Good evening. So it's time for me to give a talk. And for those of you who haven't been to any of my talks, I overheard, a friend of mine overheard a conversation one time where somebody said, oh, who's giving the talk? And the other person said, Ed Brown. And they said, well, are his talks any good? And the other person said, well, the first one you go to is all right. Anyway, for those of you who haven't been to my talks, they're not especially organized. Or to put it another way, they're organized according to the way the spirit moves me.

[01:03]

Okay, so that's a kind of an organization, actually. But that's implicit rather than explicitly organized. And so it's not usually something that you necessarily can grasp while you're sitting listening. And the talks tend to go off in a lot of different directions. And so it's kind of like meditation that way. It doesn't just go in one direction. It goes off here and then comes back and over there. And that's the way our life goes or our minds or whatever. So I'm afraid I'm not very good at controlling my mind, so to speak. In fact, of course, we have Suzuki Roshi's saying, my teacher, his saying was, if you want to control your sheep or cow, give it a large pasture. But I did want to let you know in the spirit of, you know, in the usual spirit of, tell

[02:11]

them what you're going to tell them, tell them and then tell them what you told them. I'm going to tell you, just in case it's not obvious from the talk, what I'll be talking about, I'm going to tell you. You already have some idea which is based on what I said at the beginning of meditation, right? If you, I'm encouraging, you know, to step off the good, bad, right, wrong axis, right? If you want, you know, you could try it. You know, for instance, you know, if you just try, you know, you could try moving your hand a little bit, you know, like this, or you could try just turning your head to the right and to the left. And you can try some simple movement, right? And then ask yourself, am I doing it right? And then see how much, you know, you can move once you ask that question. Usually once you ask yourself, am I doing it right? It's like, you have to stop and check. And then when you're stopping and checking, your head or your arm is not moving anymore.

[03:13]

You've stopped everything in order to check. How am I doing? Is it right? Is it wrong? Is it good? Is it bad? And you don't even need to be assessing your own experience to, you know, stop yourself or to freeze. You can think something about somebody else and you will freeze, you know, in order to think something. So I'm interested then tonight in talking with you about, well, how do we, you know, what else can I say about this? So I'll say something more about off of good, bad, right, wrong, and not worrying about getting it right. You know, partly that implies, you know, being a bit of a fool. Well, anyway, we'll get to that. And then I want to talk, you know, partly because yesterday was Valentine's Day and thought, well, and also because somebody who comes to my Thursday night meditation group said, why don't you, why don't you Buddhist teachers ever talk about relationships?

[04:16]

I feel like I'm talking about relationships all the time, but I thought I'd talk a little more explicitly tonight about relationships with that encouragement and with Valentine's yesterday. But in that regard, you know, I want to mention that, you know, the way that in Zen we understand implicitly that the way we relate to any one thing is the way we relate with everything. You know, how do you relate to the floor you walk on? Do you take it for granted? Do you acknowledge that it's there? Do you appreciate its support? How do you, how is the floor? Do you ever, do you ever clean it? Or is it just something you're going to use and then it's supposed to, you're supposed to be able to use it and not have to, you know, take care of it or do anything back, right? You just walk on it and then it's supposed to clean itself or something. Or, you know, the cup that you have or, you know, your hand, how do you relate to your

[05:21]

hand? Is your hand like the floor or something or your body? Is it something you use? And then it should just do, it should just do what you tell it to and be there for you and not cause you any pain and never complain. And otherwise it's resisting or betraying you. You know, how do we treat? So you can study, you know, for yourself how you treat anything. So this is part of also the spirit then of, you know, these two subjects go along together, right? Outside of good and bad and then how do you treat anything? And when you're relating with something, is it about getting it right or is there something else? And where does love come in? You know, what would, in that sense, you know, indicate that there's some love in the way we're relating with something. So that's generally, you know, what I want to talk about.

[06:24]

But then we'll see what actually happens now. But I also wanted to mention to you, I just got, just this last week, there's a new book out. So I wanted to tell you about this book because this is a biography of my Zen teacher, Shinryu Suzuki Roshi. It's by David Chadwick. It's called Crooked Cucumber. Crooked Cucumber is what one of Suzuki Roshi's teachers called him when he was a little boy because he didn't quite, you know, he couldn't quite get it right or he wasn't that interested in getting it right. He was like a crooked cucumber. So when you're a little crooked cucumber, you know, it can be kind of adorable and then it also can be kind of like, ooh, you're crooked. So if somebody else is interested in right and wrong, then they say, oh, you're crooked. But then if somebody is not so interested in right and wrong, then they go like, oh, that's interesting or what fun that it's crooked, you know.

[07:26]

This is to say that, you know, we have different attitudes, right, that we take towards our experience depending on are we involved with getting it right or it being good or do we take an interest in something or can we discover something or be inspired by things. Anyway, this afternoon I just got some books today and so I did my Zen Tarot kind of thing, you know. I thought of, you know, coming here tonight and then I opened up the book to where it would open to so I could give you a reading. So here's tonight's reading. And rereading some of Suzuki Roshi's lectures recently, you know, I did come across one where he said that he was very interested in signs. And this is, I'm serious when I say then that this is Zen Tarot, you know.

[08:32]

This is not just voodoo. This is like the way things are. That you can follow signs actually and that's actually what we do in our life. We follow signs and indications and, you know, which is different than getting it right. Like what's the right thing for me to read to you? Oh gosh, I wonder if this would be good or what about this one and what would be the best thing and, you know, what would, you know, really move them right. And, you know, you could spend hours like pouring over this and trying to figure out which one. But no, I just like opened it up. So here's your reading. Page 382. And there's a little quote from Suzuki Roshi at the beginning of this section and it says, you stick to naturalness too much. When you stick to it, it's not natural anymore. You know, this was during the 60s, right?

[09:33]

I mean, so he also used to say to us, you Americans, you know, you're not so interested in the material way, you know, that all of the hippies and, you know, people with long hair and everything would come to Zen Center. And he said, you're not, you've given up the material way. You're not interested in material and you're interested in the spiritual, but you, but you still want to improve. Don't you think that's rather materialistic? Oh boy. I was having tea with Suzuki in his cabin and I asked him the meaning of a scroll that was on the wall behind him. Stones in the air. Stones in the air. Yes, it was given to me by my master, Kichisawa Roshi. It means don't create some problems which are extra, like stones in the air that you could bump into which aren't there. Just the problems you already have are enough. You mean like you can't ride a horse on a horse?

[10:42]

I asked, referring to another proverb that Suzuki sometimes mentioned, which likened problems to horses. You can ride one horse, but you can't ride a horse on a horse. It was a point he made in various ways that if we don't compound our problems, we'll be able to deal with them. Yes, same thing, Suzuki answered. Oh, I said excited. I understand something. That is so like David. Suzuki laughed. Is that unusual? Yes, I never understand anything. What do you not understand? Well, when you talked last night in your lecture about re, the first principle, every time you talk about that, I give up. I think it's impossible for me to understand. No, no, no, he said, like a mother consoling a hurt child. I don't mean to discourage you.

[11:44]

You can understand. You can understand completely. It's just that the way you're trying to understand is like going south to get to San Francisco. This is when you're at Tasa Har, which is already four miles south of San Francisco. You try to understand like going south to get to San Francisco. So here's a little part of a lecture about the first principle. There are two completely different viewpoints. First principle and second principle. One is to say that everything, everyone has Buddha nature. Nothing is great and nothing is small. When we speak in that way, it means we are talking about our original nature from the standpoint of the first principle. Everything has Buddha nature, period. No idea follows. We shouldn't say therefore or but. That's the first principle.

[12:47]

The other viewpoint is to put emphasis on rules, on actual practice, on the second principle. Practice is the way to attain direct experience of the first principle. But when we talk about it, we cannot say both sides at once. We always smile. Even though the way that we practice is hard, we know it's the second principle. It's something to help us, and even though your teacher is angry, you don't take it so seriously. He says laughing. You know that is the second principle, not the first principle. So when I say something about rules, I say it smiling. So you don't take it so seriously. You talked about the first principle again, but I still don't know what it is. I said to Suzuki. I don't know, he said, is the first principle. Okay. Well, I'll read you one other thing here.

[13:53]

So then I went for reading number two, and I'll go ahead and give that to you now. So this is from the last lecture he gave shortly before, you know, actually it was several months before he died, the last lecture he gave. And he's talking about visiting with Soen Nakagawa Roshi. He served as much a tea from a bowl he'd made himself. What he was doing, I don't know. And he didn't know. He looked very happy, but that happiness is very different from the happiness we usual people have. Our practice should be to go to that level where there's no human problem. No Buddha problem where there's nothing. To have tea, to have cake, to make a trip from one place to another is his practice.

[14:54]

And he has no idea of helping people. What he's doing is helping, but he himself has no idea of helping people. To solve our human problem doesn't cover all of Buddhist practice. And we don't know how long it takes for us to make the Buddha trip. To solve our human problem doesn't cover all of Buddhist practice. We have many trips, work trips, space trips, various trips we must have. The Buddha trip's a very long trip. This is Buddhism. Thank you very much. Anyway, I think David did a wonderful job. David I met originally in 1967. I was the cook, he was the head of the dining room.

[15:56]

David's a very unusual person. He's very extroverted. I tend to be rather introverted, so I spent a lot of time at Tesshara talking to nobody, and David spent a lot of time at Tesshara talking to everybody. We were perpetually short-staffed, so he would be out talking with guests in the afternoon, and then he'd say, Well, I need to go set up the dining room now, why don't you come along? We can continue our conversation. So every day he had a new crew of guests to help set up the dining room. And then sometimes people would be waiting to be served in the dining room because David was busy talking to someone at another table and would have sat down to eat with them and forgotten about taking care of anybody. But clearly David and many people love Suzuki Rishi, but David in particular was inspired to collect, interview hundreds of people about Suzuki Rishi

[17:01]

and has hours and hours of interviews and thousands and thousands of pages. And then out of that made this little book. And one of the things, because of David's devotion and inspiration, we spent many years redoing all the tapes of Suzuki Rishi's talks, having them on master reel-to-reel tapes and archival quality. So now there's like a whole archive about Suzuki Rishi. And so this is kind of like the beginning. This is more than 25 years after Suzuki Rishi died and suddenly there's all this interest, largely because of David. So now I'm working on a book of Suzuki Rishi's talks, editing talks for another book like Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. I think this fits in with the subject tonight.

[18:03]

Because it's love that moved David. And it's love where he did all that work, not because of, just out of devotion and love, and not because he's maxed out all of his credit cards and borrowed money from friends and spent the advance months and years ago. So anyway. And probably, now as I continue with my talk, I'll think of some ways to refer back to that. This is the way you do talks. You tie stuff together as time goes on. Recently I was talking with someone about relationships

[19:12]

and the person said, you know, that he used to express himself and be sincere and honest and tell people where he was at and what he felt. And then it turned out, you know, most people went away. And so, you know, his relationships hadn't lasted. And even if, you know, in fact, they usually didn't start. So you see, if you're doing this, then he noticed, the next thing he did was to decide, well, then I just won't express myself at all. That will be the answer, because then, you know, the people won't go away. Of course, when you don't express yourself at all, that doesn't give you much space to have much of a relationship.

[20:14]

Why don't I have any relationship? And then, so now he's decided, you know, when that didn't work, you know, now he's decided, why don't I see if I can express myself in a way that other people can relate to it, or, you know, that includes other people in my expression. This is similar to the advice that the Zen Master Dogen gives, because he says, if you get in an argument, basically, you know, if you're in any situation with somebody else, express yourself fully, without trying to defeat the other person. So this doesn't mean to abandon your own point of view, but just don't try to defeat the other person. Defeating the other person is a lot of what we do, you know, because as soon as we call somebody a name,

[21:19]

you're so stupid, or, you know, we say, you always, you never, you know, we are attacking somebody, we're trying to defeat them and make them, we're trying to make them wrong. And that they're, the way that they are wrong is the cause of the problem. You know, it's not my problem, it's yours. So this way, you know, when we express ourselves, and, you know, this will also include telling somebody else what they think or feel. You're angry with me, aren't you? Well, if I wasn't already, I am now. So this is a lot of our conversation, which, you know, is a way that we don't take responsibility for our life, and we blame somebody else, and we try to defeat somebody else

[22:20]

and put the burden of things onto the other person. So it's possible to say, you know, what's going on for us without trying to defeat the other person. This also relates to Buddhist causality. Buddhist causality is actually very simple. You know, Buddhist causality is when A, then B. It doesn't say A causes B, A doesn't B, A makes B, when A, then B. So, you know, it's very typical in our conversation, and I hear it around Zen Center all the time when I'm at Zen Center, I'm not here much, so I don't know how, you know, probably the level of communication here with all the psychotherapists and everything, much better around Spirit Rock. In fact, you know, when Dan and Mudita, who do, you know, communication skills workshops,

[23:20]

and they've done a lot of Vipassana over the years, and I asked Dan and Mudita, I invited them to Tassajara a few summers ago to do a workshop on communication skills, and I went around ahead of time, and I asked all the heads of the various departments and assistant heads, would you be interested in this? And they said, oh, yeah, that sounds really interesting. Yes, I would. So we had this workshop with 16 people, and Dan and Mudita came, and they sit down, and good afternoon, and we're going to be doing this workshop, and right away somebody goes, what's so important about good communication? Well, I mean, why can't we just talk? You know, why would we need good communication skills? What's the problem with the way we're already communicating? And then other people started writing, too. Yeah, what's so important about it? What do you think you have to teach us anyway? And they hadn't even thought about it. They hadn't even started. So that's the Zen Center communication.

[24:27]

It's not always like that. I'm sorry. But if I go to Zen Center, I can make fun of you, and if I come here, I can make fun of them. Anyway, and then Dan and Mudita had a chance to practice their good communication skills. Oh, so I'm hearing you say that you think you communicate pretty well already. They did this kind of active listening, and you're not sure that you have anything to learn from us. Right. Yeah. And they went through this whole thing, and then after a while, people had calmed down and said, okay, well, I guess we can get started. Now, that's what we call active listening, you know, repeating back to somebody what they've just said so that you make sure that the other person who's heard understood you. Anyway, we had a pretty good time, and only two people didn't come back after the first day because they really didn't have anything to learn.

[25:30]

But this is not so bad when you consider that in the Buddha Sutras, hundreds of people walked out on the Buddha. Because they felt like he didn't have anything to tell them. So, if somebody leaves, you're not alone. I mean, also, they did it with the Buddha. It's not a big deal. So, I guess there's several things I want to say about this kind of situation. I mean, first of all, how is it that any of us decide in our life when we think about or study relating to someone, something, ourself, our hand, our body, our mind differently? How do we decide that? It's because we had a problem. There was a problem. When I expressed myself sincerely and honestly telling people where I was at, they disappeared. Okay.

[26:35]

So, after you've done that for a while, I noticed this happened. And that's an example of Buddhist logic, that when I said all these things, then I noticed they weren't there. It doesn't say, it's actually not saying my saying those things drove them away. And the thing I started to tell you before was, you know, you make me angry. Nobody does anything to you. You know, Buddhist logic is when you said you didn't like the way that I said such and such, I got angry. That's more the nature of things or the way things are. When you said that, I got angry. It doesn't say, you make me angry. It says, when you said that or when you did that, I got angry. Nobody's making anybody do anything. I had a certain, I experienced something and I reacted to something. And it's actually a way

[27:37]

to empower yourself in your life. When things, you know, stop making you angry and making you sad, you make me sad. You know, when things stop making you feel some way, you know, when things are doing that to you, that's what we call, you know, victim, being a victim. And one of the things we're studying in Buddhism and with meditation is how to empower yourself, how to stop being a victim. And part of it is language. When something makes you anything, you experience things happen and you take it or experience it a certain way. You know, nobody can betray you. People can leave and then you can experience it as a betrayal. But especially if you're little and dad walks out because, you know, dad has money problems and drinking problems and dad isn't actually trying to leave you. Dad doesn't want to leave you, but you can certainly experience it as a betrayal.

[28:39]

And betrayal is actually, you know, the stickiest, betrayal is actually the stickiest glue there is. So anybody who betrays you, you know, you stick to them from then on. Because to let go of it, you know, is to, is also to, means that, you know, your love for them in the first place wasn't, wasn't real, wasn't powerful. So it's very hard to get out of betrayal. You know, the whole pattern. So anyway, we move from problem to problem. We have one problem. When I express myself, I notice people leaving, going away. So I'll try not saying anything. So now they're not leaving maybe, but they're also not coming forward. I'm not engaging with them. So I'm still not in a relationship. So this is another problem now. So now I'll try something else.

[29:43]

So we move through our life actually by having problems. And then by studying, you know, what the problem is. And by deciding, you know, making some new choice. I'll try, I'll see if I can express myself. I'll study how to express myself in a way that other people hear. And I don't try to defeat them. But also I don't just, you know, hide. And, you know, one of the, so in this sense, I want to emphasize tonight, you know, about relationship. How do you relate to anything? I have a poem for you. I was a little worried at the beginning of the talk tonight that, or while I was up at the dining room having dinner, I was a little worried that, you know, since I was here so recently,

[30:45]

and normally I don't come back after five or six weeks and do another talk, so usually I don't try to remember what I said the last time. But tonight I thought, uh-oh, did I use this poem before? Well, anyway, partly this poem was in the context of Alice Waters. Do you know Alice Waters who's Chez Panisse and has this restaurant? She's had trouble with public speaking, so her public speech coach encouraged her to see the audience as heads of lettuce. Because he said, you really appreciate lettuce, so why don't you just see them as heads of lettuce? And then you can talk to them and, you know, feel at home with all of them. So that's a kind of shift, you know. What is it that is, what is it that we're talking to or relating with? And implicit in this also is that as soon as you relate

[31:45]

with anything, everything is there. So if, you know, as soon as something is real and present in your life, whether it's you, yourself, your thoughts, your feelings, another person, everything is there. That means joy and sorrow and impermanence and life and death. You know, everything is there. And everything is right, you know, at the edge. And we don't know what will happen next. So we're also in a rather scary and vulnerable place. And, you know, we can't control the outcome. So this is true as soon as we're with anything. And if it's something you love, then it's hard often to feel like you can't control the outcome, especially if it's your children or your parents. You'd like to control the outcome and then at some point, you know, it's not possible. The other day I went to visit

[32:46]

a woman whose daughter, one of her daughters called me up. It's actually not somebody I know that well, but her daughter called me up and said, why don't you know, my mom's in the hospital. She just had a stroke. She was dead for a minute or two. They've brought her back. At that point in the conversation on the telephone, you know, it's not clear whether mom wants to be here or not, is choosing to be here or, you know, choosing to leave here. And daughter, of course, wants her to stay, wants mother to be there. And at the same time, you know, wants to give her, the mother, the choice. If you're ready to leave this world, you can leave this world. You have my permission, but actually I want you to stay. You know, if it's just up to me, I like having you around. I want you to be here. So, you know, this is where

[33:47]

it's not always so easy. What is love? You know, is love letting go or is love holding on? And so also, you know, Suzuki Roshi said that we practice meditation in order to purify our love so that your love is not too sticky, so that your love can let go as well as hold on and so that your love can let something and someone realize themselves and be true to themselves. And it's not up to you to control their destiny. One of the most common questions, you know, that people ask me as a meditation teacher is, you know, my spouse is always getting angry with me. How do I get them to stop? It's either about, you know, the most common questions are usually about controlling myself

[34:48]

or controlling somebody else. How can I control them better? How can I control myself better? And that already assumes that you know the right way for you to be and the right way for others to be. You know, obviously that's what they should do because you know that's the right thing and that's the thing you want. That's the good thing. That's the thing that would make you happiest. But you're so busy always applying the standards. You know, we will get so busy checking to see, are they still, am I still getting angry? Oh, darn. You know, and when I do that, like yesterday, I had a great day with Patricia. We were having a nice Valentine's Day and then I started cooking dinner and the more I cooked dinner, the more angry I got. So this is fair warning if you come to any of my cooking classes. We don't know what will happen.

[35:51]

I may be out of control. But I started cooking dinner and I started getting more and more upset. And you know, actually I've spent a lot of time lately being about two years, six months. I have a temper tantrum, you know, while I'm cooking. Nothing broke. But pans were going across the room and the sesame seeds went over the counter and things just weren't behaving the way that they ought to. And it doesn't usually make me that, you know, I don't have a temper tantrum every time I cook. But afterwards, of course, then what happens, you know, afterwards I felt so ashamed of myself. You know, oh, I feel so badly about that. Now what happens when you feel badly about it? Then you make yourself small.

[36:53]

I feel so badly about it. Then you could get pretty depressed. Oh, I'm so depressed and I got mad again. Then you make yourself, you know, because you are so ashamed and you make yourself small. Then, then how is your life going to work? You know, then at some point, you know, what's going to happen? You'll get, you know, outraged. Let me out of here. I'm out of here. I'm not staying in this small little place. Damn it. And then we can blame somebody else for shaming us or blaming us. You know, I did all of that myself. You know, and Patricia is like, she doesn't know what to do. She tried various things, but, you know, I wasn't going to let anything help. So we've known each other long enough that we're just kind of patient, you know,

[37:55]

and we just kind of wait. And we don't expect the other person to always behave that well. And we also don't expect the other person to necessarily be of much help. You know, for a while, you know, for a long time, it's only in the last year, you know, something shifted in my thinking because you see, it's very tempting to think that if somebody loves you, they should be able to do something for you. That love does something for you. You know, love makes a difference. And it makes a difference that you can like, you can like really get your hands on. In other words, if I'm sad, somebody loves me, they'll help me feel better. They'll cheer me up. Well, actually, if somebody has to cheer you up like that,

[38:58]

it's actually kind of controlling. They're not going to let you be sad. You have to cheer up, actually. So there's, you know, and we have various ideas and sensibilities about what love is. And so, you know, one idea about love is it's controlling. Love means being controlled or love means controlling. Love means I can help this other person. I can cheer them up. Love means I can make them feel better. In fact, I don't give them permission to feel bad. So like I have a friend and she says, she tends to feel not good enough, not good enough, feeling not good enough is kind of like shame. There's this workshop coming up. How can you experience yourself more as soul and less as shame? Not good enough. And so she tends to feel not good enough. And so I asked her, well, how do you know that you're not good enough? And she says, well, I just look around at other people and see are they happy? And then if they're unhappy,

[39:59]

I have to do something to make them happy or else I'm not good enough. So does that work? This is interesting, you know. It's like, do you say things and everybody goes away? Or, you know, can you let somebody be unhappy? Can you let yourself be unhappy? Is it all right for you to be unhappy? And what happens when you're unhappy? Can you be with someone? Are you willing to be with somebody who's unhappy? Or do you tell yourself, you know, cheer up. What's wrong with you anyway? You have no reason to be unhappy. We talk like this all the time to ourself and other people. And especially to ourself. Of course, we're the worst with ourself. So in meditation, of course, you get to listen to all of this. And you get to be with somebody, you know, who's less than perfect.

[41:00]

And you get to be with somebody who's distracted and absent-minded and, you know, angry and frustrated and sad and mournful and, you know, grieving. And you get to be with yourself under a whole range and variety of circumstances. And, you know, and that also then is called love. You know, love is your willingness to be with yourself under all these circumstances that you don't abandon yourself and say, well, if that's the way you're going to be, I'm out of here. Or if that's the way you're going to be, then go to your room until you are, you know, going to be a human being again. You know, I'll stuff you someplace like your room or, you know, some part of the psyche or some part of the body that I don't usually spend any time with. And in addition, what will happen, you know, over time, you know, various parts of your body start waking up and, you know, and you're, and start talking to each other.

[42:05]

And you'll get to hear about, you know, sadness or grief or anger or frustration or annoyance and, you know, and delight and joy and interest. You'll have a whole range of experience. And so actually, in this sense, again, studying how to be with yourself or practicing being with yourself under a variety of circumstances is also, and your willingness and love and capacity to just be present, not fix it, is also something to do with, you know, how to be in relationship. Then you don't have to fix the other person, you don't have to make it better for them, but you're willing to be present and be there with somebody because you can do it with yourself. And it's not about, you know, getting it right or saying the right thing or doing the thing that makes all the difference. It's just, you know,

[43:08]

it's just, you know, being present and not running, you know, and not hiding and not trying to defeat the other person. Anyway, here's the ode to tomatoes. So again, you know, we're thinking tonight like, well, what is it like to be with something and, you know, are tomatoes just tomatoes or what are they? So here's a poet, you know, and he says, this is by the way, Francisco Alarcon, they make friends anywhere. That's nice. They make friends anywhere red smiles in salads, tender, young, generous, hot salsa dancers, round cardinals of the kitchen, hard to imagine cooking without first asking their blessing. I want to tell you,

[44:20]

you know, one other little story. By the way, the other, but before I tell you this one other story, you know, we're going to have a sort of like interlude here. The other book that I was studying in preparation for my talk tonight is called Don't Squat With Your Spurs On. It's a cowboy's guide to life by Texas Bix Bender. And there are some, you know, more like cowboy lessons in here. There's one here that says some things ain't funny. And

[45:23]

there's another one that says a body can pretend to care, but they can't pretend to be there. Oh, and he's got one in here wherever you ride, there you are. And when you give a lesson in meanness to a critter or person, don't be surprised if they learn their lesson. And then again, coming now a little closer to, you know, our theme for tonight, let's see here. Oh, you know, this one interested me because it's like, you know, it says you can just about always stand more than you think you can, which is kind of the way I think about meditation because sometimes it is so hard to sit still. And, you know,

[46:26]

and I think to myself, I'm not sitting still for this. So it's very similar to you can just about always stand more than you think you can. And while you're busy saying, I'm not sitting still for this, there you are sitting still for it. But anyway, he also says, now this is coming back to, you know, like, do you speak your mind or not and so forth. And so his suggestion is speak your mind, but ride a fast horse. And he also says, the best way to keep your word is not to give it foolishly. Well, that seems to be getting a little serious here. But then he also says, never miss a good chance to shut up. So these all seem to be

[47:29]

sort of like, sort of relevant, you know, little gratuitous advice with all this Zen talk, you know, in a more colloquial fashion, you know. These aren't big secrets, you know. But I wanted to tell you a story about, you know, this happened, took place a few years ago. I think it must be six or eight years ago now. And my daughter was a teenager. And so it actually, it has several things more to do with like communication and, you know, Patricia and I took my daughter to, and a friend of hers, to the circus to this. It was the Pickle Family Circus there for a few years. Maybe they still do. They had their circus at the Palace of Fine Arts. This was after they used to have it over at Fort Mason Center and various places. So we went to the circus and earlier in the day

[48:30]

made some things. We're going to go then to dinner at my mom's house. And when we're going to dinner at my mom's house, I start getting anxious because I feel like my mom is going to be anxious. And my mom is anxious whether we get there, that we're going to get there on time or we're going to be late. So I'm getting anxious because I'm thinking about getting there on time. So in order to do that, I'm making myself anxious. This is supposed to help. So when we got back to Fourth Avenue, I said to everybody in the car, now let's just take a few minutes to get ready to go, okay? And we're just going to go inside. We'll get the food that we made earlier, you know, 20 minutes. Is that okay with everybody? Then I get into the house

[49:33]

and I'm getting things together and my daughter and her friend have disappeared. They're not around. So I'm, okay, well, they agreed to 20 minutes. So 20 minutes goes by, no sign of them. 25 minutes. And I'm getting more and more anxious. Where are they? What are they doing? Why aren't they here? They said they'd be here. And then I thought, no, I'll calm down now. I'll make myself a cup of coffee. I'm not sure that was a good idea, but I had my cup of coffee. So after about 45 minutes, they show up, my daughter and her friend. I was really annoyed by that point. So I did something, you know,

[50:34]

I'm kind of, at times, you know, rash about these things. So I did something kind of bad, you know. I went to her room and walked right in and started scolding her. You know, that's really bad. I mean, speaking of good and bad, and if you want to talk in terms of good and bad. You know, what's bad is the first thing to do with conversations like this is, could I talk to you for a moment? Would that be all right with you? And also, do you do it in front of somebody else or not? You want to actually check all the circumstances. You don't want to just, like, go to talk to somebody at your convenience. That is so upsetting. I mean, when anybody does that to me, Patricia and I used to have, for years, have this discussion over and over again because she would just assume that she could talk to me. I work at home, but I'm in my office, you know, in the living room or the dining room or the kitchen or whatever. It's my office.

[51:35]

I'm working. It doesn't mean you can talk to me. I'm at work. So I'd just like it if you'd say, you know, could I talk with you for a minute? I had a choice. Yes or no. I could say yes or I could say no. And if I can't talk to you now, when would be a good time? So I just went right in and said, you know, you said you'd be back in 20 minutes, and then you just disappeared. You weren't here. It's been really upsetting to me. I wish you could just make agreements and stick to them, and I don't know what's wrong with you but I wish you could. Well, not my best. I mean, I could do better than that. I didn't call her any names. And I didn't say you always and you never, but I did pretty good at, you know, venting just for the sake of it

[52:37]

because I felt like it because I thought if I did that, I'd feel better. Of course, then I felt worse. So then, you know, we have a fairly subdued car driving to my mom's. And then, you know, later on we were opening presents and my daughter gave me a picture that she'd drawn a self-portrait in a plastic frame. And it turns out those 45 minutes she had run up the street 10 blocks to the ATM machine and then the 10 blocks back and then 13 blocks, you know, 10 blocks in the other direction to the framing store and back to our house, you know, to get the frame for my present. I tell you,

[53:44]

you want to be really careful about what you say to somebody and how you talk to somebody and what you assume about their motivations or their lack of motivations or their intention or, you know, they had good intention or bad intention or, you know, and you don't want to just assume like they just assumed that I did that to spite me, you know, like couldn't they behave in a way that didn't upset me and that that's the only thing that matters in the world. So, you know, later on I apologized. So apologies are, you know, people accept apologies in various ways. I've had people say to me I don't accept your apology. You just never should have done it in the first place. I can never forgive that because you're a Zen teacher

[54:46]

and you just shouldn't behave that way. But when I apologized to my daughter, she said, oh, that's okay, dad. I know, I know you pretty well now. We've known each other pretty long time and I know you lose your temper sometimes. In Zen there's a saying, you know, that the it's something like above the ground, you know, the pumpkins or gourds, you know, look separate but below the ground the roots all tangle up with one another. This is the way our life is, you know, all tangled up with one another. And we are all, you know, studying how to,

[55:48]

you know, one way or another we're studying or interested in how to purify our love, how to love more perfectly even though we don't, you know, how to be with ourself or others in a whole range of circumstances where we aren't trying to control ourself or the other person and make them behave the way that we think we would like and to somehow be able to enjoy like Francisco Alarcon enjoyed the tomatoes, you know, to be able to appreciate someone's company, our own company and someone else's company the vibrancy of being which is outside of right and wrong and good and bad you know, good enough, not good enough and just, you know, at least now and again, you know, to taste that or touch it to enjoy it, to appreciate it. So we also understand,

[56:52]

you know, this is something about how to be your own good friend, how to really be a friend to someone else. And when you're, you know, anything that we're involved in like that, you can see again if because I get so upset and because I'm so hard on myself about the mistakes, then, you know, I'm making myself small and, you know, it's only getting myself ready to explode again. So it's interesting, you know, as much as anything, you know, rather than kind of concentrating on not getting angry, you know, you could concentrate on, one could concentrate on not being so hard on oneself, on one, you know, not being so demanding of oneself or somebody else to be, you know, more perfect. And Buddhism has this concept of liberating ascension beings.

[57:53]

So as much as anything, you know, liberating beings is to letting them be who they are and not trying to control them and make them a certain way. So again, I mentioned at the beginning of meditation, you let your body find out how to meditate. Let your breath find out how to breathe. Let your hands find out how to be hands because if you try to direct everything, you know, you will limit yourself. Suzuki Roshi also said, Avalokiteshvara, you know, the Bodhisattva of Compassion has a thousand arms. It's understood sometimes to have a thousand arms or at each hand, you know, has an eye in the middle of the palm. So it's hands that can see. So he said, if Avalokiteshvara concentrates on just one arm, 999 are useless. So if we concentrate, you know, all the time

[58:54]

on not saying the wrong thing or, you know, not getting angry or not doing this or being sure to do that. It's like concentrating on just this one hand and then so much of our capacity diminishes and we have so little choice anymore. When we're not as busy with right and wrong and good and bad, you know, we can try out and many things and we have much more capacity to talk and act and learn. And we learn by, you know, being willing to make some mistake and study, you know, and problems will be the way that we go through our life. We can't do it without problems. So in this sense, you know, we can be grateful for our problems. They help us. Okay.

[60:00]

I'd like to, as I've done here before, end the evening with a chant. The chant is the syllable ho, which in Japanese is the word for Dharma. We'll chant for a minute or so. Someone suggested that we send out some, you know, warm thoughts or healing energy to Jack. So, while you're chanting, if you let this sound go out to, you know, Jack and wish him health and well-being, this sound will have a lot of health and well-being in it. And since I don't want to say so much after the chant, I'd like to thank you now for being here. I appreciated your company tonight. And also, I guess I will be saying something after the talk, but, because I have to give the after the talk announcements about, you know, driving safety and things. But,

[61:04]

anyway, I'd also like to thank you for, you know, supporting me when I come here and supporting Spirit Rock. Okay, so here's the chant. And I'll hit the bell to begin the chant. We let the sound fill the room and beyond. And then I'll hit the bell at the end. You can finish the breath you're on and let the sound die out gradually. Okay? Well, let's see. I guess we can leave that on and get the chant here.

[61:33]

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