So, nice to see everybody this morning. So, I've been thinking about two things. One is the state of the world, and the other is, what is our practice? And, of course, these two go together, as they always have been, but You know, the state of the world is a very interesting subject. You know, we say if you really look at what's going on in the world, our world, the world that we share in the light, which means the phenomenal world.

[01:04]

Looks like everything's coming apart at the seams. If you really take a good look, you realize that everything is coming apart at the seams. the ISIS phenomenon, and the Trump phenomenon, and all the political phenomena that go on that are pretty hard to swallow. We don't discuss it so much, and because we live in the utopia of Berkeley. It is. We have two of the most wonderful grocery stores in the world. And anything you want is there. I mean, you may want something that's not there, but, you know, pretty much you can get what you want. And people are at liberty to do a lot of things that they like doing without being suppressed.

[02:20]

When you look at the rest of the world, it's pretty amazing, actually, that in this particular time and place, For this moment, we're in this situation, which I can say is changing, but will always change. Right now, this is where we are. Sometime, it'll be different, radically. And so, human beings are self-creating, as we know. We create the circumstances through our actions and karma, which create our world. And we live in it. it's easy in a way to ignore a lot of things that are going on, because we get up in the morning, do whatever we do, go to work or school or whatever, and so we live in this kind of small space.

[03:36]

But around us is really a lot of tragedy going on. The largest migration in the world, One of the largest migrations that's ever happened of people displaced from their countries. Europe is at its wit's end as to how to deal with all this. And when I think about the refugees, how they can actually manage in such large groups to survive is amazing. When you think about how they eat, how they get from one place to another, how they endure the attitudes of the people in the places where they're traveling, how you actually find something to eat, how you find some place to defecate.

[04:39]

Think of thousands of people doing that day after day, all day long. But we don't have to think about that, but there it is, you know. So we live in an unstable world. But it's always been that way. It's just that because our communication is worldwide and very quick, and constant, that we think about it more. But frankly, it's always been like this, because there's nothing but change. So, this is called the Saha world in Buddhism.

[05:42]

meaning the world that's suffering. We may not feel like we're suffering, but because so many people are suffering, we can't avoid our own suffering. Their suffering is our suffering. I remember when I was practicing with Suzuki Roshi, and we were doing Sashin, seven days or something like that of sitting Zazen, and this is back in the 60s. We always did a lot of protesting in the 60s. We made marches and encircled the atomic the Ignition Facility in Livermore and other places sitting by the side of the road as protest.

[06:53]

We did a lot of that in those days. And while we were sitting Zazen or doing Sashin, somebody said, why are we sitting Zazen? when we could be protesting? That was a big question at that time. Suzuki Roshi said, You're just dreaming that doing that is better than doing this. He also said, how can you do this while there's so many people suffering? Because we used to complain about the pain in our legs when we were sitting Sachine. We were novices. We had a lot of pain in our legs when we were sitting Sachine.

[07:54]

And so we were going through this painful, experience. And he says, how can you complain about the little bit of pain that you're going through when there's so much suffering in the world? So there's a lot of question about how to take care of the world, how to take care of each other, what's the best way, what's good, what's bad, what's right, what's wrong. You know, the world is always like this. We build up society in a certain way, and then something comes along and destroys it.

[08:58]

And then we build up again, and then some force comes along and destroys it. That's the nature of this world. We want peace, we want security, but it's not possible. We live just so long. So we plan our lives and our society as if we were going to live forever. I mean, as if we were going to exist forever in this way. Whether we live forever or not is another question. As if, you know, and then, oh, he died. Oh, she's no longer with us, right? That's the nature of our life. Nothing. Everything that we create is destroyed. And then we create again, and it's destroyed. So what do you do?

[10:00]

What's the solution? We have religious belief, right? And in religious belief, there's heaven and hell and so forth. Even in Buddhism, there's heaven and hell. But that dualistic understanding, what do we do? How do we, so religion is to transcend, basically, the duality of birth and death, one way or another. Some religion says, well, there's heaven and hell. If you're bad, you go to hell. If you're good, you go to heaven, right? Well, that's kind of simplistic. Religion is, as I always say, a necessary evil, or it's an evil necessity.

[11:08]

It's necessary, but it's so easily perverted that it no longer takes the shape of its originality. Democracy was a great idea, but our selfishness destroys it. Democracy is destroyed by our greed and our ill will, and our delusion, actually. So, how can we live in this world given the insecurity and the unbalance of the way everything is? So that's the trick.

[12:17]

That's the trick of our life. And how do we do that? Because the nature of this world is dualistic, we have good and bad, and we have right and wrong. and like and dislike. In the midst of this, how do we find our composure? Basically, that's the question. How do we find our composure and how do we find, how do we reconcile all this opposition. So a Buddhist solution is to get beneath the oppositions into the realm of reconciliation of opposites.

[13:43]

the oneness of opposites. That's why we do Zazen. That's why we have Sashin. You know, in the Dharma, there's the dark and the light. The light means that where everything is revealed, all phenomena is revealed. When we sit here and we look at each other, all the phenomenal manifestations, you and me, are revealed. In the dark, everything is one. Zazen, our practice, is to let go of the phenomenal world in a sense of the light and to exist in the dark where all things are one.

[15:01]

This is the reconciliation where we all meet. This is the place where everything, everybody meets. We say if everyone sat zazen for 10 minutes in the whole world, we'd all be one person. there would be no conflicts. It's when we stand up and open our eyes, we have conflict. So for 40 minutes, to let go of the world, of objects, and simply resume our true nature, which is always there before the split, before differentiation starts. This is what we do in Zazen. We let go of the world, but what do you call the world?

[16:07]

We say, after Zazen, we go back to the real world, but that's perverse. What's the real world? The real world is the world of delusion and illusion and strife. That's the real world. Yeah, we need to do that. It's important. But the real, real world is the world before differentiation, before separation. So when we all sit together, we let go of the world of differentiation and become one. We're always one, even in the world of differentiation, but we don't realize it. We only see our differences. We don't see our sameness.

[17:12]

We don't see our oneness, our completeness. So to be able to experience at least once the deep oneness of humanity, of the universe, is important, even if it's just for one moment. This is our gift to the world, is to help people to realize that we're all one. If we have a God who we have to protect, does a God need your protection?

[18:25]

We don't have exactly a God in Buddhism, but we have a universal oneness. That's God. We have to live in the world of duality because that's the nature of this world. It's just the nature, it will not change. It's the nature of separation, but separation, if we understand the oneness of separation. All the separate manifestations are manifestations of the one. So when we realize that we're all children of the radiant light, then we don't need to quarrel with each other or say that your thing is better than our thing.

[19:35]

My thing is better than your thing. My God is better than your God. It's crazy. That's crazy making and it's destroying the world. But the world needs to be destroyed in order to rejuvenate. That's also the nature of the dualistic world. Without destruction, there's no resurgence. It's just the way things are. So we have to be able to realize and accept the fact that everything is being destroyed. And from the destruction comes the vitality. So how do we find our composure within that dynamic? That's the trick. How do we find the lightness within the heaviness?

[20:43]

The flexibility within the stiffness? The life within the destruction? So the Dharma, you know, Buddhadharma is basically is based on non-attachment. But it's hard to live a life of non-attachment because we need to have attachments. That's part of life. So we say the attachment of non-attachment to have relationship and freedom within relationship to things so that we allow for change.

[21:47]

And we flow with change because we are flowing in a world that's flowing. We often think of ourself as separate. I am here. and the world is flowing around me, but we're all flowing together. Everything is flowing together. I am flowing, and the world is flowing. As Master Dogen says, when we're riding in a boat, sometimes you look at the shore, and it looks like the shore is moving, and I'm standing still. That's not so, because the shore is moving, and I am moving too. Everything is moving. So how do we move with everything in a harmonious way? How do we create a harmonious world where we allow for change, allow for the flow, not get hung up on attachment to that which is moving, but the flow with the movement?

[22:52]

We used to say this back in the 50s, go with the flow, man. Ha ha. But it's true. Absolutely true. The 50s was a very creative time, actually. The 50s and 60s were a very creative time. The poetry, the music, art, that was actually the foundation of what's happening, but I don't want to talk about it too much. You think that things are going along in a certain way. After the Second World War, we said, now we can have peace, right? Now, no more war. But war is endless. There's only one war. And it has many battles, battlefields.

[23:57]

But there's never a time when the war is not going on. It's always going on. And so, yes, we make our best effort to stop it. That's good. We have to do that. But we should not be attached to that idea. All we can do is slow it down. And we think, oh, things are going well now. And then, it gets worse. The pendulum swings. When it's over here, everything's peaceful. And then, it comes back, everything's war. It's like that, not the clock. That's the old clocks, right? And anything that's happening in time will change, because the nature of time is change, except for time which doesn't change.

[25:01]

Except for time which is just now. Just now is the time that doesn't change. Because we can always, you can say it's one o'clock or two o'clock or three o'clock, that's time that changes. But time that doesn't change is now. Because it's always now, right? You don't live in then, except in our mind. And we don't live in the future or the past, except in our mind. But we live in the present. When we're thinking about the future, it's the present. When we're thinking about the past, it's the present. So past, present, and future are all at the same time, now. So Buddhist practice actually is to not depend so much on conditioning, but to come from the moment of now.

[26:45]

in a fresh way. So it's not like becoming childlike or childish, but regaining our innocence, which is to live right now without preconceptions and without opinions, without being attached to opinions or attached to our ideas about anything, to have a completely open mind and experience what we experience directly. Then we can really appreciate what's around us. We can appreciate each other even though we don't like each other. or even when we have problems with each other.

[27:49]

I guess it's called tolerance, but it's beyond our definition, truly beyond our definition. Tolerance means, yeah, you know, but, so there's no word for it, it's simply, being one with what's in front of us without judgment. And then you have opportunity. As long as we have judgment and preconceptions, we lose our immediacy, the immediacy of the moment to actually see what's really there. And you can see where people are coming from and what their suffering is that causes them to make us suffer. All the strife that's going on in the Middle East is part of our karma.

[29:02]

We created Bin Laden. We created ISIS. We did. It's all a reaction to dividing up the Middle East, for one thing, into countries, dividing up Africa into countries of our own choosing, and the West, I say our, but I mean in the West, and exploiting everybody in the world for our own benefit. The chickens are just coming home to quack, to peck, to quack. The ducks are coming home to quack. Yes, so we have to own our own, I don't say personally, but And the growth of Western civilization on the backs of the rest of the world.

[30:11]

And we have to take on the suffering that's come this way from all that. So what is our practice? I remember when Suzuki Roshi came to America, not too long after the Japanese had declared war on us, and we didn't like them very much, I can tell you. But when Suzuki came, he offered us, he says, I want to offer you, I know that a lot of crap has come from Japan, but I want to offer you the best. There's something that we have that will benefit. So he offered a thousand.

[31:22]

He said, this is the best of Japan, even though in Japan now, they don't think much of it. He said, here's the treasure that is ignored now in Japan, and please take care of it. So for me, our practice is to take care of the treasure that's been offered to us. Sometimes in the Koan collections, one of the teachers will say, people take the trash and throw away the valuable parts. And I think that we do that too. But You know, the Dharma is, it's the truth, but you have to investigate that yourself.

[32:35]

You can't just take it and say, oh, that's the truth because so-and-so said so. You have to prove it to yourself. And sometimes you have to prove it to yourself through suffering. Actually, we don't get anything except through some kind of suffering. physical, mental, emotional, and through our conscience. To be able to let go of all the branches and brambles that we've collected in our life and let it all go. And come up as a true person. without dualistic baggage. It's called, basically it's called innocence.

[33:41]

Not as a child, but as a mature person. to actually see everything as it really is instead of simply through our partiality. So as Suzuki Roshi said over and over again, to see things as it is, to see everything as it really is instead of through our partiality. Partiality means only seeing part of something instead of the whole thing. So we say that enlightenment is like omniscience. Omniscience means to see things as one, omni. To see the oneness that's shared with all the differentiation.

[34:54]

so that whatever you do is based on that understanding, which is more than just understanding in your head, but it's through your body. We absorb the practice through the pores of our body. That's what we say. Through practice, we absorb the understanding through our own, jumping in the water. You can have all kinds of ideas about what practice is and about what Buddhism is. Our practice goes beyond Buddhism, actually. I don't even like the word Buddhism. I don't like isms, and I know you don't like isms either. So I usually say Buddhadharma. not Buddhism.

[35:59]

We have to get beyond, but we use the Buddhism as a platform. Platform for our rocket. Our practice rocket. We use Buddhism as the platform. And then we can abandon it. not as something that we dislike, but we have to get beyond the idea of any kind of religious practice. That's the true religious practice. All the rest is ideas. so in a world where everything is changing, including ourselves. I remember I asked my teacher, Hoitsu, what do you say to people in Japan about when they're dying?

[37:14]

And he says, I say everything is going along with you, so there's nothing to worry about. Everything in the world is going right along with you, so there's nothing to worry about. Do you have any questions? Yeah. Yes, we never fully understand it.

[40:31]

That if you fully understood it, you would be the Buddha. That tathagata, tathagata means thus come one, one who comes thusly. In other words, as he is, as it comes from in the most truthful way, in the most authentic way. As far as Trump, I don't think he's smart enough to be a fascist. You know, he didn't write Mein Kampf. He just sees himself in a certain... The world is making me do something.

[41:39]

I'm just kind of floating along with something and taking it up. I don't think he's really mean, even though he's just stupid. He's not stupid. Not so stupid as he's been taken to be. Well, yes. But still stupid. Anyway, this is all... I don't want to talk about, you know, politics, although I do. But I won't. I'm not going to do that. But I will say, If you don't vote, don't complain. Absolutely, you have no room to complain if you don't vote. This has been given to us, this option to vote, and it's being taken away from us as well, right, at the same time.

[42:47]

And when I was young, up until I was about 40, When I was back in the, I didn't read the newspaper or pay attention to the news. Young people mostly don't, and so they don't get out and vote. Until the early 70s when, remember the Symbionese Liberation Army? in Berkeley and Patty Hearst. I guess you're too young. And they were rushing around Berkeley, you know, and firing guns with the police and burning up houses and stuff like that. That's when I started reading the news. And then I woke up to what was going on in the world.

[43:49]

I think even older people are not aware as much as they should be about what's going on in the world. You gotta vote. You gotta vote. And it's good to really investigate what you're voting for. Yes? Yeah, Heather? Yes. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, it's so overwhelming that it's hard to grasp the enormity of that.

[44:58]

So thank you for that. And do what you can.

[45:05]

@Text_v004
@Score_JJ