Just now, before the lecture, I bowed three times to the altar. And when we bow, the way we do it is to go onto our knees and then touch our head to the floor, and then we raise our hands with the palms up. And raising the hands with the palms up is said to be lifting Buddha's foot or feet. I don't know quite why we lift Buddha's feet. I've never understood that. But when I bow, I tend to think of my teacher, Suzuki Roshi, because one of the first times that I went to see him in an interview, I bowed, and when I bowed and raised my hands, I raised them like this. And he said to me not to bow like that. He said, when you raise your hands, keep your hands flat and lift your palm up.

[01:27]

This is like you're making an offering. This feels too much like you're trying to grab something. When you do like this, like you want to keep it all. So almost every time I bow now, I think of my teacher. And his words of, you know, those kind of words, those are instructions. Those are also like, uh-oh, I made a mistake. Somebody's correcting me. But with him, I felt, I didn't feel corrected like that, and I didn't feel criticized. I thought, how nice. He's making this effort to be with me and to help me. I think it's, I often say, you know, it's pretty difficult to find our way in this world.

[02:42]

I think we've all had that kind of experience. It's pretty hard, a lot of the time, to find our way. You know, the way to have a happy, healthy, satisfying life. And we say sometimes, oh, that's because of modern American culture. But this is also a human problem, to find a sustaining and fulfilling life. I think Zen practice is about re-inhabiting or re-owning one's life. And to do that, you know, the main thing we do is to sit. And in sitting, we settle the self on the self, as one of our teachers used to say. We stop spending so much time in the world of thought, which we can kind of think we can control our thoughts and make it come out right.

[03:47]

I had a friend recently who, you know, he started realizing in the last year or two, he'd been abused by his father. And then earlier this year, his father shot himself, committed suicide. It turned out that the police had been investigating his father for many months for molesting boys. And so when his father was arrested and got out on bail, his father shot himself. And then a few weeks after that, his girlfriend left him. I think he was pretty hard to be around. And each of us, you know, in our own way, we have our own kind of difficulty in our own life.

[04:51]

It may not be as serious as this. It may just be Bosnia and Somalia and South Central Los Angeles. But everywhere, you know, we look, there is tremendous problem and pain in the world. And it turns out this is also in our own bodies. And within our own body and mind and being, we have our own Bosnia's places that are fighting. And we don't know what to do. And to settle the self, you know, on the self is to enter into what's going on in our own life, in our own being, in our own body, in our own mind, in our own heart. And find out how to engage it in the world, engage ourself in the world and engage in our own life. My friend after his girlfriend left said,

[05:59]

people shouldn't do that, should they? This is thinking, isn't it? It's easy enough to think that, right? She promised she wouldn't. How could she? And there's a limit to, you know, thinking at some point. We don't understand why something like this would happen. How could she have done such a thing? How could she leave me? How could he leave me? Why are people behaving like this? When we go from our own thinking like this into our own being, we find out that we're also a kind of mass of wanting one thing, wanting another, having various desires, wishes, impulses. We say things we regret later. We don't say things we wish we said later. So to re-inhabit one's being is also to find out how can we trust.

[07:08]

How can I trust my own body? How can I trust my mind, my thoughts, my feelings? Can I trust them? Or do I have to stay in the realm of thinking and do what I should? Say what I'm supposed to say. Do what people expect me to do. And this is always, you know, this gets to be a little complicated to figure out. And pretty soon if we're busy doing what we should, we forget about our own feelings, our own thoughts, our own heart, how we would respond to something. If we were actually at home and settled in our body, after a while we begin to know our own heart, what we really want. And often, you know, to do this, to enter into our own body, into our own being,

[08:14]

there'll be various problems. Because the nature of our life, our body is impermanent. It often hurts. It's disturbing. Seems to have a mind of its own. Thinks things we wouldn't think. Feels things we don't particularly feel like feeling. Generally kind of misbehaves. Doesn't follow the agenda that we had in mind. Gets tired when we'd rather not be tired. So to enter into our being is to take care of things that are problem areas. Sometimes I go to spiritual communities and, you know, the toilets don't work. They're busy making Buddha statues, writing mantras on pieces of paper, putting them inside the giant Buddha statues, and the toilets don't flush. It makes me wonder sometimes about spiritual practice.

[09:18]

Because I see spiritual practices as you fix the toilets. Now they work. And this isn't always so pleasant. But it actually brings a great joy to our life. You know, here at Tassajara, we do this, the students, we take care of the cooking. We cook and we clean cabins. We take care of the garden. And, you know, so we do this kind of entering into the real work of things, the real work of the world. And then we offer it to the guests, to others, to each other, to enjoy the fruits of the effort, of the work. It's pretty nice. But this isn't always so, you know, pleasant to settle the self on the self,

[10:29]

to enter into the actual work of things. And aside from doing it through practice, like meditation or yoga, often this kind of work happens in relationship, which is what I wanted to talk about tonight. So I want to tell you a few stories about some relationships I've had, of particular instances. And for me this brings to mind a saying of Dogen Zenji's, in the Shobo Genzo. And the saying is, only a Buddha and a Buddha can realize the Buddha Dharma. So not just, you know, has no sentient being ever realized the Buddha Dharma, but only a Buddha and a Buddha, together, realize the Buddha Dharma. This is interesting, you know, to me, because often I would think,

[11:35]

and sometimes you hear stories about people, I mean, look at what about the Buddha, he's sad. He got enlightened all by himself, didn't he? So shouldn't we be able to do that? Isn't it? But it seems also that a lot of us have had, well generally, you know, when we do things, and we do what we feel like doing, and we say what we feel like saying, and can we trust it or not? And the world hasn't always responded very approvingly. People will attack us. How could you say such a thing? How could you do such a thing? So how do we trust our own body and mind? This is some ongoing kind of effort and practice. And then sometimes somebody helps us, and we realize something. So I want to tell you a couple of stories. Here it is. Now the first is about during a session I did here many years ago

[12:48]

when the Zenda was down the hill, student eating area. I was sitting right by the door, which is now the door into the bag lunch area. It's a plot of dirt now. I was sitting there and the third day of Sashin, the third day of Sashin is often the most difficult. By the fourth day sometimes you get a little used to the fact your body gets a little kind of accustomed to the extremes of sitting in this posture for many hours and maybe after a while starts to relax a little bit even though it's being rather severely traumatized. In those days we used to every period pretty much have somebody walk around with a stick and if you were sleeping you would get hit whether you asked for it or not. So I tended to be sleeping and I would get hit sometimes three or four times a period

[13:56]

because if once isn't enough they keep at it. Now what would you do? Are you going to try to please the world and wake up so that you won't get hit anymore or are you going to be committed to your own reality and what's going on in your own being? Are you going to own your tiredness or will you abandon it in the face of the world? Sometimes I tried abandoning my tiredness to avoid being hit and I found when I did that I started to shake. After a while this got uncomfortable and then even then sometimes I would get hit.

[15:08]

Then I would try to relax and if I was able to relax I'd fall asleep and I would get hit. This went on for many hours. Finally, the period before dinner and you know my legs had been really hurting, I mean serious pain, you know like where you're, I don't know if you, anyway serious, not just the knees, the whole legs. This sort of pain and sometimes sort of shooting pains and then that was probably the session where I was sitting there and talking to my knee and you know my knee was hurting and I said to my knee, don't hurt me like that or I'm going to hurt you back. My knee went on hurting, it didn't listen to what I told it and so I pushed on it like

[16:22]

that and I said you know I told you so and then my knee went on hurting and I said I thought I told you if you hurt me I'm going to hurt you back and so I hurt it again and after two or three times of this I realized, I thought to myself this is really crazy. So finally the period we did Kenyan and the period right before dinner, one knows these things during sushin, which period is which. This is the period before dinner and I decided I've had it, I just put my knees up and I put my arms around my knees and I put my head down and I said to myself I don't care what

[17:24]

happens, but I've had it and about twenty seconds later, Kobinchino who had been sitting on the altar was by my side and he said let's go outside and as soon as I got out the door I started sobbing. I didn't know that I had felt like sobbing until he was by my side and we got out the door and then I was crying so hard I couldn't see and he held my hand and took me back to my room, which is the room where I'm staying now, 1B, and he got me into the cabin, had me lie down in the bed and I sobbed convulsively.

[18:26]

I don't know if you, I didn't know there was this kind of sobbing but it's like where your legs thrash while you sob and this went on for like twenty or thirty minutes and after I calmed down a little bit, at some point, you know, after dinner my roommate or person who was staying in 1A came back. He decided maybe I hadn't cried enough so he gave me a little roughing. He started kind of like maybe there's a little more you need to get out. I was very grateful to Covencino for noticing what was happening with me and deciding to come and ask me to leave the Zen Do. I'm the kind of person who, you know, if I'm told that Zen practice is sitting on your

[19:31]

cushion, I'll keep sitting there, you know, even if it means putting my legs up and giving up, I'll still stay on the cushion, you know, but he came and got me. After that it was a lot easier to sit. I didn't have nearly so much pain in my legs. I think a lot of the pain in my body was those tears because, you know, to have that kind of feeling inside you, you have to hold it. You have to hold your body. You can't relax because if you relaxed you'd cry. So you have to hold yourself very tightly so that won't happen. And then how can you act from your own heart? Everything you do is just to avoid crying. And then when somebody might have made you cry, you get mad at them.

[20:35]

You know, this is the simplest thing. So that's one kind of, you know, experience. It seems to be necessary. I don't know, you know, I've never been able to walk out of the Zen Do and cry like that. You know, go back to my room and lie down and sob convulsively. But because somebody was with me, who obviously cared about me, you might say loved me, I could do that. I could allow myself to be in my own body and to feel my own feelings because somebody else was there with me. But this is not the only kind of experience one might have, I think, you know, with another

[21:48]

person that's conducive to a kind of realization. So another story I tell sometimes, I was working in the kitchen. This is the old kitchen that has since been torn down. It was located where the dish set is now. It was up on sort of stilts. It was pretty small. We didn't have as many students or guests then, but we would have about 45 guests and about the same number of students. And sometimes I was the tenso, the baker, the guest cook, and the head of the Zen Do crew. We weren't always so well-staffed. And it's very difficult to make a meal happen in any case, even when you're well-staffed.

[22:52]

And there's a certain pressure and stress to try to get a meal ready on time and to have it be satisfactory and good and flavorful and to have people hopefully appreciate it and have the meal reflect well on the person who cooked it. This is pretty important, especially if you're the one cooking it. Most of the rest of the people around don't realize how important it is that the meal reflects well on me. So they're not always as helpful and energetic as they might be. If they only realized how important it was. So during this, I was experiencing a lot of stress. I was kind of angry. I was annoyed at the way people were working. I was frustrated. And I also was kind of upset with myself for being so upset, you know, like, what's wrong

[24:01]

with me? Why are you so upset, huh? You know how one can talk to oneself? This is good. And then while this was going on, I heard someone calling my name. I heard the name Ed. And it took me a real while to realize that the Ed who was being called was me because the Ed who was being called was a very nice, the most nice, wonderful person you could ever expect to meet. And it's not the person that I thought I was at the time. It was somebody was calling Ed who was a very, was quite a nice person. And I looked around finally and I realized that Suzuki Roshi was standing in the doorway of the kitchen calling my name.

[25:02]

And all the feelings I'd had of stress and anger and frustration and annoyance disappeared as though they were simply dark clouds. And my mind and body became very light, like blue sky, and I had, I didn't have a single care. This is, you know, each of us is also this person or this mind, this awareness that is clear, like blue sky, and the feelings and thoughts we have are like clouds and they don't, we don't, they don't belong to us.

[26:08]

And I was introduced to this mind at this time because somebody called my name. And the person that he was calling, I didn't recognize. I hadn't known that person was also me, Ed. I don't think that Suzuki Roshi planned this. It's just because someone, you know, who's outside of us often can see us in a way that we can't see ourself, doesn't have the same kind of fixations or obsessions or, you know, attachments that we have to, you know, what's wrong with me? I think this way or I have these feelings and, you know, why can't I this and what about

[27:14]

that? And somebody who's outside of us often can love us or see us in a way we can't see ourself and it's a tremendous support. And somebody else can say to us, oh, it's all right, everybody gets angry. And sometimes it's even just calling a name, our name, or just to touch someone to bring them back, to let them know somebody else is there. It makes a big difference. And the best relationships in our life, we can do this for one another. We can bring each other back and remind each other of our fundamental being or goodness, our basic humanity and well-being.

[28:17]

You know, even in this sense, even a nice person makes mistakes. Even a nice person can get angry. Even a good person can be upset or annoyed or short-tempered. And you know, if we have to be perfect before we notice this, you know, we won't attain that kind of perfection ever in our life. You know, if every little thing that we do that's a problem or a mistake is yet another indication that we haven't realized our Buddha nature, our blue sky, clear, light nature, we never will realize anything. We'll keep attaching to the little mistakes we make and that others make. I think we all, you know, in our life, it's pretty powerful that we all want relationship,

[29:31]

we all need relationship. It's kind of an axiom that the trauma that we've experienced in our life has been through relationships and the healing we need to do in our life is through relationship. And there's a tremendous power. There can be a tremendous healing power in relationship. And although, you know, we desire very deeply to have relationship or intimacy, to be intimate with another person, to be intimate with our own being, we also worry that if we get into relationship, we'll be dominated. We will be unable to stand our own ground. We will be overcome.

[30:33]

So, it's not so easy, you know, it's pretty scary to be able to trust, to learn to trust our own body, our own responses, and to be able to enter into relationship with another human being so that somebody can call our name and awaken our nature. Somebody can be with us so we can cry. It's the same thing just to own your own anger, you know, because a lot of the time we feel like if I get angry, I can't help myself. The anger has gotten a hold of me. It's doing what it wants to with me. So we better keep our anger at a distance. And our passion, all of these things are dangerous. So this is an ongoing kind of study to own our feelings. I want to tell you one more story. This is about a conversation I had with Kadagiri Roshi.

[31:44]

I had been living here in the summer of 1984, and I went up to San Francisco to talk to Kadagiri Roshi. Sometimes, that summer especially, I noticed, especially if I went down to the pool, I noticed many attractive women. Down at the pool, they don't have very much clothes on, the attractive women. Attractive women have just tiny little pieces of cloth on. I would find this kind of interesting. When I talked to Kadagiri Roshi, I said to him, Kadagiri Roshi, you've often said we should practice at the ancient, has the ancients practiced? Did the ancients practice with the Tassajara guest season?

[32:48]

Where women at the bathing pool have just a tiny bathing suit on. And Kadagiri Roshi said, no, they didn't. So I asked him, how can we practice as the ancients practiced? In that case, he said, even if you can't practice as the ancients practiced, you should keep their practice in mind. I thought to myself, well, okay, whatever that means, I wonder what the ancients did with their desire. So I asked him again, I said, you know, actually even though I'm attracted, I'm attracted to

[33:54]

all these women, actually I have a girlfriend here in San Francisco. He said, oh, in that case it's just greed. It didn't seem like just greed to me. It seemed kind of sweet. I think of greed as kind of being kind of more aggressive than that or somehow kind of, it didn't seem, to me it just seemed like sweet. It didn't seem, you know, really like greed. So I asked him, I said, you know, I've heard it said that the bodhisattva avalokiteshvara, the bodhisattva of compassion, enters the truth each moment. Isn't it possible to enter the truth of greed? He said, if that's true, you better get in there right away.

[35:00]

You better get into the truth right away. I wasn't satisfied. And I, you know, I've also heard it said the passions are enlightenment. So I asked him. Heard it said the passions are enlightenment. So how can, isn't it possible to find enlightenment in greed? If this is the case, how would I do that? After a while, you know, he gets sort of, he would get sort of, he'd go around like this. And then he said finally, he kind of would shake his head. And he said, Ed, you can do whatever you want.

[36:03]

I hope you're willing to take responsibility for it. Please take responsibility for it. This is very interesting, isn't it? We can do whatever we want, and then the world will do whatever it wants. And we can't exactly say, well, I'll do whatever I want. And then, you know, the world really shouldn't have anything to say to me about this. Because I'm going to, I'm just doing what I want. I'm just being sincere and true to myself. Do you have a problem with that? Well, I'm sorry. So it seems to be a little more complicated, you know, than just any one of us does what we want. There's other people, and there's our relationship with other people. And there's being accountable or answering or responding to other people about what we've done, how we are.

[37:16]

. So sometimes we have to explain ourselves. We have to account. And we learn something. We learn about who we are because somebody else is interested. Sometimes because somebody, you know, wants to correct us, wants us to, wants to straighten us out, wants to give us a piece of advice, and it's confusing to know how

[38:29]

to settle in one's own being and at the same time respond to what other people have to say. And yet this is also how we realize our nature, potentially, how we grow, how we heal. So it's important in that sense that we develop in our life some good relationships, relationships that we can trust. This also isn't so easy. Our relationships where we don't feel dominated or shamed or humiliated or taken advantage of, relationships that support us, and then we can do this for other people as well.

[39:30]

And actually, it's one of the, you know, now when I look back over many years of Zen practice, I now have many friends, people I know and trust, people I've known now for 15 years, 20 years, 25 years. It's a tremendous kind of richness and wealth and well-being. So even though this kind of effort in relationship isn't always so easy and has its difficulties and dangers, it's well worth working on. And it's also how we, although we do a lot of our practice individually, it's also through relationships we come to know the Buddhadharma and the depth and richness of our own being.

[40:36]

Thank you very much.

[41:33]

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