I don't know about you, I was for many years a very serious meditator. And to be a serious meditator is rather problematic. Partly this, you know, you only find out years later the mistakes you've done. I thought I was just being a sincere, but, you know, I was in one of Nina Weiss's theater improvisation classes and I did a little movement piece and she said, that was nice and would you like some feedback? And she said, you know, you had a lot of variety of movements, you know, fast and slow and smooth and jerky and, but it seemed like everything you did had some meaning. Did you want to limit yourself in your life just to doing things that have meaning?

[01:07]

And it's like, you know, caught again, spotted. So I've spent years seeing if I can lighten up a little bit and not be so serious. It's a work in progress, you know, coming along. Well, and speaking of which, I want to start my talk really with a story about Suzuki Roshi when we were first starting at Tassajara and I had become a Zen student and then I got a job at this place called Tassajara Hot Springs. Some of you have probably been there. And I got a job in the kitchen, I was the dishwasher and once I got there, they were making this fabulous bread and I thought, I asked them to teach me and they said, sure.

[02:12]

And so then I was the dishwasher and the baker. And that was just fun for me, it was work for them to make bread. So they were happy to do less work and to have me to have more fun. And after a couple of months, one of the cooks quit. So the owners of Tassajara said, why don't you take his job? So I did and I was 21 years old and I became a cook. And within hours, I was temperamental. I thought that those cooks just were so, it was so strange the way that they would lose it and become upset and, you know, when I was the dishwasher, I was just calm and no

[03:14]

problem. So that's when, you know, people in my life started having meetings. You know, what are we going to do about Ed? Oh boy. And you know, we reached some kind of deal like, okay, let's just see if we can get through the summer. So I had a couple of months of experience. So then I was going to, continuing to practice meditation at the Zen Center and it turned out that December that Zen Center bought Tassajara. So then they came to me and said, well, you've had a couple months experience, why don't you be the head cook? So I had no idea. I said, sure, of course.

[04:17]

Thank you for recognizing my great talent. I don't know. But that was a pretty overwhelming job. And I went down to Tassajara probably in April the next year. And you know, that winter, there was a big, wonderful, pretty nice kitchen, you know, with a big, tall roof and a kind of cupola in the middle and, you know, where the air could go up and, you know, there's some ventilation and there's a fan and anyway, that winter, we're not quite sure what happened or maybe some people know better, but there was a few caretakers down there and we are talking about the 60s. And there were many times when the phone wasn't working, the phone was one wire through eight or ten miles of woods.

[05:21]

So if a storm, if there was any kind of storm, you know, the wire would be down, it could be down until somebody walked the line and nailed it back onto the tree. And so, and then there's times occasionally when the road, you know, you can't go in and out on the road, there's snow on the road or there's a tree across the road or something or there's a washout. So anyway, meantime, the people down there, we're not quite sure what they were doing, but they decided that it would be good to tear down the old kitchen because they had heard that we needed a new kitchen before we could open again. This was not a correct idea. But in their, you know, in their state of mind in isolation, they believed this. So they tore down the kitchen and left just the floor of the kitchen, a big open deck

[06:25]

with nothing on it. And then they moved the kitchen into what had been the crew's dining room. So then in this little space, kind of like a home kitchen, you know, we would cook for 30 or 40 guests and 30 or 40 students or 70 students or, you know. And if the weather was good, we could set up outside to work outside as well as in this little room. Otherwise, we had five or six people working in this little space. So it was pretty intense. But when I first got there, they, you know, somebody said to me, I started to cook something and they said, at Tassajara, we don't use salt. And I said, oh, why not? And they said, salt is bad for you. Do you now understand how articulate people can be usually about health things, diet things?

[07:35]

That was just the beginning, you know. So I had to, I felt obliged. I went to my Zen teacher, Suzuki Roshi, and I said, they've told me that I can't use salt. What do you think? And he said, you're the head cook. I think you can use salt if you want. And so we started using salt. And then there was this other practice that took a little getting used to, but in the morning we had cooked cereal. We'd have oatmeal or rice cream or cream of wheat or cornmeal cereal, some kind of grain

[08:45]

in a hot cereal. And we were eating at that time family style. So we'd have a, you'd get your food and then you could sit at a table and at the table there'd be a pitcher of milk and some sugar. And then, because some people, you know, we're talking the 60s now, okay, so things are different now. In those days, people wanted higher fat content, you know. So it wasn't milk or 2% or nonfat milk. It was milk and then half and half and occasionally cream. And then for the people who didn't like that, the canned milk, okay. And then, because some people don't like white sugar, we had brown sugar. And then some people, we can't eat sugar. They had honey and then some people didn't like honey either. We had molasses. I mean, shouldn't you be able to have your morning cereal taste the way you want it to? And isn't it appropriate not to deprive anybody of their choice of condiments for their cereal?

[09:54]

So we're doing this for a while. Now, this is okay. You're sitting at a table and you say you have one of these sets for each table and people can reach and get, you know, whatever they want or pass, please pass. And it works out pretty nicely. Then we finally got our meditation hall ready and we started having breakfast in the meditation hall. So now you have a row of people sitting there and then breakfast is served and then how do you get the condiments, right? So we would have little trays with the various milks, with pitchers of the various milks. And then if you, depending on how far you want that to go down the row. It takes a long time. Everybody's sitting, waiting or, you know, and you've got a tray of the milks and a tray of these sugars. And then, so we found out that it's really good if you have just a tray for about every

[11:03]

three people really. Can you imagine how many little pitchers of milk this is now and how many little, you know, sugar and honey and molasses. And then it comes back to the kitchen. We have 30 or 40 of these things. Then do you like, what do you do with them? Do you just cover them with saran wrap and then refrigerate? What do you do, you know, or do you dump them all out and then wash all of these things? So we didn't know what to do. Some of you may know David Chadwick. David was there and we talked about this. What do we do? And about the third morning finally that we did this, I had been serving breakfast and then we, somebody came out of the meditation hall and said, Suzuki Roshi would like to give a talk. He wants everybody in the meditation hall. So we went in and sat down and then Suzuki Roshi gave this little talk and he said, I

[12:10]

don't understand you Americans. When you put so much milk and sugar on your cereal in the morning, how can you taste the true spirit of the grain? What did you think that you could just put milk and sugar on everything in your life and make every moment taste just the way you want it to? Now I don't think any of us had had the idea of tasting the true spirit of the grain. This is like a new concept. I had certainly never had that idea.

[13:10]

Oh, that's interesting. And then there's further that, you know, every moment you could, perhaps you could see if you could taste the true spirit of the moment, the true spirit of you yourself. You could taste the true spirit of your heart, of your presence, of your practice. So after his talk anyway, we went back to the kitchen and we kind of celebrated. That we didn't have to fill up all those little pitchers and dishes any longer. And we took it upon ourselves just to serve, at that point, roasted sesame seeds with salt. You know, sesame salt in Japanese, you know, gomashio.

[14:11]

So, that's, to this day, is the way we serve cereal in the morning in the meditation hall. If it's out in the buffet line, then we put out milk and sugar. But we don't put out the honey and we don't, you know, but now it's milk and rice milk and soy milk. It's a whole different, you know, era. But this is, you know, a very interesting concept. Why don't you taste the true spirit of the grain? Why don't you taste the true spirit of this moment? And what would that be like? And obviously, you know, some moments would be more pleasant and others less pleasant. And when you taste things, you taste sweet and sour and salty and bitter and pungent,

[15:17]

you know, peppery. And then some moments are kind of plain. And some moments are kind of rotten. Suzuki Roshi also at one point told us, oh, but before I go on to that, I'd also like to remind you that then besides the taste, that we can discriminate sweet, sour, salty, bitter, pungent, plain, rotten. Besides the taste that we can discriminate, we discriminate this and that. You know, there's the true spirit of the grain is on one hand, you know, this kind of quality, something particular. But then it's also something that's not particular, right? You know, it's something that is the same as you yourself. Or in Zen, or we say sometimes in Buddhism, you know, it's the flavor of emptiness.

[16:24]

Or you could say, in Zen sometimes they say, this is the one flavor of reality. Even though we discriminate, on one hand, reality is something we discriminate. And on the other hand, there is a reality which is other than the appearances that we get involved in. So you can see here, you know, and that what Buddhism says is, you know, the first noble truth is, if you get involved with appearances and try to make them taste the way you want them to, you are going to suffer. Because you just, you know, the Zen teacher would say, you know, there's not enough milk and sugar in the universe. Or you know, bad idea. Can't be done, you know. So when you set out to make the apparent reality perfectly the way you want it to, this is,

[17:29]

you know, extremely difficult. And so the reality that the faceless reality or the nameless reality, which is, you know, we can also say where beneath the surface or behind, you know, appearances where everything connects, everything is one, there's plenty of, you know, love or resources or sustenance to go around at this other level. So this, and so anyway, so the sense of, you know, striving to perfect the apparent reality and make it the way you want is suffering and yet, you know, how do we realize and appreciate the true spirit? So we can, you know, this is, I tried to suggest in meditation tonight, you know, just see

[18:34]

if you can savor. What about just savoring this moment in this stillness and silence and have a sense of receiving, let yourself just receive and be here and nothing special, not, you know, like you need some special experience to prove that you're okay and not that you need anything particular and you can just be here and receive this moment and let, you know, your breath and your body support you. And it doesn't have to be one way or another. It doesn't have to be pleasant or nice or, you know, a certain temperature or, you know, I'm not thinking, you know. So there's a sense of, however else we describe the moment, sweet or sour, bitter, there's a sense of, some sense of receiving the blessedness of a moment and receiving the blessedness

[19:34]

is that we actually give our attention to something and we acknowledge something and we receive, we taste, we savor. I don't know if I can make sense of all of this, you know, but a little feeling maybe. So, again, you know, sometimes in Zen, there was a Zen teacher who said, see with your eyes, smell with your nose, taste with your tongue. You could also say, you know, think your thoughts, feel your feelings, nothing in the universe is hidden. What else would you have me say? And of course, the thing we would have him say is, how do I get it to taste the way I

[20:36]

want it to? Every moment, how do I do that? And that's when, you know, you might hear, not enough milk and sugar in all the world. But interestingly enough, you know, both Suzuki Roshi, Suzuki Roshi told us this story one time about how his teacher had, his teacher had, they had, they used to, at some time of the year, harvest daikon and then they would pickle them. It's in Japan, we used to do it at Tassajara, you take salt and then this rice bran and you layer the vegetables with the salt and rice bran and the salt draws the water out and there's, the seasoning from the rice bran goes into the vegetables and they're salted and they get a little limp and then the barrel sort of fills up with liquid because the salt's drawing the water out of the vegetable. And one year, apparently, some of the pickles didn't quite make it. I mean, they were kind of rotten, very foul tasting, smelling.

[21:37]

So, you know, here's Suzuki Roshi at that point, he was, you know, 12 or 13 years old and there was a number of little boys there, young men with his Zen teacher, so they wouldn't eat these. But the teacher kept putting them out for them to eat. And finally one day Suzuki Roshi thought he had a good idea, so at night he took the pickles out to the far edges of the garden and buried them. Something's distasteful, dig a hole and bury it. And if you have to, you know, do that in your own body. Find a place in there that you can encapsulate what's distasteful and bury it and don't look there anymore and then study how to not look or acknowledge that part of your body. I don't know about you, but I'm, you know, only after years, I mean, it's only in the

[22:43]

last few years I've found out how good I am at this, it's amazing. Anyway, the next day the pickles were back and his teacher said, there won't be anything else to eat until you eat these pickles. He didn't seem to be interested particularly in who had buried them and he wasn't revealing whether or not he knew. So they ate the pickles and Suzuki Roshi said, it was the first time in my life I experienced no thought. It was just chew and swallow. Do you understand like it's thinking that says how bad this is and I can't stand it

[23:46]

and I'm going to throw up. I can't imagine, you know, doing something like this in America. I mean, this is, you know, have it your way, this is the country of, you know, have it your way, make it the way you want, we'll help you. But interestingly enough, I told this story to a group of Trungpa Rinpoche students and they said, oh, that's nothing. And then, you know, who knows if these stories are true or what. But apparently, according to, you know, legend, I don't even want to tell you this story. According to legend, he was traveling with his Nyingma teacher who was a giant of a man,

[24:53]

well over six foot and which is very tall for Tibetan and rather mountain of a man, large person too. And when they stopped somewhere at one point, there was a latrine and his teacher at one point said, get in there. Apparently, Rinpoche looked around like, who is he talking to? And then his teacher actually eventually had him eat from the latrine. And somebody said, and what happened then? And he said, I got very high. And then they said, and then what happened? He said, and I've never come down. Again, this is not a practice I recommend. But, you know, personally, you know, like I find the war in Iraq sort of like the same

[25:56]

kind of idea. I found it extremely distasteful, you know, and I don't know what to do, you know, except to chew and swallow and to go on with my life and to see if I can in my own life be, you know, sense something about the true spirit. And when I meet people to not be put off or, you know, to see if I can meet somebody and not just, you know, they're like this or like that and how do I deal with it, you know? I don't know. I don't know how to do this. So I keep, you know, studying, you know, how do I do this? Oh, you know, I just remembered, but I have a poem here for you. This is a little poem about, you know, the other reality, besides the world of appearances. And I thought it was especially nice because it's last night as I was sleeping, and since

[27:00]

it is Martin Luther King Day, and since Martin Luther King had a dream, and his dream is something like this dream. This, by the way, is in, you know, the original Roger, is it Roger Housden, who does the Ten Poems, Houston, Houston, Houston, Ten Poems. This was the original Ten Poems to Change Your Life, and notice there's a pile out there to free your life, open your life. Anyway, there's more and more of them. But this was in the first one, Ten Poems to Change Your Life. Last night as I was sleeping by, it's by Antonio Machado, and this is a version by Robert Bly. Last night as I was sleeping, I dreamt, oh, marvelous error, that a spring was breaking out in my heart. I sat along which secret aqueduct, oh, water, are you coming to me?

[28:06]

Water of a new life that I have never drunk. Last night as I was sleeping, I dreamt, marvelous error, that I had a beehive here in my heart. And the golden bees were making white combs and sweet honey from my old failures. Last night as I was sleeping, I dreamt, marvelous error, that a fiery sun was giving light inside my heart. It was fiery because I felt warmth, as from a hearth, and sun because it gave light and brought tears to my eyes. Last night as I slept, I dreamt, marvelous error, that it was divinely precious here in my heart.

[29:13]

So this to me is a pretty subtle and difficult question because it doesn't seem quite right to just say, I'm not going to make an effort to make the world the way I want it to be. All right, because if you're only involved in that, and I have this tendency personally, you know, I want every little thing to be the way I want it to be. I want the traffic to be the way I want it to be. I want the sponges to do what I tell them to. I want the cups to behave. If I nudge a cup and it falls on the floor, I don't want it to break. If something falls apart or doesn't do what I want, I want to know, what's your problem? What's wrong with you? Is it that hard? Grow up.

[30:31]

Get it together. I'm trying really hard, why don't you? You know, so I go on and on like this, you know, trying to get things. And of course things don't care. Are you talking to me? Do you understand? So anyway, in that kind of world, I mean, it is, so where is the world of, you know, the water flowing to me? And is there some way I could get the world to behave and be so that I could experience the water flowing to me? It doesn't work like that, does it? So I've been on the wrong track for, you know, a long time. And it's very painful. You know, and there's good reasons for it, why I'm on the wrong track, you know. But we're not talking about that tonight. So I would like to, you know, sense the water flowing to me.

[31:42]

And to feel the vibrancy of the bees in my heart, in my life, you know, making honey from my failures. And to know the bright sun. And to have, you know, the sense of connection. And, you know, again, there's no buddy out there who's going to be loving enough to give me the connection that I want and the love that I want, because I'm going to have to do it. You know, and I can, as far as I can tell, I can only do that, you know, by practicing that. You know, sitting with, in meditation, you know, sitting with what's happening. And finally being willing to be with it. To be a good friend. To listen to myself. To receive myself. To know myself. To touch. To, you know, connect with. And to settle into my own heart. To be in my own body.

[32:44]

To be in my own pain and difficulty. And not be trying to, you know, bury it. Not be trying to mask it over with, you know, milk and sugar. Not to be trying to make me look some way that then people would recognize. And then I'd be loved. And then I'd be this. And then, you know, it's just, it never works. So, I've, every so often I come across a little something that is, you know, kind of fun and interesting for me. And I thought I'd share with you one of my recent discoveries. This is called, Conversations with the Inner Dog. And this is written by, this is a little book, written by a woman named Lynn Dedanon. And she said she'd had a lot of trouble with her black and white Springer Spaniel Cosmo.

[33:45]

He would bark at other dogs and misbehave in various ways. And she couldn't seem to get him trained. Do you understand? I've never seemed to be able to get myself trained either. And she started finally one day talking to him about his behavior. And funny thing, he listened attentively. And his behavior changed. So, I thought I'd read you a little dog training. But before I do, I want to explain to you, you know, there is a sense in which some people in Zen, you know, there are many sayings about dogs. There is, of course, does a dog have Buddha nature? That's a famous koan, you know, in Zen, does a dog have Buddha nature? And also, you know, Katagiri Roshi, for instance, used to say to us sometimes, Zen is not like training your dog. You know, sit, heel, shut up, be quiet, be still, you know, don't think.

[34:53]

Like, who did you think was in charge here? And then there's also the sense in Zen that, you know, all of us when we were fairly young, we had a vibrant, alive, energetic, playful little puppy in our life. But occasionally, you know, he didn't behave well in company, especially with one's parents. And so, you know, little by little, you leave the puppy back in your room, or maybe down in the basement. And then sometimes after you've left the puppy in the basement, you know, it whines, or it barks for your attention. And of course, then you just move up a floor in your house. Eventually, you move up a number of floors, so you're in the attic. And the dog is somewhere down in the basement. And, you know, meditation practice, as I mentioned at the beginning of the evening,

[36:01]

how do you shift your consciousness from your head, from the attic, from the thinking, planning, conceiving, scheming mind, you know, move back down into the house, and then meet up with the dog, the inner dog. And, you know, how do you become friends with that inner dog? Now, some people, you know, their inner dog, it's been such a long time that that inner dog, if it's anything, you know, like me, you know, my inner dog was pretty, and it's still like not exactly trusting. You're the one who left me here. And, you know, there's some snarling at times, you know. And, you know, first of all, the dog is in lethargy, right? Because after snarling and anger is, you know, despondency, lethargy. This is true of all mammals, you know, if you read a general theory of love or whatever, you know, you know that mammals, after they've been abandoned, and they go past the anger

[37:02]

resentment stage into despondency, despair, depression. So, you know, as you move and you meet the depressed one, then, you know, pretty soon, you know, it's a good sign that, you know, the dog is then angry, resentful, you know. Now you're getting past something, you know, you're getting, you know, so you're re-meeting, you know, yourself and what you left behind. And eventually, you know, you have a dog that's very fun to be with, you know, and it's energetic and playful. And you have some creativity and spontaneity in your life and some vigor and enthusiasm and running here and running there and jumping up and down. And you have some, you know, you have a lot of possibilities that you didn't have when the dog, the inner dog was, and, you know, knew that you're not interested. You've got a nice life going on up in your head. What do you care? So, with that as a little bit of a background, I'd like to offer you some dog training tips.

[38:08]

This is dog training number one, the fool on the leash. Why do you waste your time snarling at other dogs when you are on a leash? What's the point? There's no point. You are identified with negative emotions. This is your me, not your I, who is snarling and lunging. Let go of the illusion that you are fierce and frightening. You're not. You are pathetic. Do you think that it matters that you seem to be fierce? Don't make me laugh. You are a fool at the end of his rope. No one is the least troubled by you. When you are ready to give up your illusions, when you're ready to see things as they are,

[39:12]

you will be a truly happy dog. You see, you really are on a leash. And what does it matter? Nothing. So, and I also wanted to read you dog training number four. I've started trying to talk to myself, you know. But, you know, I'm not trying to talk to the dog exactly. I try to talk to the dog trainer. Because as far as I can tell, it's the dog trainer, the would-be dog trainer, who's the one who needs some training in this case, not actually the dog. The dog is not so much of a problem. For me, it's the one who says, what's wrong with you anyway? Shape up. Get it together. Behave. That one is a real problem. But maybe that's just another dog. Dog training number four, heal but don't follow.

[40:14]

Do you think that I'm crazy trying to teach you? Well, I'm not. But it is a bit tricky trying to teach a dog. I don't want you to follow me. Do you understand? It's a paradox. I want you to heal, but not to follow. I mean, I don't want a brainwashed dog. I want you to heal because you'll be safe and we will be together. We'll be on the path together. Won't that be nice? But it isn't important. You may have to go into the woods for a while and you may need to encounter bears and deer and rabbits and they may be your teachers. So I don't want you to do what I say just because you believe I know better or because you believe you will be punished if you do not do what I tell you.

[41:25]

I want you to wake up and stop being mechanical. I want you to see what all this teaching points to and not simply master each little trick to satisfy me. Of course, you can learn to chase a ball and bring a stick. So what? What does any of that matter? You will be like the pious man who knows how to kneel and pray, sip the wine and munch the bread, but hasn't a clue about God. Of course, none of us do. But some of us know we don't know. Remember, the person who holds the other end of the leash is a fool as well. Well, just to remind you, we have an inner dog.

[42:28]

We also have someone who's the would-be dog trainer. But neither of those, you know, it's not so important to identify with either of those as being more truly you, right? And usually, most of us tend to identify with the dog trainer, the would-be dog trainer, you know. A few of us identify with being the dog. That can be a lot of fun. But it's not quite right. You know, we're actually studying how to have the dog and the dog trainer get along and be good friends. But there's also you, yourself, who are like the true spirit of the grain. You know, not this way or that way. Flavorless, you know, and blessed and precious. I don't know if I'm making any sense tonight, but anyway, it's what I have to share with you. And it really is sweet being here with everyone.

[43:28]

Appreciate your practice and your good hearts. I appreciate it very much. So thank you all. I like to do the chant at the end of the evening here. We'll chant the syllable ho, if you would. And while we do this, we share our hearts with one another. You're letting the sound come into your body and resonate through your body and come out in your voice. And then you can bring to mind anyone you'd like to share the merit and blessings of the evening with, your family, friends, others in the room, and on out into the world to various beings in various stations of life. So let's, and if there's any part of your body that's in pain or difficulty, let the sound resonate there. If there's anybody in pain or difficulty in your life, you can let the sound resonate and go out to them. Okay, so I'll hit the bell to begin and I'll hit the bell to end. When you run out of breath, just inhale and then join back in the sound.

[44:33]

And when I hit the bell to end, then you can finish the breath you're on. Okay.

[44:37]

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