who sit on the top of a 100-foot pole, although you have entered the way, it is not genuine. Take a step from the top of the pole and the entire universe is in your eye. And again, this is a Zen story about commitment and about generosity, about doing something new, this idea of stepping off from what's safe, what's predictable, and into a place that is a little bit scary.

[23:54]

And this practice of giving the gift of fearlessness means to be so present with people in a way that is new, is different, and is beyond usual habits. I was thinking of... My family and I started going on river rafting trips. I think our first trip was probably about 10 years ago. And my wife, Lee, I remember her suggesting that we go on a river rafting trip, and we had never been rafting before. And I did everything I could to come up with reasons why this was a bad idea. It just, you know... There was the rational idea of that it was expensive and we couldn't afford it. But the truth was I was terrified of the idea

[24:54]

of going on the river. And... My wife discovered, within those discussions, she discovered that she came home and said that there was a lump on her breast and that she needed to go see the doctor, and that we were going on this river rafting trip. That somehow this... Seeing how unpredictable our lives are and the shortness of our lives, that we really don't know. We really don't know what will happen next. I was reading... Well, I was reading this morning, I picked up the book Crooked Cucumber, which is the book of Suzuki Roshi's... It's Suzuki Roshi's biography by David Chadwick. And there's a beautiful story in there.

[25:55]

It's actually in the introduction to the book where David Chadwick says to Suzuki Roshi... This is at Tassajara. After a lecture, David raises his hand and says, I really love your lectures and I love being here and I know that what you're saying is important. But I think if I were to study for a thousand years, I would have no idea what you're talking about. Could you please tell me and could you boil it all down to just a couple of words what it is that Zen practice is about? And everyone started laughing because this was just such an outrageous question and David does tend to be outrageous. But David goes on to say that he was very surprised that Suzuki Roshi actually answered his question and his answer was that everything changes.

[26:56]

We've had some amazing experiences on our river rafting trips and wonderful bouts with fearlessness. A few years ago we rafted the Grand Canyon. This was kind of the ultimate rafting trip and again I remember being pretty terrified about the idea of these huge, reputed to have these huge waves and big rapids. Little did I know that on this trip the guides were all, the lead guide was a guy who was probably in his 50s but he was like a little kid and he was completely fearless and playful and whenever we got out of the boats he would say, who wants to go on an adventure? Who wants to go on a hike? And of course I was reluctant

[28:04]

but my kids were like, yeah, they were the first in line and I felt like, well, I need to go do this. So many times I can remember the guides, we came to this, it was probably a 30 or 40 foot ravine with a creek down on the bottom and the guide said, who wants to go down there? And I was like, not me. And my kids were both, yeah, we want to go down there and I look up and the guide throws a rope down and he's climbing and my kids are climbing and the next thing I knew, I'm climbing. I'm climbing down this, down into this ravine and over and over again, these hikes were, there was another hike in which we were walking along the side of a mountain and it was fairly steep and the trail we were on seemed like it kept getting narrower and narrower and narrower to, it got to a point

[29:09]

and I can remember it looked so narrow and the possible fall looked so steep that I couldn't believe we were actually going to walk on this and I turned to the lead guide who was, I kind of, I gave him this look of terror and he said, yeah, I forgot to tell you about this part but it was amazing the trust it took in my body that my body could actually do this and one of the things that really surprised me especially after going on a lot of these hikes and walking along these narrow ledges was how safe I felt when we got back in the boats that I couldn't wait to get back in the boats it was rudder, how could you get hurt in rudder

[30:13]

I wasn't afraid of the rapids at all I did though have the, actually it wasn't on that trip it was on, I think it was on a different trip it was the middle fork of the Salmon River that I did have the experience of I was kayaking, I was in one of these little yellow kayaks and I was pretending to be fearless and it was working quite well for a while until we came upon the largest rapid on this particular river and I was in one of these little kayaks wishing I was in a boat but it was too late and as we were approaching

[31:17]

the guide went through exactly where to go and how to do it and what to pay attention to and right before we got to the main part of the rapid I hit this little whirlpool and my boat went over and I looked to, was it possible to swim to the boat no, was it possible to swim to shore, no and I proceeded to swim through, float through this it was actually an amazing, amazing experience that I hope to never repeat but there was no choice, there was completely no choice but it was a completely new experience and there was nothing I could do but to give myself to being in the water, to being in the river and it was an amazing lesson. I was thinking of, I was reading an interview this week

[32:26]

of one of the most famous golfers in the world a man named Ben Hogan who played golf I think in the 50s or 60s and he was being interviewed and the person who interviewed him said how is it that under pressure where normally where people would be really afraid you seem to hit amazing golf shot after amazing golf shot and Ben Hogan's answer to this was it's just luck and then the person interviewing him said but it's been documented that you practice you spend more time practicing golf than any human being has ever done in the history of the sport and Ben Hogan's response was the more I practice, the luckier I get.

[33:27]

And I was thinking about this practice of generosity that, thank you. I'd like to recommend, as I said, I'd like to recommend it as a practice and to really notice during the week opportunities to be generous with yourself to have a warm, like imagine having a warm-hearted spirit with yourself particularly when things are hard when things are difficult and imagine being really present and there for whether it's your friend or your spouse or someone at work

[34:30]

but to actually practice generosity and it is, I mean the reason I think of this this Ben Hogan story is that it really is a discipline that it takes both, it takes kind of an openness and flexibility but it also takes a real discipline. It's one of the things that I've really been enjoying about the process of writing I've been writing now for many, many years and I did think a little bit about would it be a shameless self-promotion for me to tell you about my new book that's out and I thought I can get over that fear but I've been working on and writing this book for about 10 years which is now out

[35:31]

called ZBA, Zen of Business Administration and the title was a joke and it's a play on MBA, ZBA so you get your ZBA degree but what I love about the process of writing is the times when I'm surprised that there are ways that I think when I'm writing that I don't I access a different part of my brain or my body that I don't access in any other way and what's exciting to me about the process of writing is the few times that I'm surprised when things come up that I didn't know but the other side of that for me is that I've noticed I can't write without, I need the discipline of writing I need to either have a particular time

[36:34]

or what I've been experimenting with lately is I give myself a goal that says I'm going to write a 2000 word essay each week and I actually hold myself accountable at the end of the week to how do I do at that and sometimes I do it and sometimes I don't but again I'm suggesting this as a way partly as a way to practice with generosity is to have some discipline to it but actually notice and actually experiment with holding yourself accountable for practicing generosity at the end of the day write in your journal how did you do at this practice did you practice generosity or what were the opportunities that you might have missed I've noticed, it's interesting there's the process of writing a book and then there's the process of well the book is done and it's this thing in the world

[37:36]

and I remember after this book ZBA was completely done and I hadn't thought about it or looked at it for several months a transcript of the book came back from the publisher and I said oh look a book and I sat down and started reading through this book of mine and I was approaching it as new and I remember thinking this is good stuff I should be doing this and one of the practices that I have now is I completely care about this book and I've been doing everything I can to promote it because I actually feel like there are things in here that are useful that there's something here that I've worked to give and at the same time I'm practicing completely letting go

[38:37]

of expecting anything or having any result at all and again as I was thinking about this last night and kind of looking at how am I doing at both these practices and I thought I really suck at both these practices that I don't feel like I'm doing very good at either and again just came back to trying really trying to be generous with myself about being able to do both I wanted to it was funny someone yesterday told me that they read my book and it changed their life and I said yeah how was that and they said that there's a piece in the book about there's a chapter called run your life and your business like a Zen monastery kitchen and I talk about what it was like

[39:38]

spending years in the Tassajara kitchens and the attention to detail and that I mention in the book that in the Tassajara kitchen sponges are always kept on their side when they're not in use so that they can air dry and this person who told me that they read my book and it changed their life because now they keep their sponges on their side I wanted to finish with reading this quote from Suzuki Roshi and this is actually one of it's a beautiful beautiful quote and story and it's in a way it's one of one of the most intimate stories that I've seen Suzuki Roshi tell in writing and it's so subtle you can almost read over it

[40:39]

and so many things in his writings are like that but I glean from this that he's talking about a particular incident that happened between him and his wife in which his wife was calling him to breakfast and he was in another room and Oksan was saying it's time for breakfast and he was studying or doing something else and in a way he didn't want to respond there was some tightness there was some way that he didn't want to respond and this is what he says about that moment so the secret is just to say yes and jump off from here then there is no problem it means to be yourself in the present moment always yourself without sticking to an old self

[41:40]

you forget all about yourself and are refreshed you are a new self and before that self becomes an old self you say yes and you walk to the kitchen for breakfast so the point of each moment is to forget the point and extend your practice and I think that's just such a beautiful way in which Suzuki Roshi was revealing both something very intimate and personal about his own relationship and also how powerful and deep his practice of generosity is just saying yes thank you very much

[42:36]

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