And hi to the families over in the community room. We can't have the thing we want most in the world. We can't have our first choice. Which is something like to keep the things we like close and the things we don't like far away. There's a big difference in our practice between, oh, I like this, I don't like this, I like this, I don't like this, and this. And even then, this. And there's a lot of reasons. Well, this is a very instinctual part of us. It's sort of, I think about the, you know, like primitive creature, you know, one-celled creature or something that just is sort of moving towards nourishment and away from danger to preserve our life.

[01:38]

So there's a certain life, you need this to stay alive, you need this feature, but we can never have it, we can never achieve it. And it comes up every day, so we need to resolve it every day. There's a lot of reasons why we can't have this. One reason is because we're already connected, everything's already connected to everything in a particular way, which is not in a having kind of way. So everything's connected to everything, but nothing has anything. So we can't get away from the things we don't like that way because we're already completely connected to everything. Another reason that this never works out is because things keep changing and our feelings keep changing so the things themselves can change from things we like into things we don't like and our feelings even if the thing is sort of seems to be staying the same our feelings can change so we thought we liked it so sometimes you can even be in a setup where you seem to have something

[02:57]

And then you decide you don't like that or you seem to have gotten something far away from you and you realize that's actually what you want. So the whole situation is kind of just moving and changing and our feelings are changing and so that's why this sort of instinctive desire to to veer towards the pleasant things and away from the unpleasant things, it just remains unsatisfied for our entire life. We can, however, we can realize our second choice. If we can let go of our first choice, we can realize our second, or I should say, when we can let go of our first choice, we can realize our second choice. And our second choice is something like maybe enlightenment or our bodhisattva vow or something. You might have your own way of wording it. I have my own way of wording it and I want to talk about that later on in my talk.

[04:04]

One reason why I... So sometimes when we, in our practice, we actually talk about the thing I'm talking about as our second choice, as our inmost request, as our deepest intention. And I like that. I like that way of talking about it. I respond to that way of talking about it. It's very moving and encouraging. And the only reason I want to talk about it this other way today is because there's a little bit of a trap there. Because if we don't acknowledge the primacy of this movement, we end up doing the second choice to satisfy the first choice. Subtly, it creeps in there. So you might first, you know, oftentimes when people first sit zazen, they feel kind of a lot of relief. They feel this, like just to bring your attention to the immediate moment and be with what's happening.

[05:09]

There's like, I think a lot of people, not everybody, some people don't like it at all or have negative feelings, but a lot of the time you feel some kind of relief or release there. But as time goes on, if you notice you're getting discouraged with your practice, it's probably because you thought, you didn't think out to start with, but you've lapsed into the idea that it was actually going to address this first thing, the first choice. And so you feel discouraged because it's not doing that, and it's never going to do that. So that's why I just today, for today, I want to talk about it. I want us to recognize the how deep and instinctive this yearning is. And I want to talk about it another way too which maybe seems like a different way to talk about it but I think it's related. And that is that we feel this kind of uneasy emptiness or lack of something.

[06:12]

And it's not like an excruciating feeling but it kind of haunts us. and it comes up in quiet times or in certain situations. So I'm not trying to put words or thoughts in your mouth, but this is how I'm talking about it. I think that many of us feel this, and we feel it as different things. We feel it as we feel unsupported or we feel vulnerable, we feel unsafe. We feel out of control. We feel some people go to, I must be doing something wrong. But there's this sort of, at the center of things, there's this sort of funny, empty feeling that, like I say, it kind of haunts us. And we actually, if we see something that we think is gonna fill that or ease that or relieve that. We want that thing more than anything.

[07:15]

We want that thing very intensely. And we put a lot of, I mean, it can be different things for different people and at different times, you know, recognition, fame, power, money, love, sex, you know, many, many things. But it's not those things themselves, but it's like somehow when I become convinced that that thing is going to meet this thing over here, that's when there's a problem. And that is the feeling that's going to keep coming up all of our life, and we're going to keep having to address it and come to terms with it and engage it. So I was thinking about this talk and this funny idea popped in my mind that our practice in Zazen is like when Odysseus strapped himself to the boat so that he could go past the sirens and hear their song and not

[08:24]

come to doom the way everybody else had. Probably most people know the story. So Odysseus was going on this dangerous journey and he got these instructions from somebody about how to escape these various pitfalls. And one of them is these sirens, these beautiful mermaids probably that have this beautiful voice and sing this wonderful song and they lure sailors to the rocks because they follow the song. And his instruction is to, well, all the other people on his boat, his crew, he stops up their ears with wax so they can't hear it. But then she says, if you want to hear the song, have your man strap you to the mast or to some part of the boat. People can correct me if I'm telling the story wrong. So he does this because he wants to hear it. And when they go past the sirens, he's like, oh, let me go.

[09:27]

Let me go. I must go. But men can't hear him or the sirens. So they sail on through. And that's how he gets through that little one of many, many difficulties that he faces. So I was thinking how Zazen is like. you come in here and you just say, OK, I'm going to stay in the boat no matter what. And one of the interesting things about the story is that no one's trying to rely on sheer willpower to avoid these sirens. Like, just don't try that. That is really a bad idea. You have to do something to strap yourself into the boat. I think when we're here in Zazen, you know, it's incredibly rare that anybody runs out of this endoscreening. Like, you know what I mean? When you think about all the moments in time where someone has wanted to do that and how rare it is, it's because somehow we have allowed, I guess, peer pressure or something to make it like that.

[10:33]

We are strapped in this boat no matter what. And we can expand that to our practice in other ways, like I think in relationship with the teacher and our relationship with each other, sangha, our connections with each other, taking the precepts in public is a way of saying, �I am going to stay in this boat no matter what. I vow to stay in this boat no matter what.� And the boat is simply this moment somehow. I mean, this very moment. The boat is just this place and this time right now. And Suzuki Roshi says, just to stay at this place in this time is our zazen. There is no other zazen. And somehow our practice And you know, when we're sitting, we're open to the world, we're hearing all these siren songs. They're all around us, they're inside of us and outside of us, and we're hearing them, but somehow, in the Zendo, and to the extent that we can in our life, in the context of our practice, we can actually stay in the boat.

[11:47]

You can't do it through sheer willpower, but you can do it. With all of our help together, we can do it. So I wanted to talk about this koan a little bit. I didn't exactly want to talk about the whole koan. I just wanted to tell the story because I feel like it's related. But then there was something in the commentary that I thought was cool, so I decided to read you the whole case. It's case 12 in the Mumon-Kan. I'm using 8 Karoshi's translation. And it's called, Zhui Yan Calls Master. And Zhui Yan is also, I've seen it as Zui Gon, so if you've heard that koan, it may be more familiar, Zui Gon Calls Master.

[12:54]

The priest, Zhui Yan, called master to himself every day and answered himself, yes. Then he would say, be aware. And he'd reply, yes. And he would say, don't be deceived by others. No, no. And he did this a lot. It wasn't like he did it at home, but he did it in a taisho too, according to this commentary. It's the way he would start his talks. So, you know, what I feel like is, And then A.K. Roshi quotes Yamada Roshi, his commentary, where he says that the Jügen hit upon a truly enlightened way to maintain his practice after his deep realization. So even after enlightenment, this issue is going to keep coming up, this way that you have no control, very little control, I wouldn't say no control, but very little control over this situation of staying close to the good things and far from the bad things, and this kind of uneasy lack

[14:11]

It's never finally resolved. And so each day you wake up and you say, wake up, remember, remember to stay in the boat. Wake up. And you call yourself master or what? Mistress or mom or something. And then this little commentary that was kind of cunning. Old Zhuyuan buys himself and sells himself. He brings forth lots of angel faces and demon masks and plays with them. So I thought that kind of had a nice resonance with the siren story, and in a sort of Zen way, it's sort of like, okay, lighten up around this siren story thing, and also realize that the sirens are inside of you, not outside of you, or they're both, or we can't tell, or there is no inside and outside.

[15:19]

So then, if we can't have our first choice and we have to keep remembering every day that waking ourselves up every day engaging our regret or frustration that we can't ever get this thing to quite work or line up at least not for any length of time then what I'm saying is we can realize our second choice if we can, when we can accept that truth then we can realize something that we feel deeply about.

[16:43]

And I think there's many different ways to word that and I have an ace in the hole because at the end of the talk, if I don't explicate it properly or we don't get to it, we're gonna talk about it at the very, very, very end of the talk. So I'll try my, take a stab at it. And we'll see. And I also was debating because I thought we could do a little exercise here where we kind of try to get a little quiet and then see if we can get in touch with what I'm calling our second choice. And then I was thinking, well, I kind of have an idea of what I want to say mine is today. Changes all the time. But should I say that first to kind of like prime the pump or something? Or should I wait and do the little exercise and then What do you think? Go for it.

[17:47]

Okay, let's do the little exercise. So how about if we just take a minute to bring our attention close, so close to our experience. So our mind is on the most immediate experience that we have. feeling of how our legs are situated, our hands are situated, our sit bones, our check-in with our breathing, however it is, deep or shallow, how we feel in a kind of basic way, like not our ideas about it, but just how at ease are we, Are we preoccupied with the things that we came in here with? I'm not saying it's wrong to be, I'm just saying let's be aware of whatever's actually happening right now, so then it's preoccupation if that's what's happening.

[18:56]

And if you're having some kind of reaction to my talk, be aware of that, whether it's you like it, you don't like it. Just bring our attention very, very close in time and space, as close as you can. And now maybe we can sort of feel how it is that it doesn't make sense that we could ever really have any control over what's happening, because everything's just happening right now and we're just one part of it. And then the next moment, and the next moment, and one moment doesn't have another moment.

[19:58]

And we're all sort of unfolding right now all together very immediately. So it's hard to influence how that's coming about. So let's take a minute just to, you know, play along with me here. If you don't agree with my framing or whatever, just play along and see if you can just have a moment where you accept that, oh yeah, that makes sense. I can't have that. I'm not sure I need it anyway, but it's not gonna happen. And then, can you feel, if you let go of that, can you feel what you would like, what you

[21:02]

Given that you can't have that or any version of that, what could you? What would you want? What would you want if you can't have that? Anybody want to say what theirs is? Jerry? I just want to be okay. Just for this moment. Just okay. Right. I want to be happier for you. I want to be patient for you. I don't want you to go away. And the things that we want in this second column, giving up on this first column, have to be things that we can do right now.

[22:16]

They aren't things in the future. So those all seem like that to me. I heard them that way. Buddy? Health? Nancy? I don't mind being not okay. Is there anything you want? No. Yes? I feel a great love and letting go. An intense desire. Right, and that, so maybe a way, if we want to bring that in, we don't need to bring that into the realm of what you want, but you could want to express that, or to somehow manifest that. I think part of what we want, in addition to what the people have said, is to express something, maybe, possibly.

[23:22]

I'll tell you what mine is, this is just, I have a couple actually that I thought of when I was thinking about this talk. One is, I want to receive the gift of the world as it is, with open arms. And I want to give whatever I have to give freely. And I also want I want to feel my connection with everything, which, as you'll remember, it goes back to the very first problem with getting what we want. So one of the things I want to feel my connection to everything is kind of the same as why I can't have the other thing I want, my more instinctive thing I want.

[24:24]

And anybody else? I hope I'm not making it too intimidating or anything. It's fine if it's just not coming. We have a long history in our practice of thinking about this, so at the end of the lecture we say some vows, which another way to talk about this thing we want is a way, it's a kind of a vow. It's another way to be with a desire besides this kind of first one that keeps pushing it off into the future and making it kind of unattainable. So vowing is a way to sort of engage that whole conundrum. So at the end of the talk we're going to say these four vows and one way to talk about those is that over the centuries those are what a lot of people have agreed is a way to express this second choice, this thing that we want since we can't have this first thing.

[25:41]

one way to make these desire, these second choices that people have meant to extend them in time is to frame them as a vow. So, let's say mine, another one I have is just I want to be honest, I want to be myself, I want to be authentically myself. So, I could say, I want to be authentically myself and I vow to continue that practice until all harm caused by inauthenticity is at an end. Or something like that. Or I want to be patient with this moment and I vow to continue that patient practice until all suffering caused by impatience is at an end. And that way it's ... I don't know if I'm getting this across very well, but I sort of think about it as like getting time on your side or something, you know, like this whole situation, you have to engage it, this whole situation with the out-of-control, you have to engage it strongly because it's there, it's in our cells and it's going to keep coming up every day.

[27:10]

So this is a way to engage it, you know, and you feel what, so with, you know, I could say that I want to receive the gift of the world with open arms until, like one place I go with it is, until there's no more distinction between me and the world. As long as there's a distinction between me and the world, I want that to be my relationship with the world. Well, I don't know what time it is, but that's about all I brought. Anybody have any, want to comment on, go continue with what we were doing or comment on anything else I said? Jake?

[28:12]

Thank you, Laurie. I especially liked your metaphor of the sirens. I also feel on a Christian that I'm tied, but I enjoy being tied because it's my choice to be tied. I like that. When you're not on the Christian and the sirens are beckoning, calling, what do you do to I think the last time I really had a thing going with that. I think I try to talk to people. It's dangerous to stay in your head for too long by yourself.

[29:25]

That's one thing I think. I can get pretty far out there, actually, if I'm just on my own little thing. So I think one thing that brings me back is discomfort. And also you can use the very discouragement. So I talked about how you feel discouraged if you're letting this first thing sneak in to your practice or to anything else, you're going to feel discouraged because you're not going to be able to get it, right? So discouragement and frustration are going to appear. And you can use those actually to bring yourself back because you feel like, ah, I've tried so hard And I feel so unsupported or unloved or unsafe, vulnerable. And then you can use that discomfort and frustration and discouragement.

[30:28]

I can. I can use that. And also for me, a feeling of alienation. So I guess it's an actual experience that brings me back now that I'm thinking about it. It's some experience of like, ugh, Or I'm thinking something about somebody, like particularly Alan, that I would never want to say to him. So then there's this big, huge distance between me and the world. The world where I would be saying what I'm thinking and then me where I've got this big secret. So a certain kind of alienation or frustration or discouragement. But, you know, Zazen is what, that's our standard way. Every day, get up sometime in the day and get a circumstance together that you will remember to bring yourself back. You need to set it up rather than sheer willpower because that's not going to work. Yes?

[31:30]

Yeah, I think, well, I don't think people actually come to practice necessarily with an idea of what it's going to do. or a gaining idea, what we call a gaining idea. So I think people are often rather open-hearted when they come. We have suffering, we have some discomfort, but we're sort of open-hearted about it in the context of meeting practice and maybe this will help. And I shouldn't say that it doesn't help at all or something. So I think there's that funny line between what our practice can, the kind of way we can work with our own mind and karma so that conditions change, to influence conditions to change in a way that we still can't control them and they still might not change, but we can influence.

[32:46]

In fact, you know, maybe some proportion of the things you don't like in your world, like maybe 30 to 50% of the things you don't like in your world are actually coming from your side. They're actually being generated from your side by unconscious activity that you're doing that's calling, you know, this thing towards you. So you can learn how to work with that. So there is this way you learn and you're working with conditions, but then when you feel like this practice doesn't work, That's when you have that feeling this is not working. It's not supposed to be working. It's only something you do right now to engage this issue, you know? And you make these vows right now and you're not involved in when this date, when you can finally stop doing this because it's suffering land or something, you're not involved with that at all. You're just engaging the reality. So I think that's what I would say.

[33:49]

And I don't even think I would say that every feeling of discouragement shouldn't be looked at. You know what I mean? I mean, there's no way to really be definitive. Yes, sometimes you might need to change your practice or something, because it's not, quote, working or something. But you're always remembering. You're sort of in touch with this part, this uneasy feeling. And you just stay, you stay with it so that it doesn't like fool you and you talk to yourself like Zui Gon, you know. That's why they said he figured this out even after his enlightenment he figured out a way to keep the thing going by talking to himself. Any other comments or disagreements or, yes? And I think sometimes we see something and we get stuck, so maybe we think about letting go or just calming.

[35:12]

It's the only thing there's any possibility for and you can only do it if you let go of this one. So, you know, are you going to go for the little gold shiny thing that you can't have anyway and blow the whole thing or are you going to, but again, demon mask and angel mask. I mean, I don't want to make it into this huge right and wrong thing, but yeah, right. But also experiencing the world completely, right? I mean, the journey is a really good metaphor for our practice, I think, as long as you don't think about the end, you know. how I would be able to evaluate whether something was my authentic self or something?

[37:03]

Very easy to forget. Mm-hmm. Very easy to kid yourself. Kid yourself about? I'm not being, and I'm not being polytheistic. Mm-hmm. I'm not being my fully authentic self, which includes parts that are, that I don't accept. Yeah. Well, one thing is you always are being your authentic self, right? I mean, there's no one else. I mean, who you are, all the conditions are coming together to make me who I am right now authentically. So to return to that, like somehow, oh, this is just the coming. I right now am just simply the coming together of everything. and the way and the feeling I have of inauthenticity is also conditioned a part of everything and you can look at what that feeling is, so is it like there is something about yourself you feel like you wouldn't tell us?

[38:05]

Yeah, so is there any conditions under which you could imagine telling somebody that thing? So then you might decide that you want to do that so that you figure out a way to create, you try to work towards creating the conditions and we try to do that too. We want this to be a safe place and it's not completely safe because we all are struggling with the same things. it's kind of like we're all working towards that same thing to make it a safe place where we could just express who we are right now. I'm comfortable stopping here. Is everybody out? Thank you.

[38:58]

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