Ron Nestor. Ron doesn't need introducing to most of you, but for some of you who are newer arrivals, this is not, by the way, Paul Haller. Paul Haller's name has been up on the bulletin board all week for reasons that I don't need to go into. Paul couldn't make it this morning. Paul Howard. But he said the real question is, who are you? That's really David's question. Ron has held just about every He's here to talk with us this morning. He lives with his wife, Karen, in Oakland.

[01:07]

And I want to tell a little story about Ron. I think the first time I really met Ron was in San Francisco on Page Street many years ago when I was a new student there. And it was a sashim. And during the sashim, this tall, lanky, strong, live-looking guy was sitting next to me, and I didn't know who he was, but it was absolutely wonderful to sit next to him. He moved so naturally, and he sat still so naturally. His presence really shone, and I was inspired by this guy, who I later got to meet as a person. an individual with a personality, and here he is, Paul and Helen.

[02:08]

David makes me feel very legitimate. And in my memory of David during that same Sashim, he was the Jisha for Reb. He was the most energetic, speedy Jīsha I've ever seen. He was just like a cyclone. Just tremendously energetic. That was when we were both younger. I'm not used to speaking with a microphone, it's strange. It's also very interesting when everybody chants, I can hear myself as someone like a bass section. It's a very ego building to hear yourself as the bass with everybody else chanting.

[03:12]

Well, I had a kind of a cockeyed idea that I wanted to put three different occurrences together into a talk that are very ... each of these occurrences is totally ... well, they're not totally different, but in appearance they're very different from each other, but they all have a common thread that I'm interested in that I wanted to see if I could convey to you. So be patient because they're going to seem kind of disparate at first. And one took place in 1200, one took place in 1900, and one took place in 2000. The first occurrence in 1200 was with Zen Master Dogen. This is actually in 1223 when he took a boat with his teacher Myosin to China trying to seek the authentic true teaching of Buddhism.

[04:35]

So he's a 23-year-old, he's brilliant, absolutely brilliant genius of a person. And when they finally land in China, he has to wait three months before he can leave the boat, probably because he has to take all the precepts before he can enter China officially. So he's on the boat and one day a head cook from one of the nearby monasteries comes to the boat and wants to buy some dried mushrooms, Japanese dried mushrooms, which are a delicacy which he can add to the gruel for his monastery. And he and Dogen strike up a conversation and they both enjoy speaking to each other. They have a good talk. and then it gets dark and it's time to go so he starts to leave and Dogen says well why don't you stay overnight since it's dark.

[05:44]

This guy, Cook is in his 60s you know don't go back now it's dark stay over and take it easy go back in the morning when it's light and Cook says no you know I don't have permission to be away from the monastery I have to go now this is my job. So Dogen thinks this is a little bit extreme So the guy goes and Dogen says, before he goes, I just don't understand why you make such a big deal about being back on time. Why don't you take it easy and spend a little bit more time in meditation and study and what's this urgency just to cook? Anybody can cook. And the head cook sort of laughs at him and says, well, you just don't understand words or discipline. You don't understand the meaning of words or discipline. And the way I understand what he was saying was that words are symbolizing just our daily activity.

[06:50]

The words are sort of how we interconnect on an everyday basis. So word stands for our everyday activity, our incessant everyday activity. And discipline is more like our practice. Discipline is trying to understand reality. I may be wrong on that but that's how I interpret what he said. So he takes off and he says you know come visit me sometime and we can talk about this some more. Later, when Dogen finally arrives and gets onto the mainland in China and is visiting a monastery, he runs into another head cook who's also in his mid-60s, who's bent over in the hot sun drying mushrooms. And this cook is just working like crazy. He's infirm, he's stiff, he's kind of aching, he's sweating. And Dogen says, why are you working so hard out in the sun?

[07:53]

Can't you get somebody to help you? Can't somebody else do this for you? And the cook says, somebody else is not me. This is my job. This is what I do. Same situation as the first person. So both of these occurrences had a very big effect on Dogen. Here is this brilliant, one of the most brilliant, it's like Mozart or Bach. Dogen is like on that level, in my opinion, that level of transcendence in his ability to understand and practice and yet these two very solid sort of plain Chinese cooks showed him something that he had missed which was that the reality and truth is not something that is not a special idea, and if you could only understand this idea, that you will have it.

[08:57]

But the truth and reality are that your actual activities are your truth and your reality. And the attitude that you bring to your activities are truth and reality. the attitude is the key thing and later the first cook came back and visited Dogen at one of the monasteries and they had another talk and Dogen says well what were you talking about back on the boat when you mentioned when you talked about words and discipline and then the cook said well you need to understand the origin of words of discipline and then Dogen said you know this is now they're into a koan so then Dogen says well what is the origin of words and the head cook said one, two, three, four, five and what's the origin of discipline and the cook says the whole universe has never obscured it

[10:16]

So I kind of want to leave those phrases alone, that's a whole other talk. But the main point I want to get at is that the cook is encouraging Dogen to get to the core of his actual daily life, his actual daily activities, uncover the origin of what he's all about. And there was something about the attitude of both of these cooks that had a tremendous impression on him, on Dogen. Okay, so leave 1200 and now go up to 1900. Totally different situation. This is the expedition of Ernest Shackleton, who's a British explorer, sort of adventurer, right before World War I and I just haven't looked at a book about him called The Endurance which is the name of his ship so that's why he is on my mind.

[11:31]

So Ernest Shackleton took a group of men to the Antarctic and their goal was to cross the Antarctic overland I believe and this is sort of for them in 1915 or 1912 I guess or 13 it's like our astronauts would be today. This is like the big adventure for the world. Most places have been discovered or explored, but not the depth of the Antarctic. I think Scott and Amsterdam had tried to make it, but it was still a frontier. And so these adventurers they were all more or less professional adventurers. They just thrived on these kind of expeditions. So they went off and as they were sailing through the Antarctic in this big wooden schooner, the ice closed in on them and they couldn't move. And gradually the ice strangled the ship and the ship broke up and just fell apart, basically exploded in slow motion.

[12:38]

So they were stranded on the ice in 1913. Nobody was going to come rescue them. And then they just went through an incredible series of and an incredible adventure of endurance to be able to exist on the ice with whatever supplies they had, and then just by step by step make it back to a settlement. And I can't convey it in a talk, it's just too short to convey the depth of what they went through, but it was just an enormous feat of endurance which they accomplished. always sticking together as a group for the most part, maintaining order and really cooperating with each other where they needed to. And in the end, finally making five of them making a voyage across the Arctic Ocean and basically just a big rowboat through all kinds of gales and wind and all the rest of it and just almost freezing to death. And finally, just after months and months of this, finally just stumbling into a whaling settlement and getting help.

[13:51]

But when you read the details of how they handled themselves and how they drew upon their resources to deal with this, it's very gripping. Because it's what they come up with spiritually and mentally to be able to deal with this, which is what's really interesting. And interestingly enough, after the expedition, after they were rescued and back in Britain, many of them just fell apart. The interesting thing was that they could rise to the occasion when they were challenged with survival, but when they were back in ordinary life, they fell apart because they couldn't find meaning in their everyday life. Shackleton died at the age of 47, I think, and he was drinking a lot. just couldn't stay with his wife and had a mistress and was just sort of aimlessly wandering around trying to recreate the drama that he had enjoyed earlier.

[14:55]

And several of his men were in that same situation. But when they were in the middle of the survival situation they could draw on every ounce of what they had. And this is a quote from Shackleton. He said, In memories we were rich, we had pierced the veneer of outside things. I mean, that's really key. I mean, this is, why are these guys doing it? Why are they, you know, they ate penguins every day for like six months, you know, nothing but just eating penguins every day. In memories we were rich, and they were cold and wet the whole time, and they never took a shower either, you know, for like two years they didn't take a shower. In memories, we were rich. We had pierced the veneer of outside things. We had suffered, starved, and triumphed, groveled down, and they groveled down 22 men sleeping under one big rowboat, you know, night after night, all just packed together.

[15:58]

Groveled down, yet grasped at glory, grown bigger in the bigness of the whole. We had seen God in His splendor, heard the text that nature renders, we had reached the naked soul of man. So then move from 1900 up to 2000. A couple of weeks ago, I went to a concert of Scottish fiddle music. Alistair Fraser is a Scottish fellow who lives up in Grass Valley. He's a very charismatic and interesting guy and very dynamic musician. And he's gathered, amongst other things that he does, he's gathered like an orchestra around him of about 50 people or so, maybe 60.

[17:06]

of all ages, from everywhere from like 19 to 70. And they have this orchestra which plays Scottish fiddle music and they've got like 25 violins and it's just... And it's... It's really fun to listen to these people because they're all more or less amateurs and they're all very enthusiastic about what they're doing. And as I was watching them play, The problem for them is that they have to play music which is not indigenous to their background, most of them. So they're playing traditional Scottish and Irish music, but they're Americans, mostly. So how can they embody this music which they didn't grow up with? How do they do that? And they also dance and sing a little bit too, so you can see how they move when they dance, you can hear their voice when they sing, and then you can hear the spirit in their music.

[18:12]

And what was interesting to me was how It was all enjoyable, but some of them were able to really feel the music more than others were. And most of them looked like they were struggling to embody this music, but couldn't quite do it. Even though they were having a lot of fun, and the audience was having a lot of fun, they couldn't quite bring this music into what they actually were. And it's not hard to understand, because it comes from another culture. They couldn't make that connection. Alistair could because he comes from that culture and also he's a very dynamic character anyway. And there was a few people that could. You could see a couple people who were able to do it and they markedly stood out as being at a different level. So the first two events that I mentioned, Dogen and Shackleton, are sort of momentous, profound occurrences, and the third is just a sort of light entertainment concert.

[19:19]

But they all have this, in my mind, they all have this quality in common of trying to get to the core, trying to get underneath the surface of things. And you know obviously this is what Zen practice is about and this is what Buddhism is about. These three occurrences are all very exotic. They involve boats and trips and pilgrimages and expeditions and adventures and music and passion. But our life has some of that in it. But for the most part, our life is not so much like that. Our life is very much more mundane than those three occurrences.

[20:21]

It's just that those occurrences highlight the kind of what happens. what can happen in our life and what can happen in our practice. And I think this is hopefully this is something that trying to get to the core of things is I think all humans have some urge in that direction. And we've just picked Zen Buddhism as the best way for us to understand that, or to practice that, or to investigate that. And the great difficulty with Zen, one of the great difficulties is the sheer plainness of just sitting.

[21:33]

particularly when it's done year after year after year after year consistently. And even if we do do it year after year consistently, how do we manage to bring it to life, to get underneath the surface? Because the surface could just be sitting down in a beautiful zendo, enjoying the beautiful ambiance, the support of the community, all the richness of the tradition, being a part of a community, all nurturing valuable parts of this experience, but not necessarily getting under the surface. And what I'm being a little repetitive, but what stirs me about these three events that I just mentioned is that in each one of them the protagonists are trying to get to the core of things in their own way.

[22:49]

In my mind, the beauty of Zen practice is that getting to the core of things doesn't look like anything special. It's not like, you know, maybe in some traditions somebody has a Kensho experience and, you know, goes dancing down the hillside or something and light bulbs, you know, go off over their head or something. But generally, it doesn't look like anything special. There may be some teachers who are really charismatic and wonderful people and, you know, you say, oh, that person is so great. But for most of us, it doesn't look like something really special. So how can you maintain a motivation and energy and interest in something which doesn't look so special? And I think that there's not an answer to that question. If there was, I'd tell you what the answer was. That's why it's such a good question is because there is no answer to it.

[24:02]

It's something that each person has to draw on in themselves in their own way. and something to add is that just because we want to understand what's under the surface of things doesn't mean that there's something wrong with the surface of things that if we have the attitude that all this is all this is just a dream it's just all a concoction which is true in one sense but if we disregard the surface of things because we always want to find something more profound That's a kind of a, actually it's a kind of a spiritual snobbery.

[25:04]

It occurs to me that the internet and all the excitement and all the huge amounts of money and power that are transferring over to internet-related endeavors and media and public interest is leading directly away from that, that actually the Internet is leading to the surface of things. The Internet is all about how to have access to more surface, so that you have an enormous amount of surface that you have access to now. Isn't that terrific? And again, there's nothing wrong with it. It's just that to spend one's life being occupied with that seems a bit of a waste. So on that positive note, I'll just end.

[26:19]

And if you'd like to say something, please do. Shackleton reminds me of these Those Scottish guys, you know, they just...

[27:45]

Well, he had to be under those kinds of conditions to sustain that practice. Any practice which needs a certain set of conditions in order to, well, let's just say the more limited the set of conditions have to be, probably the weaker the practice. There's also some mysterious resonances that work in us, too.

[29:39]

And you have to work at really understanding a tradition or a form. But there's a strange phenomenon, at least I experience, and I think I've spent a lot of time talking about this with other traditional musicians. responding to some music that's way out of sync. I actually think that a lot of people can find that if they're, you know, as they tune

[30:44]

You'd be also rock and roll. You'd be a rock and roll presbyterian musician. Right, and you wouldn't necessarily be practicing zen wearing black robes. But these things flow together in very interesting ways. Right. And I see it as a practice for those musicians is to try to embody and understand that music. So the fact that they're having difficulty with it is just fine. they need to find where the heart of that music is. It's like peeling away the stuff. It's like peeling away the stuff that keeps you from experiencing it or perceiving it directly. Right, and that's a little bit like peeling away the stuff. When the head cook said to Dogen, about the origin of discipline, the universe has never concealed it.

[32:18]

It's like, you know, I get into trouble if you try to explain it too much, but it's like the universe is not hiding anything from you. You just need to see what's there, peel away your own stuff, but the universe is, right there for you to see, for you to experience, but you just have to peel away your own resistance. Something like that. Yeah. Something that seemed to cut up, as you say, a few of those extraneous things where you felt really oppressed, I would say, or caught, or something happened where you had to

[33:31]

Well, not nearly enough. And I feel a real problem with that. I feel like in a way that a lot of my life is kind of like a well-intentioned shadow of what it could be. I haven't been able to actually endure the pain and suffering, I think, that Shackleton's group was able to handle, the psychic version of that, which I think goes along with really being able to cut through your own self-centeredness. I can't say that I've been able to do that very well, but I believe in that I can give you one very small example of what you were asking about. It's very plain, but it's actually a good example. When I was probably about 20, I didn't know what I was going to do with my life, and I felt like

[34:48]

I was supposed to do something, I was supposed to have a career, everybody else seemed to have a career, but I didn't see any career that looked particularly meaningful or interesting to me. I didn't see my life in terms of a career. It just didn't register. And yet I felt responsible that I should, because that's the way society seemed to be working. And it just had dawned on me at one moment, well, you don't know what you want to be and you don't know what you're supposed to be, so forget it, don't worry about it right now, just let it go, just do it, get this thing off your back that you're supposed to have something and you're supposed to be this, you don't know and you don't have that, so that's where you are right now. And I just felt like this, a certain amount of weight had just come off of my shoulders. very, you know, sort of small realization but sort of an example of where you have some, your mind is set in a certain way and then something, hard to know exactly why, but at a certain time you shift and you see that your mind doesn't have to be that way and that your mind can be another way.

[35:57]

I think that's part of that process. I have a mushroom story about Ron, which really goes to this point you're making, I think. When I asked Ron to give the talk today, it happened to be on the telephone. So I don't know how much this is a story about me or about Ron, right? But we haven't talked about this. But when I came in and asked him to give the talk, there was a kind of a silence on the phone, a really resonant silence. And I imagined I could feel in that silence Ron saying to himself, I'm really too busy to give this talk, and various other kinds of things he may have said to himself. Anyway, I was saying it to myself. But what I felt happened

[37:04]

on the phone in that silence was Ron's recognition, like a cook, that having been asked sincerely to give the talk, it was now his job. And being busy or something like that was not the point. So he said yes out of that quietness. Thank you. daily experience.

[38:05]

Hers or his? In both actually. knocked out of this tree, or what's going to happen? And at some point, making a leap and saying, well, it doesn't matter. It's just such a juicy quote, I have to go for it, but when you mentioned God, actually T.S.

[39:44]

Eliot wrote a poem which included one of Shackleton's experiences in it, in The Wasteland actually. And when Shackleton and two of his men were making this final run for it, they were going overland through waist-deep snow. They couldn't even carry sleeping bags because they couldn't take the weight with them. They had a two-hour zone where if they didn't make it within two hours, they were dead after two years of struggle. It came down to two hours, basically. And it's just sort of incredible how they managed to do it. But as these three guys who had been together through thick and thin for years were all trudging through the night, through the snow and everything, they mentioned later on when they all discussed it, each one of them said that they all felt like there was an extra person with them, God, that there was an extra person with them. And they each had a very visceral feeling that there was somebody else walking with them. And so T.S.

[40:44]

Eliot wrote, who is the third who walks always beside you? When I count, there are only you and I together. But when I look ahead up the white road, there is always another one walking beside you. So I don't know what to make out of that except that there's something I just don't know what to make out of it. And this idea that there's something else there is kind of interesting, and I'm a little skeptical of the something else. But these three men all had this same powerful kind of experience. This is interesting. I think it's 11. Well, thank you for listening.

[41:35]

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