And I bow. Good morning, once again. Don't you think more men ought to wear dresses? Isn't it becoming, I mean, don't you feel safe with me wearing a dress? Guy who's wearing a dress, like, well, we can trust him. He's not threatening us. I brought along some bells this morning. I thought, you know, I could teach you meditation today. You know, the beginner's meditation. So, I'll hit the bell, and when I hit the bell, we can all meditate, okay? So, I'm going to teach you, okay? So, I'm going to hit the bell. Now, you listen, all right? Are you ready? So, when we hear the bell for meditation, then we start listening.

[01:32]

So, one of the first things you do when you hear the bell for meditation is you stop talking. Usually, if you're talking, it's hard to listen. So, if I hit the bell, and then I have to start listening, too, so I won't be talking the whole time, okay? So, you've got the first part now. When you hear the bell, you become silent, and you start listening, okay? Now, we're going to talk about what do we listen to. So, why don't we try it again? I'll hit the bell, and you can listen, and then see what you hear or what you notice, okay? Meditation is to come home to yourself and listen to yourself and to the world, okay? So, let's listen. So, you probably, you know, we hear some sounds.

[03:03]

When you listen, you hear sounds, but also we're doing a kind of listening that is, we're going to see if we can listen to more than sounds. So, we're also listening to how do I feel. How do you feel today? So, you check in with yourself. How do I feel today? What's happening with me? Do I feel calm, centered, peaceful? Do I feel anxious, scared? Do I feel restless, bored? How do I feel? So, see if you can notice how you're feeling, okay? And just let yourself feel whatever you're feeling. You don't have to, whatever you're feeling, it's okay. So, we'll all be feeling something different. So, let's see what we're feeling now, okay? What's that?

[04:13]

Is that an earthquake? Is that an earthquake? Did you feel that? So, that was that felt. That was a surprise, wasn't it? A little surprise, yeah. One of the things, you know, once you start to notice how you're feeling, how you're doing,

[05:21]

and then one of the things you might also notice is, you know, your sensations. You might notice like, or your breath. Do you notice your breath from time to time? Huh? No? No? Not at all? So, well, let's try it, huh? Why don't you see if you notice? Yeah, okay. Let's try it, okay? Let's see if you can find your breath. I'll hit the bell and then see how am I doing? And I'll listen and see if I can find my breath. So, let's try it out. Here we go. Breath is interesting because it's always there. And it carries us along whether we notice it or not.

[06:23]

It carries us because the inhalation and exhalation supports our life. And then one of the things, you know, you also notice is like some of you are sitting by yourselves and then some of you are sitting with your parents. So, you can notice, are you being held or are you sitting up for yourself? And do you feel your own, your body and your being? And here you are present. And you'll have many experiences. So, let's see what experience you have. I'm going to hit the bell and then you'll see. What experience will I have now? This is like an adventure. Yeah. Experience. Experience? Whatever happens is an experience. You'll have, something will happen, won't it? So, something happens. What will it be that happens? So, let's see what happens when I hit the bell and we'll just see what is it that happens.

[07:30]

Usually, we don't notice what happens very closely, but we're going to see if we can experience or notice what happens, feel what happens very closely. See if we can really have or be with what's happening. So, what happened? Yeah. What happened? You heard the baby talking? You did?

[08:32]

Uh-huh. Anything else? Did you, did you, something else happen while you were sitting? While we were listening? Usually, often we hit the bell, and we have some kind of thoughts. We think, oh, this is fun, or this is stupid, or I'm having a good time, this is, I'm not having a good time. So, we'll think something, won't we? Huh? I can't hear. Arbor Day happened. So, you remember Arbor Day? Was that yesterday? Oh, next week. Oh, okay. Arbor Day is coming up. So, what do you think when you, as things happen, can you, can you tell what's going to happen next?

[09:42]

Huh? You can't tell what's going to happen next? If I hit the bell, you can't tell us ahead of time what will happen? What? The bell will ring more. You think the bell will ring more. Well, maybe. We'll see. Yeah, I think I'm going to hit the bell some more. But I might not. Yeah. So, we don't know what will happen. Once I hit the bell, then we can't tell what will happen, can we? Huh? We can't tell what's going to happen? And what do you think is that, you know, can we trust what's going to happen? Will we still be safe? We're going to be safe? The bell rings, and we don't know what will happen, but it's going to be all right. Not necessarily.

[10:44]

Is that scary? Are you worried? No. Huh? Not so much. Not so much, huh? The more you're worried that what's going to happen next won't be much fun, huh? You're worried that it's going to be boring. We don't know what will happen next. Should we find out what's going to happen next? Huh? All right, let's see if it's scary or what it's like, what happens. Or maybe it's just going to be boring. Let's see what happens. One. Oh, I always feel such a sigh of relief. I hear the bell, and then I start to breathe, and then I feel like,

[11:51]

Oh, thank goodness. I'm here. We're still here. It's okay. How was it? Huh? It was good? It looks good. You're sitting in your mom's lap, huh? Yeah. Well, lots of things can happen, can't they? And since we don't know what will happen, is there some way to be ready for whatever happens? Huh? Can you be ready for whatever happens? Huh? No. When you're dead, you'll be ready, huh? So what do you think?

[12:58]

Should we just hit that we see what happens, and then we see what we do, and then that'll be that, huh? Yeah. Well, sometimes we think we are going to decide what will happen next, and then we're going to make that happen, aren't we? Uh-oh. Well, I also want to say, you know, when you hear the bell, now let's see if we can enjoy our breath, and enjoy, just enjoy a few moments of silence, okay? And just enjoy, and you're going to see if you can be with yourself. This is a way to be with yourself, and a way to be a good friend to yourself. So you see, how am I doing? Am I happy? Am I sad? Am I worried? Am I bored? How am I? And then can I be nice to that person? Can I be a good person? Can I reassure myself? Can I be happy with myself, however I am,

[13:58]

and tell myself, you're doing good. That's good. Thank you. Thank you for being you. You can thank yourself for being you, all right? Let's try it. I'll hit the bell, and you see what happens, and then you can say thank you, whatever it is, okay? Thank you. We don't know what it will be, and we can't put our order in. Pizza. And for dessert? Chili beans. Chili beans for dessert. All right, well, let's see what comes. Now that we've put in our orders, and let's see what happens. And then we'll say, whatever comes, now we've put our order in, we'll see what comes, and we'll say, oh, thank you. What a surprise, but thank you. Huh? Ready?

[15:02]

The pizza? You want the pizza. All right. Let's see what comes, though. You can imagine, pizza, pizza, and see if it actually appears. Ding. Ding. Hmm. Ding. Ding. Are you thinking about pizza? Are you happy to be thinking about pizza? Say thank you. Well, thank you very much for meditating with me this morning,

[16:07]

and thank you for being you. Huh? And when you hear the bell ring, you can listen, and whatever happens, you say thank you. And then, thank you, yeah. Thank you, because I can't order whatever I want and make it be that way, but whatever it is, I'll see what I can do with it. Yes. Yeah, that's right. Who is you? You know, my little, my next-door neighbor, when he was, he's four now, and he used to say to his mom, he'd look up at his mom and he'd say, Pick you up? Pick you up? So, it's not clear who you is. Anyway, thank you very much. Many blessings.

[17:09]

Ahem. I didn't think if you had notes. Do you have notes you want to put on the little table? I just assumed you didn't want to. I don't have any notes. I didn't bring my notes. Okay, okay. Thank you. Take care. Enjoy the beautiful day, huh? Take care.

[18:26]

Hope you enjoyed the meditation. Thank you. I watched a video recently. Someone named BZ Goldberg came to one of my Zen and Yoga retreats. And he was one of the people

[19:32]

who made a movie called Promises. Promises is about children in Israel and in Palestine. He grew up in Jerusalem and lives now in Berkeley. And over the course of three years, from 1997 to 2000, he made a video and a movie with some other friends and with a lot of funding from various people. So they took days of film and they videoed children. So the movie, finally, there's five or six Israeli children in Jerusalem and five or six Arab kids. So they're learning very young the truth. Finally, towards the truth

[20:38]

as presented by their parents and the society. They live only a few minutes apart, but it's almost impossible to be friends because there's all these checkpoints where Arabs can't pass. At one point in the movie, he arranges for some Israeli children, a set of twins, twin boys, to come and visit the Arab children in one of the refugee camps. And they have a very enjoyable afternoon finally. And they talk about a lot of things and play and roughhouse. But after that, and without him being there, it wasn't possible for them to go on being friends. I don't know what to do about this,

[22:00]

except to, in my own life, study how to be a friend in whatever limited way I can. It's so sad to see these children at age eight or 10 talking about killing and not being safe to ride the bus and not being able to be friends. Lately, I'm a little uncertain from time to time

[23:03]

whether, in spite of all my practice in Buddhism, whether I'm actually prepared to live in the world. It's so painful. This last week, I was, for two days, just mortified by the thought that we might, as a country, bomb innocent people, people who seem to have made the mistake of living in a country that has oil under the ground or that people who somebody sees as dispensable, disposable, in the way, a means to an end, getting what I want. I don't know. Robert Blight, years ago,

[24:05]

wrote a poem about the Vietnam War. This is to make the world safe for democracy. This is to make the world safe for standard oil. And so forth. It was Vietnam then. And sometimes, you know, I think, oh, well, maybe the world hasn't changed that much since the Middle Ages, since slavery. You know, wealth and power seems to covet wealth and power

[25:05]

and destroys anything that gets in its way. You know? And as Buddhists, you know, it, you know, in some ways, it seems like we say, I'm not going to participate in that. Or, you know, it's very difficult to, how do you participate in the world and fight for what you believe in and not become, you know, yourself evil? Right? How do you do that? Because it's so easy, isn't it? We can understand, you know, how painful it is for, you know, to be attacked by terrorists. But, you know, it's, if we bomb Iraq,

[26:10]

it's just state terrorism. It's terrorism on a much larger scale than a few independent entrepreneurs can manage. Because it wouldn't be legal. It wouldn't be in accord with international law. It wouldn't be justified. It would just be because we feel scared and we think it's important and it's in our best interest, according to somebody. But it's just state terrorism. Apparently, you know, in Israel, there was 50 deaths from suicide bombings and the government then decided to crack down on terrorists. So now there's been 500. So it worked, didn't it? It worked. You know, it doesn't work. This is very strange, you know, but people think it will work. It will work if we're, because we're good and we have a righteous cause,

[27:13]

it will work. And it doesn't work, you know. Religions, Buddhism is no different than other religions, you know. Violence and hatred do not cease by violence and hatred. Violence and hatred cease by love. So I was encouraged last week, I got, I sometimes, a lot of days, I'm too scared to even take and receive emails. God, what's going to happen now? Who wants me to do what? But a while ago, I got an email from a friend of mine and she said, if anybody knows what we can physically do with our bodies to prevent this war, let the world know, starting with me. She sent out this email to her list

[28:13]

and then in the next day or two later, she got back an email that said, send a half a cup of rice to the White House. So she's forwarded that email to me and now I've forwarded it to some friends. The story is that anyway, you can send a half a cup of uncooked rice to the White House for $1.06. And apparently there's a history to this that actually in the 50s, there was a campaign by the Fellowship of Reconciliation for a while to send rice to the White House. And apparently actually thousands of people sent rice to the White House and it was never acknowledged by the White House. And it wasn't until 10 years later they found out that actually President Eisenhower, when he was dealing with Kamui and Matsu and those islands off the coast of China and some of his advisors told him to bomb China and various things,

[29:15]

he said, how many packets of rice did we get? Anyway, apparently it had been tens of thousands. And he said, if that many American people wanted to send rice to China, want to send rice to China, we can't bomb them. Anyway, it was a nice story. And so I thought, well, I'll send some rice. And the suggestion was to send rice with a little note that said, a quote from the Bible, if thine enemies are hungry, feed him. Please send this rice to the people of Iraq. Do not bomb them. This is so, you know, such a challenge for any of us. How do we fight evil without becoming evil?

[30:19]

Andrew, isn't it? Solzhenitsyn, was it Andre? Andre Solzhenitsyn, the poet, Russian poet. He said, wouldn't it be, you know, it would be so wonderfully simple if we could just identify good and evil and eliminate the evil, destroy it. But unfortunately, the line, the dividing line between good and evil runs right through the middle of each person's heart. So how do you destroy yourself? So I don't know what to do. And, you know, like I asked the children,

[31:25]

you know, to make sure what will happen next. Is there any way to tell what will happen next? To, you know, what should we do? So it doesn't seem to help particularly to get lost in my own fear or terror. Certainly doesn't help to believe that there's some way to make sure, literally, that we're going to live in safety. We don't know what will happen next and we never will know what will happen next.

[32:27]

We don't know whether the next moment is a moment. And next moment is a moment like every other moment, isn't it? We don't know what will happen. It's fragile, it's vulnerable. It's free, it's liberated. It's empty and it will appear. And one of the basic, you know, understandings in Buddhism is, you know, things that happen, we then, you know, give them various meaning and we add to what happens, our opinion or our evaluation. It's good, it's bad. I like it, I don't like it. And then we start to think, you know, something about how do I make sure that other moments like, moments like this never happen again. How will you do that?

[33:29]

And as we get caught up in making sure that the next moments are going to be a certain way and not some other way, how do we do that? So this is just impossible. And then, but you know, as people, it's hard for us to understand and appreciate this and to let go of wanting to make the next moment one way and not another. Extremely challenging. And this is meditation. Hmm? To see what happens next. Without the capacity to, letting go over and over again of our capacity or our idea that we'll control what happens and make it to our liking. This also means, of course, that we're free.

[34:34]

As far as I can tell, you know, Suzuki Roshi, there's a famous story about him, you know, during the Vietnam War. And as far as I can tell, you know, if somebody went to him and said, Suzuki Roshi, there's a peace march on Saturday and I'm planning to go. It's quite likely that he would say, well, good for you. Please enjoy yourself. That's great. And then if somebody said, you know, there's a peace march Saturday and I don't know, I think I'd rather just come here and sit with you. Oh, good. Why don't you do that? But if anybody said, shouldn't we be? Isn't there some way we should be? Should we be? That's when he got mad at someone. Because somebody was saying, shouldn't we be out protesting the war? Shouldn't we as Buddhists be? You know? So the idea of should, shouldn't we be?

[35:38]

He said, don't you realize the war is right here? Right here in each of our hearts. This is where the war is. So some of us, you know, we're all fighting the war in our own heart. How to be a friend to ourself. And I don't know about you, but I'm, I find myself to be a pretty worthy foe. A rather difficult, ornery, distressing kind of a person. Very moody and intense. Difficult to be with. Not a happy person to have around. Often gloomy or sad or angry. Frustrated.

[36:41]

Annoyed. What kind of person are you? Picture of light, huh? Yeah. So we're studying how can I be with me? And how can I be happy being me? Is there some way to be happy being me? This is, you know, Buddhism. How can I be happy? Is there some way to be happy being me? And what is it going to take, you know, to be happy? So this week, in the midst of my angst and dread, I've been studying again about how can I be happy. And there are various, you know,

[37:44]

there are various things about being happy that, of course, that Buddhism points out. Other people point this out too. It's not very complicated, you know. Obviously, if you're only going to be happy under certain circumstances, it won't happen very much, will it? Certain circumstances like when I've had enough to eat, when I've been to the bathroom, when I, you know, don't want anything, when I'm just content, when, you know, when the war is over, when everybody in the world is fed, when, you know, what are the criteria in order to be happy? Is it some immediate gratification that I'm missing or some situation in the world in order to be happy? And then does it make sense, you know, Buddha asked his disciples, you know, does it make sense then to make your happiness contingent upon the conditions being met?

[38:45]

And then your happiness, no, it doesn't. And your happiness is always in the future. And the conditions are never quite met. Or once they're met and then only for a few moments and then there's new conditions for happiness to arise in the future. Once I become a nicer person or these other people behave better or my friends are nicer to me, my lover forgives me, you know, my kids this, my parents that, what will it take to be happy? So mostly, you know, we put conditions on our happiness and we make ourselves the victim of circumstances. And Buddhism says, this is why you suffer. This is why we suffer because we've in our minds set up that happiness is dependent on conditions. And is there some way to just be happy regardless of the conditions?

[39:46]

Or as some people say, you know, the happiness without a cause. Buddhism, it's a happiness without a cause. It's uncaused happiness. It's not happy because. And this is what we study again in meditation. And, you know, if I hit the bell and you listen and you breathe and you're with yourself, you have your thoughts and your feelings and you say, yes, at last I'm here and I can be with myself and I can have some gratitude for my life and for my friends, for my feelings and thoughts. For being alive in the world. And it's turns out that I can be happy, you know,

[40:59]

even though I'm someone who has difficulties. When I can sit with my difficulties, breathe them into my heart. Smile at someone who has difficulty. Sit quietly with someone who has difficulty. And I can be happy having difficulty once I stop telling myself what's wrong with you. You idiot. You shouldn't have any difficulties by now. You've been a Buddhist for so long. Do you know, it's a little bit like Mark Twain apparently said, so my life is so full of terrible, horrible things that have happened to me, most of which didn't happen. Oh boy.

[42:05]

Well, so that seems like a good kind of happiness to aim for, don't you think? The happiness without a cause. The happiness of that we're here and we can be, sit quietly in our life. But it's also, you know, means that, you know, as I was saying about Suzuki Roshi, you know, if you're moved to do something, whether it's send rice to the White House or what it is, you know, go ahead and be moved. This week I've been thinking too, gee, and it's not quite, you know, it's not quite yet like I want to do that, but I'm thinking, you know, maybe it's about time I just go and sit, you know, in front of the White House, meditate nine to five, make it a job, cancel the rest of my life until further notice.

[43:09]

I have friends in DC. You know, I have places to stay, but, you know, I'm still thinking, you know, I should do that. And I should do that is a little different than I'm going to do that, but we'll see. The next time that I'm scheduled to talk here, I, you know, I might be somewhere else and it might not stop anything or, you know, produce anything, but, you know, my body would be there. Zen practices, your body's in a certain place at a certain time doing a certain thing, you know, showing up. And we all have the gift of our life.

[44:14]

And then, you know, we have this question, what will I, how will I do? What will I do with my life? How will I live my life? Mother Teresa said, one, you know, I started with one person. I helped one person. And, you know, that's what, how I started. That's all we can do, you know, is we start someplace. And it's just the expression of our life. And, you know, at some point there's also, we have no control over things, but we have our life to express and our gift to give to the world of who we are in the best way we know how to do that. So we'll see what happens, won't we?

[45:20]

Once the bell rings. Or has it rung? I do want to, I would like to do a little loving kindness meditation with you. To finish up this section of the morning. I'd like to extend, you know, loving kindness to ourselves and then to one another and to whoever we wish. And I'll say, you know, some lines of loving kindness, and then you can adjust them or use whichever, you know, feels right for you. May I be filled with loving kindness. May I live in safety,

[46:28]

free of danger, within and without. May I be full of well-being. May I live in ease regardless of the conditions. And you can breathe that into your heart. Let your heart be moved as you inhale and exhale. May I be full of loving kindness. May I extend warmth

[47:32]

and compassion to all beings. May I see the Buddha or the divine in each person I meet. May I learn to meet the best in myself and in each person. May I live in ease and harmony with all people. And if there are others you would like to extend loving kindness to, may you,

[48:33]

may you live in loving kindness. May you be free of danger, within and without, living in safety and well-being. May you be full of health and happiness letting others share in your joy and vitality. Thank you. Blessings.

[49:28]

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