I just was thinking this morning, I got the most wonderful phone call just a few minutes ago before coming over here. One of our sons called, we hadn't heard from him in a while, he just moved to Boston and we chatted about different things and then he said, but the real reason I'm calling you is because this evening is Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement begins this evening, and I wanted to call and apologize for all the things I may have done and said during this last year that probably were off or hurtful or mean, so I'm just calling to apologize. And I thought that was really wonderful, and I didn't realize how much it affected me until

[01:04]

just a minute ago, I was putting on my robe, I was in Tenzin Roshi's little room, putting on my robe, and I saw the picture of Suzuki Roshi that he has hanging up in there, and I thought to Suzuki Roshi, I'm so sorry for all the things that I'm sure I've done and said this year on behalf of the Buddha Dharma that we're not measuring up, so I had to spread my bowing cloth and make three deeply felt bows to Suzuki Roshi, because I have no doubt that not only in the last year, but in the years before that, I've said and done many things that I didn't even realize were incorrect or improper or hurtful or less than they should

[02:11]

have been, coming from the Dharma seat, so it shook me up a little bit, so I apologize to you also, when we practice, trust the teaching and trust the teachers, and it's a big responsibility and I'm sure that we all fall short of it, so I apologize. Well, that has nothing to do with what I want to talk about today at all, but I was

[03:17]

feeling that I wanted to just mention it. Today, my talk has a title, and the title of my talk is, Zen, Consumerism and Social Transformation, and the reason why my talk today has that title is because in a few days I'm going to Dublin, Ireland, and I'm going to do various things there, and there's this fellow in Dublin who I've never met, who's apparently quite a Dharma impresario, and he goes around, he's sort of setting up all these things that I'm going to do in Dublin, and I have no idea what they are, but I got a call from him that said, on such and such a day, you're going to give a talk at Trinity College in Dublin, and the title of the talk is, Zen, Consumerism and Social Transformation.

[04:19]

Click. So, this is unusual, you know, usually people say, well, what would you like to talk about, or could you talk about this, or would you, you know, but he just said, that's the title of the talk, click, you know, that's the end. So, I actually admire the lunacy of the idea. You would, somebody that you've never met, you have no idea what they know anything about, or don't know anything about, and you put up a big public talk, and you tell them what the title is, and you expect the person to show up and talk about that. But I thought that was actually pretty marvelous. So, I thought that I better prepare myself, you know, for this. So, I actually wrote a talk with that title, and I'm going to test it out on you. And afterward, in the question and answer, you're going to tell me whether

[05:23]

or not you think that they'll buy it in Dublin. So, that's my talk today, so I will begin in a moment. Well, so I have a friend, some of you may know this, I have a friend who is kind of a famous businessman, and he and his wife are kind of a team, and they're starting an e-business here in the Bay Area. So, from him, from them, I'm learning that it's a very difficult thing to do, a very difficult thing to do, especially at this moment to start an e-commerce venture. And as I'm watching them do this, I am flabbergasted

[06:30]

with what it takes to do something like this. First, you have to raise 10 or 12 million dollars, then you have to gather together a team of highly trained and experienced professionals, and then you have to make deals with scores of partnering companies who are going to help you with the skills and things that you need to design, manufacture, and market a product. It's a huge undertaking, and very risky. Now, I grew up in a small town, and all the people in our community were small business owners. And in those days, it was not that hard to have a small business. And the idea was that if you were honest and diligent and willing to work hard, and you cared about the people that you served, chances were very good that

[07:35]

you could stay in business, barring any unforeseen disasters. But it would appear that this is no longer the case. As my friend who also came from a family of small business people said to me, that was 50 years ago. But today, it's not 50 years later, it's 500 years later. And the pace of change in our world, and in business and the whole world, is so rapid now, that honesty, diligence, caring about people is not enough to ensure survival. Because there's a lot of people, a lot of smart people out there, trying to do the same thing you're doing. And there's a lot less of a social fabric, a lot less civility, a lot less of a sense of social custom, decency, and fairness than there was 50 years ago.

[08:37]

It's as though the world is getting a lot smaller, and there's a huge number of people running full speed ahead, trying to get into the same corner of the world that you're trying to get into, and everybody's elbows are out there. So it's a lot more difficult. 50 years ago, you could have a small business, and you could little by little grow, or stay more or less the same. But now that's not possible. In order to keep going, you must grow. And if you start small and try to grow slowly and reasonably, the chances are good that someone with more money and more connections will see the idea that you've got and will steal it, and do it quicker and better and with more notoriety than you can. So then the alternative is that you should borrow money and grow the business quicker. And if

[09:40]

you do that, then very quickly you lose control over what you're doing, and you are swept up in the inevitable swirl and power of the market. And I have other friends who are experiencing this. So the whole thing, the way things are now, economically, is very nervous-making, very stressful. People can make a lot of money, but also it makes you very nervous, I think. And it's not at all unusual these days for people to have a $50 million business that closes even before they sell the first product. This is happening pretty much at least one of these a week in this Silicon Valley Bay area. And being in business seems to be more a matter of making deals and managing spin than about the actual delivery of goods and

[10:44]

services. So I have a lot of admiration for my friends for attempting this and for keeping their balance in the midst of it. Again, when I was young in our little community, the idea was that human beings naturally needed a certain amount of goods and services to live, and that if you could provide those goods and services and charge reasonable prices for them, then you would be fine. This is no longer the principle, I think, of our economy. Now, as far as I can tell, the principle seems to be that there is an infinite number of possible human desires that can be exploited. And the person who can create and satisfy a desire that has not yet been thought of is the person who will do well. You know,

[11:50]

we're laughing, but this is exactly what is going on. You have to think of some human desire that no one has yet thought of. And if you're the first one to think of that and you satisfy it and you create it as not a desire but as an absolute necessity, you will be very successful. And the heroes in business, and they are heroes. When I was young, the idea that the person who owned the dress shop or the shoe store was a hero was a kind of ridiculous idea. But now, leaders of business are heroes. The heroes of business are the ones who have done that, who have created a desire that didn't exist before and have succeeded in making that desire seem to be, and actually be for us, an absolute necessity. And with the piling up of desires and the products and services that will satisfy those desires, comes a whole new set of desires that didn't exist before, and on and on. In other words,

[12:56]

if we now have the necessity, and it is a necessity, that we all have powerful computers, then it also becomes a necessity that we have computer accessories, computer furniture, computer repair people, computer consultants, software, computer magazines, and then soon after that becomes a necessity that we need personal services like personal trainers, house cleaners, gardeners, nannies, physical therapists to take care of that life that we don't have time to take care of because we're busy with our computers and all that goes with it. And then we need things like cell phones, internet and fax to communicate with the various people who are taking care of those parts of our lives that we don't have time to take care of because we are doing the things that we're doing with our computers. So desire begets desire in a proliferating and endless pile-up. And the actual principle

[14:07]

of the world economy, the ever-growing world economy is, although it's not exactly stated this clearly, I think the principle is clearly to me that the expansion of desire must be literally infinite. There must be an ongoing expansion of material growth without end. If not, and even if it keeps expanding but the rate of expansion would slow a little bit, so not only does it need to expand but the rate at which it expands also must increase always. If the rate even decreases or certainly if the expansion decreases, then there's a spreading panic because it's this upward movement of a feeling of power and energy of desire

[15:12]

that keeps the whole thing going. And if we were to stop going that way, things would suddenly deflate. And all of this economic upsurge that we're enjoying really depends in the end on our faith, our belief in the endlessness of these various desires that are erupting in us like Calistoga geysers. And if we stopped believing in them, the water would dry up fast. So everybody is very enthusiastic, very powerful, very interested, and all of our lives are very, very full, very full. We have a national dialogue going on in the presidential elections and it's impressive to me that our candidates, none of the candidates,

[16:19]

the four major presidential, vice-presidential candidates, are not complaining whatsoever about the present situation. And they are in complete agreement that we are all in better shape, happier, and more fulfilled than we have ever been. And they say exactly this thing, than we have ever been. And both of the candidates are promising us that we can do better, ever increasing, expanding more, that we can have more, that we can create more. So if you listen to all this, you would assume and you would believe that we must be in a happy situation, that we must be feeling more fulfilled than we ever have, and that the average person must be really enjoying himself, herself. And maybe it's true. Maybe I don't really know. But in my little world, the people that I know, it doesn't seem to

[17:27]

be true. Most of the people that I talk to are not feeling thrilled. They feel more uneasy. They feel burdened and stressed by the pace of life, by the feeling, tone of their lives. And they even feel, I think, somewhat fearful, because there's a sort of anxiety underneath the surface of their rushing and energetic days and weeks. There's a feeling that this is all extremely tenuous, that it wouldn't take much for it all to change quite suddenly. And the more they have and the more they're enjoying themselves and the more they want and the more they need and the more they feel good about all this, the more underneath it

[18:28]

they feel something's on edge. And they feel, I think, a sense that things are all but out of control. So, in our society, breakdowns of various sorts are not at all uncommon. Addictions of various kinds are the norm, pretty much. And it is amazing to me the numbers of people that absolutely require therapy or medication or both just to get through their week. Maybe, who knows, maybe many of us here are in that shape. The other day I saw Bill Gates interviewed on television. Is there anyone here who doesn't know who Bill Gates is?

[19:31]

He was interviewed on television and I was impressed. He seemed to be an extremely cheerful person, Bill Gates. And the interviewer asked him, after he had talked about all the wonderful things that were happening in the world, they asked him, did he see any downside to the technological revolution that he's one of the main architects of? And he said that yes, he did see a downside to it. And the interviewer said, well, what is the downside? And he said the downside is that not everyone has the technology available to them, that there are some people who are not yet wired, and that we should make sure that everyone is wired. And as a friend of mine pointed out when I mentioned this, it is true, that's true. People who don't have access to these machines

[20:43]

are at a great disadvantage and they should have access to them. However, the fact that this is the only downside that Bill Gates can see, really impressed me. And as we all know, I mean, now again, when I was young and we were looking at the future and this sort of, all these things that would happen, people were, we used to write books about what were we going to do with all of the leisure time that we would have because of all this technology that was going to make most of human activity, gainful employment, you know, irrelevant. So what were we going to do when we came to the two-day workweek and the one-day workweek? How were we going to handle that? People wrote about this. It didn't turn out that way, though, did it? Quite the opposite. It seemed to me that people

[21:47]

were working much more than they ever did, in a way, in much less satisfying ways. So that seems to be how it is. Then, on top of that, you have all these amazing advances in medical science with gene splicing and super drugs and cloning and transplants and so on. And then you have, in technology, over the horizon, artificial intelligence and microcomputers that are, you can have clouds of computers floating through the air and people can download their entire consciousness into a chip. They say, they say this. And that chip can be transplanted, you know, put into some sort of a machine. In other words, the whole thing is getting to the point where the whole notion of what it means to be a human being is in doubt.

[22:48]

Coming to the boundary of what we, the basics of what it means to be a human being, like death and so forth, somehow seem to be in doubt. And the whole notion of a future that looks anything like the present, that we think we can understand, is kind of out the window. The future is like a cloud, a dark cloud, maybe, on the horizon, and nobody knows what it looks like. So all that I'm saying so far is the good news about the part of the world that's doing really well. The first world, Europe, Japan, the U.S., it's really doing well. That's how it looks there. In the third world, the underdeveloped world, so-called, there isn't this kind of prosperity. But it's not as if the people in that world are escaping all of this, as if it doesn't exist for them. In fact, it does exist for them. And even though they're not sharing

[23:52]

in the prosperity, their traditional ways of life are being pushed out, becoming extinct. And this new economy seems to be exploitive of the underdeveloped world. And there is no corner of the world now, there is no Shangri-La, no mountain kingdom somewhere, that is unaffected by this. In relation to this, the Dalai Lama has said, and this is a quote from him, economic inequality, especially that between developed and underdeveloped and developing nations remains the greatest source of suffering on the planet. Even though they will lose money in the short term, large, multinational corporations must curtail their exploitation of poor nations. Tapping the few precious resources such countries possess

[24:57]

simply to fuel consumerism in the developed world is disastrous. If it continues unchecked, eventually we shall all suffer. So, this is troubling, all of this is troubling, whether you're living here in the Bay Area, the most prosperous, forward-looking geographical location on the planet, or whether you're living somewhere in Africa, or somewhere in Asia, the world seems troubling. Whether it's more troubling than it has ever been in the past, I don't know. It seems to me it's impossible to say. Maybe we are, as a species, better off than people ever were in the past, maybe we're much worse off. I don't know and I

[26:03]

don't see how anybody could know. It seems as if people have always felt that they were living in the crisis generation, the crucial generation. In the centuries gone by, there were solutions, it seemed, to these problems, at least for some people. For many centuries, people thought that religion was the solution, that there was a system of firm and literal belief that would assure a certain kind of a future. That feeling among human beings lasted for a long time. And when it broke down for the last century and a half, there was Marxism, which really is a brilliant social analysis that presumes to know exactly where history is going. Now we have the advantage, if it is an advantage, of being free of these

[27:05]

illusions. Most of us realize that we really don't know where we're going. We can't believe in some literal vision of a future. Everybody now knows that Marx did not have history figured out, and even the most powerful telescopes have so far not located heaven. So that's nice, we have no illusions, but this may not be entirely a happy situation. So I was assigned this topic, excuse me. I don't usually talk about stuff like this because I don't know that much about it. People know things about it more than me, but I wonder if anybody really knows anything about it, to tell you the truth. I'm very skeptical, because I think that when we talk about the world around us, we're really talking about ourselves and our friends

[28:09]

and how we feel. That's what we're really talking about. So I'm not so sure that we are in crisis and that we need social transformation. It's not that we're not in crisis and that we don't need social transformation. I mean, I think we are and we do. It's just that I'm not sure that this is any different from any other time in history, when we always were in crisis and always needed thorough social transformation. It may be just that now there's enough history that we recorded history that we can look at to be clear on this point. In our practice of Zen, we don't need to have an analysis of such a situation, regardless

[29:17]

of what we think about it. Our practice is the same, because we're not trying to know something, we're not trying to control something, and we're not trying to do anything. In a way, if we want to find the path toward the social transformation necessary for our generation in our time, that kind of practice, I really feel, is the basis of it. It's the soil out of which the plants of social transformation grow. And our method, as you all know, is to sit down in the present moment of actual lived experience and allow ourselves to be

[30:18]

there fully, centered on the fact of our being as we are, rather than on our thoughts or our emotions or our sensations. Just centered on our being here, letting things come and go, and therefore entering a wider and purer world. Not a different world, nothing different from the world we're always living in, but usually we don't notice or acknowledge this pure wider world. And the method is very simple, it's not exactly experience, it's not exactly experiential, it's not mystical, it's not profound, it's just sitting up straight, paying attention to the feeling of the body being sitting up straight, paying attention to the

[31:23]

breathing, breathing in and out, releasing yourself to the rhythm of the breathing, using all your intelligence, all your creativity and all your love to gather yourself there in the present moment of being a body and of being breathing, devoting yourself to this with all of your heart. In Buddhadharma there are many, many useful techniques that can help you to deal with your distractions, various kinds of focusing methods, compassion methods, insight methods, various ways of training yourself to appreciate basic facts of our lives that are so crucial for us to appreciate, like impermanence,

[32:25]

so on. And, you know, there's a million different schools of Buddhism that specialize in these different techniques, but whatever techniques we may use, in the end, there is no technique other than our being radically present with our lives as they actually are, as they truly are, rather than as we think they are or wish they are or fear that they may be. So our practice, Zen practice, acknowledges the simplicity of this. We know this is something that any child can do and does, and we also know now, more than ever, that it's something that we all need, that we all desperately

[33:26]

need to return to. And if you are trying to practice this, you know that although it is very simple, it is not necessarily easy, that it takes effort and it takes discipline, serious discipline. Some people become interested in practicing as a relief or an escape from the anxiety of their lives, but Zazen practice is not a relief or an escape from suffering and anxiety. In a way, it's just the opposite of that. If you do Zazen, it becomes easily and quickly quite clear to you, by your own experience, that the only way to overcome suffering and anxiety is to turn toward the suffering and turn toward the anxiety and to see what it really is and what its source is. And when we do this, we discover that the very running away from what is, is what creates the suffering

[34:36]

and the anxiety in the first place. When we can breathe with, be with, what is the suffering and the anxiety, then they reduce, they may even pass away. And even if not, we lose our fear of them. And without fear of suffering and anxiety, we find a way to work with them. Zazen practice makes life workable. But as I say, it takes discipline and discipline over an amount of time. Zen practice involves daily effort, daily practice, and I really feel there's no other way. Every day, every day, we have to come back, touch in with ourselves,

[35:45]

our truest, deepest sense of ourselves. Because every day, the power of the thought of the world and its proliferating desire pulls us away from ourself. And there's not a person here in this room who is wise enough or strong enough not to be lost in that world and its power. So we need every day to come back to ourself. And once in a while, we need to take a whole day to do nothing but that, or a whole week. We really need that. And we need friends and teachers to help us find the discipline and the faith to make that possible. Sometimes in Zen, they call Zen mind, no mind, or the mind of not knowing. No mind or not

[36:56]

knowing mind is open mind, a mind that recognizes that things are changing so constantly and so radically, moment after moment, that they are truly insubstantial at the core, empty at the core. This is a mind that flows with things, that is at one with things, ready and alert, without clinging desires and without compelling preconceptions. And it's a mind that can work with whatever comes up, whether it's good or bad, a mind that knows that it is impossible to make a world be what we want it to be. And that even if we could make the world be what we want it to be, it would be very pale compared to the marvelous world

[37:59]

that unexpectedly comes up, moment after moment, without our control. To live with such a mind may seem like an impossible ideal, but I do not believe that it's impossible. It may be an ideal, it may be that none of us quite reach this ideal, but it is a true horizon for human life, and we, like all human beings, have the capacity if we make up our minds to do it, to walk in the direction of that horizon, and to get closer to it with each step, and yet we never reach it, and it is always exactly the same distance from us as it is right now. So I believe, you know, my brilliant social

[39:09]

analysis is that we're living in a time when spiritual practice is really necessary, not ideology, not belief, but actual practice is really necessary, and furthermore that everybody knows this. Everybody knows this now. But I also feel like we're living in a post-religious time. After a hundred and fifty years of psychology, human beings are simply far too aware of the multiplicity of their inner and outer lives to be able to squeeze themselves into any particular belief system or regimented way of practice. Our great ancient religious traditions are still relevant, I think, maybe more relevant than they ever were. Every tradition is like a long conversation over hundreds and hundreds

[40:14]

and sometimes thousands of years between wise and passionately committed individuals, a conversation using a coherent vocabulary that goes down through those many years, and a conversation that's based on powerful experiential practices. It's a conversation about what matters most in the human heart, and yet it's so difficult to talk about, and so difficult to find access to, that it requires something as extreme as a religion to try to get at it. So these traditions, and I feel all of the traditions, are really beautiful and really crucial, despite the fact that we have to be honest, every one of them has created harm in human history, and sometimes devastation in the lives of individuals. So these traditions are formidable, very powerful, but also, we have to admit, they're limiting. That's

[41:22]

their nature, that they're limiting, because every one of these traditional conversations has to take place in a particular language, a language that in the end really makes sense on its own terms and eliminates other terms. So we could say religions are all monolingual, and all human beings are polyglot, and we need to learn how to communicate to ourselves and each other in many languages. And I feel that if religious traditions think that they can now, as they did in the past, require people to let go of all the many languages that they speak and adapt only the one exclusive language of a particular tradition, then these traditions are going to die out and become irrelevant. Instead, these religious traditions need to go beyond themselves, to step outside of their boundaries and to reach

[42:25]

out to people as and where they are, and to offer them their ancient depths and riches in new ways. This will be for the benefit of people as well as for the vitality and creativity of the traditions themselves. Some of you may know that I used to be the abbot of Zen Center, one of the abbots of Zen Center. And when I was elected abbot some years ago, I was chosen because a lot of people had the idea that one of the main qualifications for the job of abbot was that you didn't want to do it. I never said anything, but I thought that was not really true. I thought that was kind of a stupid idea, but people thought that. So I had that qualification. That was my main qualification. I really didn't

[43:29]

want to do it. And people thought that I was an unambitious person, and I think that they felt safe to have a person who was not so ambitious as abbot. So I was elected, and I served. I did my duty. But I'm here to tell you this morning that they were wrong about me. I have to admit that I'm actually a very, very ambitious person. It's just that my ambition is so big that being abbot of Zen Center didn't make it on the radar. Because what I really want, my ambition really is to totally transform the world. What I

[44:35]

really want is to save an infinite number of sentient beings, overcome an infinite number of desires and delusions, master an infinite number of truths, and become utterly and totally, completely, nothing other than Buddha's heart. So with an ambition like that, who can worry about being abbot of Zen Center or not, or anything like that? What's the difference? Now, I know that sometimes ordinary worldly ambitions enter my heart, and like all of you I suffer for this. But really, those moments are nothing compared to this persistent and tremendous ambition of mine. Now, I'm well aware of the fact that this ambition is impossible,

[45:42]

and that no matter what I do I can never hope to achieve it. But to me, that's what makes it so wonderful. What's the use of undertaking something you have any reasonable chance of succeeding at? What's the point of that? The only things really worth devoting a life to are things that you know you can never complete. Anything less than that, I feel, is just simply not worthy of our human passion and our human imagination. The last few hundred years of our human journey have been heroic centuries. It's almost as if we started to really grow up as a species and feel our oats, you know, like we just turned, we went from being 10 years old to about 18 in the last couple hundred years,

[46:50]

really feeling our adult power. But like an 18-year-old male, you know, we're feeling our oats a little too much. We think we're invincible. We have overestimated ourselves. We have become too boisterously arrogant, I think. And maybe now is the time for us to ripen and mature, to recognize the limitations of being human and to be truly humble, to rest and be nurtured by our breath, by our animal skin and fur, by our body, by our mind, to rest in not knowing and to rest in the faith that there is a wisdom and a power of goodness in each and every one of us that we can absolutely rely on, even if we don't

[47:57]

know what it is and we can't control it and we can't understand it. It's in us. Sometimes, social commentators, who are far more astute than I could ever be, project the future based on the present. You know, extrapolate. If it's this way now, it'll be this way then. But whenever you do that, the results are always terrible. And, you know, no doubt in the long run, regardless of what happens, our species and our planet are definitely doomed, because everything only lasts so long in the big scope of things. But there are always miracles. History is littered with miracles, and it's perfectly reasonable to count on

[49:01]

a miracle. The fact that this is so is what makes life such a marvelous thing. So I'm here today to recruit all of you to join me in my impossible dream of total transformation of the world and the creation, in Bob Thurman's words, of a limitless Buddha-verse. Why not? Why not? I think it's possible, or impossible. It doesn't really matter. And I know that if we help each other by encouraging each other to dream big dreams, by returning to the present moment and letting go of everything right there, we don't expect anything or try

[50:04]

to control anything, but just make our best effort to do what we know in our hearts is the right thing to do, I am sure, I am really sure, that we will be successful someday. I'm not saying when, but someday. So this is my proposal for my talk in Dublin. You'll tell me later what you think the Irish are going to think of that. Thank you very much for listening. It's always a pleasure to speak with such a wonderful audience.

[50:38]

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