Good morning. Good morning. When in doubt, straighten your robes. I guess I'm going to start my talk by giving you some little kind of a recap of some of the media events that I've seen lately. Nothing, you know, no big deal like Mr. Mandela or anything. But I was watching an interview that Bill Moyers did a few days ago with Jacob Needleman who said, isn't it interesting that it's the last hundred years we've had so many labor

[01:05]

saving devices and nobody has any time. We're all so busy even though there's all these labor saving devices. We've saved so much labor and now we barely sometimes have time to say, hello, how are you or time to have a cup of tea. Some of us barely have time to take a breath because, you know, you have to get something done and you have lots of things to do. So, you should just take short breaths. Get them out of the way and not very, you know, not very full. You might actually, if you took a full relaxed breath, you know, you might fall asleep.

[02:08]

And then what would you get done? Yesterday I was getting ready for a, I cooked a dinner last night, so yesterday I was getting ready to, I spent the whole day getting ready for this dinner. And at some point during the day my daughter said to me, well, you could smile. That takes a lot of time, doesn't it? To smile. But I felt like I didn't have time to smile, you know, I felt like I should just, I needed to keep working and then if I smiled, even to smile felt like taking too much time. Like that would slow me down in some way. So this is kind of habit that we've developed, it seems, in the modern era, the late 20th

[03:13]

century, a time of progress and civilization. We seem to have lost, you know, in the process something like what the Greeks or Romans called leisure. But you know, leisure, we kind of don't give it the kind of credit or dignity that it deserves. Now, if you practice meditation, that gives leisure great dignity, doesn't it? To sit like this. Isn't this a very dignified way of being at leisure? Don't you think so? But most of us, when we get into meditation, we become very busy and we want to get something out of it to make it worthwhile and rewarding.

[04:13]

So consequently, we don't have any time really to meditate because we'd be too busy wondering about, you know, is my meditation good enough or not good enough? How come nothing's happening? Why don't I have any of those miraculous effects or those, you know, wonderful benefits I've heard so much about? This can fill up a lot of time. And plus, you can think about how come everybody else is sitting so still and I have to move all the time? Or, boy, am I sitting still, everybody else is wiggling. So this passes a lot of time and avoids having to actually be at leisure and experience anything.

[05:18]

It's very interesting. But then I saw this article in the Chronicle. I brought it for you. A little Buddhist sutra for the day. It's in the people section. This was a really wonderful article. It's called Rewards Hamper Creativity. Did you see this? It was last week sometime. And it says that this person, you know, it's taken all these years now for Americans to figure out this sort of thing that, you know, as I'm going to explain to you, you know, the Buddhists could have told you a long time ago, right? But now it's scientific. Studies have shown. So, psychologist James Garbarino, Garbarino, James Garbarino, he thought sixth grade girls, they love to go to the movies, I'll give them some movie tickets as a reward.

[06:24]

So he said, please teach these younger kids this game and I'll give you some movie tickets if you do. Then he asked another group of girls, would you teach these kids this game? The ones who had no reward for doing it did much better. The ones who were going to get the reward took longer, the kids didn't learn the game as well. It was a big mess, okay? So he found that the ones who did it just because they agreed to do it, they did much better at it. The ones who were thinking about the movie ticket, they couldn't do it as well because they were thinking, they were preoccupied. So then the article goes on to say, before you dismiss these results as a fluke, consider the following studies that back up this study. Children who expected to receive a prize for making collages or telling stories proved

[07:26]

to be no less imaginative at both tasks than those who weren't promised anything. Wait a minute, did I read that right? They proved to be less imaginative, not no less imaginative, they proved to be less imaginative than those who weren't promised anything for making up stories or doing collages. You're not going to get anything from this, just make a collage, just make up a story. You don't get anything for doing this. Those people do better, okay? Two or three weeks after being told they would get an award for drawing with felt-tip markers, this is preschoolers now, preschoolers were less interested in using the markers than their peers who didn't expect to be rewarded. Teenagers who were offered a reward for remembering details of a newspaper story they had recently read had poor recall than the kids who weren't offered a reward for remembering the story

[08:29]

they'd read. What's going on? He says, well, do rewards motivate people? This is what we've heard all our life, rewards are motivating, right? Well, they found out that actually it's not true. Rewards actually hamper creativity. Rewards hamper people's capacity to remember things, to teach things, to do anything because we start thinking about the reward we're going to get for doing it. So it's true whether it's meditation, or your job, or relationship, or just sitting. Do you get anything out of being alive? If you have to worry about that, then it's going to have a terrible time, see? Well, there's a whole second page to this, and I thought there was a second column.

[09:30]

The interesting thing, I thought, is one professor of education made a distinction between task involvement and ego involvement. I thought that's kind of useful. It's one thing to be involved in the task of telling the story, making the collage, teaching the game. It's another thing to be ego involved, which is, what am I going to get for doing this? What am I going to get out of it? How do I get mine? So I thought that was interesting. So anyway, the conclusion is that the children who have the reward, they think about the goody and not about the challenge, not about the activity. So this is the way I make up my talks, right? As my daughter was saying, oh, you think of the examples first, and then you get the idea. Rather than, she's been taking English, or essay writing, right?

[10:31]

And you're supposed to have the idea first, and then make up the examples. Well, I start with the examples, and then go back to the idea. It seems to me, you know, like, when I cook, I do the same thing, because how are you going to figure out what to make for dinner, right? Well, you have to go to the, you don't start with the idea, you start with the things. You start with the produce, or the vegetables, or the ingredients, then with that, you can come to some idea about what to do. Doesn't that make sense? Otherwise, you have to kind of, where do you get these ideas? I don't know where people get these ideas. You know, kind of out of nowhere. I think some people must be good at that, but I don't seem to, these ideas out of, you know, like, what would I like for dinner tonight? And then it's supposed to, you know, pop up, it never pops up for me. You know, I kind of have to look at what I have to eat there, and then I can figure out something to make with what I've got. That works pretty well. Anyway.

[11:34]

So, let's get to the Buddhist part, right? Oh, well. We have a new speaker. So, Zen teacher Soen Shaku, who was one of the teachers, you know, who first came to America, he said, the world is full of mutability and impermanence.

[12:40]

You all knew that. Those, he said, those who don't rise above worldliness are always tossed up and down in the whirlpool of passion, up and down in the whirlpool of passion. Those who know the constitution of things, the nature of things, can see the infinite in the finite, the superphenomenal in phenomena, and they are blessed even in the midst of suffering and tribulation. He didn't say they got rid of suffering and tribulation, he said, they're blessed in suffering and tribulation, in the midst of it. So, I thought, that's pretty much like this newspaper article, don't you think? But I wanted to comment on a couple of things about this. You know, why are people tossed up and down, why are we tossed up and down in this whirlpool of passion?

[13:41]

Because he says, when we don't rise above worldliness, what is worldliness? Worldliness is wanting something back, wanting something in return, wanting a reward, wanting to get something out of it. And when we do that, just like those kids, then we're not doing what, we're not actually involved in the moment with our own being, with the person in front of us, we don't have time to smile. This is worldliness, to look for some gain, to look for some benefit, to have it reflect well on me. So, when we're involved in that kind of worldliness, this is tossed up and down in whirlpool of passion. To see the constitution of things, then we see, and we have some leisure, then we find

[14:51]

out that things are not just things, and phenomena is not just phenomena. You know, it's our love and compassion, warmth, generosity, there are many things that are already there in any moment. And this way, even when there's suffering and tribulation, we have some blessedness, or some calm or ease. Do you understand? A monk one time asked the Zen teacher Zhouzhou, to whom does Buddha give passion? And Zhouzhou, who was a great Chinese Zen master, said, Buddha gives passion to everyone.

[15:53]

The monk asked, how do we get rid of it? Zhouzhou said, why would you want to get rid of it? To this, the monk, at the time, anyway, didn't have an answer, or this quieted the monk. And this happened to me too, you know, one of the first times I talked to Suzuki Roshi, I didn't know what to say, so I just sat there, and after bowing, and after a while he said, how's your meditation? And I said, well, it's not so good. He said, what do you mean, not so good? I said, well, I've got lots of, I have trouble with thoughts. I have lots of thoughts. He said, is there some problem about having thoughts? I said, well, yeah, there's, you know, you're not supposed to think in meditation.

[17:01]

He said, I think it's pretty natural to think, don't you? So I bring this up only to say that this kind of, when, you know, when Son Shaku or someone says, rising, someone who does not rise above worldliness is tossed up and down in whirlpool of passion. I want to bring this up to say, you know, that there's some switch here, you know, possible, that actually we can be passionately involved in what we're doing, rather than having the passion directed towards the reward, you know, or the benefit that we could get. We can just have the passion involved in the activity. This is a kind of, then, liberation, right? It's not getting rid of passion, but it means that we actually bring a great deal of passion

[18:10]

to something very simple like drinking a cup of tea, or smiling, or sweeping the floor, the little events of our life. Because if you wait for a big event to come along, right, you're going to wait for the big event to come along where you can finally be passionate, you'll be so out of practice. You know, it's real hard. So somehow, you know, Buddhism encourages us to practice each moment. It doesn't look, when we sit, it doesn't look like, you know, much in the way of passion. It doesn't look, and when one isn't looking for some benefit or reward, you know, that's

[19:15]

the kind of passionate that we, you know, we see on TV all the time. You always get to see people on TV being passionate, you know. They like to have big fits, you know. Somebody always has a big angry fit, you know, and that's acting and passion, you know. And then there's the love passion, and then there's the passionate embrace, and that's our idea of passion, you know. And then we forget that passion can be, you know, in just having this kind of big awareness of being really intimate and involved with our breath, sensation, the taste, you know, of food in our mouth, the sensation of the textures. And this is how we have some calm in our life. So Dogen Zenji says, don't practice Buddhism to attain something.

[20:20]

Dogen is, of course, the founder of our Zen in Japan. So he says, the practice of Buddhist teaching is done by receiving the essential teaching of a master and not by following your own ideas. In fact, the practice of Buddhist teaching cannot be attained by having ideas or not having ideas, by having thoughts, not having thoughts. Only when the mind of practice and the way coincide will body and mind be calm. When the mind of pure practice and the way coincide.

[21:28]

So this pure practice is just being intimately involved with the moment of experience without any idea of reward, gain, how it reflects on me, am I doing well, not so well. Then body and mind will be calm. If the body and mind are not yet calm, they will not be at ease. When body and mind are not at ease, there will be lots of thorns growing on the path of realization. Same thing, right? As Son Shaku said, whirlpool of passions up and down, thorns growing in the way, why? Because we're not in a very simple, direct, immediate way, we're involved in the moment of experience we're in. We're thinking about something better in the future, what could be better than this?

[22:34]

Well, it's tomorrow, it's next week, it's seeing this person or that person or getting a good report, good grade. Teacher says congratulations. This is how we get distracted. We want somebody to compliment us, somebody to thank us, and then we get off from what we're doing. So Dogen asks, if you want for the mind to practice, for this pure practice and the way to coincide, how should we proceed? He says, very simply proceed with the mind that doesn't grasp, doesn't reject, with the mind that's unconcerned about fame or gain. What sort of reward will you get? And he says something very interesting then, he says, don't practice the Buddha Dharma

[23:36]

with the thought that it's going to be a benefit to others. Not even that. That's still going to be the thought of, it's going to be a benefit to others, it's still going to distract you. I've noticed that sometimes, because if you want to do good for other people, you can never do good enough, right? And then you can never do it for enough people. And then pretty soon you're wondering, what's wrong with me? I can't seem to help enough people, I can't do enough benefit to these people, they don't appreciate me, and then pretty soon I'm not doing anything for them, I'm just obsessing about, you know, where I stand in some scale of how well I'm doing to benefit others. It's bad. So he says, just practice the Buddha Dharma to practice the Buddha Dharma. Now I don't want you to think that the Buddha Dharma is some big mysterious thing, right?

[24:39]

How about drinking a cup of tea when you drink a cup of tea? Hearing a sound when you hear a sound? Tasting your food when it's in your mouth? Saying hello and asking someone, how are you? Having, you know, smiling when you're busy. Taking the time even to smile. This is Buddha Dharma, it's not some, you know, magical thing, it's not some big mysterious thing somewhere else. So you know, one of the, for instance, you know, one of the, a premier in some area in China came to see the local Zen teacher and he says, what is Buddha? And the Zen teacher says, your excellency! And premier says, yes?

[25:41]

And the teacher says, what else were you looking for? Pretty nice, huh? I mean, where did we think it was, you know, the treasure or the secret? We each have it, it's in our own heart already, we can't, there's nothing to do to get it. And there's no, there's not something like that, there's not some attainment, something to be attained, just being, just experiencing each moment and not thinking so much, not being distracted and all tied up in some idea, what am I going to get out of it? What's this good for? How's this going to help people? How's this going to help me? What's in it for me? Boy, I sure can sit still better than those other people.

[26:43]

It's all so distracting, isn't it? You know, the one, I don't know if it's still the same, but when I worked for the U.S. Postal Service years ago, right? It's probably still the same because things like this tend to kind of recreate themselves, right? There's a little lineage of how it is to be at the U.S. Postal Service, and I've talked to a few postal people lately and they kind of know what I'm talking about, but when I worked at the U.S. Postal Service, the whole idea was to see how little can you do and still be rewarded. And then, during the coffee breaks and things, people would brag to each other and there'd all be all these stories, you know, I took the whole afternoon off yesterday and I went down and took a ferry boat ride and blah, [...] and I came back and punched out, you know, as though I'd been here the whole time and it wasn't that great. And then somebody else would have their story, you know, about how they got rewarded for

[27:48]

not working, you know, for not doing anything, see? But that's the perfect example, again, right? Of what sort of thing happens, you know, and sort of the more extreme of that mentality. How little can I do and still be rewarded? It's to be all involved in the reward and never involved in the activity. And then the other side of it is to be so involved in the particulars of the activity that, again, we don't have any leisure. I talked with a friend of mine recently who teaches Aikido, and he's one of the few Aikido teachers who teaches free form, Jio Waza Aikido. So what does he do? Just come in and let's do Aikido now. We have groups, you know, we have partners, so you practice, you attack me and then I attack you, see what happens. But all, you know, most Aikido students want to have, you know, want to learn the forms,

[28:50]

right? And master the forms. And then he said, you know, they had this national convention in San Rafael last week. And he said, in his classes, he taught some of the classes at this convention and he could just see these black belts in Aikido trying to figure out how they get to use the forms that they know, instead of just being in a situation and just responding to things and actually experience what's going on. And they're just manipulating until they can apply one of their control techniques, you know, this flip, aha, gotcha. So that's real different than just, you know, it's a, so we were talking, thinking like, well, is it useful to learn forms or not, right? It's both, works both ways. Sometimes if you don't have any form, you don't learn anything, you just go in and you, you just, it's just goofing around, what are you learning? And yet the other side is, if you get the forms, when do you ever get to stop being involved in the form? Or do you always keep looking for the form that you know that you can repeat, that you

[29:56]

can apply in the situation that you already know how to do and it works pretty good and gets you by? Or can you be in the dark sometime and at the mercy of things and not know what to do and sort of feel your way along and stumble about? How would that be, huh? And it's the same in cooking, right? I mean, I think, well, it's useful to have people learn recipes and it's nice to have a kind of repertoire, but do you think cooking is just following a recipe? No, it's not, it's just, it's like you can experience things and then come up with something to do and we can be at a loss for a while and see, what is this, what's actually going on here? We can find out about the constitution of things, about the way things are, and then respond to that with some fullness of our being, which is different than applying the technique that we know. This kind of thing comes up when, you know, from what I've heard, I haven't spent that

[31:07]

much time with people who are dying, but what do you do? What do you do when you're dying? You know, when I'm dying, what do I do? Is there some technique, you know, some word I should tell myself or? So it's nice because it's beyond technique. There's nothing that's going to work. And there's finally just being with somebody. Pretty nice. And not worrying too much about, you know, not worrying about whether you're making a good impression or doing a good job, just being with somebody in a simple, kind of direct way. There was a story in Ram Dass' book, sort of like this. There was apparently a patient. That book, How Can I Help?, it's a great little book. I was just reminded of this story recently. There was a patient in this hospital, or he'd been in and out of hospitals a lot, and he'd

[32:13]

had one thing after another, and he's ... one of these case histories where they bring other doctors around because it's so fascinating that he could have had all these things and still be alive. He was like this medical marvel, right? And one of the doctors was writing about this, and he said that when he'd come into the room, this patient would kind of look at him and say, Hi. And it was kind of like, What are you doing here? Are you still alive? Instead of the other way around. You know? Like what are you doing here? So one day, the doctor said, the patient says to him, kind of they said hello, and then he said, the patient says to him, Who are you? And for once, he said, the doctor said, Well, you know, I started to tell him I'm Dr. So and So, and then I realized, that didn't really get it. And I'm a father. I have a couple kids.

[33:13]

Well, I went to, and he realized there was nothing he could say. It would really say, Who he? Who you? And just then the patient said, Pleased to meet you. Isn't that nice? So he knew that. There was somebody who knew, you know, just in a very simple, direct way. And he could see that person getting right to that point, where he could just be there. Pleased to meet you. Somebody who's finally at a loss, doesn't know what to say that will make a good impression, or please the other person, but just at a loss. Two people at a loss. Pleased to meet you. I've been at a loss for so long, you know, it's, I'm finally getting used to it.

[34:19]

Now I almost can talk about it as though it's a virtue. Well, I'll tell you another story. One day a monk asked Shui Feng, the master set for when the old creek of Zen dries up, and there's not a drop of water left. What do you see then? What about this time when there's no drops of water, when there's nothing to get out of something? What do you see then? And Shui Feng said, the bottomless water, which you cannot see. Wow, that's kind of Zen, huh? The bottomless water, which you cannot see.

[35:21]

The monk said, how can I drink it? Was he getting the idea of some reward or what? So Zen teacher Shui Feng put him off a bit, and he said, I wouldn't try to drink it with your mouth. Later, the monk went to Zen teacher Zhaozhou, the one who said, why would you want to get rid of passion, right? And the monk told him about the conversation. And Zhaozhou said, well, if you can't drink it with your mouth, I don't think you could do it with your nostrils either. I guess that passes for Zen humor, huh?

[36:24]

Then the monk repeated his first question. When the water, when the well of Zen dries up and there's not a drop of water, what do you see then? What about then? There's no drop of water. There's nothing to be had to satisfy your thirst. And Zen teacher Zhaozhou said, the water will taste as bitter as quinine. The monk said, what about those who drink it? And Zhaozhou said, he will lose his life. This is a kind of losing your life.

[37:28]

It's so wonderful, isn't it? We lose ourselves when we're involved in activities without wondering why we're doing it or what we're going to get out of it. And we just, in a very simple and direct way, can taste our food and smile at somebody and talk and not think about the kind of impression we're making, whether I'm doing well, not so well, better, worse than other people, you know, being a good person, not being a good person, being a good Zen person, not a good enough Zen person. How's my practice? Well, it's really terrific today. Well, yesterday wasn't so good. Tomorrow it's going to be better. Well, I still have this problem. I've got that. You know, it's also, you know, like to practice Buddhadharma, it doesn't have to do with having ideas or not having ideas about how we're doing. So this is the kind of losing your life. Very refreshing.

[38:29]

And yet there's something bitter about it, huh? Even in the midst of suffering and tribulation, there'll be some blessedness. It's not as though that, you know, it's not as though that this being with things is without, you know, bitterness. Because to be with things is also to be with suffering, basic kind of, you know, we're alive and it's fragile and impermanent and mutable. And things can change so quickly. Our life can change so radically. People do get hurt. People, we get cancer and diseases and so many things are happening in the world. But it's important to take the time to touch it, to be with it in a very simple, direct way.

[39:39]

And this way you taste the bitterness and you also lose your life. And as they say in some schools, I think you gain that way, right? Isn't there some school, religion or something that says, you know, if you lose your life for my sake, you know, then you gain it? So anyway, thank you very much for being so much at your leisure this morning. That you could have the time to sit and listen to me and hear these sounds and experience your being, your breath. And settle into your life and not be so tossed around by various gaining ideas that come along. I'll tell you, so the conclusion of Dogen's passage about not practicing for gaining ideas,

[40:48]

he says, so don't practice the Buddha Dharma for your own sake. Don't practice for the sake of others. And don't practice for name or gain. Don't practice the Buddha Dharma for miraculous effects. Or don't practice Buddha Dharma for any special benefits. Just practice the Buddha Dharma for the sake of the Buddha Dharma. This is the way. Please enjoy your tea, okay? When the time comes. Thank you.

[41:26]

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