It's nice to see all of you, especially the children, good morning. Last weekend I was in Miami, Miami Beach. It's really warm there. I actually got a sunburn. And I went to a wedding, and I don't know if any of you children have ever been to a huge wedding, a really big one where everybody dresses up in tuxedos and things like that. I went to a wedding like that in Miami Beach. I've only been to one or two weddings like that in my life, so it was quite a thrill.

[01:04]

And the best part was the, I thought anyway, was the procession. There's this music playing, and there must have been about a dozen bridesmaids and groomsmen all dressed in the same identical, the women were dressed in black dresses and the men in the tuxedos. And they walked down the aisle in pairs, you know, one man and one woman. And the door would open, and one man and one woman would come, walk down the aisle. And when they got there, the door would open again, and another two would come, went on and on like this. And they were all really beautiful. They were all young and good-looking, and they were all friends, you see, of the bride and groom. And they looked like princes and princesses walking down the aisle.

[02:07]

It was really beautiful. And I imagined how they must feel, walking down the aisle with this beautiful music playing like as if it was music from heaven, you know, coming from the sky, walking down the aisle with all these people looking at them. So it was not like going out for a stroll, you know, all these people looking at them, all eyes on them. And you could tell by the looks on their faces that they knew this was a special kind of a walk that they were taking. It looked like they were walking toward the sunrise, and they were going to walk right through the sunrise, you know, into another universe. That's how it looked, walking down the aisle. So finally, after all the bridesmaids and groomsmen came in, then came the groom, and

[03:08]

he had his mother and father on either side of him as he walked down the aisle. And that was really something to see, because the groom looked a lot like his parents. So it was like he was the new model, and they were the old model, you know, walking down the aisle. And then after that, the parents of the bride came in, and they walked a little ways down the aisle, maybe, I don't know, one quarter of the way. And the music stopped, and everybody fell silent. Then the doors opened up, and there was the bride.

[04:08]

And it just took your breath away, you know. She looked like an angel from heaven, all white, fluffy things, you know. She had a train on her gown, it looked like the foam of the ocean following behind her. And she walked out in total silence, and she joined her mother and father. And then the music burst out again, stronger than ever. And the three of them walked down the aisle together. You should have been there, it was really something. And again, it was really beautiful, because the bride really looked like her mother and father, and she looked like the new model, the special, brand new, with all the options model.

[05:12]

And she looked like she was walking down the aisle to be launched into the new life, somehow. I mean, it was something. So can you imagine that, can you picture that? Have you ever been, have any of you been to a wedding like that? Actually there was a little girl, I don't know, maybe about your age, who was the flower girl, I forgot to mention about her. She came down the aisle before the briding groom, and she was so good, she just walked in a measured pace, very slowly, and she had a little basket of flower petals, and she had a sweet smile on her face, and she would, first with her right hand, take a handful of flower petals and go, plunk. And then a few more steps, then her left hand, plunk, plunk, plunk, beautiful.

[06:27]

And so by the time the bride and groom came, the whole aisle was strewn with flower petals. So they call this, when the bride and groom come with their parents, they call this giving them away. They give away the bride, the parents give away the bride, and they give away the groom. So after that, the bride and groom are no longer really, in a way, anymore the children of their parents, their parents have given them away, right? And now they're for each other. So I'm mentioning this because all of you, even though you're very young now, someday will be given away by your parents, even if you don't have a big wedding ceremony like that, even if you never get married, one way or the other, you'll be given away by your

[07:36]

parents, it's hard to imagine, maybe now. But it will happen. Can you think of that? Can you imagine that? To be given away when you're grown up by your parents? So in the meantime, that's why I'm saying this, in the meantime, before you're given away, enjoy your parents. Because the time of being given away comes sooner than you think, and maybe when you're given away, you'll remember that I'm telling you this today, and you'll think to yourself, that seemed like so long ago that he said that I would be given away, but how short it was. So I hope that the parents will remember this, and the children will remember this also, and appreciate the time before the time of giving away, because it's really special and

[08:41]

really precious. Would you? Think of it? I hope so. So, I'm going to keep talking, but you guys can leave anytime you want. The truth is, anybody here can leave anytime they want. You might be better off, actually, going with the children. A few weeks ago, I had my stepping down ceremony, and in the ceremony, we have a Dharma dialogue

[10:20]

where people come and ask questions, and I'm supposed to answer the questions. Rick was one of the people who was assigned to ask the question. In Japan, when they have these ceremonies, it's scripted. You know the questions and the answers in advance. It's formalized. But here, we don't know the questions or answers in advance. So Rick asked me a question about family, because Rick and Eva had a baby boy, Jacob, at the end of November. So when he was asking me in the ceremony about family, this was not an abstract question about family. This was something that came from his heart. Something very immediate and personal for him.

[11:20]

Now, I have done a fair number of these ceremonies, and I can never remember exactly what is said, what I say, or what the other person says, because in order to do the ceremony, you really have to pay attention to what, and listen to the question and respond immediately. And so, when you pay attention that much, it's hard to remember what happens. So I can't really remember exactly what our dialogue was, but I do remember that I somehow said to Rick something like, you should let go of your family. Give up your family. And I also remember that in the ceremony, he didn't like that answer at all. And he said, I won't do it, forget about it, I'm not doing that. In the ceremony, he said that. So that was excellent conduct of a student, right?

[12:29]

Never believe the teacher. Give the teacher a hard time. If it's not true for you, don't believe it. Maybe later it'll be true for you, and then you'll appreciate what was said. But until then, forget about it, don't believe it. So, usually you tend to remember those moments in which you thoroughly disagree with your teacher, and they're important moments, but you should disagree if it's not true for you. So he did that. And afterward, in the reception, he came up to me with a very sweet and cheerful expression and said, I don't care what you say. I'm not giving up my family, that's not right. And this is because he really loves his family with an immense love, which is something very

[13:35]

very beautiful. From our ordinary perspective as human beings, a love like that is one of the most unlikely things imaginable, that you would care for another even more than you care for yourself is a very unlikely thing. And when you see it, it breaks your heart, it's beautiful, so beautiful. Every human being comes from a family of some sort. Everybody has to have a father and a mother as a precondition for entering this world. And this kind of a social unit is the basis of all human psychology and all human society. No matter how good or how bad our parents were, no matter how supportive and nurturing

[14:36]

they may have been, or how unsupportive and unnurturing they may have been, they always somehow remain with us. Even their absence is powerful. If we were lucky, like Jacob, Rick and Eva's son, then when we're very little, our parents establish a strong bond with us. Eva was telling me that if she goes away from Jacob just for a little while, the whole time she's away she's thinking of him every minute, and she can't stay away very long, she has to return pretty soon. So, if we're lucky, this kind of bond based on selfless love is established.

[15:38]

But the truth is that once this bond is firmly established, the whole of parenting is a long slow process of letting go of the bond, all the way up to the time that you give away the bride or the groom, one way or the other, even if it's not in a wedding ceremony. It doesn't want to be given away. Of course, even after that, you're always bonded with your spouse. That bond never goes away. But also, you really do let go. And if you don't let go, if you can't let go, then there are big problems. Oops, what's the matter?

[16:45]

I don't know. Is it okay? So, that's the hard thing about being a parent, is giving that kind of love, establishing that kind of bond, and then letting it go. It's actually, I was talking to a friend last night, my wife and I were with a friend who has grown children, as we do, and we were talking about how sweet and how difficult that is. I'm thinking about this because I'm working some on my book I'm writing about mentoring and parenting, and I have a chapter about this. And although it's very stupid to quote from oneself, I want to just read you a little

[17:56]

section of what I was working on the other day, which probably will be eliminated from the book, as everything else has been eliminated as time goes on. But I'll read it, I'll read it, because it's about this. Give away your child, you also give away most of the pages you write when you write a book. So this points toward the need in families for a new kind of love to be developed, as the family changes to include a new young adult, someone who was a child and then becomes, little by little, a young adult. It's a love that includes in it some distance, some spaciousness, a wide mutual respect that will allow each person's independent development. To grow this kind of love takes sensitivity and courage.

[18:59]

It requires that each person in the family undertake the subtle task of tending more thoroughly to his or her own business, while not losing sight of or warm concern for the other. Such love is not characteristic of young marriages or young families, and it shouldn't be. Young marriages and young families are occasions for a wonderful and intimate closeness in the midst of which it is hard to tell the difference between you and me, husband and wife, parent and child. This is a wonderful time, as magical for the parent as for the child, a time of self-transcendence and joy. But such a time, by imperceptible degrees, comes to a close over the years, and we need to be ready for it. We need to remake relationships, not only between son or daughter and parents, but also between husband and wife.

[20:01]

The family dynamic changes across the board when children get ready to come of age as adults. The work of developing this wider, more inclusive love is one of life's most rewarding experiences, I think. For most of us, most of the time, there is a great deal of fear and strongly held desire in our loving. While this is normal, it also can become confining. Eventually, it can transmute, no longer love. It can become a form of dependency driven by fear, and it can even insidiously take on the form of an antipathy, that we persist by habit in calling love. Love is dynamic. It can never stay the same. It has its stages, and to miss these stages, not to cooperate with them, is to watch love

[21:07]

die without realizing that you're watching that happen. As love in a family matures, one can see that the one we love can never be possessed, can never be held on to. From the standpoint of a dependent love, this can seem like a tragedy, but it's only tragic if you don't like it and you don't accept it. If you can accept it, you see that it's a good thing that we can't possess or hold on to the object of our love, because if we could, it would not really be a living being. It would only be our invention. And in the end, inventions aren't really lovable. The coming of age of a son or daughter is a unique time in a family's life for the development of this new, wide love. In any case, whether parents choose to undertake it or not, it's impossible for them to hold

[22:09]

on to their child or protect or shield their child from the world. Just as in the story of Buddha, whose parents try to protect him from the world, keep him within the safety of the palace, parents can't ensure that their children will always be safe and well, and that their lives will be successful and free from pain. Sometimes pain comes, and although we all try to avoid pain whenever we can, when it comes it's not necessarily something negative. Sometimes pain and suffering may be exactly what we need to make our lives more real. And mature love always recognizes this, and so contains a measure of letting go, and there's always some sadness in that, I think.

[23:10]

But I also don't think that there's any way around it, and it may not be a bad sadness, but rather a sweet sadness. In the story of Buddha's life, Buddha leaves home, but in the end he comes back and becomes the teacher for his family, and that can happen also in our families, as our children. We give them away, and they come back and become our teachers. With my friend last night we were discussing all this, and he was saying that his father has Alzheimer's disease, and he has to take his father by the hand and take him for a walk, put him to bed at night, diaper him, give him a shower, just as if he were a little baby. Most of us who come to Zen practice, come thinking of it as something that we're doing

[24:24]

for ourselves, as individuals. We think of Zen practice as being about a person alone. And in Buddhism, the sort of archetypal moment is Buddha's leaving home, as I said. Leaving his family in order to seek the way. But in reality, whether we see ourselves as Zen students or emulators of the Buddha's life, every person, regardless, does leave his or her family at some time. And I think that this is required of us, to be a whole person. We leave our family, even though you might be living in the midst of your family. Because real love, as I said, has always that sense of distance in it. I don't think it's possible to love truly unless you know what it means to let go.

[25:30]

And I think that that letting go is the spaciousness that's at the heart of love. When we understand letting go, we're embracing life as it really is, rather than life as we wish that it were. Because life is not something you can hold on to. The nature of life is to pass by. Every moment of life is a moment of passing by. So I think our practice is all about learning this kind of loving, which means joining the community of life, the flow of life as it really is. And although it may seem that Zen practice is about ourselves as individuals, when you think about it, the method of Zen practice, it's, as Sung Sunim, the Korean Zen master says, it's together action, doing everything together.

[26:35]

Sitting together, walking together, working together, eating together, joining ourselves hand to hand with everyone, as each one of us goes ahead with our life. And sitting on our cushion isn't a lonesome thing, even though we seem to be all alone. Even if we're sitting on a mountaintop far away from anyone, we're sitting right in the middle of our family. And our life, if we really see it, and really are willing to enter it fully as it is, is always lived right in the middle of our family, the family of everything. And we are always embraced and held in the bond of life, moment after moment. After many, many years of sitting with the community every day,

[27:41]

I'm now starting to sit sometimes all by myself. And I was doing that this morning, early in the morning, all by myself. And I wasn't lonesome. I really felt tied up in the bonds of life with everyone and everything, sitting by myself, hearing the sound of the ocean. This phrase that I'm using, tied up in the bonds of life, is actually a phrase from the Jewish tradition. And there's a prayer that you say for your parents when they have died, and it ends with this phrase, May they forever be bound up in the bonds of life. And I'm thinking of this phrase particularly now because

[28:49]

after that wedding that I told you about a few minutes ago, I went to visit my parents' grave. Graves, they're buried side by side in Miami. And I don't get to Miami too often, so whenever I'm there, it's high priority to go and visit the grave. And it was a little bit of a funny thing because I don't know if any of you have driven around Miami lately, but it's extremely confusing, at least to me, where you're going. Because there's 125th Street, 125th Court, 125th Avenue, 125th Place. There's South 125th Street and North 125th. The numbers don't always make sense, and so we were bumbling around getting lost, and my aunt said, Well, we'd better get there because the cemetery closes at six. So we got there at two minutes after six,

[29:52]

and there was a big sign that said, Cemetery open nine to four. So the cemetery was long closed when we got there, but fortunately it doesn't have a very high fence around it. So my son and I scaled the fence and went into the cemetery, which was actually especially nice because it was extremely peaceful. Nobody else was around because it was closed. And we went and found the graves pretty easily, and it was kind of sweet. One of our sons, Aaron, and I stood there for a while and said prayers. Lately I've been studying a fascicle of Dogan called Zenki in Japanese,

[30:58]

which can be translated into English as The Whole Works. And this fascicle is very dear to us here at Zen Center because The Whole Works is the name of our senior teacher, Tenshin Zenki Anderson. The Whole Works Anderson. And it's a very profound pun, this phrase, The Whole Works, because it's like the whole works, right, and the whole works. So it's a pun in English, and I believe also in Japanese, Dogan intended it as that kind of a very profound play on words. Anyway, this is a great... It's in, I guess, the new Dogan book that we did called Enlightenment Unfolds, and I recommend that you read this. It's a really beautiful writing of Dogan. And the main point of it is what I've been talking about this morning.

[32:01]

The fact that we are all always, every moment of our lives, deeply held right in the middle of the totality of all of life. And that as human beings, moment after moment, we act. Something we do, every moment. And that in the midst of those acts, all those acts are decisive, powerful, inclusive acts. There's nothing that we do any moment of our lives that isn't totally important and significant, and isn't a moment and an act that can't bring us completely face to face with all of life, with our whole life, with all of life. Wherever we are, that is the only place to be. And at that place, the whole world comes to fruition. That's the place where all of life is created,

[33:04]

and where all of life passes away. Whatever it is that we're doing, no matter how trivial or insignificant the act may seem, the whole world depends on it. And the whole universe was created only for us at that moment. Yesterday, I went to Jon Kabat-Zinn's retreat in the morning, and I snuck away in the afternoon. I was inspired by his discussion of mindfulness, and I went home and I folded laundry, you know, and things like that, you know, threw away garbage. And I was doing that knowing that that was the most important thing in the world, and that the whole world depended on it. And it was very nice and very peaceful. So knowing this and practicing this way, I think, is the secret of our practice.

[34:09]

To live our lives as if every moment were really like that. As if every moment were our first and our last moment. As if every moment we were walking down the aisle toward the sunrise of our lives. And this is not something made up. This is reality. This is existence. And our job is simply to wake up to it, to know that it's so. So this writing of Dogen Zenki opens up like this. This is the opening paragraph of it. The great way of all Buddhists, thoroughly practiced, is freedom and realization. Freedom means that in the middle of life, you are free of life. And in the middle of death, you are free of death.

[35:13]

This is existence itself. Freedom from life and embracing life. This is how practice is. You let go of life and you vitalize life. Such is the thorough practice of the great way. So this is how Dogen begins. And we have this idea, on the one hand, of letting go, and on the other hand, of embracing. And in our minds, these seem like quite opposite notions. One seems to preclude the other. But here, Dogen is saying that when we really appreciate our life, we see that these things are not opposites at all. That really living means letting go and embracing simultaneously. Seeing that there's no such thing as embracing without letting go. And there's no such thing as letting go without embracing.

[36:17]

You know, letting go without embracing is nihilism. And embracing without letting go is attachment. When we're born, we're not really born. When we die, we don't really die. This is how our life is on every moment. And when we can appreciate that, then we can live completely. And we can love completely. Later on in the fascicle, he says, the whole world of living and dying is like someone bending and stretching the arm. The whole world of living and dying is just like that. Or like someone asleep, reaching back for their pillow in the dark. This is making our life real. In a vast and wondrous light.

[37:21]

The whole world of living and dying is just like someone bending and stretching an arm. Or like someone in the night reaching back for a pillow. So, I think to me this is a marvelous expression. Life is just like stretching an arm. And it comes from the oldest Buddhist sutras. And certainly in the oldest Buddhist sutras, they got it from somewhere way in the past. And in old sutras it would be used as an expression for immediacy and speed. They would say often in old sutras, just as quickly as a strong man would stretch and bend his arm, just so quickly a god appeared in the sky in front of the Buddha and said. And then it would say something. And then there's an old saying in Buddhadharma, the elbow doesn't bend backwards. The elbow only bends in one direction. I guess some people maybe are double-jointed or something. Usually the elbow only bends in one direction.

[38:24]

The arm can only be stretched out in this way, not in any other way. And then there's an expression that we have in English. Reach out. The phone company made this very popular. Reach out to someone. Reach out and touch someone. Reach out like that. So I think that's the same. All of reality is like bending the arm, reaching out. And the second expression about reaching back for your pillow in the dark makes it even more clear because this is a reference to a famous line in a koan, a koan whose subject is compassion. The koan says that basically the burden of the koan is that compassion isn't some special sort of activity, something that we do once in a while.

[39:28]

It's just like reaching back for your pillow in the dark, something very natural, very reflexive, you don't even think about it. So in other words, all activity is the activity of reaching out. All activity is the activity of compassion. Getting up in the morning and putting your feet on the floor and standing up is an act of compassion. Stumbling into the bathroom and brushing your teeth and rinsing your mouth is an act of compassion. Going for a walk, feeding the dog, making the coffee are acts of compassion. Life is compassion. Life is endlessly a process of reaching out. The whole works means that life is embracing and letting go and when we live our life like that, then compassion is just something very natural, very easy. And when I was studying this and marveling over this phrase,

[40:32]

it's just like stretching out your arm, it made me think of a phrase, a biblical phrase that I've always wondered about. Every year I go to a friend's house at Passover time, we have a Seder, and there's a line in the Seder that always intrigued me because it seemed so odd. It said, and God, something like, God save the people with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. It says in the service, and I thought, that's really weird. What does this mean, an outstretched arm? But now I think I understand. Having studied Zenki once again, now I understand. God is the outstretched arm. That is, the whole works. In every moment of time, when we deeply live it and allow ourselves to drop into that moment of our lives, we are the outstretched arm embracing the family of everything that is.

[41:34]

And I really feel that we're so lucky to have a practice that's so simple and so easily accessible and can make this feeling about our lives so easily accessible. And I feel myself how sweet it is to be able to do Zazen. And when I sit in Zazen and just breathe in and breathe out, I feel that my life most purely is this truth that I'm speaking about. Every time I breathe in, I am vitalizing my life, literally vitalizing my life, embracing my life completely. Every time I breathe in, I'm saying yes to my life in whatever comes. And when I breathe out, I really feel like I'm letting go of my life.

[42:39]

I'm giving it up. I'm finding freedom from my life with each exhale. And whether I'm doing Zazen or not, whether I'm aware of this or not, I am practicing this 24 hours a day, every day of my life, as long as it lasts. When I was born, or when someone was born, conventionally called me, I was born because my parents loved each other and because they were good people. I came into the world and I took one big painful inhale and I let out a tremendous cry like everyone. And when I pass out of this world,

[43:44]

I will let out one big exhale, one final sigh of my life. But I'm doing the same thing every moment between. Every moment between, I'm accepting my life and letting it go. And the whole works goes along with it. And this is love. And whether you like it or not, whether you agree with it or not, whether you know it or not, you are practicing this. All that is, is inevitably practicing this. And this is why we know that our Sangha, our community, includes everyone and everything, because everyone and everything is practicing this.

[44:52]

So I'll close with a little part of, some of you maybe, I don't know if I've done this before in this Sunday talk, but I've been making my own versions of the psalms and I'm really enjoying it. So I'll read you a part of my version of Psalm number 95. We are here, singing to you, erupting with shouting, at the place of the rock of our salvation, coming gratefully and gracefully before you here, affirming with our words, the music of our mouths, that we are possessed by you, yours entirely. For you give us the gift of sovereignty, a power above all others,

[45:59]

the majesty of our absolutely being. You whose hands touch the earth's depths, pierces the mountain peak. The always changing sea is yours, for it exists because of you. And your hands have formed the firmness of the lands. So we come in awe, offering the earth and sea of ourselves to you, bending what we are toward you, shaper of us. For you are our beyond, and we are your doing. Sheep who graze in your pastures, animated by your hand, if only we could awaken to it. If only we could awaken to it.

[47:05]

So let's do that. Let's awaken to it. Anyway, let's make up our minds to try. Thank you.

[47:22]

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