In the third paragraph it says, the wholehearted way I'm talking about allows everything to live in enlightenment and to be one with the path of emancipation. So quite naturally you probably guessed I'm going to talk about money. I was thinking, now this is one hell of a good deal, you know, you come and you get money given to you. I mean, how many times does that happen when you go to a dharma talk? I'm not saying this is going to be a trend, but you never know. You could call up and ask. Put requests in the suggestion box. So here's where my inspiration to give out money came from.

[01:05]

About a month or so ago, I gave a Dharma talk at a Vipassana group down the peninsula, the Gil Farnsdell's group. And they have a collection box, a basket, and people put money in. And then at the end of it, they hand it off to the person who gave the talk. So you have this wonderful experience of someone hands you this big wad of money, most of it's ones, but it's substantial, you know, and I was quite charmed by it, you know, and I wondered why. And actually later I thought, when I was, as Meili was saying, I grew up on Ireland and we had, I grew up Catholic and we had certain ceremonies, first communion and confirmation And, you know, you really didn't get told or else I didn't listen too much about what it was all about. But what I did remember was people gave you money.

[02:08]

You know, you could dress up in your Sunday best and then after the ceremony, you know, as you wandered around, people would say, oh, you had your first communion today, here. So this abundance of giving and receiving. So when I received this bundle of paper money, I was charmed. And I must confess I spent the 20s. But I kept the ones, you know, and I kept them in my drawer. And I didn't quite know why I kept them, you know, it just seemed like an interesting thing to do. And it set me thinking about, you know, what is my relationship to money, you know, in a number of ways.

[03:18]

And that's part of what I'd like to talk about and hopefully, you know, provoke you to have similar questions for yourself. So then I decided I would give the dollar bills away. And then I thought I'd give a Dharma talk about money and that would be a good place to give them away. Show and tell. And also it reminded me of something that About five years ago at Page Street, someone gave us a present of four Buddhas, quite large, standing Buddhas, about so, and quite old.

[04:21]

We had a Buddhologist, if that's the word, someone who was a specialist in Buddha statuary, look at them. they were very impressed and said they were very old and they were priceless and they didn't know what they were but they have a wonderful presence and so we decided to do a dedication ceremony for the new Buddha and a sojourn was the Doshin and he said we're caretakers for these and that really struck me, you know, because I've been thinking they were given to us so now we own them and they were ours and in a way they made our life more our center more substantial because now we owned more than we owned before and so I was very struck when he said that

[05:32]

And that was kind of wonderful because these statues are maybe 400 years old. So the chances that they're going to outlive us are pretty good. Maybe outlive our whole center. Our center will be gone and these priceless Buddhas that nobody knows quite which Buddha they are will exist. And then the word priceless, you know, they can't, they don't have a price. Is an interesting thought too. The things in our life that don't have a price, that can't be priced. You know those annoying stupid questions that people ask you, you know, how much would you, how much money would it take to get you to do this or give away this?

[06:44]

How much would you sell your rakasu for? Don't answer that. The answer is, it's priceless. So, for those lucky or unlucky persons who received a dollar bill, I'd like you to engage in a guided meditation. So you can look at it, and think about money and think, what is money to you? What is money? So that's one, I think, important question for us, those of us who partake in the finance of our wonderful culture and society. What is money? And what do I do with it?

[07:50]

Then what is money as a currency? You know, at one time we had a barter system. We exchanged goods for goods. We interacted. interacted with the Miller. And they knew that relationship. They knew in the way their lives interconnected. They knew of their mutual interdependence. They knew they needed each other. And then some very creative person, innovative person, came up with the concept of money. You know, rather than carrying this 50 pound sack of grain three miles to the village, we'll set up a token system.

[09:04]

And then we can just pass over these very lightweight tokens and not have to carry all this stuff around. Kind of a marvelous idea. But in the process, Something dramatic happened. Now we have these objects that are, in shamanistic terms, they're power objects. So there's an interesting thought for us. In religious terms, we create power objects, we create statues, we create particular ways of dress. And then in worldly terms, we create power objects. You know, what are the power objects of our society and how much do we endorse them? And how does that relate to our spiritual endeavor?

[10:13]

So, you know, my wish this morning is to bring up questions hopefully to open your eyes and settle your stomach rather than make you frown and agitated. And I think that's worth bearing in mind as we start to inquire about what our life is and how we live it. That we do it with some respect and settledness in our own being. How else will we be wholehearted? How else will we step forward with dignity and confidence? And if we don't inquire, how will that step be wise and compassionate?

[11:23]

So this was part of my thinking when I thought about money. So I thought of what commerce is, what money is in our society, and what are power objects. And then I thought about my own relationship to that. And that was very intriguing. and I won't bore you with all the details other than to say that I learned a lot. You know, I noticed several years ago that when I'm paying the bills and I'm writing checks to pay the bills, it's an activity that I do hastily. I noticed it's always something I do as quickly as I can to get it over with. So it speaks of an aspect of my relationship to money.

[12:28]

So, and it speaks of personal relationships. So each of us has a personal relationship, you know, that we can start to explore. You know, you can look at this dollar bill and you can say, so what will I do with this? If I had a couple more I could get a coffee latte after this talk. Maybe it could go towards paying my bills and taking care of my needs. Maybe I could experiment with it. give it to the person next to me here. If I could do an even more bizarre experiment and give it to a total stranger. Can you just imagine taking this dollar bill and stopping someone in the street and saying, excuse me, can I give you a dollar bill?

[13:40]

So there's something for you to think about, what that would be like. I haven't done it but I'm intrigued by it. I think I'm going to try it a couple of times. I like that in a way it sort of violates some of the assumptions of our society. There's a sort of a dark unexamined assumption that Our preservation, our esteem, our esteem within our society finds its effectiveness through our material wealth. And how do we do that? We accumulate it, we hold on to it.

[14:44]

And then that's a wonderful thought, because then we realize that if you take this dollar bill and just hold on to it, in a way it becomes worthless. Its worth is in its capacity to be a medium of exchange. Now, if you look on the back of this dollar bill, it says an amazing thing. It says, in God we trust. And I think, I have no idea why it says that, and probably some of you know quite well whose idea it was to put it on it. But here's my uninformed thoughts about it. that it says something about its capacity to be a medium of exchange and how that points us back to our mutual dependence.

[16:01]

That it shows us right in physical material terms that we need each other. That the teaching, the Buddhist teaching of interdependence is not an abstract spiritual notion. That the material world and the very icon of the material world, money, can give us that teaching. That it has a dharma. And so we write on it, in Dharma we trust, or in God we trust, same thing. And then we see that aspect of money. its capacity to enable interaction and mutual interdependence.

[17:13]

And then we see our personal relationship to it, you know. We see, when we look and we ponder on, and I would really hope you would and encourage you to, I think it's a very fruitful exercise, to look at it and think about it and think, you know, they're wonderful questions you can ask yourself. and how much money do you want? I mean, if someone came in here and said, okay, I'm writing checks, just come up and tell me how much you want, how much would you ask for? And how would you assess that? What would you base it on? You know? What mixture of needs, desires, fears. We fear the absence of certain things.

[18:18]

And money plays a part in that. If I have enough money, I'll have some security. And where do needs become desires? Do we have it clear in our head what the difference is? Is there a difference? And is it possible to emancipate ourselves from our concerns? from our wish for safety and security and predictability for the future. And where does money fit into that?

[19:23]

There's an obscure expression in Zen. There's a Zen story about this. But the gist of the story is, the punchline is, inanimate objects preach the Dharma. Inanimate objects teach us what is the nature of life and how to practice life. So, money is an inanimate object. But like all inanimate objects, we make them animate. We empower them. We empower money. We give it a presence. Just the same way that bundle of money, I gave it a presence. What was it? It was just a bundle of money.

[20:24]

Just a bundle of paper. And they preach the Dharma because they are our link to the world. They ask us to know how to live. They ask us, in Zen terms, they ask us to discover how to practice the way. How do we live with money? And if you think about the religious endeavor, even if we just think about it in Buddhist terms, it goes the whole gamut. You know, when I was a monk in Thailand, you weren't allowed to touch money. It's a very interesting practice. So when you wanted something like a postage stamp to send a letter, you had to wait. I had some money, but I had my money in a drawer.

[21:28]

And I had to wait, and you couldn't ask somebody to go to the door and get money out of the door and go get you a postage stamp. You had to wait until someone said, is there anything I can do for you? And then you could say, yeah, take some pot from the door and go get me a postage stamp so I can put it on this letter. So, from that end, and then at the other end, We have, there's a story, there's a sutra actually, the Vimalakirti Sutra. Now Vimalakirti had it so together that he could have all sorts of engagements with money. He went to gambling houses, he went to wealthy places. But so, he was so clear about what money was and what it wasn't, and so clear of his relationship to it, that he didn't get stuck. It's just money.

[22:30]

It's just the material world. Evoking what it evokes, being what it is, coming into being, going out of being, just teaching the Dharma. So these two images, you know, really take very different stances. in trying to answer the question of how does a human being practice the way? As Dogen says it, that everything lives in enlightenment and is one with the path of emancipation. So how does our relationship to money become enlightened? How does it become part of the path of emancipation?

[23:37]

So it's the material world and our concerns about it. You know when I came back from Tassajara, my daughter was two and my son was a week old. And we had about $40. And we moved to San Francisco. And we had the painful realization over the next year or so of knowing we were entering the world of money. Money played a role. Tassajara, they ring the bell, you go eat your lunch. and neither do the schools or the apartments or whatever.

[24:46]

So we entered the material world and we brought with it all the prejudices and concerns and desires that arose out of our karmic life, as we would say in Buddha's terms, out of the conditions and experience and family histories that we had. So money brings that forth. When we think about it, it will open a window, it will share the light on who we are as a person, on what our history is. If we're honest, it will show us the nature of our desires. It will help us see what we think we need and what we don't need. And as I said before, it will always shed a light on the deeper aspect of our mutual interdependence.

[26:00]

So how to live this life, or as Dogen puts it, how to practice the way wholeheartedly. And so that's a wonderful dilemma for us. What can I do unreservedly? What can I commit to completely? And when we, you know, to go back to that silly image that I created of someone writing us all checks for as much money as we wanted, would we really know what to say? I think it would be hard for us, for each of us. Maybe it would for some people, but I think for many people it would be hard.

[27:17]

Because in a way, our relationship to the material world is mysterious. I don't know how it is for you, but for me it's constantly changing. I have different ideas about it. I have different emotions about it. And as I examine them, often they unfold into something else. My emotional relationship in the material world is, I want it not to bother me. I have this sort of a socialist leaning, I just wish that everybody could have their needs taken care of. And then we can get along, we can get on to more important things, whatever more important things are. So that's my emotional relationship to it. So when it comes time to pay my bills, I want to get it over with and get on to more important things.

[28:23]

It's not a spiritual activity. So we can set up this dichotomy, we can set up this tension between the physical and material and the spiritual, whatever that is, or maybe just that aspect of life which embodies for us meaning and purpose. So I think in some ways we can't exhaustively know who we are in relationship to the material world. And on the other hand, our exploration of a spiritual practice. Can we exhaustively know that? If I could completely be the aspiration of the Dharma, what would it be?

[29:32]

It's a great question too. What would that be? How would I relate to the self, family, the world, other people, everything. Sometimes in Zen we say the practice of Zen is clarifying the mystery. We see what we know and we see what we don't know. And then these two worlds interact. sometimes in harmony, and sometimes in conflict. Sometimes it feels like, can I afford to take a week off from my job and sit Shashi?

[30:35]

Can I do without the money? So the material world, to put it in Zen terms, brings our calling, it grinds our koan that's a great koan it asks of us to enter the moment to experience in that moment its particularity and then out of that moment respond to the world so I give you a dollar bill and it's a koan now What will you do with it? What is it and what will you do with it? I've sort of tricked you in, I've conscripted you into the material world and you thought you were getting something for nothing. But it also has with it, you know, when I thought of giving it away,

[31:48]

It had a certain delight and I think it had a certain, for me personally, it had a certain emancipation because my karmic relationship to money, all the ways I associate with it, has in many aspects a heaviness to it. Anything, yeah, heaviness is a good word, but the idea of simply playing with it, of taking this power object of our society and turning it into a plaything, it is kind of a wonderful thought. I thought, now that is a lot of fun. What a terrific thing to do. Just play with it.

[32:50]

So this is the image of Vimalakirti. He enters each situation. He doesn't deny its power. He's not saying, I'm in it, but I'm not of it. He's saying, I'm in it, I'm of it, but I'm not stuck. So this is being one with the path of emancipation. So allowing everything to live in enlightenment, this asks us to know it. And then I complicated that a little in saying, that that doesn't mean we exhaustively know everything about the material world or even ourself, or even what we could do or feel about this dollar bill. But it brings us into a more conscious relationship to it.

[33:59]

And then the path of emancipation is to not be stuck in old habits, to not be stuck in society says, get as much of this as you can, you know. The path of emancipation is to appreciate the pieces, the power of money, the influence of it, is to appreciate the karmic influences that come up for us. and to not be stuck. Can I stop having the impulses and images and attachments I have around money? Well, I don't know. I guess I'll have to find out. But in allowing it to be in the moment, allowing it to support me to be one,

[35:09]

Now, to be one with the path of emancipation, to be here with the dollar bill, and think, huh, what is practicing the wood? And then to give it away, or to keep it. to extend that thought into our practice. As we see what we are and who we are, we're creating the opportunity to ask, now what? Okay, so I see myself rushing through writing checks to pay my bills. Now what? Shall I continue to do it? Shall I do something different? Shall I see if I can do something different?

[36:12]

Maybe I can. When this now what? Has a respectful, generous compassion, then we can start to be wholehearted. Is this not what is loaded up with judgment and desperation? That's a hard place to live. That's a hard place to throw ourselves into completely. So I would say to you, you know, as you endeavor with your practice, recognize, try to recognize what supports it and encourages it and what doesn't. I'm going to look at my notes and see if I have any other monetary wisdom.

[37:27]

This would be a great talk to give if you were a financial planner, wouldn't it? You could pass a brochure on mutual funds and how to start savings. So the term that Dogen, the finder of this style of Zen, coined, no pun intended, was the Genjo Koan. That our life and how we live it is our koan. You know what a koan is? A koan is an inquiry that asks us to come into contact with what's going on. So the Genjo Koan is our life asking us to come into contact with what's going on.

[38:39]

To be present with it. To not know what it is before we meet it. And when we meet it, to be one with it. To let it become the path of emancipation. So the answer comes out of the meeting. And sometimes we can infuse that for thinking that somehow practice will resolve my life. If I practice hard enough, my money problems will go away. What's going wrong? I'm really a good practitioner and I have all these money problems. or I still have problems with my relationships, or you know, my car breaks down, I don't get parking places when I go out. There may be other practices that will resolve all those things, but this practice, here's the bad news, it's offering a much more modest proposal.

[39:48]

Simply, that it can help us to wake up to what the pieces are and in waking up we can start to discover how to work with it. It's something as invisible and omnipresent and all-powerful as money can preach the dharma to us. Thank you. Do we have time for questions? I have a question for you. That's the idea, right? I ask you questions. In particular for the, well, no, for all of you.

[40:50]

You can just imagine. Actually, here's what we'll do. If you come up with a good answer to this question, you'll get a dollar bill. What was that? We all will. It'll be public acclaim. So one of my thoughts was to give a stranger a dollar bill. And I thought that that's a good way to explore and discover the path of emancipation. And I wonder if you had any suggestions in terms of dollar bills or in terms of money. Right now, every cent you spend.

[41:54]

Oh. Right now, every cent you spend. Wow. For a period of a week or a month. Yeah. It would be, wouldn't it? Yeah, it would be. And then you could even allocate it, you know, this was need, this was desire, or whatever else, you know, whatever. solid for that one month. How did you wash it? Well, I don't know. They said just to wash it.

[42:57]

No, I had the same thought. I thought about washing these. I thought about all the hands they passed through. I didn't really wash it. I just pretended I did. I was going to put it in the washing machine. I did that for a month and it really did have a lot of significance. The first thing I did, the first thing I did with this was buy a candle. And you know, just the first thing you do, buy a candle. Oh, that felt so good. You know, to spend it on something spiritual rather than, you know, a coffee or something. I did that. And then for that one month, I felt really alive. And then the second suggestion was my older, I have an adult son who says, Mom, just take all your change, anything you get, just take all the change and put it away for a month. Did that for a month and I almost had a million dollars. Well, I identified with this business of paying bills and getting rid of the task as soon as possible.

[44:00]

And I thought, what if I turned that around and I started appreciating each receiver for the service that I was getting and bowed. Well, interestingly enough, I have a foundation, so I have to give a lot of money away. But I had a very interesting experience here, because on the Buddhist Peace Fellowship Board, another Pole did the same dollar bill experiment. Really? And sometime you two will meet and discuss it. What was his last name? Tell me, say his last name, David. Takiani? Pretty close. So when I got the dollar bill today, I quickly handed it back.

[45:03]

And I saw that for me, if I had the dollar bill, that I would keep it. Because also at the BPF board meeting, I gave the money to BPF. And other people, I project, were more willing to sustain a certain amount of anxiety about that bill. And people did different things, but some people who could sustain in my perception, the most anxiety, did something more creative. And I found that today, I said, I've done this. I don't want to do this. I don't want to contemplate this bill. I'm going to give it to someone else. Let them feel the anxiety. That was my learning of just that there's so much anxiety. The burden of money. I want to get rid of it. And it makes me question how much of the funding I do has a responsibility to it and really going deeply into the projects and with the people I'm working with, rather than this anxiety about this potent object with God in the pyramid and the eye on it.

[46:12]

I just want it to pass through me rather than stay present. That's a very interesting insight. Thank you. You're welcome. I tried an experiment of my own. earlier this, well, I guess the end of last year, I was realizing that I just wasn't happy with having money in my life, and so I started trying to barter for everything that I possibly could. And I started house-sitting, and I was doing work exchange to trade with a community-supported agriculture for a box, and I went to a couple workshops by trading tools and labor and things like that. And it was, I know that most people's lifestyles can't do that to any extreme level, but I think that trying to go back to doing some barter and making a point of sharing and trading with people and interacting can be very meaningful.

[47:18]

And in case anybody doesn't know, Berkeley has a, there's something called BREDS, Berkeley Regional Exchange and Development, and it's a barter and exchange system you can get into the little mail that goes out and say what you want, what you can offer. It's a wonderful new community resource for you to stay. So, just so, you know, if anybody wants more information, you can reach me up there. That's great. I think you can untag your paper, we don't have any more time. Okay, so we've run out of time. When that lady was talking about being part of a foundation, I think what it brought back up for me was the deep impulse that our society and our culture and maybe our own selfish nature

[48:27]

How deeply true it is that the path of emancipation is deeply supported by generosity. And I know Mei Li has many worthy, engaged Buddhist projects that she has developed and is involved in. And I think that's an important ingredient. You know, we can play with the dollar bill, but to into the world of suffering with our bodhisattva vow and bring emancipation through it is exquisitely powerful both to whatever extent we can alleviate the suffering and in enhancing our mutual welfare in supporting our mutual practice So, yeah, they give it a plug.

[49:40]

And if you're in San Francisco, you can come by pastry, because we and I have similar programs. Thank you very much.

[49:48]

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