I vow to chase the truth of that which does us worse. Good morning. Good morning. We'll see if we talk how people talk about things, not that they understand, but that they know a lot about because they had a lot of difficulty with it. So that's how one gets, in this field anyway, to be an expert. Zen teachers, I'm told, teach, talk about things to explain it to themselves, and not because they understand it so well. What I'd like to talk about today is pleasure. And it's an unconventional topic for Zen talk.

[01:05]

But we used to have a verse that we chanted at tea time in Tassajara that I was very fond of. It went, now as I take food and drink, I vow with all sentient beings to partake of the pleasure in Zen and to fully enjoy the Dharma. I had a hard time understanding this at Tassajara, especially at four o'clock on an afternoon when it was 112 and we had been working in the sun and we're going to work in the sun some more and then go back in the zendo where it was just baking. But I always loved the verse and it went into disrepute. sometime in the 70s and was replaced with a verse that went, now as I take food and drink, no, we pay homage to the three treasures and are thankful for this food, the work of many people, and the suffering of other forms of life.

[02:21]

And that's a nice verse too. But the emphasis is sort of more serious or more somber or something. Well, last weekend I went to a conference in San Francisco called Healthy Pleasures and this was a scientific meeting with a whole day of papers given by medical and psychological researchers on pleasure. There were lots of scientific studies reported on the benefits of good food, good friends, and good sex.

[03:26]

In some of the research, exceptionally healthy people were studied. People who were over 65, who were happy, successful, and in much better shape, both physically and mentally, than most of their peers. And people were studied who had done particularly well with very serious illnesses. the long and short of what was found about these people was that by and large most of them didn't follow the rules of what modern medicine says we should do about diet and exercise and all that stuff. They did what they enjoyed.

[04:28]

They ate what they enjoyed. They did work that they enjoyed and they had relationships that they enjoyed. Some other researchers trying to understand at some scientific level what all this might be about have been studying the neurophysiological aspects of all this. and have found that the nervous system and the immune system are very closely connected and talk to each other. And this is probably not news to a lot of you who read the newspaper, but actually only 15 or 20 years ago, probably 20 years ago, when most of the doctors who were presenting these papers went to medical school,

[05:30]

it was thought that the nervous system and the immune system were completely separate and didn't talk to one another. And now they actually can see the receptors in the immune system for nervous system information. And they actually understand a lot about the chemistry of that. And what it all means is that what we take in through our nervous system and all the processes of our nervous system influence and are influenced by our immune system. So all this stuff about, you know, positive thinking and getting better and preventing illness isn't totally without foundation. Exactly how it works is not at all understood and it's not as simple as we'd like to think. And one of the reasons that I was that I went to this conference is that I work with cancer patients who are very interested in how they can help themselves to get well by the physical and mental activities that they do.

[06:53]

But, and most of my cancer patients were more familiar than I with a lot of this research. It was all very interesting, but I kept asking myself, why in this hedonistic culture of ours do we need a conference on pleasure, on sensual pleasure, the benefits of sensuality? We're bombarded all the time with the benefits of sensuality, and it seemed somehow odd to me. And in fact, one of the presenters commented on the irony of 500 people sitting in hard pews. The conference was given in the First Congregational Church, which is right out of 18th century New England, with the original wooden pews.

[07:56]

on a beautiful Saturday listening to the benefits of having a good time. Why do we just all go to the park? One of the things they talked about neurophysiologically is how it is that it's so hard for us to in fact have a good time in spite of all the pleasures that our society offers us is understood by brain researchers as that the brain is, the human brain is not designed to take in what's happening. It's too much. The nervous system is too sensitive and one of the functions of the brain is to screen out most of what's happening so that we can deal with what we need to do for survival.

[08:58]

And like other animals, we were designed for survival. So the brain pays attention to what's new in its environment. The brain makes patterns out of things, doesn't take in everything, but selectively takes in information. And as we grow up, from infancy, we gradually make sense of all the sensory input, make some sort of sense, some sort of pattern, and we know that, you know, that's a tree, and this is mom, and this is somebody else, and we screen out a lot of the extraneous information. And while this is very beneficial for survival, in the sense that we can just be calm in the forest and our brain will immediately pick up if a wild animal crosses our path, if it's a danger, and will disregard something else.

[10:14]

In Buddhist terms, it's not so adaptive because Our habits of mind limit our experience and limit our pleasure. What you just heard or what you just thought influence very much, in fact, almost determine the next thought. And it takes something extraordinary out of the pattern of your usual thoughts and experiences to register as something new. Buddha also observed this a long time ago and he called it dependent origination. Buddha observed that ignorance leads to action, action leads to consciousness, consciousness leads to name and form, name and form leads to the six entrances which means our senses and

[11:24]

thinking, which leads to contact, which leads to sensation, desire, then clinging, existence, which leads to birth, which leads to old age and death and grief and lamentation and suffering and, you know, all that stuff. And each of these links of the causation of suffering, which we all know is the opposite of pleasure, can be examined closely. and a lot of Buddhist practices are in fact the examination of these different links. Because the links in the wheel of causation of suffering are like a vicious circle, and you know you can break into a vicious cycle anywhere. So you can pay attention to desire, and you can break into the chain there. You can pay attention to consciousness, and you can break into the chain there. In Buddhist psychology, there are various levels of consciousness, and feelings and perceptions, impulses, all of those things exist on different levels.

[12:40]

So there's a level of potential or the seed form, and that's our capacity for something. And then there's the manifest level. It's what we actually do. So we have a capacity to smile. And we learn to smile. It's one of the first things we learn as babies, to smile. But as Thich Nhat Hanh points out, if we don't practice smiling, if we don't smile for 20 years, then our smiling gets very weak. it's you haven't manifested. So it gets weaker and weaker. And if you smile a lot, it gets stronger and stronger. What you manifest feeds your potential as your potential feeds what you can manifest.

[13:44]

What we receive in the way of smiles or frowns falls to the bottom of our consciousness and resonates with similar stuff that's there, which creates more potential for whatever it is. So whatever occupies your conscious mind will tend to plant seeds of the same nature. And it tends to plant seeds of the same nature at all the various levels. And these seeds influence and transform each other. So Thich Nhat Hanh says, if your smiling seeds become too weak, then they have a hard time offering you a smile. And they get strong through practice. And what he means is by practice of smiling. Just like your legs get strong.

[14:52]

by the practice of bicycle riding. And that was exactly the message of the brain researchers at the conference, that positive experiences build on each other and build certain kinds of connections in the nervous system and in the immune system which reinforce each other. And the same is true negative input. And this is exactly what Buddha also observed. And his recommendation was to annihilate, get rid of the bad input, so as to get rid of the bad output. So if you annihilate ignorance, you annihilate action.

[15:56]

If you annihilate action, you annihilate consciousness. Annihilation of consciousness leads to annihilation of name and form, which leads to annihilation of the six entrances of contact, sensation, the annihilation of desire, the annihilation of clinging, the annihilation of existence, birth, old age, and death. This teaching is very wise, but we tend not to understand it. And it's tended to give rise in Zen students to the idea that since all this talk that all this talk of annihilation means that sensual pleasure and Buddhist practice are mutually contradictory. And I think that this is a fundamental misunderstanding. Look at the smile on the King Herod's face.

[16:58]

I think that our fundamental misunderstanding is the product of getting to the end of the chain having misunderstood the first link. And remember that each thought conditions the next. So whatever you start with, it's a circle, but wherever you start, it builds on that. So the first link is ignorance. So what's ignorance? If you're ignorant, you're not educated, right? We're all educated, we all went to school. We're all ignorant. And one of the reasons we're ignorant is we weren't paying attention. We didn't pay attention. How many people paid attention in school? Weren't you throwing spitballs, sleeping, talking to some other kid, looking out the window? Speakers at my conference, and one of them said that he didn't worry too much about his talks because he knew that there had been a study

[18:19]

It showed that at a big conference, a third of the people would actually pay attention and remember what the speaker said. A third would sort of drift in and out throughout the day. And the other third were engaged in intense sexual fantasies. Bob, of course, is thinking about Mother Teresa, but he wants me to study. That's not fair. So ignorance is what we have the most practice at. Ignorance is what we do all the time. We ignore what comes in. We ignore what our life is trying to teach us. And we get very good at it. We get very good at tuning out. or rejecting or being separate from what our actual experience is.

[19:21]

And oddly enough, ironically enough, mostly we do it because we think that it's going to make us more comfortable. We're protecting ourselves, we think, from something unpleasant. And this ignorance, this ignoring, This lack of attention is what Buddha was saying is the root cause of our suffering. So how can we stop? How can we do something different? How can we stop ignoring this great wisdom that's offered to us every moment? Life is always teaching us, always offering us something, and mostly we don't want it. It's complete perfection, but we don't see it, so we don't want it.

[20:25]

Can we learn to pay attention? Or shall we just continue ignoring it? But usually, I would give you a choice. But today, I'm not going to give you a choice. So I'm going to do something else that's not original with me that was done at the conference. And I'll need some help here. Let's see, Ron, could you start this going over this way? We start getting passed around. Take one and pass it on. And as you pass the bowl, please treat it as if it were your own head. And treat the contents similarly.

[21:32]

And don't unwrap it yet. But notice as something unusual happens in the room. Notice the movements of your mind. What are you thinking? Is it possible just to be open and let the moment unfold? What in the world is going on here? Everybody get one?

[23:23]

OK. Hold your candy just in the palm of your hand and just look at it for a minute. Just look at this form. And just notice what thoughts or associations you have with this very familiar item. Notice your breath. Where is your breath? Now, unwrap it and just smell it. Just smell it. And notice the sound, the smell entering your nose. Does sensation lead to desire? to clinging, to greed. Just smell it.

[24:25]

This is the fragrance of the Dharma. Chocolate, just as it is. Don't add anything or take anything away. Okay, put it in your mouth, if you want to, and pay attention to the sensations in your mouth. It's nothing that has quite the sensation of chocolate in the mouth. So partake of the pleasure in Zen, and fully enjoy the Dharma. your breath.

[25:29]

Is there any hindrance to your attention to this experience? Any ideas about chocolate? Any history that you have with chocolate? Fears? Desire for more or less? Don't worry. Oh dear. I'll go out on a chocolate binge now for sure. I haven't had any chocolate in so many years. Oh my god. Why is she doing this to me? So, anybody like to share their experience of this little moment?

[26:53]

What the chocolate was like or what the ideas were like? The chocolate was Chocolate becomes liquid at body temperature. It's what makes that wonderful, very unique feel of it in the mouth. You notice that space where it got to temperature. I guess after I got the bowl and I had it in my hand, I got everything that I did with the chocolate, I just felt like that was complete. You know, I was just into what I was doing.

[28:07]

And just like having it in my hand, and then looking at it, and smelling it, and having it in my mouth. Just every moment was just complete. And I didn't, I wasn't trying to wish for anything else. It was really interesting. And that kind of surprises me. I don't have that experience too often. Yeah. As I was smelling it, you just happen to be saying that this is the fragrance of dharma, of dharma. And I like that. Then my thought kind of went into that, you know, and kind of shifted from the chocolate to dharma. And as the chocolate was feeling sweet and good in my mouth, and I said, I kept thinking of the dharma, as I said, this is great, this is good feeling. I must come more often to be with the dharma. And then my thought went on to say that this must be like something else and that I should be with good things, you know, things that make you feel good more often.

[29:12]

And that was the message. So you see how the mind takes something and extends it. You have some pleasant feeling and the mind takes it and builds on it. So this is both the good news and the bad news, isn't it? because the mind has this capacity to build and it's the building, it's the process that we want to watch. When the outcome is pleasant, we like that. When the outcome isn't pleasant, we don't like that. Yeah, I understand that building up. Yeah. It seems like that's my style, you know, I can get onto it and build on it. Well, that's what the mind does. It's supposed to do that. It doesn't mean there's something wrong with you. The mind is supposed to do that. And we're just supposed to watch. It doesn't mean really that there's anything wrong with it.

[30:18]

And I think that's important. I wish I could have stayed with the diamond, but instead I was beginning to think about how much I have associated chocolate with love over the years, and I'm struggling with that one. What makes this extra special to me is not just the pure chocolate, but the fact that it's a chocolate kiss. And I've got all kinds of associations with that, and if I see a cookie and it's in the shape of a heart, that makes it really extra special. just all these associations, which I guess are meaningless, but I attached all this meaning to. So that's the stuff that's stored up that is nourished by similar things. For me it was memory. I sort of enjoyed the memory that my mother and my husband are both

[31:20]

tremendous chocolate freaks. So they would eat truffles together. It's a bond between them. And so it's a nice thing for me to remember that my husband has this intense bond with his mother-in-law through chocolate, which is nice. And the second memory was the first sashimi I ever went to at New York's Zando. I thought the food was going to be awful, but I had steeled myself for this. And the first day was, I guess, like everyone's first day. I knew I was going to die. I mean, I was not going to make it through this thing. It was just awful. It started at the middle of the night, and we'd gone all day, and I was in pain and stuff. It was just awful. And we took a break, and we came back about, I guess, 4.30. And I was in total despair, because I knew I wasn't going to be released for another five hours. So we sat down, and in came the coffee, which was beautiful, delicious coffee, accompanied by a chocolate mint.

[32:31]

It was just a perfectly delicious, wonderful chocolate mint. And I thought about the nerds and those very skillful youths. Chocolate for that assignment allowed me to go on. I was just thinking about how smart those people were. You know, in the Lotus Sutra, Buddha says that enlightenment is like that. That an experience of an enlightenment experience is like our reward for a day's work. And it's like our meal at the end of the day with a paycheck at the end of the week. And you know, you can't live on it. But it's that reward that kind of keeps us going.

[33:34]

They suck us in. sugar, before you even ingest the substance, your energy is already up there.

[34:40]

That's really incredible. That's really a power suggestion. The other thing was, I was really carried away by the sound of everybody unwrapping, unwrapping the kiss. There was this, you were saying, You were suggesting something else, and as you were suggesting it, all I could do was listen to the sound of this very delicate, silvery crinkling. It was a beautiful sound, because everybody was doing it exactly at the same time. Very powerful. I was struck by that, too. And thinking about it, I didn't notice it, the sound at all, at the conference. And I'm sure that it was because it wasn't a quiet group. I find it really interesting that you're all talking about it as an experience completed, but we back here are sitting with two big bowls of chocolate.

[35:46]

Our experience is continuing. What's that like? Somewhat tempting, I would say. It was such a good experience, let's do it again. One thing that occurred to me during your talk was that children are great teachers of pleasure, how to enjoy things. I live with a five-year-old, and it seems like a lot of what I do is I plan things, and I sort of steer us in different directions. I have goals we have to be someplace in now. We should be doing something. And she's constantly insisting on enjoying something that's You know, we have to train them out of that in order to get them to school on time. Get them to bed on time so they can get to school on time. Exactly. That's the role. But even while I'm playing that role, which I do have to play,

[36:50]

See, that's what's wonderful. He can do both. He can really... She's got me eating candy a lot, too. Kids are smarter than you think. Well, as a person who's never been able to eat only one piece of chocolate, I was surprised that it seemed very complete that I had this one piece. And my thoughts didn't, even when you made the statement about, I'm going to go out and binge on chocolate, I didn't feel that I was. And looking at it, I was just kind of interested in how it looked in my hand, and the shape of my hand. I don't know. It was a very different experience for me. Putting it in my mouth, I had one distraction, which was that I put the paper down here, and then I decided that I might forget it. and leave it to Zendo to go ahead and pick it up and put it in my pocket.

[38:06]

But then I got right back. And it was very easy to be totally in the experience of that chocolate in my mouth. But I was surprised, and yet not surprised, knowing myself, that I was so stunned that it disappeared. That I really, I mean, I can understand why I can't eat only one piece of chocolate, because I never allow myself to have that entire experience, which was that it dissolved. And I felt very sad. But I didn't want more chocolate, because somehow that wasn't what we were doing. And I'm very glad that I'm not back there. It taught me something very important. Well, now you've planted a seed. And so you can't tell yourself anymore that you're a person that can only eat one piece of chocolate, because now you are a person who can't eat only one piece of chocolate, and that seed is there.

[39:09]

But what he sees can be filled. You should give yourself more credit. Most Americans have this Christian, Calvinist, puritanical, cultural background, which is a very severe way of life in terms of we should be absolutely excellent, which we can't be normally, and anything less than that, desired, deserves strict censure or discipline. we don't readily avail ourselves to natural pleasures as a culture. Yeah, I think you're right and I think that's part of why it's so hard for us to enjoy one piece of chocolate and why there's this push and pull about pleasure and the tendency to

[40:29]

to get into craving and addiction or asceticism. You know, those are two sides of one coin, overindulgence and asceticism. And they're both based on a sort of difficulty of just being with this thing, this right now. There's some idea about it or craving for it rejection of it, all that stuff that we've been taught. My experience was really different from what I'm hearing, in that I fought it every step of the way. The bull came by, I saw it was chocolate kisses, I thought, now I'm on a diet, I can't, there's bound to be milk, I can't eat dairy. There's bound to be milk, and I thought, well, give it a chance, just take a piece of chocolate. And then he said, smell or hold this chocolate, and I held it and I looked at it and I thought, gee, all this aluminum foil, how decadent it's all being mixed with this chocolate.

[41:40]

And then he said, smell the chocolate, you know, smell the fragrance of the Dharma. I thought, I have a cold, I can't smell nothing. And I was so surprised because I could smell it perfectly, you know. And then I ate it And I thought, I don't even like chocolate. And I felt all the energy in the room, everyone getting all excited. And I thought, oh, I feel totally alienated. Because I don't share this feeling about chocolate, or at least right now. And then when I ate it, I thought, hmm, this is just chocolate. I really have to force myself to open up to the whole experience And now that I've eaten it, I can still taste it. It tastes a little bit sour, I think. And I'm like, I want to go home and brush my teeth. It was just very interesting. I appreciate your sharing that side of it, because I'm sure you're not the only one in the room that had that experience.

[42:43]

Nora? Yeah, thank you for sharing what you did. It was mine. It's really interesting. Yeah, I felt like I got into every part of it. Passing around, I took it, I looked at it, everything just felt... What it did for me was it expanded everything. Everything was really kind of romantic. You know, the fact that I took the chocolate, looked at it, smelled it, and I couldn't get myself to eat it. It just seemed like it was such a There's a wonderful book that I don't have, but it was read to me at this conference. It's Sandra Boynton's book on chocolate. I think you should look for it. I had various mixed thoughts and feelings while I was eating it, but now I'm getting up on

[43:52]

form and emptiness. We started out with this chocolate that was in a very definite form and now it's emptiness. It wasn't emptiness before? No, it's even more apparent to me. And it was a beautiful shape and very Maybe that's just out of familiarity. But the shape was kind of all the same. I mean, everybody's shape was the same. And now, I find that I'm kind of preoccupied with holding the foil and the relationship of the little strip of Hershey Kiss's paper with the foil. And the form is all different now. But it's still beautiful. That's a great mystery, isn't it?

[44:53]

How the form and emptiness are the same thing, and how that, the one and many, are also the same and not the same. I have a question. Could you elaborate a little on, you were talking about the mistake that we make, that we think we should refrain from sensual pleasures, What may not be a mistake that you make, as a Zen student, I think it's a mistake that Zen students make a lot, particularly so-called well-trained Zen students who spend years at a time, you know, getting up at five in the morning every morning without fail all the things that you have to do in order to be able to get up at five in the morning, every morning, and wearing black.

[46:01]

The whole lifestyle of Zen training tends to give us the idea that sensual pleasure isn't okay. Even though our teachers tend to be, the old Japanese teachers who taught us this, were people who could just bust out laughing at a moment's notice. And if you watched them, clearly enjoyed everything. But most of us kind of thought it was because they were enlightened or something and thought we'd get that way if we just held our chin straight enough and didn't move our legs when they hurt.

[47:08]

You mentioned something about addiction. What's the difference between pleasure and when it turns into addiction in a sort of health, say like substance abuse? or sexual addiction, or in this case, food addiction? Well, somehow I think that they're the opposite of each other. You know, it's like pushing something away because you think it's going to hurt you. Pulling something, running after something because you think it's going to make you feel better. it's not being with the present, because addiction always has to do with worrying about where the next one is going to come from. It always has to do with a fear of loss, of abandonment. And so it's always involved in either, you know, if it's love addiction, it's abandoning somebody before they abandon you,

[48:19]

If it's food addiction, it's always going after the next thing, or regretting, which means pushing away what is actually happening. So I think that addiction, like asceticism, has to do with difficulty paying attention. So what would be the difference between somebody who ate one chocolate kiss here today And somebody who ate one chocolate kiss here today went home and ate three bags of chocolate candy. Well, what do you think? I don't know, because you say that you're planting the seed of pleasure. And I don't know what the difference is with that seed run rampant. Okay, so you're confusing the... You can plant a seed of chocolate, or you can plant the seed of pure attention. So it doesn't matter what you're paying attention to.

[49:22]

What you were planting the seed for here, if you were paying full attention to the chocolate, was the seed of paying full attention to whatever it is. If you can pay full attention and really savor and appreciate that, that's the key. What about the aftertaste of the chocolate that lingers? That's this moment. It's not the aftertaste of the chocolate. It's this moment. Then there's the next moment. Each independent. Okay. Thich Nhat Hanh suggests various kinds of ways to plant the seeds of what we want to grow in our mind. One of the things that he suggests is asking people, what's right?

[50:25]

You know, we always say to somebody, what's wrong? He says we should ask ourselves and other people, what's right? And that sounds real unusual. In fact, I'm being trained in a style of psychotherapy that does exactly that. And it's very interesting. to me to ask people, you know, what's going on or how's it going? And very often people say, well, it's actually better. And I'll say, what's better? And they'll tell me nine things that are worse. And I'll say, you said something was better. What's better? And they'll tell me five things that were worse. Well, there was something that was better. What's better? It's very, very, very interesting to try and help people remember what went better and to expand that and figure out how it went better and what contributed to its going better.

[51:35]

Another thing Thich Nhat Hanh suggests is, of course, smiling practice. And he has various smiling practices that you can do. And they're a lot of fun. They're quite a challenge if you're feeling really depressed. One is just to practice a slight smile whenever you think of it. Just not a big grin, but just a slight smile. Another is when you're really mad. before exploding with it, instead of counting to 10, or whatever you do, try smiling, just a half smile, a little smile, just for the space of three breaths. You don't have to count to 10. Just smile for three breaths. And he has a gatha that goes with smiling.

[52:39]

Breathing in, I calm my body. Breathing out, I smile with joy. Dwelling in the present moment, I know this is a wonderful moment. Breathing in, I calm my body. Breathing out, I smile with joy. dwelling in the present moment. I know this moment is complete. Wonderful seems a little extra to me. He recommends helping ourselves pay attention by using gathas like this. You can make them up for various activities. He's made them up for using the telephone and driving the car and opening the refrigerator.

[53:43]

They're all wonderful and you can make up your own to express whatever your intention is. I'd like to go back to the gatha that I started with. Now as I take food and drink, I vow with all sentient beings to partake of the pleasure in Zen and to fully enjoy the Dharma. I think one of the reasons we have trouble with that is that the words Zen and Dharma don't mean much to us, or we have some idea about what that means. So try it this way. I vow with all sentient beings to taste the truth of this very moment. That's Zen. this very moment, and to fully enjoy life just as it is. That's the Dharma, life just as it is.

[54:46]

That's not my translation. Joe Gobeck uses that translation in all the Bhattis and Sutras. So, let's practice together, fully enjoying life as it is, with joy and fellowship, breathing in the life-giving oxygen of reality, and breathing out a smile of true pleasure. Thank you very much.

[55:35]

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