Well, it's getting darker and darker and darker until we get to the solstice, which is not too far away. And this is the time of year when people all over the world want to bring light. It's getting so dark that they want to bring some light into their lives. And so there's festivals, various festivals of light. And right now, this is the fourth night of Hanukkah, which is also called the Festival of Light, and it's a festival of freedom, too. So I don't know how many of you are familiar with the holiday, what it's all about, but

[01:18]

it commemorates an event that happened in 170 B.C., which was right around the time when the Prajnaparamita was first coming forth in India. And the Greeks and the Jews were, well, they had a big fight. And at the end of the fight, the group of guerrilla warfare, people named the Maccabees, won,

[02:19]

and they wanted to re-enter the temple and light a light called the eternal light that's usually burning in the temple. And they only had oil for one day, but for some reason, the oil lasted for eight days. Even though it looked like there was just enough for one day, it kept burning for eight days. And so they said, a miracle happened here, a miracle happened here, which the first letter of that sentence in Hebrew, those letters are on the toy called the dreidel that's played during this time of year, during this holiday. And those four letters, it's a gambling game.

[03:20]

You either lose, win half of the pot, win all of the pot, or get another turn anyway. Those four letters mean a miracle happened here, so it commemorates that. And it's a kind of minor holiday, but it's a joyous one. It's one of the only festivals that goes on in the winter. So what about these miracles? A miracle happened there. Do miracles happen anymore, or are there any miracles that happen? We had a class on Monday night where we were talking about the Heart Sutra and the mantra that comes at the end, Gyate, Gyate, Paragyate, Parasamgyate, Bodhisvaha. And we had a, I thought, a rather lively discussion about mantra and magic and the efficacy of

[04:31]

saying such syllables and this Buddhism. Is there magic in Buddhism, or is that a strange addition that's not really part of the real thing? Anyway, I appreciated the class which everyone taught for me because my mind had been totally obliterated for the last week or so. So everybody just completely taught the class and taught each other and discussed whether a miracle happens or what is magic. So the word miracle, the root of the word miracle, it means something outside of natural law or something that you're astonished by.

[05:31]

And it also means, one of the roots means to smile. So that's kind of embedded in the definition of miracle is something that makes you smile. Well, if you put it that way, are miracles happening? Do miracles happen nowadays? Also in the word miracle, one of the roots, the word mirror comes from the same thing. And you can see how that would be to look at something with astonishment, to gaze at something with attention, and to be mirrored or look in a mirror. There's a mirror in this car, and maybe some of you have the same kind of mirror.

[06:38]

And etched on the mirror, it says, a Buddhist teaching, it says, objects in mirror are closer than they appear. Have you ever seen that? Have you read that? I sit on the passenger side, which is where it's written in our car. And I've often looked at that and thought, what are they saying? What are they trying to tell me? Objects in the mirror are closer than they appear. And I think that's what Buddhism teaches about objects. What are objects? What is mind and objects, or subject and object? That was my question to Norman last week, too. What are mind, what is mind, what is the Buddhist teaching of mind and objects?

[07:38]

Objects in the mirror are closer than they appear. And I got a wonderful chance to work with that this last week because I had a whopping case, as most of you know, of poison oak. And so there I was having various sensations, which we talked about in the Heart Sutra class, trying to get the skandhas in view and remove the notion of an I or a person and just look at the skandhas, the flowing five aggregates or heaps that makes up what we call I or what we call our psychophysical personality stream. So it was a very good exercise for me. And as someone said, you lost the competition, or I don't know what it was.

[08:46]

So the poison oak, the sensations of the poison oak were extremely strong. And although it wasn't life-threatening, which I mentioned to someone today, this is not a life-threatening disease, at least this case. Maybe there are cases that are. So there was no fear that I was going to lose my life, or there was just plain torment. It was just torment. And those of you who've had it know that for me it's easier to work with other kinds of pain than this particular kind of pain, which seemed to cry out for something to relieve it that would be even some stronger, more severe pain or discomfort than what was going on already.

[09:49]

So I wanted to... Well, actually, Wendy, is she here? Wendy told me in Appalachia the cure for poison oak or what they do is dunk the person in Clorox. It's called white magic. And when she told me, I thought, oh, that would have been perfect, something searing and burning and more intense, and that would relieve the pain. But I didn't know about white magic, so we didn't try that. But that's another kind of magic, is white magic. But wanting to have something scalding. So this is not so unusual, actually. When we have emotional pain or trauma, we often, in a confused way, I think, want to do something that will be even more painful to ourselves

[10:58]

to obliterate the mental or emotional pain that we have already. We want to annihilate and obliterate, and one can do various extreme things to oneself in order to... which seems like being relieved from the pain, but it just causes more pain of other types and can be harmful to oneself. But I really understood with this poison oak how one would seek for something even worse as relief. It sounds unusual, but I don't think it's all that unusual. So, mind and objects. The Buddhist teaching of mind and objects is that

[12:01]

mind and objects... Look at the quiet, peaceful mind of mind and objects. The Buddha's mind of mind and objects. There's not really a problem. There's no problem with mind and objects. They're actually quiet and peaceful, just the way they are. And yet, we and I am not settled there. This is an unusual thing to think that that's quiet and peaceful. Mind and objects is quiet and peaceful. How could it possibly be? It's greed, hate, delusion. It's thirst and craving and torment. That's what it is. That's what mind and objects is, isn't it? How could there be quiet and peacefulness around mind and objects?

[13:07]

Objects in the mirror are closer than they appear. The Buddhist teaching of objects in the mirror closer than they appear is pointing to the fact that mind and objects are not separate things. This is the Buddha's mind, and the Buddha's mind is mind and objects, quiet and peaceful. Jessamyn Meyerhoff the other day showed my daughter a transfer, a ticket for a bus transfer, and it said, void if detached. And she thought that was also a wonderful Buddhist teaching. So the question is, the girls told me about that. I had to put it into the lecture. But that's true. Void, you know, sometimes emptiness is translated as the void, you know.

[14:12]

So if one is detached from mind and objects, then that understanding of emptiness comes from this detachment. So void if detached. So everything in the world is helping us. There's not one single thing that's outside of Buddha's activity that's helping us. All the world is helping us, even the poison oak. And I... I am... That's like good news, you know. I want to hear about that. But the mind needs some kind of training.

[15:14]

The mind needs some kind of training to accept this. It's not so easy to accept this at face value, that everything in the world is helping you, that everything, whatever happens, is just the unfolding of Buddha's mind, of the Buddha mind and way. This is not easily accepted. So little by little, little by little, we can take this in and settle. So anyway, this feeling of being obliterated and also preparing for this top feeling, there was nothing... This is what happens when you're sick or emotionally distraught or there's some problem.

[16:19]

You feel... You can feel... Like you've got nothing there to work with or to come forward with, you know. So I was happy on Monday when the class was taught by everyone else. I could just let that happen. And because... This feeling of allowing things to come forward and realize themselves, there's a kind of rest there, like listening to some wonderful music that you don't... You know it maybe a little bit, but you don't know it really, really well, so you listen attentively and the music kind of comes forward and reveals itself for you. I've been reading this book

[17:29]

called The Jew in the Lotus about a group of rabbis and Jewish scholars who went to visit the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala Maybe some of you have read it or looked at it. It's a good read. The person who wrote it, he carries you along. The narrative moves very nicely. And they had a big discussion on the way to Dharamsala also about miracles and magic and even what to call the Dalai Lama. Should we call him His Holiness? Because what does that mean? How could a human being be called His Holiness? So there was long debates about what to call the Dalai Lama. And also when they spoke with him, there was a variety of traditions that were assembled in the room

[18:32]

and one person spoke at length about a very emotional, spiritually fervent way of practicing Judaism and some of the other people from slightly different traditions were embarrassed. It was embarrassing to hear about this side, which is, he didn't know so much about it, talking about angels, the whole tradition of angels and all these angels that support everything we do. This is all within the Jewish tradition, but it's not talked about so much. I never heard about it. And that's what one of these rabbis said. Some of us have heard this for the first time, but the Dalai Lama was very interested in angels, wanted to hear all about the different varieties and levels. So in this tradition, in the tradition that I grew up in,

[19:39]

it would be embarrassing to be really fervently interested in practicing strongly the religion. I didn't really know anybody. I knew scholars and I knew people who did good works and donated to worthy causes, but I didn't really know anyone who was filled with the equivalent word of the Dharma. This is embarrassing. And I find, just talking about it, I feel slightly embarrassed. I know that in the diversity workshop,

[20:40]

for those of us who are here for that, when we, all those who are from Jewish backgrounds, please cross to the other side, to the other side of the room, that was unusual in a Zen Center context for me to be separated out as someone who is from a Jewish background. And I know at Zen Center, just like any other place in the world, there's anti-Semitism and sexism and racism and all the isms that one can find anywhere else you can find at Zen Center. This place is not immune. And I've experienced instances of this here. So I realize, as I'm talking, I'm sort of hesitating to delineate myself

[21:44]

in a certain way that might be cause for someone setting up a certain idea. That's interesting in terms of exposing oneself, exposing oneself to the golden wind, exposing oneself to the Sangha. So we need to train our mind. We call this practice period, we always call it practice period here, but for a long time we used to call it training period. Are you going down for training period? And we dropped that usage a while back. I think people had some association with training, like military, that they didn't like. So we say practice period,

[22:44]

but our mind needs training in order to help, to learn how to take care of ourselves. When mind and objects are intense and painful and emotional, we may actually realize we don't know how to take care of ourselves. We actually don't know what to do. And maybe by this time we've learned if we go this way, there's going to be big trouble. If we try to obliterate or intensify so much for relief, it's not going to work. But then what do you do? If you don't do that, turning away and touching are both wrong. If you don't touch the fire for relief, but you don't want to turn away because you're going to get too cold, what do you do? You don't know what to do often.

[23:55]

So the Buddhist teaching of mindfulness, there's a book called The Miracle of Mindfulness. What happens when we actually begin to pay attention to our emotional states, to our tendencies and propensities, and with courage, with heart, with wholeheartedness, take care of that which is before us? Take care of it rather than try to obliterate or kill ourselves. And it becomes more and more and more subtle, the way in which we try to obliterate. It may not be some big, intense, but the more we pay attention,

[24:59]

the more we see that a hair's breadth deviation will fail to accord with the proper attunement. You know that we say that? A hair's breadth deviation is enough. So we go from big, giant swings. When we take our posture, we swing way over to the right, way over to the left, and back and forth and back and forth, tinier, smaller, smaller, until we come to rest smack dab in the middle with our two little sitting bones, like two little feet, very even and upright. And this posture, this courageous posture, because it does take heart, courage comes from the word core, heart. It takes heart to sit in upright posture.

[26:02]

It takes whole-heartedness. You can't sit upright without heart, without courage. So we sit upright, smack dab, and this is a miracle. This is astonishing. First of all, it's astonishing that out of all the things that we could have heard about in the whole entire universe, we did happen to hear about upright sitting. This is astonishing. Many people might hear about it, but then actually to try it out, we were just talking about all the people we give Zazen instruction to every week, and all the people at Tassajara, every summer day there's 25, 35 people who have Zazen instruction, but where are they?

[27:04]

Are they sitting somewhere? We don't know. Thousands and thousands of people have had Zazen instruction in the last 30 years of Zen Center, so luckily we heard about this and decided to try it out. This is astonishing, and this makes you smile. This is a miracle occurred here, a miracle happened here, a group of people sitting here quietly, peacefully. So our training is to find how we can live with this with the difficulties and entanglements

[28:04]

and problems of our life, which are not going to go away, and use those as expression, as the full expression of who we are. One of the trainings is something that is sometimes called the Four Guidances, and also I saw it translated as the Four Ways of Gathering Students, which I had some feeling that after the fact someone said, oh, this is how you gather students, look at all the students, and that person does this, this, and this, rather than someone saying, how am I going to get some students? How about if I try this, this, and this, and see if they come? I think it happened afterwards. The four are, the first is giving gifts, and this is a traditional time of year to give gifts, giving gifts at any opportunity, giving the gifts of your body, speech, and mind,

[29:10]

the actions, as well as material things. And the second one is kind speech, or speaking pleasantly, but kind speech, and kind speech has an enormous effect even when you overhear someone else speaking kindly to someone over there, you feel a wonderful feeling that will last, can last for a long time, you'll remember that, what someone said. Kind speech is extremely important. And the third is helping people to fulfill their aims, and so what people want to accomplish in their life, what they want to do, how they want to live, to help them to do that, to help people to find their true way,

[30:12]

whatever it may be, whether it's your way, or similar to your way, or another way, to help people to find their way. And the last one is to live according to what you teach, sort of practice what you preach, to actually live your life in accord with all the things you're telling other people about. And even if we try to do these four things, we have trouble doing that. Harsh speech comes out, even like frogs, that's what my mother used to say, if someone said something mean or something, it was like frogs coming out of their mouth. Like frogs. It comes out, you say a harsh word or unthinking thing, and you don't give a gift, you know,

[31:15]

you keep it for yourself, or it doesn't even occur to you, you know. And you don't take the trouble to help someone kind of do what it is they need to do, and you don't live by what you teach. So I found that even though I say to my kids, don't scratch, I couldn't help but scratch. I was scratched, and I felt sort of, what did I feel like, I felt sort of nuts, I felt sort of crazy with scratching, having to scratch, knowing that this was not going to help, and not being able to not, you know. And the kids would say, don't scratch, don't scratch. So these four things, everyone can try,

[32:18]

it doesn't matter about gathering students or not gathering students, they're also called the four ways of guidance, I think. This is just four ways that you can live your life, add to what you're already trying to do maybe, but they accord with the precepts and the six perfections and everything else. So everything in the world is helping us, whether we know it or not, whether we believe it or not. And this very mind is Buddha, that's one translation of Soko Zen Butsu, Soko Zen Butsu, this exact mind is Buddha. This quiet, peaceful mind of mind and objects.

[33:23]

So I brought a story to read tonight, just because, you know, it's dark outside and it's Hanukkah, and this is a story, a Hanukkah story by Isaac Bashevit Singer. Do you know him as a writer? Many of you do. He grew up in Warsaw, and I actually don't know very much about him, but he writes in Yiddish and is translated. And this, let's see, how do we turn this on? This is a story called A Hanukkah Evening in My Parents' House. You know, it's not, I found this story, there was something about it. It's not a really earth-shaking story or very funny or anything, but it sort of got to me, so I thought I'd read it to you. All year round, my father, a rabbi in Warsaw,

[34:35]

did not allow his children to play any games Even when I wanted to play cat's cradle with my younger brother, Moshe, Father would say, Why lose time on such nonsense? Better to recite psalms. Often when I got two pennies from my father and I told him that I wanted to buy chocolate, ice cream, or colored pencils, he would say, You would do a lot better to find a poor man and give your pennies to him, because charity is a great deed. But on Hanukkah, after Father lit the Hanukkah candles, he allowed us to play dreidel for half an hour. I remember one such night especially. It was the eighth night, and in our Hanukkah lamp, eight wicks were burning. Outside, a heavy snow had fallen. Even though our stove was hot, frost trees were forming on the window panes. My brother Joshua, who was 11 years older than I, already a grown-up, was saying to my sister Hindala, Do you see the snow?

[35:37]

Each flake is a hexagon. It has six sides with fancy little designs and decorations, every one a perfect jewel and slightly different from all the others. My brother Joshua read scientific books. He also painted landscapes, peasants, huts, fields, forests, animals, sometimes a sunset. He was tall and blonde. Father wanted him to become a rabbi, but Joshua's ambition was to be an artist. My sister Hindala was even older than Joshua and already engaged to be married. She had dark hair and blue eyes. The idea that Hindala was going to be the wife of some strange young man and even going to change her surname seemed to me so peculiar that I refused to think about it. When father heard what Joshua had said about the snow, he promptly said, It's all the work of God Almighty who bestows beauty on everything He creates. Why must each flake of snow

[36:39]

be so beautiful since people step on it or it turns to water? Hindala asked. Everything comes easily to nature, Joshua answered. The crystals arrange themselves in certain patterns. Take the frost trees. Every winter they are the same. They actually look like fig trees and date trees. Such trees don't grow here in Poland, but in the Holy Land, father added. When the Messiah comes, all God-fearing people will return to the land of Israel. There will be the resurrection of the dead. The Holy Temple will be rebuilt. The world will be as full of wisdom as the sea of water. The door opened and mother came in from the kitchen. She was frying the Hanukkah pancakes. Her lean face was flushed. For a while, she stood there and listened. Although mother was the daughter of a rabbi herself, she always pleaded with father to be lenient and not to preach to us all the time, as she felt he did. I heard her say, Let the children have some fun. Who's winning? It's little Moshe's lucky day,

[37:40]

Hindala said. He's cleaned us all out, the darling. Don't forget to give a few pennies to the poor, father said to him. In olden times, one had to give tithe to the priest. Now the tithe should be given to the needy. Mother nodded, smiled, and returned to the kitchen, and we continued our game. The tin dreidel, which I had bought before Hanukkah, had four Hebrew letters engraved on its sides, Nun, Gimel, He and Shin. According to father, these letters were the initials of words which meant a great miracle happened there, an allusion to the war between the Maccabees and the Greeks in 170 B.C., etc., etc. Moshe and I took the game seriously, but Joshua and Hindala played only to keep us company. They always let us, the younger ones, win. As for me, I was interested both in the game and in the conversation of the adults. As if he read my mind, I heard Joshua ask, Why did God work miracles

[38:41]

in ancient times, and why doesn't he work miracles in our times? Father pulled at his red beard and his eyes expressed indignation. What are you saying, my son? God works miracles in all generations, even though we are not always aware of them. Hanukkah, especially, is a feast of miracles. My grandmother, Hindala, you, my daughter, are named after her, told me the following story. In the village of Tishvitz, there was a child named Zadok. He was a prodigy. When he was three years old, he could already read the Bible. At five, he studied the Talmud. He was very good-hearted, both to human beings and to animals. There was a mouse where his father lived, and every day little Zadok used to put a piece of cheese at the hole in the wall where the creature was hiding. At night, he put a saucer of milk there. One day, it happened to be the third day of Hanukkah, little Zadok overheard a neighbor tell of a sick tailor

[39:43]

in the village who was so poor that he could not afford to buy wood to heat his hut. Little Zadok had heard that in the forest near the village, there were a lot of fallen branches to be picked up for nothing, and he decided to gather as much wood as he could carry and bring it to the sick man. The child was so eager to help that he immediately set out for the forest without telling his mother where he was going. It was already late in the day when he left the house, and by the time he reached the forest, it was dark. Little Zadok had lost his way, and he would surely have died from the cold when suddenly he saw in the darkness three Hanukkah lights. For a while, they lingered before his eyes, and then they began to move slowly. Little Zadok went after them, and they brought him back to the village, to the hut where the sick man lived with his family. When the lights reached the door of the sick man's hut,

[40:44]

they fell, turning into gold coins. The sick man was able to buy bread for his family and himself, fuel to heat the oven, as well as oil for the Hanukkah lights. It wasn't long before he got well and was again able to earn a living. Daddy, what happened to Zadok when he grew up? I asked. He became a famous rabbi, Father said. He was known as the saintly Rabbi Zadok. It became so quiet that I could hear the sputtering of the Hanukkah candles and the chirping of our house cricket. Mother came in from the kitchen with two full plates of pancakes. They smelled delicious. Why is it so quiet? Is the game over, she asked. My brother, Moshe, who had seemed to be half asleep when Father told his story, suddenly opened his big blue eyes wide and said, Daddy, I want to give the money I won to a sick tailor. You were preaching to them, huh,

[41:44]

Mother asked half reproachfully. I didn't preach. I told them a story, Father said. I want them to know that what God could do 2,000 years ago, He can also do in our time. That's the end of the story. So here we are in training period and there's a story of a young Hasidic student who wanted to go and study with a rabbi and he went all over after him trying to find him so he could study with him and his friend said, Are you going to study with him so that you can learn the holy Talmud and the books? He said, No. I'm going to study. I want to see how he ties his shoes. So we have a body practice here, a big body practice,

[42:46]

and we want to learn how to tie our shoes with courage and wholeheartedness. And we can learn that from each other and put that into practice so that all of our entanglements and all of our problems become the expression of our understanding. And this is a miracle. Thank you very much. May our intention May our intention

[43:31]

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