Good morning. Well, I see it's almost 10.30, and that means my lecture is about half over already. How is it so far? Good. Right, maybe I should stop. You must have had a lot of repentance going on in the last session. Well, we're about halfway through our practice period, and actually we have mid-practice period dinner and self-entertainment this evening. And I thought I would, I've been thinking about what my practice is during this practice period and during this general time of my life of late. And I thought I would share that with you by way of some encouragement.

[01:02]

For those who are taking notes, the title to this talk is Getting to Yes. So this is not the Getting to Yes Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In. It's actually With Giving In. That's the title. I borrowed the title from a book by Roger Fisher and William Ury of the Harvard Negotiation Project, which is a perennial bestseller in business management. But we're not managing anything here except our wily selves. And that's kind of what I wanted to talk about. How I do that, how I think about it, and how I see that in the context of our practice.

[02:10]

I have a very, I have a slippery mind that's kind of always looking in the cracks and shadows of things. And like most beings that I've met, I am always seeking comfort and ease and safety. And that's not so unusual. The Buddha talks about it in the Dhammapada. All beings seek these things. And we have different ways of thinking we're going to get it, sometimes by cutting corners, sometimes by sort of staking out territories of the self.

[03:16]

And I find I can run, I can almost always, I can use Suzuki Roshi's words, not always so. You can use that in an affirmative way to point to the impermanence of things. Or you can use it as a way of slipping around because, well, it's not always so. I was thinking about a couple of quotations. The immortal words of Charles Edward Anderson Berry, sometimes I will, then again I think I won't. That's Chuck Berry. And Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote, he said, there is something of a civil war

[04:22]

going on within all of our lives. There's a recalcitrant south of our soul, revolting against the north of our soul. And there is continual struggle within the very structure of every individual life. There's something within each of us that causes us to cry out with Goethe, there's enough stuff in me to make both a gentleman and a rogue. So you may identify with this, whether you were a gentleman or a gentlewoman. I certainly do. So lately, what I've been trying to do is to maintain a practice of saying, yes. I sort of focused on this as kind of the edge

[05:25]

and particularity of this practice period for myself. So if I see something that seems like it has to be done, if someone needs me in some way or other, my intention is to say yes. Yes may not always be my first thought, to be honest with you. But I've at least tried to set it up so that in the context and practice, it's going to be my second thought. It's going to be what I come down to. I think we have a wonderful, I've had a wonderful example, and we all do, in something that Sogyal Roshan has said and what he does, when you knock on his door,

[06:30]

and I mean literally knock on it. Actually, when you knock on his door, he can usually tell who you are from your knock, at least my knock. He will say, hi, yes. I think this is a matter of practice for him. I've heard him explain that when that knock comes, he will allow himself to be interrupted. So he will turn his attention to the person who is coming to the door. And that means turning in a way, so that's saying yes to that person. And of course, yes also has the invariable implication of no.

[07:34]

So in that moment, he also has to say no to the particular activity that was right in front of him. Here's the next moment with a person in front of him. And that's a really good example. We can get back, I want to come back to this yes and no. But I've learned a lot from this practice, and one of the things I've learned is, since I know that's the way he functions, I've learned to consider, stop for a moment and consider, do I need to interrupt him or do I need to interrupt another person? And make that process of discernment before I knock on the door.

[08:37]

So thinking about where this vow of practice comes from in an immediate sense, it's things that I've noticed about myself, where a kind of laziness or wish to slip around something may arise. It's from things that are pointed out to me by Lori or by others who are close to me, what they observe. And all of that sort of points to this practice of saying yes and to see where does it lead me. I also was really thinking about this, so we got back last weekend,

[09:43]

and we went to our daughter Sylvie's college graduation back east. And there were a few talks at these various events, the graduation and other ceremony, and mostly they were pretty boring. And kind of, you know, hand inspiration to an extent, and people were trying. But there was one person who was really inspiring. There was a young man named Kennedy Odede, who was speaking for her class. And he grew up incredibly poor in Kibera, which is possibly the largest slum in Africa, in Nairobi, Kenya.

[10:44]

And when he saw things as a young man, he had a certain vision for himself and for his community, although he had no means to realize it. But whatever means came to hand, if it was an opportunity to go to a school, which his mother could hardly afford, you know, he went barefoot to that school. He saw an opportunity to start something about eight, nine years ago in Kibera, and he started a sports program with just a soccer ball. And that's expanded into a large organization called Shining Hope for Communities,

[11:46]

which has a girls' school, clinic, sanitation projects, sports, theater. And, you know, he did this starting when he was, like, 18. And he met somebody who really appreciated what he was doing, and he ended up with a scholarship to a college in the United States. And this was not somebody from the privileged classes in Africa, but it was somebody who said yes to the opportunities that came in front of him, and yes to the realities of his life. So yes also means to continue to work for his community. I think that Lori mentioned, she spoke to, she quoted this passage from Ketagiri Roshi, one of our teachers,

[12:49]

in his most recent book, Each Moment is the Universe, which is about Doge's fascicle, being time. And I like this a lot. Ketagiri Roshi says, There are two ways of manifesting your life every day. There's an ordinary life and a bodhisattva life. The ordinary life, type of life, is to live in past karma as a cause, and delusions as a conditioned element. Past karma means that your life extends from the past into the future. I would say that delusions as a conditioned element means that we don't see things clearly.

[13:50]

We see things through the lens of our self-interest, of our self-delusion, our self-centeredness, and in doing so and believing that that is actually the truth or an accurate way to be seeing things, then we continue this karma from the past into the future. Then he says, but for bodhisattvas, there is another type of living. To live the bodhisattva life is to live in vow as a cause, and the paramitas as a conditioned element. Conditioned element, I might change it to conditioning element, because you are looking at the world through the paramitas.

[14:56]

The paramitas are also translated as perfections, the bodhisattva perfections. Giving, morality, patience, effort, meditation, and wisdom. These are the practices, the lenses, if you will, through which bodhisattvas see the world and through which we aspire to see the world. So, we live in vow as a cause. We just chanted the precepts in our monthly bodhisattva ceremony, and we recite the precepts, we are reciting our vows to live in accordance with the ethical principles that were realized

[16:02]

by all of the ancient and present-day Buddhas and bodhisattvas. And at the end of this talk, we'll chant the four bodhisattva vows. The vow to save all sentient beings, or to awaken all sentient beings, to eliminate delusions, to explore every dharma, and to live an enlightened, awakened life. So, living by vow, to me, means saying yes. Again and again, even in very difficult circumstances, even when there's a part of us that wants to shout, no. I think that the practice that we're cultivating, the practice of zazen,

[17:09]

is the actual unfolding of vow, as saying yes. We say yes each time we breathe in, we say yes each time we exhale. We say yes to whatever thought or feeling arises, whether it's pleasant or unpleasant or neutral. And we say yes to the waning or the passing of that thought or feeling. Sometimes this is really difficult. Sometimes it's hard to say yes to something that is really challenging or painful. Sometimes it's hard to say yes as you watch the train leaving the station.

[18:09]

I will say, you know, it was very hard last weekend, after this whole joyous time together with our daughter Sylvie, to have the whole family there, Laurie and Alex and Sylvie and myself, to say yes to actually waving goodbye, closing the car door and driving off. Not easy. There was nothing wrong. But we had to say yes to that, yes to our going back into our lives, the lives that we really appreciate and love here, and yes to her moving into her new life.

[19:12]

I was thinking of a line, you know, we've been studying Genjo Koan as the kind of touchstone for this practice period, and Sojin's class has been on that. It seems to me that these two lines from Genjo Koan illustrate to some degree what I'm trying to get at. Dogen writes, although there are many features in the dusty world and the world beyond conditions, you see and understand only what your eye of practice can reach. This has been a really important teaching for me over the years.

[20:22]

So it's yes to having one's eyes open, and yes to practicing with what one meets in that moment. So it's yes to the person who's knocking on the door, who wants to be met. That means having one's eye of practice open, and if I don't have that open, if I keep the door closed, if I protect my privacy or my time, if I don't wish to be interrupted, I'm not going to see and understand what the world is bringing, is setting before me.

[21:29]

This is true in our meditation, this is true in our lives. If you don't have your... you can only see, I love this line, you can see and understand only what your eye of practice can reach. Which means taking risks, it means risking failure. But it's that very risk that is the essence of eye opening. To say yes to something whether you know you can do it or you're not sure. So this is the heart of the practice that I've been trying to do.

[22:32]

This is an essential part of Zen training. So here we're very inclined to say, to ask what? To say, yes, but... And that's not inappropriate, that's built into our culture. But what happens when you just say yes? And what happens when you take that on? Sometimes younger people come here, with no disrespect to them,

[23:36]

but you see people come and they think they really want to take up this Zen practice. And initially they're very good at saying yes. And ultimately after a time they hit some wall. They begin to wonder, well, maybe. I'm not so sure about yes. The question is, when you've been practicing 10 years, 20 years, 30 years or more, can I still say yes? Can I still have my eyes open and learn? Can I still be willing not to ignore whatever position I may have,

[24:37]

but not to stand on that position and just say yes to each person? I invite you to think about that. Now, my mind is such that when I see one side, I tend to see the other side. So I don't want to say that there's not a time for saying no. Does a dog have a Buddha nature? No! But, you know, no eyes, no ears, no nose, no tongue. And the primary way of teaching you, if you were in Japan, nobody would ever explain anything to you. If you did something that was not in accord with the proper way of doing it, they would just say no.

[25:38]

And probably not, might not seem particularly kind. So, there's a time for no. No is also, for better or worse, it's often a child's first word. I've said this before. I remember hearing a radio program where someone was talking to an expert. And they said, you know, they were talking about unconditional love. And somebody asked this expert, well, when does the unconditional love between mother and child, when does that shift? And this person said, when the child says no. When they can actually articulate that. Which is not a bad thing.

[26:40]

But if we say no, so there are circumstances under which we say no, but often, saying no is a way of turning away from a circumstance, a kind of contraction or retraction. We say it because we have this sense that there's something wrong with this moment or situation. And when we get in the habit of saying no, then possibly we create a karmic pattern of conditions that, where I think, not only is there something wrong with this moment, but there's something wrong with me.

[27:44]

And that perception continues into the next moment in the way that Kategiri Roshi was talking about ordinary life, the karma continuing from past to future, to the present. And it's also true, as I pointed out, that when one says yes to one thing, one says no to something else. But the yes that I'm talking about here is a kind of medicine. If you think about it in that way. It's a practical and very simple three-letter method for bringing yourself into alignment with a present that is always flowing and always changing.

[28:49]

So how can we live by saying yes, and then yes, and then yes again? It's not so easy. And I think that it's at the heart of our practice. I think it's a really wonderful and challenging way to live. The not-easiness is good. It means we always have something to work with. So I want to leave a few minutes for question or discussion. And good luck. Annette? Thank you for this wonderful talk. My first teacher who was in Berlin, in France, 50 years ago, said to me, the whole of wisdom is contained in the word yes.

[29:51]

So I kept that with me. So bringing it back here is very important to me. And also, the no to is very important. Yeah. That's hard for me to think about. I appreciate that you brought it up. Well, I think it's important. Because actually, there are things that we have to say no to. There are questions of justice, there are questions of balance. And recognize that when you're saying no to one thing, you're saying yes to something else. Yeah. Thank you. Jed? Thank you, Alan. For me, growing up, it was very hard to say no. So I found that in order to be able to say no, in order to be able to say yes, I have to be able to say no.

[30:55]

And then the other thing is, it seems to me, is to be aware when I'm saying no and when I'm saying yes. Because oftentimes I'm confused about when I'm actually saying no and when I'm actually saying yes. Be aware of that in those moments. Thank you. I mean, I'm curious to hear in another situation what was so difficult. Two thoughts come to mind. One is, for me, I think a lot of my family and cultural training was saying no. And I got pretty good at it. Which is not useful for me. The other thing, I was thinking, well, there's some cultures you could go to where they say yes and they mean no. And they say no and they mean yes. And you understand it perfectly if you're within that culture.

[32:00]

But if you're not, it's completely confusing. But, yeah, that's why I said yes as medicine. You need to bring yourself... All of these teachings are about bringing yourself into balance. So we need, if there's too much of one, we need some more of the other. Jake? We should say a little more about the world of perhaps. Because I think there's a place for that. So say a little more about that. Well, I think that the world of, in a sense, the world of not always so is the world of perhaps. It's the world where what you recognize is the reality that you are facing is not fixed. That is changing.

[33:02]

And so one's response to it has to be constantly adjusting. So if you lock down... I've just been reading, I'm not sure why, Barbara Tuchman's book, Guns of August. You know, it's like you read about, reading about World War I. It's like there was no room for perhaps in the minds of these generals. And so they weren't, you know, this is thinking on a very broad and fairly drastic scale. But they weren't perhaps means considering the conditions. And considering the conditions are changing. So this is where sometimes before I would say yes. These are simple questions here in our daily encounters. But where the question becomes more complex,

[34:07]

then I bring more people into the process of discernment. I get help. And perhaps, I think, calls for help. Which, you know, not because it's weakness, but because this is actually also comes back to Genjokhan. The wonderful thing about Genjokhan is that enlightenment consists of a multiplicity of perspectives. No one of which is the entirety of it. So if you have other people's wisdom, other people's views, your decision can be richer. So, yeah. I appreciate very much that you've taken two deceptively simple words and actually had a very complex discussion about them. Thinking about, we've been talking a lot on the relative level of yes and no in our lives.

[35:10]

In your story of the young man who gave the commencement speech, thinking on one level, if he said yes to his life, he'd still be in the ghetto. But what he said yes to was life. Life with a capital L. And he saw a possibility where there wasn't a possibility, which I realize ties into what you were saying about Genjokhan. I don't know what's possible here. It's not knowing the circumstance which creates freedom, which unfetters it, unfetters it. Could you say, is there anything more that you would say about that? Yes, I think I want to be concise. Lately, I've been really thinking about the Heart Sutra and the heart of the Heart Sutra, which to me, the pivot point is

[36:12]

without any hindrances, no fears exist. So it's the fear that blocks us. And I just found, I won't read you now, I was looking at this guy, Kennedy Odeide, I did a search for him, and I found his blog, which is fantastic. It's called Black Kennedy Odeide, if you want to see it, you can find it. O-D-E-D-E. And one of the pieces on his blog was about making fear your ally, rather than being run by it. Not saying no to it, but saying yes to something at the heart of it. I think that's a place to look. Anything more? Ross? Thank you.

[37:15]

How would you characterize your doorknock on the door? This is not so resonant. My doorknock tends to be, I think, fairly sharp and close together, two knots. It tends to have some energy. For me, it doesn't have any particular, it's not aggressive. I don't know, some people might hear it as such. I'm tempted to ask, but maybe not. Maybe not. It's not thought, but I will say... What was the context for bringing it up, or the inspiration to bring it up? Oh, the inspiration to bring it up was... I was talking about knocking on the door.

[38:20]

I appreciate the opportunity to unpack it a little. It's not mindless on my part. It's not like I'm just doing it on automatic. It's more like a kind of voice. Some people may... Then, whatever one's voice is, people take it in their own way. So if we have an opportunity to talk about it, fine. Because one's story, Sojin's story about my knock may be different than my story about my knock. He could learn something from me, and I could learn something from him, conceivably. But I think I want to leave it there. One more. It's interesting that Andrea mentioned the word freedom, because I was thinking about self-control.

[39:26]

How is a vow to practice, or just say yes, different than self-control? Or does it have to do with not just blindly doing it? Self-control, to me, seems to be about being blind or not examining something. Is that maybe where it differs? When you take a vow, it's not just, say, just kind of blindly build into something. There's something I'm missing about how self-control... It seems like you're taking a vow to practice or to say yes, it's just self-control. I'm just going to say yes, no matter what. You probably would not describe it that way. And so I'm saying, is it different, because there's a level of examination that goes along with that. And that's what makes it different than just self-control. No, the vows, the precepts, vow is something to return to. It's a ground to return to, for me. So it gives me...

[40:30]

It's more... It's not a rule, it's a reminder. It's a tool for waking up, like, oh, this was my intention. My intention is to get out of bed six mornings a week, when I'm here. And even when I don't feel like doing that, I do that. But that doing that, even when you don't feel it, is that a form of self-control? It's a form of discipline. And it's conditional. If I'm up until midnight, or I'm not feeling well, then I don't just push through that, because I've said I'm going to do it. If somebody's life were at stake, maybe I would. So you're always working with this edge of discernment. I think discernment is a really useful tool.

[41:30]

Well, thank you very much, and enjoy the day.

[41:35]

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