and I thought it would be really good if I had some kind of personal example about this. many foolishnesses I would be willing to expose today. And I also, I was, at this time I was getting ready, helping my daughter get ready for school, and I was a little bit, had gotten distracted, so I was running a little late. And I hadn't changed out of my zazen clothes or my raksu. And I was starting to make her lunch, Is anybody cringing yet? And I reached down under this sink to get a plastic bag and I didn't notice that my Rok-Su was hooked on the knob of the cupboard. So I went up and I heard this big RIP! Huge RIP sound. And you'd think that it would just come off with a strap.

[01:05]

is sewed on, but I guess I must have sewed there really well because I actually ripped the fabric. Sigh. And I was thinking, oh, this is the thing. This is one of many things I do, which is, to me, the way where I saw it or how I see it is, I move on before the thing I'm doing is done, or I move, I go on to the next thing before I've finished the thing I'm doing. So in this case, I had started to do the day's activity, including getting my kids ready for school, before I had even taken my raksu off, let alone my clothes I wear to Zazen. I, and that's something I do. This is kind of a smallish manifestation, kind of painful, but smallish.

[02:15]

But I've noticed this about myself for a long time. And actually, I think I've moved off from some of the grosser manifestations like the way I've left my family and lovers and friends and teacher and community in the past, and I kind of am operating in this sort of middle range of activity, like that example I just gave. The other way, the way I'm really trying to work on it actively is that I don't put my work away at the end of the workday. So when I come in the morning to work at my desk, my desk is like this map of the day before. And I try really hard to remind myself to tidy my desk before, but I keep forgetting. So that's, And you know, that's not such a bad, I mean, at least most of the consequences come to me.

[03:22]

I think that's a good direction to have things going in. You might notice that I, I mean, I won't abandon you, but you might notice at the end of a conversation, I might check out before it's really over. So there's moments like that. Alan always teases me for walking out of the room before we finished our conversation. So it's kind of embarrassing to notice this, and I think that really, You know, and I can also, a way I can work with also is in zazen and service are perfect opportunities to, you know, just stay till the end of the bow. Stay with the breath till it's over. I have a lot of, in our formal practice, there's a lot of ways I can work with it. And really, fundamentally, where the energy for this, I think, I believe, is really coming from is that somehow I think that that behavior is addressing the situation in some strange way.

[04:29]

I think I'm somehow getting some ease around the situation by doing this. So the best thing is to really relax into the situation and get the ease within the situation, not try to escape the situation, because as long as I'm trying to escape the situation, there's going to be juice for this behavior, no matter how I tweak my everyday life. Oops, I'm having a little trouble with this today. So I'm going to read the next paragraph, which is actually he quotes from a sutra. Recently I read some of Buddha's teachings about the way. Brethren, restrain your many desires while receiving food and drink accepted as medicine.

[05:31]

Do not accept or reject it based on what you like or dislike. Just support your bodies and avoid starvation and thirst. As a bee in gathering honey tastes the flower but does not harm its color or scent, So brethren, you may accept just enough of people's offerings to avoid distress. Don't have many demands and thereby break their good hearts. Wise men, for example, have judged the capacity of their animal strength and do not wear them out by overloading them." And Suzuki Roshi has several interesting places he goes with this. I love this quote. I think I could really see some implications for ecology and in the realm of politics. I'm actually going to skip several paragraphs, so I encourage you to read this chapter because I really love this analogy or the metaphor of the bee and the honey. So I'm going to read his commentary about that.

[06:33]

I can't quite see it there. As a bee in gathering honey, taste the flower but does not harm its color or scent. This is a very famous parable. When we take honey because the flower is beautiful or the scent is nice, we miss the true taste of the flower. When you are taking care of yourself and the flower, you can have a direct feeling of the flower and taste its honey. Often we are not so careful. We may ruin a beautiful flower or we may stick to a particular flower. If we stick too much, eventually the flower will die. The purpose of the flower having honey is to help the plant by inviting bees. So it is necessary to know whether we are like a bee or like something else. When we are aware of the difficulties that we sometimes create, we can extend our practice more carefully throughout our everyday life. I was thinking this morning, I haven't been staying for orioke breakfast typically lately. Alan and I over the years kind of take turns and right now he's been staying.

[07:40]

So I, for the first time in a while, did Saturday orioke breakfast and I thought, oh, this is like, our orioke practice is a perfect manifestation of this bee flower analogy. It's like when the server comes I mean, everything about it is just to have this relationship with the things and the people in the meal, the servers, the food, to just to not... tinker with or roughhouse with these things. And already the form is created that way. You know, it's not like you try to get to the beginning of the line, the server, you're not like waving to the server, me first, me first. And you're not, you know, sort of blaming the server for the way they're serving you and thinking that, you know, wanting them to do it differently. You may be feeling that way, actually, but you don't usually manifest it.

[08:40]

And so it's a really wonderful practice for this. And we don't, even though we don't beg, so I think this is about this bee in the flower is like, he's referring to people's offerings, how we receive people's offerings. And it's also just about how we—so we receive the offerings of people and just about how we meet each other. And, you know, like, how about the checkout people in the grocery store, you know, and the other people in the grocery store? We are being supported all the time, incredibly, by so many people and things. Constantly farmers are growing food and truckers are shipping it to our grocery store and the people in the grocery store are putting it on shelves and we're buying it and then people are checking our order out and taking our money and those are all people who are giving us offerings. And how do we relate when we're in that situation?

[09:43]

This is like, these are wonderful times that we can just this thing about the bee and the flower. And the thing I like about it, one thing I like about it is that in a certain way, the flower is not really thinking about the bee. The flower's not quite there to give the bee pollen so the bee can go home and make honey. Exactly. And the bee is not coming there for the flower to pollinate it. And you know, it's all just, they're just doing their thing. They're just doing their thing. They're presenting their expression. But there's some relationship. But it's a very, very careful relationship. It's like the bee's not wrecking the flower when it gets the pollen. And the flower's not poisoning the bee or anything. It's very pure. So I think it's a wonderful analogy. And I also think of how we are with our friends and our teachers.

[10:50]

You know, how can we accept their offering for what it is as their expression of who they are and not have it be about why they aren't doing it the way we want them to. And still we are mutually benefited by that, mysteriously. He goes on to say, our minds should be more careful, more attentive, and more reflective. You may think our way has too many rules about how to treat things. But before you know what you are doing, you cannot say there are too many rules.

[11:54]

So notice whether you are creating problems in your everyday life or creating bad karma for yourself or for others. And you should also know why you suffer right now. There's a reason why you suffer, and it's not possible to escape from suffering unless you change your karma. So we have maybe an expression or a motif in Buddhist practice called, don't blame others for your difficulties. And something I've been thinking about, about this is, you know, to not blame others is not the same as exonerating others. You know, we are so insightful and we are so incredibly insightful about the ways other people are messing up and the way they're off.

[13:04]

But, so to not blame others is, it's not to exonerate others, it's not to say, I must be screwing up. It seems like they're screwing up, but they must not be. I must be. That's what Buddhist practice teaches me to say. I don't think it's like that. I often think of my favorite bodhisattva, Harriet Tubman, Daiyo Sho. And she, I don't know how many of you know her story. I talked about it once. She was a slave and she wanted to be free for all her whole life from a child. Probably all slaves did, we would assume, but she found a way to. She didn't get any support from her husband or her parents. And it's not like she thought, oh, I can't blame slavery.

[14:12]

It must not be wrong. Or what did I do to get into this? Or how do I deserve this thing that happened? That's not where she went with it. And she didn't blame her family or her husband, you know, they should help me, they're not. I mean, who knows what, I don't know what she was feeling or thinking, but basically she took her situation. She said, okay, I have a situation here. What can I do? She said, I've figured out or I reasoned out that There's two things, I can't quite remember the quote, but something like there's two things I could have, liberty or death, and if I can't have one, I'm gonna have the other. So it's not about when we don't, it's not about I'm bad, I did it wrong, they're good. That's not what not blaming others is about. It's about really noticing

[15:14]

What you're doing is really, really noticing what you're doing. So he says, when you follow karma and drive karma in a good direction you can avoid the destructive nature of karma. You can do that by being attentive to the nature of karma and the nature of your desires and activities. As Buddha pointed out, to know the cause of suffering is to know how to avoid suffering. If you study why you suffer, you'll understand cause and effect and how bad actions result in bad effects, because you understand you can avoid the destructive power of karma. I feel like this is one of the... Suzuki Roshi really enters the realm of duality in this talk more than he usually does. He's usually really... really always putting forth the non-dual, sentence after sentence.

[16:19]

And I find this really interesting to have been studying this. It's like, I wish I could do what he's doing here because somehow he goes right in there and yet he's It works for me. I don't know. Anyway, he goes on to say something really interesting, I think. As long as we have an idea of self, karma has an object to work on. So the best way is to make karma work on the voidness of space. If we have no idea of self, karma doesn't know what to do. Oh, where is my partner? Where is my friend? Some people try hard to banish karma but I don't think that is possible. The best way is to know the strict rules of karma and to work on our karma immediately. So it's kind of like if you don't have an angle then there's nothing for karma to do. And you don't have any reason not to stay within the laws of karma.

[17:26]

So, we try to, you know, we need an angle on the situation. We really need to have some angle that we can deal with this situation we're in. And how do we just relax into our situation, let go of our angle, and just bow to the laws of karma? And then bring forth our bee nature, you know, our gathering of pollen that we transform into honey to feed our community. So, I'm going to read the last couple paragraphs of this and then we can have a discussion. If you know something is wrong with your car, stop your car immediately and work on it. This is so unlike him to me. I mean, I don't know, it's just, it's like, so bold.

[18:33]

Oh, this is a minor, but usually we don't. Oh, this is a minor problem for my car. It's still running, let's go. That is not our way. Even though we can keep driving, we should take care of our car very carefully. If you push your car to the limit, the problems are constantly working on your car until finally it stops. Now it may be too late to fix it and it will require a lot more energy. So everyday care is very important. Then you can get rid of your misunderstandings and know what you are actually doing. Thank you very much, he says. And before I open for questions, I just wanted to... say one little tangential thing, which is after I've really enjoyed my Dharma Brothers evocations of Suzuki Roshi thus far, and I'm looking forward to more, and Ron mentioned that he had listened to a tape of Suzuki Roshi, or he remembered listening to a tape of Suzuki Roshi, and that made me think, oh, I'm going to go

[19:41]

I'm going to go listen to a tape of Suzuki Roshi before my talk. And I couldn't find, I think we had the tape or something. I couldn't find it. And then I thought, oh, by now there's probably like audio files, right? You can go to the website, get the audio file and download it onto your computer. But no, there aren't. And so what I want to do is put in a little plug for David Chadwick and his work. He's a Zen priest that's working on is setting up the archives of Suzuki Roshi's talks. And I think he's got all transcriptions, and you can do it in the edited or the raw. But if anybody has any money, let's send it to him and then tell him we want audio files available, and he can do that. Do you? So if you come on Thursday night, you can hear him. No, just my own world, my own world situation.

[21:05]

I think about that with my own life. I was watching Six Feet Under and there's a line that says, the whole world is a graveyard. And it really struck me that we have a graveyard here and I think about all the things that are dying. And staying with it every stage, you know, the birth, the life, and the death. Don't check out at any point, and also don't try to hold on.

[22:07]

Like, I do this thing where I check out early, but my sister's the opposite. She does the thing where she tries to prolong that last moment as long as she possibly can. So we're often kind of at loggerheads. And also, the more I do my thing, the more she does her thing, and vice versa. That reminds me of a funny story that I remembered while I was thinking about this, which when Richard Baker was Abbot at San Francisco Zen Center, he told a story that he, in Doksan, a student came to him and asked him something like, what do you see before your eyes? Something like that. And he said, skulls. And the person said, don't you see skin? I thought that was great. Anybody else? Tamar. It's interesting that you're presenting this kind of moving on. I don't know, I have a problem because I always, you know, I think I've experienced what you're talking about, but I always think

[23:13]

you know, purpose is so obvious, she doesn't linger over here, blah, blah, blah. She knows to move on to the next. Well, yeah, I mean, there might be something, you know, there's something true about that, too, maybe. Maybe that's the other side is that it's not just diluted, it's, but I need to, you know. It's kind of part of your clarity, too. Yeah, but when I get the bad result, that's when I need to pay attention then, rather than wait. for it to snowball into some huge thing. Yes? There was some comment in there about not producing bad karma for yourself and for others, because I guess I never, how do we create someone else's karma? A lot, I mean all the time, it's contagious, you know, so if I start blaming you, then you're going to start blaming me.

[24:17]

Because we're not separate. I mean, that's the thing. The karma is dualistic because it's from this perspective of the self. But actually, the viruses are just being constantly passed around. And the positive, too. If I open my heart, you might feel a little relaxed and then you might open yours, you know, and then that helps me. So it's like we're reverberating in whichever thing we're doing. And, you know, particularly when you think of kids who you can't really blame a kid if they're treated with violence, you know, you can't say they asked for that. unless you get involved in some complicated past life thing or whatever, but I don't find that interesting. But still, we know from society that that violence, a child treated with violence is more inclined to use violence as a choice. So we are constantly doing that, reverberating with each other.

[25:26]

That was a beautiful talk. I have a question. I do that too, I check out before the end of things. It's not so much that I try to escape the situation at that time, but there are all these things calling upon for me to keep under control. So I have to go to the next one to strengthen up. And as I get older, I feel I cannot straighten up everything I would like to straighten up. And I find it difficult to just say, oh, it's going to go bad, and I cannot do it. Right. I think, and yeah, for me, I experienced that too. Like, the things are calling to me. And that's, it plays into that. So I start checking out. And as soon as I start checking out, I hear the other things calling to me. And it's hard. I think it's very hard, but you're going to do your day, right? You're going to do your day and you're going to make your choices and you can just, as long as you're not getting the, I mean, I don't know.

[26:37]

I'm stumped. It's hard. There's no, there might not be any answer. Jerry? before, and how it relates to karma, and kind of the way I'm hearing it is, for example, you see yourself doing whatever it is that, and taking an action, or getting into a situation that you know that is not And then when you stop it, at what point do you take care of it? And what does that taking care of look like? And does that taking care of have an impact on the reverberation or the continuation of the karma?

[27:39]

Yeah, so there's a lot of things you can do at that moment when you catch yourself. Of course, until you address the, the problem is until you address the core thing, the energy source for the whole project, you're gonna keep, it's gonna keep happening. But while you're working on addressing that, which you are through Zazen and practice, there's a lot of things, actually a lot of things you can do. Confess, repent, apologize, make amends. I mean, it's really, if you can face that moment, when you see. This is what he says, we need to be more reflective. We need to train our ear or our eye to catch that. So when something happens, I'm sure you've all experienced this, sometimes something happens and you think immediately, oh, this is from that thing that I did a long time ago.

[28:42]

That's like if you catch yourself, you're almost home free at that moment. You want to resist. You want to try to justify something. But it's really just, it's less, it's more selfless just to confess and repent because it's really not you anyway. So it's really okay. So there's confess, repent, and vow, you know, and you can do these things in public. Vow to do it differently. Tell someone else so that they can remind you, you know. Admit that you're working on this so that people can tell you, and hopefully they'll do it in a kind and supportive way, right, guys? Kind and supportive way. Susan, and then your name. Or Sue? I wonder, I mean, knowing this problem well myself, what I wonder is, what is, do you find it, it seems to me that the shift is like a moment before it's obvious, you know, something happens in you that then

[29:59]

Do you find any kind of internal signal or change or panic or anything that is shifting in you? You mean before you make the mistake? Before you move on to the next thing. In terms of mistaking or in terms of repef practice? In terms of leaving one thing to hurry on to the next. No, I haven't found that yet. I mean, I set up the form. So I say, OK, I'm going to clear my desk before I leave my work or something. I set up some kind of form to remind me. I don't, I don't. But it's important that you I haven't, sorry. Maybe someone else has. Let's have this person go and then, go ahead. I went to Tassajara for the first time in 1970, in the summer.

[31:12]

And these black bumblebees with shiny, kind of glossy, almost a plastic-like gleam of black light would be hitting, would be feeding on these haliacs. At the end of the three weeks, I had to say goodbye, so I asked for Dokusan. And I said that I noticed that there were these monks, like nine or ten of his disciples, and they were like And they were kind of, kind of buzzing.

[32:33]

And yet now these bees have continued to go away, and I don't know whether the white hollyhocks are there in the summer anymore. Maybe your Doksan made him look up this, made him remember this passage and look it up, and then made him give this talk. Who knows? Back there, I don't know your name. Do you still? Have something? I was thinking one of the hardest things for me in terms of getting confused and losing track and not doing things one at a time is time itself. That I'll be thinking, oh, I have to do this. But then I also have to do that and that and that. And so then I try and do several things at once. Or pet the cat and read something. I just have this, maybe you could say something about the time problem.

[34:16]

It reminded me when you were getting your daughter ready and it just seemed like you just didn't have enough time to get it all done or enough time to finish one thing before you could move on to the next. Yeah. This is starting a whole new topic in a way, but I actually, I mean, I think we're in a cultural thing with this, and it has to do with our privilege, our level of privilege that we've assembled so much access to resources for ourselves that we have too many choices and we can do so many of the things we want to do. Meanwhile, there's other people who can't do any of the things they want to do. So I think if we were to share, if we could figure out how to go back to sharing, reverse that and share some, we wouldn't have as much time. We still wouldn't have time. I mean, you never have time. We still wouldn't have as much time, but

[35:19]

I don't know where I'm going with this, but I think what you're talking about is not just your personal problem. I think, and this is something we're all feeding each other. We're feeding on each other. We're feeding each other's tendency in this way. And I don't have any ideas about what to do about it, but I think the first thing is to notice, you know, to notice what's happening. So that's what I'm trying to do. Do you have any? words of wisdom? I think that Suzuki Roshi always talked about mundane things. When you read his book, maybe, it looks like he's always talking about emptiness and big minds. Actually, everything he did was very practical. Yeah, I didn't mean that. I meant it's not so dualistic, like good and bad karma and stuff.

[36:23]

He tends to bring up more. I think it's more down to earth than this in some way, sometimes. Although I ended up feeling that this was very down to earth, but sort of my first reading. That's the trick. That's the trick. How do you do that? That's the big mystery. which there's plenty of time to investigate. I guess it kind of seems like we're done. Rob, I don't know, what do you think? Jake? Oh, we can do one more. I was really struck by this earlier question about affecting other people's karma. What was your question? How do we affect other people's karma? the feelings of somebody else. And this is true for me personally, I don't know if it's true for others, but it feels like in our culture, there's a tremendous amount which encourages this independence, this independent spirit.

[37:33]

And I know I really take that and run with it. It kind of allows me to do my own thing. It's a good thing, this is what I tell myself, it's good to be concerned about it, but in We're very intertwined, but then we also think we're intertwined in ways that we're not. I mean, that whole topic is like how we're intertwined with each other is the whole topic. that we don't, we get it wrong. We think it's a certain way, but it's really this other way, but we are still intertwined. Right. Right. Good. Thank you. I think we've brought it out. Thank you. Beings are numberless.

[38:51]

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