Recently, the last few days actually, Dr. Schumacher has been here, who's written a book called Small is Beautiful, which I think quite a number of you have read and also may have heard him speak. He's also written a chapter of his book, which is called Buddhist Economics, speaking to him last night, he said he doesn't know if there's really such a thing as Buddhist Economics, but he said so. He himself is a convert to Catholicism, and so when he speaks of economics, the background

[01:09]

is also quite sympathetic for Buddhists and Christians, and I think most religious people. But he's a very practical economist. Can you hear me okay in the back? So I want to talk a little about what he spoke about, or the kinds of questions raised by

[02:10]

our being a community. You know, we got into being a community rather by accident. I guess, a little of this I spoke about at the general meeting we had at Tassajara in San Francisco a few weeks ago, but anyway, for those of you who weren't there, we got into being a community rather by accident. We originally just wanted to supply a place for people to do Zazen, and maybe, I guess, we expected one or two or three or four people to practice a long time, and most people would practice only a few months or a year or two. But an awful lot of us are staying with practice thoroughly for a long time, many years, and

[03:18]

so by that a kind of community has been created, which Suzuki Roshi, near the end of his life, decided we should actively articulate and take mutual responsibility for. There are many forces in our society today, or tendencies in our society, towards the creation of some kind of unit which isn't the easily seen biological unit of the individual

[04:19]

or the state, which is mostly how our government is set up, recognizing the individual and the state. And the separation of church and state, or the exclusion of the congregation, has some ... well, a number of things, anyway, have gone toward making some unit larger than the individual rather impotent in our society, no way to express itself. And we find ourselves part of these tendencies to form a community. But our community is informed by Buddhist ideas or a Buddhist way of life, and there's no question about it that right livelihood or conduct or generosity, as major aspects

[05:22]

of our practice, completely have an economic or social implication. How we live, you know, right livelihood means how we live, and how we live means how we support ourselves, how we survive together, doesn't mean we engage in political activity. And this kind ... one reason I'm talking about this is because there are dangers for us in being too involved in our community, or too responsive, perhaps, to the forces in our society which are wanting some example of a community, some example of how to support ourselves. You know, and we're in pretty bad psychological state, this country and the world.

[06:27]

I was just on the East Coast, and everywhere I go, people are predicting some kind of apocalypse, maybe some collapse of our world monetary system next spring. And one can't help but be relieved, even though it means, it will mean a great deal of suffering, you know, for people. And we don't know what will happen, but just if everyone thinks something terrible is going to happen, something terrible is likely to happen, since we are in control of our own destiny, unfortunately, or at present, unfortunately. Anyway, the problems before us are complicated enough that, for example, the people who are

[07:46]

head of the Institute for World Order, which is quite a powerful, influential organization, think that we have only two possibilities – China, the model of China, or the model of Brazil – to survive, one being on the left and one being on the right. And Carl Sagan, who is an exobiologist for NASA, quite a brilliant man, he thinks maybe the human race only has twenty years, he talks about it as a dinosaur. So because of this kind of thinking, people feel rather hopeless. I think they feel rather hopeless, actually, because our culture, if you forgive me, is

[08:48]

so primitive that we deal in very simple alternatives – suffering or not suffering – that kind of thinking. And we don't have much experience about how to recognize many kinds of suffering and simultaneously have some joy in our life. But anyway, people have this very negative state of mind, and so here we are, just some amateur farmers, tilling very few acres, and people think we are some hopeful sign. That's how desperate people are. If you only put up a windmill or farm a little, great corporations examine you to see if you

[09:56]

have some secret. So actually, many people are asking us and looking at us, and this asking us and looking at us is very dangerous for us, I think. And, as you know, we have many people asking from the media – television and national networks, newspapers – asking us. This month alone maybe ten newspapers and ABC television, etc. I don't know how many exactly, but about ten maybe. And, more important, I think many individuals have some question. They're not just asking us, but many people.

[10:56]

So I discussed this point with Dr. Schumacher, and he answered. He paused. I asked the question rather lightly, because I didn't want to burden him with too many questions. He's been talking steadily to different people – businessmen and radical economists and hippie groups, etc. – for three weeks now, morning, afternoon, and evening. So I asked it rather lightly, but then he paused for quite a while and he said, You should ask them what they are in aid of. And to make sure, I said, Do you mean what they are in need of? He said, No, what they are in aid of. I think that's a really interesting way to answer.

[12:00]

And that, you know, is the first paramita, the first great perfection, generosity or dana or giving. What are you in aid of? And it's the first bhumi, of course. The first bhumi is joy. But there is no joy until you know completely what you are in aid of. So I'd like to speak a little bit now about how the Buddhist way of thinking influences our own community.

[13:05]

The first two paramitas are generosity or giving or completely recognizing our interdependent being, and second, conduct. And it's said, without conduct, a Buddhist without conduct is an imposter. Conduct or our way of living is extremely important, essential. Generosity and conduct are necessary completely before there is a freeing of your energy for meditation and wisdom. And generosity or giving or recognizing our interdependent being means also renunciation

[14:22]

or poverty. So poverty, you know, doesn't just mean how can we live as frugally as possible. That it means too. But it means how you use things rather than how you possess things. It's best exemplified by maybe the story you've heard me tell you many times, I think, about Suzuki Roshi's glasses. He said, you know, these glasses are your glasses, but you know about my tired old eyes, so you let me use them. This kind of sense of property or possession. And what's interesting is now this kind of bringing, this articulation of some kind of

[15:35]

community, in some cases congregation or economists talking about religious, speaking about religious values, is in effect a kind of mutual support which permits poverty. We need some, I think, mutual support for poverty. Without some mutual support, we feel we have to rip off our own chunk and make it secure for our old age, to support our family and protect ourselves. And I don't personally, I don't know how to calculate it, but personally, as you know, I don't think the world has enough stuff for each person to have his own independent scene.

[16:36]

So, to give up, you know, we need some feeling of mutual support with each other. And that mutual support tends to define units or groupings of people that are somewhat self-sustaining. So it rather changes the idea of some overall state, you know, what those units are. Now, in Buddhism, the idea of a sangha, a community of people who practice together or share practice, various levels of the idea of sangha, is actually somewhat related, you know, and practically speaking, very related to some kind of self-supporting unit. So, we can be poor, much poorer, with mutual support, even, than center, you know, is.

[17:56]

We are quite, you know, from an economist's point of view, efficient, because together we live much more cheaply, using much less energy and resources than if each of us had his own scene, or each of us was drawing a salary separately, you know, maintaining some separate house, etc. So, generosity or poverty, how we understand possessions is essential to Buddhist practice,

[19:14]

as to the paramitas of generosity and conduct. So, I would like to say that there are, to point out, that in Buddhism we talk about maybe three limits, limits of possession, limits of value and limits of use. But if you look at Buddhism, you find these limits present throughout Buddhist thinking. And if we, I don't have time, you know, maybe in a session, where we have seven days to think or practice together, we can come to some subtler understanding, maybe, of what the limits of possession are.

[20:17]

But really, you know, the basic experience is, there is nothing you can possess. You can't actually possess something. If you really try to possess something, you find out you can't. So, as I've said, if you're really greedy, you end up to be a Buddhist, because you won't find anything you can possess, except Buddhism, maybe. And that, you know, is nothing at all. But also in this is that the way of thinking, the process of thinking which tries to define separate units – you, me, existentially existing, or your hand, or some object – that way of thinking itself, that possessive way of thinking, is illusory. And we have that kind of way of thinking, you know, without knowing it, all the time. You can give up owning things, but if you have that kind of thinking,

[21:25]

you are still involved in possession, still involved in goals. One reason we are not involved in politics is because we don't have some idea of a goal. You know? That society should be like such and such. In forming all of Buddhism is the sense of continuity from past, present and future, you know? So, in every society, we must know how to exist, and every society, every prevailing society, will be something imperfect. And the way of each individual and each sangha is how to survive within the prevailing society, and by that survival, enlighten the society.

[22:28]

But that is a process which is always changing, like practice. Simultaneously, you are some decaying, cruddy, physical being, and also a Buddha. And that process, you know, for a Buddhist, of survival in the prevailing society and enlightenment of the society, is done through individuals. We don't try to change the government. I'm not saying somebody shouldn't try to change the government, but I'm just speaking about Buddhism. So sometimes there is an attempt to change the emperor or the president, but usually the attempt is through individuals perfecting themselves,

[23:32]

as in the koan, the Blue Cliff Records, story number five, I talked about in the last Sashin, when Setpo holds up the husk of millet and says, if you hold up the whole world, it is as a husk of millet, something very small, and throwing it down, it's nowhere to be seen, as black or hard to find as a black lacquer pail in a dark room. And beat the drum and hunt everywhere, is the story. And Engo comments on that. What is needed to hold up the mudra of the whole world, to demonstrate the whole world? And he says, a man of perfect personality is needed.

[24:36]

So this emphasis is always present in Buddhism. So first there is this limits of possession, a deep understanding that you can't possess things, that things don't exist in possessible states. If you analyze them, there's nothing there, some pattern, maybe, that a molecule, electron, follows. And if you try to possess things and your own state of mind, you will kill yourself. Limits of possession and limits of value. By limits of value, I mean that difference itself is value,

[25:48]

not gradations of difference, but just that things are different is value. And as we take refuge in what's before us, what we have is enough, that there's no abstract system of value, that what just comes to hand is valuable. And as I've said, people are very much makers, human beings are makers. Even if we find something unmade, like a beach stone, to find it is to make something of it. So we're always making something and living in the products of our making. But knowing this kind of thing, that there's a tendency to have few possessions

[26:52]

and to have those that have been you made, or someone makes for you, or some relationship to the making. As in Buddhism, we're always aware of the unmade, the not-yet-made. So we don't have the best table in the whole world. We have the table that we or our friend can make, or the building that we or our friends can make. Maybe you don't see the implications of this, but in terms of economics this is extremely important, because so much of our economics is based on the huge structure of transportation, of bringing the best thing from some place to somewhere else. And what we're talking about, there's not much need for transportation. I think those of you...

[27:55]

I wasn't at his first lecture, I wasn't here, Dr. Schumacher's, but I believe he told a story about traveling from London to Glasgow on a highway. And the story was repeated to me. He was talking about how these great lorries, or trucks, were polluting the air, and they had a big... As he was driving along, going north, there were these trucks going to Glasgow, saying, Biscuits, from London. And as he drove farther, he saw great trucks coming from Glasgow, with on them saying, Biscuits. And he said to an unbiased observer from some star, I might assume that transportation enhanced the flavor.

[28:57]

He's a rather funny man. Anyway, we're always transporting things like that. So, this kind of thing means that we have some vegetables here. We shouldn't look for the best market somewhere. Maybe we should just sell them to Muir Beach and Stinson Beach, etc. This kind of limits of value is, I think, quite important. And it's just our way of living, you know, based on the six paramitas. Generosity, and conduct, and patience, or waiting, and energy, and zazen, or meditation, and wisdom. But following them has implications. And third, the limits of use.

[30:08]

By this I mean how we use things, and what we use. The sense in Buddhism is that you don't possess things, and you borrow things. The second precept is, do not take. Take what is not given. So, something is given you, and you borrow it, and you return it. You don't break it, or destroy it, or use it in such a way that it can't be repaired or replaced. Now, again, when you follow this kind of feeling, you have some hesitation, you know, about using non-renewable resources, like gasoline and things, to use in just a few decades. What's taken millions of years to store up is something strange.

[31:22]

You know, it may sound like I'm extrapolating this too far, but I don't think so. You know, Dogen, I think, expressed this when he took some water from a stream and washed his clothes. And when he was through washing his clothes, he carried that water, which had come from a running stream, back to the stream and poured it in the stream. Most people might just dump it on the ground. But running water, you know, should be returned to the stream. That feeling of not interfering too much. And within this sense of generosity is this interdependent being, you know, who possesses our glasses.

[32:24]

We don't discriminate between rich person and poor person. So this, again, has some implication. Like a psychiatrist charges, or a doctor charges a rich patient quite a lot, and a poor patient not so much. This we would not do so much. Or, you know, the idea of charging what the market will bear. You don't charge $25 for your Pepsi-Cola on the Gobi Desert. You don't charge whatever you can get for it. There's some sense of your use and actual cost. And you don't give... So, anyway, we are this kind of group of people

[33:49]

who are practicing together primarily. We're a practice community, not a residential community. So when you've practiced here long enough, you may go somewhere else. But as we do exist as a community, this kind of thinking will determine how we sell the vegetables from Green Gulch and how we do many things. And it's a process. We don't have some definite idea worked out of exactly how it should be. I think in each case we're going to have to decide, what do we do? But, still, our basic business is Zazen. And we mustn't change into some model community

[34:54]

with great, wonderful windmills producing energy for us, with prayers written on the blades and running hi-fi sets. We could become some model community, maybe. I think we wouldn't last very long. We would get bored with it. But this kind of tendency, we have to think about and remember that our main responsibility is practice. Yes. Tsukiroshi said that a stone in a stream can change the whole course of the stream. Or a rock, or a tree, or even a chopstick, he said.

[35:59]

And I think he was speaking about himself. Because when he left Japan, he told a man in the village where he came from that he was going to America to help America because we were quite lost. In many ways he has said this kind of thing. So he came and just practiced. They gave him money before he came to buy western clothes. And then when they saw him off at the airport, he still had his robes on. And they asked him, didn't he buy any western clothes? And he didn't. Just his robes were good enough.

[37:04]

He didn't know what America would be like, but he was going to do that. And when he came, as many of you know, he spent the first weeks just begging in the streets of San Francisco. And that wasn't so appropriate, so he tried some other way to continue his life. But he just continued his way of life. And this kind of scrupulousness... Scrupulousness actually means stone, a sharp stone. This kind of scrupulousness or scrupulous honesty, poverty, maybe, is necessary. So by this kind of attention we'll get, either ten years ago we got attention as some freaky fringe group, and now we'll get some attention as some hopeful pioneer.

[38:07]

But we are just practicing Buddhism, that's all. And we should stick to our way. We should have some stable, centralized way of life. And at the center of our life should be meditation practice. If we can just continue this, then we can understand ourselves and help other people understand themselves, perhaps. But I don't think we want to think about goals or attaining something or helping people, just to practice our way,

[39:11]

like maybe a stone in a stream. And whether the stream changes or goes over you is not so important. And this kind of giving, this interdependent being, this generosity of the first perfection I'm talking about, isn't just economics. It means you offer yourself to everyone. As I said the last time I spoke here, each of us has a role to play. Each moment we offer ourselves. We offer ourselves to each person and each thing. This is real generosity. When I was in the East Coast,

[40:12]

I spoke for quite a while with a man named Rusty Zweikart, who was an astronaut, and he was the first man in space. And he's quite an interesting, intelligent person. He told about the experience of going and preparing and everything. He said that they simulated it so often, they rehearsed it so often, hundreds of times, each thing, that when he was actually there lifting off, it was just like a simulation. Except easier. Because in the simulation, he said some joker was always trying to throw a problem in. You know, the dial would do something. But in the actual lift-off, he just rode up. And their conduct had to be very careful with each other

[41:19]

because of the narrow situation. But someone asked him, did this extraordinary experience, this extraordinary event of lifting off the Earth and going to the Moon, affect all the astronauts in some deep way? And he said, no, the experience had no effect on many of them. It was no different from going to the store. Well, what made the difference? And he said, well, I... Well, he told this story. He said, before he went, he took a piece of paper and he typed on it or wrote on it all the great sayings he could think of, from Shakespeare and Buddha and the Bible, etc., to see if any of the words of mankind meant anything when he was up there.

[42:19]

So, he had this on a piece of paper tucked into the pocket of his space suit. So he made some preparation. And... made some preparation. And when he was up there, he... There was no time for anything because you were always not up with your flight plan and you had to rush to do this and rush to do that and you were always ten minutes or an hour or a day behind or something in the schedule that you had to follow. So there was no chance to experience anything. And then he was out floating. Finally, they went from the rocket to this other thing, I guess, the land, maybe, or something.

[43:23]

They didn't land on the moon, but they walked outside, you know. And then he had a little backpack, you know. And he, I guess, went off from the rocket ship and floated in space. And his friend was taking pictures, you know, from the doorway of the rocket. And he was out there doing what he was supposed to do, testing, et cetera. And his friend's camera jammed. So, for a moment, the machines watching Earth, et cetera, stopped. And he had to wait while... He had to wait while his friend fixed the camera. So he thought, now is my chance to read this list of... ...great statements, you know. And it was in his pocket. But he didn't really have time to get it out and everything, you know. To see it floating off, you know. Someone to find.

[44:24]

In a Coke bottle, probably. But he... Instead, he had this, you know, helmet on, where he could see in all directions. Instead, he looked around at the Earth, which was out there, looking incredibly beautiful. He said, it's so green and blue and white. It's unbelievably beautiful, he said so. He tried at that moment to see the meaning of it. He said, what is the meaning of this? You know, he actively tried. And some deep feeling swept across him. And the point he made is the experience itself affected nobody. But the effort to understand it or find some meaning in it, or to penetrate it, did. And we don't have to do that, you know. You don't have to be transported for that many billion dollars out there to have that kind of experience. Just looking at one of our chickens.

[45:30]

Or a vegetable, you know, is enough. If you can look. Scrupulous, you know, also means to hesitate for a moment. To wait for it, you know. To wait for something to happen, as I interpret, or translate, patience, the third dharmita. Or the stream, the stone in the stream, which makes it hesitate. So he had that chance. And each of us, you know, has that chance. And that offering of ourself in that moment to the earth, to the chicken, you know, is the essence of our Buddhist life and practice.

[46:38]

Does that make sense to you? Is there anything you'd like to talk about? Yeah. Very simple. Now that we have an opportunity, I'm going to talk to you a little bit. I don't know whether you can hear me or not. We brought renunciation. It's a very special moment. It's a very special moment. We didn't know much when we got here. I think that kind of problem is more in our heads, you know.

[47:54]

Excuse me, but I don't think it's a real problem. When you go to visit your parents, maybe, you take a different care with visiting your parents than when you get on a bus. So with some visitor, I think we should take nearly the same care with some visitor. And you treat a guest differently than someone else. And I don't think it makes much difference whether he's a congressman or something, but it has something to do with the kind of relationship the person wants. For instance, with Dr. Schumacher. If we had dinner with him the other night. And, you know, we want to take some care with him and prepare a meal carefully for him and also have an opportunity for him to actually talk with some people. If we have a great eating with everybody,

[48:58]

if he has time, he should do both. But if he doesn't have so much time, he may want to do one or the other. Sometimes people say, I'd just like to come to the dining room and eat with everyone. And sometimes they say, I'd like to have a chance to talk with a few people. So if they want to have a chance to talk with a few people, we go somewhere where we can sit down, a few people, and talk. And we make some effort to make a meal carefully. I think that's quite natural. And we actually treat people pretty much the same. Any visitor who comes for some reason to spend some time with us or express some other kind of relationship to us, we do, I think, what's appropriate. If you mean, do we treat some people differently

[50:00]

because they can offer us something more or help us? To some extent, of course. But mostly we don't. And the whole way Zen Center relates to people who do help us is, by and large, almost the same. Particularly compared to what... There's some pressure on us to do it differently. You know, we can't... As I said, difference is value. And we can't... do everything at once. So we, like here, we first start out with the Zen Do

[51:06]

and try to make the Zen Do work. And then we try to take care of the people who are going to be here for many years. And we work towards the middle. But we can't do everything at once. Always there's some difference, as our community is based on consensus through seniority. We try to have everyone participate in the decisions about what we do, but it's through a system that has been worked out in Buddhism over many years which consensus is through everyone who's been around about the same length of time having the same amount to say about things, and eventually moving into the background of things. So in a Buddhist community you have a kind of promotion cycle

[52:07]

and then a demotion cycle, and then a fading into the background. And you're some kind of resource only. But the roles, the responsibilities, the jobs in Zen Center are usually, and in any Buddhist community, are usually held by newer people the first few years. So anyway, this kind of system to recognize equality or undifferentiatedness and difference is not simple. I think it's a problem we have particularly. Thank you.

[53:29]

I don't mean to say that you have to be completely idealistic. If you are, you can't live. Some flexible, you know, the idea of skillful means, or what I call a non-repeating universe. In each situation you must find something to do. Practically, it is necessary if we're going to have a place to practice and a way to live, and a way to participate with others. If our honesty is too rigid, by scrupulous honesty I mean something flexible that participates with others. If our honesty is too rigid, it's like criticizing people too much.

[54:52]

So sometimes you have to go along with people. A Buddhist saying is, not just do unto others as you would do unto yourself, but do unto others as they wish to be done unto. So some subtlety and practicality is necessary. And as you know, as we talked in the general meeting, we are trying to find a way now to shift from so much concentration on the way to survive, how to make Zen Center exist for people to practice, and to just, in a more lemming-like fashion maybe, go along with what's happening. And the most important thing is your settled way of life,

[56:12]

which includes others.

[56:14]

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