lying on my back, of course, and my head propped up talking into this wonderful Sony 430S, something 430S or something like that machine. This is the one I'm doing my entire diary in. And I'm sending you this very short tape, in all likelihood, because I have... In a friendly gesture to a policy analyst at the White House who responded to my paper of the I Still Sing with a Certain Friendliness, I sent him a Tassajara postcard, the convivial bridge postcard. And he wrote back, in response, in part to the postcard, he said that, among other things,

[01:06]

he found the postcard beautiful. And so, I called Norman and told him, and he suggested that I quote him a note. He found the news happy news, and in the interest of saving some time, I thought that Food might be able to send you the information, so I called her, and based on her response, I figured that I had better send you the full story, so that there would be no misunderstanding. Because I think Food's imagination immediately took off, and took conclusions that are unwanted. So, I'm sending her a copy of my paper, just so that you'll know why the White House was

[02:18]

responding to me at all. She said that she would be telling a lot of people about the postcard, and that the White House might be beautiful, as one person has. All right, I'm going to start at the beginning. I have in front of me both letters from Andrew M. Sieg, S-I-E-G, he's a White House policy analyst in the Office of Policy Development, and just to give you some background, I had sent Roger Porter, who is the Director of the Office of Policy Development, Policy and Economic and Policy Development, and his name was given to me by Lynn Ching, who, as you

[03:29]

may know, is the Chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities in Washington, which is a counterpart of the National Endowment for the Arts, and a much more reputable organization right now. Anyway, I had called Lynn Cheney when I had had the idea for the program declaration, and I had asked one of her assistants over the telephone to give me the name of someone in the White House I could contact, and they wrote me, Lynn Cheney wrote me, and gave me the name of Roger Porter. So I sent Roger Porter two copies of the program declaration, and didn't hear from him, and

[04:35]

I didn't expect to, and then when I finished this latest paper, I sent two copies to Bush and two copies to Roger Porter. And I sent them to Bush, and I sent them to Roger Porter, and I sent them to Bush, and I sent them to Roger Porter, and I sent them to Bush, and I sent them to Bush, and I sent and I sent them to Bush, [...]

[05:46]

and I sent them to Bush, [...] and I sent them I sent them to Bush, and I sent them to Bush, and [...] I sent them to

[07:16]

Bush, and I sent them to [...] Bush and I sent them to Bush, and I sent them to Bush, and I sent [...] them to Bush, and I sent them

[08:46]

to Bush, and I sent them [...] to Bush. Not only are they wonderful people, but they're wonderful people who are infinitely sympathetic to religious practice.

[09:59]

And today is, perhaps as you know, been designated by President Bush as a national day of prayer. And he's catching a lot of help with that. He relates it in particular to the war in Persian Gulf, and that we should be praying for peace and for the safety of our troops. And I think it's a wonderful thing for him to do. I don't know whether you were aware of this or not, but on the eve of the day in which we started bombing Iraq, Bush invited Billy Graham to spend the night in the White House, which he did.

[11:03]

He slept every night in the White House. And perhaps 20 years ago, I would have found that an extremely objectionable event. You get the idea. We never quite know. And we just left it up to each of us to say, you know, how can I get my way in the world, and what should I do to get my way? I mean, that's not the way the world works, right? So this is like the First Noble Truth in Buddhism. Things don't happen like that, and that's not the point, to try to get our way and get the things that we want and not get the things that we see as misfortune and so on. And a lot of it has to do with where you're positioned, right? I mean, this morning, I stopped at a stoplight in San Francisco, and it turned red right as I was coming up to it. And I, darn. You know, I'm trying to get to Gringotts for a lecture. I tell the universe, right? To no one in particular, right?

[12:04]

Don't you understand, light, that I have a mission? You know, I have something to accomplish here. And, of course, the light doesn't pay any attention. But that's pretty funny, because, I mean, we're sitting here now, and dozens of lights out there, hundreds and thousands of lights out in the world are changing from green to red now. And who cares? But it's only like, you know, our particular juxtaposition to something, you know, and then we go, oh, why are you doing this to me, world? You know, it's pretty funny. Anyway, so that's one side of the sort of answer to what do I do. In a certain sense, you know, we ought to relax a little bit more and not worry quite so much about how things come out. And whether it's good fortune or bad fortune, or whether we get to Gringotts in time or don't, and so on. That's easy enough to say, right? But, okay, but I'll say it anyway. But then there's this other kind of side to things, which is one kind of way we attempt to deal with this is to move into a kind of ritual space.

[13:14]

And things are different in ritual space. Here at Gringotts, we have this hall. On Sundays, it's a hall. And we have the meditation hall. And when you move in, you behave in a certain way. You have to cross the threshold. And at the threshold, you bow. And now you're in ritual space. And things work differently in this kind of space. You know, for one thing, we slow down. We're not rushing anymore in order to sit still. We can stop. You know, we've arrived. We don't have to. You know, we're there. And we slow down. And in this kind of space, it doesn't matter anymore. We've moved into that space where it doesn't matter whether we're getting what we want. And we have something to do, a way to behave. There's particular forms. You walk in a certain way with your hands a certain way. And you walk quietly. And your steps are not too short and not too long and so on.

[14:15]

And then when you get to your cushion, you bow facing your cushion. And you turn clockwise and bow away from your cushion. And there's a posture for sitting. And then we're all in the middle of this form and this way to do something. Do you want to know what to do? Here's what to do. And then good fortune, bad fortune, it comes. And you can say, well, we'll see. You know, today it's a pretty good period of meditation. Tomorrow it's not. Well, we'll see. We don't know what's good fortune in that kind of space. And so we're not anymore aiming to necessarily get through unscathed. In fact, when you get into that kind of space, you may find it's, you know, you don't. In fact, you kind of tend to come apart. It's very hard to sit still. You know, you can get antsy and agitated and you can have pain. And things will start to come up. And all the stuff, you know, all of our baggage, so to speak, will start to kind of tumble out.

[15:16]

And it will feel to us as though everybody can see all of our baggage, all of our dirty laundry. And it's spilling out. And I'm sure they're all getting pretty, you know, disturbed by it. Only they've got all their dirty baggage, you know, their dirty laundry and their baggage, and it's spilling out by them too. And you can look around and you can see what people are doing. On one hand, everybody's falling apart. But on the other hand, everybody's keeping it together. This is ritual space where we can fall apart with some structure in a kind of container. And in that kind of space, we can have a kind of transformation. It can take place. In some ways, that's one way of approaching things. But we get to a new problem then. We start using ritual space. It's pretty good. But then there's the possibility that we can over-rely on ritual space.

[16:18]

Pretty soon we want to just be in ritual space all the time. Right? When you walk out of this endo, then somebody talks to you, and then you just keep your eyes down and walk along. And pretty soon we forget that now we're not in ritual space. And the extreme is like a friend of mine who was married for many years to a more or less a kind of Buddhist priest kind of person. And when she wanted to talk to him about something, he'd just do his beads. Excuse me, but I think I'd rather do my beads now than talk to you. This is like a kind of, at some point, the use of ritual space becomes, it becomes, it's just a ritual, and it's not doing its function, and it becomes a way to hide and escape, rather than something that has its place and its time, and then we move out of it. And in the world, we have to act, and we respond to things, whether it's a person there, or the stuff that's going on in their life.

[17:20]

How am I going to get to work today? How am I going to support myself? And we have to actually do something about these questions. We can't just sit there anymore. So we have to find some way to move from this ritual space into the everyday sort of space. And the problem then we have sometimes, there are those of us then who get overly involved in everyday kind of space. And where everything is really important, and you've got to try to make it come out the way you want, and you've got to get your way. And as you know, some of you, I mean, to the extent that we all may spend some time in this kind of space. That's what happened to me this morning. It happens to me when I drive. I want people to get out of my way. You know? I'm sorry. I apologize. And so then I've completely lost this kind of ritual space

[18:21]

where it doesn't particularly matter whether you're here or there. And I've completely gotten caught up in this other side of things. Getting my way. Getting to where I want to go. Arriving at my destination. Not getting through unscathed and intact. Being right and blameless. It's not my fault I'm late. All those other people were in my way. You know? And so there's various stories about this, but the one I like is that fellow who went to Nepal, and he was off someplace, and he was actually kind of meditating, and he was in seclusion, and he had his bag of brown rice and a few vegetables or something, and then he's doing this, and after a while he starts hearing there's a little creek going by, and in the sound of the creek he starts hearing marching music. Maybe he played in the band in high school. Anyway, he can't get it out of his mind.

[19:22]

Once he starts hearing it, all he can hear is marching music, and he can't stand marching music. And he wants to get this to stop, so he meditates on it. Nothing works. He tries to become one with the sound. He tries being kind to the sound, forgiving the sound. Nothing works. So finally one day he goes out and starts moving the rocks. Apparently this is a true story. So this is what we try to do in our lives sometimes. We want to move the rocks in some stream, and there's not much you can do. And then it's not like after you move the rocks in the stream you stop hearing marching music and now you get rock and roll or who knows what, right? So it doesn't work to go out and move all those rocks in the stream. But that's what we try to do when we get so involved in our everyday life and we forget

[20:23]

there's no balance to it. There's no container at all for it. And we can get pretty hot and irate and worked up. And then when things don't go right we can get unhappy and discouraged and upset, sorrowful, hurt. So it doesn't quite work to try to just stay in that world or to move just entirely into ritual space. Not really relate to anything in the kind of thinking it's spiritual

[21:23]

or to just be involved in the world like that. And we should have, Buddhism is always suggesting, some middle way, right? The 80s were kind of like, in some sense, are now we can see, are some extreme of the just being in the world type of thing and pushing things to the maximum. And I was reading in the Wall Street Journal the other day that there's a whole school of business people and I forget what the article was about but one investment person in Wall Street was quoted as saying, net worth is self-worth. And so then it's important when you, and so people are actually believing that. We're all sort of at some level, you know, we get hooked into that. That we're as good as our last, you know, if I cook, right? I cook, well then I'm as good as my last meal.

[22:25]

If you're in some other kind of work, you're as good as, you know, whatever you can, however you grade yourself, you know. Your last accomplishment, you know. That's how good you are, right? So that again is being involved in the world in this funny way that is completely unbalanced. And you can see in that kind of scenario that it's endless, right? If net worth is self-worth, then how much do you need to have some self-worth? Hey, the sky's the limit. You can go endlessly. There's no end. So do you ever get self-worth out of the deal? You get a kind of fictitious self-worth out of the deal. And then even that isn't worth much, right? And you have trouble believing it, so you have to get more. And you never get the self-worth and, you know, we're always, and so we're always pushing. I mean, this is known as, in Buddhism, this is the samsara world. Because of this endless quality, never arriving.

[23:32]

And having ourselves hooked into this kind of scenario. But the other side is we get hooked into, well, I'm going to do the right thing then. I'm going to behave properly. I'm going to just value what there is, you know. I'm going to find my real self-worth. And I'm going to be, you know, and I'm going to do the right thing. So we can go to this other extreme. Right? And then pretty soon, we can't say anything to anybody. You know, we'll sit doing our beads, being holy. And afraid to say something that would be the wrong thing to say, or that would be hurtful, or that would be shameful, or that would show that I have problems. I mean, I wouldn't want to let the world know that I'm needy. Or that, you know, I have, you know, that I can get upset. Right?

[24:34]

So those of us in spiritual practice, we tend to have more of this other kind of, you know, we can see the self-worth is net worth. We know that's not where it's at. Then we start taking up spiritual practice, and then pretty soon we can tell, we have this idea that this is much better, you know. But pretty soon we kind of isolated ourselves in a kind of cocoon of being a righteous person, or a holy person. And we can't let the world know really how messed up we might be if we opened our mouths, you know, or said something, or, you know, had to talk to somebody, or whatever it is. So, there's some limit to that too. So in the world, when we move out of ritual space, I mean, at some point we should, you know, work towards,

[25:36]

or understand that in the long run we can develop some space that is both a ritual space and an everyday kind of space. But if we stick to one way or the other, like this, and get caught in one way or the other, then we get pretty lost, or we get stuck. So in the everyday world, you know, people want to know, what shall I do? And basically, you know, you have to wing it. But you better do something, and not just sit there doing your beads. Unless you're a really good holy person, that doesn't quite work, you know. I've heard of the saints who can get away with that, but not very many, not very many. And basically, in the world... And so, Siddhicuras used to say, it's like being in the dark. We don't know what to do. You have to feel your way along.

[26:36]

And then, you know, and you don't want to try to go too fast. You might bump into something, and then you can hurt yourself. And you feel your way along. And if you're doing things with that kind of feeling your way along, with that kind of, in a sense, carefulness, you feel out what to do. But at some point, you know, it just kind of bubbles up, and it bubbles out, and it comes out, and then you may not look good, you know. And you may get criticized. And then you have to take that into account and go on from there. This is how we learn about the world. We don't... And in the long run, this is what Buddhism calls wisdom, what to do and what to do, how to make these distinctions. What is the difference between repressing things and expressing things and emoting, you know, acting out? Where does one stop and the next begin? You know, we don't quite know. What's what? What's just dumping on other people

[27:40]

and what's expressing yourself and what's, you know, keeping too much to yourself? So to find out, we have to make mistakes. We have to do something and see how... what comes back from the world and then figure out... and then feel out the next thing to do. Wait for it to bubble up. Something comes up. We do it. It's very interesting. You know, I had a discussion with Karagiri Roshi many years ago about this kind of thing. I mean, I was down in Tassajara in the summertime and in Tassajara in the summertime, as many of you know, it's very hot. It's not like it's raining here. And so if you're down at the pool, certainly there's... I'm a young man or was when I was, you know, at Tassajara. There's many women with rather skimpy amounts of clothing on, you know, bikinis, and there's many attractive women

[28:40]

and there's many attractive women who are students at Tassajara. And in hot weather like that, people tend to not wear very much and so it's kind of interesting for me. And meanwhile, I have a girlfriend in San Francisco. But San Francisco is San Francisco and Tassajara is Tassajara and here is all of this flesh appearing before my eyes. In ritual space, you know, you just let it come and go, right? Stuff comes, stuff goes. Who cares? And, you know, so that's fine, right? So out in the world, what are we in now? Ritual space or the real world? So I asked Kadagiri Roshi, I said, well, now how is one to practice, you know? You say practice as the ancients practiced, right?

[29:44]

And he said, yes, practice as the ancients practiced. So I asked him, did the ancients have a place like Tassajara? Was this their practice with all of these women walking around with skimpy amounts of clothing on? No, they didn't have a Tassajara. What should I do then? Well, still you should keep in mind the example of the ancients. Okay. And then I said, but also I have a girlfriend in San Francisco. Oh, he said, oh, in that case, well, then that's just greed. He's very definite about it. I have trouble drawing those lines. He had no trouble. Oh, in that case, it's greed. So, I mean,

[30:44]

if you start saying that that's greed, well, then pretty soon, like, is it always greed? Is there never a time that you can go and talk to a woman then? Well, then you're going to end up being a monk and you'll just be in ritual space. Do you want to spend all of your life in ritual space? Or are you going to be in the world sometime? What are you going to do? So finally he said, look, just do whatever you want, but remember, you're the one who did it. And you should take responsibility for it. Some people might call it right. Other people might call it wrong. Some people call it good. Some people call it bad. Sometimes we might say it's hurtful. It's not hurtful. We don't know exactly what it is, but you're going to hear all about it once you've done it. But there's not any alternative.

[31:44]

There's not some way to just do this thing or make a decision or do something and then nobody now or in the future ever can criticize you. How can I do the thing that nobody can ever attack me for doing? How can I get through my life unscathed, intact, getting my way, having what I want? Do you understand? You can't do that. We can't do that way. Somehow we're going to do things that undo us. Whether it's in the world like that or whether it's in meditation, we're going to become undone and we're going to get at times torn apart. And in the context of meditation, we say, welcome home at that time. Nyogen Senzaki, this 20th century Zen teacher I've talked with you about sometimes,

[32:48]

he said, meditation is not very complicated, not very difficult. It's just a way to your long lost home. What did you think home was? You know? So in one sense we can think, well, home is this place where we're all protected and cozy and it's a little nest. But home is also where we don't have to worry about being perfect. We don't have to worry anymore about being right. We don't have to worry anymore about not letting the world know that I'm really not that great a person. We don't have to worry about, you know, pretense and good show exactly. Right? This is home, where everything can hang out. Right? Well, that works pretty well in ritual space where it's got a container. A little more complicated in the world, wouldn't you say? How do you let everything hang out

[33:50]

and yet not, you know, hurt the people that you're with and not hurt yourself, harm yourself? In Robert Bly's new book, he tells us a story about his local Lutheran minister, his new book, Iron John. And the local Lutheran minister in Minnesota was a very careful kind of person and fairly stern, fairly, you know, together. Right? And he had a firm hand in his congregation in spite of various things going on. And then he was this way with his son, too. And for one reason or another, he didn't want his son to use the car, the family car. So, finally, the son stole the car. And then he called the police. The father called the police. And the police caught up with him

[34:51]

and the son pulled a gun out of the back and shot the policeman. See? So we never quite know what will happen. There's not always some, there's not going to be some way that, you know, if we're careful enough, if we're good enough, if we're right enough, where we'll make it through intact with all of our, who wants to do that anyway with all of the baggage we've got? You know? So, the aim in Zen, finally, is some kind of idea. I like this kind of expression I use sometimes. Take off the blinders. Unpack the saddlebags. Right? The blinders are when you're out there in the world. Net worth is self-worth. Full speed ahead. Right? You've got to go to your goal. And you can't, you know, pay attention to anything that's around you or really relate to anything except this distant goal of arriving at net worth is self-worth,

[35:52]

which you can never get to. But you better keep going and you better keep the blinders on and you better keep, you know, at it. Right? And then maybe you'll get there. Only you don't. And then what about all that baggage you're carrying then? All the pain and the hurt and the sorrow and the imperfections and all that stuff you don't want the world to know about. It gets to be pretty heavy. You know? And the way you've been going about life isn't addressing any of that. We keep carrying all that baggage. It's such a weight then. You know? But sometimes, you know, there's the other, the flip side of that kind of weight is, hey, let's just drop all that weight and the easy way to drop all that weight is to adopt the kind of viewpoint of one way, my way, the right way. If I want your opinion, I'll tell you what it is. And then you can go full speed ahead and it doesn't matter. And then you've dropped all that weight of am I doing the right thing? What do people think of me?

[36:55]

If they don't think well of me, well, that's their problem. You know? Right? So a lot of people, a lot of us when we adopt that kind of energy or take up that kind of energy or have that kind of way of life, we have those kind of blinders on and we don't care what the rest of the world thinks because we know who we are and where we're going. And I'm doing it right. So anyway, whether we're in ritual space, in ritual space we have a kind of opportunity to take off the blinders. Pretty soon, you know, you've noticed that in meditation. Like you say to yourself, you start to meditate, right? And what? Five minutes, ten minutes, a week goes by, two weeks, and then you say, you know, I'm not getting anywhere. Oh. Well, maybe you should just take off the blinders

[37:57]

and be where you are. Right? And make yourself at home there. Find out how to be at home where you are. Instead of thinking there's some place to get to and keeping those blinders on and trying to get ahead and unpacking the saddlebags. Doesn't all this stuff, when you meditate, it starts to come out, right? But it'll do that, you know, your sorrow and your pain and your anger and rage and lots of things will come out in meditation. And it's so much more relaxing now that you can be like a real person. You know? To be a person, a human being. Animals, apparently Walt Whitman said something like, animals don't stay awake at night worrying about their sins. But, you know,

[38:58]

if you don't have a ritual space, this is going to happen to you in your regular life too. Or even if you have a ritual space. Our daily life will bring us these same kind of undoings. And if we're lucky, you know, we'll find ourselves forced to be, you know, with no alternative but to be where we are. Sometimes it's only when we get sick or when we have, you know, irreconcilable differences. We can't solve something. We can't work out something. In ritual space, you don't have to work out everything. You don't have to solve everything. You don't have to be a beautiful person. And it's the same in the everyday world. So, another Zen saying,

[40:01]

very similar, the whinny of the pack horse completely unloaded. How refreshing. Is there some way to let go of the baggage? Is there some way to let go of the baggage? Is there some way to let go of the baggage? So, we may have to, you know, at times in our life, we'll emphasize one way or another. We'll get involved in the fast track and, you know, net worth is self-worth.

[41:03]

You're only as good as your last meal. And other times we'll get involved in trying to be right, blameless, the good one. And there, you know, we have various kind of, besides, you know, a more articulated ritual space like the Zendo here, we have our own rituals and our society has its rituals like alcohol, right? And drugs and things that can be your ritual and will help you not have to relate to anything and will help you not get too involved in striving ahead. Net worth is self-worth. So, somehow we have to find our middle way. We're each trying to find our middle way in that sense. How to, how to, and even if it's not how to get through unscathed,

[42:04]

it's how to proceed. Suzuki Roshi said, just to feel your way along, like you're in the dark. There's a short little poem by Antonio Machado that Robert Bly uses. It says, Walker, there are no roads at sea. There's only the steps that you take. So, each of us is, we each have to find our own path and create our own path. In this sense, you know, a Zen teacher once said, 56 years, I've walked this path by myself. No one else on the road. Spring rain.

[43:06]

So, finally, you know, Zen or Buddhism will give us little pieces of advice. What is this middle way where we don't get stuck? So, Dogen Zenji in the instructions for the cook, he says, handle each ingredient with sincerity and wholeheartedness. Don't be disdainful when the ingredients are poor. Don't get overjoyed when you've got extra special ingredients. Each thing that comes along, relate to each thing that comes along. Respond to things. And also, we can then say something like, to treasure or to acknowledge your true intention or your deep wish. Which is not exactly the same

[44:18]

as getting through unscathed, right? That's a lot of baggage. But it's something more like to become whole or to grow or to live in harmony. But living in harmony, that's not going to mean, you know, sticking to the ritual way. So, you know, the right way to do things. To feel okay about being who you are, about your being, that you have a real place in the world. And even if you don't feel that way, to leave some warm place in your heart for the possibility that you could feel that way. Thank you.

[45:27]

Ready to listen to the rain. How about you? Would that be all right if we listen to the rain for a few minutes and then stop? Being here today, I appreciate your... I don't know, when I'm here and sitting quietly with you in the rain, it's like a big ocean. A very deep feeling.

[46:10]

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