Good evening. Guess I haven't been here for a while. Couldn't remember how to get in. I haven't lived here for 10 years. I've lived in room 33, 10, 11, 12. Top of the stairs. 45. And I lived across the street for 5 years. My daughter, who is 24 now, is still famous to this day for many people still mention the silent meals in the dining room. And the silence would be broken by my daughter's yelling out, Butter! But she didn't say T's very well, so it was more like, Butler!

[01:01]

When I go to give a talk, I You know, I kind of try to get out of the way and let my muse do it. I'm kind of dependent on my muse that way. I don't try to figure it out so much ahead of time. So we'll see what happens, won't we? Sometimes nothing much happens, you know, and then that's too bad. And then sometimes something happens that's kind of depressing. And then sometimes it works pretty well. But I've gotten kind of used to doing it this way, so that's the way it goes. And I pay the price. Anyway, I wanted to tell you a story tonight. First of all, many years ago at Tassajara, we were having tea with Suzuki Roshi, and a student said to him, asked him, Why haven't you enlightened me?

[02:19]

I thought this was kind of a little embarrassing to me. It seemed a little disrespectful. It also seemed to put an undue amount of the burden on Suzuki Roshi. But you know, we're Americans, so we get to be impolite. Recently a friend of mine went to England with her mother and two sisters, four women, and then her mother, you know, they were coming out of seeing, they went to see the English patient. And then they're in the lobby, and they're kind of walking along, and English people are pretty quiet, you know. And this is what everyone says anyway, I haven't been there. But her mother says to the three daughters, who are sort of scattered in a little range around the theater, she says in a loud voice, Well, I couldn't have an orgasm in a closet. And then later they're at Buckingham Palace,

[03:29]

and they have a big exhibit of Winston Churchill, celebrating Winston Churchill. And her mother starts saying, Now do you think that Winston Churchill actually wrote his own speeches? And my friend said, Well, yeah, I would think so. I mean, in those days, statesmen, that's a lot of why they were statesmen, because they wrote their own speeches, and people respected that. So finally their mother wasn't quite convinced, so she goes up to the guard. The woman is standing there. And she says, Now do you think, did Winston Churchill really write all of his own speeches, or did he have actually a speechwriter? And the guard said, Well, I expect he did. Anyway, we get to do this all over the world, this kind of thing. But anyway, when Suzuki Roshi was asked,

[04:34]

Why haven't you enlightened me yet? He said, I'm making my best effort. And politely enough, he didn't say, How about you? So how about you? I don't mean are you making your best effort, but are you asking a lot of yourself? Because if you ask, the way you treat others is the way you treat yourself, and how you treat yourself is how you treat others. So this person also asked a lot of herself. So usually we go around saying to our own body and our own mind, Gee, I guess you haven't come up with very good experiences,

[05:37]

couldn't you get me a better one? I'd like something more enlightening. I'd like it to be more calm and compassionate and kind. I don't want any of that other stuff that you keep coming up with. I'd like you to stuff it. And give me some really brilliant spiritual kind of experiences. You know, most of us in Zen, we're into the spiritual kind. Anyway, it's a little hard on your body and mind, and it can get kind of discouraging too. Because if you listen carefully to your body and to your mind, it will tell you, I just gave you a thought, I just gave you a feeling. I give you things to see and things to smell, things to taste. I give you an infinite variety of experiences, moment after moment. What else do you want? But we're pretty demanding, usually, of ourself.

[06:40]

And consequently of others. So, over the years, I've been cultivating my own practice. I say my own practice because, generally speaking, in the context of Zen Center, we expect a lot of one another. We have all these forms, and then, you know, please be quiet and do this and do that. And then, what chance do you have? And then pretty soon, we begin to think it extends to our mind. We should have a particular kind of mental experience as well. As well as having our body in a certain shape, we think, well, I better have my mind in a certain shape. And we start trying to shape our mind. And then, this can't be done. So, it's kind of frustrating.

[07:42]

And painful. It's painful to try to coerce or shape your mind. You've probably noticed this. But anyway, it's important to acknowledge it, how painful it is to try to shape your mind in your experience. Then, maybe you can let go of it. And give your mind and body and your experience, as Suzuki Yoshi said, a large pasture. Give your sheep or cow a large pasture. In this sense, mind, your experience, the world is like a beast, a cow or sheep. It's pretty wild. It's unruly. It's unmanageable. It can't be controlled. So, give it a big pasture. And in Zen, we can allow a big pasture because we have the container of the practice. So, outwardly, we have forms.

[08:46]

Inwardly, do what you feel like or what occurs to you. Isn't that nice? Complete freedom. Just don't move. Ahem. So, I want to talk a little bit.

[09:47]

I bring up this story I brought up for various reasons. I want to tell you a kind of, anyway, a Zen saying, which I also appreciate, which for me goes along with this story. I want to tell you a Zen saying Ahem. You've probably heard it. Take off the blinders. Unpack the saddlebags. The blinders are what the horse has on so you can go straight ahead and you don't look around. And you're definitely on your way somewhere. So, the Zen expression is take off the blinders, unpack the saddlebags. So, usually, once you arrive someplace and you're willing to be where you are, actually, you don't have to unpack the saddlebags. They'll start, you know, stuff will start tumbling out. You've probably noticed this. As soon as you are still, you know, something will tumble out and the saddlebags will start to unload.

[10:50]

And there's a lot of thoughts and judgments and anger and rage and greed and desire and frustration and envy and sorrow and sadness. And it's often quite mixed up. So, it's interesting. You know, we have to decide, each of us, we decide, you know, why are we here? What are you doing? Why would you want to practice Zen? Why would you want to do anything? And usually, you know, we have some mixed desire. On one hand, it would be nice if our life was just calm and peaceful. And on the other hand, it would be nice if we actually, as Dogen says, you know, in the Genjokan, your treasure store opened and you could spend it at will. Like, in other words,

[11:53]

you came into your power, into your life. Or Suzuki Roshi said, own your own body and mind. You actually owned your own body and mind and your life flowed out of you. Or, you know, Thich Nhat Hanh says, re-inhabit your life. Stop treating yourself. Stop colonizing yourself. You know, trying to rip off the raw materials and sell back some other stuff. You know, just like in that story. Haven't you come up with something better yet? Manufacture something better for me. So, you know, it depends on what you're interested in. But, personally, I'm interested in this is what I'm interested in. I'm interested in encouraging people to do that also.

[12:54]

To come into your own life, have your own power. And, you know, that your treasure store opens, that you have accessible your creativity, your energy, vitality, you know, resourcefulness. And it's yours to use and you can spend it. So this is different than just, you know, thinking that you can do what you were supposed to and everything would come out okay. Sometimes I think, you know, if you're here tonight, you know, you must already have decided you know, something about meditation for the long run. I meet people just starting to meditate and then there's people who say, well, I think I'll try this meditation out, I'll see how it goes and if it works out, okay, I'll do it.

[13:56]

And if it doesn't, I'm out of here. And then there's people who say, I'm going to find out how to meditate. It's a different kind of decision, isn't it? And as far as unpacking the saddlebags, you know, so also what's in the saddlebags is there's a difference between deciding ahead of time what your life is going to look like or should look like or is supposed to look like either according to you or to some people that you're hanging around with and having your life look the way it does. And most of us are rather busy having our life look the way it should and so we don't have particularly time to touch our life the way it is. And to touch our life the way it is, we have to be, you know, what's necessary is to be present. Present and also the second part

[14:58]

that's important is to be vulnerable or receptive. And to be vulnerable and receptive and actually feel something or notice something in your life, to be actually aware and to be receiving your experience and no longer criticizing it is not good enough. Why haven't you done more for me lately? Why haven't you been more impressive? And why haven't you astounded others? And et cetera. So actually to receive your experience we have to stop judging and criticizing and wondering about how well I'm doing, what's wrong with those other people. And then we can actually notice something and taste something in our life and something touches us. And if we're quiet enough and receive something completely enough then, you know, that's what's called sacred or Buddha nature, something real.

[15:59]

And you feel it in your core. Your core can vibrate at the frequency of touching another core, of another being or the taste of something in your mouth or the sensation of your breath. And you can't be busy at that time, you know, saying how good or bad it is or comparing it to anything else. So Zen, interestingly, as far as I can tell, is both about touching things at the core, being touched at your core. You know, Suzuki Roshi said Zen practice is to let your experience come home to your heart. You know, to let your experience come home to your heart, my experience is,

[17:00]

you know, this is, you know, this is anyway, it's an activity, something you do. And also, to let something actually touch your heart is, you know, very dangerous. If you have ever fallen in love, you know how dangerous it is. Because when you let something touch your heart, then you're, you know, you're vulnerable and you can hurt and you can have pain and you can have betrayal. And what touches you can go away. It's called in Buddhism, dukkha, suffering. That something you love and has touched your heart disappears. And yet the teaching of Buddhism actually is that to put an end to suffering is not to close your heart and wall yourself off from experience and see if you can handle everything at a distance

[18:02]

and keep above it all, but to actually receive things in your heart and let your heart respond. So you also don't close off your capacity to respond with the fullness of your being. And this is actually, you know, to do this kind of practice is something we spend then years finding out how to do because nobody does it that easily and well. And it's a craft how to be open and receptive and receive the world and at the same time, you know, have limits and when to have limits and when not to have limits and how to articulate your life. So a lot of the times, you know, we forget one side or the other. Some people are quite involved in

[19:04]

the articulation of everything and how to do things in the right way and the wrong way and getting everything just right in the realm of experience and then they forget about letting, you know, things touch the core, touch the heart. And then other people think, you know, are very easily touched at the heart but then don't have a clue about how to orchestrate their life so it actually works. Well, I don't want to talk too long tonight. I'm going to tell you a story. A more everyday kind of a story. A more colloquial kind of a story. And it's a story for me that illustrates various things but I'll, you know, I'll let it illustrate for you what it does. But anyway, I'll just say probably in the context of tonight,

[20:05]

I told you, you know, I trust my muse. I trust, you know, this is another way of thinking about practice is, you know, how can you, how is it to trust your own being? Can you trust your own being? Or do you have to decide and tell it what to do? I always tell people if I do a cooking class, do you tell your hands how to cut? Like you know better than your hands how to be a hand? Well, you should move like this and then like this and that's the way you should do it and you tell your hands how to do it. You could also, you know, invite your hands to find out how to cut in a way that they really love. That's completely different than telling your hands how to do it. And most of us spend our whole lives telling our hands, our arms, our legs, our chest, our heart, you know, what they're supposed to do next. And we don't spend

[21:08]

so much time inviting our being to express itself and to be there and to find out how to live. We don't invite so much our heart how to, you know, would you please go ahead and find out how to be a heart? Would you? And your hands, can you ask your hands, you know, can you find out how to be hands? And would you do what hands can do and love to do? And I give you my permission. A while back, I was at a workshop and I'm pretty good with my hands, you know. I've kneaded bread and I can cut vegetables really well and I can do a lot of things with my hands. And I was at a workshop and I asked the person leading the workshop, you know, my wrists are very stiff. I can't bend my hand back very far. You know, most people can get their hand back farther than that. But it stopped my basketball career for one thing. It's hard to shoot a basketball, you know,

[22:08]

if you can't balance it here on your hand, you know, and you have to bend your arm back to get the ball to balance there. I was too short anyway, obviously, but... So I asked him, you know, what about this? He said, why don't you just see what you can find out in the next day or so. So the next morning I was sitting in Zazen and I noticed I didn't have hands. Awareness just stopped right here, right at the wrist. Does anyone wonder why my wrists are stiff? And then, you know, I told the person the next day at the workshop, I said, I noticed my hands, you know, my awareness in my body stops here at the wrist. He said, lots of people doing spiritual practice do that, they cut off their hands. Why would you cut off your hands? So you don't hurt anybody.

[23:09]

So most of us in spiritual practice we cut off a lot, so, you know, we won't hurt anybody, just to be on the safe side. Then the next thing I noticed, I noticed that if I'm not aware of it, you know, my hands go like this, you know, while I'm sitting. And in the school that I'm studying, this is called, when your hand goes like this, that's I can't. If your hand goes the other direction, that's I can. You know, towards your thumb side. So I was sitting here doing I can't, according to this, you know, phenomenology. You might believe this or not, heck, I don't care. But I noticed that if I actually did the posture and I put this hand on this hand, and I have the knuckles, you know, on top of the knuckles, and the tip of my index, my middle finger comes right to the edge of my palm, and the other fingers

[24:13]

line up, and I have my thumb here, and I put my hands here, perfectly in line with my wrist. And I'm not doing I can't anymore. And I'm not cutting off my hands. And I have to have awareness in my hands to do that. I thought that was pretty interesting. But that's all on the side. I'm trying to tell you, you know, you could ask your hands to find out how to be hands. And you could ask your legs how to be legs. And you can let them find out. You can let your breath find out how to breathe instead of telling it be calm now. Does that ever bug you? You know, I'm sometimes doing cooking classes and I get intense and then people say calm down, Ed. And then I tell them after a while if they keep that up I say, why, you know, I'd rather you didn't tell me to calm down. You know, I don't mind if you tell me when you get upset like that I don't know what to do.

[25:14]

And it makes me it scares me when you're that intense. I get scared. When you get that intense I get scared. Instead of that they say, calm down, Ed. You see, the difference they're not owning is it's not like owning your own experience. We just try to tell other people how to behave so that you don't have to have your experience that you're having. You know, change you behavior so I don't experience what's going on in me. And then how much do you think you can do that with the whole universe? Huh? Oh, but maybe you can get better and then have some spiritual authority to back you up when you tell people how to behave. That would be good, wouldn't it? A little enlightenment. That's what I thought when I started practicing and I found out it doesn't go very far. And then, you know, even so, people will ask you, why haven't you enlightened me yet? You know, so a lot of good it does, you know. Anyway, you could ask your own body and being, but the problem is, I'm going to tell you about some of the problems now so you understand when you start asking yourself, you know,

[26:15]

and asking your own body to find its own way and asking your mind to come up with what to say and what to do, you know, these are some of the problems you could have and this is the price. You know, there's a price to pay for this and I've been paying this price for a long time. I know a lot about it. So, earlier this year, a friend of mine asked me, she comes to my meditation group in San Rafael on Thursday nights and she's the head of the Jewish Community Center's nursery school. She asked me, would I help with the benefit? I said, sure. Well, I'm going to get some celebrity chefs and you're going to create a menu and then you'll cater this magnificent mingle that we're going to have and people will pay lots of dollars and they're going to come to this thing. Okay. Well, now, I know that my cooking is what I call rustic. It's not chic, refined, polished. It's not restaurant and I agreed to cook with some people who are restaurant tiers, tours. You know, like Nancy Oakes from Le Boulevard that used to be La Venue, you know, the avenue out on Geary and then they moved downtown

[27:16]

and became Le Boulevard and, anyway, I was going to, so then, it turned out, she came back to me a little while later and said, well, the magnificent mingle is going to be at Dianne Feinstein's house because her daughter, Kathleen, is the president of the JCC and so she and Richard have agreed to underwrite the catering of the magnificent mingle at their house so you just have to make the dessert now. Are you still willing to help? So I thought, oh, okay. I was getting a little nervous because I'm even less able to produce magnificent desserts than I am just magnificent food, you know, and I knew that whatever I made was going to be rather homey compared to chic productions but I thought I would risk it and I decided to make a rhubarb strawberry tart cake. There's a layer of tart dough on the bottom,

[28:17]

then there's a layer of rhubarb goo, there's some strawberries and there's cake on top. I tried it out. It worked great. Then two friends from my sitting group came over to my house and we were going to make dessert for 150 people and I started about 8 o'clock and about 2 o'clock, you know, the dessert started coming out of the oven and then they started cooling and then eventually I cut them up and then I went to scoop them out and the bottom, the tart part on the bottom stuck to the spatula and then the goo comes out on the plate and then the tart dough is still on the spatula. And I started getting really anxious. They've all been done by this point, you know, some of them in the oven, some of them are cooling, but there's no help for this at this point. This is the way it's going to be and I started getting extremely agitated. This is my desserts compared to theirs

[29:18]

and what will people think about me and how are they going to, you know, and I tried another one and it sticks, you know, and then I started getting upset and within a couple of minutes I was screaming, you know, and my friends from my sitting group, they started doing this thing, you know, calm down Ed, it's not so important, you know. They're really tasty, the desserts are really good, they just don't look so good. Don't worry, it'll be okay and at that point, at some point, at that point I say, it's easy enough for you to say, I'm the person who has to show up there with these desserts and, you know, serve them or see that they get served. I'm the one who has to be there. You guys are going home now. It's easy enough for you to say, it's going to be okay, I have to show up there.

[30:19]

With the cream of the San Francisco, you know, the richest level of the, you know, Jewish culture here in San Francisco, Dianne Feinstein, Richard Blum, you know, the president of the JCC, the vice president, you know, the chairman of the board of, you know, the Jewish synagogue out there, Temple Emanuel, all that, you know, I have to go and I'm going to have to be there and there's going to be all those exquisite desserts and then there's going to be my little dumpy dessert that's falling apart. And, and so these two people from my sitting group made polite excuses and left. They got out of there really fast. They were extremely, obviously, extremely embarrassed at my outburst. After, you know, I would calm down and then when they were leaving I'd say, thank you very much and I appreciate your help. And then when they were out to do it

[31:20]

I'd start screaming again. I tend to scream, you know, at the universe. This is an ongoing study, you know, what do you scream at? Mom? Dad? The universe? The universe is like screaming at Buddha or Source. Anyway, after a while my daughter came in and she said, Dad, I really think you're, you know, kind of obsessed with this and I don't think people who eat the dessert are going to be looking at it the way you do with your judgments and so on. She was pretty nice about it. I was starting to calm down by that point. I made myself a cup of coffee and I lied down for a while. I took a nap and I had some coffee and then I had to get ready to go. And later my daughter said, you know, it's really kind of hard to respect somebody when they're behaving like that. And my daughter also complains

[32:25]

that, oh well, I'm not supposed to tell you about that. But anyway, do you think the parents who never reveal any feelings or emotions are any better? I don't know, but I've met a lot of people whose parents never felt a damn thing as far as they could tell and it's not known that much good either. But anyway, so I got on my best black dress, you know, and then I realized I have to get gas and I didn't, I didn't want to have to get gas in my best black dress. And so I started looking for a gas station that's full service, you know. There's almost no full service gas stations. I don't know where they are. I couldn't find one. I didn't know where and I couldn't find one. So I came on into San Francisco. I knew I had enough gas to get here into San Francisco

[33:26]

and I thought if worse comes to worse I'll just go and get gas. And then I got to the bottom of Waldo Great. It was Saturday at 5.30. The traffic was backed up across the Golden Gate Bridge just to the bottom of Waldo Great. If you've ever been over to Marin you know it's a mile and a half, two miles. It only took from 5.30 till, oh, I don't know, 6.20 or something to get to the bridge. I mean, it took 35, 40 minutes at least stop and go traffic. I'm doing this for the love of it. I'm sure. You know, I'm going to, I have all these desserts that I'm going to be humiliated by. And not only I have to be humiliated by the desserts but I have to sit in this traffic and it's not something I would choose to do normally. I got into town and I couldn't find the full service gas station so I went to a shell station out on Geary and I went and gave him $10 and he smiled at me.

[34:26]

He was Chinese, I think, and he seemed to recognize me in some sense. He seemed to be happy to see me. Anyway, I pumped the gas and then I went to Diane's house, Presidio Terrace, right off of Aguayo. So I brought my desserts in, reparked the car, came in in my black dress and there was Dianne Feinstein and then they introduced me to Dianne Feinstein and they said, how nice to see you again because she came to Green's once or twice when Michael and I were there and other people. And then, how nice of you to help out with this whole event and blah, blah, blah. And then her husband, Richard Blum, showed up and said, Richard was very pleased to see me because he's a fellow Buddhist and then he gave me a tour of the house and all the Buddhist art and the statues and things from Nepal and Thailand and Tibet and huge tankas and then he gave me a little ceramic alms symbol that I'm using as a hot plate now at my house. And he seemed

[35:29]

terribly distracted. Aside from being, you know, in a certain way very friendly, he was also very distracted and the next day it turned out he side-swiped a car, you know, a parked car or something and he over-jogged and over-exercised as his blood sugar was way down and he went to the hospital, you know, anyway, who knows. So then this whole event unfolded and I'm walking around with a glass of champagne and talking to people and the caterers are walking by, the people are walking by with little appetizers and things and little tiny pancakes rolled up with little pieces of something or other and then, you know, they always have something with little caviar things and, you know, little wonton wrapper things and all kinds of little stuff and then the champagne and then eventually dinner started and it was a pretty nice dinner and I was talking with various people and then the desserts finally started coming out and then the desserts was, the dinner was served in the dining room and then you walk around the table in the dining room and I tried out a slice of small, tiny piece of, you know, roast beef and, you know, various things and then the desserts

[36:32]

were being served finally in the solarium and in the solarium I noticed like, my God, there's about 12 or 15 different desserts here and I didn't see any of mine and I had been told that the caterers were going to serve the desserts. So I started investigating and I found out and the caterers said, oh, he's in charge of desserts. Well, he was one of the people from one of the other restaurants and he was serving his desserts and then Nancy Oakes and her crew were downstairs and they had these huge tables downstairs and they were serving their desserts and they didn't just make one dessert, they decided to bring a whole pastry menu from the boulevard. So there's dozens of desserts out here and then people are serving themselves desserts and I'm wandering around thinking like, oh my God, I've got all this trouble and then it was really embarrassing to have that fit this afternoon and now on top of that the desserts are getting served and I've gone to all this effort and nobody's going to eat the full things anyway. They had exactly the opposite reaction. Not that they're going to be eaten but they won't be eaten.

[37:33]

So I'm wandering around rather bereft and not knowing what to do and trying to find Ronnie, my friend, you know, to ask her, could you see that the caterers actually do serve my dessert the way you told me that they would and Dianne Weinstein comes up to me and she says, is something wrong? Are you okay? Is there anything I can do? Do you need some help with something? Just tell me, what can I do? What is it? And I just couldn't imagine finally saying to my senator, could you see that my desserts get served? But, you know, it's just been stuff in the papers about, you know, this is when the, you know, Chinese fundraising and stuff is going on, you know, and people are on contributions and who knows what. I don't follow all that but, you know, I'm thinking like, oh, and then somebody sent me a little thing, you know, a little postcard that I should send on to Dianne about how you're supporting, you know, somebody's dump site that's, you know, radioactive, toxic and you shouldn't

[38:41]

be doing that and, you know, I resent the fact that you would be supporting that in a very impolitely worded kind of thing that we send to our politicians. Anyway, eventually they served half a tray of my desserts in the dining room. Half the people had already left and the other half of the people were sitting there with their, you know, standing around with their dessert plates with five desserts already on them. So then, at that point, I picked up the rest of my desserts, my four dessert trays, and I took them out to my car and I said goodbye to a couple people and I went home. And I had four and a half trays of desserts left and so a lot of my friends had a lot of dessert to eat for a few days. And then for a few days I was thinking, like, is this the story in my life, you know, tremendous effort and then nobody cares? It doesn't take much, does it, you know, to color, you know, everything? And then suppose it was the story of your life

[39:42]

then what would you do? And that probably is the story of your life. Or maybe everything you do, you know, radiates out vastly into the universe whether anybody eats it or not. You could just make butter sculptures and put them on the altar and then, you know, and then take them off or whatever. I don't know. I don't know how all this stuff works. Anyway, this is what you know, all kinds of things happen if you start to follow and ask your body and being just to do stuff and then all kinds of things go wrong, you know. I'm sorry. But then if you don't do all that, you know, all those things go wrong anyway. And I just personally find it more interesting for me to ask my body and being, you know, to see what it likes to do and to find out instead of trying to figure it out ahead of time and tell it. So this is how

[40:49]

I came to write a book because I didn't just, you know, I, because I, this is the way I live. In fact, I don't decide ahead of time I'm going to write a book but, you know, something in me starts doing it. And then after a while I decide, oh, do you like that? You're interested in that sort of thing? Oh, okay. Well, go for it. So, I try to give myself a fair amount of permission and at the same time, you know, the other side is, you know, one side is getting a lot of permission and the other side is cutting that off the hands. You know, watch yourself. This is a very complicated business this life. Not so easy to, you know, give yourself permission and not hurt anybody. So, good luck fellas and, you know, guys and gals. And interesting, you know, it's very interesting but, you know,

[41:50]

our culture has a habit and especially for men, you're supposed to make everything look easy and you, you don't really have problems. You really, you know, things are okay and even if you get cancer or whatever, it's not supposed to be a problem. You know, what's wrong with me? Like, I'm worried about my cancer. And, you're not supposed to have much of a hard time with anything. So, this is a big, you know, kind of, what you call that? Handicap we have. You know, not letting anybody see how much trouble we're having, how painful it is, how difficult it is and trying to make everything look completely easy. Oh no, I don't have trouble. Oh no, I don't have trouble. So, I've never been able to manage that business of not having trouble. So everybody, you know, mostly people know just how much trouble I'm having. And then,

[42:54]

you know, only a few people stick around after that. You find out who your friends are pretty fast that way. So anyway, I'm not saying you should practice like me. I'm just saying you should find your way and just suggesting that you might want to give yourself a little permission and give your own being a little chance to find out for itself. Give your hands a chance to find out how to be hands. Don't tell them how to be hands. And this is, you know, in Zen, I mean, this is liberation. You liberate your hands by inviting them to be hands and to find out how to be hands and find out how to do what they love to do. And your hands know much better how to be hands than your mind, your brain, your thought, your thinking. Well, I probably talked long enough. Do you have some things you want to talk about? Yeah. Well,

[43:56]

there's two reasons. Yeah. One reason is I didn't make the bottom thick enough and I was working with a different size pan and I measured out the first one and if I had been doing it I would have figured it out pretty soon and I got it out and I thought it was about right and then I told the woman a number. I said, put on four cups but actually I put on four and a half cups and I should have said put on four and a half to five cups of the stuff to spread out on the pan and then it would have been you know, a little thicker. So one thing, it wasn't thick enough and I hadn't worked with that size pan before and then I, if I was doing it it would have been fine but I'm telling somebody else to do it and then she's doing what I tell her and she's not doing like, like she's made the dessert a lot of times before and she knows how thick it should be so it should have been thicker, one. And then I pre-baked the crust and I didn't pre-bake the crust enough because if you pre-bake it, if you don't pre-bake it enough then when you put the rhubarb on the goof and the rhubarb sinks in and then the crust part gets all wet and then because it's wet

[44:57]

it starts to stick to the spatula. If it's dry it doesn't stick to the spatula. So it wasn't thick enough and it wasn't pre-baked enough before the rhubarb went on. That'll do it. Is that right? That there's the wish not to harm. Because Buddhism doesn't just make these things up like not harming. We actually, if we're honest and we haven't been gotten all confused by various experiences in our life we know like well I don't really want to hurt others. I don't want to cause suffering to others. And just as I don't want to be hurt I wish not to hurt others. So just to be on the safe side then usually we get over-contained. Whether it's containing our literally our physical body containing our thoughts containing our voice.

[45:58]

So then we get we overdo it usually just to be on the safe side. And that's maybe it's not so bad for society as a whole. We're in the business of studying how to come into our own and how to express ourselves and how to realize ourselves. How to have the treasure store open and spend it freely. So there's hazards to this business. And we're we're trying to find out how to go from being overly contained to how to spend our treasure house. And you know how to express what's in our heart and what's in our being. In a way that actually works with others and you know is is you know appropriate and useful and and you know supports and benefits others and ourselves. In the case of like you said when something touches your heart like the example of falling in love and then at the time thinking you know that there is going to be pain and hurt and betrayal

[46:59]

and all that. There you go. But you go anywhere you know. Yes, that's right. Yeah. So so that's part of the deal. You know that's why you know to fall in love is to you you have to be vulnerable and it's a risk. And and then you know sometimes then we decide because it was you know we have such painful experiences sometimes then we decide well I'm never going to be that vulnerable again. And then we try to figure out a life you know where we can get through never being that vulnerable again and then we wonder why is it so dry or you know why does nothing touch me? Well probably because you decided things weren't going to touch you ever again. So anyway this is our study.

[48:00]

You know how to be open and have things touch us and and what we can trust in our experience. And where we don't just and then you know again that something touches you at the core but there's actually still how you articulate that at the surface how you work with it. You know just because something touches you in your core then you know that's a study. And then how does your body what does your body do with that actually? And what one of the things that of course that Zen and Buddhism generally emphasizes is you know don't depend on the object and the control of your experience to you know for being touched at the core. You know don't think it's a particular person and don't think it's a particular object and don't think it's a particular experience that's going to elicit that experience in you. Just practice doing that.

[49:01]

And don't be dependent on particular objects to touch you at the core. Just practice being touched. You want to be touched then practice that. And that then you have some freedom and you don't and you don't you know have addiction to some particular object or person or thing to elicit that feeling in you. And it's very independable to depend on a person or anything to to do that for you. This is part of the problem. Then you get mad at the other person. You're not doing that for me anymore like you used to. So you know we practice you know we're trying to find out among other things how to let many things touch us. for me I let food touch me. And food is pretty safe. You can put a radish in your mouth and be touched. It's a lot simpler than some person who walks up to you. So I had a lot of practice

[50:05]

with vegetables before I worked my way up to people. Something else? Was my talk today just confusing or what? Well anyway if it was then you know in a while we'll chant or whatever you know you can let the sound of the traffic wash your ears clear. Yes? I'm curious what your daughter criticized you about that you're not supposed to talk about. Oh no it wasn't what she criticized me about. It's the way that she is. I'm not supposed to talk about you know I'm not supposed to be telling everybody about like who she is and what she does and she'd like a little privacy in that. You know it's not her criticizing me. I can tell you that part. At some point I just have to remember like because then she meets all these people and says oh we heard all about you from your dad.

[51:06]

And after a while you know I try to restrain myself now as far as that goes. Excuse me. No I have lots of great stories about my daughter and interestingly enough I have found she's 24 now and she was working in Europe after graduating from college and then she came to live with us this last February and it's been really nice and something in me has shifted where I'm actually willing to be with her and have her you know just have her there and I realized oh gosh you know for so many years I was in you know so preoccupied with my own pain and unhappiness and just kind of kept her over there not wanting her to get too close. So that's been really nice. Anyway. Anything else?

[52:15]

Any other questions? Comments? Yeah. I've got some rhubarb in my refrigerator. Oh you do? A lot of times I'll buy that when it comes in season. Yeah it's a great season. This is the time for it. But sometimes I'll sit there until it rots. And sometimes when I cook it it just kind of you know you cook it and it melts right? Yeah. Rhubarb goo. Do you use to thicken it so that it doesn't Oh I don't thicken it. I just cook it longer until it thickens. Oh you just cook it longer? Yeah first of all don't put any water in when you cook it. Don't add water when you go to cook it. So when you first start cooking it you put a lid on and maybe just a tiny bit of water but if you have it on low heat all kinds of water comes out of the rhubarb. And so then after the water's all out of the rhubarb I take the lid off the pot so then the steam can and I just cook it on low heat for about another hour. And then it gets thicker and thicker and thicker. And then I season it. You know I sweeten it and put in a lemon or orange or vanilla extract and in my rhubarb stir-fry tart

[53:15]

I was putting a little tiny bit of anise seed. That was so interesting. And you know I tell everybody to taste it after each ingredient. And it was amazing how a tiny bit of anise seed or a little bit or a tiny bit of vanilla extract and it just tastes much sweeter even though you haven't added sugar. And the same with the anise seed and it's very fascinating to me how much things can change with one little ingredient. Yeah. I wasn't there. So I can't tell you much about it. You'll have to ask somebody who was there. Yeah I just wrote a new cooking book and if you want to get it tonight I'm going to sign books in the dining room too afterwards.

[54:17]

And it's a book about stories and recipes. There's about 45 stories in there. Stories, about 15 of them are about experiences with Suzuki Roshi and it's about my cooking at Tassajara and various things. I also have one story in there how to, it's a story about eating just one potato chip. And Sunday at Green Goats we performed this as a ceremony in the Zendo. And it was Kids Day at Green Goats. So the first 10 or 15 minutes all these 20 kids or so, so I told them today we're going to have a, we're going to do a very rarely performed ceremony. It's so rare it's never been done here before in the Zendo. And it's the ceremony of eating just one potato chip. Before I mentioned the ceremony I said, so you know the ceremony is the outer form and then also the willing participation of everyone. Are you willing,

[55:19]

you need to do your best and are you willing to do your best? And they said yes we are. So then I told them it was the ceremony of eating just one potato chip. And when I got to the part where I said you know eating this one potato chip is the most important thing in the world this one kid said you're crazy. You know in a loud voice you know and I said that's why yes you're right I am crazy and that's why this is a ceremony because everybody knows in everyday life eating a potato chip is not so important but for the sake of the ceremony we are suspending ordinary reality and we are going to take on the belief and understanding and practice that eating this chip is the most important thing in the whole universe. And I thought that maybe some of the people and I told them some of you may have to do the practice of not eating one potato chip but it turned out

[56:21]

that one 14 ounce bag of potato chips that was enough for the whole center there whatever you know two or three hundred people and there were chips left over. Yeah it's pretty amazing it was staggering so then you know I explained to them you know to eat one potato chip concentration attention and mindfulness you know concentration not to have distractions it was pretty easy there you know there was no television or mass media you know no people magazine no cocktail glasses no dip you know nobody to talk to you know they were already practicing silence so you got the concentration part down pretty well in terms of not being distracted and then I encouraged them to attune their attention you know you have to attune your attention to the chip because usually we are attending to what we think is really important so that's why you know you have to understand that this for the sake of the ceremony that's an important point and and then

[57:21]

mindfulness you know to know to the experience actually mindfulness technically speaking it's nice because it's a cooking term technically speaking mindfulness has to be whipped up it helps to whip up your mindfulness to whip it up means you know that your your mindfulness is aroused so that your experience actually registers it impacts it has an impact on your awareness on your consciousness you know so you whip up your and so to whip up one of the ways you know to whip up mindfulness is to make little notes about what it is that you're experiencing crunchy salty greasy you know and so on you know in the sound hearing the sensations of swallowing various things so this is a very difficult ceremony to do at home and you know I considered doing it for you tonight but I don't know you know

[58:22]

these things I can't I mean this is I think I'm going to keep this one rare a rarely performed ceremony so you can try it if you want but I don't think you can do it at home you might you know you probably will end up eating more than one think well that was interesting I better try that again so you usually need the support of a group you know anyway so there's various kinds of stories in the book all right thank you that's it

[58:59]

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