Because I ride a bicycle a lot lately. So, I have really only two things to say. I'm going to tell it to you now. And if I have to just stop when it says stop, I'll stop and you'll have already everything I've had to say for the night. Which is two things. One is, in my opinion, I don't know, you know, you don't have to agree if you don't want to. It really is important to sit Zazen. That's number one. We have to sit. And number two is the reason why we have to sit. The reason why we have to sit, if any of you are listening at all to the radio or, you know, can you hear me?

[01:08]

Okay. To the radio or to, if you're unlucky enough to have a TV, which I do, the news, you will know that what's happening in the world today is... I don't even have words to say. It just seems to me so completely... Help me. Insane came to mind, but this is us, you know. Unspeakable maybe, too much, you know. I mean, disappointing is good, you know. Enough already, you know. But the second reason is that the reason, also in my opinion, you don't have to agree, but I'm backed by a lineage that we happen to belong to.

[02:11]

So... Is because of a sense of separation. And it's so painful. It hurts so much. At every single level. In the world, you know, world-world. And then in the United States, with this children episode, which I'll tell you about if you don't know. And then even closer to home, I'll tell you a story about a young man, Dexter, I met the other day. And then in our own personal lives, this yearning to be connected, to be one with, you know, to understand how deeply we are really... I don't want to get too soppy, but we are the heart, you know, we really are.

[03:12]

And our hearts are open all the time. And the only reason we can't behave that way is because we're protected. We're afraid, and we want, we grasp. And that's all I have to say. And the reason, therefore, the reason to sit is because as we do zazen... Well, you know... There are many ways to say what I want to say. So what should I say? If we practice, if we do a practice, which in our lineage we really don't, we do nothing, that's our practice. Our practice is to do nothing at all. And in fact, that's the most effective, it turns out, way to chip away at this sense of separation, which is the ego.

[04:18]

Okay? We do nothing, that's the recommended zazen. And it turns out that when you sit, you can actually see, because we are this awareness, you can see the mind, the attachment to this mind of separation. But when the mind is quiet, just that much, when the mind is quiet, a natural connectedness, a sense of connectedness does appear. And many other things, you know, seeing through conceptual, you know, being bound to conceptuality, many, many things, you know. It all happens because you're sitting there watching the whole thing. So, of course, whatever understanding that we talk about in Buddhism will come, will be there, because Buddhism is actually the study of, what should we say,

[05:29]

life, you know, the big thing that we are. So now I'll tell you the story. I'm feeling, holding back of these words because we hear them so often, and right now, to my own ears, they sound even, I don't even want to hear them anymore, you know. I can't even read, I'm having a lot of difficulty studying, thank God I'm riding my bicycle. But, anyway, sometimes, you know, the words of Buddhism get tiring, get tiresome, and we have to find new ways of sharing or encouraging each other, simply to keep going with being awake.

[06:35]

And if we just do that long enough, we chip away, little bit by little bit, we chip away at our sense of separation, we chip away at the ego. The other night, Monday night, I went to a shiso ceremony, Imola shiso ceremony, she's been practicing here for twenty-six some years. She lives at Green Gulch, and it was a beautiful thing. Anybody here go? No? It was really good, it was really good. I know her for a really long time, and the both of us, one time I remember we were sitting on a hill at Tassajara, it was the summer time, it was very hot, and the hill was dry grass, yellow, you know, how it happens in California. It was dry grass, and we were sitting talking about failed relationships, actually,

[07:41]

hers and mine, and it was about the same person, so, we were, right away, we were kind of bonded, right away. But the other thing that we talked about, that we bonded about, was that we were both desperate to be enlightened. And I do mean desperate. And the thing that was, for both of us, for years and years and years, the most difficult thing, was doubt. We were both really good at doubt. I'm terrific at doubt. I know a lot about it. And even a few years ago, as we were talking, she would sort of denigrate her own understanding, and we would take turns kind of supporting each other, sort of. But underneath it, her path and my path kind of diverged.

[08:45]

I became a priest, and she remained a layperson, and is very much into work practice, and so on and so forth. It's not really a different path, but it looked different. And many other things in our lives that are quite different. And we hadn't talked so much over the past few years, so I really didn't know. I thought doubt was still happening. And so last night, when she did her ceremony, I was just... How did I feel? I felt gratitude, tremendous gratitude to see this flower, this understanding, really understanding. After all this time, why didn't I talk about that? No idea.

[09:47]

Yesterday was an incredible day for me. I'm going to share it with you. I woke up in the morning and I talked to some people, which I like doing. I try my best. Sometimes I make mistakes, but I do try. And then there was breakfast, staff meeting. Why was it such a big day for me? I saw Clinton on the TV. And yesterday was the first day over the TV that it was news story that in Colorado, in Littleton, Colorado, in a school called Columbine, thank you, in a school called Columbine, two young men, one 17 and one 18 years old,

[10:50]

made, over months, made bombs, pipe bombs and things like that, learning how to do it over the Internet, that kind of information is available, and had guns, numbers of guns, just like a TV show, or just like one of these video games, or just like the war we're doing. And they went to school and they shot people who they felt had basically ostracized them, or, anyway, made them feel alone and separate, and killed a number of people, young people. So I heard, first of all, that's one thing, and then I heard Clinton giving a very nice talk addressing what had just happened.

[11:59]

And then he said a sentence that I thought just blew me away. He said, and we should teach our children to settle differences without violence. And I thought, wait a minute, what is wrong with this picture? I just couldn't, it didn't compute. I couldn't compute. What are we doing? So, to me, it was about separation. The whole thing was about separation. Clinton's complete separation between what he's doing, and the Serbs, and everybody else, and us at the level that we do our violence at. It's close, it's not far away.

[13:05]

And he had it very neatly compartmentalized. This was happening over here, and this was happening over here, and somehow or another the connections weren't being made. I couldn't believe it. Anyway. And then I met a young person like that. Later on in the evening, I was shopping, and I came out of the shopping store. I was buying Recharge, for those of you who train. This is new to me, so I'm enjoying all this stuff. Recharge is a drink where you get electrolytes back, so you don't faint while you're riding a bicycle. It's very important, because it happened to me once. It was really impressive. Get going, dear, come on, more. So, this young man's name, he was 19 years old. He looked 15 to me. He was 19 years old, and his name was Dexter.

[14:08]

Isn't that a great name for a young man, Dexter? He had a dog, and his dog's name was Big Mama. And I think she was like a pit bull. I was almost a little scared of her. I was not afraid of Dexter. Dexter was begging outside of the grocery store, and I stopped to give him some money. And just as I was kind of reaching in to get some money and stuff like that, a man on the other side of Dexter had a can of dog food and gave Dexter the dog food for the dog. And during that time, Dexter and I had a chance to sort of meet. It just happened by accident. And we started talking. And so I asked him, you know, well, what do you want the money for anyway?

[15:13]

And he said, well, I'm going to buy a drink. And I said, thank you for being honest. And then I said, I don't want to give you the money, but I'll take you for dinner. He said, fine. I said, where do you want to go? And he said, KFC. I was aghast, but I took him anyway. And we went over here, and he was in holy clothes. And I don't mean these kind. You know, he was on the street since he was 15, and he's an alcoholic. And he's an alcoholic, and he likes drinking. So what was I to say, you know? What's a person to do? So I just sat with him while he had his dinner.

[16:20]

And he ate his dinner with his fingers, kind of slopped the whole thing sort of into his mouth. And he ate all of it. He ate it like he was just sucking the whole thing down. He was hungry. And then I asked him, well, if you had a chance to ask somebody older than you were who had lived a certain amount of time and might have a certain amount of life experience, what would you ask them? Tricky, didn't you think? And he said, I would ask them, what's it like to have children? And I said, I have no idea. So by that time we were getting to know each other a little bit. And then I asked him where he wanted to go,

[17:24]

and he wanted to go to be dropped off at a, I think it was a bar down on Haight, the round tree or the hitch post or something like that, up there, to see a friend. So I took him and dropped him there. And just before I dropped him out of the car, I was feeling a little bit affectionate anyway toward him. He was only 19. I'm 55 for anybody who's 19. So I took off his cap on his head and I almost started hitting him gently. And I said to him, you're good, you're good. You're not bad. You're good. Because, you know, underneath it, he hates himself. He said, so. I said, you're good, you're good. You're not bad. He doesn't have a family, and his parents were drug addicts and abandoned him. And of course, he thinks he's a piece of shit. So I rode him by here.

[18:33]

I told him I lived here, just in case sometime when he's 30 or something, he'll remember there's a place he can go to sit and work through his karma. So it's almost time to go. I've told you some stories, but really what I wanted to say was, you know, all this stuff, greed and hate, is based on delusion, the delusion of separation. And we address it by sitting Zazen. Now, this is the more important part. In Time magazine, there's a great Time magazine which has Star Wars on the cover. Are we all going to see Star Wars? Are you not going to see Star Wars? You don't know? You don't care?

[19:35]

My God. How will you know what to talk about with people soon? Anyway, I'm going to go see Star Wars. I'm kind of looking forward to it now. So in the Time magazine, Lucas, what's Lucas' first name? George Lucas was talking with Bill Moyers about the great myths of the Star Wars movie. You know what I mean by myths? Myths, is that right? Myths? You know, the Greek, yeah, the Greek myths, the great myths, right, myths. What a weird... What a strange word. Try it, myths. So, as you know, in Star Wars, as in life, there's a dark side and a light side.

[20:40]

Now, just to be dharmically correct, you know, that's dualistic, right? And our way is beyond the dark side or the light side, okay? However, in Star Wars, there's a dark side and a light side. Mr. Lucas is explaining that the light side is the side of compassion and the dark side is the side of greed. Pretty good so far, huh? He says greed is evil when we... Okay, and then he says there's a guy in the new Star Wars called... What's it called, the new one? The Phantom Menace. The Phantom Menace has a character in it called Darth Maul. He's the really bad one, and I think he's the one that made Darth Vader bad on the dark side.

[21:45]

See, Darth Vader, Darth Maul, okay? So this is a quote from George Lucas. The issue of greed, the dark side, of getting things, like Kosovo for Milosevic, of owning things, of not being able to let go of things, hurts, ideas, people, like when we possess our partner in a relationship, is the opposite of compassion. That is, of not thinking of yourself all the time. These are the two sides. This is still a quote from him. It's the simplest part of a complex cosmic structure beyond duality of good and bad, okay?

[22:50]

Moyer says then, how do you get to the dark side? How did Darth Vader get to the dark side? And Lucas says, I think it comes out of a rationale of doing certain things and denying to yourself, like Clinton, you're actually doing them. Now this is the key. If people really sat down, and honestly looked at themselves, and the consequences of their actions, they would try to live their lives a lot differently. So, that's my talk for tonight. I'm sure that you all are doing your best.

[23:55]

We all are really trying our hardest. Even people who are doing things that hurt other people, they're doing their best in a way too. It's all their conditioned situation. They're not like in the front of time, it says, Milosevic, you know, the face of evil. That was really kind of unkind, I thought. Too much pushing him away, you know? But his behavior, you know, our behavior, right? So, my suggestion is basically, sit, please, or at least stop in your life, and look. See if when we're feeling separate, that we notice that,

[24:58]

and that instead of behaving on the way to separation, we try to kind of let that go. Just let it go. And then if we can, we can behave toward connectedness, you know? And then maybe something. Okay. May our intention...

[25:32]

@Text_v004
@Score_JJ