Well, thank you very much. I almost made it. I'm almost there. of the good old 88. It's not a lot different. Of course, I'm still 87. So, I'll let you know what it's like to be 88 in a few days. So, thanks for that rousing song. I don't really like it. I've been trained not to be discriminating and to accept what's offered.

[01:15]

So, where was I before all that happened? For those of you who know me, my knee is actually a lot better. But I'm being a little cautious about sitting on the cushion. So that's why I'm sitting in the chair. It's an interesting situation, you know, because I always kind of prided myself for sitting on the cushion. So it's good to be a little humbled by sitting in a chair. Actually, I haven't really sat in a chair before. 53 years. But it doesn't mean I haven't had knee problems before. But I always kind of barrel through them. And I barrel through this one. But I'm not yet ready to sit on the cushion.

[02:20]

So, I have a lot of empathy for people who have physical problems. And some of our most admirable examples of practice are people who have serious physical problems. And I identify with that. So, those people to me are the most inspiring. It's like just not giving up, you know, just finding a way to keep practicing no matter what your disposition is. And to me, that's what our practice is about, because as we grow and change,

[03:25]

which we're doing all the time, our bodies change, our psyches change, our circumstances change, and through all the changes, the one thing that stays constant is the practice. To me, that's the meaning of practice. The one thing that doesn't change is our aspiration for practice. And then we can understand and experience whatever is happening with our body and our mind and our disposition. But we have a ground that is always constant and where we really live. It's called zero. what's called many things. I never thought of myself as getting old until I reached 87 and nine-tenths.

[04:44]

Or ten-twelfths. So, I have to admit that that's happening, finally. And I blame it all on Zazen. So, but that's not what I wanted to talk about today. I mean, part of me wanted to talk about that today. But, you know, there's so many things to talk about. A lot of them are old and stale, but still I have to decide. So, I decided a few minutes ago what I would talk about. And I'm going to talk about how we let go. how we let go while we're living and how we let go when we're so-called dying. So Suzuki Roshi has a nice little talk about it, which I've talked about this before, but I'm gonna use him as a reference.

[06:01]

This thing is really troublesome when you're trying to read. Anyway, it's okay. Everything is compensation. Our whole life is built on compensation because something is standing in our way all the time. something is standing in the way, something is changing, something is more difficult. And compensation is what we're doing all the time. So one time I had an eye operation. I'll tell you about this operation. It was called a, what was it called? It was called a macular hole, not macular degeneration. They're two different things. Macular degeneration when your eye something detaches from the macula.

[07:09]

But this is a hole, a little teeny hole. And they discovered a way to deal with that. And the way to deal with it was to put a take all the fluid out of your eye and put a gas bubble in your eye, and then you hold your head down like this for two weeks to ten days. Some years ago I did that, and it wasn't so hard for me because I'm used to sitting still, not with my head down, but, you know, It doesn't really help. And then when it was over, what the hole in the immaculate does is makes straight lines go like this, curvy. But after that, it still, there's some curviness.

[08:20]

but your eyes adjust to it and make everything seem straight. So that's compensation. Your eyes are compensating for the distortion, but you see it as straight. And I said to the doctor, something about that, and he says, it's all compensation. And that stuck in my mind, that we're just compensating for all the time, for what's in front of us. It's an obstacle. So here's my talk. You know, we are creatures of habit. We're creatures of attachment, and I want to look at my note a minute.

[09:31]

And we're creatures of addiction. Those three are related. Habit is how we operate. We learn various habits, and if we didn't, we'd have to decide how to live our life on each moment without any background. which is not a bad idea, but we can't really do it, so we create habits. And it's just natural for us to create habits. Good habits, bad habits, and so forth. Good habits are coming to Zazen every morning. Bad habits are like taking dope and being addicted to being happy. We are addicts. We're all addicts. Some of our addictions are really harmful, but we don't really realize how addicted we are to everything.

[10:41]

the more complex our society becomes, the more addicted we become to things that are offered to us. So we really are killing ourselves, you know, with our offering things to each other that will create addictions. And then we don't, we're ruled and driven by the addictions. if you think about what it is that you're motivated by that you don't want to not be motivated by, and when you try to not be motivated by them, you realize how caught you are by them. So, The purpose of, I thought about this a few days, a little while ago about, yes, Buddhism is about learning how not to be addicted.

[12:00]

That's what it's really about. Because if you look at what Buddha said, Apparently, suffering is in the nature of human beings to suffer or to be diseased. And the cause is addiction. We say delusion. We also say desire. Those things are part of it, but addiction is the result. So when we think about, not the suffering that's caused from outside, but the suffering that's caused by inside, it's due to our addictions, what we are caught by.

[13:03]

So we have all our little hooks out. We're fishermen with all the little hooks out. And then, oh, that's nice. Oh, whatever we have also has us. So, I'm holding up this piece of paper, but this piece of paper also has me, because it's telling me what to do. In order to pick this up, it's got a certain shape and it's got a certain kind of writing on it, which is really nice, actually. And so, in order for me to handle this, I have to pay attention to what it's telling me. So everything is telling me something. If I do something that is that I want to do it again.

[14:06]

And you can't repeat anything. So that's a big problem. We can't repeat anything. So what do we do? That's my introduction to Suzuki Roshi's talk. which is titled The Zen of Going to the Restroom. You probably have read this if you know this. So he says, how do you feel right now? And then he says, he laughs, and he says, I don't know how you feel, but I feel like I've just come out of the restroom. And then he talks about when he was younger, you know.

[15:06]

When I was younger, I went to the restroom more often than others. And sometimes I had an advantage because of that. Because when he went to Eheji Monastery, in Japan and sat Tangaryo, which is a period where when you enter the monastery, you just sit and for anywhere from three or four days to a week, without kin-hin or anything like that, you eat your meals there. But it's just constant sitting. That's the entrance exam. So, he said, so when I went to the monastery and sat Tangario, I could go to the restroom without a guilty conscience. Often people go because, take a break, you know, whether they have to go or not.

[16:13]

So, and then they have a guilty conscience. I was so happy to go to the restroom. I think that going to the restroom is a good way to look at our practice. Everything has two sides. In this particular culture, this is a culture of accumulation. So in the culture of accumulation, we get stopped up. So this is a metaphor, of course, for our mind gets stopped up with conflicting desires. How do we take care of that?

[17:16]

we have a lot of big problems because of the confusion of conflicting desires. So Master Uman in the Tang Dynasty, he may have been the first person to make a connection between our practice and the restroom. He said, somebody asked him, what is your practice? What is Buddha? Someone asked him. And he answered, a shit stick. Suzuki Roshi says toilet paper because he's very polite, but it's actually, he didn't have toilet paper then, shit stick. It's something to wipe yourself with, a stick of some kind, after you go to the bathroom.

[18:25]

So actually nowadays it's toilet paper, but he said something to wipe yourself with in the restroom. The stick is important because, as you'll see, That is what he said. And since then, many Zen masters have been thinking about this and practicing with this koan. How can Buddha be a shit stick, right? That's blasphemy, but not in Zen. So, what is that? What did he mean by that? My note here says, he used the stick to prop open the door. a prop to open the gate or the door. So, Buddha takes many forms, and this is one of them.

[19:29]

He uses it to open the gate. So, what happens when we open the gate? When we open the gate, we find our freedom. So freedom has two different, at least two different meanings. One is to do what you want. That's one meaning. And the other is to be free of everything. That's our meaning. Not to do what you want, but to be free of everything. So this is why he says, how do you feel? I feel like I just came out of the restroom. free of everything. No burdens, nothing there. And I'm sure you've all felt like that in your life somewhere. Maybe today. So he says, in our everyday life, we eat many things, good and bad, fancy and simple, tasty and not-so-tasty, and later we need to go to the restroom.

[20:40]

Similarly, after filling our mind, we practice zazen. Otherwise, our thinking will eventually become very unhealthy. Don't you think so? Our thinking becomes really unhealthy. It is necessary for us to make our mind clear before we study something. It's like drawing something on a piece of white paper. If you don't use clean white paper, you can't draw what you want. So it's necessary to go back to your original state where you have nothing to see and nothing to think about. Then you will understand what you're doing. So that's why we say, you know, you must let go of everything before you can practice, truly. This is why in the monastery we have Tangario. Tangario squeezes everything out of your mind.

[21:48]

So you enter the monastery as a newborn person with nothing. You have nothing. Someone gave me a book, Hema, you know Hema, when she was here, and this book about this woman who was brought up in the South Pacific on an atoll, Puka Puka, is the name of her atoll. just a little dot in the middle of the ocean. And their life was so simple before, well, Captain Cook came there. And so, it's one of the Cook Islands. But the people live such a simple life, just supporting themselves with the ocean and the coconuts and telling stories and singing songs and dancing.

[23:01]

But that was their life, and not too long ago. Of course, the war came along and ruined the South Pacific Islands totally. But before then, it was quite simple. And I remember her detailing, once a year, a passenger ship would come by and the tourists would come off. and look around the island, and they would laugh at them because of their unusual funny postures and desires and ignorance. Anyway. You know, there's an old saying about how we, about greed.

[24:04]

We're always eating something. We eat through our eyes, we eat through our nose, we eat through our ears, we eat through our mouth, and we eat through our feelings, our touch. And we're always needing something to eat. But we become too greedy for things. And then it's hard to let go of what we're so greedy for. And we're filled up. And so we have no freedom. It inhibits our freedom. But we think that freedom is to collect all those things. That's our addiction. So, because we have all of our feelers out, which are like hooks, we get caught.

[25:14]

We catch things. And then we want them, and then we crave them. This is just basic Buddhism. And then we're caught by things, and we can't let go. Until we try to let go, we don't realize how hooked we are. So what do we hold? We hold grudges. We catch a cold. You know, we've created, as a culture, poisons that will never go away.

[26:19]

Atomic waste, which will never go away. We can't do anything. We have shifted around from place to place. So we get caught by our ideas of trying to do too much. to create atomic energy because the fake news about atomic energy is that it's not poisonous. It's safe, which is the most unsafe material there is. So, but we're addicted to power. We're addicted to electricity.

[27:26]

I know this seems a little bit over the top, but I think we have to look at that. Progress. we think that progress is inventing more and more. Fortunately, using the sun and the wind is, you know, we should really be promoting that more and more. It's the only thing that will save the earth, actually. I'm kind of wondering, but I think you understand what I mean. So he says, culture is based on the idea of gaining or accumulating something. Science, for instance, is the accumulation of knowledge. I don't know that a modern scientist is greater than a scientist in the 16th century.

[28:29]

The difference is that we have accumulated our scientific knowledge. That is a good point. And at the same time, dangerous. We're in danger of being buried under all of our accumulated knowledge. It's like trying to survive without going to the restroom. We are already swimming in the pond of polluted water and air. and we talk about the pollution, and at the same time we can hardly survive the pollution of our knowledge. So each one of us knows how to go to the restroom without attaching to something we have in our bodies. Whether we realize that we already have everything, until we realize that we already have everything, we will not be attached to anything. Actually, we have everything. Even without going to the moon, we have it. When we try to go to the moon, it means that we think the moon is something outside of ourselves.

[29:31]

That's partly true, not completely. So our mind, as Buddha told us, is one with everything. Within our mind, everything exists. If we understand things in that way, then we will understand our activity. To study something is to appreciate something, and to appreciate something is to be non-attached from things. When we become non-attached from things, everything will be ours. Our practice is to realize this kind of big mind. In other words, to go beyond each being, including ourselves, and let ourselves work as it works. That is Zazen practice. When we practice Zazen, we actually clean up our various attachments. We do clean up our various attachments, and then when we walk out the door, we reattach. So, the question is,

[30:34]

How do we live our lives without attachment and addiction outside the zendo? That's where most of our life takes place. But coming back to zero is what our practice is. People say, well, how do I practice outside of the zendo? By coming back to zero over and over again. When you sit Zazen, your mind wanders, and then you realize, oh, my mind is wandering, and then you, I hope you think this, my mind is wandering, and then you let go and come back to Zazen, and then your mind wanders. you come back, you simply let go. You don't fight. You don't try to chase anything away. You just say, oh, that's right. Zazen. Oh, yeah. Zazen. You don't blame your mind for thinking.

[31:38]

simply, oh yeah, back on track, get on track, get on track, get on track. That's how we practice in the world. Stay on track, stay on track, don't get caught. Suzuki Roshi's famous, most wonderful statement, don't get caught by anything. He's talking about addiction. He's talking about attachment. He's not talking so much about habit, because we need habits, right? Even attachment can be good. Attachment, when we realize how to find our freedom within attachment, it's no longer called attachment. But addiction is where you can't help yourself. but actually I've got a something that happens I lose my wallet and I think to myself well it's not stolen I resolve this first it's not stolen and it's not at somebody else's house so I don't need to find my wallet now I can leave my wallet lost until the time I need to find it and so it's like the moon I don't need the moon I don't need to go and possess the moon I can just say okay the moon is there and if

[33:22]

I ever need the moon, it'll be there for me. So the idea of getting back on track, okay, is like I want to get back to my wallet. I want to get back to possessing everything, including the moon. I don't want to get back to Zazen Zero. Are we addicted to Zazen Zero? I mean, are there times when we need our wallet to be there, or the moon, or some thought to be there, or how would you not be addicted to that? Well, I hope you're addicted to zero. How could you not be addicted to zero? and I recognize the need not to hold things, but this is not always like, I've got to let go of this, I've got to stop being anywhere I am now in order to get to zero.

[34:36]

No, because you're at zero no matter what you're doing. Zero is not a different place. Zero is simply The reality of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 is the basis of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. You can't have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 without zero. So you come back to the foundation of your life instead of getting lost in the details. The details are fine. Of course, we live in the details. But we don't lose sight of the bigger reality. And besides, I never put my wallet any place but my pocket. And I always want to hit people over the head when they leave their wallet on the bus. I take out my wallet and put it on the bus beside me, you know, and then I walk out the door.

[35:37]

Come on! Or they put it in their purse. Anyway, I don't want to go anymore about that. Oh yeah? I'm so happy to share your birthday. Oh yeah. I've known you over 30 years and you are sharp and healthy and happy. But my question is, are you addicted to agelessness? To who? Agelessness. I'm addicted, yeah, I am kind of addicted to agelessness, yes. But I'm in for a big surprise. Yeah, we have to let it go. But the problem is, you know, just keep trying until you can't try anymore. So it's easy to just say, well, you know, I'll just sit back and that's okay.

[36:45]

I'm doing that in a certain way, but slowly. So, I don't know. I don't want to discuss that either because I don't know what I'm doing. You talked about some addictions being more harmful to others. Than others, yeah. I said two are, well, they are harmful to others, yes. Well, you know, we usually think of addiction as dope and drinking and stuff like that, but addiction to sex, addiction to money, addiction to wanting people to think we're good, addiction to wanting people to think we're bad. I mean, just the normal stuff of life we're addicted to.

[37:49]

We're addicted to coffee, right? We're addicted to sugar. I mean, and we're addicted psychically to things, you know, like wanting, admiration, and we're addicted to talking too much or not talking enough. Yeah. So if I take like a coffee addiction, at what point do I say that this addiction Oh, I didn't say that. I said harming us. Yeah, but, well, there is a way that it's harming other people. I don't know about, you know, now coffee is in. It used to be out. You know, it used to be like coffee's not good for you. Now it's coffee's good for you, you know. But let's say it's whatever it is that makes you sick. affects everybody around you, because then they have to take care of you at some point. Or you're giving them a problem because you have a problem, because we're so connected that everything that we do that is harmful affects everybody, not just ourselves, because we think, well, I'm just this person, you know, with this shape and so forth.

[39:08]

But it's, and the thing about the moon is, You know, in Japan, they used to teach children, the moon is, you are the moon, you are one with the moon. Instead of, the moon is out there and we're going to go, you know, see if we can land on it. There's a few different ways of dealing with the moon and you. So, you know, the moon is a big rock, just like the earth, but it's fun to go there. And, you know, it's a lot of effort to go there. A lot of smoke and stuff. Anyway, yes, but we're all affected by whatever everybody does. So, you can see that clearly when you have a sangha that lives together. Everybody's Whatever any one person does, it affects everybody else.

[40:16]

If you ever go to have a monastic life, you realize that everything everybody does has an effect on everybody else, whether overt or covert. Back to zero. Yes, that's a good point. So the Bodhisattva ceremony is a purification ceremony in that the first thing is to acknowledge our ancient tangled karma. So that's a kind of confession, but it's not so much of a personal confession as it

[41:24]

It's not like I did this and I did that and so forth. But since we can't possibly come up with everything that we did as a transgression, stuff we don't even know about, right? We're transgressing all the time, so to speak. So we just acknowledge, oh, my ancient tangled karma, and free ourselves at that moment. Then we reestablish our practice. which is paying homage to all the ancestors and then taking the precepts at the end. So, that's the basic basis of the Bodhisattva ceremony. It's the short version. of the Uposatha ceremony, of confession that was done in historical Buddhism.

[42:32]

Yeah? One of the addictions, thank you for your talk. Happy birthday. So anyway, I'm happy that you're here. So one of the addictions in our culture, Well, now we have addiction to female power. Sundays? We don't have a Sunday schedule. We do that. issues around the male power within our community? Well, in this community, we may have those issues or we may not. To say that man, woman, man, woman, that's very mechanical.

[43:38]

But that's what you said, so. We do have women give talks all the time. I don't know what you're talking about. In any case, I'm wondering if that's an important thing to actually look at. Let me tell you something. We've been dealing with that problem for 50 years. It's not the first time. So that's why we have a really nice sangha where men and women are equal. I hadn't seen that. Remember the last time I was here, there were, out of 17 seats in the front, 14 of them were occupied by men. So I'm very happy to see this. Yeah, well anyway, your vision is different than the rest of us. Sometimes we see that, sometimes we see more women, sometimes... We don't count.

[44:42]

We don't count the... Oh yes they are. There were two here this morning. As a matter of fact, there's a women's sangha that we're thinking about using our zendo at certain times. A black women's sangha. That is nice, yes. I don't know if it's great, but it's really nice. Dean? Thank you, Sojin. When we were studying the precepts, generally when we hear about the precepts, it's the big precepts. Yeah, major precepts, yeah. And you started reading a bunch of them that were

[45:46]

and things like that. And it was really great to hear that, because it made me think about things more. And you mentioned a couple of things that are addictions. So when we talk about addictions, generally it's sex, drugs, rock and roll, coffee, things like that. What are some of the small sort of behaviors we seem to be Right, mostly the minor precepts. Mostly about curbing our ego. Most of the minor precepts are about curbing our ego. As a matter of fact, that's what all the precepts are about. is curbing our self-centeredness.

[46:55]

And that's the same it sounds like with our addictions. A lot of them have to do with our ego. Well, of course. Addictions and ego are the same thing. I mean, they're definitely related. I think our culture is addicted to being young. I volunteer to be old. I'll follow your lead. Megan, is that really volunteering? Yes. Yes. Now everybody's going to the gym. I volunteer to be old. Well, that's kind of a bridge, because it seems to me we're in a gym right now.

[48:01]

My question is, could you say something about the role of Sangha in terms of working with addictions that I can't see? Why we practice in Sangha? in terms of working with addictions that I might not be aware of? Well, I don't know what you're not aware of. I mean, I'm not sure what you exactly mean. What would you propose? Well, like this morning, sitting in this seat, I thought the two people who were sitting there hadn't been served, because I didn't see that they had been served. And so the Kokyo, who was sitting in the seat that Gary's in now, had a different vantage point, and was able to say, oh, they've already been served.

[49:10]

So I wouldn't call that an addiction, per se. It could turn into an addiction if I got obsessed about that or... Well, let me say something. You know, there's a culture of how we do things. And we don't always say, you shouldn't do this or you shouldn't do that. you have the opportunity to find out for yourself by absorbing the culture that we have. So we don't talk so much about do this, don't do that, and so forth. Mostly we let people find what it is that's their problem. But sometimes we have to say something, yes, that's true, if it becomes too annoying. But basically we let people find their way.

[50:12]

And as soon as you start, you can become addicted to correction, yes. I think that's what you're talking about. So yes, don't become addicted to correcting. Sometimes we just let things go. and let people pick up on it. So the nature of the practice is partly, big part, patience. Patience, patience, patience. And you absorb the practice through your pores, through practicing. And then you begin to get it. Linda. in sometimes, no area, but if it's an annoying way sometimes of bringing to our attention the notion of equality between usually dominant demographics and so on in our society.

[51:45]

And when you said, well, that would be very mechanical to every other one, male, female. No, first of all, our service is extremely mechanical. very mechanical. So it could be an experiment. It could be interesting. Let's say 20% of our speakers be people of color, 50% of our speakers be women. It's very mechanical, but it would be an interesting experiment. And finally, I just want to say, I didn't know it was your birthday today. Where'd that come from? That one.

[52:46]

And you wore it today. Yes, let's have it for intuition. Anyway, I don't want to argue with you about alternation. We've been through all that. It's because we feel comfortable with ourselves. I think we feel comfortable with ourselves. There may be problems, you know, too many men or too many women, but I think we feel comfortable enough with ourselves that we give everybody an opportunity that we can, according to circumstances. Circumstances also play a part, big part, in how you make things, how you order or how you create a homogenous sangha.

[53:53]

Wait a minute. It's really, I don't have my watch anymore. Time? Okay. What logic. Yeah, well, let's do that then. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. Who treats women? Who's we? Thank you. I see.

[54:56]

I understand. I do understand what you're saying. Thank you. Maybe you should find out. Let's look at how we treat people. Why shouldn't any of these women be giving as many talks as any of the men? They are equally and even better dharma teachers. OK. I agree with you. Thank you very much for that.

[55:41]

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