I found the flowers on the altar quite startling when I came in. Were they there this morning? The new arrangement, yes? Yeah, okay. I would have been chagrined if I actually noticed them now and hadn't noticed them earlier, but they're just full of birth and death, very ripe, as we are today. Most of us are sitting, one day sitting today, a day long, sitting from five in the morning until about nine at night, And it's just a great pleasure to do that.

[01:06]

And there is a great urgency that we bring to it. We're lucky to have this time in our lives We're lucky to be able to set it aside. We're lucky to have a place like this where we can come and practice and really face the question of how are we living? And how will we live? That's, in one way or other, the question that brought most of us to Zen practice and that sometimes haunts us and sometimes happily rides on our shoulder.

[02:12]

just as something that we carry that actually is very helpful in how we face our day, how we face our lives, our work, our family, how we face the wall in Zazen. How will we live? How are we living right now? What I thought I would talk about today is, from different angles, question of relinquishment and renunciation as a principle of how we live, what we let go of, what lets go of us So I've been reading around from different places trying to get some kind of perspective on my own thinking to share with you and maybe we can talk a little bit together if there's some time.

[03:38]

Master Sekheto was asked, what's the essential meaning of Buddhadharma? Sekhito replied, no gaining, no knowing. Can you say anything further? Sekhito answered, the expansive sky does not obstruct the floating white clouds. What's the essential meaning of Buddhadharma? No gaining, no knowing. The expansive sky does not obstruct the floating white clouds. This is what this idea of no gaining, no knowing, is intimately connected with relinquishment, with refraining

[04:48]

with letting go. It's what we do again and again. We train ourselves here in Zazen. It's what some of you may have seen this book by Uchiyama Roshi, Opening the Hand of Thought. It's just opening the hand of thought. And when you open the hand of thought, Your ideas, your desires, they just fall away. They fall through, they slip through your fingers like water running through your fingers. Or they drift away like clouds in an endless sky. It's extremely relaxing. You know, usually we feel like we have to really hold on to something.

[05:55]

We have to hold on to it or it's going to slip away. And that causes a tremendous tension. It's a really difficult way to live. And so we hold on to our likes and our dislikes we hold on to the things that we think we really want to have, we really need, and we forget about the vast sky. It's really, as I was kind of working on this, I was upstairs in the new room in the attic and there were these skylights and I was sort of nestled in a little corner and I was looking at it and then I looked up and I saw the sky with clouds drifting across and for just that moment nothing else was necessary.

[07:14]

You know, it was perfect and I could have been anywhere. And then, not surprisingly, this kind of deeply ingrained habit of self reared its head and I was back, and the vacuum cleaner was going downstairs, and then Sylvie was practicing the violin, and the phone rang, and I was trying to hold on to my concentration, hold on to that pleasant moment, and I lost it. by holding on. Not a great loss, nothing terrible, but there's always this, the sky is always there, and our opportunity to gain it and lose it is always there.

[08:37]

You can always open this hand of thought. We can always let these things go. Suzuki Roshi wrote that renunciation is not giving up the things of the world, but accepting that they go away. Our youth will go away. Our beauty, if we have any, will go away. Our strength, our health, our parents and our old friends will go away. Our bodies and our lives themselves will slip away. This is just the reality that most of us, much of the time, find hard to bear.

[09:44]

We don't really like it very much and we're always trying to cut bargains with it or slip around it in some way or other. It really seems like a bad idea that these things will just go away. And they'll go away whether we let go of them or not. It's very frustrating. So we have this kind of we've cultivated and we've sort of perfected in our age now this kind of Burger King philosophy of life. You can have it your way. And it's very tricky when we apply this to our Zazen practice because we actually

[11:00]

somewhere secretly we want to have it our way many of us, you know, it's like we want to have we want to have our zazen practice we want to have it in a nice mindful place a safe place we also want to have our good job and our satisfying work, and our wholesome family life, and our healthy bodies. I include myself very much in this. want to have it this way. I sort of have this secret thought that if I do my zazen right and show up at all the appropriate times, then I can have it all these ways.

[12:07]

You know? Everything will be perfectly cooked. But that is not necessarily the case. And that is ignoring the reality of impermanence. It's ignoring the fact that this impermanence itself is perfection, that none of the things that we treasure would be possible without what's come before it, without the arising and the falling away of other generations, other beings, other forms,

[13:22]

that all these things are constantly falling away and giving way to new life and new existence. I mean, what would it be like if all these things just kind of kept existing and just sort of piled up? It's not easily imagined. and not a pretty sight. In fact, we're already plagued by plenty of things piling up, and usually the things that are piling up are the things that come from our desire. So, in this impermanence, the scraps of food that we leave behind become compost.

[14:25]

They're worked on by the sky and the rain and there's a chemical transformation and they become food again for other things that grow and blossom and that we use respectfully and then offer back in one way or another. And this is a cycle of impermanence that is, all seems really nice and really perfect. You know, it just, until it gets to here, you know, it all seems to work very well. But I'd like to make a little exception.

[15:31]

So that's where we practice, that's the point of our practice. How will we live accepting that? How will we live with other beings? What do we offer back? freely, knowingly, knowing that our bodies themselves will be offered back whether we choose this or not. So what we have, we have a realm of choice here. And that choice is extremely important. That choice is the place of practice. In the same way that we choose to return to our breath and posture as we're sitting zazen, we use what we learn about intentionality and choice or about right effort.

[16:46]

one of the points on the Eightfold Path. We use that to choose how we live and how we offer ourselves. Zazen, as I said before, Zazen can be a kind of laboratory for that kind of intentionality. So I really, I like and I experience very much what Suzuki Roshi says, that renunciation is not necessarily not giving up the things of the world, but accepting that they go away. I have experienced that to some degree with resistance, with some resistance, with some fear, and with some odd regrets.

[17:56]

And maybe you have had similar experiences. What I find, particularly when I travel, and I travel a bit for my work at Buddhist Peace Fellowship, So I find myself in a distant city without my usual circle of family and friends, without familiar places and things around me. That's the place where it just comes most sharply to me. There is some desire in those kinds of settings to, if only I could find the right thing to eat, or the right thing to buy, then this kind of gnawing empty,

[19:11]

feeling that I have would be assuaged, you know, it would be filled, it would be... it would go away. And... it doesn't work anymore. You know, I'm not sure it ever worked for me. But... I think for most of the years of my life, I had an assumption that it would work. And so, you know, I'm not a heavy-duty consumer. I never had enough money to do that. But, you know, I like my pleasures. I like to eat. I like my comforts. And somewhere, sometimes I think that I can buy that.

[20:20]

And if only I could buy this, then I would be easier. And it doesn't work anymore. Very frustrating. And there's some grief there for me. Because I miss, and this happens, it's like the desire to desire will come up. Is that familiar to anybody? And then there's a message from experience, from practice, from a lot of things. It's not going to work. You know, if you eat such and such thing, you're actually going to feel bad. And, you know, if you buy such and such a thing, you're actually wasting your money. You know, you don't need it. And it's very hard, you know, because there's still, there's like some voice that's really deep.

[21:29]

But I want it. I want to, what I really want, I want to get out of this state of mind. I want to slip away from it. I want to slip around it. And you're telling me that I can't do it this way. And this voice of practice is saying, yeah, that's right. It won't work. So you have to let go of it. you know, and try to be present. See what's really going on and stay with that, because that is, in fact, real, authentic, and bottomlessly deep, whether I like it or not. So, with some symbolic gnashing of teeth, I step back from that and I try to stay present.

[22:41]

I find this comes up again and again, you know, there's a resistance, there's a desire to claim to this kind of self, this small self, this desire to believe in desire, to believe that it can be sated, that it can be filled, and that I'll feel better for it. And I'm not saying that I don't have pleasures. There's lots of pleasures. And I'm not discounting them. Well, I'm not saying that you shouldn't find life pleasurable, but when you go after seeking it, seeking those pleasures, then that's problematic.

[23:47]

at least in my experience, and I think in the teaching of Buddhism, when that becomes what drives us. But it's very... it's subtler than that, too, and it also comes back to how we live. You know, right here, for the day, our lives are fairly simple. our business is to, in Sashin, is to just let go of our preferences, our likes and dislikes, and make an effort towards actually relinquishing body and mind and just staying present. Just experiencing some real deep and fundamental reality, which is pretty challenging. And we find ourselves kind of flipping back and forth.

[24:50]

But in daily life, in our wider life, the challenge is more intense. You know, we have the precepts. We have the precept, the second precept of not stealing or not taking what is not given. And when we look at that in a really open-eyed way, what does that say about how we live? What are we, how do we live On whose efforts? You know, to an extent it's on our own labors and efforts and work. And yet there's some hidden or unseen portion of our lives that is really helped along and supported by people and beings all around the world.

[26:09]

whose efforts we don't see or whose efforts we take for granted or whose efforts we exploit. So to me part of the practice is to really try to see those things that for various reasons are obscure to us. You know, sometimes Usually, they're obscure to us because we are living embedded in a system that is always trying to sell us things. It's a system that's run on desire. The profit system is run on desire. And so it's best for them to obscure the real sources of things, not to mention obscure sharp questions about what we really need.

[27:23]

So it's a little hard to find out where do these things come from. You know, just about every Every kind of small household object and toy that comes into our house is made in China. And I think some people, there may be a boycott on this. I'm not even, I don't think there is though. But it's a little hard to avoid. And you wonder, how are those people living? Are they living as we're living? And now, are they wanting to live as we live? Which is precisely what they're being sold. So these kinds of questions become very, they can be very troubling. And I think that it's important in the context of

[28:29]

our Zen practice to look as deeply as we can and really explore what the impact of our lives has on other people. And this is tremendously complex. I don't have any simple answer to this. But I would urge you to think about it and consider it. Just as we do, as we say in the meal chant, we acknowledge the labors that have brought us this food. Every head of lettuce has been picked, I think by hand, and then every leaf of lettuce that we eat somebody in the kitchen there has torn it, has taken it, has handled it.

[29:40]

So the amount of labor that goes into just having a salad is the amount of time and labor and distance and interdependence of many elements is tremendously complex. and our whole lives are like that. So I urge you to investigate, and part of that investigation is to notice what things are relinquishing you, what things are letting go of you, what things are saying, sometimes in a small voice, really sustaining my deepest intention, my deepest intention to live whole, to live for the benefit of all people.

[30:44]

So to look at just what is first this quiet voice that's coming up within you about what wants to be let go, what wants to be let go of. and also to investigate what you can let go of, what you think you really need, and to look at that without any judgment, because the judgment is not so useful. And to look at it, to look at yourself very kindly and patiently, because we live here, You know, we live surrounded by people who are living similarly to us. And, you know, compared to my travels a month or two ago in Bangladesh, compared to the way I saw people living there, everybody across the board here

[31:59]

lives more similarly to each other than we do to many of the people that I met over there, even though there are great distinctions of privilege and wealth among us. But look at this interdependence and look at what your clear intention of practice is and observe what falls away. Things are always falling away, and things will continue to fall away. So, the more you can open your hand of thought and let what's unnecessary slip through, the easier, the more graceful and harmonious kind of life you'll be able to lead.

[33:05]

And you will, you can come to understand that the really important things are there. The sky is there. The ocean is there. Life is there. And that will not slip through your fingers. The only thing that will slip through your fingers are your desires and your preconceptions. What is true will just remain. And that's where we're working at each time we turn around to face the wall, each time we enter the zendo. And that's a very There's a reason why the Buddha outlined the Noble Eightfold Path. It's a noble endeavor that we do together and we do deeply.

[34:13]

So maybe I will stop there and leave a little time for some questions. Tim? In a pragmatic way, practice letting go of our likes and dislikes. In a pragmatic way? Yeah. How do we do it? We want to do it. How do we do it? You can do it by just sitting still. You can do it by thinking, what's important? You know, you can ask yourself, is this important now? Do I really need this? You know, I mean, we can do it in Zazen, in a kind of non-conceptual, non-discursive way, but if you have to ask yourself the question, ask yourself the question, is this, right now, is this important?

[35:20]

Charlie? Well, there's some basic rules when you go to the That's why. Is that too brutal? No, they don't. That's why I should never go to the supermarket. But you need to practice. You need structure. You need technique. And then you need to apply all those things. I think that's right. But I also think you can use your desire, your likes and dislikes. I think of them as, you know, Thich Nhat Hanh talks about the bell of mindfulness. I think as you practice, you can use your desires, your likes and dislikes themselves as a tool of mindfulness.

[36:24]

That when they come up, you begin to notice over a period of time, you notice this is coming up and it reminds you of your question. It reminds you right there, do I need this? Is this important? Is it helpful? Katherine? You touched me very much when you were describing that hollow feeling. And I think what Charlie says is really is that kind of application has been important for me there are certain desires that somehow in our heads we've got associated with this will-fill-the-hunger, and those become addicted. And I find that in working with those desires as opposed to just ordinary, I mean I can handle the supermarket, I don't shop much, but there's some hungers that come when I'm thinking

[37:27]

I turn on those, that's what you were saying about judging. And I find that the healing thing is not to try to override the desire with my will, but to find something that will feed the hunger. To really actively seek what will feed the hunger. But I can't stay hungry.

[38:42]

Right, then you need to turn towards something. Sometimes just asking the question is sufficient. In the same way we were talking last night about compassion, that sometimes actually hearing the voice of hunger is sufficient. You may not have to do anything, and sometimes it's just too compelling, too strong, and you may have to do something. I can't say what that is, but it's why I was thinking for those of you, you know, if you're familiar with the precepts, so the second precept is not taking what's not given or not stealing, and the fifth precept is not using intoxicants. These are very closely linked, particularly in our culture, maybe in all cultures, but we have so many different kinds of intoxicants that take us away from ourselves, that take us away from these intoxicants, keep us

[40:01]

you know, in an addictive mode, they keep us from seeing actually what is given and what is not given. So those two are really closely linked, I think. Alan, one of the things I'm experiencing actually in Sishing, you know, today, but I experience it frequently in practice, is the desire to practice more strenuous learning, more upright, and feeling the inability to do it. And I feel like, you know, the only thing that I can get from your words is to relinquish that. to accept, to let this desire fall from our fingers too.

[41:12]

You know, because it's the only thing I can do. And yet it seems paradoxical because it seems like In order to do the right thing, you can't just let go. So I feel that I don't have the ability to be upright. Well, that's what you think.

[42:18]

This is why we have Sangha and community. There's a way in which we support each other. There's a way in which we see each other. there's things that we see without even necessarily saying to each other. But we see each other in ways that we may not see ourselves. I think I understand what you're saying. It's difficult to take comfort from I appreciate the support I get from some.

[43:22]

Sometimes I feel they just don't seek the truth. They don't seek the truth? They don't seek the truth. And I shouldn't be dependent upon other people's perceptions. No, that's true. You shouldn't be dependent upon other people's perceptions. they can be helpful. As I said, sometimes they see something that you don't see. And you need to be kind to yourself. You need to be as kind to yourself as You are to other people. And you just have to keep coming back at it.

[44:28]

It is really hard. But it's not always hard. It's not always hard. And things don't stay in one place. So you actually have to have some faith. One or two more? are we to let it all go?

[45:52]

I think that we should be careful with overselling, getting rid of desire. Desire is what put us all here. So you take desire or you take likes and dislikes and you can do a lot of things with it. Well, that's the realm I live in, you know, is exactly checking back and forth between desire, which I have many of,

[46:55]

and relinquishment, asking myself what I need and what I appreciate. I can't say much about, I don't know much about Frank Sinatra, the man, but there is something so beautiful in the offering of his songs that I just, and I get deeper and deeper into it. I was reading liner notes to an album this morning and it's had particular poignancy for me. Somebody was asking him at the height of his success in maybe the late 1950s, you know, when he was making movies and making records and, you know, being in Las Vegas all the time and having all these investments.

[47:57]

Frank, how do you do all these things? It just seems like you're doing so much. How do you do all these things? And the quote, I swear to you, in the line notes, he said, well, I just do one thing at a time. Where have we heard this before? Now, I'm not holding him up as Zen Master Frank, but I think what you ask is, that's a really important question. And I wasn't saying jettison your lives, I was just saying look at your desires, enter them really deeply. And I think this is just a, you know, this is a vital koan for us because, as I say, we are in the middle, we're not monks and nuns, you know, we're not renunciates in a way that's

[49:02]

that's very clear and easily perceived. And we have these orange robes on and everybody knows what that means, which in fact doesn't even necessarily mean that anymore. So what does it mean? How do we live with our desires? What's important? What isn't? How does it affect others? Last one. And I think that's important and I think that's very human.

[50:19]

I think that's another aspect of its utility and its force. Thank you. Thank you.

[50:35]

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