Well, last night, Monday night, I gave a talk in the Zen Dojo and I mentioned that it was kind of like Zen Improvisation Theater, but actually tonight is more like theater because when I come up here to the dining room, there's this hum of talk and chatter, like before the theater. And then when I come in here, there's this hush, falls over the room, expectant. I was just thinking up in my room, I was just remembering once again why we have a Jiko, you know, an attendant for the lecturer. It's to make sure that he shows up. If I go to the Zen Dojo, somebody comes along with me and offers incense and they, you know, if you don't come to the meeting place, they come looking for you. No, no, right this way. But tonight, you know, nobody was coming and I had to on my own walk out the door and then

[01:07]

Daikon was there and he said, do you need an attendant and I said, yeah, take him with you. Anyway, thank you. So this morning, I went over to meet the attendant and I was going to be coming to the Zen Dojo to what we call open it. I mean, there's already about 50 people in the Zen Dojo, but then the priest comes in and offers incense and now it's open. Before that, everybody came into the closed Zen Dojo. And I got to the Jiko and we bowed and I thought, and then we go in and offer incense in the Kaisando and I came back and then we were heading off to the Zen Dojo and I thought, and I just found myself, you know, singing, we're off to see the wizard, the wonderful

[02:09]

wizard of Oz. And I thought, gee, this is a nice way to start the day. And I thought it'd be a pretty nice way to start a talk too. And then we can go on a lot of adventures together and hopefully we'll end up, you know, before too long in the Emerald City and then, you know, eventually we'll be back in Kansas. But isn't, don't you think, you know, that Zen is sort of like that? Off to see the wizard. I mean, I mean, and it's so much not only like Zen, but like life where you, we're always off to meet some strange, mysterious person who will give us what we've always lacked. And it could be a lover or a Zen teacher, you know, something, somewhere, someone, could they please appear? And I know that the Wizard of Oz isn't an official Zen story, but it seems like that's

[03:16]

kind of, you know, everyday Zen is like this, you know, and we keep trying to say things in Zen like, you're lacking nothing. But it's hard to remember, you know, when you're off to see the wizard. And even though to the people reading the Wizard of Oz, the Oz story, it's pretty obvious that the Scarecrow has plenty of brains and the Tin Woodsman has lots of hearts, but they don't get it. So they have to go on this big adventure. And we're the same way. We have to go on a big adventure to find out we always had what we thought we lacked and we're looking for somewhere else. So this isn't so far from Zen, even though it's not in the annals of Tang Dynasty China. So I wanted to talk about a few things tonight. I guess, well, I'm going to, do you want to hear what they are first or should we just

[04:24]

meet them as we get there? You know, the Wizard of Oz, you just meet them as you go along, right? So I guess that's the way to do it, in keeping with the theme of the evening. So when I get to the Zen Do, and I go to offer incense, I raise the incense up to my forehead. And I don't know what other people say, and there may be actually an official thing that you're supposed to say at that time when you raise the stick of incense to your head, but I say, homage to the perfection of wisdom, the lovely, the holy. And sometimes I add something else like, may all beings be happy. And if I feel like it, I think about particular beings, or I wish all beings grow in wisdom and compassion. Or I think, you know, I hope that people sitting here are doing okay or something. Anyway, after a while I offer the incense. I get in as much as I can, you know, it's a fairly brief time, you have the stick of

[05:35]

incense at your forehead. But the important thing, I always start with homage to the perfection of wisdom, the lovely, the holy. So tonight, I thought, you know, we could have a little adventure with the perfection of wisdom. Because if there's, if it seems to me, if there's one thing worth, you know, offering homage to, it would be the perfection of wisdom. So this perfection of wisdom is a rather interesting, my favorite story about the perfection of wisdom is in the sutra, the Perfection of Wisdom Sutra in Eight Thousand Lines. And the Buddha asked one of his disciples, Subuddhi, to explain it to the other bodhisattvas and people gathered there. Would you explain to everyone here, the assembly, the perfection of wisdom? Would you explain to the bodhisattvas the perfection of wisdom?

[06:36]

And how one could enter it, and train in it, and know it, and so on. And right away, there's a little problem, because one of the disciples thinks, named Shariputra, he's the one who's kind of dense in the story. You have to have somebody in the story who's a little dense or slow, you know, so he right away is thinking, like, is Subuddhi going to explain this to us and not the Buddha? And the Buddha says, he doesn't say it as grossly, but he says, I caught you thinking that. And he says, yes, Subuddhi is going to explain this through the Buddha's might, he explains this. Or Subuddhi says this, through the Buddha's might, I will explain it. So it's okay. So right away, there's this shift where it's okay for someone besides the Buddha to explain things. And so then Subuddhi starts in and he says, when I look really closely, I can't find

[07:41]

anything to call a bodhisattva. I can't actually find something to put the designation bodhisattva on, and I can't find anything to apply the designation perfection of wisdom to. So which bodhisattvas shall I instruct and what perfection of wisdom? When someone hears this and they're not dismayed, they don't cower, they don't tremble, they're not frightened, they're not discouraged, this is the perfection of wisdom and that person is a bodhisattva. So that's somebody who's not lacking anything, I guess. That's somebody who's not missing anything because they're not busy thinking, oh, I could get that perfection of wisdom if I just knew what it was. So when they hear that this perfection of wisdom is not really something that they can get hold of, and that doesn't bother them. And they're just fine without getting this special, unique tool or device or, what do

[08:54]

you call that, you know, well, it's like the lapel thing, I mean the epaulettes, you know, you're not getting any epaulettes, no special designation, you won't be accruing anything. This is the perfection of wisdom and that's a bodhisattva. But I want to continue with this. Wisdom in Buddhism traditionally has to do with discrimination. Wisdom is to discriminate clearly between this and that. And what Buddhism says is that by and large, you know, the most basic hindrance or problem we have is what's called delusion. Delusion is not having the capacity to discriminate accurately and clearly. Delusion is not discriminating accurately. So delusion involves not looking at something closely enough in order to be able to distinguish

[09:57]

what it is. That's one kind of delusion, which is like, in a certain sense, the delusion of turning away from. And then there's the delusion of looking at something and then not being able to, and then misidentifying it. And there's a couple aspects to this misidentifying. So I want to talk to you, and here we are, you see, in the midst of one of our adventures where we're in the thicket, you know, and there's a lot of woods growing here, and we may not be able to see our way to discriminating, but we'll talk about it anyway. We'll see if we emerge. Anyway, what Buddhism has done is, at various times, people practicing meditation and studying

[10:58]

Buddhism sat down and decided to think of, you know, what's really real, or, you know, what's what. Recently, or since I've been here, the subject of grief has come up, the subject of depression has come up, the subject of blackness has come up. A lot of us spend a lot of time thinking, and one of the good things about thinking is that if you think enough, it keeps you from actually looking at anything. Because if you ever stop thinking, when you started looking at something, you might notice it's completely black. This is the way it is for some of us at some times in our life. Or you could stop thinking for a moment, and you might actually notice something beautiful. But one of the things that thinking does is, you know, we can notice just a few of the dots,

[11:58]

and then what thinking does is to connect them and say what it is that we're looking at. And so, I think that's, and we don't really look at it, we just get a quick glance and not look very closely, and we connect all the dots and we say, it's black, or it's grief, it's depression, or it's, you know, it's a man, it's a woman. I like them, I don't like them, I don't really know them, but anyway, we think various things. And we think, you know, we may think at some point someone is just like our mother, or just like our father, or just like somebody we knew. We may think, anyway, we don't always look directly at the object. So, what Buddhism suggests and what is intended to be a, you know, the antidote for delusion

[13:04]

is to start looking at things very carefully and closely and intimately, since delusion is considered to be what this capacity we have not to experience what's there leaves us in this, perpetually stuck in our own thinking, in our own mind, so to speak. And after a while we notice, this is uncomfortable, this is obsessive, this is neurotic, or whatever, anyway, we feel stuck in our own thinking, because we don't actually attend to anything, and our thinking tends to predominate. So this basic, one of the basic efforts in meditation, or just throughout the day, is actually attend to something, actually observe something, be with something, notice something, and as I said the other night, I mentioned, let your experience touch you, let your experience

[14:10]

come home to your heart, and let your heart respond. Let your mind go out and abide in things, let things return and abide in your mind. So this is different than, I'm going to keep my mind apart from all these things that might be threatening and scary and difficult or painful, I'm not going to touch anything unless it's really good. So then, again, this tends to isolate us from our life, or separate us from our life. And it's considered this kind of, and you can even decide then not to think, as a kind of strategy. And this not thinking or trying to keep your mind as a, in Zen there's the advice, don't set up a nest where you can hide out, or, and they say, you know, don't, the sixth ancestor, Wei Neng, said, you know, a lot of you are trying to make your mind empty,

[15:15]

you're trying to eliminate all thinking, you're trying to have, you know, you're getting, you're trying to be very quiet and not have anything happen. This is an obstruction to the way. And when I say not to think, he said, what I meant, what I mean is, if you have a thought, think nothing of it. Anyway, that was his advice. But this is different, you see, than just making your mind blank. Anyway, what we're getting to is the discussion of, well, what is a Dharma? Because what, what we're trying to notice is, you know, what's really going on? What's beneath the surface? Because the way our mind works, because of our thinking, then we kind of have, like, what thinking is considered in Buddhism to be a covering. It's like a cover or a lid or a blanket, it's something over things. So you want to try to pick up the cover, pick up the lid, pick up the blanket, what's underneath

[16:20]

there? And also, emotions are considered to be like covers or lids. So you want to pick that up and say, well, what's underneath there? What's actually there? Rather than keeping the lid on things. So, there are certain things that Buddhism decided was, you know, practitioners decided are more real than other things, are really real, so to speak. But this really real, it's just a tentative designation, so don't worry about it. But, for instance, when you look with your eyes, you know, we see with our eyes, what we notice is, actually what we see is colors. We never see a person, we never see a chair or a table, we see colors. That's what eyes do. Eyes do not see things, eyes see colors and shapes.

[17:24]

That's what eyes do. And there's another function of mine, which in Buddhism is called perception. And perception identifies particular groupings of colors as things. There's a stool, this is a microphone, there's Susan, it's a ceiling, a light. So that's called perception, that, you know, points at various things. But the eyes didn't do that. So what we see with our eyes is just colors, and what we hear with our ears is just sounds. And then perception says, that's an airplane. What was that this morning? You know, sonic boom, there you have it. So something like, and then there's, so there's mindfulness, so there's the category of these, what is known as forms, all the sensory objects, which are not things, none of these are things yet. You never see a bodhisattva. You see colors and then you can put the designation bodhisattva on there, or you could put the

[18:30]

designation on dumb person. You know, so you can take any number of designations and put it on what your eyes just saw. That's called perception. So perception in Buddhism is notorious, it's always pointed out. Perception is known to be faulty. You can make mistakes with perception. You can see ropes as being snakes, that's one of the common metaphors. You can, there's a rope on the ground and you say, oh, it's a snake, and so on. So you can't always trust your perception necessarily, but with some practice maybe you could, because we're trying to learn how do we trust our perceptions. But, you know, one thing Suzuki Roshi always said is, you know, once you put a designation on something, you might want to add afterwards, tentatively speaking, just to remind yourself that you just did that. You just put the designation on there, that designation is not inherent in those colors

[19:34]

that you see across the room. This, by the way, for me has something to do with, you know, I'm interested, I've always been interested, I realize, in the spirit of Zen. There's the spirit of Zen and then there's the forms of Zen, you know, and how, so I've always been interested in, well, what's the spirit of Zen, because, and partly it's because I considered that I wasn't a very good Zen student, other people could sit still longer than I could and work harder than I did and, you know, they were more intelligent, they studied more than I did, they were smarter and so forth. So I thought, well, I better not try for any of those categories, I better go for, you know, like I'll be better at the spirit of Zen. And you can see how much that has to do with the spirit of Zen, right?

[20:39]

But there's this, so there's the spirit of Zen and then there's the forms, you know, zazen, bowing, chanting, and then, but then, you know, it sort of slips over into forms that are implicit or unspoken or, you know, how we all behave with one another and, you know, by and large, you don't hear people raising their voices, we have a kind of a premium on silence, silence is good, it may be better not to open your mouth, but then when you do, you know, watch what comes out and so there's a lot of sort of implicit things, you know, in the way we go about things and a lot of it is an effort to be more Zen, you know, better at Zen, you know, so you wouldn't want to be too emotional because it's not very emotional, I mean, being very emotional is not especially Zen, and so forth, you know, so you kind of try to shape yourself to be like a good Zen person looks like and so anyway, I've always

[21:50]

been interested in the spirit of Zen and so then, you know, the form sometimes goes by the by and then it's not, and then it's interesting because, you know, both of them are pretty, you know, equally important, you can't actually just have the spirit of Zen without having some interest or concern or observance of form, so we're still getting to this, okay? I'm sorry if it takes so long, but it has to do with dharmas and the own being of dharmas, it says about, you know, we chant in the morning now, omnis the perfection of wisdom, the lovely, the holy, and then we say at some point, she herself is an organ of vision because she can see the own being of all dharmas and she does not stray away from it, so when Buddhists looked at their experience, there's the sense objects, color, shape, sound, taste, smell, touch, and when you touch, you don't ever touch a person, you touch hard, soft, warm,

[22:54]

cold, rough, smooth, you know, you don't touch a person, what you're touching, you can, by your perception, you can perceive, I'm touching a person, but your hands don't touch a person when you touch a person, that's not your hands touching a person, your hands are touching, you know, a little, slightly rough, you know, more rough, you know, and then there's things that are, oh, that's smooth, this is cool, smooth, cool, that's what your hands do, you know, and then there's an important, very important category called feelings, which is pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral, pleasant and unpleasant and neutral is very important because it's what ties us into the way we are, and the way we do things, we'll come back to that, there's perception, which we talked about, and then there's a big category of mental constituents, so various, you know, the various Buddhists at various times would

[24:02]

get together and try to figure out what these mental constituents are, which are the ones that are the most basic, such that you can't divide them any further, so grief isn't on the list, fear isn't on the list, hate is on the list, love is on the list, love or non-hate, you know, concentration, mindfulness, attention, lack of attention, faith, lack of faith, and in some lists there's buoyancy of mind, flexibility of mind, non-rigidity of mind, another list that's not on there. So first of all, you know, to look closely at something, if you want to, if you're interested in actually being present and being with things, and not just being stuck and caught in thinking, which is what is otherwise known as suffering, you take up, you want to pick up the lid and try to feel or see or sense in some way, what's there?

[25:03]

What is it that's there when we stop thinking? So, for instance, with grief, grief is, often there's some element in there of anger, there's some element in there of denial, of resisting, of not wanting to look, there's some element of, there may be sadness, sorrow, there could be rage, there could be a sense of abandonment. Then there's also, you know, relief, I'm so relieved that this person has died. So there's a whole range of things, but when people, you know, are caught in grief, they're not picking up this cover and actually identifying and touching specific basic elements. These are the dharmas. She, herself, is an organ of vision because she sees the unbeing of dharmas.

[26:08]

So dharma is a technical word, it's a very interesting word, and it's used to mean that which carries its own mark. So in a certain sense, finally, it is its own mark. Now, what a mark is, is how come you call somebody a woman? Well, it has certain characteristics, or what in Buddhist technical language is a mark, it has certain characteristics, and then you say, it has all that characteristics, it must be. Well, in Buddhism there's no such thing as it must be because we didn't experience it, what we experienced was the characteristics. So if you say, oh, there's anger, and there's this, and there's this, it must be grief. No, it's just all those little things. It's all those very discreet little moments. So anyway, oftentimes we, you know, this is why if we label something we say, well, tentatively

[27:10]

speaking. So first of all, you know, so first of all, the characteristic of dharma is, it is its mark. There's not something behind that, there's not something doing that. You say, well, you know, it's solid, it has four legs, it's a flat surface, it must be a table. But all we experienced was, we experienced the solidity, we experienced the, we could see, you know, the surface, we could see the legs, we say, oh, it must be a table. But what is the table? What is it that's a table? Well, it's all those things. So anyway, this is the kind of thing that actually if you look carefully at a lot of things in your life which seem like they're either to be grasped for or averted from, based on what

[28:13]

you've designated them to be, you'll find that you don't need to grasp them or avert from them. Won't that be a relief? Now the other, the other aspect about the own being of dharmas, and it's the own being of all dharmas, is that all dharmas are considered to be empty, or, in other words, there's not anything actually there. But it's the same as what I just said, that there's not something to be grasped for or averted from. Once you look, when we look very closely and carefully, we actually touch and sense particular things that, and the further kind of description of dharmas is that these discreet experiences are not approachable. You cannot get near to them. There's no way to have them or not have them.

[29:14]

There's no way to appropriate them. You can't, you, there's no way to actually, actually grasp them or avert from them. Because that's their basic, the basic nature of all of our experience. Hmm. We ended up in the woods, didn't we? Well, let's go on. So you know, I kind of went around today and I was thinking about the Wizard of Oz and people would say, well, what are you talking about tonight? And I'd say, well, we're off to see the wizard. So, and then people would tell me what was on their mind or what they wanted me to talk about or, you know, so I have this whole talk now.

[30:15]

But one of the things I was thinking about anyway is relationship or, you know, commitment. And in the context of which we've been talking about, you know, the basic commitment is, you know, one to yourself, finally. Because you may, you know, and you know, in the meantime, we may go off searching for some strange and mysterious lover or Zen teacher or somebody who's going to solve things and take care of things and give us the answers so we won't feel as lost or confused as we do. But finally, you know, our interest is going to be to pick up the lid, pick up the cover and look at what's there and touch what's there and know for ourself in our own experience what's what and let something come home to our heart and respond, let our heart respond and actually have this kind of vitality and connectedness with everything in our life.

[31:25]

And so, in a lot of ways, you know, this is a relationship, you know, first of all, there's the relationship with your thinking, with your thinking mind. Some people have mentioned to me this week how difficult and painful they find the relationship with their thinking mind because it is so much, it is so dominant and they feel so helpless. You know, there's a lot of relationships like that. It's not just with, you know, oneself and one's thinking, you know. People can get into that kind of relationship too and feel abused by somebody else. So, one piece of advice I would like to offer in that regard is that, you know, you really want to, I would encourage you to ask your thinking to give, you know, to allow you a moment to actually experience your life, whatever it is that's going on in the present.

[32:33]

And usually, your thinking, you know, will have some reason. If your thinking is really strong and obsessive that way, your thinking will have some good reason why you better not do that. It's scary. It's scary. It's terrifying. You won't know what to do. You'll be lost. You'll be helpless. You'll be vulnerable. You'll be at the mercy of things. Your thinking will come up with some reason why you just better not ever experience anything but your thinking. And so, it's very helpful. I can assure you, to assure your thinking, that you're not planning to kill it, much as you may want to, you know. The impulse is, I just want to be done with this thinking once and for all.

[33:42]

This is not conducive to a wholesome long-term relationship. So, if you're planning on a long-term relationship, which I would suggest is a good kind of plan or commitment to make, you know, you could make a commitment, this is going to be a long-term relationship, me and my thinking. And so, I would, you know, you say to your thinking, could you just let me experience something just for a moment? But I promise to check back with you afterwards and see what you think. And then, you know, park your thinking someplace. And sometimes, this parking, you know, your thinking won't want to get parked. Just be, you know, really, really sure. I will check back with you later, I promise, with all my heart.

[34:43]

And then, at some point, you may need to, you know, be very firm and slam the door on your thinking and actually experience something. And if you do it once, this is a tremendous breakthrough. And meditation generally is considered to be that you find gaps in your thinking, sometimes they just happen by accident. But if they're not happening by accident, this is one possible strategy or plan or approach. You know, your thinking has served you well all these years to isolate you from things that might be painful and difficult and to take care of you and to, you know, get you through. And it's not like you're going to abandon it, but it just needs, your thinking needs to be a little more associated with what we call wisdom, which means also not to think. And wisdom is to actually sense what's there and to know it for what it is, which is both,

[35:52]

you know, distinctive, you know, we actually identify then the difference between anger, rage, kindness, friendship, warmth, you know, joy, unhappiness. We can make all these different distinctions. So that's one aspect of wisdom. And the other aspect of wisdom is all of these things are not, you know, it's only tentatively speaking, and all these things are, we don't know what they are, it's just energy, it's just, you know, what Dogen says, it's the storehouse, it's your treasury, you know, you open it at will. There's nothing, there's not something actually there that you could appropriate, that you could get away from, because if you pick up the cover, you know, and what you call grief,

[36:54]

and then there's sadness, and then you pick up the sadness, and maybe there's fear, and you pick up the fear, and there's anger, and you pick up the anger, there's always something. This is the way our mind works, until you notice that actually, there's disappearing and disappearing, and there's not something finally there that you could get at. So in other words, it's a long-term relationship. You and your thinking, you and your mind, you and your senses. So, it's helpful in this long-term relationship, first of all, I want to suggest this, promise your thinking, you're not going to abandon it. You'll check back very shortly now.

[37:56]

And then keep your promise, so that your thinking trusts you. Sense something, you know, experience something for a moment. And even if your experience is, it's completely black. I've had times like that in my life, where if I stop thinking, and if I stop being busy, busy is another thing we do, to not experience things, to not touch anything, to not, you know, know anything. But once you stop, and then there may be, there's often something there, like it's just black, or it's just, you know, it's just grief, it's anger. And then there's being willing to reach into that. So, you know, the spirit of Zen, we sometimes describe as soft mind, soft mind as opposed

[39:00]

to hard mind, or the mind that is ready for anything, or flexible mind. So flexible mind, soft mind, ready for anything means you could reach into the black, and you could actually touch something that was in the dark. This is the perfection of wisdom. She herself is an organ of vision. She brings light. She brings light because she reaches into the darkness and looks at something, and says what it is, and knows it for what it is, and knows not, that's not the whole story. And this is, you know, something, you know, a kind of ongoing relationship. So it's useful, I think, I was just thinking in the last couple of days how important

[40:00]

it is to have, you know, long-term relationships are tremendously important. I don't necessarily mean with a person, you know, or a Zen teacher, or a lover, or a family, or a spouse, but, you know, relationship long-term can also be to a place. Many people talk about how important that can be, you know, Wendell Berry and Gary Snyder and others. And then there's also commitment or long-term relationship to practice. And I mean to something, you know, that you have, you know, that's in your heart to practice. Because, you know, so however you say it, if you have a wish, you know, it's important to acknowledge your wish because your wish is what gives your wish power. So you can wish to be, you know, present. You can wish to see things as they are. You can wish to actually know your life and be intimate with your experience.

[41:05]

You can wish to allow your experience to enlighten you. You can wish to, I've wished sometimes to, I would like to feel, you know, at home in this world, completely at home, rather than feeling estranged or separate. A friend of mine wished, used to wish, and still does, I wished, he said something like, I wish to be touched by someone or something without having to ask, to be touched with love and compassion. Anyway, there are various wishes, and part of the long-term, you know, so a long-term

[42:09]

commitment can be to your wish, or, you know, what in Buddhism we often call vow, what Suzuki Roshi called innermost request. What is innermost in your heart? You could, you know, and if you know, sometimes people say, well, I don't know. Then you could wish to know. It's not so complicated. I wish to know what's in my heart. And it's useful to find something you really, you know, you actually can make a commitment to, something, someone, you know, a place, a tradition, something you can come back to, because, you know, actually to reach into the darkness and touch things and know things, this is not easy. It is scary. It is threatening. We often don't know what to do.

[43:11]

You know, it's often overwhelming, and so we need a lot of support or something, you know, to do this kind of, to make this kind of effort. For those of us who practice Zen, you know, it's a tremendous support to go to the Zen Do, and then we're not just going there for our own practice, but to support others, to make this kind of effort to touch one's own experience, to let one's own experience touch you. And the interesting thing about this commitment, I was reminded today of this story, but, you know, I got married here in 1970. I guess it was 1970. It's so long ago now. It was the middle of the summer. We closed for a couple of days. Anyway, I got married, and Suzuki Roshi did the ceremony.

[44:14]

And it was in the old Zen Do, which is now the student union area. I had on a nice white shirt with a little sunburst in the middle. And ... It was 1970. Come on. And the woman I was marrying, Meg, you know, anyway, we were ... It seems strange now, but we were madly in love. Whatever. We'd found what we lacked, I guess. Anyway, we had this ceremony, and my parents were there, and her parents were there, and the Zen Do was packed. You know, there was about 120 people. And after we'd gone through all the vows, Suzuki Roshi gave a little informal talk at the end of the ceremony. Before, you know, we hit all the bells to really end the ceremony, so it's an informal

[45:20]

talk that's actually part of the ceremony. And he said, Ed and Meg are going to have a lot of difficulty. I wasn't exactly ready for that. And I hadn't understood that, and now, you know, and I kind of wish he'd mentioned that a little earlier. And then he said, you know, especially Meg, because Ed's going to be a priest, and he's going to have a lot of ... he's going to be busy, and he's going to be doing, you know, these things, and she's going to be feeling left out, or something like this. And he, you know, he went on and on. And a couple years ago, two, three years ago, I was telling Lou Hartman about this, and Glantz said, oh, I remember that, because she was here, and Glantz had, 1970, Glantz

[46:26]

had long, beautiful brown hair. Boy, was she beautiful. And anyway, we were all younger then. And I had a shaved head, my hair's grown a little, hers has gotten shorter. And she said, I told her, and she said, oh, well, Lou was, her husband was his attendant, his Chisha, and they got back to his cabin after the ceremony, and he was taking out this acacia, and he was saying, too serious, too serious. But anyway, he was right. You know, we did have a lot of difficulty. And I finally decided, at some point, probably I'm going to have difficulty wherever I go, but this is not a good person for me to be having this difficulty with. And then it turns out that, you know, and then I started hearing at some point, you

[47:29]

know, many years after that, that actually, you know, we were, we were having this ceremony up in the Zendo, it was a question and answer ceremony, and Mel was the abbot here at the time, and so we were all coming up asking him a question, and somebody said, what should I look for in a relationship? And he said, look for someone to have difficulty with. Like, yeah, that would be a good idea. Instead of looking for somebody who was going to solve all the difficulty, or take care of you, or make you feel better, or, you know, finally, you know, give you solace. And, you know, dress your wounds, and all of those things, right? How about somebody that you could have difficulty with? Because there's going to be difficulty. And actually our life is difficulty.

[48:31]

So, Tassajara, Tassajara is a place to have difficulty. That's the point of Tassajara. And the point is, is it a good place for, you know, for those of us who are residents, you know, we keep deciding, is this a good place for me to be having difficulty? Is this the place for me to be having difficulty? Or would there be? Because you don't want to get stuck in, like, where's the place where I wouldn't be having any difficulty? You might be headed for the Emerald City and the Wizard next. Yes. The wizard who turns out not to be a wizard, who just reminds you that you already have what you need. But he doesn't do it. He's a little sly about it, you know. He actually gives, he appears to give you what you're missing, that you already have, such that you realize you had it all along. So, the commitment, in a certain sense, is commitment, you know, basic commitment in

[49:38]

this long-term relationship business is to having difficulty, to be willing to have difficulty and to find the place to have difficulty or who to have it with. Okay. Okay. Sometimes there's an interlude between adventures.

[51:18]

So, I don't think so much about my thoughts being, you know, I think about it as a way to be with you. And my idea is, you know, I think what's important in Zen, in a certain sense, you know, one way I think about it anyway is, and I've mentioned this before, but what's important, finally, is for you to be you. You know, not to be trying to be somebody else, not to be trying to be the perfect person, not to be trying to be the perfect Zen student, not to be trying to be the perfect spouse, but for you to be you. And I, and what I and other people, you know, noticed about our teachers was how willing they were to be who they were.

[52:36]

This is also a kind of commitment. And another kind of, you know, and then another kind of commitment I think about, you know, which is traditional in Zen and is part of the spirit of Zen, is energy or vitality. And a big emphasis in Japanese Zen on throwing yourself into activity. You know, that your energy goes where your life is, and that you rouse your energy on the spot. You know, if you're sitting Zazen, then you manifest your energy in Zazen. If you're working in the kitchen, you manifest your energy in the kitchen. If you're walking, your energy, you energize your energies in walking. It's also, you know, when you wash the rice, wash the rice. You do what you're doing, and you make a commitment to it. But interestingly enough, this also then has to do with the own being or what is, what are the nature of Dharma.

[53:41]

So what are, because what are you going to commit to? What are you going to make a commitment to? And some things you can actually commit to, and you can do them. And you energize yourself to do them, and you do them. And certain things I've found, for instance, like chopping wood. You can't just pick up the axe and say, excuse me, but could you split now? And then you go tab. And nothing happens. And you have to be completely committed. To get the wood to chop, to split. I split not very big pieces of wood at my little cottage in Inverness. But they, you know, and the bay or oak is different than the pine. Pine you can kind of tap it, and you know, it will sometimes, if it's straight, you know, it will split. So you can kind of say, but even pine sometimes you go, could you be nice enough to split now?

[54:42]

And you go tab, and then nothing happens. So if you want wood to split, you have to be, you have to make a commitment. And you say, I really want you to split. And you're very definite about it. And you pick up the axe, and then you bring it down. And you get your legs, you know, your feet out of the way. You don't stand this way, you know, you stand this way. In case the axe goes straight through, you don't want it to, you know, go into your foot. You take certain precautions, because the wood does not always behave the way you'd like it to. And then you pick up the axe, and then you bring it down. And you bring it down with complete, absolute, utter devotion and intention to splitting the wood the way you want it split. And then it will. And then it goes. And then there's some pieces of wood, they're so gnarly. They are not going to split no matter what you do. And so those pieces of wood, you know, you set them aside.

[55:44]

You see, this is having a mind that's ready. A mind that's flexible does not insist on splitting a piece of wood that won't split. And this is also true with you yourself or your companions. There are certain things about you that are like this twisted piece of wood, and nothing you do is going to have any impact. You know, and you might think, I would like, you know, I would like, I would like you to, I would like me to, and it's just not going to happen. So you have to be able to discriminate which is which. But if you never, so one way to discriminate is, there's no way to do that ahead of time except you try like heck to split it. And then when you find out it doesn't split with your best effort, you say, oh, I guess this isn't going to split. I will set it aside. And then that wood, you know, if it doesn't already fit in the fireplace, it becomes a sculpture. You know, or it goes on a bonfire or something.

[56:53]

And, you know, it was very impressive to me that at Karmacholing, which is a Tibetan, you know, center, which they started in Barnett, Vermont, you walk into the main building there, and you pass by the big dining room, and there's an entry hallway, and then you come into the sort of living room lounge. And over in the corner, there's this garden, and there's this little gravel, and then there's this huge rock that's right there in the corner. And they were digging the foundation, and then there was this huge rock, so they left it there and built the thing around it. They didn't try to dynamite this thing. So this is the way, you know, we are too. I mean, there are some things about us you can just leave in place. And maybe even your thinking. You know, you don't want to get too ambitious about straightening yourself out. But if you are going to do something, you know, make a commitment to doing it.

[57:55]

And if it is a piece of wood that you want to split, then split the heck out of it. If this axe keeps bouncing off and nothing happens, then, you know, turn it into a sculpture or an altar, put it on your altar. You know, make a statue out of it. You know, put it out in the garden. Build everything else around it. Because some things, you know, they are not going to change, and the whole effort to change and fix and straighten, you know, where did we get the idea? It's not being you. It's trying to tune you into this neat Buddha. You know, we say in Buddhism all the time, in Zen all the time, don't try to be a Buddha. Don't make yourself into a clay Buddha, won't go through the water. The wood Buddha doesn't go through the fire. The metal Buddha won't make it through the furnace.

[58:56]

Skip it. You are never going to become a Buddha. So, you know, some of those gnarled things, just set them aside. Just, you know, a sculpture. Something in the garden. Because otherwise you just, you spend your whole life trying to straighten out something. It's never going to give. And thinking is actually fairly amenable to that. You know, thinking is actually something, you know, I mentioned before, promise you're thinking that you're not going to abandon it and you're not trying to get rid of it forever. You'll check back in a minute. But another kind of thing is that you finally, you know, you stop trying to argue with your thinking. Because one of the things you're thinking will do is say, you are such a klutz, aren't you? And you say, no, I'm not. I'm really confident. You see what I just did yesterday? No, you're not.

[59:58]

You're really a klutz. And then you keep, you know, when you argue with your thinking and try to get yourself to think differently or convince yourself differently, then it's endless. Your thinking is always, will always outdo you. You'll never come up with good enough arguments to change your thinking. So after a while, let your thinking think whatever it wants. It's like the sixth ancestor said. When you have a thought, think nothing of it. Let it go on thinking. Put it in the corner. Get on with your life. Let it think what it wants to and put some energy into, you know, something that will split. If you hit it with enough intensity and enough, you know, precision and exactness, and you take your effort and, you know, right there, bam. So there's commitment. In that sense, there's commitment in Zen practice to, you know, energize. And, you know, to energize yourself, to do what you're doing is a commitment.

[60:59]

And you just commit yourself to it. And you do it. And sometimes, you know, you have to decide, you know, something, sometimes something doesn't move. You may need some help. Sometimes if it's a rock, you may need some leverage. Sometimes if the rock's big enough, you just leave it there. There's plenty of rocks around here. We just leave it there. Well, I probably talked long enough. I wanted to mention one other thing I forgot about the other night. I mentioned, I was, you know, and I'll go over them again so I can tell you what I left out. But I mentioned, you know, in Zazen or, you know, as you're walking, you might think about, you know, your head. The back of the neck is a place we often tend to shrink and collapse, and it gets compressed.

[62:05]

And in Zen, we often say pull your chin in or lift up through the crown chakra. And I'm suggesting that you do this in a much more gentle way, which is to allow a slight breeze to come to your face. And it moves your head slightly back. And as your head moves back slightly, it tends to float up. So your head, instead of holding your head in some fashion, you let your head float up and back, back and up. And when your head floats like that, then you can let the rest of your body release down. So you don't have to put as much tension and stress into standing up. And you can also, I mentioned, and several people have said, oh, how nice that was. But if you just acknowledge the side body, the sides of your body, and allow them to be open and receptive.

[63:06]

And this is where you have the support of other people in the sides of your body. So even now as we sit here, if you just allow yourself to experience other people through the sides of your body, and this tremendous support. And you know, literally, our connectedness with all beings, it's in there. It's already there, the sides of your body. But we often feel like, oh, I have to do this on my own. And we organize and structure ourselves in particular ways which embody the way we understand things. I'm on my own. This is a big American thing. I have to do it for myself. I should be confident. I need to be successful. I need to prove how confident I am. I've always needed to prove how confident I am.

[64:07]

And then what Zen practice taught me is how unconfident I am, and I had to keep falling on my face. It turned out I wasn't very confident, but anyway. And I mentioned also the back of the heart. Oftentimes you can allow, if you bring your awareness to the back of your heart. You know, in sitting we tend to want to, we encourage yourself to move the back of the heart in. But you can also, even if the back of the heart is out, but if you bring your awareness to your back, behind your heart, and you feel that area with your awareness, and you can either soften or open or, you know, feel that area with your awareness. It's part of what allows things to come to your heart, to come home to your heart. To receive your experience with a kind of open-heartedness. And then the other thing I wanted to mention tonight is the sacrum, which is the triangular bone, you know, at the base of the spine.

[65:22]

In the sitting, in Zen, we often say, you know, sit up. And we talk about, you know, having the small of the back slightly in. And because we do that, you know, we tend to actually get probably a little stiff in the sacrum, because we hold the sacrum. We hold it a particular way, you know, we practice holding our sacrum there. So another way to do this is actually, especially if your head is floating up, you let all your energy, you let all your energy settle down, and you let, you let your sacrum sink down onto the seat, onto the zazu. You let your body settle. And it's, a lot of that is in the sacrum, and finding a place where your sacrum can rest and release down. Rather than holding your sacrum up, and forward, you let the base of your spine settle and sink down. And then you actually have, you know, you'll actually be sitting on the ground, or the zazu, or the chair.

[66:32]

You won't be sitting on air. Anyway. Well, I've gone over time. I was going to, which I'd like to do anyway, to chant for a moment. I was going to tell you something more about the chanting, but I won't tell you more about the chanting tonight. But I've learned, I do a chant with my sitting groups, and it's a chant I learned from Maureen Stewart Roshi, who learned it from Soen Roshi. And it's the one syllable in Japanese, it's the syllable ho, and ho is the Japanese word for dharma. And the way we chant is to make an, extend the sound ho, and then when you run out of breath, inhale and join back into the sound.

[67:38]

And tonight what I'd like to suggest is you let the sound, notice how the sound resonates in your body. And, you know, that, you know, so you let the vibration of the sound vibrate all through your being. You know, so that if you let the sound vibrate through your being, you know, there's nothing, there's nothing there that you try to hold. You know, sound is very good for this, and chanting is very good for this. There's nothing in your body that you hold apart from the sound. It's very safe, you know, just to let your body resonate and vibrate with the sound. And you'll feel the sound, you know, you'll be able to feel the sound, you know, in your heart, or wherever you put your awareness, you'll be able to feel the sound in your head, you know, your throat, your heart, your abdomen, your belly, your hips, you know, your legs, you'll feel the sound. So we'll do Ho, and, you know, normally we hit a bell to end it, there's no bell, maybe I'll just be like a conductor.

[68:44]

And then you can finish the breath you're on, you don't have to stop suddenly. Okay? Okay. Okay. Okay.

[69:53]

That was sufficient. Thank you. I'd like to remind people after these talks that the area right outside the dining room, we ask people to be silent after 8.30 in the evening, which it is now. So if you're visiting, please move away from this area especially. Some people can stay and help reset it for them.

[70:54]

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