Well, welcome everybody. Lots of you. My name is Fu, and I live here on the farm, and I have a daughter who's going to be ten. She's kind of big, so she's not here. She said she had other things to do this morning. So I'm glad you came. And I thought I would tell you a story, and then I know you have an activity planned, all of you together, so you get to go outside pretty quick. This story, do any of you know this story? It's called Play With Me. Have you heard it before? No? Okay. Play with me. So in the picture, because I know you won't be able to see it very well, there's a little girl, and it's a sunny day, and she's walking in the meadow. And she says, the sun was up, and there was dew on the grass, and I went to the meadow to play. A grasshopper sat on the leaf of

[01:10]

a weed. He was eating it up for his breakfast. Grasshopper, I said, will you play with me? And I tried to catch him, but he leapt away. Grasshopper leapt away. A frog stopped jumping and sat down by the pond. I think he was waiting to catch a mosquito. Frog, I said, will you play with me? And I tried to catch him, but he leapt away too. A turtle was sitting on the edge of a log. He was just sitting still, getting warm in the sun. Turtle, I said, will you play with me? But before I could touch him, he plopped into the water. A chipmunk was sitting beneath the oak tree, shelling an

[02:14]

acorn with his sharp little teeth. Chipmunk, I said, will you play with me? But when I ran near him, he ran up the tree. A blue jay came and sat down on a bough and jabbered and scolded the way blue jays do. Blue jay, I said, will you play with me? But when I held up my hands, he flew away too. A rabbit was sitting behind the oak tree. He was wiggling his nose and nibbling a flower. Rabbit, I said, will you play with me? And I tried to catch him, but he ran to the woods. A snake came sneaking through the grass, zigzagging and sliding the way that snakes do. Snake, I said, will you play with me? But even the snake ran away down his hole. None of them, none of them would play with me. So I picked up a milkweed

[03:22]

and blew off its seeds. Then I went to the pond and I sat down on a rock and watched a bug making trails on the water. And as I sat there without making a sound, grasshopper came back and sat down beside me. And then frog came back and sat down in the grass. And slowpoke turtle crawled back to his log. The chipmunk came and watched me and chattered. And blue jay came back to his bow overhead. And rabbit came back and hopped all around me. And snake came out of his hole. And as I sat there without making a sound so they wouldn't get scared and run away, out from the bushes where he had been hiding came a tiny baby fawn. And he looked at me. I held my breath and he came nearer. He came so

[04:32]

near I could have touched him. But I didn't move. And I didn't speak. And the fawn came up and licked my cheek. Oh, now I was happy as happy could be for all of them, all of them were playing with me. Okay? Would you like to go out and play with each other? Okay, good. Please, please do. Enjoy yourselves on the farm. Thank you. Bye. Bye. You like birds, right? Right? You don't? I have a kiss.

[05:45]

Well, I don't know about all of you, but I am growing impatient. I want the patterns of violence and hatred in this world to come to an end. When I was little, I wouldn't have said I was impatient. I would have said that I was scared and sad. But as I got older, I wouldn't have said I was scared and sad. I would have said that I was angry. Until when I was a young adult, I learned to say that I needed some help. And I'm very grateful to have been taught some methods of moderation of my anger by the Buddhists. The primary method, as I was just offering it to the children, is to simply sit quietly by the pond

[10:01]

without sound. And little by little, we begin to notice beneath the shield of our anger, the unhealed wounds from having been so little, so sad, so scared for so long. After many years of looking and listening and feeling what I feel, those wounds in me are beginning to heal. So as I have now reached my middle years, I'm 55. As someone said, I've hit the speed limit. I find myself drawn back to an interest and a curiosity toward the world from which I fled, the world that's much bigger and much older than me. I had an image in my mind recently of splashing waves of ice-cold

[11:20]

water hitting me in the face and of struggling to get my head above the waves in order to see the pattern of waves that preceded those which were hitting me now. And this image reminded me of what the Dalai Lama had said after 9-11. He said, Don't seek for blame, seek for causes. So I have been reading and thinking and talking with others about causes. I've found and rented and purchased some books and some videotapes on the history of the United States, of Europe, of the Middle East, of Asia and Africa, of slavery and language and food, philosophy, psychology, ideology, of insects and of viruses.

[12:27]

In other words, how all of us in this myriad manifestation have been struggling together for a very long time, struggling for our lives. I even heard about a single-celled life form called the Luka. Do you know about the Luka? The Luka once swam unmolested in a warm primordial ocean of identical twins. The Luka is basically the letters for our last uniform common ancestor, those tiny little mothers that gave birth to us all. So I wanted to tell you a few things that I feel I've come to understand through my studies, that in this universe life is precious and rare,

[13:42]

that clean air, clean water and nourishing food are primary. Compassion is primary. Wisdom is primary. The welfare of some cannot be sustained at the expense of others. Human beings will die or be killed for ideas. Ideas are very powerful. Nonviolence is very powerful. There is right and there is wrong and there are consequences for our actions. Each of us must understand all of this for ourselves and much, much more, that we are the Luka. And yet, for all of my reading and pondering and understanding, still I know that at the core of my own capacity for anger and violence,

[15:01]

there is still what I think of as a glass shard. It was of really great benefit to me to hear this story from a friend of mine, a woman who lives in Mill Valley. It concerns her neighbors who, as she described them, are rageaholics. They yell frequently at one another and at their children and at their large barking dog. And they allow this dog to run free in the neighborhood and it has chosen to defecate in my friend's driveway. So, after getting up the courage to speak to her neighbors, she came out the next morning to find that her car had been smeared with dog feces. So, I think we can all imagine how hurt, disgusted, frightened and furious she became.

[16:18]

After cleaning off her car, she considered the variety of responses that she might make to her neighbors, which included attorneys, the police, and her own secret retaliatory acts of violence. But instead, the next day, she found herself taking the wrapping off of her morning paper and cleaning up after the dog. And this went on for several weeks and all the while she was filled with resentment, fear and anger. And then one morning, as she bent down to clean her driveway, she was overcome with inexplicable joy. And she thought to herself, I have chosen the path of peace. Since that time, and it's been a while, she cleans her driveway every morning with this deep knowledge and appreciation for herself, for her understanding of right and wrong.

[17:39]

And when we asked her if she felt any differently about her neighbor, she said, not particularly, but I have become fond of the dog. So, this story took me down deeply into my own heart, because I've always known that I am vulnerable to acts of anger, of coercion and of retaliation. But what I haven't always known is that I am completely responsible for ending violence at this spot of earth. I want to read to you again a passage that I'm very fond of from an old Buddhist text called the Dhammapada, which speaks to me so clearly about this essential point of the teaching.

[18:46]

What we are today comes from our thoughts of yesterday, and our present thoughts build our life of tomorrow. Our life is a creation of our mind. If a man or a woman speaks or acts with an impure mind, suffering follows them as the wheel of the cart follows the beast that draws the cart. What we are today comes from our thoughts of yesterday, and our present thoughts build our life of tomorrow. Our life is a creation of our mind. If a man or a woman speaks or acts with a pure mind, joy follows them as their own shadow. He insulted me. She hurt me. They beat me. He robbed me. Those who think such thoughts will not be free from hate. He insulted me. She hurt me. They defeated me. He robbed me.

[19:53]

Those who think not such thoughts will be free from hate, for hate is not conquered by hate. Hate is conquered by love. This is the eternal law. Those who do not know this fight against each other. We are here in this world to live in harmony. So what is it that makes living in harmony so difficult for we human beings? How is it that time and time again we come to fight against each other? The teacher of our tradition, Shakyamuni Buddha, sat down under a tree with this very same concern. I am strong. I am handsome. I'm young. I'm rich. He noticed.

[20:56]

But I too am subject to aging, illness, acts of violence, and death. Or as a contemporary poet said, I think it was Mr. Yates, sick with desire and fastened to a dying animal. So how do we harmonize with that? Each of us has been dealt the very same hand. We are the Luka. There are three primary strategies that the Buddha noticed as he watched his own mind turning in its traces around this issue of his own survival. He could turn away from life. This he called aversion or hatred.

[22:03]

He could appropriate life to his own benefit. This he called greed. Or he could sit there in a swirl. And this he called ignorance or confusion. And he saw that independence on which of these strategies he chose, six psychological destinations would result without fail. The first of these is called the hellish mind, which produces the worst kinds of evil. The second is an animal mind, which sucks into itself all the resources of food and pleasure. The third is a ghostly mind, aroused by desires for fame and praise,

[23:08]

though utterly lacking in inner virtue. The fourth is a fighting demon's mind, esteeming itself and disparaging others. The fifth is a human mind, longing for worldly comfort and pleasure. And the sixth is the mind of a god, feeding on pure pleasures and goodness amidst fantasies of eternal life. Most importantly for us and for our enduring hope of peace in this world, it was the very workings of the mind of the clockwork in the tower. These workings are both the cause and the escape

[24:10]

from these patterns of suffering in our world, in ourselves. From Nagarjuna's Mulamajamika Karikas, I highly recommend this reading to you. Whoever sees dependent co-arising, in other words the workings of the mind, whoever sees dependent co-arising, sees suffering, its arising, its cessation, and as well sees the path. Within the illness itself is the medicine for its cure. I don't know how many of you saw the Clint Eastwood classic Escape from Alcatraz, but in it, he studies with great concentration

[25:16]

all of the crevices of his island penitentiary for a means to escape. Toothbrushes, pieces of glass, tiny scraps of leather, cloth to be used to make rope. And I suggest that with no less determination as Clint Eastwood, we have to find in the squalid details of our own confinement the luminous signposts of liberation. And it's tricky business, as the Buddha saw when he grew closer to his own realization, these forces within his mind grew more rabid and fierce, just like the neighborhood dog. Not many of us in this room are going to have the experience

[26:23]

of driving into Baghdad in a tank with a gun. Nor will we likely strap explosives to our bellies and blow ourselves and our neighbors to smithereens. We don't have to go to these extremes in order to encounter the forces of greed, hate, and delusion, which are right now as we speak, as I speak, manifesting in the villages of the Middle East. These forces are identical in us and in them. We are the Luka. We are staring at our twins through the ocean-like mind that we call the Buddha. Those are our fathers, sisters, and brothers.

[27:24]

We are their mothers, uncles, and aunts. Only the thought of difference and separation is as the distance between heaven, earth, and hell. One of the women in the sitting group where I heard the story of her about the dog said to us, Well, I understand how I'm not separate from the citizens of Iraq, but I see no identity between myself and Saddam Hussein. And another lady in the group replied, Do you see an identity between yourself and George Bush? A third lady responded, who had once been the mayor of our very own town, Well, my dear friends, I do.

[28:25]

I see the mind of a leader. I see a mind that wants things to go my way or else. And it was only humor in the end that rescued all of us from the brink of our very own little version of warfare. Someone suggested we offer a workshop on finding the inner Saddam. So later that week I found in a Buddhist meditation manual a description of the mind that seeks control over others. Which our friend had been confessing to at our morning meeting. This is from Stopping and Seeing by the Chinese Buddhist Tendai Master, Zhuri. If the mind continually wants power so that all go along with whatever one does, says, or thinks,

[29:26]

this is arousing the mind of the commander of the realm of desire. Traveling on the path of the murderer. When a samurai approached a Buddhist monk with his sword drawn and the monk failed to stand or to speak, the samurai said, Don't you know I'm the one who can kill you? The monk replied, Don't you know I'm the one who can be killed? Choosing the path of peace takes a tremendous amount of courage. On the occasion of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday, my family and I rented a video about his ministry. I don't think I really knew before how extremely important

[30:32]

a man he was in an extremely important time in our own history. When he was invited to join the Civil Rights Movement in the late 1950s, he declined, but he said he'd be willing to come to a meeting. And the organizers of the movement said, Well, that's good because the meeting is going to take place in your church. They already knew that he was a leader and that he was an inspiring teacher and they chose him at first against his will. From childhood, he had been disciplined by a strict and loving father who would often hit him and tell him that he must learn to bear the beatings of others. With dignity and nonviolence. And in this way, he was training his son to survive as a black man

[31:38]

in the white America of his day. Later in the film, there was footage of dignified and well-dressed black gentlemen in the very same suits and hats that my father used to wear to church on Easter Sunday. Walking with the Reverend King down the streets of Selma, Alabama towards the rageaholics and the neighborhood dogs of human hatred. And they were beaten again and again and they were bitten by the dogs. And it was seen on television by us all. And their sacrifice engendered the first of many laws which continue to shine light on the unkept promises of this promised land.

[32:39]

So this is the fourth strategy, the one that the Buddha discovered under the Bodhi tree on the dawn of his enlightenment. To do all good, to refrain from all evil, and to live for the benefit of others. This strategy won't necessarily make you rich, but it may render you harmless and free. So reflecting for a moment back on the story of the little girl that I told to the children, the one who sat beside the pond, I think it's pretty easy for us to see how the world either is hidden from us or revealed to us depending upon our own actions. In any given moment, the very same world is either running in terror as we approach

[33:44]

or it's continuing about its day in harmony with its new neighbor. We may not get to test all of this out in the geopolitical ocean of multiple causes and generational hatred, but we can certainly try it out on our neighbors and our friends, in our own communities, right here with each other. From the Pali Canon, there is an unborn, unbecome, unmade, unconditioned existence which makes possible escape from the born, the made, the become, and the conditioned. And this escape takes place at the very moment that we cease running away from those who are chasing us.

[34:44]

When we turn and bow to the faces in the mirror, the adult faces which melt into children who smile and wave and scamper on home to their homemade dinners. Oh, now I was happy as happy could be for all of them, all of them were playing with me. Thank you very much. May our intention equally penetrate every being and place.

[35:35]

@Text_v004
@Score_JJ