Well, as usual, I have various things to talk about and no particular order, and let's see what happens. I was kind of excited to be coming here at the end of the year. It's a pretty powerful time for me. The darkness, one friend today said the profound beautiful darkness, and of course in Zen we appreciate darkness, because the understanding is that when you try to just live in the light, it's so upsetting when it's dark, which it is much of the time. And in fact, one of my favorite teachings of my Zen teacher Suzuki Ueshi was, he said, Zen is to feel your way along in the dark.

[01:11]

So if you have, when you have this, when we have this sense of our life, feeling our way along in the dark, we're not in so much of a hurry, and we're pretty careful. We don't rush. We are fairly sensitive and careful. We don't knock things over. We might bump into things, but we don't knock them over. And so then we little by little find our way. And because it's so dark, we're very sensitive. Rather than, because it's light and we know what we're doing, we can get in too much of a hurry and knock things over and not be so sensitive. It's interesting. So from that point of view, we would say, don't see darkness as dark. It's just dark. Darkness is also the light. It's the light and the dark. Also, though, for the end of the year for me is fairly difficult in some ways, too, because I start to reflect on the year and then next year.

[02:24]

And this year, especially, I feel kind of lost. And part of that loss is I wish there was something I, you know, I wish I knew what to do to make things turn out all right. You know, that kind of feeling. What's the recipe? And I've spent a lifetime trying to make things turn out all right. I thought Buddhism would help. But of course, when you practice meditation, it's not that it's going to turn out all right. It's that you just surrender to however it's turning out. Anyway, that's one side of it, you know. So I am reminded of, you know, just basic Buddhism is don't chase after the future. Don't dwell in the past.

[03:32]

Live in the here and now, in the present. And then, you know, here and now, in the present, we can have our awesome present. So I did want to read you this passage from the Zen teacher Dogen. The title of this piece is called Awesome Presence of Active Buddhas. Don't think that they're somewhere else. Buddhas invariably practice complete awesome presence. Thus they are active Buddhas. So they're, that's us, sitting here, practicing awesome presence. I like the, you know, the word awesome. Carlos Castaneda, Michael Ventura, tells a story about having lunch or dinner with Carlos Castaneda once.

[04:41]

And a woman asked him, how can I have a spiritual practice? I have a good life. How will I have a spiritual practice? And Carlos Castaneda said, just, why don't you, when you go home, just sit down in a chair, any chair, relax, and just remind yourself that you and everyone you know is going to die in no particular order. And if you do this for a while, you'll have a spiritual practice. And Michael Ventura is thinking, isn't that wonderful that he didn't say, you know, read my book or, or tell her exactly, like, what, how to do a spiritual practice. But just something that she can do that would, that would focus her toward having a spiritual practice or toward developing a spiritual practice.

[05:44]

Maybe the circumstances of the world now, you know, are focusing us toward having a spiritual practice. Maybe toward having an active practice. Anyway, the woman that he mentioned this to said, how do I do that? This is, you know, how much we want some instruction. And we don't really have the sense of, this could come from me. This could come out of my life, out of my being. I would find my way in the dark here, and I would allow myself to come up with what to do and how to practice. And I would just see what happens, and I wouldn't know ahead of time. Wouldn't that be awesome? And Carlos Castaneda answered, you give yourself a command. I think that's pretty good.

[06:50]

You could also give yourself a request, or you could give yourself a vow. Or you could acknowledge the vow that is inherent in your life, or the wish that is in your being. You could acknowledge your wishes, or the kind of life that you want for yourself. Now, I understand that as Buddhism. I'm not sure everybody does, but I see that as Buddhism. Acknowledging, and at the end of the year, I start, I take several days to sort out what is my wish, and especially for the coming year. What is my aim or direction? So it's pretty nice to do this. You could also say, what is the command you want to give yourself for the coming year? It's a little different relationship, giving yourself a command. But that's pretty good too, because your being, your body, your being, will respond to what you ask of it.

[07:59]

And, of course, part of our difficulty in our life is that we're asking all sorts of different things, which aren't always compatible with one another. And our being is going to get confused, then, if we're not clear about what our intention, or aim, or vow, or wish is, as to what it ought to come up with for it. One of my friends says, it's not that we only use 5% of our brain, as some people say, you know, we're using 95% to restrain the other 5%. So, apparently, giving yourself a command wasn't quite enough for the woman, so she said, how do you do that? And Michael Ventura was very impressed with the kind of steel, he said, that came into Castaneda's voice when he said, you give yourself a command.

[09:02]

And just repeated it, you know. But with enough intensity that she wasn't going to ask any more questions. But, you know, I'm not Carlos Castaneda, and I would rather you, you know, I don't, you could put in requests. I like the idea of putting some requests for yourself, for your being, for your life, or some imagination. Some wish, some intention, some aim, you know, for the coming year, that's pretty nice. And partly this comes out of, you know, when, you could understand this as doing this consciously, or you could understand that as we quiet ourself in meditation, and tonight I was suggesting going to the level of sensation,

[10:05]

and dropping out of your story, right? How I'm doing, and how I'm doing, and is this working out better, or that, or this, or that, and what's going to, you know. Sorting it all out, you know, in terms of thinking, right? That's so much of our preoccupation, and how well does it work? See, this is the, this is the amazing thing, you know. I mean, I'm very persistent at this, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary. You know, that it doesn't work very well, and I'm still trying to figure out how to make things come out the way they should, or the way I'd like them to, and they still haven't. And golly, why wouldn't I just give it a rest? And, so, recently somebody was telling me about this article in the New York Times.

[11:07]

I have some friends who like Science Tuesday. I guess they're sort of like, I heard, oh, who is it? Sterling, Sheldon, Spalding Gray. I heard Spalding Gray a while back at the Marin Jewish community place in Santa Venetia there. And he said he liked Science Tuesday in the New York Times, because he has so much free-floating anxiety, and Science Tuesday gives him something to pin it on. You know, riding a bicycle can cause an increase in testicular cancer. And the ozone layer, and et cetera, et cetera. And, so, he was acknowledging how useful it is to have a story of where to put what's going on. You know, something to pin it on. And the way we operate in our life is, if we could figure out what was wrong, we could fix that,

[12:09]

and then everything would be okay, wouldn't it? So, now the problem is Iraq, and if we fix that, then there's North Korea, whatever. Find the next problem, and then you would believe that if you took care of that, everything is going to be okay. But actually you spend your time just taking care of the next thing that falls apart. And then you blame everything on that. So here was this wonderful story, and some people came to one of my meditation groups, and they told me about this article. And, interestingly enough, this is what I've been experiencing, especially this year. I tend to get depressed a lot. I mean, I don't know if you notice it. You know, if I'm just giving a talk to this awesome group of people, I don't sit up here being depressed, okay? But, you know, if I get off by myself, and I don't have you around to actively, as it says here, what Buddhas do for one another, you know,

[13:11]

I, as I am, attentively maintained by all Buddhas. See, if I sit here with all of you being attentively maintained by you, I don't get depressed. But if I get off by myself, I stop being aware of all the Buddhas attentively maintaining me, and I don't notice them so much, even though they must still be there. Anyway, I'm sorry, I'll get to what I'm going to talk about. Anyway, this article was terrific, but what I've been noticing this year is that whatever I feel, you know, whatever I say about how I'm feeling, it has nothing to do with anything. I just made it up. I started figuring this out several years ago. I'll come back to this. So, the article says, this is written by a therapist, and she says, okay, I have these two patients, and they're both depressed. They're depressed in the morning, and then in the evening, they're not so depressed.

[14:15]

And it's actually fairly common for people. And she says that's diurnal depression. But one of them, the story is, when I go to work, it's so much stress on the job, it's very depressing. And then I get home, and I can relax, and I feel better. And the other woman works at night, and so she says it's very depressing being at home. And then when I go to work in the evening, she's a musician, and I'm with all these wonderful people and everything, I feel better. But what they're finding out, you know, now, and they're doing scientific studies, science is getting into all these strange things that they didn't used to bother with, right? Because consciousness can't be measured. So they didn't want to get involved with consciousness, since it can't be measured, and duplicated, and replicated, and, you know, all the things that science is supposed to be able to do. So they were doing these studies, and they would electronically stimulate somebody's laughter center. So then the person starts laughing, and they say, what's so funny? And they say, you're awfully serious, aren't you, to the experimenter.

[15:24]

Or they say, oh, that exit sign is really funny. You know, they make up a story. This is what we do, we make up a story as to what the explanation is. So we're doing this so much of the time, you know. I got a letter recently, for instance. Your talk at such and such a place was really painful and frustrating. Your self-hatred and careless mocking of others' efforts was painful and frustrating. And I was really angry with you. You really upset me. Did I do that? You see? So we easily make up stories, you know. You're this, you're that, you make me feel this, you make me feel that. And then, I mean, really? You see.

[16:25]

But this is the story. And as I say sometimes, that's my story, and I'm sticking to it. I don't care whether it's true. But this is amazing that, you know, you actually could be, in the Buddhist sense, you see, liberated from your story. Because you could notice that your story really doesn't have, isn't about reality. And you could then acknowledge your story and go to the level of sensation and be in the present moment and not be captivated by your story. And then trying to get other people to behave so that they don't make you angry. Are you angry or frustrated? Or depressed? That's so depressing. You see. I've been, so like in the last, well it was actually over, it wasn't just this year, but like last year. At one point, I live with Patricia, she's a yoga teacher, and we do Zen and Yoga retreats together.

[17:30]

Among other things, you know. We work together. But at one point, Patricia told me, you're being depressed really makes me angry. And I said, I'm not making you anything, come on. You know, what do you mean? I can't make you anything. You know, Buddhist logic is, when A, then B. So, when you're depressed, I get angry. It doesn't say I made her angry, you know, that would be different, you see. That would be Buddhist logic. And letting go of this story, and making, you know, something out there which you can't control, the cause of something that you feel, that you don't like feeling. And if they behave differently, you wouldn't have to feel what's uncomfortable for you to feel. So if you could just get them to behave differently, you wouldn't have to feel something difficult. Isn't that simple enough? And then how well does it work, you see?

[18:31]

This is problematic. So, finally, you know, it took about three days. Patricia and I were talking about this. In spite of my being depressed, I managed to get up enough energy to talk. It isn't always easy for people who are depressed. Because you would rather, you know, one of the reasons to be depressed is, if you say something, it will be the wrong thing. And also if you start to say something, you know, people might not like what you say, so it would be better not to say anything. And let them not like that. Anyway. So finally I made it clear, like, I'm feeling some way. You didn't have to get angry. That didn't make you angry. You could have been angry. You could have just laughed. You could have, you know, you could have been solicitous. You could have done any number of things.

[19:32]

And at some level, you chose being angry. Or your response was to be angry. And you're justified. And then you justified it further by saying that I caused it. And that you're not actually responsible for your feelings. Something that's happening for you. And that your story, that your story is true. And Patricia finally said, oh, okay, I see. So you're, you're, when you're depressed, it's okay if I get angry. I said, you can get angry if you want. But just don't, don't, don't say that I'm making you angry. You can get angry. Okay. But I didn't make that. You know, go ahead and get angry. You have my permission. And so she repeated all this back to me, and she'd gotten it. And then right then I realized, oh my, your getting angry makes me depressed. So it's so easy to get caught in the story.

[20:47]

That we have the explanation for why we're feeling something or thinking something. Or, you know, and then, and then to think that there, we could figure out what to do so that we didn't have to be depressed, or we didn't have to be angry, or, you know, and how would we do that? And then most of our stories, we just made them up. And, you know, for instance, a dear friend of mine, who I hardly ever see, but, I mean, we practiced Zen together for several years at Tassajara, so that's enough, right? Friends for life, or many lives. So I hadn't seen him in 25 years. And a couple summers ago I saw him. And we spent a couple hours visiting. And he said, and he's somewhere in his, you know, mid to late 50s. I'm convinced, you know, by the way, just as an aside,

[21:49]

that, you know, the 50s are underrated as being difficult for men. You know, men have male menopause, and then, you know, there's no publicity about it. And you don't have these obvious symptoms, like your menstrual cycle stops, and you have hot flashes. No, you just, anyway. But my friend said, oh, a couple years before, a woman he'd been dating broke up with him. And she was, you know, she was younger, she was in her early to mid 30s. And he'd really been appreciating the relationship, and he was quite upset and depressed. And kind of despondent. And then, so, is her breaking up with him the cause of that? After a while he started thinking, you know, this is like the feeling I had when I was 18 and that woman broke up with me.

[22:54]

And at that time he'd been, he'd grown up in Denmark, and he, in response to that breakup, he went away to sea. You know, and his whole life changed. And he spent time in Japan, and he came to California, and he ended up at Tassajara. And those were the days that somebody could just show up at Tassajara and they said, I want to be a Zen student. Okay, go in that room and sit there until we come for you. We don't do that anymore. But he said, oh, that was like when I was 18. And then he got to thinking about it, and actually, you know, when he was four, his mother, he remembered how his mother used to say, you know, we never really wanted you. You were a mistake. So what's the cause of the feeling? And is there anything to do about that cause?

[24:00]

And is there any way to fix it? And this brings me back to awesome presence, actually, because it turns out that the wounds in our life, which we tend to come across in meditation, you know, tend to encounter your woundedness in meditation. You know, at least most of us when we meditate, we're not particularly successful. Successfully concentrating in deep absorption, attaining magnificent luminous states of consciousness, dropping body and mind, expanding into the vastness. Anyway, you know, we just get deeper and deeper into doo-doo or something. I don't know. And then the people who are good at these sort of things, they just do that later.

[25:04]

You know, they have these profound meditation states for 10 or 12 or 15 years, and then they remember, you know, I had a pretty terrible childhood, didn't I? And they start having nightmares and, you know, they start remembering. And they start realizing, like, gosh, I spent a lot of years here avoiding the real pain in my life, didn't I? And Buddhism has really been good at that, at helping me do that. And now maybe Buddhism will be good at helping me have my pain. And from the point of view, again, you know, from Zen, and Zen is to feel your way along in the dark, you know, you could also say that meditation practice in Buddhism is about having your weak point, rather than hiding your weak point or hiding yourself from your weak point or concealing your weak point for the rest of your life. And how do you structure yourself so as to conceal your pain? To hide your pain from, and if you're busy hiding it from others,

[26:10]

you're also going to be, of course, hiding it from yourself. So then there's this some part of you that's in pain, which you hide from yourself, and then the part of you in pain wishes and wishes and longs for you to touch and acknowledge the pain. So, you know, you could actually settle into your being and touch what is most painful and difficult to touch. And that's awesome. That's awesome presence. When people do this, they have a sense of awesomeness. And the other thing, then, that's awesome, is that it turns out that that wound, like that, you know, and there's always some original wound, like my friend, and growing up and being a very little boy, and knowing, you know, from a very early age, Mom doesn't really want me here. It's painful.

[27:11]

Anyway, so experiencing that and touching that pain finally, rather than spending your life like, I'm angry at you for reminding me of my original pain. You know, that's one of our usual responses is to attack what we believe is the cause of our pain. Rather than, you touched what's already in me, my wound, you touched my wound. But it turns out that, of course, that the wound is very close to your blessedness, the preciousness of your life. And when you protect yourself from your wound, you protect yourself from your blessedness. You protect yourself from your preciousness. So sometimes when we're doing Buddhist meditation, we're busy maintaining the right state of mind and aiming to become,

[28:21]

but we're not exactly willing to have or be, you know, our awesome presence, which is both our wound and our blessedness. And it's our connection. And interestingly enough, in that same article that Michael Ventura wrote about Carlos Castaneda, he said that at one point Castaneda said, discipline, discipline is the sorcerer's art of experiencing awe. Discipline, and mostly we think of discipline as, if I was more disciplined, I wouldn't have to experience my pain. I would know how to get rid of this without having to experience it. I would know how to practice to better defend myself from my difficulty. I would know how to live to not have the kind of problems that I have. So this is, this is all, it's kind of, for me, very interesting this way

[29:29]

that we could actually, you know, have our life and have it be awesome, both the difficulties and the blessedness put together. And then, you know, we're not busy defending ourselves from our difficulties. We're attacking others for our difficulties. And this year I've been saying this also as, you know, an expression of love. This is to, you know, because you could also say, and I may have talked about this here before, but it's been, you know, love is something similar again to what I'm calling also tonight, awesome presence.

[30:33]

Because love is something that is, we could just experience, but mostly we don't allow the experience of love to actually be here because we're so focused on approval, measuring up, succeeding, accomplishing, you know, deserving, and then getting, you know, earning. Isn't about accomplishing or deserving or measuring up or earning or approval,

[31:50]

love is just like agree, agree to feel love. Do you understand? So that's awesome presence too. You could, this is actually a kind of decision or willingness. I'm willing to experience, and this is again a possible, you know, aim or wish for the coming year. I'm willing to experience the love I've always wanted and dreamed about and never had, never felt I deserved, always found, you know, that people weren't offering to me enough. And I could just let love be here. If you just, we know this is just a gesture, right?

[32:58]

It's just a hand, but what's the story? And actually for our gestures we have stories, and one of the stories can be, what are you offering? What are you willing to offer? And are you going to offer just nice things and pleasant things? Are you going to just try to be good and not bad? Are you going to try to be pleasant and not unpleasant? And will you offer your heart? Will you offer your sincerity? Will you offer your pain? And our pain is also an offering. And this also, curiously enough, this is a gesture of receiving. That you could offer your love. And is it so different than your pain?

[34:03]

Is it something that doesn't have pain when you offer love? Does love mean that it can't have any pain? It has to just be perfect? Pure? And then this is the same gesture as receiving. What are you willing to receive? Are you willing to receive somebody else's pain? Their difficulty? Or you just want to receive? You know what's the choice. And the more you're willing to offer whatever you have to offer, and receive whatever there is to receive, that's love. And love is something that flows whatever it is. Love can be there, whether there's difficulty or no difficulty, or there's blessedness or preciousness. Love can be there. So we Buddhists don't often talk about love, but I've been struck this year by how close meditation practice is to activity.

[35:07]

Once in a while, Suzuki Rishi talked about it. He said we practice meditation to purify our love. Because usually our love is a little selfish or greedy, or we want it to make a good deal. So can it just be a little freer to offer what we have to offer and to receive what comes into our life? And so this quality of giving and receiving is awesome. And it's more and more awesome the less that it's contrived and controlled. You know, you need to behave differently so you stop making me angry. Because I don't really want to receive that from you or to feel this from me. So one of my aims for the coming year is to live in love.

[36:15]

Which isn't the same as to not have any pain or difficulty. So by the way, my friend then, more recently than a few years ago, his son was about 15 and getting into a lot of trouble. So his ex-wife, they live right next door to each other. He's a builder, so he built a house for her right next door. Same lot. Son wouldn't have far to go back and forth, you know. So his ex-wife was pestering him. You need to do something. Straighten him out. And he didn't know what to do. And finally, he'd been thinking about it and thinking about it. And people, you know, were telling him all sorts of things. You know, tough love and this and that and the other thing.

[37:18]

And do this and that and, you know, whatever. And finally one day he was listening to the radio and he heard Monty Roberts on the radio. Monty Roberts is the original, one of the original horse whisperers. And there is a book called The Man Who Listened to Horses. And actually in the last few weeks I got the books on video from the library in Fairfax and listened to it. And it's just an amazing story about this person who listened to horses. And even as a young boy, as young as seven, he knew that you could train a horse without humiliating it. Without demeaning it. Without, you know, breaking its spirit. When you break the spirit, you know, you're not talking about love anymore. You're talking about obedience. You can't force love.

[38:19]

Marsha Rosenberg, you know, who teaches nonviolent communication says, I could never make my kids do what I wanted them to. I could only make them regret that they hadn't. But, he said, once I made them regret that they hadn't, they made me regret that I had made them regret. So, my friend listened to, anyway, so Monty Roberts is, it's an amazing story. At the age of seven he figured this out and he actually showed his dad one day. And his dad right away went and got this big chain and whipped him. And started and was saying, what, you know, and cussing, what have I been raising? So he had to hide his understanding and his knowledge and his sense of importance from his dad for years.

[39:20]

And his dad never got it. Never understood. And as a teenager he spent, he would spend weeks at a time observing wild horses in Nevada. And he learned the language of horses by watching them. And then, so he studied them, so he found out how to train, or what they now call starting a horse, start a horse. And he can start a horse, a wild horse, and have somebody riding it in 25, 30 minutes. And people who aren't used to this, you know, just can't believe it. And it turns out, like he went to England, the Queen of England heard about him. And so he demonstrated this and right away her handler said, you know, it's a fluke. And a few weeks later by the time, you know, they toured around England.

[40:22]

And then they right away test him with these really wild, you know, these big stallions that are kind of vicious and so forth. And, you know, and he trained them. And finally they were in another part of England and his rider said when he got on the horse and started riding, well, Monty, 51st fluke in a row. But apparently Monty Roberts had started working at times with teenage boys. And applying some of the same principles. And my friend listened to Monty Roberts. And he thought to himself that's it. And he went to his son. And he said, I put my hands in Gusho and he said, I vow to never shame you again. And I want you to let me know if I do because I won't, I'm not always so aware of it, I'm sure.

[41:28]

So I want you to tell me if you ever feel shamed by me. Shame is very powerful. Shame is all those things like, you idiot. You know, you did it, you had it. What's wrong with you anyway? Anyway, so he made that vow to his son and he said, you know, this was when I saw him, it was three years later. And he said, we're now best friends. And you know what? We can now shame each other for the fun of it. And it's just play. You're not supposed to behave like that Dad, you idiot. So there's another one, you know, as far as like an aim and intention.

[42:31]

I'm aiming to not to shame myself. I find I'm very good at it. It hasn't always been so obvious, but it's gotten obvious again. There's actual, you know, articulate purple voice saying, you idiot. You stupid. And so I don't know that shaming myself is particularly effective and strategy in terms of improving behavior to, so that I would become more likable. Why wouldn't I just agree to be friends and love someone who's less than perfect? You know, would I need to be perfect in order to receive my great blessing?

[43:35]

Blessing. There's another passage in Dogen here that I wanted to mention to you. A couple more actually, and we'll finish up. So here's another word. In this case, the word is non-defilement. So for the purposes tonight, you could understand non-defilement as awesome presence. This awesome presence, this non-defilement is what is attentively maintained by all Buddhists. This awesome presence, this non-defilement. You are also like this. I am also like this.

[44:37]

All the ancestors are also like this. Because you are also like this, there are Buddhists. Because I am also like this, there are all Buddhists. Indeed, it is beyond me and beyond you. In this non-defilement, in this awesome presence, I, as I am, attentively maintained by all Buddhists, is the awesome presence of an active Buddha. You, as you are, attentively maintained by all Buddhists, is the awesome presence of an active Buddha. So you can feel it in the room now, this sense of awesome.

[45:41]

And in that spirit also, I would like to mention one more thing, which is, why don't we just go ahead and change the world? And, you know, go ahead and empower yourself in your life, to live your life, to offer what is in your heart to offer, to imagine or dream up what to do with yourself, that is whatever is out there. Because, you know, you may as well. Last summer, or in September, I met someone who has been taking a lot of ayahuasca. Maybe some of you know ayahuasca. It is a South American drug, for some people a drug of choice.

[46:47]

Many visions. So he had gotten really deep into it, you know, gone down to Brazil, and he told me, North America is about to be devastated. What do you think we should do? North America is about to be history. He lives in Toronto. So he is thinking. And I said, well, seems like you have two choices. One is, you really could try to figure out where you and your family could be safe. According to ayahuasca. I told some friends of mine in Fairfax, you know, about this, and they said, oh yeah, ayahuasca was giving my husband stock tips for a while there.

[47:52]

Ayahuasca is a great trickster. But, you know, you can believe the story if you want to. That is a story. That is not the return to the level of sensation. That is a story. That is a vision. That is a picture. Are you going to buy into it? You know, for the future. But, you know, okay, let's say you do, then you could either try to find someplace that is safe, or, given that there may be very little time left, what do you really want to do with your life? And what is the love? And the, you know, the gift, the offering you would like to make with your time and effort and energy, with yourself, with your awesome presence. How will you manifest it? What will you do with it?

[48:56]

So, Happy New Year. Blessings.

[49:01]

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