Good morning. Well, as we all know, we're close to the 4th of July, Independence Day. And as many of you know, some clever person in Buddhism coined the phrase, Interdependence Day. So that's what I've been thinking about, independence and interdependence. I come to Berkeley Zen Center, I live beside the city center in San Francisco, and I come to Berkeley frequently enough to be pleasantly surprised by what I see. the caring to details to come and to just notice that someone put the pots back on the shelf in an intentional way and to go into Mel's office and see all the details of his life and to actually know many of them

[01:37]

So I was thinking about that and in relation to our society and how our society has its roots in independence. Independent nation and independent individuals. How that has formulated and flowered And unfortunately, in some ways, part of the flowering is negative. Our society, in some deep way, seems to have created the notion for us that in our exchange in life, in our interdependence, the purpose is to succeed, to get as much as possible for as little as possible. There's something in that sort of exchange is called success.

[03:01]

And how we bring that to practice. And what a struggle it is for most of us to untangle those expectations. Whether it's in our sitting or in relationship to each other. I think many of us know how difficult relationships can be when you're trying to gain and not to give. And what a wonderful contrast it is to look around our center, our Zen center, and to see so much giving and so much caring. And it's very interesting, you know, I spent most of my time in our own center in the city, and I thought, now it's very interesting that I have to come here to see that the pots Yeah, we do the same thing. I think it tells us something, you know.

[04:05]

Things are there to teach us and are we willing to look, or what does it take to look? So I'd like to tell you a brief anecdote. A couple of weeks ago I was at Tassajara. Through a number of circumstances, most of the staff were either doing something or it was a day off. Anyway, someone turned up, a young man, and he'd be hiking in the mountains around Tassajara, and he had all his belongings in a backpack. So he threw them away and went to the monastery. And I had the... I had the... a wonderful opportunity of being presented with this. Someone came to me and said, this person's just turned up, he's thrown everything he owned away and come to the monastery.

[05:11]

Can you talk to him? In fact, that's exactly what he did. I don't know, he was hiking the Pine Ridge Trail, for those of you who know that area, and somehow he got to the top of the trail and looked out and thought, you know, these things are just weighing me down. Maybe it was carrying them off the trail. Maybe the spiritual inspiration came out of his body. Anyway, he took his side pack and just tossed it over the side. It was a very evocative and has stayed a very evocative experience for me in thinking about renunciation and how that is within spirituality and how it is within our understanding of spirituality, our understanding being within the Zen school.

[06:26]

I find a quote from Suzuki Roshi where he said, is accepting impermanence. That was his statement at that time anyway, that particular day. It was a lecture I found in the window. But it's very interesting to meet this young And to watch in myself and to notice in the person who brought it to me, there was a certain skepticism. We didn't think, oh, this is wonderful. This is the true mark of practice. And a certain hesitancy, a certain uh-oh. And actually it reminded me of myself when I started the practice.

[07:35]

something I've looked back on over the years with a certain amount of embarrassment. And I started to practice. I started with an interest in Zen and then practiced Theravada Buddhism where renunciation was a very tangible and real event. You renounce the world. You renounce the belongings. And then And that was in Asia, and after a couple of years I came to the West. And that stayed with me. I remember, as I gained possessions, how that question was always there for me. In that very literal way. I remember when I first got a car, I wouldn't lock it. I would leave it unlocked, and this was the sort of And something about renunciation was still there, in a very literal way for me.

[08:41]

I still have the car, and now I lock it, and I have one of those radios where you can detach the face and put it in your pocket, so you can take it away from you. So, anyway, these are things I've had to think about over the last couple of years. In some ways, renunciation is linked to an aspect of independence. And how do we untangle the implications and assumptions of our society? It's kind of interesting, you know, for those of us who've sort of come up through the 60s and the 70s, alternative culture, I don't know what we are now, ex-culture or something.

[09:50]

Or maybe we're back in the mainstream with locked cars and detachable face radios. But there's some link in my mind between renunciation and independence. our back of all the ideas and descriptions of reality and how we ought to be habitual thinking, habitual desires. How do we stop them from obscuring seeing what's in front of us? How can we have a fresh

[10:53]

point of view, and this has something to do with independence. In Buddhist thinking, I intend to quote a koan that came up for Deng Xian. A monk asked him, among the three realms of the Buddha body, so the first realm of the Buddha body, the three realms of the Buddha body are the realm of desire, And the monk asked him, of these three realms, which one teaches the Dharma? Which one exposes us to the truth? And Dongshan said, I always stay close to this, to this kind of inquiry.

[11:55]

what teaches the truth. So we didn't say anyone other than the others. So the realm of desire, the realm that our society presents us with so wonderfully, has created a great deal of our commerce. and laid out the nature of our society in so many ways. The sense, unfortunately, of exploitation. Get as much as possible and give as little as possible. Now we have computers and they will enable this somehow. And you know our practice, in particular the Soto Zen, tries to turn that on its head.

[13:12]

Or at least let us see it's an exchange. It is interdependence. That without our care and our effort and our giving, this Zen center just doesn't exist. It's the fact, you know, that the pots are arranged in a neat order, that you all come and contribute to the Saturday morning program. That's what makes it as ancient. Without that, it doesn't exist. It's just inanimate. And with that, it's animate. The rows of shoes teach the Dharma. So the realm of desire, it's the primary mode.

[14:17]

Get what you want, avoid what you don't want. And all the attendant expressions of that, the fear that you won't get what you want, The fear that you'll be stuck in what you don't want. And the anxiety and the striving and the yearning and the regret. So this is our realm of desire. This is our melodrama. This is our existential struggle. And then as we open our eyes a little, we see that there is In the midst of this passion play, there is some detail. There is some objects. But the world is just not my passion play. There are other people in it. There are other things in it. That other people are real.

[15:29]

They have ideas, they have feelings. They're there to be responded to. To be listened to. To be cared for. And other things. To look at Mel's office and see all these little objects that draw your attention. make you notice something. A little paperweight made out of brass and some of the fan sheet. A picture of a signed autograph of Joe Montana on the wall. The life cycle of snoring by Daniel Weissman. If you've ever had the misfortune to sleep in your mouth, you know what that's about.

[16:34]

He has an unbelievable snore. So the world of form, the realm of form, it brings things to life. And then the formless, that everything is interactive, that subject and object interact, and reality is the interaction. And out of that reality, subject and object are created. Everything is relationship. Everything is interdependence. So these are the three realms that we move between. Maybe we'd like to think as practitioners, we move from one to two to three, and then we just dwell in the dynamic fluidity of interdependence.

[17:51]

Maybe there's some truth to that. I think also, as we progress, new tidbits of our own melodrama. We keep unearthing places where we're locked into getting what we want and avoiding what we don't want. And also we keep recreating. So this was a great question to ask Deng Cheng. What about these three realms? Which one teaches us the Dharma? And it's a very wise answer to say, stay close to the question. Very Zen answer too. Turning away and touching are both wrong.

[18:57]

Turning away and touching are both inevitable. So how do we stay in touch? Noticing which way we're leaning. Are we leaning into things or are we leaning out of them? So throwing your backpack away, is it, what makes it an expression of enlightenment? Of disentangling yourself from all your ancient karma, and what makes it a profound delusion, thinking you could separate yourself, thinking that there's some pure land, thinking that in some ways you can take all your neuroses, all your problems, and throw them off a cliff.

[20:03]

So it's a good question for us to ask ourselves. How do we relate to the material world? Is it our teacher or does it enslave us? I know for me in thinking again, especially as I was pulling up outside, I was thinking about when I didn't lock my car and thinking. It's very interesting. Today I thought about it. I still locked it. Usually I don't think about it. I just lock it. And outside the city center it gets broken into anyway. And stolen. So I thought about locking it and then I thought, or not locking it, when it was stolen

[21:11]

and I have insurance that covers it, and actually it came back in better condition than it went away. The parts they broke were replaced by new, and I thought that's an interesting turn of events. Profoundly what our practice says is there are many ways that we practice everything. And then the question for each of us in each situation is, how is that so?

[22:18]

What does it take to open our eyes to this situation, to engage in it, and to learn from it? Sometimes classically we call this, what is Buddha? how to be enlightened by any moment. So there's a challenge for each one of us to look at renunciation and learn from it and to not be too glib with our wonderful non-dualistic teachings. that immediately classify it as based on some kind of sense of purity.

[23:30]

There's something to be gained and something to be lost. Turning away and touching a little too long. And then on the other side, How do we embrace our lives? Perhaps one way to understand the teaching of Zen is our renunciation is momentary. That we give ourselves to the activity of the moment. That just by taking care of something right in front of us renounce some sense of separate self, some sense of selfishness, that we renounce some sense of gain.

[24:32]

We don't do it to gain something. We do it to be connected, to manifest the vitality of life. right there. And that's supported by our willingness to give, to be generous, to be compassionate. And very much the style of Zen training that we all go through that creates this sense It's tangible. You know, it's probably not so tangible for you because you're immersed in it. It reminds me of that story of Suzuki Roshi when he went back to Eheji. And as he walked in the gate of Eheji, he started to cry.

[25:39]

And he just couldn't stop crying because it was so wonderful. And then he remembered when he lived there, it was just totally ordinary. That was just life. Nothing special. So maybe we should visit each other's centers and experience the extraordinary. Or how do we visit each other and experience the extraordinary? What is the Buddha that sees the extraordinary within the ordinary? everyday lives. So, since I brought this book, I'm going to read the poem.

[26:41]

This is Case 98 from the book of Serenity. So the commentary comes in the form of a verse, and here it is. not entering the world, not following conditions. So this is renunciation. In the emptiness of the pot of the ages, there's a family tradition. When we take on our practice in a sincere way, we discover it's the wise response to the human condition. And there are many who've walked that path before us. And we share a tremendous intimacy with them.

[27:45]

We're one family. White duckweeds, a gentle breeze, Evening on the autumn river, an ancient embankment, the boat returns, a single stretch of haze. So suddenly the poem becomes very gentle and very particular and just filled with the naturalness of our lives. So when we let go of the melodrama, we just see the beauty of the world as it is. And it's not necessarily simple. But its particularity has its own kind of art, has its own beauty and has

[28:54]

It's something that truly can support us. When I woke up this morning, last night I was dreaming about renunciation. I know that's weird, but that's what I was dreaming about. And when I woke up this morning, all these ideas were in my head, so I wrote them down. I'll read you what I wrote down. I was just seeing if I've covered them all. Renunciation, independence and interdependence, shila, staying close, turning away and touching, exploitation and mutual caring,

[29:57]

rediscovery and learning of interdependence. There's one in there I didn't cover and I got a few more minutes so I will. Sheila. So Sheila is often translated as morality or ethics. But actually what it means is it means the conduct How would you behave in a way that kept you close to your practice? And of course ethics is a part of that. Really the notion behind Shiva is how do you stay close to awareness? How would you behave to stay close to awareness? And it's a wonderful way to engage your life. what spaces you like, what spins you off into stuckness or into dullness, into apathy.

[31:11]

And to just look at it. Another form of renunciation is, can you experience yourself just as a specimen? and just look and see what supports this life, what detracts from it, what draws you to awareness and what doesn't. Within the particularity of your own circumstances, what does that? So that's a wonderful inquiry. And then the attendant inquiry is, How could you behave to support your awareness? And are you willing to do that? Anyway, if you take it up, realize it's not static.

[32:17]

And by that I mean, as you explore it, realize that your own description, that your own values, of what practice is should be interdependent. It should be a dynamic. This is Don Shands. I always stay close. He doesn't go for the particular. So as you explore yourself, you discover your subjective particularity. What supports your practice? What do you call practice? How do you experience what you call doing practice? What is that? And what is not doing practice? What is it when you're not practicing? What's that?

[33:21]

And of course we can just go back to Zen non-dualism and say everything's practice. That's too clear. within your subjective experience, what is it? Once you move back into that, you see quite clearly there are times when you feel off and times when you feel on. And you have your own vocabulary for that. You have your own way of describing it. So Sheila is, how do you support yourself to be on, to be aware, to be practicing? And how do you let go of what undermines that? So that's what Sheila's about. So, I covered all my ideas. I think we have a few minutes for questions if you have any.

[34:31]

I heard someone say once that they block their car so they don't tempt other people to come in to a thing, which I feel like a good way of not doing it. Thinking about the other person rather than holding on to them. I wish that was my reason. I can get close to that. I can draw it into... It's practical. It responds to the conditions under which I live. I don't want to lose it. That's not so true actually. I think practicality

[35:59]

Now taking the face off my radio, that cuts closer to the bone. You know, I would have a harder time defending myself. Bill had his car broken into and his radio stolen. He didn't seem so sad because he was able to upgrade his house. Well, that was the irony of my experience, too. They stole my car and stole the radio, and it was insured, and that model was out of production, so I got that upgrade. That's what I'd say, my car came back better than it left. And it's something wonderful. It's that wonderful gift of technology, and you can take the face off. Somehow, I'm better living through technology. society.

[37:07]

I wondered about that. I wondered if I should go blow by blow through our interaction. And in my wondering, I thought, was I respectful of him? And because whatever we may think of it, you know, wonderful or naive, it was sincere. But I'll tell you some of the details. He said, I know when you come to the monastery, you do what's asked of you. you might say, go over there and bite your head on a rock. And I said, well, actually, we're not so likely to say that. We're much more likely to say very mundane things like, here's the usual way you come here.

[38:21]

And I said, sometimes the hard part of our practice is its ordinariness. that we don't, it'd be great, wouldn't it, if someone said, go over there and bash your head on a rock? So definitive, right? Okay, like, if I bash my head on that rock, I'm a real practitioner, I'm really doing it. So I explained to him the normal procedure. This would be our equivalent of bashing your head on a rock. And he thought that was pretty good. And his sincerity didn't waver.

[39:28]

He said, well, I came to do what was asked, and I will. and I don't know what happened after that but we'll see it was a couple of weeks ago so he said he would come and present himself as was asked and which at Tassajara You come and you're a guest student and you pay for seven days or five days and then you fit into the program in a very mundane way. So in a way he passed the test, right?

[40:39]

Appropriate response. We walk our car, but we don't walk our house. And sometimes my children come to visit and they walk a house. And I get very, somehow it brings up, when I come home and find the front door locked. I mean, which is ridiculous. There are windows all over and back doors are locked. It's very annoying. I don't know. It brings up something that I can't explain. But I can't figure out any rational reason to lock our car and not lock our house.

[41:45]

Which way it should be tipped or anything. It's just what we do. I think when we look carefully at our own lives, it's not always rational. I was thinking in the realm of practice, especially our own definition of when we're doing it and when we're not doing it. and in another way they inform it and guide it in a beautiful way.

[42:51]

There's something about meeting our life just as it is. That's a wonderful teacher. When we meet it just as it is, in a very deep way we can see as opposed to trying to take it and turn it into something else. That is an important part of our practice is meeting And then our irrationality just becomes another detail.

[43:59]

It's part of what gives us beauty. It's like in tea ceremony, you know, the flaw is what accentuates the beauty of the cup. You know, it's the same with us. That's what makes us kind of interesting, is the fact that we're all a little bit crazy There was something about this guy that threw his backpack over, you know, I have to confess, it didn't all make sense. But he was sincere and willing to step, take the next step from that place. And maybe that's the danger of the dramatic act. You know, you bash your head on your rug and you think, OK, I'm done. I've done it. If you had lunch, would I wash your bones?

[45:03]

Thank you.

[45:09]

@Text_v004
@Score_JJ