I'm not sure, but I think that tonight I'm giving a little different talk than I used to give, which is interesting because it makes me a little bit nervous. I'm sort of used to the talks I used to give, anyway, we'll see what happens. I used to try to give like Zen talks, so tonight I thought I just wanted to talk about something actually fairly simple, and I wanted to talk about it in simple language, and not particularly Buddhist language. I think it's pretty obvious to all of us that life is more than whatever it is we're doing.

[01:18]

There's something spiritual about our lives, or that each of us are on a spiritual journey of a sort, and it's hard to know what that is, but we can think about it in various terms. Like Joseph Campbell in his series, he talked about following your bliss, or defeating the dragons, and so on. But I think we each have some sense that life is not just the fact that it's hot today and cold in the winter, and we have a job to do, and we have responsibilities, and we have to make money, and we have kids to take care of, and there's something else, too.

[02:19]

We're born and we're going to die, and we want to know something about what the meaning of that is, the meaning of life. So something else is going on at another level in our being besides just whether or not we have a good job, or a good house, and so on. We're trying to find our way through life. And I think the simplest way, when I was thinking about this today, the simplest way I can think about it is, in Buddhism we say, all beings are striving to be happy. That's pretty simple. We're each striving to be happy. So I wanted tonight to talk about being happy. It's pretty interesting. And I wanted to recognize that this striving to be happy is pretty basic, in some ways you could say most basic, because it's only a little difference to say, to strive to be

[03:24]

happy, to strive for enlightenment, or liberation, or anything else that we might use to characterize what a spiritual journey is, or the path that we're on. And Buddhism, in a lot of ways, is just talking about all the mistakes we make in trying to be happy. So I want to talk about some of the common mistakes we make, about how we go about trying to be happy in a way that doesn't work. So for instance, you know, Suzuki Roshi said, if you want to know what suffering is, just try being happy all the time. So there's a mistake right there. In trying to be happy, we try to be happy all the time. So it's, if we like eating brownies and we don't like eating broccoli, well then let's

[04:27]

just eat brownies. And if we're happy when we're drunk and unhappy when we're sober, well let's stay drunk. And if somebody isn't nice to us, let's not be nice to them, because let's punish them for it, so that they know in the future they should be nice to us. So we do a lot of things that end up, by trying to be happy all the time, pretty soon we don't have a very good diet, and we're drinking too much, or, you know, we're not a very nice person to live with, but it all started out because we were trying to be happy. We were trying to do and experience just the things that made us happy, and not experience the other things that we didn't seem to have much happiness with. I like, by the way, Robert Bly, in the beginning of Iron John, in his introduction, quotes a little part of a poem by Antonio Machado, where he says,

[05:32]

You walkers, O you walkers, there are no paths, only wind trails on the sea. That's pretty nice. There's not really some path or particular way that we need to go through life, any one of us, but, because even if there are ways, there's not, nobody's lived our life before. So our living our life is creating the path, and so in that sense we're finding the way, we're trying to find the way, moment after moment. And if we actually remember that we're trying to find the way, this helps, don't you think? And we don't then assume that we already know the best way to be happy, and we can recognize and acknowledge the ways that we go about, the ways that we go about trying to be happy that aren't working. So this is one of them.

[06:33]

This is similar to one time in the pink section of the Chronicle, the date book, there was a little quote by Bette Midler, and she said, I used to be so unhappy because nobody ever tells you that there's no happiness you can get and keep, and I tried to do that for years. So she said, you know, something like, I was always kind of punishing myself, what's wrong with you? You know, you haven't gotten it yet. Other people seem to have it. Some happiness that you can get ahold of and keep, what's wrong with you? Then she said, finally she realized that there was no happiness she could get and keep, so she said, now I can relax a lot more, I don't have to be so hard on myself. So this, these are slightly different in my mind, but, so we tend to think that happiness

[07:41]

resides in the object or in the experience. Happiness is in how hot the day is, and if it's over a certain temperature, you know, we can't be happy. Or happiness is in, you know, it's something we eat, it's something we do, it's an activity. We can be happy while we're swimming or at the narrows, but we can't be happy while we're working. And we're happy when we're rested, but not happy when we're tired. So we should get plenty of rest, we should not be tired. So pretty soon we have rather elaborate strategies, which are intended to produce the conditions for happiness. And then does it ever arrive? We're all the time adopting our strategies, but then it doesn't necessarily, we don't

[08:47]

necessarily get to the place. Then when we get down to the narrows, we may find that there's some flies down there that bite, and it's actually too hot, and we're getting a sunburn, and we actually end up getting in an argument with our partner or something, and it turned out that, you know, the conditions for being happy were even more particular than we thought. So it gets pretty frustrating trying to do that. So we have to, again, at some point we start to recognize, and this is really like, you know, this is the First Noble Truth in Buddhism, it's pretty difficult, isn't it? In fact, if we're trying to be happy like that, and we go about trying to create the conditions and set up the circumstances where they're just right to elicit and induce our happiness, but it's in the events, in the experience, we're trying to bring this about. This is called suffering.

[09:48]

This is the First Noble Truth, that we went about things in that way, and then consequently we never actually got to the time where we had the happiness, or if we did, it was pretty short-lived and that was that, and now we have to come up with our next strategy for inducing the proper things to happen. So this kind of strategy, of course, then fails to acknowledge that happiness is in us, happiness is in our state of mind, so to speak, in our mind, in our being, or in our heart. Maybe it's best to say, you know, happiness is in our heart. But we can, you know, let that go for now, we can think about that a little bit. But I think it's, you know, pretty apparent, because we know that sometimes very simple

[10:56]

things can make us happy. We can be happy with something very simple. Sometimes particularly here at Tassajara, we're settled enough or quiet enough, and just to sit, and we see the sunlight through the leaves and the trees, there's maybe a slight breeze, and even the sound of the blue jays, we feel pretty happy. I don't think it's just the circumstances, it's because if we were busy with our life, and we were concerned about gain and loss, and accomplishing what we were supposed to be accomplishing, and doing what we were supposed to do, and taking care of all those things the way that we thought we should be taking care of them, and doing all that, pretty soon we would forget about how to be happy with the sunlight and the trees. Anyway, for me that's pretty obvious, that happiness is in our own being, in our own

[12:02]

state of mind or attitude. I know for myself, sometimes I can look at a piece of fruit, an apricot or a peach, and I feel very happy, and other times I don't. So what's the difference? Is it in the peach, or is it in me? So we have many experiences like this. So, partly then, we start to look at, well, what will allow us to be in touch with the happiness that's in our own being, in our own heart? What will allow us to touch that, or to allow that happiness to be there? Which isn't dependent on circumstances and conditions, and how people are looking at us, or not looking at us, or thanking us, or not thanking us, or appreciating us, or don't appreciate us, and so on.

[13:04]

I think another thing about happiness is that happiness is not about gaining. I read this article a while back, and I told some of you I know, it was about children and creativity, and it said that this person did a study, and he took six grade girls, and he asked them to teach younger kids a particular game, and he explained the game to them. And then he promised, one said he promised them movie tickets if they taught the game, and the other ones he just said, would you do this? And the ones who weren't promised anything, they did a much better job and faster at teaching the game to the kids. Isn't that nice? And they found this too with kindergarten kids, promised them a reward for drawing, and the other ones they just gave them crayons. And the ones who got a reward for drawing, pretty soon they didn't care about drawing. The other ones, the other kids were drawing. They were drawing because they liked drawing.

[14:14]

So it seems like as soon as we get the idea that we're going to gain something if we accomplish the task, then pretty soon we just want to get it done, get it over with, and we resent whatever time it takes, just want it to get done so we get what we're supposed to get out of it. Okay? So this is, and yet we sometimes think that happiness is something to do with gaining something, accomplishing something, and then having this gain at the end that's going to give us the happiness. It's going to be this gain when the people give us the thanks or when we get the money or there's something at the end there. And this is true even in work where we are paid because a lot, because we can still, if you're getting paid, it doesn't mean we're not basically doing it out of some love or goodness of our heart. Here at Tassajara people are working and then it's coming out of people's love and generosity and kindness and good nature.

[15:18]

All this work, it just comes out of that, it just flows out. And that's different than if people were here, I was here when it was still a resort and people are getting paid room and board in 150 a month. It's 1966, that's a lot of money. And everybody's bitching and moaning and complaining and we're not getting paid enough. And people aren't particularly happy about their work. So I was thinking about this and I read recently, there's that wonderful book, My Tibet or something, the Dalai Lama's, it's pictures by Galen Rall and little talks by the Dalai Lama, wonderful pictures. And one of the talks is about pilgrimage and the Dalai Lama says this, he says, when two people make cross to bed and go for months and one of them is basically doing it as a spiritual pilgrimage and the other one is doing it for business, then that's a different thing that they're doing. And one will just be intent on getting there and making money and the other one will be

[16:23]

actually doing this journey and having a different kind of experience because it's basically out of some devotion or out of some love. And he said it doesn't mean you can't do some business but if your primary motivation is this kind of generosity or is it as a pilgrimage, as an offering, you're doing something as an offering, as a kindness, out of the warmth of your being, your good spirit, your heart, then there's some happiness associated with this that's different than if you're doing something for a gain. Another one I think is, now it seems to me that happiness is associated with play. So this is somewhat related to this last one because when we're serious about gaining and

[17:31]

getting something done, then we forget to play. We just want to get something done. So we have to be very serious and just try to get it done and we can't take any time to play because playing sort of takes a little longer and it's more fun and we're happier but we don't necessarily get things accomplished quite as fast. And play is also associated with absorption, being absorbed in what we're doing and it's also related I think to when we stop telling ourself, that's not good enough, people are going to criticize you, this isn't going to turn out well, you better just do something that you know how to do, you better not try something new, you better not play around, people are expecting you to get things. So if we're busy, when we're busy telling ourselves that's not going to be much fun, we won't be very happy and we certainly won't be playing. So to play we have to kind of turn off the sensor for a while, don't you think?

[18:34]

And then at some point of course we need the sensor, I mean we have to kind of check out what we're doing at some point but if we can't turn it off at least for a while and play and have a good time, what we're doing, then pretty soon we won't be very happy. And I think this is true in meditation. I think it's true in cooking. It's even true I think in eating. So it's related to the fact that, I think it's also related to whether or not we're trying to gain by accomplishing something in particular. It doesn't mean that we don't get something done but if we're trying to gain, you know just to get it done and get it out of the way, we can't, we won't be playing, I don't So I think this is also, for me this is also associated with finding out how to do things,

[20:00]

not already knowing how to do something or being a beginner and trying things out and being willing to make mistakes and being willing to not measure up and being willing to fail in a sense. So all those things are associated with play actually. Play as we grow up becomes harder because of that. It's not as easy as it was when we were young and we didn't have to worry about being criticized. In that way. Happiness I would say is different than excitement, intensity, stimulation, relaxation, repose. It's different than all the uppers and downers and yet I think we often confuse these things. I'd be so happy if, you know like, I think I'd like some excitement.

[21:02]

We forget that sometimes that the excitement by itself is not necessarily happiness. Or the stimulation by itself is not necessarily happiness. The repose by itself is not necessarily happiness. The relaxation, I'd like to be more relaxed. And then, you know we may drink alcohol, we may take a drug. And pretty soon, we're not happier because of that. We may have gotten the relaxation or the stimulation, but we're not happier. Our heart isn't more open, we're not more playful, we're not more open to the experiences of our life. We're not more generous or patient. So I think it's, for me certainly, it's useful to recognize that kind of difference. What's the difference between, you know, happiness and just being stimulated or excited or turned on?

[22:04]

Having an intense experience. Often then, after that, you want to do it again, tomorrow. And then all the time in between is, this is crummy, this isn't very good. This isn't very exciting. This isn't very interesting, this isn't very stimulating, this isn't, you know, very intense. This is really lousy. And then at last, you know, the intensity comes. So that kind of life isn't the life of happiness. It's mostly a lot of unhappy time. When we're not feeling the way we'd like to feel. And we forget that we don't remember then, you know, am I interested in happiness or am I interested in excitement? Am I interested in happiness or am I interested in repose? So we don't always remember. Probably thank goodness, right?

[23:08]

Life would be pretty uninteresting if we always remembered. And we'd have a little less drama. Drama is another one, you know, that some of us like. And it seems like, you know, that's very gripping. And so it has its own, you know, it has an interest. And it's good theater. You know, and we get, and so that's a lot of fun. And we want to know what happens next in the story. Anyway, that again is not necessarily happiness. But, good story. Great theater. Highs and lows. Thank goodness. So, I guess then, so Buddhism, we also recognize then that happiness will tend to be associated with other mental phenomena, other mental factors.

[24:13]

So happiness will tend to be associated with generosity, with patience. With kindness. Happiness will be associated with concentration. Being absorbed in something, concentrated on something. Happiness goes along with that kind of concentration on something. Happiness is associated with mindfulness. Knowing, noticing what's, and acknowledging what's happening. So we feel, so we notice, even to notice and acknowledge anger or frustration. We'll be happier by noticing that than if we try to ignore it. Which brings up the next one. You know, happiness is never having any bad news for anybody, including yourself. This is sort of the, these days this is a big one because it's, you know, because it has to do with co-dependency and co-dependent families and so on.

[25:17]

Aren't we a happy family? And don't say that we're not. So sometimes we think happiness is, you know, not rocking the boat or not being the messenger, not bringing any bad news, not bringing up anything unpleasant. And not only not bringing it up to somebody else, but then pretty soon we're not bringing it up to ourself. We're not noticing. And then, of course, this leads to, often to kind of depression. It can also lead to kind of anger and frustration that nobody seems to care or be interested in how I feel. I mean, who's the one that didn't care and wouldn't notice? It's me, but, you know, I like to think it's others. So happiness in that sense will have something more to do actually with noticing how one feels, noticing how and acknowledging how one feels, whether it's a pleasant or unpleasant.

[26:23]

And it will also have something to do with communicating this with yourself and then actually sharing it with others. And being willing to bring up, in a sense, bad news. And then finding out how to do that in a way that's kind and, you know, is not attacking somebody else, but it's also not abandoning one's own point of view or understanding. And that's a kind of study, right? That's a kind of practice we have to... A lot of these things we have to work on or we never find out or we have to play at. We have to be willing to try out doing something in some other way or... You know, most of us have a way, we have some way of going through our life and it hasn't worked very well and we're not very happy, but we think we ought to go on doing it like this. Isn't that strange? I don't know about you, but that's the way I am, right? Instead of admitting like, you know, we could be, we might be going about it in some kind of mistaken way.

[27:35]

You know, we might actually be able to notice the mistakes, the basic kind of mistakes we're making and try something else for a change. Another one that we sometimes forget about is that we think sometimes we could have happiness at others' expense. Or when others aren't happy, or by making others unhappy, we could have happiness. Sometimes we think that, you know, if we make somebody else suffer, we'll be happy. Especially if we're angry at them. There was two couples here yesterday and we were talking before dinner last night and they're each celebrating their 40th wedding anniversary this year. You know, within a month or two, I don't know how long they've known each other, I don't think they've known each other the whole 40 years. I mean, the two couples have known each other.

[28:41]

I mean, the people within each couple have known each other. One couple, he kept saying, you know, the only time that he almost thought their marriage was going to come, the worst fight they had was when they were in Europe and he was trying to drive and she was trying to figure out which way to go. But he said one time he asked her if she'd ever thought about divorce and she thought about it for a while and she said, divorce? No. Murder? Yes. But I'm sure sometimes, you know, people must think, you know, that murder is a way to be happy. If I could just get rid of this person, then I, you know, this would be a relief, this would be, you know, there'd be happiness there.

[29:42]

I'd be rid of this burden, I'd be rid of this objectionable behavior. And it's a perfect example of, you know, in the heat of it, we forget, you know, there are people, there are those of us, we forget. And that's an extreme example, but we forget sometimes the way we talk to somebody and, you know, the way we do various things, that it's not actually conducive to our happiness, but we're doing it kind of to get something off our chest or to relieve something in our being that's sort of like we can't live with, we don't feel comfortable with, we don't have any, we can't be happy as long as we have that in our body and our mind. So we want to get it out, and we turn it on somebody else. So tonight, anyway, I want to, I think, you know, all of these things we, I think most of us, we understand these kind of things, right, and yet we forget and we have habits.

[31:01]

We have a habitual way of going through our life, and it's not necessarily the way that is conducive to happiness. Our own happiness and the happiness of others, and of course they're related, our own happiness, for us to be happy will help others to be happy. And for others to be happy will help us to be happy. I did have one quote from a Buddhist source that I was going to share with you tonight. I sort of forgot about it until now, so now is the time. This is from Thich Nhat Hanh, the Vietnamese Zen teacher who spends a good deal of time in France and also tours in this country now and again. I may visit his center in France later this year. Several people, or at least a couple of you here tonight, have been there and I've been talking with these people. Anyway, he said, whatever suffering we have in the present moment, the practice of Buddhism should help.

[32:07]

We should not say that these are only personal things and that we deal only with ultimate reality or supreme enlightenment. These do not mean anything if they have nothing to do with our daily life and our daily suffering. So please confront the real issues, the real problems of our life and inquire. So tonight I've been talking about happiness and I'd like to encourage you to look into this, how to be happy. And to acknowledge that it's actually very important and vital to acknowledge our desire to be happy, our wish to be happy. And part of it, as you can see, because it's different than all these things that we've been talking about and the mistaken ways that we can go about this. We can forget that happiness is not intensity or it's not just repose.

[33:13]

It's not being able to control phenomena so only pleasant things happen to us and people only smile at us. It's not being emotionally manipulative to get somebody else to behave the way we want them to. And punishing them when they don't. This is not conducive to our happiness even though in our confused thinking we might think so. And happiness is not being completely serious about accomplishing things and getting things done and obtaining things and having something to show for it. It's having some playfulness and being able to play at things and enjoy working or meditation or talking or a moment of being or a cup of tea, a bite of food. Many things can bring us happiness and to remember that it has something to do with our heart.

[34:15]

And the Dalai Lama says, oftentimes, it seems like the main thing he says about Buddhism is, to practice Buddhism is to have a good heart and to acknowledge and recognize your good heart and to purify your heart. So to purify your heart is to recognize these kind of misunderstandings or mistakes we make. And then to notice that we can have this kind of happiness and we have it in our heart already. So this is also mindfulness then, reminding ourself of these kind of things. Once we know and once we understand this then we can remind ourself from time to time. This is also considered to be how we develop our character. Suzuki Roshi sometimes talks about that practicing Zen is to develop your character.

[35:20]

One time I asked him, because I had heard all this stuff about practicing Zen is for no gain. So you have to understand it's in this particular context. If you try to gain and that's why you're doing it and you're not doing it out of some love for doing it, then you won't be happy. You'll just try to get it done with and get it over with and you'll be putting in your time thinking that there's something to be gained and you won't be happy. So it's in this kind of context that in Zen and Buddhism we teach, no, there's no gain. We do this out of love. Anyway, one time he said to me, you should gain something in your practice. And I said, no, but you're not supposed to gain anything. And he said, listen, if your practice is not going forward, it's going downhill. Anyway, it helped me. Because sometimes we forget that it's all right.

[36:31]

I mean, those of us who are here and practicing Buddhism and trying to be a good Buddhist and everything, we forget that actually the idea is to be happy. It's not the idea just to be a good Buddhist and do the Buddhist thing. And do things the Buddhist way. The idea is to be happy. And we're all working on finding out how to do this and we remind ourselves and occasionally if we can, in a positive way, we can sometimes remind one another how to be happy. And I think, you know, we could even think about then, in Buddhism we sometimes talk about enlightenment or liberation.

[37:32]

I like the word liberation better because enlightenment is such a mysterious word. Nobody seems to be able to say much about it. What does it mean? You know, there's so many words. And they got it. Recently there was an article in the Pacific Sun in Marin County and it said that Werner Erhardt's now got it. It's not cosmic consciousness anymore, it's public evisceration. I don't know. Anyway, I like the term liberation better because in that sense, you know, we can think about even something like this. What we've been talking about tonight is we're liberated from these mistaken ways of going about seeking happiness. And we actually can do that. We actually can liberate ourselves in this way. So that we go about being happy in a way that actually works. So that we generate happiness in our own life, happiness and peace and well-being.

[38:37]

And we generate happiness and peace and well-being in the lives of people around us. And this is quite good work, I think. So this week I'll be talking, I think, a little more specifically then about ways to generate happiness. I decided to make this my theme for the week. I hope you don't mind. That it's not anything more serious and philosophical and deep. But it seems to me to the point and an appropriate topic for a retreat like we're doing this week. And as much as anything then I want to tonight to remind you to acknowledge that once again my respect and appreciation for your being here and being on this journey.

[39:39]

And sharing this journey with me and with all of us here. We've all chosen in some, you know, one way or another chosen to be here. And it's because we have this kind of heart or interest in the spiritual journey. And in tonight in a way what I would call, you know, finding out how to be happy in our life. And help others to be happy. So I appreciate that very much. And I hope that each of you can at least in some small way feel the depth of your own good heart. And acknowledge that in your life. Okay?

[40:24]

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