Good morning. So those of us who are Dharma teachers in Zen Center Lineage and all the people who live at Green Gulch and practice here, and all of you who come for Sunday morning Dharma talks as well, are all involved in the project of bringing Buddhist practice and Buddhist teaching into our lives in 21st century America. So throughout the history of Buddhism in Asia, Buddhism has adapted and developed and grown as it's moved into different countries and different cultures and interacted with the native religions and traditions.

[01:00]

So in China with Taoism and ancestor veneration, in Japan with Shintoism, in all the different countries, Tibet, China, Japan, Korea, Southeast Asia, Buddhism has been a living tradition and grown and developed and interacted with the culture and changed. And this has been happening in America over the last 50 years as well. So I've been very involved myself in Buddhist-Christian dialogue, doing various Buddhist-Christian conferences and teaching Buddhist studies at Berkeley Graduate Theological Union where many of my students are Christian seminarians. And also I'm doing a, I'll put a plug in here for the workshop I'm doing the last Saturday of this month here, Buddhist-Christian dialogue workshop. And I feel like as we study from the point of view of Buddhism, as we study different

[02:05]

religious traditions, it's very valuable in terms of informing what Buddhist practice is about. So there are many American Buddhists now who are also very involved in interactions with Judaism, with Native American religions, with science in terms of modern physics and neurobiology. And of course very much with Western psychology. There are many former Zen Center students who are now therapists or counselors. And in fact I sometimes think of Northern California Zen as Jungian Buddhism. So I think interfaith dialogue has great value and as we find our own seat as American Buddhists, of course we are bringing our experience and our awareness of American traditions and culture

[03:10]

to Buddhism and Buddhism is changing. And I basically feel like there's something of value in every religious tradition. So I've taught college courses on world religion and like studying comparative religion. So that's all background to what I want to talk about today, which is the one major American religion that I feel is in conflict with Buddhism in terms of its fundamental values. So that's the religion of consumerism. So I want to try and talk about this from the point of view of Buddhist precepts. So Buddhist precepts are guidelines for how to express our Buddhist awareness in our everyday activity. So a lot of Buddhist practice is about, we could call it the balancing of wisdom and compassion.

[04:18]

So to oversimplify, the side of wisdom is something we get a sense of in our meditation practice in Zazen. The sense of the possibility of wholeness, about the possibility of seeing deeply our interconnectedness with all being, seeing into the emptiness fundamentally of all distinctions. This is the side of wisdom. The side of compassion is how we apply that in our daily activity. So the precepts are guidelines. They're not commandments, but they're guidelines for how to see, how to take care of our lives. How Buddha's awareness expresses itself in the various kinds of difficulties that we find ourselves in in our ordinary everyday activity. And in terms of this, I feel like there's a fundamental conflict with the basic social values in our society.

[05:24]

So it seems to me that in our mainstream media, especially in terms of the religion of consumerism, the fundamental values are greed and material acquisition and even vengeance. So all of the television commercials and all of the ads we see are designed very skillfully to create more needs and more desires. So I understand that the average American is exposed to 3,000 ads each day. So there's this idea in Buddhism of hungry ghosts. Hungry ghosts is one of the different realms that beings can be born in. It's also one of the aspects, potentially, of our psychic being. So there's the human realm and the animal realm and heavenly realms and hell realms.

[06:30]

And then there's this hungry ghost realm, which is kind of insatiability, a very sad situation. So hungry ghosts are depicted with tiny necks and huge stomachs, and they're never satisfied. And it's a pretty pathetic realm. And actually, one of the fanciest ceremonies we do here is called sagaki. We usually do it here on Halloween, and it means to feed the hungry ghosts. And we have a big altar here with many offerings. And this is done in Japan around August during the Obon time when the spirits are invited back. And we make offerings, and we try and appease the hungry ghosts and help them to find some peace and some satisfaction. And eventually, maybe they will find their way back to human realm. So that's one of the important Buddhist ceremonies. On the other hand, in advertising, this seems like in our society we are trained to be hungry ghosts and to need more and more and more.

[07:40]

And the major holiday in the religion of consumerism has been appropriated from Christianity. It's called Christmas, and its purpose is to create hungry ghosts who need to or are obliged to buy many gifts, more and bigger, and more and bigger. More expensive. So this idea of talking about consumerism as a religion has been talked about by a couple of very fine Buddhist scholar philosophers. One of them is named David Loy, who lives in Japan, and another is Stephanie Kasa, who I believe teaches in Vermont, but used to be a student here. So David Loy talks about religions from a point of view of a functional definition. That religion is what grounds us by teaching what the world is, and teaching our place in the world. So in that way, consumerism kind of acts as a religion, just as Buddhism does, just as Christianity does. So you could call it a religion, you could call it a philosophy, but our basic assumptions about how we are and how the world is are offered in various different spiritual traditions.

[08:54]

And in this way, consumerism in our society is one of the major religions. It teaches us how to live, and what to do, and how to find fulfillment. So David Loy says there are two tenets to consumerism, two items of faith. One is that growth and subsidized world trade will benefit everyone. This is an unquestioned item of faith in consumerism. The second is that growth doesn't need to be constrained or limited by the limited resources of this finite planet, that the economy can just keep growing and growing and growing. And basically, the self-fulfillment and self-realization in this consumerist religion or philosophy in our society is based on how much we consume. One is the bumper sticker, whoever dies with the most toys wins.

[09:59]

So there's a kind of basic philosophy and basic even goal to the consumerism, which is mostly unconscious in our society. In Buddhism, the basic value is to be content with what we have, to enjoy this world as it is, to be grateful for Green Gulch, for the ocean, for the birds and the trees, for our friends and family, and for the situation we're in. Now, this does not mean just being passive and accepting everything as it is. Part of the precepts is that we do respond to suffering. We do try and not harm beings, but also to benefit all beings, to see what we do in the context of many beings, of all beings, not just of my own company, but in terms of all beings, but also to try and foster awakening and awareness.

[11:12]

So there's a kind of satisfaction that also can be dynamic and active and responsive, but fundamentally it's about not creating craving for more material wealth. So in the Buddhist tradition and the Zen tradition, there are many examples of kind of characters who are non-consumer extremists. So I want to say a little bit about one of them. So it's possible to be extremist about not having desires and not having property and not having needs. So there's a wonderful Soto Zen monk and poet who lived in Japan around 1800 named Ryokan. It's very, very popular still in Japan. He lived, after he finished his training, instead of becoming the abbot of a temple or a Zen teacher, he just went back to his hometown and lived in a tiny little hut outside the town.

[12:24]

And he made his living by doing begging rounds, which is traditional in Asian Buddhism. But he was also a very great poet, and there are many, many, many stories about him. He took as his name Daigu, Great Fool, and there are many stories about his foolishness. He played with children all the time and was very forgetful, but also was a wonderful poet. So I don't want to tell you all the stories because he was such a non-consumerist extremist that some of you might just walk out if you heard some of these stories. One of them that's really well known is one night he was sitting in his hut, and I don't know if he was looking through the window or holes in the roof. But he was looking at the moon, at the full moon, which is this image of wholeness and perfection and peacefulness in Zen.

[13:26]

And a thief came into his little hut, and Ryokan did not have anything to steal. But he saw the thief and he thought that he must really be needy, so Ryokan gave the thief his thin little blanket, which he had to sleep with. And the thief took it, kind of a little embarrassed, and left. And then Ryokan wrote a poem about how he wished that he could give this person the moon. So Ryokan wrote many wonderful poems. One of them I think speaks to this issue in terms of values of consumerism and values of Buddhism. Without desire everything is sufficient. With seeking myriad things are impoverished. Plain vegetables can soothe hunger.

[14:28]

A patched robe is enough to cover this bent old body. Alone I hike with a deer. Cheerfully I sing with village children. The stream beneath the cliff cleanses my ears. The pine on the mountaintop fits my heart. So there are other examples in Zen history of people like this who really went to extremes to not need new toys. To just live simply and appreciate the world of nature and appreciate their meditation and appreciate playing with children and just living openheartedly. But in Buddhism we practice the middle way. So I would say for us the alternative to consumerism is not necessarily that you should give up all of your property or come to Green Gulch and support the Dharma by working like a slave for room and board and a tiny stipend. Or that you have to get rid of all of the things you like.

[15:34]

There's the middle way. In fact in the Green Gulch office we have some Buddhist toys for sale. So you can get Buddhist beads and Buddhist books and wonderful Buddhist statues. Get them while they're hot. They've done a very good job here of having wonderful Buddhist toys. And even Ryokan in his time, you know this consumerism goes back a ways in world history. So even in Ryokan's time he was in addition to being a wonderful monk and a great poet and a fool, he was also a very fine calligrapher. And even during his own lifetime his calligraphy became very valuable. Examples of his calligraphy were a hot commodity. So there are stories about him being tricked into writing calligraphy for people because it was already in his lifetime very valuable.

[16:35]

One story for example, there are many, but one story is some kids that he was playing with had these paper kites and they said to Ryokan, please write something on these kites to help them fly. And he wrote heaven up great wind on the kites. And they were very happy, but actually it turns out that their parents had put them up to it because they wanted to get some calligraphy of Ryokan. So maybe it's like kids trying to get baseball players autographs to sell them on eBay. Anyway, so I don't think the main danger of consumerism to Buddhism is people liking to buy Buddhist beads or Buddhist statues. But it's that we might think of spiritual practice as another commodity to consume. So we've been trained by advertising and by our media to want the best and the quickest and the fanciest. So some people who travel around just to visit different kinds of Buddhist centers and Buddhist teachers and so forth want the quickest path or the best teacher or the fast track to enlightenment.

[17:50]

This is the consumerist approach to Buddhism. And I think it's not so helpful. This practice is basically about finding the way to express our deepest self, our deepest truth. We each have this already. And to do that, it takes some time. It takes some settling in. It takes some willingness to just be here in this body and mind. This is what we do in our meditation and then try and find in our lives. How can we be upright in the middle of this body, this mind? It's not about getting some fancy new state of consciousness. So actually, in terms of this middle way about consumerism, having wealth and material resources is actually a great opportunity and a responsibility. There are the opposite kind of examples from Ryokan in Buddhism, too.

[18:53]

So the great enlightened layman Vimalakirti, the legendary layman who supposedly lived in Shakyamuni Buddha's time 2,500 years ago in northern India, had a lot of wealth and a lot of power. And he used this to help foster awakening. He had great business skill and he had a lot of resources. But the purpose of his skill and the purposes of his resources was not just to accumulate more and more and more. He actually entered into many situations in the world using his material resources. And in each of those, benefited the beings there and helped lead them towards the path towards finding their true self. So again, there's this middle way between not needing the Ryokan side and between using our resources beneficially, not being consumed by them.

[19:55]

And actually, there are many examples in Buddhist history of people who have great material resources and use them to help support practice and to help support the poor and to help support the needy in society and to help develop culture and the arts. So this isn't just about getting rid of material wealth. In fact, Buddhism is about using the phenomenal world to help support awakening, taking care of the phenomenal world very well. But I want to get back to this idea of precepts and values. I think the root of this problem that we have with consumerism has to do with how we see our basic values. So I particularly like Thomas Jefferson and I know he's gotten a bad press lately and he certainly had flaws and in fact he was a slave owner.

[21:01]

But one thing he did that I really appreciate, and I'm not, I haven't been able to, I heard this story and I don't know if it's really true but I think it might be, that when he was writing the Declaration of Independence with Franklin and John Adams, they originally, I don't know whether it was Adams or Franklin or someone else, originally they had, the original draft was we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal and so forth endowed with inalienable rights that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of property. And Tom Jefferson insisted on changing it to the pursuit of happiness. So I think this idea of the pursuit of happiness and whether it has to do, what it has to do with the pursuit of property is really one of the key issues here. So happiness does not necessarily equal amount of property and wealth. There's the great happiness of Yokan, his joy at just looking at the moon, his enjoyment at playing with the children and just walking on his begging rounds and meditating.

[22:10]

So from the point of view of the Buddhist precepts, in our Soto Zen tradition here we have 16 precepts we use. So I wanted to mention a couple of them that I think are relevant to this. We have what are called the Ten Grave Precepts. The first one is a disciple of Buddha does not kill. So again these aren't commandments, these are descriptions of how does awakened awareness act in the world. A disciple of the Buddha does not kill. And each of these precepts is kind of a problem or a question or has many, many aspects, many sides. But in terms of consumerism I would say that we kill the life of the world when we make things into dead commodities. So do we see the world and each other as alive or do we see the world and each other and ourselves as just commodities to be consumed?

[23:31]

So this has effects both in terms of our society and personally in terms of our own hearts and minds. If the world is just a bunch of dead objects and if a world is not something that has this dynamic interactive life, which is what Buddhism teaches, then nature is just a commodity. And people in power feel entitled to, for example, clear cut on growth forests because they're just liquidating their assets. Or they feel that it's okay to set up oil wells all over nature reserves in Alaska because the oil is there and we should use it. And somebody's going to make a big profit on it. And our government is now possibly going to start setting up oil wells all up and down the shore of the Caribbean and maybe off the California coast.

[24:36]

Because it's there and it's a commodity and of course let's use it and consume it. So I would say that one of the big problems in the world today is a result of these values of consumerism. Organizations like the FTA, the Free Trade Association of America, and the World Trade Organization are run by these big transnational corporations. And they're arranging treaties and laws for globalization, often secretly, that are making corporate rights to profit legally supersede human rights, labor rights, or reasonable environmental protections. So we can see many effects in terms of the damage to our environment of these values of consumerism. That we should just consume as much as we can, that the world is a bunch of dead commodities. And again I think this has to do with this precept about not killing. How do we see the world as alive? How do we see each other as alive?

[25:40]

It affects us on our personal level too in terms of our relationships. So if we see ourselves as separate from the world, separate from the ocean, separate from the nature preserve, separate from the trees and the birds, and separate from each other, then nature and people and possessions are all just dead objects and we should manipulate them for our own profit because that's the highest value. And when we do that we consume things and we consume people. And we act in the world trying to manipulate things so that we can get the most out of it. This seems to me to be the logic of consumerism. There's a line from my favorite American Dharma poet Bob Dylan. He says something about people who do what they do just to be nothing more than something they invest in. So when we follow the tenets of consumerism we are investing in ourselves and we're all familiar with this and we can build our resumes and we become commodities ourselves.

[26:50]

So then we lose this other joy that's not the happiness based on the pursuit of property but the happiness to just enjoy our lives. To be present in our lives, to face our lives, to enjoy the things that we have, to respond positively and constructively to the situations in our world, in our life, and in our everyday activity. Another one of the precepts is about intoxication. I think how we say it now is a disciple of the Buddha does not intoxicate mind or body of self or others. So in some Asian countries it just says a disciple of the Buddha doesn't sell wine or alcohol. But I think it's more than just about alcohol or even drugs. So one of the primary values of Buddhism is awareness.

[28:00]

Just to pay attention to this situation right now. This is our practice and it's the opposite of intoxication. Whether or not you've had a glass of wine or sake, just to be there and actually be present in your life and with the situation right there. This kind of awareness is very important in our practice. But in the values of consumerism it's sort of the opposite. Advertising and entertainment is to distract us. From really being present in our body and mind, a lot of it. And it's very skillful of course and it's sometimes fun to watch of course. But from the point of view of consumerism its aim is to increase our desire, to increase our craving, to create hungry ghosts.

[29:02]

So it's a kind of intoxication. And of course it's nice to have new things, it's nice to have new toys, shiny new toys or fun new toys. I have to admit that I'm a consumer of Buddhist beads and statues. But we can get carried away. So to paraphrase Descartes who said, I think therefore I am, in consumerism it's I shop therefore I am. And in our culture it's kind of unpatriotic not to be in debt. So there's this kind of addiction to having new toys, having new things and more and more of them and bigger and better. And I am thinking about getting a new computer. It's an old one, it sort of works but there's some things I can't do on it. So it's tempting. So what is the middle way? How do we take care of the things we have and the tools that we use?

[30:05]

Without being consumed by that drive to have more and more and bigger and better. And in some way I think that this addiction to material objects, this desire for new toys is a way of really just avoiding our life. It's an intoxicant. If we get carried away from the middle way on it. So the Soto Zen founder Dogen, Japanese monk who brought this tradition from China to Japan. In one of his most famous writings, Genjo Kawan, actualizing the fundamental point. Dogen says, when Dharma does not fill our body and mind we think it is already sufficient. When Dharma fills our body and mind we realize that something's missing. So this something missing is, you know, this is our life problem. This is our sadness. This is our frustration. And in Zen practice we sit right in the middle of that.

[31:09]

We face that something is missing as Dharma fills our body and mind. And I think the problem with consumerism is that it tries to fill up this something is missing with new toys. It tries to distract us from our own fears and our own sadness and our own frustrations and to take us away from our life. It's an escape. And we think we're already okay, you know, because we're not really soaked in the Dharma like Ryokan. And so when we feel some little frustration, well, let's go out and get a new whatever. And we substitute new toys for actually facing who we are and learning to settle into that. So this is very tempting, you know. It's sometimes hard to sit upright in the middle of who we are and what the world is and how we are and what our situation is.

[32:15]

It's painful. But I don't think that new toys is ultimately the answer. You know, sometimes it might be nice to have a little break and, you know, go to a movie or even get a new toy and it might be okay. But how do we find the middle way there? How can we be aware of our lack and our sense of lack and not try and fill it up with new toys? So Dylan has another line. Each of us, at times, we might work too hard, too heavy, too fast or too much. And anyone can fill his life up with things he can see, but he just cannot touch. So I feel like in consumerism, we try to fill our life up with things that actually don't touch us. We can't touch them. It doesn't touch the reality of our lives. It doesn't really address our suffering. It's just a distraction. It's an intoxicant. So in Buddhism, we're willing to not possess everything.

[33:30]

You know, we don't have to get all the new toys. We don't have to get the latest and the brightest and the fanciest whatever. We can still stay in touch with Ryokan's happiness. We can enjoy the moon. We don't have to conquer the moon. So I actually, I heard this on the radio, seriously, that there was somebody on the radio was talking about how he had a wonderful new plan, a very good entrepreneur, and he had discovered that, or he was working on laser projection, and he was actually trying to get this marketed and raise funds to develop this, to have corporate logos projected on the moon through laser projection. So maybe, and he was very serious, and kind of an interesting guy, and he was making the art case that actually the technology is there. So, I don't know, do you think that Ryokan would have wanted to give the moon to this thief

[34:33]

if it had said drink Coca-Cola on it? All those paintings of the moon in Asian culture with corporate logos on them. So I hope that as Buddhism develops in America, you know, we don't have patches on our monk's robe available for corporate logos. Drink Coca-Cola. I wonder how much I could get from Bill Gates if I had tattooed on my head the Microsoft logo. There's a whole potential there, I don't know. So anyway, Buddhist practice and meditation practice is about learning not to be addicted, not to consuming our world, to appreciate the forest, to appreciate the marine wildlife,

[35:34]

to appreciate our lives as we are, our lives are as they are, without needing to accumulate more and more toys. And if we have a lot of toys, that's great, and how do we use them beneficially? We can enjoy the toys we have, but how do we follow the middle way and not be consumed by needing more and more and more and more, and bigger and better? So I don't have any answers or, you know, a Buddhist policy about how to deal with consumerism in our society, or in our own lives. Except for one basic Buddhist idea, which I've already mentioned, and that's the value of awareness and attention. So I'm talking about this today because I want to encourage all of us

[36:36]

to pay attention to these issues, to see, do we really need this? Or, you know, if we get new toys, how do we use them? And if we keep paying attention and are aware of these values in our society and in our own lives, then eventually, I think this will change these patterns of addiction and change how consumerism is damaging our world. So I'll end with maybe a couple poems of Rilkan's. I'll read the one I read before first. Without desire, everything is sufficient. With seeking, myriad things are impoverished. Plain vegetables can soothe hunger.

[37:37]

We do have a nice vegetarian lunch here. Plain vegetables can soothe hunger. A patched robe is enough to cover this bent old body. Alone, I hike with a deer. Cheerfully, I sing with village children. The stream beneath the cliff cleanses my ears. The pine on the mountaintop fits my heart. So in terms of consumerist values, Rilkan really was a fool. Here's another one. All my life, too lackadaisical to stand up for myself. Buoyantly, I leave everything to the harmony of reality. In my sack, three scoops of rice. Beside the fire, a bundle of firewood. Who would ask about traces of delusion and enlightenment? How could you know the dusts of name and gain?

[38:39]

Evening rain. In my thatched hut, I casually stretch out my legs. This last one I'll read is about his attitude towards his begging rounds. Spring wind feels rather soft. Ringing amongst staff, I enter the eastern town. So green willows in the garden. So restless, floating grass over the pond. My bowl is fragrant with rice of a thousand homes. My heart has abandoned splendor of 10,000 vehicles. Yearning for traces of ancient Buddhas, step by step, I walk, begging.

[39:22]

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