Good evening once again There's a an ant right here in front of me I There's been a number of them Well I There's usually you know most of the time something small crawling around someplace

[01:11]

Usually we call them thoughts Or judgments And often we're trying to get rid of them because we don't like having them around I I'm you know over the years at one for a while. I you know I was very quite serious about getting rid of thinking But you know over the years I've met people Who are who've become quite good at it, and I say did you call someone so to let them know you'd be late No, I didn't think of that And Did you get the grocery shopping done no, I didn't think of that so People sometimes who become good at not thinking you know kind of overdo it

[02:13]

It's actually useful you know to be able to think And just not to think obsessively you know in a kind of fixed manner And At least some of the time being a writer. I find that it's quite useful to Encourage my thinking rather than discourage it So I invite my thinking to show up and help me out so like tonight I have to give a talk so I want my thinking to keep coming up with words to tell you No So I think it's important to have a good relationship with your thinking So That you know you're you're good friends. You're on you know and you can encourage and play with one another And you can be mischievous together This was one of my teacher Suzuki Roshi's ideas You know he said the best thing to do as a teacher is encourage your students to be mischievous

[03:17]

Otherwise you know you spend too much time trying to be And then it's called you know you try to become a Buddha Perfect And you know then you'll be unhappy a lot because It's so difficult to do and be discouraged anyway I So I do want to tonight talk with you more about the expression, it's from Dogen Zenji About let your heart go out and abide in things let things return and abide in your heart This is you know we mentioned a teaching like this you know of course usually the expression is mind but in Japanese and Chinese the

[04:20]

Character shin and Japanese is usually translated mind, but it's also actually it's usually more thought of in terms of heart and I think for us You know it's more important to emphasize heart Rather than mind or the mind that resides in the heart rather than the mind that's in the head You In some ways you know this kind of expression is just to say why don't we live in love Buddhism doesn't mention love very much Specifically But this is actually to say Let's practice loving To let your heart go out and be with your experience is to love And to let things come and abide in your heart is to love And this is as you know a real challenge

[05:27]

So we could say that meditation is a chance to purify or develop or cultivate your love and love in this sense of course is you know there's There's two things. I think why you know it's difficult. I'm going to emphasize tonight anyway two things that are difficult One is that it seems safer to hold back or to separate or to distance yourself from your experience And The second is that Love is not about control So and once you've decided you know so the first factor here is Is it possible to let your love go out and be with something and to decide you know we actually can decide to do that or

[06:31]

And do we hold back and you know the price of course is pain So sometimes we decide rather than risk pain I won't love and Then you know we have that kind of dilemma Can I let my heart go out and be with things With other people with experiences with my thoughts and feelings with my sensations With the objects in my life Can I let things actually touch me or will it be too painful? And what's painful is you know partly then to do with the second factor here, which is that We all know very well and keep you know being reminded, but Things Things our own body mind, and then the other people the world doesn't behave

[07:40]

Repeatedly doesn't behave the way we want it to And this is painful That the world cares so little about us me personally That it wouldn't go out of its way to make me happy and do what I want So you know when the world is not behaving the way I want this is you know can be called betrayal abandonment The world is out to get me you know politely we say it's a little Dharma teaching I Know their growth another opportunity for growth Which is just to say that things are not happening the way that I want them to So we often have a kind of script

[08:42]

That we've mapped out at least from my point of view you know the script For what will happen and then somehow the other people don't seem to know their part And Whether you get impatient with them or angry or sad or depressed it doesn't help they still don't do their part I've tried all of these different Strategies and I like you each of you. You know I am the most important person the one special person in the universe So for me things ought to go better and after all I've been practicing meditation for a long time And it's it's turning out that you know meditation isn't quite the investment that I thought it would be

[09:45]

I Did it doesn't grant the immunity that I thought it would This also seems to be true of not just meditation, but like yoga you know that you could if you do yoga You don't actually age You get young you get you know that you don't actually get younger and younger the more you meditate the more you do yoga and So I don't it's a little discouraging at times And as you know this is This teaching that things don't behave according to your idea each of our idea. You know this teaching is that this is the first noble truth You know we usually just say suffering, but it means things aren't doing what we told them to

[10:51]

What we wanted them how we wanted them to behave And It's tempting at that point to withhold your love When they're not behaving because if you withhold love Everybody knows that things would behave better That will teach them I Withhold my love They are sure to behave better in the future because that's so painful for them to be denied my love And it's so important to them that you know they receive my love that they will be sure to improve their performance in the future And earn my approval and my well at least temporarily undying love For a few moments before they misbehave again, you know and then I can withhold my love and that that'll teach them once again

[11:54]

So of course at some point the question is you know who who is suffering here The you know you yourself who are withholding your love or the other person Probably both but I Have yet to notice where withholding my love from anybody You know helped anything I Can't think of a time Where it you know Actually You know elicited somebody else to be loving in return someday sometimes it's Prompted people to be a little solicitous. Are you okay? So maybe something like that

[13:02]

You You So what I'm talking about here is that of course that love is different than control And It's something interesting to me, but you know, we do tend to Give up on love and just aim to get approval because approval is something you can actually work for and earn If you do something well, or you please somebody they would approve You could approve So

[14:17]

It's possible to to gain or earn approval. It's not possible to gain or earn love Love is always just given freely Whether it's you giving love or somebody else Giving love and love I'm using now in this sense of let your heart go out and be with things Let things return and abide in your heart This is to experience things directly Intimately Closely to be connected to feel connected You know rather than How do I deal with these things out there so that they don't get to me This is about basic conception about you know, what would be Healthy approach for our life or approach that would actually be conducive to happiness

[15:21]

You know, how well has it worked to do things well Be responsible take care of your chores your obligations your commitments and You know and then they'll be and then you'll have love You So even after we've done all those things, you know It's often the feeling we have is The love isn't there And By the way now I want to be careful to tell you again about things, you know What is things in this context let your heart go out and abide in things that things return things is everything

[16:31]

You know things is the things you see is sight objects Colors sounds smells taste touch can can those things can you be with those things? Lately I was thinking about you know taste and I I've been telling as I think I mentioned to you I'm not here that often, but I so I can't remember what I talked about last It's kind of I hope you don't mind if I repeat myself. I guess I can't remember But I encourage people to you know, taste what you put in your mouth Here's the perfect example of the challenge that we have You know already, you know when something when we taste something we're thinking do I like it do I not like it And partly that is has to do with is it

[17:34]

You know, we get so tired or we are so disinclined to experience anything You know, is it possible to experience anything Would your heart go out and actually experience something? What about what you put in your mouth? But a lot of the time people You know, we like comfort foods comfort foods means There will be no taste in that food that's going to surprise you and make you taste it The taste will be so familiar you won't have to acknowledge them being there. This is very comforting That's what comfort foods are that's what comfort is you don't have to experience anything And This is you know, so in a certain sense, you know

[18:35]

You could say generosity Or you know love is connected with generosity, which is are you willing to give your awareness to something? Give your heart the awareness of you give your presence your heart your being to receiving something Into your being taste smell touch Sensation thoughts feelings. Will you actually have your life? and Then there's what other people do what people say Events in the world. There's objects. There's things things in the sense of objects So The other night I went to the first The Zen Center in San Francisco is having a film series that's connected with the Asian Art Museum So the first movie was Friday night

[19:38]

It's a movie called Enlightenment Guaranteed The German movie It's About two German men who For various reasons go to Japan to practice then And they get to Tokyo and proceed to lose their well they they go out at night and they can't find their way back to the hotel And the next thing you know the the cash machine gobbles up their credit cards won't give them back But eventually they get to the monastery But one of the things anyway emphasized in the monasteries you see them over and over again pushing this towel across the floor to You know to clean the floor to wipe the floor It's one of the most amazing things about Japanese Zen monasteries the floors. I

[20:41]

was at I went to a HG monastery, which is North and then a little inland from Osaka And the most amazing thing are these floors that are what in a minute with the monastery was started in 1244 or something so some of these floors have been in been there for 800 years or you know 750 years or something and The floors are like glass You can see a reflection in the floor And The way that's done is every day They take a damp towel and wipe it For 800 years Our idea is why don't we varathane it We'll coat it with a with a plastic petroleum product

[21:50]

So that it will just stay like that with our having to relate to it ever again Let's just do something once and for all so we don't have to relate to the floor ever again You know because it's tiresome to It's tiresome to relate to anything It's Tiresome to relate to floors. It's tiresome to relate to your thoughts. It's tiresome to relate to your feelings Let's just tell everything to go away. Leave me alone. Then I can have some peace and quiet. I'll be able to meditate You know just fine. I'll have plenty of peace quiet well-being happiness joy. I just won't have to relate to anything so This is the American idea of happiness How's it working? You know basically if it had been working it would have worked by now you wouldn't have come to a meditation center Or maybe you're not quite convinced and meditation you think will be a better way to not have to relate to anything than the ways

[22:54]

You've been doing it without meditating And you can you know when the Robert Bly's third stage and reowning the shadow is You know when the first of all the projections start to Slip and then you at some point there you want to reassert your projection, so you call in the spiritual reinforcements So if your mind isn't quiet enough you tell it it's spiritual to shut up now and meditate This is spiritual practice So don't bother me now With your thoughts and feelings stuff Because I'm meditating So you can you can set this up, and you can tell your body Your mind your thoughts your feelings Everything you know to behave themselves because it's spiritual now, and they need to get with the program The spiritual thing you're doing

[23:55]

But usually they don't understand this and they you know they start to act out Misbehave Which is you know all in all quite good, don't you think I mean? Because why would you want to have a sort of totalitarian system telling you know your thoughts and your feelings to shut up and don't Bother you and what what do you think your thoughts and feelings think what do they feel? You know boy is he on a trip boy is she Who does she think she is she thinks she's some kind of Buddha. He thinks he's really hot stuff boy. I will teach him And they'll get together and they'll gang up on you So It's this other kind of strategy or actually it's love to Can Your awareness be with something can you be generous enough to give your attention to something and let something?

[25:03]

Actually be there for you So the idea of this cleaning in Zen But you see in this movie in it it becomes very funny in the movie because they're standing there Cleaning the little sides of the shoji screens, you know So of course it's very funny To watch them do this and then the Japanese monks are racing down the floor with their towels and the man from Germany's because it keeps falling down and He just can't do it. He can't get his body to race across the room bent over You know pushing the towel along the floor. He just can't do it Is it Zen to be able to do that but anyway The idea is not so much that you clean in order to clean but the idea of cleaning is It's a way to relate to something. It's a way that

[26:06]

because you're it's you acknowledge the floor by wiping it and then the floor is there for you and you have a relationship with the floor So the floor actually supports you and you feel the floor and because you've made some Expression to take care of or relate to the floor by touching it. It's like a caress you touch the floor and Then it's touching you the floor is touching you and you have a connection and This is what happens with love love Allows something into your heart you respond in some way you reach out and you touch something So this is things out in the world, but then it's also What do you do with your own thoughts or your own feelings and some feelings? They're so painful and intense, you know, we tell them, you know, we'd rather be mad than feel disappointed for instance. I

[27:09]

Know you know plenty of people like that I'm kind of like that sometimes It's easier to be angry than to say I feel so disappointed So I'd rather be angry Sometimes it's difficult to feel sad You know Or sometimes, you know, we'd rather not feel angry It's better to feel like instead of feeling angry. We just think right away. I'm a bad person. I Just shouldn't be alive So a lot of the things that we do actually are ways to You know distance ourself from our experience So in a simple way, you know, we keep saying over and over again in Buddhism just in Vipassana, you know Just note what your experience is Rather than trying to control what the experience is just note sadness disappointment in out Heat cold

[28:09]

And Practice being with things one thing after another with each practice being with the moment of experience Letting it touch you your heart goes out to it. It comes into your heart and you're with things moment after moment Including the things that say I don't like it like this. I Wish it were different. I'm disappointed. I'm so angry So What I'm talking about isn't so different than Probably than you know what many of us are already practicing in the way of meditation or maybe practicing in our life or So at one level it's important to clarify intention and Then at another level is there some way we can actually practice that How do we actually live that, you know live in love

[29:17]

So again, I think first of all It's important to be willing. Are you willing? To be alive. Are you willing to experience things? This is partly a matter of generosity, can you give your Awareness your attention your presence to something It's a matter of patience, you know patiently Enduring what fails to meet your expectation and to behave the way that you want it to And coming back to it anyway You So willingness You know, I was very struck one time I was at a Meditation center in Vermont there was a Tibetan teacher there and he was talking about how

[30:29]

auspicious it was to meditate How auspicious the meditation hall was. What a wonderful opportunity. So, we know with my background in training, I decided to be a little mischievous, because sometimes I go to meditation centers where, I was at one meditation center where there were people busy writing out mantras to put in the 16 foot tall golden Buddha they were constructing, and constructing the Buddha, and sewing, you know, robes. There was about 50 people doing all these different things, and the cook said to me, no one will help, because they have spiritual things to do. No one wants to cook, and when I went to the bathroom, there was water on the floor, it turned out that the toilets weren't

[31:32]

draining, but who'd want to do that, because they're busy writing mantras. So, what's worth giving your heart to? What's worth giving your heart to? So, I asked the Tibetan teacher, well, what about the people who are cooking? Somebody has to do the plumbing. Somebody's going to have to make repairs. We can't always be in the meditation hall. Do we have any chance? Is there any hope for us? And he said, the meditation hall is the most auspicious place, but if you do what you do with complete willingness, it's exactly the same thing.

[32:43]

Sometimes I ask people, you know, just, will you have your life? Will you have your mind? Will you have your body? Will you have these thoughts, these feelings? Willingly, will you willingly receive your life, but you say, no, I don't want it if it's like that. I'd rather die than have this kind of experience. And, you know, we make choices like that sometimes. Sometimes it feels like, if I have to go on experiences, I will die, and then somehow we're alive the next moment. It's amazing. So, willingness, you know, are you willing to have the experience? And then, secondly, can you let it be the way it is, rather than trying to fix it, control it, improve it, perfect it, you know, through some kind of emotional blackmail and withdrawal of your love and your heart.

[33:56]

When you behave better and meet my expectation, then I'll be there for you. But until you do, I'm going to keep my distance. Doesn't work. It's not for your happiness or well-being. It's not for any of our happiness and well-being. It's a bad habit, if I may say so. So, letting the experience be the way it is. You know, that's, again, it's noting, sad, anger, judgment, thinking, resentment, pleasant, unpleasant, grasping, averting. It's being with things and sensing things. And, as I began this evening, you know, making yourself at home in your own being, with all the creatures that show up there, and inviting them into your life.

[35:09]

I would never be able to, you know, partly this is the difference between, you know, if I wanted to cook something, and if I dream up what to do, and then start looking around for the ingredients, can't always get them. I don't always have enough time. So, why not look and see what's there, the things, how much time you have, what do you feel like, and dream up what to do with what's there. It's amazing what you can dream up what to do with what's there, rather than dreaming up what to do, and then somehow the world isn't providing it for you. The world isn't cooperating enough. Sometimes, when I've talked about this, people have the feeling that I'm talking about, you know, surrender, being willing to experience things, letting things be the way they are.

[36:26]

It's a kind of letting go, and then how do you make decisions? But this also means being willing to be with your wishes, with your intention, with your desire and work with it. Be with it intimately enough to dream up what to do with it. Otherwise you're in the position of which from time to time I've felt very depressed, and, you know, depression is some serious negative judgment. Because usually when you're depressed you don't realize how seriously negatively judging

[37:27]

everything you're doing. Things are just messed up. It's just those things, and nothing will make any difference. And I'll make sure that nothing makes any difference, or I'd be wrong, and I'm never going to be wrong again about anything anyway. But what I, in looking very closely, what I discovered was I do have a lot of passion. I do have a lot of desire. And I was just telling myself, it's wrong. It's not good. That's not being willing to be with the vitality, energy, passion, enthusiasm, joy, you know,

[38:27]

the upwelling of your life. That's saying, no, I'm not going to have those things because they're not spiritual enough. So, this kind of practice is also, you know, to liberate yourself. You know, love is also then, you know, about liberation. It's liberating yourself from all these ideas about what's good and what's bad and what's right and what's wrong, and to go ahead and connect and be with things. Again, things, your thoughts, your feelings, your sensations, the people, your wishes, your desires, your passions, your disappointments, to be with yourself, to be present, to show up for you, to show up. When you show up for you, you show up for somebody else. You show up for somebody else, you show up for yourself.

[39:28]

You show up for the floor, you show up for yourself. Now. Now.

[40:30]

Now. Now. One thing that, another thing that Zen Master Dogen said, I mention this because it's easy to be discouraged, at least for me. Tonight, as I've talked, I felt a fair amount of sadness in the room, disappointment, longing, and we wish that we could, that we were more loving. So, Dogen also said, you know, even, it's important, you know, to keep aiming at the

[42:09]

target and, you know, 99 misses, you may have 99 misses before you hit the target. The target, in this case, you know, is to be loving, the target isn't to quiet your mind or empty your mind or, you know, get rid of all experience, not have to relate to anything, be distant and apart from things, so, you know. You know, the target is to be in the middle of our life with love, willing to experience our life and connect with things of our life, with the people and things and with our own being. So, you know, a lot of failures makes no difference, you know, continue to aim at the target. Thank you. We have a few minutes, if anyone has any question or comment before we end the evening.

[43:20]

Yes? Abide, abide, I'm sorry, the heart goes out and imbibes in things, it's just as good. Drink them in, you know, drink them up. That's very devotional and ecstatic, you know, you've turned what I said, you know, my Dogen into Rumi. It's actually the same idea in Christianity, you know, that everything, Brother David, when he taught us about Christianity, he said, everything is a gift from God, but for it to be a gift, you have to receive it as though it's a gift, so if you say, oh no, I don't want that, thank you anyway, then that's called sin. Sin is not to receive your experience as a gift from God.

[44:35]

So, if you say, you know, and Stephen Levine used to tell that story about the person who had a kidney stone and was in extreme pain and got out to the cab and he was sitting in the cab and said, you know, please get me to the hospital and then he was saying to himself, oh God, take this pain away, and then he heard this voice saying, but I just gave it to you. So yes, your heart goes out and abides in things or imbibes in things. Thank you. That was good. Something else? You don't want to be rejecting of your experience, and one of your experiences is rejecting your

[45:42]

experience. I don't know how to describe it, but it's almost, it seems as if there has to be some level of just giving up. Yeah, probably so. I've noticed that, you know, and usually in order to give up, my experience is I have to try everything else first, because the last thing I want to do is actually just go ahead and let my heart, you know, be with the fact that I'm rejecting my experience. That's the last thing I want to do. So I'm going to fix this and, you know, I'll do various things and, you know, what's wrong

[46:43]

with you and get it together, you know, start accepting things. So I'll tell myself a bunch of stuff to do and I may actually try to do those things and the last thing will finally just to be give up, okay, I'll have the experience of the fact that mostly, you know, I'm quite involved right now in rejecting my experience and I'll have that, okay. So anyway, that sense of being defeated seems to be, in my experience, quite important, you know, to give up and to go ahead and be defeated. There's poems and Rilke has a poem like that too. I forget how it goes, but it's something like, you know, you're locked in stone. And how will the stone crack open? And, in fact, our various plans and strategies and things, they're not going to, they're

[47:47]

not working. They would have worked by now if they were going to work. So the sense is that at some point we've just gone that way until we finally hit the wall and we give up. And that's often the usefulness of, you know, extended meditation retreat. That's one of the main places where you can, you know, you started out the meditation retreat thinking, okay, I'll keep my buoyant, you know, energetic, accepting, whatever idea you have of, you know, and at some point it's just not working. So I give up on that plan. We used to say at Zen Center, well, if you can't concentrate, anyway, accept. What else?

[48:57]

Oh, the poem, all of you undisturbed cities, haven't you ever longed for the enemy? To be completely surrounded by him and, you know, brought to your knees, finally being in despair and longing with tears flowing down your face, you finally give up, you know, and, you know, this enemy which surrounds the city, climb up in your turrets. Sure, get up there in your head, you know, I can't tell you the poem exactly, but it says, get up there in the turret, look out, the enemy is there and he's strong, you know, and he's more patient than you and he endures and he's not going anywhere and he's not sending anyone to negotiate. And then there's some, you know, at the end of the poem, and when he works, you know, the one who brings down the walls, when he works, he works in silence, but there's that

[50:06]

feeling, all of you undisturbed cities, haven't you ever longed for the enemy? You know, for ten earth-shaking, you know, tormenting, pain-wracked years surrounding your city, you know, until finally, you know, you let go, you give up, the walls come down, you're connected. So there is that sense of, in that poem, certainly that kind of feeling of finally you give up. Yes? Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Oh, absolutely. Love encourages choice. Love, to be loving is to resume choice. You know, if you feel like I have to, you're not in love anymore. If you tell somebody else, you have to.

[51:06]

And we keep, and so, if we don't have choice anyway, we start to feel resentful, small, you know, we make ourself wrong, other people wrong. And love leaves space for choice, and then the other side of that is, you know, that somehow, it can be very, you know, depending on the relationship, there's all kinds of possibilities. I say that because, you know, for instance, I came across what I really enjoyed, a book I really enjoyed was called Living Happily Ever After. It's this really sweet book, and I called up book people, and they said, oh, we stopped selling that because it wasn't selling. But it's this, you know, oversized, I think it might be a chronicle book, and it's the

[52:11]

sweetest book. It's like about 30 or 40 couples who have been together 40 to 60 or 70 years. And there's pictures of them, you know, as teenagers or in their 20s, and there's pictures of them now. And then there's the stories of all the stuff they've been through. And they, you know, there's two twins, two identical twins that married two identical twins. There's one gay couple, one lesbian couple. You know, there's couples who have been faithful to each other all that time. There's couples who used to take each other to their, you know, boyfriend's or girlfriend's house. But people worked it out, you know, and, you know, part of, and there's a, so there's just many, many different examples of what finally, you know, is an enduring relationship. And people who got divorced and remarried, people who got divorced and are back

[53:14]

together, but they haven't remarried, but now they've been together for 50 years, but they're not getting married this time. And, you know, there's all these different possibilities. But anyway, I just found that so delightful, that book. And it's so touching, all these stories, and the things that we go through as, you know, human beings, and the preciousness of these relationships. And certainly, you know, it's tempting from time to time to say, well, if you love me, you would or you wouldn't do, you know, you would this or you wouldn't that if you loved me. But then that's kind of coercing the person, you know, that's kind of, you know, it's using a kind of argument to kind of coerce them into kind of behavior, you know, that, so my sense of it is more that, and obviously this is pretty potent

[54:15]

issue, you know, but my sense of it is to restore a resumed choice. You know, the only way I could sit still in meditation finally is not that I tell myself, don't move, don't move, don't even think about moving. I have to say, oh, you want to move. Oh, that's cool. Okay. Now, well, shall we or not? And I have to, you know, I have to acknowledge that. Oh, you want to move. Oh, okay. I understand. So I've got to at least listen and acknowledge that I want to move. And then, and then, okay, well, all right, let's do that, you know, or, well, let's sit here a little bit longer, see what happens next. I mean, you know, so I've been able to sit still, not because I denied myself the choice, the possibility of moving, but because I chose to sit still finally. And the relationships are healthiest, you know, when we keep choosing them. We keep, we keep choosing it.

[55:15]

And if there's no choice, it, it just, you know, we, we start, we shrink and feel very small. And then we have, you have to, you must, you shouldn't, you should. And, you know, we're starting, you know, that's a kind of, all a kind of coercion. And oftentimes when we get into a kind of coercion, you know, we start to distance the other person or we start distancing ourself. When we're, when we're involved in coercion, you know, a kind of guilt tripping or a kind of, well, if you were really loving or if you were really this, you were that, you know, we set these things up as a way to, it's a kind of, you know, coercion is also known as control. It's a way to try to, try to control. I would aim for choice and resuming choice. Okay. It's about 9.15. Can we ho? I like to ho at the end of the evening, so you just, ho is the Japanese word for Dharma,

[56:21]

but it's just a fun word. And you, with some energy and vitality, your body, your being, your heart, your breath, and you let the ho resonate through you. Let your body resonate with ho. You receive the sound. You create the sound. Let your intention or your heart go out and share this with whoever you would like. If you're in any pain, let the ho touch the pain. If someone you know is in pain or difficulty, let the ho, just with your awareness, you just include them in the ho. Let them receive that. President Bush, I don't care. Non-President Bush or whoever he is, I don't know. I try not to think about it. But we'll just let everything dissolve into ho for a minute or two. Just let it cleanse and wash through, wash away anything, and let your heart go out to

[57:26]

whoever you'd like it to.

[57:27]

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