Well, in our class Thursday night, we began to study Zen Master Dogen's Gakudo Yojinshu, which translates as Points to Watch in Buddhist Training. And we covered section one, and section two is rather short. So I thought that I would talk about that today, the short section. A long talk about a short section. In this section, Master Dogen says, once you see or hear the true teaching, you should practice it without fail. One phrase offered by a loyal servant can have the power to alter the course of the nation.

[01:02]

One word given by a Buddha ancestor cannot fail to turn people's minds. The unwise ruler does not adopt the servant's advice. One who does not step forward cannot accept the Buddha's teaching. If you are unbending, you cannot stop floating along in birth and death. If appropriate advice is not heeded, governing with virtue cannot be realized. So this is a very appropriate passage for our time. Yesterday afternoon, we had afternoon tea in the Zendo, and I asked people what they wanted to talk about. I used that for questions, and it seemed, I said, well, we can talk about Zazen, but people wanted to talk about the present situation in the world, which made me feel very optimistic, because sometimes people don't want to talk about

[02:21]

the present situation in the world, or they don't want to talk about it in the Zen Do, or they don't want to hear my opinion. But things that are in front of our face are rather unavoidable. It seems that this passage, if we discuss this passage without looking at the present situation of the world, it's like having an elephant in the middle of the room and not seeing it. So Dogen says, once you see or hear the true teaching, you should practice it without fail.

[03:26]

This is Dogen's wish, and of course, we can't argue with that. Once we hear the true teaching, but it's not so easy always to practice without fail. As a matter of fact, not so many people can actually practice the true teaching. Not everyone is ready to practice the true teaching, but at the same time we always encourage everyone to practice the true teaching. And, you know, maybe this is not the true teaching. Not everyone believes it's the true teaching, or maybe a lot of people have other things to do. Every Saturday morning, we have Zazen instruction. And a number of people come, and they have zazen instruction, and then they leave.

[04:28]

And once in a while, someone comes back, or someone stays and continue. So it's like we offer the teaching continuously to many, many people, but not everyone is ready to take hold of it. But that's okay, you know. Because everyone is practicing in some way, on some level, either knowingly or unknowingly. Because practice is not Buddhism. Practice is just understanding your life thoroughly as it is. That's what we call the Dharma. Seeing the reality of your life as it is and practicing in accord with Dharma means the law of the way things are. So to practice in accord with the law of the way things are is what we offer to people.

[05:35]

So basically, the law is whatever, it's very simple. What you sow is what you reap. It's called the law of karma. And in Christianity, it's called what you sow is what you reap. And then there are rules to sowing. There are rules to how things are planted and how they grow and what the effect of the things that we plant have on us when we grow them. So how to be careful about what you plant, because it will grow up to haunt you, or it will grow up to feed you, or it will grow up to haunt others, or it will grow up to feed others.

[06:41]

So this is about all there is to it. And the rest is commentary. But not everyone is ready to hear that. So a worldly teacher says, through study, I'm sorry, I'm in the wrong place. One phrase offered by a loyal retainer or loyal servant can have the power to alter the course of the nation. This is true. In China, there was an emperor who had a loyal retainer, and because he listened to the loyal retainer, the nation prospered. So this is very important. One who is in a powerful position must listen to people around that person, he or she. A good leader should always listen to the people around, not just the people in a high position, but to the people in a low position, people on the ground, so to speak.

[08:04]

And then, when all sides are heard, to make a decision. based on that understanding of benefiting the most people, what benefits the most people. And taking everyone's position or opinion or idea into consideration, whether or not one agrees with those positions. So, this is called wise ruling. So he says, one word given by a Buddha ancestor cannot fail to turn people's minds. The unwise ruler does not accept the servant's advice. But what he means by the servant here is Buddha. Does not accept the Buddha's advice. Does not accept the advice of

[09:10]

someone who has great understanding. One who does not step forward cannot accept the Buddhist teaching. In other words, in order to accept the Buddhist teaching, you have to actually step forward. You have to offer yourself in some way. to make that work. The Buddha can open your mouth and pour the Dharma in, but it doesn't work. You have to come up to the table and take your knife and fork and eat the food yourself. If you are unbending, or if you're stiff-necked, or if you're stubborn, you cannot stop floating along in birth and death.

[10:18]

If appropriate advice is not heeded, a governing with virtue cannot be realized. You know, when the leader, when George Bush became president, someone asked him, well, who do you take advice from? He says, I take advice from Jesus Christ. It's a good idea, but This is very harmful to Christianity. I would think that we're all suffering from not taking advice from Jesus, really.

[11:21]

It's called hypocrisy. We're all a little bit hypocritical. I am hypocritical sometimes, you know, I admit that. I just sometimes do things that I don't think is right and so forth. But when we base our whole life on hypocrisy, that's dangerous when you're in a very high position and you don't take people's advice. And especially you don't take advice from the person or whatever that you say that you're taking advice from. I gave a talk about this about two years ago, Zen Center, in which I said, Jesus is looking more like Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld all the time. You know, the latest thing we have now is torture in the prison.

[12:26]

What a surprise. Are you surprised? Is that a surprise? What happens at the bottom is a reflection of what happens at the top. When the nation is ruled by wise rulers, then the people at the bottom are influenced by that. So when a whole ethnic group of people is dehumanized, then there's no reason not to treat them as subhuman. This is not the teaching of Jesus that I heard about. The teaching of Jesus that I heard about was, love thy neighbor, and so forth, and treat thy neighbor as thyself, including animals.

[13:44]

Even if whole cultures are subhumanized, still, maybe they're animals. So we should treat animals kindly. I'm only kidding. I'm just being facetious. But what can we possibly expect? Where is the sincerity in all this? So it's necessary to look deeper and deeper into the quagmire of what is really happening. The whole world wanted to give advice to us, and we didn't take it.

[14:49]

What do you guys know? You're the old world. Torture has various meanings and has various venues. But basically what we think of torture is when one person is helpless and another person is dominant. And the dominant person takes pleasure in tormenting the helpless one. So the Abu Ghraib prison is just a focal point.

[15:58]

It's just a little drama, a psychodrama of what's in a nutshell of our policy in the world. to dominate and torture. We don't think of torture, but that's what we actually are doing. We're humiliating. Humiliation is another aspect of torture. We are humiliating and continue to humiliate whole cultures. and then accusing them of revolting or accusing them of insurgency. I don't know how we can think otherwise.

[17:07]

So, you know, we have no reasons for doing this except for the sake of dominance. Greed and dominance. The teaching of Jesus is, what is it profit, what does it profit a person to gain the whole world and lose their humanity? If I was professed as a Christian, I would feel totally shamed by all this. I'm shamed by it anyway, because I can't say that I'm not Christian. So what bothers me is I don't see the Christian world rising up and criticizing this.

[18:17]

It's like people have just lost their rudder. They've lost their direction, totally. It's like selling out to greed. I mean, our nation has sold its soul to greed. So there's no way to object. There is a small contingent of people who object, you know, and more people are beginning to question. But it's, how it's possible to still believe in what's going on is incredible. To have faith in what's going on, it's hard to imagine. But, you know, we squelch education.

[19:30]

I really believe that the administration It doesn't want people to be educated. That's why, although we tote more money for education, it's actually less. And the schools are being closed down. The teachers are being laid off. Because educated people can think about these things. But the less educated we are, the less access there is to information, true information. The fewer people think that it's worthwhile to vote or understand what they're voting for or why. The one thing that we have in this country is the vote. So, you know, everything that is happening on this level

[21:04]

has been reported. All of the things that we are surprised at have appeared one day or another in the newspaper. If you read the newspaper every day, you will know what's really happening. But people say, gee, I don't know what's happening. I didn't know that. Senators say, gee, I didn't know that was happening. How come they didn't know it was happening and I knew it was happening? I'm not even in Washington. Of course, if you're in Washington, you know less than if you're in California. Too close to the situation. And I thought that there were going to be weapons of mass destruction, blah, blah. We knew there were no weapons of mass destruction. We knew that because it was in the newspapers.

[22:08]

Before the war, the CIA, the FBI said there are no weapons of mass destruction. They said that. And it was reported in the newspaper. And now there's all this question. Gee, you know, the FBI and the CIA, they didn't tell us, blah, blah, blah. It was common knowledge. Everything has been common knowledge, the whole thing. Every single bit has been common knowledge. And then people say, well, geez, we didn't know about that. I wouldn't have voted for blah, blah, blah if I had known. So then Buddha says, don't get angry. Don't give in to anger. So this is our great koan. If you really know what's happening. I'm really not angry at George Bush because he's too dumb to be angry at.

[23:21]

I just feel more pity that he's being used in this way So the government is being sold out to private interests. That's the basis. There's no more government. We talk about our government, our elected government. That's over. It's almost over. Because the corporations control the government. That's what it is. And there's this noose that's tightening on the country. And we don't know it until it starts to choke us. And you find that, you know, we used to say when I was a kid, I can say what I want, it's a free country. We used to say that, probably the kids still do say that. But it's getting less and less free.

[24:27]

Because people say, well, America's imperial. It is more and more imperial. But it's inevitable because the desire for power is always there. When there's a weak spot, the powerful go in and grab it. And unless that's countered in some way, it takes over, and it's taking over. So we can be angry, but at the same time, you know, it's inevitable, kind of inevitable. But even though it's inevitable, if you have some concern, you have to do something about it to counter it.

[25:39]

So how do we do something to counter it if that's what you want to do? I don't know if you would, why you wouldn't want to, but, well, because it's easier not to. It's easy to just go along with things. The easy thing is just go along with things. And the hard thing is to actually make a stand somewhere. Because it's like a steamroller. It's like suddenly you're caught in a place where you think that you have places to escape to, and then you find that they're not there. So anyway, I think that we should follow the advice of Buddha and not be hypocritical.

[26:51]

And we should also follow the advice of Jesus. which is anger will not be subdued by anger. Anger can only be subdued by love. And retaliating in the same way just creates more confusion. So for Buddhists, skillful means, upaya, is what one has to develop. So that you can see a situation, no matter how difficult it is, with equanimity and balance. And when anger arises, to use the anger.

[28:01]

to diffuse it into action, to do something, because it's just energy. So when the energy comes up, it can be transformed into useful energy, into useful pathways. To say, there's no anger, or I'm not angry, I'm blah, there's denial. Buddha can get angry. Buddha knows how to use anger, how to transform that energy into doing something useful with it. So here we have our practice period. And we're putting energy into doing our practice, Zendo practice.

[29:06]

But what do we do about stuff that, when the world is on fire, how do we put it out? How do we help put out the world that's on fire? Dogen says, and Buddha says, put out the fire on your own head. But how do we put out the fire that's all around us as well? I think they go together. Putting out the fire in our own head helps us to put out the fire in the world. Because you can only do what you can do according to who you are and how you are. So, you know, we can vote. We can influence people to vote.

[30:08]

We don't have to tell them who to vote for. But people should be educated. We can help people to be educated and help them to be active. and to counter the lies. Anyway, you might have a comment. There are two things I'd say In Buddhism, or at least in Taoism, and I think in Buddhism as well, there's the notion of trying to have the maximum effect, kind of for the minimum effort, and wait until events are at a point when a maximum effect can be had.

[31:24]

And I really do think that we are at a tipping point, if we're not on the other side of it to some extent already. And that means that actions that people take now can have a maximum effect, I think, in pushing the country away from the direction that Bush is taking it. And although what you said is true about the drive to have the corporate national security state and all of that, I think at the same time, I've never seen the opposite side as energized Maybe since Reagan or, I don't know, it's been a long time since the more progressive side has been so energized. And we've never had the kind of tools that we have now with the internet, so that it becomes much, much harder to fool the people because information doesn't get lost.

[32:27]

Information is kept and information is disseminated. And it's also become so easy to write to legislators or to sign petitions, online petitions and things like that. It's so much easier than it used to be sitting down at the typewriter. And so it's easier to take action now. Groups like MoveOn, all of these organizations make it so easy, it's almost like there's no excuse not to take action, and the amount of money that's being raised on the right is staggering. But I've never seen money being raised on the left like it's being raised. And so, it's really not the time to despair, it's the time of maximum opportunity, I think. And so, if we do believe in the precepts that we recite and so on,

[33:29]

Time for optimism. Thank you. Claire? This is a personal statement, and I don't know if this is an extension of what you're saying or not. And that is that if there are people in the room that believe Bush is doing the right thing or believe that the administration has more good than bad on their side, I would like to talk together, and I would like to hear what these people have to say so we don't build fences that are open to each other's views. Yeah, good point. Yeah. I agree with you that that prison thing is, you know, enrages the Christian people, right?

[36:03]

But what about up to that point is what I'm talking about. People are not aware of what's going on because they're not paying attention. Right, but I appreciate what you're saying. That's good, yeah. Somebody way in the back there. Yeah. You have to speak up. We tried to exterminate the Indians. We brought slaves here against their will. So we have karma going back for hundreds of years, and it won't be easy to overcome it.

[37:11]

Yeah, it's true. There's a very famous study of people, I think it was at Stanford, who were students, and they were asked to be guards and prisoners. the guards and the prisoners were very humiliated and it was just an experiment. So I want to try and remember that I'm capable, I choose not to do these things, but I'm capable of it so that I can see a way to understand that these people are human and just misguided. And if anybody's interested in talking to people in Switzerland And the AFL-CIO is going to be encouraging people to go there. Yeah, that's right. There were some other people who had their hands up.

[38:12]

of that conditioning? Well, the fact that you know this is hypocrisy. When you're hypocritical, you know this is hypocrisy. Or someone tells you and then you pay attention. Oh, I'm being hypocritical because someone told me that. But if people keep telling you this and you just ignore it or you think you're righteous or whatever, then you have a problem. you create a big problem. So we all do things that are, you know, maybe small things that are against our principles, but when it's pointed out to us and we recognize it, we can't feel ashamed of ourself, or we can do some repentance or something like that, or just let go of it. Don't do it again. As you said, it's easy for us just to go along with our own hypocrisy, and then at what point do people say, let's go along with it,

[39:50]

Don't blame it on me. we just don't want to. Well, when it affects a lot of people, that's one thing. When it's simply our own stuff, who cares? You know, except you or whoever it is that's being affected by it, right? But when it affects everybody, when your hypocrisy affects everybody and damages people and kills people, then it's a problem. Alan. Well, my understanding from what I've been reading is that actually the churches are quite clear.

[41:07]

The what is clear? The churches, Christianity, as a grouping of institutions, is very clear in their opposition to, and have been, for a while, and takes some of the most principled stance against it. That's true. What I appreciate here is, okay, so you're speaking, you're in the pulpit now, and you're speaking from that position. A lot of individual priests, even though their organizations may support it, it's a very risky thing for them to do. The same thing for rabbis that I know who are appalled by what's going on in Israel, because to speak from that position means pointing out the contradictions And the terms of that war is, do I like my comfortable life, which is based on all the things that are being brought to us by corporations, by political privilege, and military power, or am I willing to live a kind of renunciate's life?

[42:38]

And that war exists within each of us, and it exists within ministers and priests who are afraid to speak out because it will make their position more difficult. But the institutions themselves, the religious institutions, are really clear. Yeah, I think that's true. But it's not a big voice of opposition, is what I'm saying, although those things are true. It doesn't get heard much. But what you reminded me of was, by putting something aside, by renouncing something, I think about the NRA, the national people who have guns, and they say, well, guns don't kill people, people kill people, you know, except that people kill people with guns. but unwilling to renounce firearms of any kind in order to save people's lives.

[43:55]

If everybody put down their guns, just think of what a statement that would be to the nation. the greatest quantity to the rest of the world. So it's exactly what you said, what happens at the top, by way of policy, how could you expect it to be at the ordinary person's level? Right, so you know, one of the biggest reasons for invasion is to use armaments. And then we keep supplying money to make more armaments, and a lot of people are getting rich on armaments. I mean, that's been going on forever. That's always one of the biggest causes for war is the people who make armaments make this happen. Let me preface this by saying I think it's important for us to take action.

[44:58]

But I also want to get back to Dogen. Ah, yes. being real invested in the outcome. And I think that that's our task as we bring this into the Zenda and maybe part of what we can contribute.

[46:00]

How do we do that? And I think that's part of what Dawson practices about. I get worried. When you take action, you're trying to do good. And that's a problem. I mean, I think Hitler was trying to do good for the Germans. I think at least some of the people involved in promoting the war were sincerely trying to do good. Sincerely. But trying to do good often come and you don't get what you sow. On the other hand, if you don't sow,

[47:03]

So what we want is for the boat to right itself. So if the boat's tipping over this way, then you go over to the other side so that it rights itself. And then when it starts tipping that way, you go over. So the pendulum is always swinging. That's the nature of things, that the pendulum is always swinging. So it's swinging all the way to the right. Now it's going to swing back to the left. And it doesn't stop swinging. So should we practice our satsang? Sway to the right. That's exactly right. Thank you. So ends our talk.

[48:24]

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