except I am about to taste the truth of God's righteousness words. Good morning. Today is the last talk that I'll give this year. And that's because there's going to be Christmas and New Year's and everybody takes a holiday. I want to talk a little bit about our attitude toward Christmas and New Year's, not so much New Year's, but Christmas and how we handle our attitude, what kind of attitude we should have

[01:31]

toward Christianity, or Judaism, or some other religion, when most of us are from Christian, or Jewish, or Muslim. Not so many Muslims, but mostly Jewish and Christian backgrounds. And maybe something else, I don't know. And when there are Jewish holidays, something comes up in you if you're Jewish. And in Christian holidays, something comes up in you if you're Christian. And something as powerful as Christmas affects everybody because it's so overwhelming. Christmas dominates the scene. Maybe if you go home, you know, to your parents, visit your parents.

[02:42]

A lot of times people go and visit their family and that makes you feel a little uneasy sometimes because your family may be Christian or Jewish or something and they don't quite, you don't quite know how to relate to them so easily. How do you express you resent at that time. So it's a big question and we need to know how to deal with it. One way to deal with it is to avoid it. You just don't want to get involved. Let's not talk about it. But you shouldn't have to avoid it. You should be able to relate in some way to your family or your friends or whoever you're dealing with.

[03:54]

And without feeling funny about it. I think this is a very important time for How we practice our koan. Do you know our koan? This is a very important time for us to concentrate on our koan.

[04:57]

Ganjo koan. which we all practice, whether we know it or not, or whether we're aware of it or not, we are all practicing genjo koan, which is the fundamental koan of all koans, which is basically What am I doing right now? Basically, what am I doing right now? What is this right now? If you're truly practicing your koan, what is this right now? Then whatever situation you enter into, you bring your koan with you. then there's no need to rely on Buddhism or Christianity or Judaism or any religious facade.

[06:09]

Zen, you know, is the basis of all religions. We can talk about it in two ways. There's a religion called Buddhism. And its fundamental practice is called Zen. And then there's Zen, which is the fundamental of everything. So when you confront or meet with Christianity, you should find out what is the fundamental thing there. What does Christmas mean? What is Christmas? Is it tinsel and Christmas trees and 19th century tunes called Christmas carols? Actually, the older Christmas carols were more meaningful, had more

[07:18]

depths, I think. 19th century Christmas carols are kind of like romantic little ditties. But the old, pre-Renaissance even, tunes were very gutsy and more kind of expressing something more fundamental, deeper. Most people who practice Zen, Buddhism, are a little dissatisfied with the religion that they were brought up with. And so when we go home, we're a little shy of that, you know, there's some conflict. But as a Zen student, you should try and find out what's really underneath, what's the basis of your religious background.

[08:37]

What is the real germ or the real meaning of Christianity? Not necessarily what you were taught, but to investigate a little bit deeper, to find out something that you didn't know about it. And the same with Judaism. Find out something that you didn't know about it before. That's a kind of good challenge. What is it? Is there something that you didn't know about? before you thought it was kind of fruitless or something. Usually we can find something in our religious background that corresponds to our own Zen practice.

[09:48]

if you really investigate it, and not just write it off. It's not that at the bottom all religions are the same. That's a kind of easy way out. At the bottom, they're not really all the same. And it's not that all roads lead to the same place, or all religions lead to the same place. That's not it. But most religious practices have something in common anyway. But there's a certain point where they all diverge off into their own understanding, in their own way. So rather than standing off, making a standoff by confronting or arguing over what's right and what's wrong, to agree on what you can agree on.

[11:04]

You had to create a harmonious situation and not to press your conviction as if it was the right way. is how you begin to get along with people. If you start pressing your conviction, you know, Buddhism is much better than Christianity, you know, or Judaism. Because it's got all this and this and this and this, you know, you just start alienating people. So, you can't depend on Buddhism. First of all, That's called depending on Buddhism. If you start depending on Buddhism, someone else will start depending on Christianity. You'll find yourself going further and further away from each other. So, you can only relate as human beings.

[12:07]

How we express our Zen practice is just to relate as a human being, not to try to convince someone of the superiority of Zen, of Buddhism. So this is a great challenge, is how to really be yourself. And how to express something very fundamental in your everyday activity. How to express the truth that you feel you know, or the truth that you would like to know, or the truth that you feel you would like to know, in your everyday activity. That's called practicing with the koan. And if you're very skillful, you can, if you're relating to Christians, you can help them appreciate their own religion.

[13:32]

If you're relating to your Jewish family, you can help them appreciate their own religion. And you can take part in all of those things that they do. If they sing Christmas carols, you can sing Christmas carols. If they put on a yarmulke, you can put on a yarmulke. You can take any form, as Avalokiteshvara can take all forms. You don't have to worry about losing anything. So this is also how we observe precepts as well.

[14:53]

Actually, Buddhist precepts are a little bit like Ten Commandments. Ten Prohibitory Precepts are a lot like Ten Commandments. They're not exactly the same, but they're very similar. But, you know, we don't observe those precepts like rules. We understand what they are and then we just go ahead with our life. And without relying on precepts and without relying on Buddhism and without relying on Zen, we investigate our koan. Just keep our mind on our koan. So how we do that is we're constantly reducing everything to zero.

[16:13]

We're constantly throwing everything out. And by constantly throwing everything out, we appear completely new, constantly. And if we're completely new and without ideas and preconceptions and arguments, we can enter into everything. It's called a MOOC. So, just to keep our mind always open and ready for everything, without something behind it, without having something behind us. Some preconceived idea of how things are supposed to be.

[17:18]

So don't go home smelling of Zen or smelling of Buddhism. Suzuki Roshi used to call that stinky, stinky Buddhism. When you have all these ideas that you're trying to impress people with, So rather than to feel that these people are practicing Christianity, these people are practicing Judaism, and I'm practicing Buddhism, in some sense, in the sense of Zen that's before Zen, or Zen that's before the religion of Buddhism, everybody's practicing that practice.

[18:30]

And you can relate to everyone that way, because you're all practicing fundamental practice. Well, what is this fundamental that really ties you all together? Just to appreciate everyone's way. But you don't have to give up your Buddhism. They don't have to give up their Christianity or their Judaism. You can appreciate their practice. And because you can appreciate your practice, you can appreciate their practice. When you don't set up some duality or antagonism, then they can appreciate your practice, even though it may be hard for them.

[19:49]

But they can only appreciate it through you, not through your ideas, just through your activity. how you conduct yourself and how you express yourself and how big your mind is. If your mind is very narrow, then people relate to you in a very narrow way. But if your mind is big enough to include all of that, then people will relate to you in a very big way. So I don't mean to condescend, you know, not to be condescending.

[21:00]

That's something different. Not to pat people on the back and say, oh yeah, this is nice. but to really try to enter into the spirit of what should be happening, what you're doing, and to look for that thing which corresponds to your own understanding of practice in someone else's practice. There are many things actually that Christians or Jews do that practice that are in many ways less selfish than Buddhists.

[22:02]

We should try to see things as they really are and not through our own biases. Then other people will begin to lose their bias. Pretty soon you're laying down your arms. You know, we really create antagonistic situations and we all, even though we don't have guns, we all arm ourselves with something, you know. We're always, we have carry around our ammunition of some kind and our weapons of some kind. And they're mostly verbal or emotional weapons, but they're there. And we should make this effort to disarm ourself and other people so that we don't have any fear of each other. Religions always have this fear of each other, you know. If they're right, then I'm wrong.

[23:15]

So I must carry my guns with me so that I can blast off when things get, when it looks like I'm going to get toppled. But if you don't have anything to topple over, if you don't have anything that someone can push over, then there's nothing they can do. And so there's no need for armament, verbal armament or emotional armament or intellectual armament. Just don't have anything sticking up. Maybe it brings up some questions for you.

[24:37]

How do you appreciate hypocrisy? Well, I don't think we do. I don't think we appreciate hypocrisy so much. I mean, you know, it's hypocrisy, but we don't appreciate it. And when I go home to the religion that I was brought up in, What upsets me the most is that my family and friends do one thing and they say something else. And what they say, actually, is what I took seriously and why I came to Zen practice. And what they do is something else. And it's like I became a shadow figure for them because they build up this persona in this facade of what, to protect themselves from the truth that they knew but couldn't face.

[25:42]

And I, when I come home without my persona, it makes me very uncomfortable. They want to see the persona that they grew me up to face the world with. And when they see me without my persona, they get real uncomfortable. It's like it brings up to them something that they put aside, a great person of Christ, and they don't see it. That's very difficult. Somehow, you have to express what you do have. Somehow you have to be able to express what you do have. But how can you express yourself without creating a dualistic antagonism?

[26:45]

One thing is that if we think they're wrong, then that creates a defensiveness. Are they wrong? because you're not presenting your persona the way they want you to, expect you to. Does that make them wrong? Not necessarily. Only if they pushed your heart on me. See, it's a big problem, you know, and I'm not offering you a formula. But what I'm saying is, talking about our attitude, you know, and whatever you, you're going to run into all kinds of problems, you know.

[27:47]

But if you, the attitude that I'm offering you, that I'm talking about, is how you work on this koan. And if I start giving you advice or telling you how to do it, then, of course, it's nothing but mounting problems that are insurmountable. But if you enter it as a koan without trying to figure out how to do it, you don't try and figure out anything. You just keep to the bottom line. And you just have to keep that in mind. If you have some idea about how you're going to, if you have it all worked out, how you're going to do it, then it's just more ideas. It's just more. You come up against not only silver mountains and iron cliffs, but the great deep ocean and ground.

[28:55]

Don't have some idea. Don't have any ideas. Don't go in with some idea. Just be open. Because your ideas will just stay in your way. But if you do that, then you feel unprotected and so forth. But that's the beginning of dropping. So entering a situation without any idea, just no ideas, just openness, is like really dropping our defenses. Dropping your body and your mind. But it's hard.

[30:03]

Hard to do. Because we're full of defenses. We're fully armed. We try to think of, well, what elements can I use? What's the best strategy? Stuff like that. So if we don't have any arms, you know, and no defenses, things will go more easily. It's not that they won't be rough and difficulties and da-da-da, but you always know where you are. Always know where you are. And you always come back to zero. If you get disconnected from zero, then you're just back into the battle. You always have to stay at zero.

[31:04]

That's the bottom line. What do I mean by the bottom line? It's zero. Not having anything for or against it. So it's no longer asana, no longer an asana situation. But it's hard, hard to do. But still, that's expressing our practice. You're saying that all you have to do is just stay on zero. Reminds me that that's not always so easy. And a little sentence that I read keeps bobbing back in my mind. If you don't know that you know, you think that you don't know.

[32:10]

So it's especially, I think, when people go home to their own families, it becomes really very hard to find zero. Harder than usual. And it takes great confidence to know that you know. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, you have to have that confidence. But if you work at it, that's how you get the confidence. It's not that we're just practicing this at Christmas time. This is our practice all the time. This is our constant practice with our koan, skin-chill koan, all the time. That's why we can say we're practicing 24, 25 hours a day. There's no time when you're not practicing. I really

[33:19]

I kind of identify with what you say about your family. I feel like a lot of us probably feel and have felt from when we were very young, like we had that position. And I sometimes think we're like Hamlet, you know, Hamlet He comes back to the court of his family, where his mother is, and there's all this gaiety, and he comes in this black, because he's in mourning for his father, and he really gets off on it. I mean, there's like that side of Hamlet, and I think that we kind of do that, too. We kind of, you know, they're there, and I'm here. As my parents get older, a lot of things kind of break down because their lives are hard, much harder, not materially, but emotionally. And it's easier for me to see, well, why do they do this? Well, they're hurting or they're scared. And those little glimpses

[34:27]

make it much easier. Because then it's not just, it always used to be me that was hurting, but not them. And a lot of times something will happen and I, as I withdraw or maybe on the way home I think, now why did that happen again? And it's, I can just see all the pain in it. And so I can go back once in a while with a kind of fresh perception, but I don't feel this enormous me and them kind of feeling, and I don't, as I let go, kind of getting off on it, it's a lot easier. As soon as you give up your defense, you know, and feel some real sympathy or empathy with them, then you suddenly enter into the realm of maturity.

[35:34]

And... What the industry is, is in defending your position. And in creating, you know, it looks like they're putting you in a position, or you are putting it in where it's trying to be a standoff. I was part of it, creating it. And just like the Russians, you know, America keeps creating situations that make for the standoff.

[36:42]

Obviously, he could do it. He could do it. He could make this thing. That's what it is. And he's a wizard. I think he is. He's wonderful. And he's, you know, an important American writer, indeed. Well, somebody just had to stop it. and then do something, as soon as you do something good in erection, you know, the erections are doing well, and you have to, in erection, stop thinking badly about you, you know, pretty soon, everybody just kind of, uh, slowing, but as long as you're criticizing each other, The thing is, you're putting your stuff at a distance. And the more space you leave, the more of a distance. So if I'm just hovering over each other like this, you've got to put a camera on that.

[37:51]

Just the way you do it is fun. Even if I don't like it, it's fun. Even if it's not the way I do it. But you shouldn't be doing that, though. It's great. So we have to kind of follow our professionalism. You know, our idea about how things should go. And allow people to have their way. I mean, that's what it's like. My experience with my own parents was that When I stopped criticizing them, and stopped blaming them for all my problems, I could just carry on with what they were doing, even though I had no relationship to them whatsoever. I just wanted to make sure that they could do it. And I think that they did it. And then they just, they just carried on with it.

[38:53]

But we build up, you know, getting up there. And sometimes we have to, you know, we've created this tower and we have to chop it down. So, how do we get at it? Completely give up. and just start to follow those same things as they are in the mirror view. So we're constantly... How we treat each other is moment to moment. It's just coming moment by moment. And I hold over him. And this is how with the dogs. The dogs are only going to let him... However, we have to understand and learn to put limits to it. We don't hold over the feeling from the last moment.

[39:58]

We just never enter the feeling of this moment because we depend on what happened in the last moment. We don't carry that over. We don't carry the last moment's pain over into this moment. This moment is... everything is possible on this moment. Everything is possible on this moment. This moment is a completely new moment when everything happens. You don't have to add it up. But if you have problems, then you add one thing to the mix and bring it in. It's a wall, a huge wall. And it's just like building up on the cliff.

[41:00]

And it's just ourselves standing in front of it. We're just watching it. But it's probably like that in a moment. It's pretty interesting. Sorry. Anyway, I'm not sure if that's such a good thing to talk about. I mean, I have to do what I have to do. Anyway. Anyway, I'm not sure if that's such a good thing to talk about. I mean, I have to do what I have to do. So, I hope you are happy.

[42:31]

I hope you are. Thank you. Thank you.

[42:41]

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