Good morning. I need to clear my throat. I'm worried about coughing into the microphone. Well, I don't know about you. You probably came for the talk. I just as soon, I think, sit here and listen to the rain. Doesn't it sound nice? I mean, as long as you're someone whose house isn't about to fall off the hillside, right? Rain is one of those wonderful things

[01:05]

that when one is at least safe and dry inside, there's something very reassuring about the sound of the rain and very soothing. And in some way, we are like the plants watered by the sound of the rain, watered and refreshed. I also enjoy very much sitting quietly with people. And I noticed that this morning. It's really nice that all of you could come and share

[02:09]

this kind of quiet and the stillness of this space of Green Gulch and this building. And when we, you know, when we come to a place like this with others, we can share a deeper kind of silence and stillness and composure than we often can by ourself, you know, without having to make any special effort. Just by being in the same space with others who are quiet and still, there's a wonderful kind of resonance. And sometimes, something like the sound of the rain will even help to deepen that stillness or quiet. Classically, you know, it's the sound of

[03:15]

the bird deepens the silence of the mountains. Because the silence just by itself, we often don't realize how quiet things are. And the sound of the bird or the sound of the rain will help us realize how still things can be. This weekend, I'm involved in a workshop here at Green Gulch on Zen and psychoanalysis. I know not so much about psychoanalysis. And I've had a lot of experience with Zen over the years. I don't know how much I know about it. So anyway, this morning, and we're sort of involved with the subject of eating as a kind of focal point. So this morning, I thought I

[04:20]

would talk a little bit about eating. Do you like eating? I like eating a lot. And so somehow, it's been a major kind of focus of mine. And I find it an interesting subject because around the subject of eating, for me, you can talk about, you know, I can tell you all about Buddhism just in terms of food and eating. So that's sort of what I'm going to do today. I'm going to give you the basic course in Buddhism, but we'll just be talking about food. And, you know, what I tend to do in my talks is I think up the stories I want to tell you. And then I try to think of like, what can I, what Zen story can I use so that I can make sure that you understand that this is really about Buddhism and Zen, and I'm not just telling you stories. So the saying I have for you today, you know, is the classic story of Zen,

[05:28]

classic Zen saying, you know, what is Zen? What is everyday mind? And the teacher says, when I'm hungry, I eat. When I'm tired, I sleep. And then people wonder, well, why would I follow the schedule at Green Gulch then? Because at Green Gulch, when I'm tired, I have to get up and go to the meditation hall. And I'm only eating at the scheduled times and so on, you know. So this is one of life's mysteries, so to speak. But interestingly enough, this weekend, I found out that, you know, in anthropological studies and so on, that cultures that have rights, the more rights and rules they have around food, the less eating disorders they have. That's interesting that actually some order or some rule, you know, helps us kind of come to grips with our desires or our wishes or, you know, the functioning,

[06:29]

how we live our life. So I was thinking about the way that we eat in informal situations. And just to describe it briefly, many of you, of course, know, but we have a set of bowls that are of different sizes. So they nest inside of each other. They'll stack up in a nice little packet. And it's all wrapped up with a nice cloth on the outside. And when we go to eat, we chant first, and then we open up the outside cloth, and this becomes the tablecloth, because you tuck in the edges on either end and then the edges on the front and on the outside. Then you have this little rectangle of a tablecloth. And then you can set out your bowls, and then you can get out your chopsticks and spoon. We haven't converted yet to, you know, Western utensils. But you get out your chopsticks and spoon. And then along with the utensils and the bowls, there's also a little napkin for your lap. And then there's a little drying cloth. And there's also a cleaning stick. And the cleaning

[07:32]

stick in some Zen centers now has converted from the stick with a little piece of muslin sewn on the bottom, which some of us are not so good at keeping clean, and which need to be replaced. And again, some Zen centers have switched to little plastic spatulas, you know, that you can use to clean out your bowl with. This is important because we also do the dishes as part of our eating ceremony. We serve hot water, and you clean your first bowl and pour the water into the second bowl, and then take your drying cloth and dry the bowl. And then clean your utensils, clean your second bowl, pour the water into the third bowl, dry the second bowl, and so on. And then we come in and we collect the extra water, which at this point is considered to be a kind of elixir. We say, when the servers come in to pick up the water, we say, the water with which I clean my bowls tastes like ambrosia. And then we offer it to the various spirits to satisfy them. And presumably, who's ever

[08:38]

collected at some point goes out and in fact does offer it to the various spirits and pours it on some plants someplace, or outdoors somewhere, and not just down the drain in the sink. Usually, the idea is like you get more spirits when you pour it outside than if you just pour it down the drain. Some of our parts of our ritual are not as ritualized as others, so it's kind of up to the server's discretion what they do with this water. We haven't had a lot of clear, careful instruction on this point. But the meal itself is pretty clear. Now another of the interesting things about this meal is that we have three bowls and we often serve three things. And then traditionally, the idea is just take what is served. You're not supposed to sort of like check it out so much. Do I want it? Do I not want it? Is this good for me? Is this not good for me? So traditionally, you're invited to accept some of each thing that's offered.

[09:47]

At some points, we've amended this. We have the dairyless section of the zendo, because over the years, there's different sort of fads of what people get concerned about. When I was starting to practice, there was a huge macrobiotic contingent. So they wanted brown rice and cooked vegetables, and they didn't want dairy. And then there were the people who wanted potatoes and cheese and salads. And the macrobiotics, they didn't want salads. So there was a lot of little tension in the zendo. And then there's the phases where we should all have more protein. So we had more dairy and more cheese and more nuts and this sort of thing. And right now, it seems to be pretty quiet. But for a while, there's the wheat-free and the dairy-free, and we would have little sections. You had to sit in a special place in the zendo, and you could get the dairyless meal. So we have at times tried to work with the fact that people

[10:53]

have preferences. But the overriding rule is, just take some of each thing that's offered. So someone comes with the food, and you're sitting, you have your bowls up at this point. Then we bow to each other, and then you're offered something for your bowl. And you have discretion over how much to accept. But the idea is, this is basic to practice in Buddhism, don't pick and choose. Don't think that you have the capacity to pick and choose what you'll get in your life. If it's offered to you, bow and receive it, and then you eat it. This is not always the most satisfying experience in some ways. But interestingly enough, when we eat things thoroughly, and digest things, and then we can absorb,

[11:54]

and digest, and grow from the experiences in our life. So it's fundamental that we get not only the things that we like, but also some of the things we might not like so much. And when we eat those things, and carefully, and digest them, and assimilate them, we grow. And otherwise, when we go through life, and we pick and choose what we're going to get, oftentimes we end up with a deficiency of something that's a little distasteful for us, but actually might be very good for our diet. So hopefully the monastery in serving, you know, the cook is supposed to be quite wise and know about these things. But sometimes it's just a matter of, you know, they're supposed to be quite wise and know about these things, and give you a nice diversity, and some, you know, balance the flavors so you get some bitter, as well as the sweet, and so forth. And you have cooling foods in the summer, and warming foods in the winter, and so on. And cooks should have some awareness about this, ideally.

[12:59]

But also sometimes the cook will, you know, overcook something, and something's a little burned, or it's not cooked or, you know, prepared the way that you would do it. I met somebody yesterday who was here who just moved away from Green Gulch after some time, and so she, of course, was having this experience of, like, oh yes, we got this house in San Francisco, and it is so wonderful. We get to cook for ourselves. You know, we get to make, like, what we like. And how wonderful this is, after you've been through this sort of thing of, like, you get what's served. And then you get to complain and say, well, I wouldn't do it like that, and I don't want that. And boy, if I cook, it wouldn't be like this. And you forget, you sort of start to sort of be picky about it, and forgetting the fact that there's also a certain chore to cooking. And there's all this work that people have done for you, and they've worked very hard, and they're making this offering to you. And it may not suit your fancy, but it is this sincere

[14:06]

offering that has this, you know, effort that people have made. So it's easy to overlook that, but this is the idea when you're in the meditation hall to receive the food. You bow, and you can respect that you're receiving this wonderful food, and you didn't have to cook it, you know, in a lot of instances. You didn't have to go out and, you know, grow the vegetables, and you are provided for. How nice that is. Well, I thought of some of my eating experiences, and one of my favorite eating stories is not, you know, mine exactly, but one that Suzuki Roshi told about when he was a little boy. This has wonderful psychoanalytic, you know, sides to it, so it's a good story here. But when he was a young man, and his father sent him to the monastery

[15:09]

of his disciple, of the father's disciple, when Suzuki Roshi was a boy, nine or ten years old. And one year when he was still perhaps ten or eleven years old, they used to pick daikon radishes, daikon, the long white radishes, and they would pickle them, because they're all ripening about the same time. And so then to keep them, they would put them in salt and rice bran, and it makes a pickle. And one batch of pickles, they didn't put enough salt in. So the pickle kind of rotted before, you know, as well as getting pickled, it kind of rotted. And their teacher, being the kind of teacher he was, served them anyway. And the Suzuki Roshi had some, there were some other young men there too, and all of them, you know, their natural inclination of course was, no thank you, yuck. And so meal after meal though, the teacher served them, and they would kind of like just eat,

[16:14]

you know, the other things, and they would leave these, the rotten pickles. A little funny smell to them, not just a little funny smell, pretty strong funny smell. And so finally he decided, you know, he took matters into his own hands, he took the pickles, took them outside into the garden at night, dug a hole and buried them. This is a very good thing you might think to do with something that's distasteful. You dig a hole either out in the garden or somewhere inside of you, you put what's distasteful in there and you put some dirt over it and you hope that what's distasteful will stay there, interred, carefully interred there, and will not come back in some way to haunt you. And in this case though, the next day the pickles were back on the table again.

[17:16]

We don't know exactly how this happened, but it's mysterious, you know, when you're a kid how parents know about these things, you know. Have you been smoking? Oh, how did you know? But there they were again, and this time the teacher explained to them that they wouldn't have anything else to eat until they'd finished the pickles. So this is, you know, otherwise, this is some distasteful, so to speak, medicine. I'm not a real fan of distasteful medicine, you know, I don't like to dispense it personally, but I appreciate this story. So they had to eat the pickles. So Suzuki Roshi said, eating those pickles was the first time in his life he experienced the state of non-thought. This is, you know, a great accomplishment in Zen, you know, not thinking. Because he said,

[18:35]

if you were to think anything you would have to, you know, spit up the, if you were to think, you know, like these taste awful, these smell terrible, this, you know, this makes me sick, you know, I can't stomach this. If you thought anything, you know, you couldn't eat the pickles. So he said it was just, you know, eat, you know, chew and swallow, chew and swallow, and with no thought. Well, I appreciate this story too, and not so much because I, you know, as I say, I'm not a real fan of, you know, when I cook, I don't serve people rotten pickles and say like, it's good for you, you know, and it'll help you build your character. And this sort of thing, you know, life seems to provide enough rotten pickles with, and some of them are more unavoidable, you know, than others, you know. So one in some way has to relate to rotten pickles, you know, at some level, whether it's literally in the pickles or the fact is that, you know,

[19:41]

in our own bodies, in our own beings, we're experiencing thoughts and feelings and sensations, and some of them are going to be distasteful. They are not, we're not going to like them, you know, and we don't like the idea of stomaching them. And we would rather with those thoughts and feelings and sensation, take them out and bury them in the garden or bury them somewhere in our body, in our being, where we won't have to actually put them in our mouth, where we won't actually have to ingest or experience this distastefulness. So this is, you know, basic kind of tendency we have and basic kind of problem. And it will be important for us to have, it will be helpful for us. And, you know, when we actually are willing to taste or eat, eat in the sense of take in this distasteful experience, and, you know, digestion takes a while sometimes, and we digest the experience over time.

[20:43]

And from distasteful experiences, then we extract some nutritive essence, and we discard, you know, some waste, there's some dregs, just as from a tasteful experience. And so, of course, oftentimes in meditation, people have, we have distasteful experiences, and then we wonder like, what's wrong with me? Can I meditate well? You know, and I'm, angry all the time, or I'm scared, or, you know, I can't stand sitting here, I'm thinking a lot. So we may have any number of distasteful experiences. And meditation is some opportunity to sit quietly and digest over time, we digest things. And we, and there will be some nutritive essence, whatever the experience might be. And oftentimes, of course, the, this will be, the distasteful things that come up will supply

[21:46]

actually the most, the most nutritive. And part of what is interesting, though, it's not the experience itself that is so nutritive, but the fact that we actually taste it and take it in and absorb it. And then, and we find out we can survive. And that actually, we feel better. We feel better when we've done this than when we buried it. And when we buried it, and we're trying to keep the dirt on it and keep it covered and keep anybody from finding out and not letting anybody know that it's there, and not letting ourself know that it's there. This takes a tremendous amount of effort. And the fact is, we learn when we, when it gets unearthed, and we end up eating it, that we grow. And even though in a certain sense, there's something distasteful about this process of digestion and growth. Well, you know, there's different kinds of food. So this is a kind of distasteful kind of food. And basically, you know, we like to say there's three kinds of food, the unpleasant, the pleasant,

[22:47]

and the neutral. Okay, so this is a kind of unpleasant kind of food. Then we have the kind of foods like you might think are really, they're really good. You know, they're really pleasant. And it's really nice, you know, I find for myself, it's really helpful for these really pleasant foods. I appreciate the ritual factor. So I'm not, you know, like, I've occasionally had, like, eaten lots of cookies or lots of cake, and, you know, and I don't feel so well afterwards. You know, so much for things that were pleasant, right? But I've worked it out. So like, when I was on a three-month retreat, many, several years ago, and I went to the Vipassana retreat in Bari. And this is a three-month retreat in silence. And they give you, and part of the instructions, when you're going to go, they tell you what to bring, like your sleeping bag and your bedding and your clothes. And they also say, you know, if you, you know, we are not supplying any

[23:48]

goodies so much. So if you want any candies or chocolates or that sort of thing, you're going to have to bring them. And we don't serve any coffee either. So I brought my own chocolate and my own coffee. I got six pounds of Pete's coffee. And I took it, you know, from here, back to there. You know, I was sort of like, because I'm a kind of ritualistic kind of person. You know, so to me, you know, coffee ritual is important, you know. Because, you know, somehow it's this one place that you can sort of count on in your life. At least if you've taken this sort of trouble to, you know, bring the coffee with you, you can count on. You can't count on others to take care of your ritual for you. I learned this. No, no. And I also brought then several little packages of lint chocolates of various varieties.

[24:53]

And each morning around 11, I used to, we would have the meditation in the morning, we'd have breakfast, we'd have walking meditations. And at some point in the morning, I had signed up to help prepare salad. So we would wash lettuce and chop up vegetables for the salad. And after that, I would go to my room, and I would have my little ceremony. You know, so I would have like three or four of those little squares of lint. And I would make a freshly brewed cup of coffee, and I had my little grinder with me too. And then I had in my room also an electric tea kettle. They didn't put this on their list, but I know. Now, from going to other meditation retreats, it's really nice to have your own electric tea kettle in your room. Here at Green Gulch, I'm not sure it would work, or at Tassajara, it doesn't work so well. And because, you know, there's not electricity in all the rooms. They're sneaky, you know. And you have to give up more, you know, when you practice Zen. So I would have this little ritual with something I really liked, like coffee and chocolate.

[26:01]

And then I would make it very carefully, and then I would get out the chocolate, and set it out on a nice little dish. And then I would enjoy it immensely. I found this, you know, in its own way, a different kind of, you know, nourishing, right? I don't know if I can say exactly what that is. But I found it, you know, like to do this each day. It was this wonderful kind of, here's something you can count on in the midst of all this sort of meditation. And, you know, all this stuff is going on, and there's all these, you know, whatever's in, you know, physical, you know, pains or aches. And, you know, I got hemorrhoids, and I had athlete's foot, and, you know, all these different things, right? But then there's chocolate each day, you know? And I had, you know, extreme anxiety states, and fears, and fantasies, and, you know, all these things. And then there's chocolate each day. I mean,

[27:07]

and I talked this over with one of my meditation teachers. You're usually assigned two teachers, and you can request. So I had two Vipassana teachers. One of them wouldn't want to hear about this sort of thing. He would want to hear, how is your meditation practice? And sometimes I would come in, and I'd say, I want to tell you a poem. And I'd tell him this poem, and he'd say, that's nice. Now can you tell me about your meditation practice? And I kind of, you know, in this sort of thing where you're not talking very much, and you get to talk to one of your teachers every, you know, for 10 minutes every two days, I was kind of, you know, hoping for a little more of a kind of like resonance here, like a little more response, you know? Zero. Tell me about your meditation. What are you noticing in your meditation? Oh, okay. But one of my teachers was, she, after a while, she scheduled me as the last person before lunch, so we'd have a little more than 10 minutes. That was very kind of her. I appreciated that very much. And so then I

[28:15]

could explain sometimes, like, I'm running low on coffee. What do you think about this? Should I send to Pete's for more? More. Anyway, her advice was, yes, she said, yes, wisdom is the proper use of caffeine. This is a widening of the sort of classic definition of wisdom, but it gives you a little flavor of what wisdom is about. You know, not that we, you know, have to avoid this and not have that, but really the emphasis in Zen is then, you know, not so much on what you eat, but how you eat it. You know, when you receive the food, it's, you're not deciding like what to eat when you're in the meditation hall. You're just receiving the food. And then the idea is like, well, eat with some

[29:19]

awareness and some care and, you know, with some, you know, experiencing your food, as opposed to reading, also being reading or watching TV or doing something else. You actually eat. And we eat together in silence. And then you actually, and it's interesting because probably the most that I found over the years at Zen Center, the most intimate thing that I've done with people over the years is to serve or receive food in the meditation hall. It turns out to be the most intimate experience. And we are, you know, both people are so exposed in that situation and so much exactly who they are. It is so intimate somehow to, you know, to bow and pick up your bowl and to receive food from somebody. This is, this is in that setting where it's so quiet and still, and then, you know, and all your attention is focused on it, extremely intimate encounter. And it's not like you remember it and keep track of it. But when you pass people,

[30:26]

if you pass somebody out walking or you're just sitting and eating together in the dining room or many things, it doesn't seem nearly as intimate oftentimes as this simple exchange of receiving food that specifically from somebody. Well, I want to mention one other eating experience, which is kind of the category of neutral. You know, there's, so there's these pleasant things, there's the unpleasant things, there's neutral things. And so I'm going to use radishes. Like most people don't go like, oh, radishes, fabulous. Oh, where do I get them? And they don't, you know, wire across the country, you know, for radishes the way that some people do for coffee, right? And, and also they don't take the radishes, you know, that are nice and fresh. They don't take those and bury them or say like, ooh, radishes, most people. And so for most of us, radishes are just kind of, they're kind of in this middle area. They're just radishes,

[31:30]

you know, like they don't do much for me one way or another, huh? So these are in some ways, you know, the most interesting. I mean, in their own way, chocolate is interesting and, and, you know, the pickles are interesting, but also this third category is interesting because mostly then the third category, we don't realize how wonderful something can be. So one day I went to a friend's house for dinner, and this is someone who's a chef in San Francisco at a restaurant. And some friends of mine had, we'd wanted to go to his restaurant and he wasn't, the restaurant wasn't open the night we wanted to go. So he said, come to my house for dinner. He's the kind of person he is, quite kind of, you know, generous in that sense. And, you know, it wasn't like he'd cooked enough during the week. And so on his day off he wasn't going to cook. You know, he was happy to cook at home on his day off with some friends. So we got over there and I took over two 10-year-old California wines as a little kind of

[32:33]

gift. I mean, he had on his mantel two 20-year-old French Bordeauxs. I thought, oh, this is unusual. And then we sat down in, not the living room where the table was to eat, but in a little, so what would normally be the dining room, but was anyway, there was a little low table, like coffee table, and then little chairs around. And on the table there were platters of radishes and they'd been washed and they still had their little roots on and the stems there. And then there were little dishes of sweet butter and little dishes of salt. So you could have a plain radish, you could have a radish with butter, you could have a radish with salt, or you could have a radish with butter and salt. So you actually had four dishes there. And then we had a little of that French apple cider that's just very slightly alcoholic,

[33:34]

you know, sparkling cider, slightly alcoholic with our radishes. I've never had such good radishes. Now, do radishes change that much, radish to radish? I mean, he did, I think, pick out some good radishes. He'd been to a good market, but basically the difference is what we bring to something and the kind of awareness we give something. And when somebody goes to the trouble to prepare something like this and to offer something like this, and somebody in this case could appreciate radishes, somebody knew these radishes are really wonderful. They are so, such a gift and such a blessing. And I would like to share this gift and this blessing with you. And I've washed them. And this is also like for a cook, this shows a cook who has tremendous confidence, because when you're not so confident as a cook, you want to do something to the food

[34:36]

to make it good and to demonstrate your skill as a cook. So you want to make it into something like, well, let's have a pizza, or let's have a pasta, or let's, you know, if you tell somebody on a little list of a cooking class, we will prepare radishes, nobody's interested. But this, in this case, so it's, you know, the very simplest foods. And when a cook can serve the very simplest foods, this is because the cook understands something, you know, they don't need to show off their capacity as a cook. They just, they realize what a wonder, what an incredible thing food is, any food, including a radish. And so, the fact that somebody can appreciate and respect and value radishes, and then serve them to you like that, then you take the trouble. We all sat there and sort of like, like, oh, a radish. And

[35:39]

then we all went to the trouble to actually experience and taste and enjoy and, you know, respect, appreciate radishes, which most of the time, like, who cares, one way or another. And that was, so that was the most, to me, that was the most memorable part of the meal. I mean, we had all these other things. We had this, this is one thing that's strange, but then he served us lamb. I mean, and I'm basically a vegetarian, but I'm also polite. And in my, you know, from my training at Zen Center of like, you receive what you served in the bowl. And this all goes back to, you know, Buddha, who, in Buddha's days, the monks had begging bowls, and you would go out and beg for food, and you eat what people put in your bowl. And you don't say, oh, excuse me, but I'm a vegetarian. And there's even one monk that is, you know, still to this day renowned in the literature, because he ate a leper's thumb that dropped off into his begging bowl. Or this is the story anyway.

[36:42]

Anyway, so I, you know, I still, I, you know, we have our own way of following this practice. And even though we decide, because we're in a monastic situation and a group of people living together, we're vegetarian, we're just serving vegetarian food, but we're still incorporating part of this original practice in Buddhism of receiving what you're offered. And I'll see what I can do with it. And I'll try it, you know, I'm going to appreciate, you know, try to appreciate and know it for what it is. And still, sweet things are sweet, sour things are sour, bitter things are bitter, and we know things for what they are. But we also know that there's, you know, that there's something that we can't pick and choose among our experience and expect, you know, to grow. We'll have to. And in a certain sense that all of our experience is colorless and tasteless, you know, and in the sense that none of our experiences last. You know, I can tell you about radishes now, but the taste of radishes is gone.

[37:54]

Radishes are, who knows where they are now, you know, and the taste of radishes is gone. But this point anyway that I want to make is, you know, what we bring to our experiences, what we bring to the experience, how we take in the experience is in Buddhist practice much, more important than what experiences we try to get, you know. So, often if we're doing meditation, I'd like to get an enlightenment experience, you know. And, you know, the universe doesn't care. Please universe! You know, so, and we find out actually that we get many experiences which are not the big E, and they're not the big enlightenment experience, but we begin to taste each experience carefully, and in the sense, you know, take in each experience carefully. Some of them are just tasteful,

[38:59]

some of them are tasteful, some of them are kind of neutral. But when we give them our full attention and the generosity of our awareness, they become these little jewels, like radishes become like these jewels, these precious treasures. Or like, when we actually stop and listen to the sound of the rain, and we give it our awareness, and we receive experience in this way, we resonate with things, things resonate with us, and we grow. We're fed. And so, to be fed is much more than the actual food. It's our effort to take something in, receive it, know it, taste it thoroughly, digest it, absorb it, and we have some nutritive essence there, and we let go of something there. I also wanted to, I don't know what time it's getting, I don't like to run over time, you know.

[40:17]

And that was because when I was, you know, sitting out there at talks, and I would be sitting cross-legged, and my legs would start to hurt after a while, and I wonder like, when is he going to stop? It's about 11. I think I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll stop now, and then if you come to the question and answer later, I'll tell you the part that I'm not telling you now. I'll tell you briefly now, okay. Some of you obviously want to go walking in the rain instead. All right. A while back I came across this story in one of Alice Miller's books. Alice Miller, she's written now a number of books, and they're all around the issue of parent-child relationships, and how much the experiences we have as a children, and how much they inform our adult life. And particularly, you know, in the extreme cases of,

[41:19]

you know, like every serial killer, as far as she can tell, has been severely abused as a child. And they will, and I read another article in the paper, a woman who interviews serial killers for the FBI, and she says every person she's talked to at some point starts to cry, and they never cry about their victim, but it's always about what was done to them when they were a child. And then, you know, but as a child we experienced like, I must deserve this. And as a child we're so powerless to say, no, no one deserves this. And then in regard to that too, I saw there was a, I found a very touching piece on 60 Minutes about abuse and wife abuse in Quincy, Massachusetts. They've spent now five or, the last five or eight or ten years now, they've made a concerted effort to reduce and eliminate spousal abuse.

[42:26]

And so they, even if a woman won't press charges, the next day they have a counseling service that calls up, the police are completely sympathetic. They'll tell women, nobody deserves to be punished, you know, to be hurt like this. And for a woman to hear that from a policeman, you know, often will be tremendously moving for them, and tremendously empowering for them, you know, to remove themselves from situations where they're being abused. So again, this is an instance of, in that case, I mean, there is a limit to sort of like, if I talk about rotten pickles, I'm not saying that, hey, eat all the rotten pickles, you know, there are in the universe and you deserve it or whatever, and you'll grow from it, I'm sure. I mean, you have to balance any of these things with some common sense, right, you know? And that's why, you know, if we eat together in a group and we all are eating like this or something, it's different than, you know, one person who's forcing some diet on you, you know, in your own home. And there's a little sort of more safety

[43:30]

in a sort of like a group, not always, because some groups are pretty weird too. But anyway, Alice Miller, I found this wonderful story in one of her books, which is Banished, called Banished Knowledge. And I like this story a lot, and it reminds me of this saying, when you're hungry, eat, you know, when you're tired, sleep. And this is a little three-year-old who apparently had not been, his mother had not been severely, you know, humiliating or punishing him or anything. And one weekend though, she wanted to take her son to grandmother's because she was going to do something. And she was a little nervous about this because she knew her grandmother was, she knew her mother was really big on good manners. And so, but she also knew that her mother liked her son a great deal and would read him stories,

[44:33]

and that basically they had a good relationship. So, she took the son there. After the weekend, she picked him up and the son said, after they got in the car, I don't want to go to grandma's anymore, she hurt me. So, mom went home and then later talked to her mother, and little by little found out the story about what happened. So, here's the story about what happened. The little boy, they were having dinner and it came time for dessert, and they were having a kind of souffle, which was one of the son's favorite desserts. And so, when he finished the bowl that he had been served, he reached out on the table to help himself to some more, which is what he always did at home. And he was very proud of the fact of his independence and his ability to do that. Grandmother put her hand on his and said, you have to ask the others if it's okay. And he looked around and said, well, where are the others? And he was quite upset because in his house, he was used to helping himself.

[45:44]

And he was so, and he, you know, he obviously felt quite threatened because, you know, for a child, it's easy to feel like, you know, when the parent is withdrawing their love or withholding their love until you behave right, you know, you do the right thing. And so, of course, when we grow up, many times we start to withhold love from ourself because we don't think we're behaving well enough and we don't have the right kind of manners, etc., right? Anyway, so he, in fact, got so upset at some point there, he had a little tantrum and then he got over that and he said to his grandmother, you hurt me. And he said, and she said, well, you need good manners.

[46:53]

And he said, I don't need good manners. At my mother's house, when I'm hungry, I eat. This to me is, you know, part of my, you know, I was very moved by this because mostly I tend to relate to the three-year-old. And then I found out that many people, when I told this story in January at my one-day sitting, many people there related to the grandmother and said, damn right, you've got to, you've got to teach these kids good manners. And, you know, it's also, who are we teaching good manners? Like, you've got to teach, you know, your body not to behave in those despicable ways and not to give you those bad, you know, those sensations that aren't very good manners. And you've got to teach your mind to produce mannerly emotions and mannered, good-mannered feelings. And you've got to teach your mind to produce thoughts that are the right-mannered

[47:56]

and good-mannered thoughts. And then we have the same relationship with our own body, our own mind, our own being, like, and then we get upset. You're not behaving in a good manner. And that's the way we relate. We, at some point, when we over-relate to the grandmother, you know, we start to want to, we want to impose these good manners on our own body and our own being. And it doesn't work. You know, there's a three-year-old or, you know, our own body and our own mind is, it doesn't, you know, it tries, but it keeps coming up with things like that aren't good manners. I'm sorry. And it's some rotten pickles and it's some plain old radishes and, you know, I'm not just, and I can't just give you chocolates all the time. And I can't just give you the kinds of experiences that you think you like and that you find, you know, delicious. And so our body, you know, is producing, you know, keeps on doing this stuff.

[48:59]

And when, and so, you know, a large part of, you know, Zen training, a certain aspect of Zen training and to sit in meditation is, we notice there's a grandmother, we notice there's, you know, there's someone who likes to control things. There's someone, there's something, you know, experience that's out of control. And mostly we learn, as Suzuki Roshi said in his book, if you want to control that cow that's out of control, give it a large pasture. This was his, you know, teaching. If you want to control your sheep or cow, give it a large pasture. And meditation, although it looks like this confinement, is meant to be a large pasture where we can experience a full range of feelings and thoughts and emotions and physical sensations. Some pleasant, some neutral, some unpleasant. And we can learn to be with all of those

[50:04]

and not, and stop withholding our love for our own being and body and life itself that's not providing just the tasty things. So obviously this, you see, this is the beginning of a whole other talk, right? But this all reminded me anyway, just of this basic sort of notion of, you know, a certain sense of, you know, developing a certain sense of kindness and appreciation and, you know, respect. Grandmother is trying her best and, but she needs, you know, she needs a little more information and she can still grow. And the three-year-old can still grow. And they really need each other. And so over time we can learn, we can digest our experiences and see how things happen. So I guess what I'd like to do is before I actually end the talk, let's just sit,

[51:36]

sit quietly for a minute or so and just taste, carefully taste what our experience is, what your experience is at this time. So your breath or your body or your thoughts or feelings, and just taste it fully and savor it for the sound of the rain. So

[52:55]

Buddhism teaches us, and I've come over the years, I think, to appreciate this more and more, Buddhism teaches that each of us has a good heart. We're all trying, each of us is trying very hard, very sincerely, to express, to know and express our good heart. And we can't always, you know, we're not always very good at it. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't continue this kind of effort to know and express our good heart and our concern and care for our friends and for the world and for one another. This effort doesn't always appear to, that we make, doesn't always appear to be successful or as successful as we'd like it to be, but this is still our shared,

[54:49]

you know, in some way our shared heart, our shared good heart. And it's our shared, what do you call that, inheritance. Being a human being, we have this good heartedness. And we're, we each seek out how to, how to express it in our life. How to know it in ourselves and share it with one another. And part of this good heartedness is that we will taste our experiences and know our experiences. Carefully. And each of our experiences is like this. You know, it's in a way like a three-year-old and we can't always teach it manners. So thank you very much for, I don't know why I would thank you for your good heartedness,

[55:58]

but still I'd like to thank you for coming here as an expression of your good heartedness and sharing this morning with everyone. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

[57:28]

Thank you. Thank you. Good morning. I see the sun shining out here, so it looks like we'll emerge out in the sunshine here. I have only two short announcements.

[58:30]

The first is we have a five-day sitting that starts next Sunday evening and will run Monday through Friday. And you're welcome to join us. If you're interested, please do sign up in the office by Tuesday at noon. That's our deadline so we can organize this. And then the other announcement is in approximately five weeks, we're going to do another study period with the Abbott Tension Anderson. And if you're interested in that, there's information on that in the office and please do register for that. So Norman Fisher has an announcement and then Marty will make an announcement for the lay group. Good morning. I have a couple of things. First, I want to ask you again to help us out with the Zendo renewal project. We did really well fundraising, but then again, it cost more than we thought.

[59:34]

So we're trying to raise from our Sunday group about $30,000 more. Out on the table, you'll see pledge cards. If you have made a pledge, would you consider making a pledge?

[59:50]

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