When I give a talk, as you can see, I don't have my notes in front of me. And I don't, you know, so the talk is not all planned out ahead of time, you know. Like this part here, I wasn't thinking about telling you this, but while the service has been going on, I thought I would explain or mention this to you. When I give a talk, the tradition that I am from, I just sit here and talk, right? And I have some idea what to talk about. But you might notice, you see, that when I talk also, it won't be a continuous stream of words. You know, like if you read a book, you can read right along. Or if somebody gives a talk and they have it written out, you can read right along, see? So, while I talk, there will be these gaps and pauses and silences.

[01:02]

And the place I talk from is not just the intellect. And I'm not just talking to your intellect. But when I talk, it's from, it's more from the whole body talking. And it's not only mind-to-mind talking, but body-to-body talking. And you might notice, as you listen, what hears the talk. You know, who hears the talk and what hears the talk? And do you hear with your ears, actually? Do you notice, you know, some particular thing about your ears going, you know, and you go, oh yeah, my ears are working now, see? We don't exactly just hear with our ears. It's the same with the music we heard. You know, you don't hear that just with your ears. It gets in your stomach and in your chest, in your legs. You know, pretty soon, your legs start to move.

[02:03]

You feel like, well, maybe it'd be nice to get up and dance, you know? That was pretty nice, you know, dun-dun-dun-dun-dun, you know? So while I talk, see what you hear the talk with. What is it that resonates with the words? The topic for the talk today is, I told Joel, I'll talk about the Tom Sawyer School of Zen. And it's going to take a little bit of introduction to get to what it is that's the Tom Sawyer School. I have to give you a little bit of background about this. One of the things that occurred to me when I thought about this talk is, I went to Centerville High School. And once in a while, infrequently, I played hooky. On the school.

[03:04]

And some friends of mine and I would drive some place, take the day off. We'd show up at school and then somebody would say, let's cut school today, let's go for a drive. So we'd go out to Tennessee Valley or Bolinas, someplace, San Francisco. And it always seemed like those days in particular were rather special and, you know, rather beautiful days. Such a joyous feeling, you know, of freedom from drudgery and boredom, responsibility. And of course, at that time, I thought, when I grow up, I won't have to put up with this school business anymore. Well, I won't have to put up with things that are boring, dull, drudgery, responsibilities.

[04:07]

I won't have to do that. Well, I'll just do the things that I want to do, right? That's what happens when you grow up, right? You get, now you grow up, you get to do what you want. So recently, I wrote a letter to a young friend of mine, a girl who's about eight now, and I said, you really need to start misbehaving now because it's not true that when you grow up, you'll be able to do what you want. And so you should start practicing now doing what you want and being mischievous and misbehaving now because it doesn't get easier later. It actually gets harder, you see. So I got to thinking about this, you see, and it takes a few years, I think, as we grow up to realize that this is how it is and that, in fact, things are not going to get better when we become adults, you know, compared to being kids.

[05:11]

And of course, I've been a firm believer for years that the whole point of school, you see, is to prepare you for the future life of boredom, drudgery, responsibility, and so on, you know. And in fact, you get, we get certified. You get a certificate or a diploma that says, yes, this person is willing to put up with a boring, drudgery, not very interesting situation, be moderately productive, not sabotage it, and will go along, generally go along with the whole thing. And this person is certified to be able to do this. So if you want him in your company, you know, you've got a qualified person here. And certainly, I found out, you know, I mean, we find out, I found out, like, having a child, how difficult that is. And I think, you know, various things happen to us as we grow up that are rather disillusioning

[06:13]

in a certain way. And on the other hand, it's called realization. We realize how things actually are. And this means things like, you know, a child getting quite sick or ill and even dying, and automobile accidents, and old age of ourself, our parents, our friends, sickness, death, death approaching, death of a friend, death of a loved one. It means, you know, a marriage where the partner is not going to change. You know, when did you first, when did we first realize that, you know? Oh my God, she's not going to change. I thought I could, you know, I would have this power, I would have this ability, I would be able to change myself, the other person, you know, and then children, my gosh, they really are children, aren't they?

[07:13]

And babies, they're really babies. And I kept thinking with my daughter, couldn't she act a little more grown up? And I'd have to keep reminding myself, but she is only two. But we learn a lot from children, which is partly what this talk is about. Although, I may not mention that again. So I think we start out with the rather high expectations about what's possible in life and in my life, and what I'll be able to do. What I'll be able to accomplish. And there's nothing wrong with that, you know, we need those high ideals.

[08:18]

And then there's a certain disillusionment sets in, or someone, a book I read recently, they said, why don't we call it de-illusionment? So what happens at that time when we realize that it's not possible, it won't be possible, we do have boredom, drudgery, hard work, responsibilities, we're extremely busy, we have lots of tension and stress and job, and then there's family, and then there's taxes. I mean, I didn't pay taxes for years, you know, it was for 10 or 12 years I was at Zen Center and living at Zen Center, more, I think it was probably about 15 years, I wasn't earning any money, I didn't pay any taxes, you know. And then I started working, and then I realized, well, I better pay some taxes.

[09:25]

And then I think, well, where does anybody have time to do this? I mean, you're already doing all these other things, and then you're supposed to pay taxes on top of that, and, you know, how does anybody do that? How does anybody have the time to take their car in for repairs, you know, when they're trying to, you know, do everything else? Anyway, so the question then comes up, what kind of, the question I raised for you, see, is what kind of happiness is possible then? Because we see more and more clearly, it won't be possible to just do what we want, not have to be bored, not have to do things that we don't really feel that strongly about. We're going to have, you know, we don't have that kind of capacity in our life. And even if you get to be very wealthy, of course, then you have a certain capacity to

[10:25]

do all that, but then your life gets sort of disconnected from anything real. Then you feel kind of out there, and then you can get into really weird stuff, you know? It's a great opportunity. And you don't end up being very grounded or happy necessarily, you know, you can end up being Howard Hughes and not have any relationship with people because they're all going to rip you off, you see? So it doesn't seem like there's any real simple answer, you see? So what kind of happiness? So the happiness I'm going to bring up and suggest today is what I'm going to call wholeness, whole-mindedness. This is where we'll get to the Tom Sawyer School, okay? So in order to talk about this, I'm going to bring up for you the five elements, the five things that happen, the five things that are a hindrance or a disturbance to wholeness,

[11:30]

to mental, to whole-mindedness. These are five things that happen that are classically in Buddhism considered to be the five things that are obstructions or hindrances. These five, I'll tell you the five first and then I'll say a little bit more about them. The first is called sense desire. We would rather have, you know, we get attracted to things that would be, would give us a pleasant sensual experience, whether it's another person or food or music or heat and cold and so on. We get, we see something or we can imagine something, looks very attractive and we tend to go for it, okay? And of course at the same time, number two, anger or ill will, the things that we want to get rid of, we don't want them around, okay, push them away.

[12:33]

Number three has a great title, it's called sloth and torpor. It's all so tiring and I really don't have the energy for it. Number four is excitement, anxiety, worry. They sort of go together. It's sort of the other side of sloth and torpor. It's instead of a little energy, it's a lot of energy but it's not focused on the object exactly in a workable way, you know? Start to do something and say, oh, but what about that? And so it's also a kind of scatteredness, you see? Oh, but what about, oh, and I really ought to, and then pretty soon we're not doing anything, you know? It's just a worry and agitation, you see? And the fifth is called doubt. This is the kind of doubt that is somewhat similar to fear. It's a doubt that paralyzes.

[13:37]

There's no use, nothing helps, nothing works, you know? There's no solution, there's no answer. No effort will make any difference. Probably, you know, oftentimes when I talk about this, I mean, I feel familiar with these but sometimes I feel like maybe the people I'm talking to, maybe you have no experience of these, or are these five things that you can relate to? Yeah, you can relate to these five, right? Okay. Now, why are these considered to be obstructions or hindrances to whole-mindedness? Well, we're going to get to that little by little, but basically you can see how annoying these things can be, how disturbing they can be, right? When sense desire comes up, you want to do something about it.

[14:43]

You know, it's sort of like, that's really good. And then you sort of start, things start to move, right? And then there's another part of your mind that says, but no, I have this responsibility to take care of. You see, and pretty soon you have two minds going in two different directions, you see? The same with ill will, you know? That person is so annoying, but you have to work with them. And you know, kids and spouses, they're the same thing, you know? You live with them and yet there's this annoyance and this anger and, you know, it's not, you know? So you get, in these situations with these five hindrances or obstacles, you get a kind of double bind, right? You can get into a kind of double bind. And now, and then what is, you know, our experience of what to do about them?

[15:53]

Most frequently, what we do about these hindrances is to bring in another hindrance to deal with the first one. You have a sense desire, and partly these things are sequential, you know? You have a sense desire, oh, get mad at yourself, you know? Get angry at the sense desire, no, you don't, you know, it's not practical, you know? I told you not to, you know, try to get that, you know, it doesn't work. And then, in response to the anger, there's, you know, depression. How come I'm always getting so angry and this is so frustrating and, you know, and it makes me so sad and it's so depressing, you know, to always be getting so angry? And then, you can maybe get a little excitement or anxiety, but, you know, what about if I was to do such and such and so on, you know? And then, pretty soon, you say, oh, God, nothing, you know, nothing works. And all these things, they go round and round like this, you know? We get angry about getting angry and depressed about having sense desires that can't be satisfied,

[17:01]

and then we don't have the energy to, you know, rather than dealing with my own anger, then I go to sleep instead, you know? And then, because I've gone to sleep, I haven't taken care of these things, and then there's worry and anxiety, you see, and so they all keep going like this and they keep feeding one another, right, you see? So this is the kind of dilemma, you see, that we have. And the question is, of course, then, what about this whole-mindedness then? Is it possible to take one of these hindrances and not respond to it with another hindrance, with another, with more, you know, rather than setting up one mind against another? Oh, I can't stand that anger, you know? And then you set up one mind, we set up another mind, you see, in opposition to anger, to sense desire, to sloth and turpor. You're so lazy, you see?

[18:05]

And we set up another mind in opposition to the mind that's just come up, okay? This is why we call these hindrances, you see, because it's setting up one mind against another. So in terms of whole-mindedness, or peace of mind, you see, or the happiness that's actually possible, it means that somehow we're going to have to have these experiences come up and deal with them, take a different approach to dealing with them, rather than setting up yet another mind that's in opposition to the mind that just arose, you see? There's, by the way, you know, a Kabir poem, I may have used it last year, and it goes something like, Friend, what do I do about this world I hold on to and keep spinning

[19:07]

out? I gave up sewn clothes and wore a robe, but one day I noticed how elegantly I tossed it over my left shoulder. I pulled back my sexual longings, and then I noticed I was angry all day long. I worked hard to get rid of my anger, and now I'm really proud of myself. It's that kind of thing, you see? One thing after another, huh? So you get rid of one thing, and then this other thing comes up. So Kabir says, Friend, look very carefully. There are very few who find the way, you see? Alright. So, now I want to bring you little by little into the Tamsara school of Zen, which is similar

[20:09]

to, what's the problem about having thoughts, you see, that I brought up at the beginning? And that the worst horse may be the best horse, you see? But, of course, you're going to have to be willing to work with this worst horse. It's not exactly a worst horse just the way it is. But the great thing about these worst horses is that they have, the worst horses have tremendous, there's a tremendous energy there, tremendous vitality, tremendous creativity, tremendous awareness with the worst horse. And actually, you see, practically speaking, it's not appropriate to go about training the horse, but training the rider. The rider is the one who needs to be trained. You don't need to tame the horse, you need to tame the rider so that instead of sticking in the spurs and saying, you know, get going, and then you wonder why the horse bucks, you

[21:14]

see? The horse is so disturbed, you stick in the spurs, you know? Or you tell the horse, go faster, and you've just been running for two days, and then you tell the horse, well, go faster now, you see? And then you wonder, why is the horse tired? What's wrong with this horse? Why is it so lazy? How come it can't accomplish the superhuman, you know, superhuman feats? So, there's another Zen story, too, of the monk asked Zaojo, the Zen teacher, Zaojo, who does Buddha give passions to? And Zaojo said, Buddha gives passions to everyone. The monk said, how do we get rid of them? And Zaojo said, why would you want to get rid of them, okay? So, let me tell you, now, the story as I remember it, and I haven't looked up the story recently,

[22:16]

why I call it the Tom Sawyer School of Zen, isn't there a story now, one of them is painting the fence, Tom or Huck, or one of them is painting the fence, right? And the other one says, what are you doing? And he says, well, I'm having a great time, and he said, it looks like work to me. And the other one says, no, it's actually, it's a lot of fun, I'm having a tremendously great time here. And eventually the other one says, well, gee, let me try it, right? So, what I want to suggest for the, in terms of the hindrances, you see, is a somewhat similar approach. And to give you some idea about this, you see, I have to, well, I'll just take one thing for example, like sense, like sense desire. One of the things that we notice about any of these hindrances is that, well, all of these are in relation to a particular object or activity that we're engaged in, okay?

[23:21]

We may be washing the dishes, or we may be working on our taxes, or, you know, and then another mind comes up. This isn't very interesting, you know? I would rather be, you know, doing such and such, right? In fact, I could think of, you know, some wonderful, wonderful sensual experience I could be having now. See? So partly this is also then the fact of, we're not, no longer relating to what's in front of us. We're dreaming up a somewhere else, something else, and our mind goes somewhere else, you see? Okay. Now, what does that say about, you see, about the way that we were doing what we were doing? Usually it says that what we were doing, one of the things it says, what we were just doing, we didn't have that kind of mind. We were approaching doing the dishes or the taxes with a mind that was kind of dull, and,

[24:29]

you know, wasn't very appreciative, wasn't very, there wasn't much joy, there wasn't much tenderness. In fact, it was a mind that was kind of, well, we're dredging on, dredging on, I've got to take care of this, got to do this. Now it's pretty natural, you see, so one thing to do when a hindrance comes up is to say, what does that say about the way I usually do things? See, is that included or not? And these hindrances will come up because they're not there in the first place. Do you understand? Why is it so clear that, why does it come up so clearly, you know, and so brightly, you see? It's because we weren't doing it in the first place. And for instance, people, you know, my experience, like in meditation, it's very easy to say, meditation, you have to be very serious, yes? You know, are you supposed to have a good time in meditation? Oh no, you should just follow your breath, or you should just do this, you should just do that.

[25:30]

Do you think you're going to have much sensual pleasure then? After a while, your mind is going to say, this is no fun. See? This is no fun, this is not very entertaining, this is not amusing, it's not any fun, it's not very joyful. Maybe you could do something else instead, you know, let's, you know, stop doing this. Now at that time, okay, at that time, is it possible to go on painting the fence, you see? Only, you go on painting the fence, hey, I am, you know, now I'm going to change the time story a little bit, you see, and painting the fence, and then, you know, when the thought comes up, you know, that doesn't look like fun to me, I think it would be a lot more fun to go outside and go for a walk now, and it's really beautiful out, and you know, even walking in the rain, and it's really fun, it would be really great. Say, no, I think I'm going to stay here and keep working on this, but it's no fun, okay?

[26:31]

At that time, if you turn to your sense desire and say, well, listen, if you have, if you understand so well how to have fun, why don't you go ahead, please do this, and show me how to do it and have fun, you see? You invite, invite the hindrance to show you how to do what you were just doing, only a little differently, with a different spirit, with a different attitude. Now, interestingly enough, this is actually possible. And you see, part of our big problem is that we, you know, we take an object, so-called object, I'm using this word in a very broad sense, object, experience, you know, activity, thought, feeling, sensory experience, whatever, you know, becomes the object, you know, and

[27:33]

we say, oh no, I couldn't have fun doing the dishes. That's not something you have fun at, that's not something you enjoy, that's not something you can have sensual pleasure doing, you see, by definition, right? We define things like that, and then we don't have any, you know, we don't have any sensual pleasure doing that, because we said it's not possible there, do you see? And part of, you see, part of then attaining a kind of what we call liberation, to be liberated. I couldn't, no, I couldn't, I couldn't have a sensual experience washing the dishes, no. I have, this is something you have to just work at, and it's just drudgery, you know.

[28:34]

The same thing, you see, taking anger, anger, you know, from my experience, anger is a couple things, can be seen as a couple things. One is, anger is tremendous energy, it's an energy that most of us, a lot of the time, we have no idea how much energy we actually have. Tremendous energy, okay? Great intensity. Now, if you say to yourself, what happens if you turn that energy down, okay? You turn the energy down, right? Because what happens if you turn the energy up, you turn the energy up, and then you get intense and excited, and then people kind of go, oh, wait a minute, you know, and then you have to deal with that. And also, if you have a lot of energy, then lots of things matter to you that didn't matter before, right? Then you start getting concerned. Why doesn't everybody else work this hard? So then after a while, you say, geez, I better turn my energy down.

[29:37]

What happens when you turn the energy down? After a while, it kind of blows up. Okay, so that's one way you can look at energy, at anger. The other is creativity. A lot of anger is, in that sense, a kind of, you know, to shut down the creativity. When you shut down your creativity, then again, boom, okay? And when something, so that's one example of that, when something doesn't work out the way you planned, and it makes you mad, well, I, you know, I thought if I did this and this and this, then that would happen, and it doesn't. So that's where, well, then where's your creativity, can't you just, you know, well then how do you deal with that? You know, be creative, be imaginative. No I don't want to. But again, you can take the anger that's coming up and you say, well, how, you know, if you're

[30:44]

so smart and, you know, about what's what and this and that, then show me how you would do this activity. What's that, what would that mind, you know, that's coming up and sort of going off someplace and getting mad, how would that mind deal with the situation that's right in front of you? With the situation that's right in front of you, okay? So actually it turns out you can wash the dishes with a great deal of energy. You know, and you have to be a little bit careful, you might break something, but, you know, there's a tremendous energy you can put into it. And that's absorbing, you see, that's taking energy that's going off someplace, putting it back in, you see. So this is basically what I want to suggest as the Tom Sawyer school, is how do you take

[31:47]

the mind, is to, is to say, to take this mind or attitude, a thought that's going off someplace else, and invite that mind to show you what to do. Instead of saying, so instead of saying, what do I do about anger? You know, people say, well, what shall I do about it? I don't know. I mean, what do you do? There's all sorts of things you could do. And people say, well, what should I do? As though, well, what should you do in order to what? You know, I said, like, well, obviously you shouldn't get angry, right? That's another approach, right? In fact, my teacher said, Suzuki Roshi, I was getting angry a lot, and he said, well, you can get angry if you want, but don't. So, you might actually have to see now, if you take that approach, it leads you to the

[32:50]

Tom Sawyer school eventually. So, I'm skipping over a lot of steps, actually, to get you right into the Tom Sawyer school, right? Because you have to take it as your task, you see, to, to incorporate, to absorb the elements of your mind that are going off in different directions and saying, no, I don't want to deal with what's in front of me, because what's in front of me has limited potential for my satisfaction. See, so, isn't there some creativity, how you could, how you could relate to what's in front of you, you know, with some more openness or freedom or generosity or kindness or what, you know, energy, vitality, can you, that you bring to it? Um, I see every step, and Joe's looking at his watch, so I gather, um, I need to stop

[34:06]

soon, um, anyway, I think you've gotten the basic idea of this that I'm, uh, offering you this morning. Obviously, you can do with it what you will, um, I'm, you know, if you'd like to just drop it in the wastebasket on your way out, uh, you can, obviously, uh, and, um, if you find some way to make use of it, uh, then that's fine too. Basically, what we're talking about then is, uh, you know, what is the basic attitude or approach to, uh, experience, or what I've called objects, what is your basic attitude or approach? And partly you can tell this, for instance, what happens, you know, when you walk in the door of the fellowship, you see, and then you look around the room. Uh, do you start noticing things you like, um, people you like, uh, you know, or do you

[35:16]

start noticing, uh, what you don't like, people who annoy you? Do you walk in and say, oh gosh, here I am again. Do you walk in and say, oh, better watch myself now, you never know what's going to happen here and what they're going to say. So we notice this attitude, you know, these kind of attitudes then can be, are on one hand moment to moment and then also, uh, some more pervasive tendency that each of us has may be more closely associated with one or another of the hindrances. So the question is, or the idea of this is, to take some, some place in your life and try out, uh, bringing to it, uh, you know, inviting that, which is, you know, that little voice that is saying to you, you know, here I am, watch yourself, and then you say, well,

[36:20]

he's telling me to watch myself, why don't you come and do it then, hey, you know, big boy, I mean, you're so smart, then, you know, you come and do it, please. Show me how you would do it, you see? So this is what I'm suggesting, is there some way you can invite, uh, these elements into your life, out in your life, rather than remaining something that comes up as something separate and something that is setting up one mind against another, you see? Alright, I'll close with a poem, I have a Rumi poem for you, Rumi was a Sufi mystic, somewhat related to the subject, it's called The Illusive Ones. They're lovers again, sugar dissolving in milk, day and night, no difference, the sun

[37:22]

is the moon, an amalgam, their gold and silver melt together, this is the season when the and the green branch are the same branch, the cynic bites his fingernail because he can't understand, Omar and Ali on the same throne, two kings in one belt, nightmares filled with light like a holiday, people and angels speak the same language, good and bad, dead and alive, everything blooms from one natural stem, I'll stop, you already know this, everywhere you look it's the same vision, your body is a candle touched with fire.

[38:34]

@Text_v004
@Score_JJ