I've got to taste the truth of the Tartartus words. out in the world, and in the world of work, and cities, and employees, and relationships. So let's face the truth. Your words. Good morning. Good morning. I'm going to start off with an old Zen story.

[01:08]

It's called Dizong's Nearness. Dizong asked Fayan, where are you going? Fayan said, around on a pilgrimage. Dizong said, what is the purpose of the pilgrimage? Fayan said, I don't know. Dizong said, not knowing is nearest. So often that last line, not knowing is nearness, is translated as not knowing is intimacy, or true intimacy. So I'll read it once again. Dizong asked Fayan, where are you going? Fayan said, around on a pilgrimage. Dizan said, what is the purpose of pilgrimage?

[02:12]

Fayan said, I don't know. Dizan said, not knowing is nearest. Not knowing is intimacy. So when we learn to sit Zazen, we're often told to think not thinking. And that's not very easy to do. We're told, what is this non-thinking? You can't tell yourself not to think. The mind just thinks on its own. Really, what we talk about is dropping our ideas and our preconceptions, dropping our fixed views, We talk about knowing and not knowing, and of course it's easy to fall into a trap, this kind of oppositional trap of, well, does it mean knowing facts?

[03:27]

Is it intellectual knowledge? Is it memorizing a bunch of Zen stories and rattling them off? And then on the opposite side there's an assumption that not knowing could be ignorance or stupidity. Well, I'm indifferent or I don't care. But this is actually a different kind of not knowing. This is the not knowing of an open mind, of not believing that one knows what will happen next or what another person is thinking or what's going to arise in the next moment. Nansen had a comment along those lines later about this story.

[04:28]

The way is not in knowing or in not knowing. Knowing is false consciousness and not knowing is indifference. So when I was very young, I didn't know my father really. That's what I, I wanted to know my father. And it wasn't, he was alive and living with the family, but for one thing, he was a workaholic and he was just never around. So I felt that I didn't know him at all. He had his own business, an advertising agency, So he not only worked all day, but he worked on the weekends and he was never there. And I tried to find all sorts of ways to know him.

[05:33]

The first thing was that I wanted to play softball. Because when I was a child, I was very much into sports. So I wanted to play softball with daddy or at least play catch. but he wouldn't play with me. And he had all sorts of good reasons like, you know, he was too busy and that work was more important. And then I had all sorts of imaginings about him, you know, being very powerful and strong and, you know, Well that's who I wanted attention from. So I used to get a little allowance when I was like 10 years old. And I forget how much it was, it wasn't very much, maybe it was 50 cents a week or something. But I was aware that his, he was always complaining that his transistor radio wasn't working right.

[06:43]

He used to listen to transistor radio while he was shaving in the morning. and that was about the only time I ever saw him I was early in the morning shaving so he complained about the transistor radio that it was on the blink so I saved my allowance money each week because I was going to buy him a new transistor radio and then I don't know how long it took. I have this vague memory that this transistor radio was about $14. And it was at the drugstore down the street, you know, in a little plastic container. And it was the most expensive one. They had about three or four different transistor radios. So this was the fanciest one in the drugstore. So I don't know how much time went by, maybe a few months, but I saved up all my money and I went and bought the transistor radio and gave it to him for something like Father's Day or his birthday or whatever.

[07:52]

But he took it back to the store. I don't think it was intentionally mean, obviously it wasn't. I think he had something else going on in his mind, Needless to say, it was a painful experience. And I think it created more distance between us. And then, when I got a bit older, when I was 14, I decided that I was going to drop sports altogether and become an intellectual. And it was a very conscious decision. I mean, it didn't just happen, it happened one day. And so I got very interested in books and being knowledgeable.

[08:57]

And it's no surprise I became a librarian. You know, librarians do the best on Jeopardy than any other, any other profession. But anyway, so I not only became an intellectual and started reading all these philosophers and all sorts of things, but I also got interested in Buddhism. And I wanted this thing called enlightenment, which I thought was very mysterious and far away and unreachable but that I was going to attain it. And at the same time I was very embarrassed not to know things. I was the kind of person by the time I got to my teens that had to know the answer to everything and the most humiliating thing would be not to know something, you know, not to know what was going on in the world, not to have read this book, you know, etc., etc.

[10:04]

So, but I did try to meditate back then and it was very, very difficult for me because I had a very active thinking mind. So I dropped that for a while, eventually my late teens, and my next big goal along with enlightenment was to travel around the world. And part of the reason this story speaks to me so much about this going on a pilgrimage is because that's really how it felt. I wanted to find some answer and I thought it was far away. I did travel almost all around the world. I did a lot of it with my thumb hitchhiking. But eventually something happened that I don't think it's really important that I describe it here, but at that point I knew that I wanted, when I was about 20, 21, that I really seriously wanted to practice this practice of Zazen.

[11:27]

So I came back from that pilgrimage. And I took up Zazen rather vigorously. And I always found that I had a lot of difficulty with the thinking mind, the mind that feels she has to know everything. And that would take the form of mental obsessing, I would call it, repetition. I wasn't one of those people who suffered intensely from knee pain and leg pain, but it was, you know, thinking pain. And it's made me think a lot about how the obsessive mind really depends on predictability and verifying things over and over and over.

[12:34]

a way of not trusting what might come up in the moment. I've talked to Sojan Roshi quite often about the thinking mind and, you know, he says, just don't worry about your thoughts. But I found that hard, personally, not to worry about it. And then I'd ask him, you know, what is this thing nirvana? And he said to me, nirvana is not a thing. It's right here. We talk so much about attainment and non-attainment. In the Heart Sutra we say over and over again there is no attainment yet we sit zazen and we come here and we all want something.

[13:40]

I know I want something. When I think about what real intimacy is in a way it's about not thinking. It's about not looking at oneself from a distance and creating these ideas about what one is saying and what's going to happen and what the next person is going to, how they're going to respond. Before I left on this pilgrimage, I had a certain distance developed from me towards my father. I dropped the whole trying to please daddy thing and I resented, I had a lot of resentment towards my parents but actually when I left my father was quite upset and it was the first time he showed me how sad he was that I was leaving home.

[14:59]

But at that time I couldn't I wasn't in the mood to receive that. I think perhaps I had blocked off the feelings that I had or I wanted to go my own way, but he was quite upset and I pushed him away, basically. Now, in 19 ... in 2001, my parents were going to come out and visit and I got a call they were not coming out because my father was diagnosed with colon cancer and the first feeling that I had was guilt actually and I volunteered to go back to see him for his operation because I, to be quite frank, a lot of it was motivated by guilt.

[16:21]

I had all these ideas about what was going to go on when my parents died and how I wanted to be a dutiful daughter and all that. It was very clear I wanted to do the right thing. But I also was very aware that I didn't want to go. and I felt a big distance from my family. So I decided to go back with an idea that this wouldn't make any bit of difference whatsoever the fact that I went back. My family had been pulled apart by alcoholism and anger and all that and I was sure that that this visit was going to be torture. But I got off the plane and I took a taxi to the hospital where he just, you know, the day before had his surgery for colon cancer, which was inoperable.

[17:33]

And my mother is waiting for me, you know, I took a taxi from the airport to the hospital and she's cheerful and waving at me, which I could not believe. And then I go to the hospital room and there's my father smiling and waving at me and thanking me profusely for coming to visit. And I had never really had that experience where ... you know, of really being able to give them something. I felt this was a real case of having a very strong preconceived idea of what was going to happen before I went and who they were.

[18:45]

I went back five or six more times to Philadelphia. I don't think I said that. So it was a big trip. I went back to visit. five or six times in the next six months, and there was never any complaint or criticism. And I remember one time You know, it's the very last time I saw my father. He was sitting in a chair and he'd become very weak because the colon cancer had spread to the liver and I had to convince him to go into hospice, which he didn't want to do. He had wanted to try every extreme experimental measure to extend his life.

[19:51]

And he was almost 80. So the doctors were trying to convince him that he should go into hospice and he was refusing. And finally, you know, he turned to me and asked what I thought should happen. He didn't want to listen to my mother. I had two siblings, by the way, who were not speaking, were completely estranged from the family. And he turned to me and asked, Well what should I do? So I finally told him I thought he should go into hospice. You know that really there was not hope that he was not going to really live longer. So we went home that day and he was sitting in a chair really extremely unhappy. I asked if there's anything I could do for him and he said well you comb my hair.

[20:55]

And I said, of course, and where's your comb? And he pointed out, he had this beautiful leather pouch that contained, you know, a comb and something you pull your whiskers with and different things in there. I'm sorry, I'm not, I don't shave, so I don't know how. So he had this beautiful set, though, of things that he used to groom himself. And you know, I never knew my father was so neat. It never occurred to me that he was a meticulous man. And he really was. And he told me exactly where it was, you know, where is this, it's next to that, and that's behind it. I didn't know he was so organized and clean and neat and everything, so I combed his hair.

[22:04]

And he was a little bit fussy about how I combed it, but that was fine. This was like a whole new experience of a man I thought I knew. I also had ideas about what was going to happen when he died. I had this horrible fear of what it's like to lose a parent, I had never lost a parent. And as mixed as my relationship was I still saw them as being these strong people there, stronger than me. So I was really terrified, but I had this whole scenario in my mind of what was going to happen. You know, the hospice nurse came and she explained what was likely to happen.

[23:09]

And I was the oldest daughter and the only real active sibling. And she was going to call me and she said, OK, two weeks before I think he's going to die. I'm going to call you. I'm going to have my bags packed. I'm going to go back there. I'm going to sit at the bedside. And I have the whole list of likely ways that somebody who has colon and liver cancer is going to pass away. you know, the liver breaks down, the jaundice, this, that, the other thing. So I was all, you know, preparing myself for spending maybe four or five days at his bedside and what I was going to say and, you know, that kind of thing. So I came back to Berkeley and I had my bags packed and all that. And then I got a call one morning from my mother that he died just during the night.

[24:10]

and so none of that happened that I thought was going to happen and it really what really stays with me is combing his hair There's a story, another story. This is another Chinese story, I believe. Ryozan Enkan, who was the 42nd ancestor, was the attendant to the 41st ancestor, who was Doan Kanchi.

[25:14]

And as such, he carried his robe for him. Okay, that's what the attendants did, carried his robe. So there was a moment when the teacher needed to put on his robe, so he handed the robe to him. Dhawan Kanchi said to his disciple, what is the business under the patched robe? His student, Ryozan Enkan, had no answer. The teacher said, to wear this robe and not understand the great matter is the greatest suffering. You asked me. So the student asked the teacher, what is this business under the patched robe? The teacher said, intimacy, intimacy. So this was the moment of awakening for the 42nd ancestor. He bowed to his teacher in great gratitude and tears were flowing. The teacher asked, what have you understood?

[26:16]

Can you express it? He said. So the student said, what is the matter under this robe? Intimacy. his teacher said, intimacy and even greater intimacy. So, I don't know what time it is, but... Does anyone have a question or a comment? I've heard you tell this story, I'm going back, back to when you decided to switch from being a sportswoman. I don't know why, but I've heard you tell this story before and I think, well, you had an aptitude for both, I mean, it wasn't like you just made an intellectual decision, I mean, somehow you have an aptitude, you had an aptitude for sports, and did you sort of know somehow that you had this other aptitude?

[27:29]

It's like you make it sound like, well, I didn't like this story, so I started this new story. Well, that is kind of true. What was the impetus? You know, I know, I was very wild as a child. I didn't tell this story this time because I've told it here before, you know, but I was, my parents were called into the principal's office on a regular basis because I was a behavior problem. So not only was I into sports, but you know, I liked punching people and kicking them. So, And I was quite unpopular. So... I decided at one point I was going to shut my mouth and just read a lot.

[28:35]

But you liked to read. I definitely did. I definitely did. You always established that you liked to read. Yes, I knew I did. I mean, the truth is I do have a passion for books and that's always been the case. But I think I exaggerated. I really think that some of the experiences I've described, though, were some of the motivation. I mean, I do think I wanted to get attention by being an intellectual. I wasn't getting much attention the other way. So... It wasn't the attention I was hoping to get. been a safe thing.

[29:58]

My question is, so what finally happened with your obsessive mind and your thinking mind? Did you ever find, I'll use the word, quiet? Well, the truth is that I still have an obsessive thinking mind. And yes, there are moments of deep tranquility. It's just that one can't control them. There's no way to control an outcome and you can't grasp onto these moments of relief from how the mind usually operates. They just arise and pass away just like the painful moments. had to work with this my whole life and it's recently that I've just begun to accept that this is going to be the way it is for the rest of my life.

[31:07]

I kept thinking, you know, the older I get, I mean I'm 53 now and I've been doing this practice for over 30 years, if it hasn't gone away now It's not going to, you know, I used to imagine my own deathbed, you know, this peaceful, you know, samadhi state and all that stuff, but I've had to accept that I don't know. And not knowing is actually a good way to feel a lot of the time. So thank you for your comment. Well, you've been there. No, I am talking about closeness with another and closeness with oneself and everything else.

[32:33]

This last story about the robe with a student and a teacher with a robe that's intimacy, it's closeness between teacher and student. Now, one thing I learned over the years here I used to look at Sojin as being kind of this patriarchal authority figure. And after morning zazen, when we leave the temple, he stands at the door and each person bows to him. It's interesting all the feelings that come up in bowing to him. You know, whether it's fear, maybe trying to impress him, gratitude, all sorts of things. But over the years, the most important thing I've learned about Sojin is that he loves us.

[33:36]

I think that's the most important thing going on. I remember one time I talked to him. I was living in Berkeley and we had a barn in the back of my house and I wanted to turn the barn into a Zendo. And I kind of felt like a nobody here. I had been here a long time but I still felt like a nobody. And I was talking to him and I said, you know, I'd really like to turn this barn into a Zendo. And he got really excited about that and he said, well, I want to see your barn. So he jumped into my car and came over to my house. And yes, he is trying to, you know, spread Zen throughout the world. Yes, that's part of what we do. But I felt that the main thing was love and I don't mean to make that sound corny like it's just me, because it's not about me exactly.

[34:42]

It is about me, but it's not about me. but that's a really important thing. Now, I don't know if that answers your question. Well, I think that's a lot of why, you know, this story is about being nearer. You know, it has so many meanings, but that's one of the meanings. One of the meanings is person-to-person closeness. But I remember the last month, my father, too, he had cancer.

[36:04]

He had cancer in the side. He was a beautiful boy. Thank you. I really like listening to your talks, and I feel like nothing gets in the way of what you're saying.

[37:34]

Very open, but also very detailed, very concrete, I like the combination. I'm just going to the comment on it. I teach and I got a little set of personal short papers from students that they send in by email yesterday and I was checking who was on time and who was late and somebody was late. It's early in the quarter so I thought, oh I'm going to look this person up on the Stanford website and see if I can find out anything about him. So I did and I found out some activities that he did that put him in a place that was politically I didn't really like. So I immediately got prejudiced against him. But I remembered that I liked him in class.

[38:37]

But I immediately started creating this picture of him that was creating great distance before I even looked at what he had written. He's only a couple hours late. I noticed myself doing that, and I just thought, was wishing that I didn't create these pictures that we're talking about, not knowing that we're not having such a hard picture of somebody that we can't ever be open to who they are. That's what we were talking about. And I just did it, this student, and I felt this kind of weak cry coming up. Do you mean you felt weak? Yeah, I felt, you know, when I was seeing myself have this hardened reaction to him, oh, he has a political opinion that I disapprove of. But I knew that was really obtuse and rigid of me to have that reaction, and yet my cry against it was pretty weak.

[39:40]

I didn't feel confident that I could overcome it and have a more open relationship with him. So, would you like to help me? Well, what I think about sometimes is how people do change. I'm not sure how you deal with it exactly in the moment, but my parents' political opinions changed radically over the years, from very conservative to pretty liberal. And I've known a number of people who have changed, so I don't think that people are really solidly in one camp or another. So it may be hard to change yourself in that moment, but maybe Not looking at him as a total, you know, solid, fixed, this is how he thinks.

[40:52]

I think it's me that's solid and fixed. Yeah, I would agree. So, not only to hope that he might change, but so that he looks more like me. Not necessarily a blessing, but and how if that cry were a little stronger, what it might sound like, that it would be better to listen to how and why and the quality of how he lives in the political conviction that he has, and relate it in a much more subtle way. Well, I think you've said it pretty well yourself, that you both share a reality, you're not that different.

[41:57]

So, I think you know... Yeah, I'm just using you as an example. I know. No, you've said it well. Mark? I'm not totally sure I understand the question about time.

[43:09]

Well, I don't know exactly how to answer that except that the situation of my father's illness and me being much older and being aware that I'd carried around certain very fixed ideas about him, how that intersected with this crisis of his illness and dying. And none of these moments that I mentioned were planned or expected. I had plenty of planned profound moments, which did not happen. But the ones that turned out to be the most intimate were unplanned, they were really unknown.

[44:29]

Often, you know, when we talk about koans we don't know the answer to the koan but the important point is the question. You know, it's questioning rather than knowing an answer. And maybe, you know, when I asked him, well, what can I do for you now? I wasn't expecting him to ask me to comb his hair. I mean, I was expecting to go get takeout food or, you know, bring the bedpan or something like that. You know what I mean? That's what I had planned in my mind. But in fact, what wasn't planned was his response and then what came out of that. I hope that answers your question some. I think, is it time to end? What time is it? Okay, it's time. Actually, afterward, we'll have some refreshments and then a little question and answer, which Jake will discuss.

[45:46]

So if you have more questions, I'll be around after tea. So thank you all. Things are numberless.

[46:19]

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