My voice is a little strange this morning because I just got over a sore throat and cold and all that. So that makes it a little funny. Hi kids. Well, I have a couple of stories here. I think I can remember the first one. This is one day, do you know what a monastery is? Yeah, like a temple, monastery. So, one day a merchant came with rice for the monastery, but it was raining and he got all wet And the horse got all wet, and the rice got all wet.

[01:17]

And when he arrived at the mother's carry, he was all wet. Everything was wet. So the teacher used this example as a question for his students. So he says to his students, when it rains, What is it that doesn't get wet? And some students said, the mind doesn't get wet. Some other students said, rocks don't get wet. They named all these things that they thought don't get wet. But none of them were quite right. And then one student said, And I'm going to see if you know what he said. Can you guess? What?

[02:19]

Your soul doesn't get well? Your soul? Your soul. Well, that's a good answer, but it's not the right one. So I tell you, this man said, So his teacher acknowledged that student. So here's another story and I hope it's not too long. Okay, so this is a story about Master Higwell. He lived in Korea. Do you know where Korea is? Korea is near China. And he taught Zen in Korea a long time ago.

[03:22]

And when he taught Zen to many disciples at his monastery, Master Jaewol brought a large bull. A bull. Whenever he had time, he cleared the mountain forests with his disciples, taking his bull to plow the new land. He said to them, if the Zen practitioner eats too much and too well, he cannot study properly. In the monastery, they ate only barley and vegetables, and his students complained about the poor food. One day, he was invited out, and while he was gone from the monastery, Three of his disciples took the bull to the marketplace and sold it.

[04:27]

Wow! They bought lots of rice, cakes, fruits, and candy. And taking the food back to the monastery ate well for several days. Master Keval returned. and said, where has my bull gone? all of his disciples said, we don't know but Yehweh said, bring my bull otherwise I will punish all of you since they already sold the bull They didn't know what to do. At last, the disciple Park Ko Bong took off all his clothes and entered the master's room naked and said, here I brought your bowl and walked on all fours around the room

[05:47]

Moo. Master Haywalt smacked his disciple's butt with his hand, saying, my bowl is a large golden one, not a small cat like this. Get out of here at once. Then Master Haywalt, the master, went to the meditation hall and said to his disciples, Pak Kobong paid back the money from the sale of my bowl. After that, he never mentioned the bowl again. What do you think of that? That mischievous guy. Suzuki Roshi used to say, I really like mischievous students.

[06:59]

Mischievous students is like show some spirit. So are you recommending this behavior to the children? Or the adult? I'm recommending it to their parents. No, no, not everybody. So I have one more story, if I can find it. Okay, this story is about There was a very poor man who lived by fishing along, at the sea shore.

[08:06]

He used to throw his, he had a fishing pole and he used to throw it in the water with a hook on the end and catch fish. But he was very poor because, you know, he couldn't catch so many. So one day he fished a big carp. The carp is a big fisherman with big whiskers. Okay? And the fisherman, thinking that this must be a fish from the dragon's palace, set it free in the water. So this fish must have been rather extraordinary for him to recognize that it came from the dragon's palace. You know, dragons love the water. That's where they kind of live and let their homes in the water. And in China, you know, it was kind of a myth that the dragon's palace was at the bottom of the ocean.

[09:16]

So the fishermen, so that night, he dreamed a dream. in which he saw a saintly old man who said, I am the king of the dragon's palace in the sea. Since you set my son free, who went astray, so as to be caught by you, I will repay you with a present. Tomorrow morning you will find it on the seashore where you fish. So that morning the fisherman wondering about it, went ashore, where he saw a fish come out of the sea with a bowl on its head. It left the bowl on the seashore and then disappeared into the sea. The fishermen brought the bowl home. The bowl was very old. So for a while, it was not used and remained in the corner of the room.

[10:30]

But one day, his wife happened to put a small bit of rice into the bowl. As soon as she did so, the bowl became filled with rice at once. Surprised, she emptied it and put it in another handful of rice. Again, the bowl became full. From then on, they could live without fear of being hungry. However, the wife was a very greedy person, so she used the bull ceaselessly to increase the stock of grain. Such greediness was enough to make the Dragon King resentful. The bowl suddenly disappeared without any trace. The fisherman scolded his wife for reading this, but had no choice but to start fishing again.

[11:36]

So he went to the seashore, and throwing the fishing line into the water, he entreated. He said, Oh, Dragon King! Please give me back the treasure ball, or I'm afraid I might catch your son again. Well, that sounds a little ambiguous. If I keep fishing, I might catch your son again. Or, I might try to catch your son again. I think he means. If I keep fishing, who knows what will happen. So the Dragon King appeared again in his dream and said, I was infuriated by your wife's greenness and took away the bowl. Now that you are in green, I'll give it back to you again on condition that you not do some reading. Saying so, the Dragon King disappeared and after that the fisherman got the treasure bowl again from the sea shore and

[12:44]

He and his wife agreed, this is my ending, he and his wife agreed to live frugally and not fall into being victim of greed. This one says, they got the treasure boat back again from the seashore and thanks to it they are happily ever after. So I changed the ending. I'm thinking about this story. This is the story of what's actually happening right now in our life. We've been given this gift, the gift that never ceases giving. And because we've abused it, we're punished by, through our karma.

[14:02]

The fruits of our karma is the retribution for having abused this gift that we have of affluence or, you know, our country, our world. But specifically, our country is built on these wonderful premises of foundation of generosity, goodwill and enlightenment. But we perverted through our greed by taking advantage of turning the country into a cow. a cash cow, and kind of like a big cow, and this is the thighs, and this is the chops, and so forth.

[15:05]

The steaks, the steaks are high. When we live in balance with nature, and when we live in balance with each other, everything is taken care of. We're actually taken care of. Because why wouldn't that be so? So we do have this gift that keeps giving, but we have perverted it. We've become so greedy that We've fallen out of balance with both nature and each other. So this is the consequence. We're getting poorer and poorer and losing our balance, losing what we actually have created.

[16:09]

than we often realize. I'm almost ready to talk about the State of the Union, but I won't. Every once in a while I get my State of the Union talk, but you already know about it. So maybe that's enough for you guys. There is a slight hum over the speakers. Not that bad, yeah.

[17:30]

Not bad enough to stop. So, I'm thinking about how we maintain our balance. Beginning with just our body and mind, how we maintain a balance of body and mind. This is, of course, a story about greed, but Master Isan, Yangshan used this story to talk about effort.

[18:33]

He says, you know, Master Isang, in Chinese Yangshan, used circles to illustrate his teaching. He had a hundred circles and not all of them come down to a circle, which means something like, he would have a circle, for example, and then he'd have a cow, character for, actually, for a water buffalo. And a water buffalo inside a circle would be a cow eating patient's grass. because the circle had inside the circle also a character for land. So a cow eating patient's grass to illustrate enlightenment.

[19:44]

So this particular circle is a character for a person, and another character for someone. And putting these two characters together means Buddha. This character is a certain person, and this character is you. And putting them together is Buddha. So, he says, if one were to ask about this form, Master Tsunji said he would answer by adding the character meaning person, beside the character meaning a certain person. This means man, and this is kind of like part of the character for Buddha.

[20:47]

then these two characters will become another character, meaning Buddha. So Master Tsunji explained, the one who asks seeks for something by throwing a hook and the response will come with a treasure bowl. So he used this story to illustrate that. The character meaning person or man indicates the man throwing the hook and waiting for a fish. The character meaning a certain person added to this right side indicates the one who comes over the treasure pole. So, this illustrates like throwing the fishing pole, throwing the hook into the water is the person seeking the Dharma. and the one who offers the bowl is the Buddha.

[21:54]

So putting both of those characters together is Buddha seeks Buddha and Buddha responds. I don't know if the rest of the story seems also to follow Whereas, one receives the bowl and the rice just keeps coming. In other words, the Dharma, once one actually connects with the practice, then one is fed continuously. Master Dogen says, As long as you are totally, continuously practicing, following the practice, you will always be fed. That is true.

[22:56]

There are times when we won't be fed, but that's also okay. In the meal chant, we say, may our virtue and practice deserve this meal, reward us with this meal, which means that the only thing that we have to, as long as we continue to practice, we deserve this meal. But when we are no longer practicing, We may or may not deserve it, because it's something given to us. So the monk doesn't... The only way the monk receives food is through their virtual practice, not by going to work to make money.

[24:08]

I remember, I told you this story before, Usilananda, the Burmese monk, we used to let him teach here, was at Green Gulch one day, and people were standing in line to fill their plates with food, and he was just standing on the side, And I just saw him standing there and I thought, he's not going to stand in line to get his food because he has to be fed. Someone has to offer him food before he can eat. So I said, would you like something? And he said, yes, thanks. And I got him the food. And he was very happy about that. But he would not stand in line and feed himself. He had to be offered. So, and he wouldn't be asked to.

[25:19]

So, I think the thing that is most, the one thing that monks are taught is not to be greedy. because that's not being greedy, feeding yourself, but that's an extreme form of, through your virtue and practice, that you are fed. That people will feel, and if you're not fed, that's okay. We think of eating, that we eat through our mouth.

[26:25]

But we also, mouth is just one of the doors, doorways of perception, or for taking in the world. So this eating is through taste. So we usually think of reading this as through taste. But there's also the doorway of seeing. So we see, we eat with our eyes. And we're always eating information with our eyes, taking in information and taking in pleasant sights and unpleasant sights. And we usually turn away from unpleasant sights, but we want pleasant sights.

[27:31]

And so we tend to make a distinction about making our life pleasant around us through seeing, through vision. But we can become very greedy through vision by trying to make everything a certain way through seeing. And the same goes for hearing. We take in, we're feeding ourself through hearing, we're feeding ourself through touch, we're feeding ourself through aroma, and we're feeding our feelings through all these doorways. So we're continually eating the world through these various doorways.

[28:40]

So we get, you know, there's this idea about being psychedelic. I remember back in the 80s or 70s, being psychedelic was one of the buzzwords that meant extreme visionary excitement. So we get kind of addicted to visual excitement, auditory excitement, and through tactile excitement. So this kind of readiness for these excitements keep us attached to mundane things. So, you know, when the music stops, or when we come to an impasse, we don't know what to do, because we are so connected to our excitements.

[29:59]

And so we easily get bored. when we don't realize how hyped up we are most of the time. Often when people sit Zazen, I remember I did a wedding one time and when I do a wedding I usually have people sit for five minutes before, just before the wedding to calm down. And one woman said, That's the longest I've ever sat without saying something in my whole life. So we get addicted to speech patterns and having to connect through, you know, our white duckies. Driving. So, when the momentum stops, like our society has momentum, and we get caught up in the momentum of society, which is called mainstream, and going along with the mainstream,

[31:27]

we get addicted to prosperity. This is our biggest problem. We get addicted to prosperity. The standard of living keeps escalating. And if you don't have this, what's the matter with you? And then if you don't have that, what's the matter with you? Every day something new comes out. Especially in the walkie-talkie business. And the computer business. Your computer gets outmoded after a month. As soon as you buy it, there's another one that you're supposed to buy. So we're addicted to this momentum. And then when the bottom falls out, we fall down. So you can be talking about this.

[32:43]

Too scary. But, so, right now we're all thinking about Haiti. You know, it's a great disaster. People are going about their lives and then, boom, everything falls down. women praying in the streets and dead bodies all over the place. It's horrific, you know, horrific. That's natural disaster. But, you know, we've become immune to man-made disasters. Every day, if you about how many suicide bombers blew themselves up and how many people were killed.

[33:46]

But there's no need to read about it. You just, ah, and then you go to the next page. Because that page is always the same information. It's just different circumstances. But we become immune to that. Suicide bomber blows himself up. But what does that mean? We rarely talk about what that means. Just as if, oh, there's just another one, you know, there's another one. You can't really, it's very difficult to take that in and comprehend and sit with it, what that really means. And we're destroying people all over the place. When we hear about the natural disaster, That's horrific, but the man-made disasters are going on all over the place. We live in this little bubble of the world where we're so immune in certain ways.

[34:55]

I mean, it's amazing how we, so far, I just thought I'd mention this New York Times column which said that the Haiti earthquake was actually a man-made disaster and compared it to the almost same magnitude in 1989 here. 63 people were killed. So 50,000 people killed. It's poverty. Well, that's right. It's a man-made disaster in that no building comes. It's that because there's so much poverty and so much greed and so much political, horrendous political behavior, there's a place like Haiti which has 50,000 deaths from an earthquake where we had 63 deaths.

[35:56]

That's right. We ignore people. The World Bank and all those wonderful institutions which are manipulated by corporations pretend to save people, but they really very little. Ideally, instead of trying to conquer the world through force, it'd be the world through love. But that's unthinkable for many people. It would be so much better if everybody was trying to help each other instead of trying to manipulate each other.

[37:01]

Manipulation is like the name of the game for power. But we don't get power power doesn't mean it doesn't help everybody. If we turn all that energy into helping every nation to, I don't want to say improve, improve or the roots of greed, ill will, and delusion are very strong. When something like a disaster happens, everybody tries to help in some way, which is difficult now, and then three months later, it's all past, and people are left picking up the pieces.

[38:12]

If everyone really wanted to maintain, it would be great if the world would just help each other. If all the nations in the world would just help each other instead of trying to get their own, be so independent. feel terrible when some politician says, well, you know, it's in our national interest, or it's not in our national interest. That's a total selfishness. If we would do something that was not in our national interest to help people, how great that would be. Just do something for the sake of doing something. That's Dharma. You just do something because it helps people in our natural interest. It's a terrible statement.

[39:19]

It just turns our minds to thinking about how to protect ourselves. This escalation of If you hit a hornet's nest, guess what happens? They come out and attack you. And we just keep hitting the hornet's nest over and over again. It's going to be terrible. It's building up more and more. At some point it's going to explode. Because the tensions are just building up too much. And we just keep hitting the nest. The bomber guy, this poor guy comes on the airplane and gets caught, and then everybody has to scramble to find some way to protect the people, which will never work, because you can't protect people.

[40:27]

The more you antagonize them, they will always find a way. And why we don't know that? I think why we don't know, we do know, but we can't stop it because all of our natural, all of our resources are going into armament. Most of it is going into armament and that can't be stopped because the people who make them control the government. we are, but people don't realize it. It's a corporate hypocrisy. Anyway. It's slipping into the stick of the human.

[41:28]

But it's important. If we don't discuss it, if we don't talk about it, if it's just there without saying something, Every once in a while we have to air this stuff out. So I'm not being political. Yes. One interesting twist with Haiti is those things have a layer of report. And they were talking to some reporter there and saying, well, you know, I've seen, you know, roving bands of, you know, cetera. And she said, well, frankly, I'm impressed that I haven't seen it. And I see so many of the Haitians trying to help each other. Yeah. Well, also, people are hungry. And I would be much worse.

[42:29]

When you go a day without eating, or even missing one meal. But if you go a day without eating, or two days, So, looting, well what is there to loot, I mean? People don't have a place to sleep, nothing to do. It's like when your whole life that you depended on is gone. It just disappeared. No house, no mommy, no daddy, no whatever, you know. So, you know, we should send some money for relief, whatever we can, you know. But I think it's important to really think about how to turn things around. Even though it will never be turned around.

[43:31]

That shouldn't be an excuse for not turning things around.

[43:35]

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