I love to taste the juice of the blood of Tiger Tuss words. Good morning. Good morning. Can you hear me in the back? First of all, Melinda, I took your shoes by accident. I didn't realize. They felt funny walking around in them. In some ways, I don't feel qualified to give a talk, specifically today, because as most of you aren't Sasheen, not everyone, and whereas traditionally, I sit this all five days, I have for many years. This year, my wife and I can't really do that because we have a four-month-old son, and so we're only sitting part of this issue.

[01:10]

And I'm sitting today and tomorrow, and Marie, my wife, sat yesterday, and we're both gonna sit tomorrow. My sister's gonna babysit Sam, my son. But in any case, I feel awkward actually giving the talk because having sat Sasheen, I know how the energy of being together for a few days is very palpable and powerful. And so to come in on the fourth day and sort of be up here and give a talk feels funny. So I just wanted to tell everyone Sasheen. And then there's also something else I kind of want to say about this form, Taisho, giving a talk, and how it seems a bit precarious form, at least to my mind, a little fraught. In most contexts in our culture where someone gives a talk, they are experts in some field.

[02:15]

And they're talking about some subject matter that they know a lot about, and we're listening to learn about that subject matter. But what's a Dharma talk? I mean, obviously, I could talk about Buddhism in sort of an academic way, but there's this kind of other implied thing about who's ever sitting up here maybe imparting some kind of wisdom. And that feels funny to me and it feels precarious. And because, you know, I look around this room and I see a lot of very mature, very wise people that I learn from all the time. And so why is it me sitting up here and not some of you? And And everyone has different strengths.

[03:18]

Everyone has different blind spots as well. And we can all teach something, I believe. And I think that it's important to remember that Shakyamuni was a person. And we immerse ourselves in Buddhist literature, and it's sometimes, for me, easy to lose sight of it. I remember a shosan one time, a fellow asked a question. He goes, you know, just hit me. Shakyamuni, he's just a guy. He's just a dude. And this is true. He was a person and we're aware of some of his blind sides. For instance, he had trouble fully recognizing females as equal practitioners and had to be sort of pushed to see them that way.

[04:21]

But I think it's important that that we look at, and then we also have the E word, enlightenment, right? And that's fraught too. And so I just wanted to say this sort of to demystify a little bit for myself what it means to sit up here. And I like to look at this as another form, as a kind of ceremony. A ceremony, you know there's that koan, Do non-sentient beings speak the Dharma? Do inanimate objects speak the Dharma? And, you know, my sense is yes, but only if we're listening. If we're present. And so I see this as kind of a form for doing that.

[05:28]

And there's that other koan, for instance, Kyogen, who becomes enlightened. Years of studies, he's big on the books and he knows all the sutras, and he gets frustrated at some point and spends his time sweeping the grounds at a cemetery, I think. And one day he's enlightened by the sound of the pebble, the crack, the sound of the pebble hitting bamboo when he was sweeping the ground. And so maybe that's what we're doing. If, I'm going on too long about this, but if we hear something that Sojin says, that I say, that maybe feels like realization, right?

[06:33]

That realization is ours. In some fundamental way, it's solely ours. It's not wisdom being imparted to us or given to us. The fact that we realize something is completely our own wisdom that we already have, in a sense, and is now being recognized. And maybe it's something that we knew and forgot, or maybe like Kyogen, you know, We learn all the time, just being, we're taking stuff in. And our practice, I think, is about finding ways to be, to let that stuff come in, open up the channels. And listening, deep listening, being present to me talking or anyone talking, a pebble sitting up here. Or my son Sam, if we put him on the seat. It's all the same in a way. Okay.

[07:39]

That was kind of a preface. What I really want to talk about is my practice now and my experience of being a parent and being a father. And what does it mean to practice now that I can't sit five days of shins? I don't sit as much zazen. And my life is dramatically different. In Zen mind, beginner's mind, there's a lot of places where Suzuki Roshi says that all activity is Zazen. In some way, all activity is Zazen. What does he mean by that? But that is actually something that I believe and that I'm experiencing now in my practice with Sam and experiencing what it's like to practice with Sam, my son.

[08:42]

Because in a lot of ways, it's completely different than coming here and sitting Zazen. But in fundamental ways, it's the same. My practice is waking up to the present moment. Waking up to my life. Every moment. And responding. Including everything. not reacting from my habit self, but reacting from some place that maybe I have learned or was best able to learn through Zazen. And so, maybe I'm going to try to describe that practice, that activity, that experience with Sam. First of all, well, let me say, I am really tired.

[09:53]

I am so tired. Deep tired. You know, practicing with Sam is like another kind of sashimi. You know, instead of sitting on the cushion and then the bell, you hear the bell and you go to the next activity. It's like you're with Sam and then the next thing happens. It's either he's crying or he's got a poopy diaper or he's giggling and you get to play with him and give him tummy trumpets and kisses, back of his head. You know, there's all kinds of good stuff. Or he's hungry. He needs a change of clothes. But it feels a lot like sashimi because there's a container there that's very intense and requires a lot of effort, a lot of focus.

[11:00]

And it really feels remarkably similar. It feels different in some ways too, and I'll try to describe that. Well, one thing about Sam is he's four months old, so he's past the point where in the beginning he was kind of like a biological, just purely kind of a physical biological entity with needs, physical needs. He's either hungry. or he's pooping, or he's cold. I mean, actually, often you don't know what's going on with him, and that's still the case, and that's part of the practice, actually. But it was clear that his, well, it was somewhat clear, insofar as I'm able to tell from the outside, that his experience was kind of purely instinctual, just what was happening to him as a physical, biological being in the moment.

[12:09]

And now, at four months, there's still that part, but I don't think it's before his sense of self has arisen, the beginning and the end. But yet, he's not just solely kind of an instinctual responding biological thing. He's very interactive. He's completely relational. He just loves to be with you. He loves to be in the world. And consequently, a lot of his suffering has started as well. I mean, there's the suffering of being uncomfortable because he's hungry, for instance, which was there from the beginning. And that's still there. But now there's suffering because he wants things. And he doesn't want it because he's got a self.

[13:14]

He wants it because it feels good. It feels good to be tuned into me or his mother. It feels good to be just you know, playing with stuff and sticking stuff in his mouth. Man, he likes to do that. And so when he's not able to do that or something interferes with his capability of doing that, he gets upset. He gets upset. He suffers. He cries. So anyway, but this is a very He's teaching me because he's demonstrating in this moment of his development kind of a way that we're trying to be. Which is in the moment. He's completely in the moment. And he's completely relational. And he has no self. In a pretty profound way, at this point, he has no self. And so watching him and experiencing him is quite a profound gift because he can go from crying to giggling madly in like a microsecond.

[14:25]

And it's all, it's the clouds, sun-faced Buddha, moon-faced Buddha. Man, this is Sam right now. And so that's very inspiring in a way. Because our practice is to kind of recover that You know, not to regress, but to recover that modality at the same time that we inhabit our adult being. Being with Sam, going back to some more explicit practice, it is Shikantaza. To be with Sam, you just have to be with Sam. And he knows when you're not. If you're trying to do two things at once, he knows it. He says, you're not paying attention to me, or you're not, you know, you're trying to check your email while you hold me, and this is not acceptable.

[15:35]

So, you know, and so there's his suffering in that moment, but it's telling me that actually I'm suffering because I'm neither checking my email or being with him, actually. And to be with him when I'm fully with him, Shikan Paza, just being with him, just doing, then I feel whole. I feel completely connected. Who has the clock? Do you, Richard? Meryl, can you tell me when it's like 5 to 11? Sure. Okay. We need to check your answer. Yeah. Some of this stuff I don't want to spend too much time on because they're obvious.

[16:46]

Sam is completely dependent on us, his mother and I. And he is interdependence incarnate. He sort of can't exist outside the context of his relationships. and his relationships to us. And this is true of us, too. And it's hard to realize about us, but with Sam it's very clear. Well, to sort of expand on that a bit, it's also clear ... Maria and I and Sam were trying to do this thing together, right? And it would have been easier, I would have thought it would have been easy to kind of see my relationship with him or experience it as a, like that tug, let's say when I'm trying to do something else and he wants attention.

[17:53]

That it would be easy to see that as a kind of a dualistic conflict. That there are my needs and his needs and they're in conflict. But the way that we end up practicing with him and each other, Marie and I, it's more, it's not like that. It's not our needs versus his needs. It's our needs together. To really make it work with Sam, we need to kind of take in the whole thing. We're like a unit. So we are interdependent as well. And it doesn't work if I start thinking about it in terms of each individual. And maybe I'll get to like an example later, because it's kind of hard. That seemed abstract the way I put it. But because there's all, it's hard, it's actually, it's hard, it's hard,

[18:59]

Being a parent, it is hard. And there's always suffering. The picture always includes suffering. The Four Noble Truths are right. It's right there. And so, part of the picture is including that suffering. And I'll talk about that more. Some other things that I'm experiencing about this, one thing is the intensity, the visceralness of my love and attachment to Sam. You know, before this happened, I could kind of speculate and conjecture what the logistics of our life would be like, you know? But I was not prepared for this, this thing coming from down here, this connection with him.

[20:04]

It is really powerful. And I don't think for me that it's because, obviously we're hardwired in a lot of ways to be like that, right? Because as we've evolved as species, we've got to take care of our young. But I don't think for me, I don't think it's because he's like my genetic legacy. I think if someone handed me Sam and I knew that he was not related to me at all, from day one, it would feel the same way. There is something about his helplessness, his complete dependence on you, and just his being, his physical, visceral being that is, it just gets you. It just pulls you. So taking care of him, it does bring me out of myself in a way.

[21:13]

My remaining proclivity, even through years and years of practice, to be a little self-absorbed sometimes. Because there's no time for that and his needs are so profound. But actually something else comes too and that is that in my attachment to him, I use that word, it's very easy for me to feel like I'm failing when he's upset. I've noticed that my proclivity for self-judgment has gotten worse, or more of a point of practice with Sam. Because when he is unhappy, I really feel like it's my fault. And I have to deal with that constantly. And it's hard. There is something about when he is unhappy and he is crying, especially in the middle of the night when you haven't had any sleep, and he hasn't, you know, that I just, oh my God, I'm really, I'm hanging by a thread.

[22:29]

And this is where the rubber meets the road for my practice, because this is where it's hard, as Dogen put it, to take that backwards step. and then include everything, to step back from that judgmental mind and then feel, to drop body and mind and to be there, to be with everything that's going on and sort of look at what's happening from a place of emptiness. One thing I've been reminded of, there's one difference in the two Sashins, you know, like the Sashin that we're having in the Sashin with Sam. I really felt, I feel with formal practice, Zazen practice, that I'm cultivating a kind of spaciousness.

[23:40]

You know, my life feels roomy. Spacious. That's hard to feel with Sam because his needs are so intense and that connection is so intense. It's hard to feel that way. So it's harder practice in a way. And it made me think of the koan, which I don't know really where it comes from, but you read about it all the time, about the monk This old woman sends her beautiful granddaughter, is it? 16-year-old granddaughter to this monk who's been living on a mountain in a hut for years. And this old woman has supported this monk for many years. And one day as a test, she sends her beautiful 16-year-old granddaughter to this monk. And this 16-year-old girl comes on to him and starts trying to seduce him. And he says, no, I can't, I actually... When he says... Any warmth, he's referring to himself.

[25:06]

He can't respond to her passion. And this incenses the old woman. When the granddaughter comes back and says, this is what happened, he didn't respond to my seduction at all. He just stayed there and said he was cold and like a dead root. And the woman was so incensed she burned his hut down. Cohen, that's not easy to understand. But I think I have some kind of understanding, it might not be the correct one now, about how A certain kind of practice where the spaciousness becomes complacence or a kind of deadening, which can happen, and it's happened to me in periods of my practice, is not real practice. It's not what we're trying. And Sam knows this very well, because you can't respond to him with that.

[26:12]

So in preparing this talk, I remembered, also it's interesting, the five-day session last year, I was sitting where Karen was, I was head student. And it was at the end of the session that Maria and I announced that we were expecting. So it's kind of nice to talk about this a year later like this. But anyway, during that sashin, I gave a talk about another koan, which I think applies here as well. It's the one, I could read it, I guess. It is as though you were up in a tree hanging from a branch with your teeth. Your hands and feet can't touch any branch. Someone appears beneath the tree and asks, what is the meaning of Bodhidharma's coming from the West? If you do not answer, you evade your responsibility.

[27:20]

If you do answer, you lose your life. It's not someone asking, is Bodhidharma coming from the West? It's Sam. It's Sam crying. It's Sam asking for something. And I really like this koan a lot because it's so easy to start to look at it as, well, what do you do? You let go of the tree? But I don't think the koan is really so much about that. It's about capturing the feeling of being in the tree. no matter what you do, there's going to be suffering. That the answer is not obvious, and that you have to stay, and that you have to wake up to being in that tree every moment.

[28:30]

Sam is a wonderful child, and he's been actually pretty pretty easy on us. The one sort of Achilles heel we've had or the difficulty has been around sleeping. I think because, you know, He's at the stage now where he loves to be awake and in the world and doing stuff. But I think if he has a temperament that we're able to ascertain, it's that he's a pretty alert kind of kid. So he has not liked sleeping, and he has fought sleeping. You know, most children have to learn how to sleep. It's kind of odd. And so you have to develop routines and rituals that help them learn how to sleep. It's been very difficult for Sam. And for many weeks, he would wake up every two hours at night and get us up. And this was past the point, and usually the thing that would help him go back to sleep was breastfeeding.

[29:40]

So this was very hard on Marie. Very hard on Marie. I woke up too, just so you know. But, you know, he was past the point at which he really, I mean, if you believed everything we read and what our pediatrician said, he didn't need to eat every two hours. We had to find a way to soothe him and calm him that would get him to last longer. And this was not easy to do. Oh, by the way, you know, we read a lot about, you know, parenting, and everybody's got an opinion, and they all make you feel like you're doing it wrong. That's one thing. Anyway, so at some point, Marie and I decided that, well, the background, he was sleeping in our bed for the first couple months. And then we transitioned him to a crib in an adjoining room. And that seemed to work actually pretty well.

[30:42]

We realized that maybe we were keeping him up, that the stimulation of being in the bed was a little too much. And so we went through a good couple weeks where he was sleeping longer. But then it seemed to regress, and he was getting up and screaming every couple hours, and we'd try to suit him. So the solution we found was that we were gonna take shifts, and that one of us would sleep in that room, on the floor on a futon, and that way at least one of us could get some sleep, right? And that we would take on the task of trying to find a way to soothe Sam and help him learn how to sleep. And this was hard. And it's still going on to a certain extent. And there was one night where, and you know, that he was up every 45 minutes screaming and I was in there. And it's so hard to communicate how wrenching it is when Sam is screaming and really unhappy.

[31:57]

And he's to the point now where when he sees you in the crib, he's got that look like, He just wants, he's looking at you like, and he holds his arms up, like, pick me up, pick me up and hold me and pick, make this all go away. He could do it really well. And so, you know, I would go there and I'd try to suit, and the thing is, you try not to pick him up. You know, it's like the gradations. You don't want him to eat so he can sleep. You don't want to comfort him with feeding, because that creates one problem. And you don't want to have to pick him up every time, because then to get him back to sleep, you have to pick him up every time. So you try to soothe him in the crib, and he's looking up with those eyes. And it's just not working. Or I get him down for a little while, and then I go back and lay on the floor. And like 10 minutes later, and I was just

[32:57]

I was crying, and I didn't know how to deal. And then I thought of this course, because this is what it was like. There was nothing that, well, I had to respond. It's true, I had to respond, but it's either keep trying to comfort him, let him cry, wake up Marie and have her feed him, Um, and then, you know, so I'm trying to take the step back and see it all and then realizing, you know, this is just, you know, the, you know, the hundredth time in a sequence of thousands of times where Sam is going to be suffering. And many of those times I have to choose that maybe it's best that he suffer. And I say, and I realize, I have to take that backwards step.

[34:04]

And it's still hard. It's just, I think about it. It's very hard. It's much harder than my own suffering on the cushion or any other event I've had. I don't know why. It's really hard. I might say about that are, start to look at, you know, this is the first noble truth. Every moment we wake up, we're in that tree, and it could be the best of all possible moments, but I don't know about you, there's still something there. There's still something there. You can call it suffering, you can call it desire, you can call it dissonance, you can call it alienation.

[35:08]

I don't know if you folks feel that way. It's always there. And I think maybe it's just energy. You know, we're biological, physical, like Sam, we're biological, physical beings. And we take in energy as food, and animated, alive, we Creating energy and maybe the experience of that energy just by itself. You don't have to add anything to that It's kind of a form of suffering Because it's got to go somewhere try to do something with it and So when you feel it and you step back when you're in the tree when you wake up to your life When you wake up to your present moment It's gonna always be like that And that's what we practice with.

[36:17]

When I realized that, when I'm the most, thank you, like feeling the most spacious, When I feel like I am including everything. I should add, I mean, another element that I've been including, and I do include, is the fact that I have to say goodbye to Sam someday. There's no two ways about that. You know, my mother died earlier this year, so I think about, it helps me think about that. It's not a bad thing to think about. You know, hopefully I go first, right? But it's wrenching, it's wrenching, that reality is wrenching. And Sam also, he's gonna, you know, I'm 45 years old, I have no, I'm sitting here today, and I have no idea how I got here. I don't, and I could have not hypothesized what it would feel like.

[37:21]

When I was a kid, all the things, that I've dealt with. Some of you know I've had some hardships. I mean, nothing compared to probably most of the population of the globe. It's not easy. And Sam's got to do it all again by himself. That's another thing, not one, not two. Sam is completely dependent. We're completely interdependent. But his suffering is completely his suffering. and will always be. I think I'll just add one more.

[38:24]

I don't know if I really want to, but there is, you know, there's that suffering I talked about that maybe is just there, you know, but I noticed for myself that even in my most enlightened moments, where I'm able to hold and contain the most, that there's this kind of, in being able to do that, I feel like another kind of sadness emerges. a kind of grief. And then maybe it's the grief of accepting all of it, the grief of that my story, my small self, my habit mind, that it's useless. That grief just becomes part of the equation every moment.

[39:30]

by the Sangha. Many questions? Meryl? have a sense of self. I understand what you're saying, and actually, I agree.

[41:09]

However, I think there's an element of sophistry in that, just a little bit. I think that sometimes we get the idea that if we practice, we won't have pain, and that's not true. That's not the teaching. Well, I know it's not the teaching. I'm not saying it, but we could We can easily get fooled, I think, sometimes, entering practice. Yeah, pain is a better word. And I agree with you. I agree with you. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. Probably 85%. then you can't be adding on that, you know, the extra dollop of ice cream, the maraschino cherries, all this stuff that we do.

[42:15]

I agree, although I don't know. Yes, Linda. You talked about, you know you and Sam are going to have a heart. And so one way of putting the question is, since you know that all of your, everything that's used is going to blow up and then pieces into the universe, right? Just molecules in your, you know, Margaret's mind and anything. And the same for him. Does that affect your sense of love or affection? And the other way of putting it is they step back into a space of emptiness.

[43:19]

In that space of emptiness, is there love? Yeah. Yeah. The one thing I did But I'm reticent to read it because it's kind of a, I don't want to say a difficult poem, but... Go for it. I think that that is love, actually, emptiness. And it doesn't preclude any ideas or any... expressions of affection or passion or kissing or cuddling or anything that we sort of colloquially think of as love. It includes all that.

[44:21]

But to really love Sam, I think one does have to step back into that because you would just be reacting to him all the time. But I'll read the poem. Mary Mocene, a senior practitioner, read it at a Sachine several years ago. It's a Jane Hirshfield poem. And it's called The World Loved by Moonlight. And it parts that a little bit. Moonlight is kind of a symbol for emptiness or Enlightenment in Zen tradition. So you could say the title is the end of the world as loved by emptiness or something. You try.

[45:23]

Eyes. Bricks and stone. Only something heartless could bear the full weight. Do you have a question? At the risk of misquoting, I believe you said suffering does not Yeah, absolutely. I can't actually separate them in some way. My joy ... I chose to talk about my grief in those moments of expansiveness, but they're equal parts joy, euphoria, exhilaration, and they're counterparts in a way.

[46:39]

they're completely dependent on each other. I mean, and as Dogen talks about it a lot, right? When one side is illuminated, the other side is dark. But I think sometimes they're both there. And that I can be sort of acutely aware, it's like a nectar of the sadness and the joy is almost one thing. Yes, Alexander. Like you train yourself in practice. You have to teach a young child to rein it in a little. And he will struggle against that. And what it does to your relationship kind of balances it out a little.

[47:43]

It's no longer, you don't feel so heart vulnerable when He is off, you know, breaking all the rules. You pull him back, but you pull yourself back. And go through years and years of that. It tempers the relationship in a way that makes it terrible. Well, thank you. Actually, that's very helpful. I'm finding it very hard. You know that Suzuki Roshi, that part of Zen Mind Beginner's Mind where he talks about the pasture, and how practice is like extending the pasture. I think I've learned how to do that pretty well for myself, but what you're talking about is I have to help him do that too. And that's hard. Okay, thank you.

[48:50]

Beings are numberless.

[48:57]

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