Fellow Sangha members, Shogun Sensei, in the words of the great ancients, Laurel and Hardy, this is another fine mess you've gotten me into. And here I am, and here we all are after these days of sitting. I wanted to talk a little bit about picking and choosing, and especially how it applies in our everyday life. So, as this practice period started for me, there have been many obstacles as I've mentioned. Of course, I create them and enjoy them. As I've said, you know, just the day before, the practice period started I broke my rib and it was kind of a sign of things to come. It was wonderful because it was a six week injury and of course it was a six week practice period so I'm happy to say that as of yesterday it's officially healed.

[01:10]

So there have been two ongoing dramas for me during the practice period. One has been the drama of the body and the other has been the drama of the Department of Motor Vehicles. And I'll deal with the first one first. The first part... Peter, don't listen to this. I not only have gotten two moving violations, but I've gotten four parking tickets, as I mentioned in my lecture. And I realized finally by the last one that it had to do with this drama of the separate self. that I actually had created a self where I gave myself a parking permit to park anywhere I wanted. And it also, in my creation of my separate self, had decided that I knew when the parking meter people would be coming around.

[02:14]

Although they weren't tuned in to my concept. Or maybe they were. and we had a very good ongoing game, because in fact there was a boundless Samadhi field right next to my office, the Safeway parking lot, where I could park and not have any tickets, but I chose to be engaged in this drama. Well, I finally, I came to understand this boundless Samadhi field, and now I throw myself into it with my car, so, that's over. In the matter of the moving violations, I was really, thinking about our first koan that we were studying, where the teacher asked the student, what are you doing? He said, I'm going on pilgrimage. And I was on a pilgrimage at the time in my car. And the teacher said, why are you doing that? And the student said, I don't know. And the teacher replied, not knowing is most intimate.

[03:18]

So as I was on this pilgrimage, and the policeman stopped me, I really had no idea. I had no knowing at all about what this was about. And I said, what's up? He said, well, you were doing 49 in a 35-mile zone. So I thought I'd use the Koan. I said, well, I did not know that. I did not know that, and thank you very much for telling me. And I thought, you know, as in the koan, you know, one of us was going to get enlightenment, but instead he wrote me a ticket anyway. He said it wasn't his favorite koan. Anyway, the next one I got as I was coming to the Zen Center, And I turned right on Ashby at Adeline after stopping, but it says no right on red, in case you guys didn't know that.

[04:22]

And in that situation, he followed me all the way to the Zen Center. And I pulled into the driveway to turn my car around. Again, I was completely ignorant. I didn't try the koan that time. I was completely ignorant about what was going on. And I managed, and he said, so I said to him, what's up? And he said, well, you turned right on the red, and besides that, there are barriers here. And I said, barriers? You mean I can't pull in here? He said, well, just don't let me catch you. But this time, I guess some of the karma from my earlier trial with a koan came back to me because he gave me a citation and not a motive violation in fact. So our insurance won't be all right. I am going to comedy traffic school and thank you for reminding me because about the same time, right, I do have a doctorate in traffic school, and about the same time my son

[05:38]

Curran, the younger son, got a ticket and we're going to track a school together. I thought it was a good family activity. I said, when you go to track a school, they always ask you, why are you here? And you could just say, bad genes. And in the matter of the body, there was first the broken rib, and then I was rear-ended while I was crossing the Bay Bridge, just a short time after. And I say, oh, I have my seatbelt on, I wonder what I did to my rib. And then, in the middle of all this, I got a, I had a diagnosis of osteoporosis, which doesn't mean too much now, but should I live to be in my 80s, it will. So in that case, I said, well, I better start lifting some heavier weights. So of course, I threw my back out the day before Sesshin.

[06:41]

So I've been coming to Sesshin in a brace and watching my body sort of fall apart through the Sesshin. And finally, yesterday, I had a wonderful moment of clarity where I realized there's a point in the ceremony, in the Shuso ceremony, where the Benji says, hear this you so, or something like this. And I thought, well, they may have to just bring me in in a wheelbarrow. And that's OK. And when I sort of could accept that everything might just fall apart, that would be OK. So now hear this you so, and there I would be in the wheelbarrow. You have to be all right. And hopefully, it'll be a quiet wheelbarrow if we need it. But throughout the talk about the last koan we studied, the Hare's Breath, we've been hearing that the way is about not picking and choosing.

[07:50]

And all of us say, yes, but, you know, we have these lives where we must pick and choose. And so how do we pick and choose? In one of the books that I've been reading throughout this practice period, I've mentioned it a couple of times, this Mindy Mind is a course in basic meditation and it has not only the Fukan Zazengi but Kuan Ejo's Absorption in the Treasury of Light and many other teachers, but their most elementary works on Zazen instruction. So it's a really useful book. But there was something in here about the third patriarch in the Xin Xin Ming that Mel's been helping us with during Ce Xin.

[08:53]

If you want to head for the way it says, the third patriarch of Zen said, if you want to head for the way of unity, Do not be averse to the objects of the six senses. This does not mean that you should indulge in the objects of the six senses. It means that you should keep right mindfulness continuous, neither grasping nor rejecting the object of the six senses in the course of everyday life. Like a duck going into the water without its feathers getting wet. If in contrast you despise the objects of the six senses and try to avoid them, you fall into escapist tendencies and never fulfill the way of Buddhahood. If you clearly see the essence, then the objects of the six senses are themselves meditation. Sensual desires are themselves the way of unity, and all things are manifestations of reality.

[09:58]

Entering into the great Zen stability, undivided by movement and stillness, body and mind are both freed and eased." Well, I thought a lot about that image of the duck going into the water, and it seemed to me that There are two models actually, two images. One is the duck going into the water and coming out with its feathers not wet. And the other is really of, and that's a certain kind of temperament in the world. It's not mine, but I recognize that other people can do it. And then there are people who get into the water and get thoroughly wet. And take the water into themselves, breathe through the water, and really swim around in it. And so thinking about being the latter type, how is it then that we are in the water completely, completely being ourselves and yet are not attached to the choices?

[11:19]

How do we make choices and how do we make decisions? There was a wonderful article in the New York Times recently in the science section about And it was something like musing on the role of empathy in man and beast. And so I think that empathy is a lot like, their notion of it is a lot like compassion. So certainly I was thinking that in choosing, in being aware of opportunities and places to make moves, certainly empathy and compassion were very important. This is interesting because it's written by scientists about compassion and empathy. In the physics of human emotions, love may be thought of as the strong force binding together friends, family, and couples with the tight private energy of the atom's core. But the emotion most akin to gravity, the sensation that keeps the affairs of humanity on track, as surely as the earth wheels around the sun,

[12:28]

is empathy, the power to recognize the plight of another and to take on that burden as if it were built to order. And in a certain way that can give us some direction for making choices and yet it's so hard to know what's the right amount to give were confronted with this choice every day in Berkeley with so many causes and street people that it's hard to know when to give. And so I thought about something I'd read recently that balanced empathy with a couple other qualities that I thought I would share with you. And in this case, these qualities are called humanity, which is empathy or compassion, clarity and courage.

[13:31]

And humanity, as I read about empathy, is what keeps us together and makes everyone feel good around us. It's about taking care of those who are in higher positions or in lower positions and really approaching people with an open heart. And clarity is about seeing things, seeing things as they are, and knowing when something is dangerous, when it needs to be taken care of, and realizing sort of where the edges of things are, where we need to pay attention to the transitions. And courage is something that we understand somewhat, but I think sometimes in this practice doesn't get spoken of so much. And it's about knowing when to confront, when necessary, and when to swallow one's own harsh words.

[14:39]

And we're very good on the other side, which is when we can back off. Our training in this practice really gives us that. It's also when to do those things that are so hard to do, to say no. So there is something about using the balance of these three qualities that is really good instruction for how to pick and choose. To do it according to heartfelt perception, clarity of what the situation really calls for, encourage to really face up to consequences. I must say that during this session, I don't know, some of you may have noticed that Peter and I left on Friday. And the reason we left on Friday evening was that we were attending the high school graduation of a foster child that we'd had.

[15:44]

And for me, George, our foster child, was really a story of picking and choosing and balancing our humanity and our clarity and our courage. So I thought I'd tell you a little bit about George so you could see some of these things as they apply in life. About, I don't know, let's see, seven or eight years ago I did an internship at Children's Hospital and I had the good fortune while I was in the Department of Psychiatry there of meeting many abused children. and George was one of them. It's hard to say who chose whom in my relationship with George. I've seen many children who had been badly damaged. One four-year-old boy who'd been shot in the head by his mother, whose mother was in jail.

[16:50]

You know, children who had been sexually abused. I had, I remember, two-year-old twins who used to come see me and I didn't realize it at the time, but the father in the home was still sexually abusing them and they used to grab my legs when they would come for therapy and not want to let go. So, there were many children to choose. George first came to the attention of social services when he was 10 months old, he had a broken jaw. His mother was a drug user and a prostitute and mentally retarded, and her lover had picked him up and thrown him against the wall. So it took about another year before George was removed from the home.

[17:58]

And he had some years of good fortune. He lived with an older woman who really loved him. But if it weren't for bad luck, he didn't have any at all. She became sick with cancer, and he cooked for her when he was eight, nine years old. And then she died and he was taken from her and never went to the funeral or saw her again. So I got him when he was about nine as a patient. It was interesting choosing patients. At that point in my career it was very early. So I just took any of the cases that came my way.

[19:02]

And George's case was kind of a typical case for Oakland. A child, a foster abused child. And I worked with him for many months and he never said anything. So I called his foster mom and said, I think I'd like to discontinue the therapy. He doesn't say anything. And she said, why don't you stick with it a little longer? So I did. And my supervisor said, when he's in the waiting room waiting for you, he looks up out of the corner of his eye. And that was it. So in my own theoretical stance, I do something called hamburger therapy, which is taking children out to eat. And so I changed the mode of therapy to meet George at lunch hour and took him to the cafeteria and fed him.

[20:09]

And so we talked some. After a number of years of therapy, George was about 13, he started having a lot of trouble in the foster placement he was in, and he started talking about guns and gangs, and I knew that he was about to lose his placement. So, Peter and I talked about taking him in, And to do that meant to break all the rules that I was trained with as a therapist. And it also meant a tremendous risk, because if things didn't work for George, just the one person he had, what would happen?

[21:12]

But we brought George home, and he stayed with us for several months. And during the course of that time, again, the difficulties arose. And the clarity side of our situation came up, which was I was seeing maybe 50 abused children during the week. And it was almost impossible for me to come home and have it at my house as well. strange things would happen to George things that never would happen to my children and so Peter and I talked about it and we had to make a very difficult decision which was then again to put George out and that was where the courage came in and so it's an interesting turn of events that To be taken from foster care when you're in Piedmont is different than being taken from foster care when you're in Oakland. And he was taken to, rather than to a home in Oakland, he was taken to a place in San Lorenzo.

[22:23]

And he was put in a group home, which is really what he needed. It was very hard for him to live with me and Peter and our son, Kern, because there was too much to lose for him. And it made it impossible for him to be at ease. And so when he didn't have the thought of losing us, he was able to cope. And throughout the years, from the time he was 13 until now he's 18, we have been more like uncle and aunt to him. And there have been times when we have, well Peter and I have gone to court, and this is where the clarity has come in, where to see how much to intervene to keep George out of prison and how much to let him take the consequence of his actions. And I spoke to a friend of mine, an African-American psychologist, who said, I said to her that keeping George out of prison was a success.

[23:33]

That would mean success for us as parents. It didn't matter what else he did. And she said to me, keeping him from serving more than 10 years in prison will be a success for you. Which kind of broke my heart, but that was part of the clarity of the situation. Anyway, we went to his graduation on Friday. And he was so proud. And I thought about all the factors that kept us together during that time.

[24:37]

All the Thanksgivings and Christmases. Birthdays. And all the people. The judges who would give him another chance. If you see George this afternoon, say, hi, George. Congratulations. very busy but always finds time for everything somehow.

[25:53]

And I just want to say that I feel that I haven't paid so much attention to her as I should have during this period. And it's been a very overwhelming year Green Gulch, which lasted longer than the Casa Harp practice period would, and not really being able to see my family for most of that time, and then coming right into this practice period. So I wasn't completely here as much as I should have been ordinarily for this practice period. And I really appreciate it. coming together and holding it up.

[26:59]

Even though it's very subtle, but that's really what's been happening. And I would like to have spent more time with you. And I think that that's really come through. Thank you very much. And I must say that I was looking very, I found myself looking forward to this Sashi. And with anticipation, not anticipation, but looking forward to it in a very joyful way.

[28:06]

And so I want to take this opportunity now to thank Karen for all the work she did in making it work. We had five cuts. for efficiency and compassion, and for a pledge for spending a lot of time sewing.

[29:32]

I'll talk about that in a minute. And Rebecca and Anne Bussey, mostly, have been sewing a robe for a long time for me. And Anne Bussey and others have been sewing a raksu for Fritz. And after Kihin and Little Zazen, we're going to have a little sermon. Did anybody tell you about this? No. It will last about 10 minutes, or so, in which they will present this okhasa to me, and the raksha to Grace.

[30:48]

And so I just want to express my gratitude for them all, and a lot of other people. many, many people in the science, so on this Ocasea. So I want to thank everybody for their effort to do this, for both the Ocasea and the rocks, and for Grace. And it's a very special robe that covers the sangha.

[31:53]

So even though I wear it, it belongs to everyone. Thank you for letting me wear it. I would like us to keep the dialogue short and to the point." And that's of course what I said to her.

[33:04]

I said, don't explain anything. And I said, I've learned that well from my teacher. So, is there anything else we should say, or we should talk about? Does anybody want to say anything? I wanted to say one thing, that there was a really vile rumor going around, that I had offered $100 for questions. It was never more than $20. Yeah, right. So many Sims.

[33:55]

@Text_v004
@Score_JJ