Generally, in a sashin, perhaps not even lectures are given, but certainly we try to reduce the input, particularly from outside to minimal, and during a sashin generally it's best if you don't talk at all, and if you don't read at all, don't receive mail, etc. But, since I just went outside, I want to, maybe, I have no choice, but anyway, I'm

[01:05]

bringing you energy from outside, so I want to talk about that. When I first started sitting, the big outside activity, which was a competition for my time and energy, was the peace movement, and friends of mine were organizing SANE and such things, and I was always under some pressure, you should come because, you know, the Vietnam War, etc. And it was pretty difficult for me, for several reasons. One is, I mean, of course I was horrified by the war, and I felt that something could

[02:13]

be done about it, and I felt the people who were doing that were having a real impact, and I also felt it could go a step further or two, I felt if you really wanted to stop a troop train, you could, actually, and people weren't going about it to really be effective. So anyway, over the years, I participated, but I tried to participate not in a leadership role, and whenever possible, whenever there was a conflict, I chose Zen Center and practicing Zazen. And I would never, in those years, ever left a session or even my cushion for any reason. I think now that I was absolutely, as absolutely as you can be absolutely anyway, right, that

[03:31]

working with Zen Center was what I should have done. Then there's the whole range of outside pressures, in general, to do this or to be that kind of, another kind of person, and I'm not a kind of person who says no, I usually say some kind of yes, and so it's difficult to, in the end, have a no position, but that's what I ended up, and it's taken some years, but I've cut myself off thoroughly in the sense that, I don't mean that I don't have outside interests, but that the interests are pretty, they don't make demands on me. I would be just as, in fact, more pleased to be left alone in one room than to have

[04:39]

to go outside, okay. I was getting to that point in Japan, and one coming back here has raised a new set of problems, and in a sense, it's up the ante. In other words, it's clear to me that most of the outside activities that one could participate in, aid in, are not as valuable for society, if you think of it that way, as practicing Zen. But so they've upped the ante now, now that instead of the usual conferences that I'm asked to participate in, for one reason or another, which I can say no to, now they have international conferences, you see, so it's harder to turn down an international conference than a national one. So one thing is simple, is that Zen Center does

[05:47]

have to have relationships outside the building, if Zen Center is going to continue, and to find a way to continue our sashins, even. But even that's a difficult decision. One of the things I was, that's partly what I was talking about yesterday, is because someone is in the process of giving us an island, and so when I came back here from Japan, I didn't leave the building at all to see anybody, but that's become nearly impossible to do now, and so Thursday I flew to Seattle in the morning and came back Thursday evening. So I have to think about that, you know, it's rather, you know, but the point was, in order

[06:53]

to have this island given to us, I had to go there. The island's completely free, you know, there's no money, we don't have to expend any energy except take care of it, and it's 400 acres off the Vancouver coast, pretty much completely untouched. And the idea of the island is related to, I mean, one way we may use it is, when I talked about Louis Agassiz putting the fish down yesterday, and having the graduate student examine it. Well, it might be interesting for us to use the island in that way, for a student to go there and to see what the island actually is, you know. We don't want to interfere with it at all, just what birds live there, what plants grow there, what's in the tidal pools, et cetera, because to just see what it is without interfering

[07:58]

is how we practice as in actually, just to see what we are without interfering. And there is clearly no difference between outside and inside. So, if you cultivate the world, you know, you cultivate yourself, and we need also uncultivated areas, wild or primitive areas of our being just as they are, and the world needs such areas. You eliminate one, you eliminate the other. But so what do you do? You decide, we're going to be given the island, I have to go up there, so the plane flying up there puts all this fossil fuel waste out, and does it pollute 400 acres in order for us to get 400 acres? I don't know. Maybe I shouldn't fly up there to get it, right? And maybe I shouldn't take my energy out of Zen Center.

[09:02]

I'm talking about, you know, of course, your own decisions of why you practice Azen, or what are you doing here in the Sesshin, you should be out saving the world somewhere. So people will say that to you, of course, and you'll say it to yourself. So, anyway, this morning I went to a meeting which is planning a parallel conference to the United Nations conference in Stockholm in June on the world environment, and I had no intention of going except I kept getting invitations, finally six separate people called me to go, so, this morning, so finally I decided I would go, you know. And, this is, in some ways, a subtler problem than the peace movement, because the peace

[10:23]

movement is pretty clear that we know that the war was a bad thing, but the ecology situation is the reasoning, or logic, or spirit behind it is extremely close to Buddhism, and we are in a, rather what you'd have to call an end-of-the-world syndrome, which is interesting because Buddhism has developed and been strongest in the past when there was an end-of-the-world syndrome, people talking about the world's going to end, and there may be more reality to it at present. A report that was published recently by the Club of Rome, which you may

[11:32]

have seen, written up in Time Magazine and such things, shows that whatever you do to solve the problem, the growth, the problem of population, or food shortages, or whatever, you have the population, or you increase production, or whatever you do, all the growth curves, no matter what solution you program into it, all the growth curves end at 2020, the year 2020. In other words, our lifetime, certainly my daughter's lifetime, from then on is downhill very rapidly. So, there isn't actually much, if you get into the end-of-the-world syndrome, thinking, there isn't much time, and now the big thing is clean power, and so we don't have Con Edison or PG&E having these different kinds of atomic energy plants, and they have

[12:39]

super-atomic energy plants in the way, which do even more damage, but the newest thing is the perfect power source is the solar energy. But the problem there is, and that's what they're going to sell, you see, the UN conference is partly, the aim of it is to sell solar power to the world as the clean power, and it is. It also has a few devastating side effects. One is, it's an unbelievable weapon, because you see, you can concentrate the solar power onto a mirror on a satellite and frizzle any part of the world you want. It's like, as long as you don't miss, you know, it's okay. It's ridiculous. And it's like, as soon as they discovered dolphins were smart, probably smarter than us, they immediately started

[13:41]

training them to carry torpedoes, you know, it's just crazy. And we deserve to die, to be wiped out, actually. Well, the other side of it is, imagine what a growth economy, consumptive, world-consuming country like ours, with all our resources, will do if they have unlimited power. I mean, the level of pollution is unbelievable, because the products they'll produce with the unlimited power. So, right now, we're in the process of enslaving, if you'll excuse the word, the rest of the world, because we're forcing their agriculture and huge populations to be dependent on our technology, because we supply the fertilizers and agricultural technology, which allows them to produce the huge crops necessary

[14:42]

for their huge populations. And so, if they don't do what we want, or our technology fails, then they're kaput. Of course, that has a lot to do with why America was settled, you know. On an acre of land, you can support a larger number of people on potatoes than you can on wheat. And so, in Europe, when the potato came in from South America, they planted potato in Ireland and Germany and such places, and the population immediately increased to the level at which the potato would support. And then, there was the potato bug or famine or whatever happened, and some blight hit the potato. So, all the excess population that didn't die, because even if you planted wheat as fast as possible, the wheat couldn't earn enough acres in wheat to support the new population, they came to America, and that's us, you know. Or a lot of us, you know. So anyway, I went and I find

[15:55]

people who want to change the world's thinking, who can't stop smoking. Of course, it may be that if you start on the world's pollution first, then you can start on your own later, but I don't know. Anyway, the problem is one of, anyway, the Club of Rome study, what they came out with is that if there's zero population growth and zero capital investment, in other words, there's no new anything, no progress, no growth, equilibrium now, right away, there's

[17:00]

a chance, you know, that we can stabilize things. And the only model I know which has possibility of many people understanding it, in other words, there isn't a tribal model limited to a small number of people or a particular country, is Buddhism. The only model I know which is a way of existing, which is not based on growth or progress. And Suzuki Roshi talked about it all the time. In fact, I edited a lecture of his a few weeks ago, in which the whole lecture was about progress and our idea of progress and development and anathema to the spiritual life, to Buddhism. So, though I attended the meeting, I actually

[18:18]

couldn't have if you hadn't been here in Sesshin. The fact that this Sesshin was going on made it at least conceivable for me to go to the meeting. I would have felt really hopeless about it if there wasn't what we are doing here existing. Everything, the whole idea of interdependent and actually beyond interdependent, which is something I couldn't suggest at the meeting, it was a little much, but whole idea of interdependency. For example, Herman Kahn wants now to dam the Amazon River, make a big lake,

[19:26]

and that'll stop all the flow of nutrients that come out of the Amazon basin into the ocean. And that's actually where we get our air, is from marine life, not from terrestrial plants. So if our air and marine life is dependent on our river systems, and one-third of our river systems are already ruined, and now they're going to ruin the biggest one of all perhaps, the Amazon, because the people in Brazil want to change it into the Ruhr Valley or something. But from the Buddhist point of view, everything that exists parallel and simultaneous to us is also us. So it's absolutely essential that the Amazon Valley exists just as it is, and that you exist just as you are, and that the Meher Baba group over there exists just as it is.

[20:30]

So from a Buddhist point of view, the world is not one, it's one and two, two and one. And we go a step further and say, not one, not two. So, there's an interesting koan, which is birds, I can't remember the whole thing, but anyway, the punchline is, birds swim and fish fly. I didn't say that at the meeting to the ecologists. They want everything to be in place, you know, too. But birds and fish should have their independent nature. Anyway, I think maybe the meeting was worth going to if it hadn't been Sashin time.

[22:09]

Since it was Sashin time, I'm not sure, maybe. Excuse me for leaving. Do you have any questions? Yes, from a Buddhist point of view, worlds end in the same way that people die. Is it not our way to participate in that? In a sense, support that rather than oppose it? Worlds end as men die? Yeah. Well, the Buddhist idea is to let them end by themselves. What we're doing is a kind of murder.

[23:13]

And if we're going to end, fine. But if we're going to murder all the other species, that's something else. But, you know, if we do that too, cosmically, it's of no importance. But, you know, we have to do something, you know, with our time. Isn't that our code? Is that not our code? Of course, yeah. I mean, you all have the problem, what I'm talking about. Why do you sit, you know? When you get more pressure on you to do things, as you become more able to do things, you have more pressure to do things. And there are very good reasons for doing things. But why then keep coming back to sit in a session or be here? I would say that if you...

[24:19]

The better you understand the world as it is, the better you understand the necessity of a practice like this. I find it pretty strange sometimes to think, here I am in this plane in Seattle, or in Seattle. Of course, in some ways it's rather unfavorable ways to meet people and see people there. Everyone's caught, you know, by being there. Being in the city, etc. Anyway, I wonder sometimes, when you do that, it looks rather interesting perhaps, why I'd rather be here bowing. You know, I'd really rather be here bowing. And I don't like bowing so much, I used to rather dislike it, actually.

[25:31]

Anyway. Anyway. But I'm convinced it's the most responsible, active thing I can do, aside from the most satisfying. Yeah? You spoke of the need for wilderness. A few weeks ago, you were telling us about how in Japan, there's hardly any wilderness left. Everything is civilized, so to speak, in some form or other. What would be the disadvantages to Japanese culture, which was a black wilderness? Hmm. I don't know, I don't think I can answer that simply, you know, so let me think about it.

[26:49]

You know, I thought a great deal about it, but how to respond to what you say, I don't know exactly. One problem is you get a system which works very well in its own terms only. Buddhism in Japan works very well in its own terms. But as long as everything behaves itself, everything's okay in Japan. Would you mind giving us three things that you mentioned yesterday, talking about how to...

[28:17]

Three patiences? One is the patience to endure hardships. Another is, as I said, I can't remember the wording, but I think the gist of it is the patience to endure the bad trips people lay on you. And the third is the patience to endure a practice which takes away everything you believe in. There may be something left afterwards. You said there may be something left afterwards. Left afterwards? You said there may be something left after everything is taken away. Oh, did I? Did I? Well, maybe.

[29:21]

If we say it's something, then it's not there, of course. If we say it's not there, then you won't understand at all. So, part of what I was talking about yesterday was that if you need, if you do go outside and participate in the city, as we all do actually, is your practice works. You're able to extend your practice into your everyday life when you have that sense of steadfastness. Otherwise you get, it doesn't, you can't. Yeah? I can't hear you. When you're practicing, thoughts come before you about your participation in the economy.

[30:26]

Do you just watch them or engage in them? Me or you or everybody? Anybody? You specifically. Oh. Well, of course, you know, you just, the meeting itself, you know, it's just, if you, once, if you learn, if you have, if you, our language is really difficult because there's no way to express Buddhism in English really. It's very difficult to talk about Buddhism in English because the logic of our language

[31:30]

is anti-Buddhist, is non-Buddhist. So to talk about, it has built into it implications which are not Buddhist, so it's very difficult to say if we do or if we have this or something. Anyway, you view whatever activity you do that way, whatever happens, thoughts about anything, you know, I don't know, of course. There's some, you can be attached to the pleasure of having few thoughts, which is one of the pleasures of a sesshin, is that you only have one thing to do and it's rather satisfying to go in the city, you know, by city I mean, you know, some active form where you're supposed to participate and there's a lot of ideas and things. On the other hand, it's like, as I've used the metaphor or image before of the ocean with a lot of boats on it.

[32:30]

If your center is the calm, deeper part of the ocean, then the number of boats on it is not very important. If you're in a swimming pool, it may make a difference, you know. But certainly after you do something like that, your mind is somewhat more active than it is in a sesshin. And the point of a sesshin is to reduce that activity, to have a period of time in which that activity is reduced, so we don't put input, you know, you don't, you try not to do things which increase the activity, even though the activity is not important, it's just like 25 boats instead of one boat on the ocean, the ocean doesn't care. But still, in a sesshin, the point is to reduce the activity, so you don't read things, you don't have conversations with people, unless necessary, you know, to do something like work in the kitchen or something. Thank you very much. Neiowa.

[33:36]

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