I was, I was thinking of, I had this sort of talk planned and then I thought of a couple things to talk about before I start my talk. I was in our group with the cooking and meditation, I was, I've already talked about this, but I wanted to talk with the rest of you. You know, we have a custom at Zen Center and Buddhism, traditionally, that at food time, sometimes we make a, we make up a little tray of food to offer to the Buddha, and the Buddha never seems to come and eat it, but we offer it anyway. And for years and years, I thought this was pretty stupid, actually. It seemed, didn't seem to, what was, what's the point? You know, should serve food to people who are going to eat it. And, and just in the last year or two, I started thinking, you know, after 25 or 26 or 7 years or

[01:04]

whatever, I started thinking, like, isn't this a nice thing to be doing? And isn't this, you know, the kind of predicament that we're actually in a lot of the time, where we do something and not much comes back. We do something and it's not especially acknowledged by the world. Oh, thank you very much. We do it and, and we offer it, and we bow, and we kind of walk away, and that's that. And we don't actually hear from other people or the Buddha or whoever it is. Oh, thank you. Oh, that was good. Oh, I appreciate it. But this is our life, you know, a kind of ongoing kind of offering in this way. And if we think, you know, it's, it really should be something different, then, you know, we get into lots of trouble, wondering how come the Buddha doesn't say anything, and our friends don't say

[02:05]

anything, and our family doesn't say anything, and so on. But anyway, I had something else to talk about too, but I can't remember that. I'm gonna read you a thing here from Charlotte Silver. You know, we have a yurt down past the baths that Charlotte and her husband Charles Brooks donated, donated the money to build the yurt, and they dedicated the yurt to Elsa Gidlow, Gidler, and to Suzuki Roshi. Elsa Gidler was Charlotte's teacher of sensory awareness in Germany, and they liked Suzuki Roshi very much, and he appreciated their work in sensory awareness. So they've been coming down, you know, they came here to Tatsara every year for many years and did a five-day workshop, and I worked with them sometimes, years and years ago when they were here. This is something that

[03:09]

Charlotte said about studying with her teacher, and something that happened. What Gidler said, it was as though she spoke directly out of my heart. I thought I understood every word. The only thing I noticed was that she was always looking at me, or looking away from me, excuse me. The only thing I noticed was that she always looked away from me. She always looked away, but she didn't say a word, and I thought everything she says is just what I feel too, and she'd look away. And finally after about a year of working with her, she came over to me and she said, thank God, the first true movement. I nearly fainted. I hadn't even noticed that I had moved. After this, I began to realize that my movements were

[04:10]

hollow, just posed. Then began the difficult time. I was kind of, you know, that passage struck me, something about that passage. Because perhaps you, like me, I've had various experiences of feeling, you know, something being hollow, or going through the motions, and not having, not really being in my life in some way. And I know particularly in meditation, it's quite obvious, you know, over many years, after a while one realizes at some point, I think I've been trying to make this up, and I've been trying to follow the recipe, and make it come out the way it's supposed to when you follow that recipe.

[05:15]

Just like, you know, when I was growing up, every so often we'd get Pillsbury biscuits in a little can, and you wrap it on the counter, and then you open it up, you take them out, and you put them on the pan, and then you bake them. And I wondered, like, how, and my biscuits never tasted like those biscuits. And I kept thinking, like, why can't I get my biscuits to taste like the Pillsbury biscuits? And meditation, you know, why isn't my meditation like I read in the books? I'm doing everything I was told. I'm following all the recipes, and it's not coming out the way it's supposed to. So this becomes a kind of, you know, predicament. And then, you know, there

[06:18]

comes a time when I can't do this anymore. You know, I can't, I can't. And it's interesting, you know, for me, I experienced that as a kind of failure. Somehow the recipe didn't work. I couldn't actually attain all those things. I couldn't actually create a body and mind and a life according to all those books and the recipes. And then at some point, it's like, well, what's wrong with the body and mind I have? Can't, you know. And then, but to start with, this is a kind of failure. The recipe didn't work. I guess I, I'm not a good cook. I'm not a good meditator. You know, it didn't come out the way it was supposed to. So that's a pretty good teacher, I think, who could recognize, you know, a true movement. A movement that is not something you just made up, as though you

[07:21]

were following the recipe and doing, you know, the movement that you're supposed to make. Sitting there the way you're supposed to sit there. And it's interesting, you know, it takes, here she says it was a year, you know. But this takes, you know, actually many years of study to know where is my life coming from? Is it coming out of my heart, my being, or am I making up, taking on a kind of recipe that I'm trying to model my life after and get my life to measure up to? Because in spite of, you know, what it looks like, where when we go to the meditation hall and you get directions, in spite of what it looks like, this is about how to live life from the inside. This isn't about how to put some kind of life onto your life, which would be better than your life, and which everybody could look at and say, oh what a beautiful life, how Zen, or how spiritual.

[08:22]

And it's on top of your life, or you know, masking your life, the real you, which is somewhere down there. One time I went to see Kadagirishi a few years ago, and I was telling him about what I was doing in meditation. And I was slightly nervous about telling him this, because it wasn't really Zen, what I was doing in my meditation. It was something I had made up. I was kind of curious as to what he would say. You know, I was imagining sort of light and compassion coming down through my body, pouring it over my head, and having it come down, and feeling quite good. But in Zen, you know, you just follow your breath, right? That's Zen, and without any other thought, or at least we might think so. And so I

[09:31]

told him all this, and then after a while he just kind of nodded, and then he said at some point, yes, for 20 years I tried to do the Zazen of Dogen, before I realized there was no such thing. So, you know, Charlotte says one year before a true movement, but in some ways, you know, it takes us a really long time, any of us, to notice the depth, or the degree to which we make up these things to try to do, which would be, you know, make ourselves come out the way a good recipe would come out. Here's a beautiful cake, here's a beautiful person, here's someone who's spiritual now. So, I also, as I mentioned often, appreciate Suzuki Roshi saying, when you are you, Zen is Zen. Not when you get to be really Zen, then you've

[10:34]

got it made, you know, then you've succeeded, and you've done it. When you are you. And sometimes you can notice this sort of thing because, you know, we start to, we notice this sort of gap between who I am and what I've been trying to do, because something doesn't work. My knees are hurting, my back aches, you know, my foot is in pain, I'm getting headaches. Why is this? And we don't always notice that. Then this is a cause, you know, to start to examine, what am I doing? Am I just doing some recipe? And why am I not paying more attention to my body? If my back is complaining like this, well, how am I treating my back? What does my back need or want? So, when I read about Charlotte and Elsa Kindler, I have

[11:45]

this kind of feeling of, that she could see a movement that is really in the body. It's the body moving, it's not the mind creating a movement, instructing the body to do. You know, and then it's a pose. The mind says, now do this, now do that, and the body says, oh, okay, okay. Yeah, just like you say, yes, whatever you say. And then after a while, you know, it goes like, I'm tired. Who are you to tell me all this, you know, to keep laying these trips on me? I've had enough of this. I'm going to bed. See if you can do anything about it, why don't you? So, these things, you know, sometimes can be a help for our realization, you know, for actually becoming ourselves, for owning our own body,

[12:52]

owning our own mind, and having our life come out of our own being, out of our own heart, and not something we kind of make up from outside that looks like a good recipe for us to undergo. Okay. Well, the second thing I'm going to read you tonight, this one's a little longer. It's a couple of pages. This is a little different genre. Sorry it's so long, but it's kind of fun. And I thought as long as I'm not going to tell you anything new tonight, I may as well share something fun with you. This is written by somebody named Jonathan Rabban, who's an English from England. And the first part of this little piece he did is about coming over on a boat from England. It was the first time he went on a big sort of freighter, and they got out in the middle of the Atlantic there, and they got in a very huge storm, and the ship was kind of

[13:55]

going vertical at times, and all kinds of things. And the captain is saying, don't worry. And so that's the beginning of this. And then it turns out that some of what was on this freighter ship, it seems like, is turning up in New York City. So this is where we come in, and specifically, it's turning up at Macy's in New York. The cargo, some of the big cargo things on the boat said bric-a-brac. They didn't say cars or clothes or bric-a-brac. So I found this piece kind of interesting, and you'll see why by the time we get to the end of it. Something that had happened. Macy's in 1988 smelled of serious money. The air trapped in the swing door reeked of new leather

[14:57]

and Reeve gauche. Inside a man in white tie and tails was rattling off popular classics on a concert grand. Above the glassy aisles and mahogany paneled boutiques, there was a heraldic blazonry of expensive trade names. Louis Vuitton, Calvin Klein, Givenchy, Dior, Ralph Lauren. It was platinum card country. A twinkling gallery as big as a battlefield of gold, silk, scent, and lizard skin. When last I'd been there, there had been a slogan painted over the entrance, it's smart to be thrifty. Sometime between the age of Richard Nixon and the last days of Ronald Reagan, that homely touch of American puritanism had been whitewashed over. Only frumps were thrifty now. This is how

[16:08]

hard it is to just be you, for any of us to be, for any of us to just be me. This is what we have to go through, you know. The crowd ran sluggishly through the long marble pillared corridors of jewelry, handbags, and cosmetics. It eddied round the girls in high heels, fishnet tights, frou-frou skirts, and top hats, who were squirting scent samples at everyone, male and female, who came within their range. For a few moments, I was gridlocked with someone's reluctant husband. A tubby man wearing a bomber jacket and a leatherette helmet with ear flaps, who gave off a powerful odor of sweat and a tar of roses. He was hauled away, whining to the escalators by

[17:12]

a twin-engined brillo pad in a fox fur stole, while the current of the crowd bore me along into men's furnishings. These furnishings were disappointingly dull in themselves. Plain cotton shirts and ties that in England would be the badge of having once belonged to an obscure country regiment or minor public school. It was the way they were displayed that was extraordinary. Each counter had been converted into a grotto of evocative junk. Between the shirts and ties were piles of antique fishing rods, golf clubs, snowshoes, hat boxes, tarnished silver cups, gum boots, antlers, broken leather suitcases with labels from hotels in Split, Prague, Venice, Florence, gold-banded

[18:12]

walking sticks, a pair of crossed oars, a torn photograph, a battered schoolroom globe, shotgun cartridges, bits of Split cane furniture left over from the Raj, old family snapshots and ornate silver frames. So this was what had been in the container billed as bric-a-brac. On the conveyor's cargo manifest, there was a new life waiting in America for all the rubbish. There was a new life waiting in America for all the rubbish in the attics of genteel England. Macy's must have ransacked half the old rectories and mulberry lodges in Cheshire in order to assemble this hoard of moth-eaten Edwardania. Edwardiana. Excuse me. The rubbish apparently served some alchemical purpose, for after a day or two

[19:15]

spent in the company of a croquet mallet, a hunting flask, a box of trout flies and a pair of old stirrups, an ordinary white shirt, I suppose, began to stiffen with exclusiveness and nobility as it absorbed the molecules of stable servants' log fires filled in streams. Certainly the shirt could only justify its $90 price tag if you were prepared to pay at least $50 for the labor of the alchemist and not be overly fussy about the standard of shirt-making. The crowd poured onto the escalators. When Macy's opened in 1902, these escalators with their woodblock steps had been the latest thing. Now they were a piece with the antique luggage and wind-up Victrola valued the more highly for being old than being new. They rumbled up through timber-paneled shafts. We piled hip to haunch on this creaky Jacob's Ladder, talking in Spanish, Haitian French, Brooklyn Russian. There was a

[20:20]

noisy elation in the crowd as if the act of going shopping was working like an inhalation of Benzedrine. We climbed through a cloud bank of bras and negligees. A meadow of dresses went by. Suppose you just arrived from Guiana or Bucharest. Here would be your vision of American plenty, the brimming cornucopia of the fruits of capitalism. Here goods queued up in line for people and not vice versa. Here you were treated as an object of elaborate cajolery and seduction. Nothing was too much for you. At every turn of the moving staircase, Macy had laid on a new surprise for your passing entertainment. You'd like to see the inside of an

[21:26]

exclusive club for Victorian gentlemen? We've built one. A pioneer log cabin? Here it is. After the log cabin, a high-tech pleasure dome of mirrors and white steel. After the pleasure dome, a deconstructionist fantasy made of scaffolding with banks of VDU screens, all showing the same picture of beautiful people modeling leisure wear. The whole store was wired for sound and each architectural extravagance had its own musical signature. Duke Ellington, Telemann, Miles Davis, Strauss. Macy's was scared stiff of our boredom. This was a world constructed for creatures with infantile attention spans, for whom every moment had to be crammed with novelties and sensations. To be so babied and beguiled all for the sake of selling skirts and

[22:27]

jacket, sheets and towels. It was gross, even by the relatively indulgent standards of London. Many of the people on the escalators were fresh from that other world of clothing coupons and short rations. Had I been one of them, I'd have been swept by a wave of blank helplessness in the face of all this aggressive American fun. To get by in Macy's, a sturdy sense of selfhood was required. Everything in the store whispered, for you, for you, just for you. And you needed to love yourself a very great deal to live up to this continual pampering. For there was an insidious coda to this message, whispering, are you sure you belong here? Have you got what it takes? Shame was

[23:29]

a central part of the deal in this show. The luxurious artifice had been designed to soften you up, first by making you feel good about yourself, and then by slugging you below the belt with a surprise punch and making you feel rotten. It worked, too. By the time I was halfway up the store, I had an American haircut and a new pair of shiny oxblood Italian loafers. It was a pity that, though Macy's sold almost everything, they didn't seem to have a boutique where you could buy new teeth. Well, so much for the world we live in, right? Anyway, this does seem to be sort of our culture, you know, that our culture is scared stiff of boredom, and the possibility that any of us could actually practice and be absorbed in our life, in our activity, in our daily, the daily

[24:30]

bits and pieces of what it is to live, you know, it's not something that sells, you know. So what sells things is to, you know, to aim at a different part of our being, where we start to think, you know, to be recognized in the world. And we need something to do, we need to do something to assuage our boredom, whether it's movies or shopping and so on, you know. In the Buddhist, you know, sense, we sometimes, you know, talk about conscious mind, and then the unconscious mind, or the storehouse consciousness. And in this sense, mostly our culture, and some tendency that we have, is to try to keep

[25:36]

nice things in our conscious mind, and not be disturbed by anything that might be in the basement, or in the storehouse. And if we keep enough fun things around in the conscious mind, and that will entertain us and catch our attention, then we won't have to actually confront or be with what is, you know, underneath, so to speak. What is in the depth of our life, which is both our pain and our well-being, and our real deep energy, and our real basic, our basic vitality of our life. And what we need to bring out, in order to not just be posing, and going through the motions of what it is to be alive. So when we do stop, and you know, we're no longer in this kind of space, where we feed

[26:41]

ourselves various distractions. You know, if Macy's isn't doing it for us, we will, we will tend to do it for ourselves. And sometimes this is even like, you know, good work. We become, we work all the time, we work very hard, or we meditate a lot. But if we stop for a little while, and we're quiet, you know, what is underneath in our life, can come up. And we may notice some basic, you know, unhappiness, or sorrow, or grief, anger, pain. And you notice this, as soon as you get to the meditation hall, you sit down, and things are quiet. And well, why can't I just be quiet, and be tranquil. You know, and then there's this sort of yak, [...] and what about this, and what about that. And it doesn't feel very good. So even at this time, there's the possibility for a kind of absorption, or mindfulness. Mindfulness is something with which we can, mindfulness is something we taste, and notice, and know these

[27:47]

experiences that come up in our life. Thich Nhat Hanh says, mindfulness is like the saliva, it helps you digest the events of your life. Hi, Zoe. Zoe has those nice white paws, doesn't he look a little bit like he could be a monk, you know, with his little white, and then his little black. Somehow, he got to be named Zoe, instead of Karomo. The Karomo, in case you don't know, is the little black robe, you know, that goes, the long black robe, that goes over the white one, Karomo. And then somebody said, well, we can call him Perry Karomo. Zoe is probably much better. Anyway, to actually be in our life, we have to stop entertaining ourselves, at some point, and not be, you know, so

[29:09]

continually trying to entertain this part of us, that feeds on all these new things, and that doesn't want to meet, or be with, or spend time with, you know, what would be unpleasant, or uncomfortable, or difficult. And then, because after a while, we find out that, actually, that's fine, that's all right, you know, to have those things in our life. So, and that we don't need to create a life that doesn't have any of these things in it. And it's very real, you know, our life becomes real, and down to earth, we have our feet on the ground, and we do ordinary things. Here at Tassajara, you know, we meditate, we work, we can bathe, we have a very full life. And it's not, but it's not very entertaining, you know. And

[30:14]

occasionally, you know, somebody comes to Tassajara, and turns around and goes back up the road. Because it's not entertaining, there's not entertainment here, there's not, where are the magazines, where are the movies, you know. But then there's another group of people come, because it's not entertaining. And because it is quiet, and because you can be with yourself, and because, you know, we support one another to be real, you know, be, be in our own bodies, you know, and to own our own bodies, own our own minds, and to feel settled in our being. So it's, it's very important to have, in this sense, you know, a group of people in a place like this, where we can do this for one another, where we can help one another settle, and not be chasing after the latest

[31:15]

entertainment. And even here, you know, there's still little ones, you know, like coffee. Anyway, but I think, I don't know, you know, once you live here for a while, you forget, you know, it's easy to forget, but any of us who've come in and out, come into Tassajara, and we notice some difference. And after a day or two, we feel settled in here, and we can relax, and enjoy, you know, the simplest, simplest kinds of things. So, one other, one last thing about this, it actually seems, you know, useful. I think there's

[32:44]

sometimes, you know, we get a little, I know, I get this, and I think, you know, American, American sort of thinking, modern sort of culture, sort of problem against a certain kind of thinking, which is, you can do whatever you want, and we'll fix you. You know, you won't have to actually suffer the consequences of your way of life. So if you eat too much fat, or, you know, whatever it is, you know, we'll give you heart bypass. Don't worry about the kind of life you're living, you know, that's just plumbing. You know, we'll fix it, we'll change it, we'll give you a new one. This is part of our sort of heritage, or whatever. It's a strange thing, don't you think? But nowadays, this is, this is part of our sort of like freedom. Our freedom is that we can live however we want, and then, you know, our medicine and everything will, will fix you. It's kind of strange. And anyway, there's a side to it that's kind of, you know, strange, and we don't expect our

[33:56]

doctors to talk to us about our way of life or anything, you know. So anyway, I get to, you know, theoretically, you know, you're, you're a priest or whatever, you know, I can talk to you. But, but even so, you know, we sort of hesitate to, to talk about, you know, that, gee, the way you're living might make a difference, you know. But, but speaking of all of this, you know, it, it, when we do spend a lot of time entertaining, you know, this means we're taking these things in. And we can be entertaining ourselves with food, we can be entertaining ourselves with coffee, with tea, with, you know, here at Tushara, not so much, but, you know, otherwise, alcohol. It's a kind of entertainment, you know. And when we take in all this entertainment, just like when we go shopping at Macy's, you know, after a while, and this keeps the conscious mind occupied, we're keeping entertained. And the basement, what's in the basement is not, you know, is kind of down there rotting, it's down there festering. And when the longer you put

[35:00]

off looking at it, the more unhappy it is with you, for not looking a little sooner, and not somehow, you know, examining a little sooner. Do you know, it's similar to like, when you forget about the cookies that are in the oven? You know, when you forget about something for too long, then they're burnt, you know, when the cookies, then the cookies are burnt. When you forget about your, your real life, and your real being for so long, then it's like it's burnt. It's like the cookies you forgot about. So generally, when you forget about something for a long time, it has some complaint, you know. Or like if you're a waiter, and you forget about a table for a while, then, where is it? You know, you said you'd bring it. Where's our coffee? What's the matter with you? And so on. Anyway, our inner life is like this too. So if we spend a lot of time entertaining ourselves, keeping our conscious mind busy, then we don't get a chance to examine and be with,

[36:02]

you know, what is inside, so to speak, what is in the basement. And our tendency also, as things come up in our life, will be to, you know, we react not always with mindfulness of a kind of maintaining our composure or absorption, and with the mindfulness, digesting the experience that comes up, but then we will sometimes react with hatred and anger and frustration and annoyance that something is coming up to disturb us and interrupt us and take us away from or delay what we're trying to accomplish. You know, there's a line in Rumi I like a lot. He says, don't go where you think you want to go. Ask the way to the spring. So these things that actually are disturbances can't be the spring. When we, you know, are willing to spend some time with them and digest them and absorb them into our being, and we become more whole, literally. And when we treat things with anger and frustration

[37:04]

and annoyance, this is, we create more seeds that go into the basement, into the storehouse, and, you know, are there to be watered. But over time, we actually can, you know, absorb the seeds that are there when we work to, with some mindfulness and concentration and so on, and meet things with some tolerance or patience or a slight smile. And, you know, Tassajara again, you know, to be in a place like Tassajara or to be in the support of friends will be a help to where we don't spend too much time, you know, entertaining ourselves and distracting ourselves, and we can be settled in our life. Various things will help us. You know, in our own sort of vow or wish, when we understand, you know, it's our real wish

[38:06]

to become whole and to know our life through and through, then this will help us. The more we understand some, you know, our own deep wish or motivation, it's easy for us then not to, we don't have to practice some discipline not to be, to not be entertained. We do, we live our life the way we do because we want to, and it's not a kind of discipline. And when I think of this, I always think of Issan, who many of you know was a priest here and for many years was a, lived as a female impersonator and took a lot of drugs and somehow made it through all that. For one thing, you know, I think he always had a practice of putting up, you know, folding up and hanging his clothes up when he got home. He did little things and he took care of his space very carefully. So even in some ways his life was, you know, off the edge, there was a little bit that was kind of like, you know, taking care of something and, you know, putting the clothes away.

[39:07]

He said there was only two times in his life when he was too out of it to hang up his clothes. But anyway, one day he was walking down Haight Street and saw a picture of Ramana Maharshi in the window of a bookstore and said, I've got to start meditating. And then he said, so next day he went to Zen Center. And then he said, you know, it's not that I stopped wanting to do those other things, I wanted to meditate more. So I had to go to bed at night so I could get up in the morning to meditate. So this isn't discipline, you know? Discipline is where you are posing, you know, and you put a regime, regimen on yourself. This is discipline and you say, now go here, now go there. This is a spiritual life, so you better do this, you better do that. And it doesn't come from inside, from knowing your own wish. What is our own wish, you know? So the more we know our own real deep wish

[40:11]

that this will help us in our life too, as well as being with good friends or in a good place. A while back I heard about a study someone had done with heart patients and they asked people with heart diseases whether or not they had, actually they asked a whole group of people, whether or not they had an important, intimate relationship in their life. And they found that people who said yes had much less heart disease than people who said no. So that, I like that story. I mean, I don't know, is it a story? Is it a real study? But maybe some people had intimate relationships with their dogs, I don't know. But anyway, the people who had intimate relationships did much better. But, and then I was telling this to a friend of mine who said, do you mean for all the heartache

[41:12]

of a relationship, it's still good for the heart? I don't know. This is interesting, isn't it? But what the heart wants to do is to listen and to be with things, to receive others and our own being, even though it's as painful as it is sometimes to do that. I'm going to read you another sonnet from Rilke. In English, I'm afraid. Well, no, you'd probably prefer it in English anyway rather than German. I'm trying to learn German, so. Even though it's the summer, this sonnet is about spring. So it's a little out of season now, but I like it anyway.

[42:16]

At least I'm only out of season, one season instead of two. Spring has returned. The earth resembles a little girl who has memorized many poems. For all the trouble of her long learning, she wins the prize. Her teacher was strict. We love the white in the old man's beard and shaggy eyebrows. Now, whatever we ask about the blue and the green, she knows, she knows. Earth overjoyed to be out on vacation, play with the children. We long to catch up, jubilant earth. The happiest will win. What her teacher taught her, the numberless things and what lies hidden in stem and in deep, difficult root. She sings, she sings. So I was reminded of this poem. What lies hidden in deep, difficult root?

[43:18]

She sings, she sings. So each of us has this deep, difficult root and our life is to bring it to flower, bring it to fruit, to express it, to act it in our lives. What lies hidden in deep, difficult root? So I appreciate very much being here with all of you and I feel very supported and nurtured and cared for here at Tessahara. And it, you know, supported and nurtured and cared for and encouraged to do this kind of work, to bring to the surface and to express the dark, deep, difficult root of things. And I feel, you know, your effort also to do this,

[44:23]

to sing the deep, dark, the deep, difficult root, to know the deep, difficult root and to express it in your life. This is a, even though it is difficult, this is our real joy. At least I would say, you know, for me it's my real joy in life is to be able to do this kind of work.

[44:50]

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