I vow to taste the truth of the Tractors' words. Morning. Well, today is our first regular schedule. of the new year. And it felt very good this morning after having our little vacation, 10 days or so, to come back to the Zendo and in a crisp, cool morning. It's always nice to sit in the cold, best way and rejuvenated after doing two seven-day sashins, the first part of December.

[01:14]

First I do the seven-day rohatsu sashin here in Berkeley, and then I went to Tosahara, did the seven-day sashin there, and felt good to have a break. So today's our first day, and this is the first very close to the New Year. And when we think about New Year's, on New Year's Eve, we think about all of our shortcomings, you know, and we make our resolutions. And we want the New Year to, we want to be optimistic about the New Year. So we make resolutions and have some good hope for what will happen in the year.

[02:19]

But sometimes, when we get to that point, it's hard for us to... it's sometimes easy for us to say what we don't want or what we would rather not have. But it's also hard, you know, because it's hard to give up to things that are so awful. You know, it's really hard to give up our hindrances. And so our altruistic self says, ah, you write all these things down. that we would like to give up, even though we don't really want to give them up. And we say, but they're hanging on to me, you know. We say, we feel that when we think about compulsive behavior and what our parents did to us and the anger we feel and resentments

[03:30]

is where we're caught and stuck. And we feel, one side of us feels, I'd really like to give all this up, you know, and just be whole and happy. And the other side says, but I don't really want to give these things up at all. So when we go to do that, there's some little resistance that comes up. Do I really want to get rid of my anger? Do I really want to get rid of my lust, my greed, my delusion? So it's not easy. easy to think about, but not easy to actually implement. So it's easy to be stuck. And sometimes people come to me and tell me about how they're stuck.

[04:39]

And mostly we're stuck in our self-centeredness, in our selfishness, and in hanging on. to resentments and unwilling to let go. And unwilling to let go of the stuff that causes us so much suffering. But it's hard to do. And then a person will feel, well, I really can't practice because, you know, I have all this stuff to think about, all this stuff to obsess on. And if I'm sitting zazen, I'm just obsessing on this stuff anyway. So what's the use of sitting zazen if I'm just obsessing on all this stuff? So this is also a kind of excuse that people have.

[05:52]

Sometimes people come to me with anger. and they're always angry and resentful. My parents did this, you know, and I can never forgive them for what they did to me, and the people around me are always causing me a lot of trouble, so I'm always lashing out at them and alienating them. And often I just say, well, if you really want, if you really don't want to have this, if you really want to get rid of it, then give a gift or do something for somebody in order to get out of yourself. Because most of our problems come from our own self-centeredness. We worry about ourself. There was a movie I think it was Christmas Eve, a movie that's... I can't remember the name of it.

[07:03]

I came onto the movie in the middle of it, so I didn't catch the name of it, but it's an old movie with Jimmy Stewart, James Stewart. The wonderful one. Yeah. We already know all about it. But James Stewart is this wonderful guy, you know, always catches everybody else's problems and everybody hands him their problems. And he takes care of them. And it's just his nature, you know, to be kind of unselfconsciously altruistic. And so he wants to go... I don't want to tell you this whole story, even though you already know it. He wants to... go out and where he's living in a small town, he wants to go out in the world, you know, and make his mark in the world. But he never, there's always some crisis at home that keeps him at home.

[08:07]

And he takes on the crisis rather than leaving. So, to make a long story short, he gets to the point of despair one time. He has this old guy who's the banker who is Mr. Scrooge. And he puts him in this position where he's feeling utter despair. And so he's standing on this bridge ready to jump into the river on this rainy night in December. But up in heaven, there's a guardian angel who needs to earn his second of degree wings as an angel. So the suggestion is that he go down and help this guy out, be his guardian angel. So the guardian angel comes down.

[09:11]

He's not very bright, but he's very sweet. And he comes down. And he's standing, appears on the bridge. And the next thing you know, he There's this big splash, and he's jumped in the water. And Jimmy Stewart sees him, and he takes off his coat and jumps in and saves him. And later on, they're talking about it, and Jimmy Stewart says, why did you jump in? Why did you jump in the river? And the angel said, well, I jumped in to save you. jumped in so that you could jump in to save me. Anyway, it's a great example, you know, of forgetting about your obsession or your problem and finding some freedom.

[10:17]

Because the difficult thing is when we have these obsessions or problems or difficulties, we don't have any freedom. We lose our freedom. So, we'll always have these kinds of problems. Does that mean that we always give up our freedom because we have these problems? Zen students, you know, are not saints. I remember this woman who went to Eheji a long time ago, in the head temple, the head monastery in Japan, and she was there for some little time, and she wrote back, she said, these Zen students

[11:23]

These men in this monastery are not saints. They're human beings with half good and half bad. And all the Zen students are the same, half good and half bad. When I go to Tassajara, all the new students tell their story. to the sangha. And it makes you realize how small your problems are. It's amazing how much suffering everybody has gone through in their life, and how much difficulty gone through in their life, and still has.

[12:26]

On the surface, you know, we interact with each other and do our jobs and go about our business, but underneath, each one of us, in our own way, has gone through all kinds of suffering and difficulty. And when you hear each person's story, it's pretty amazing what each one has to say about their life. Incidents about their life which are great suffering and also times of great redemption. from their suffering in times of insight, in times of despair, in times of release.

[13:34]

And when you hear these stories, you begin to see what's behind, a little bit, what's behind everyone's personality, and what's behind the way people respond and react to each other. And it really releases a lot of compassion. And you begin to see how everyone's in the same boat. We're all in this big boat. different but there's something that's very much the same about everyone and people are really caught you begin to see how people how we all are very caught by our emotions and our feelings and our greed and our ill will and our delusions

[14:56]

And so being caught, even though we want to not be caught, it's hard to not be caught. And when we realize this, we become much more tolerant with each other and accepting of each other's, not problems, but disposition. And the more we begin to understand what's behind each person, the less critical we become. And the less critical we become of ourself. There are two hindrances to practice. One is being critical of others, and the other is being over-critical of ourself, being attached to old circumstances.

[16:16]

Repentance means to turn around and go in the other direction. It's like re-turning. And in Zen practice, repentance means to acknowledge and to turn, not to harbor resentments against yourself or against others, but just to recognize and see very clearly where the problem is, and then to turn and go in the other direction. And then you get turned back again, and then you turn and go in the other direction, and you get turned over and over. You know, you may think, well, when is this ever going to end? It will end when you get tired of it.

[17:24]

I remember Suzuki Roshi never, you know, in the 50s and 60s, in the 60s, almost everybody smoked. And it was just the thing to do of the day. And Suzuki Roshi, even the Japanese monks smoked a lot, but Suzuki Roshi never did smoke. But, and we all were smoking at that time. And he didn't like it so much, but he never said, or rarely said, stop smoking. He said, when you're ready, you'll stop smoking. And we thought, that was pretty good. When we're ready, we'll stop smoking. So we knew that someday we'd stop, because we'd be ready. We were waiting for the time when we'd be ready. But it's true. I stopped smoking when I was ready.

[18:29]

And it was very easy, believe it or not. I smoked for about 30 years, or maybe 35. And I stopped smoking in 1972 or three. And I just stopped. I was just great. craved another cigarette after that. And that's amazing, actually. So my feeling about it is that as much as we want to stop doing something, it may be possible to stop by wanting to. When time and circumstance comes together, then things end.

[19:32]

But we keep going toward that point with patience, lots of patience. So we say, isn't so-and-so, so-and-so, won't they ever reform? Won't they ever change? But with great patience, suddenly, They're not the same, or you're not the same. And this is the way it is with practice, with our own practice. We want to change, we want to be different, but no matter how much we try, you know, there we are, ourself. But with practice, the practice itself Within the practice it's a change or transformation takes place without trying to make a change. Suddenly you find that you're not doing something that you always did.

[20:42]

Or you're doing something that you always wanted to do that you never could do. So, what do we do, though, with the stuff that we've got? Until things change. You know, we say, get rid of ego. But you can't get rid of ego by trying to get rid of something. The more you try to get rid of it, the more it travels around with you. Even though things seem to chase us, it's actually we who are chasing things. But we can't see it that way.

[21:52]

We always think that we're being pursued by our greed, hate, and delusion. to take a positive step, if we have anger, to offer up the anger to practice. If we have greed, to offer up the greed to practice. It doesn't mean that it's gone. It means that we're doing something very positive Instead of trying to get rid of it, we acknowledge it. That yes, this is my greed, and I just have to practice with it.

[22:55]

This is my anger, I just have to practice with it. It's there with me when I practice, in my practice. And, rather than being the obstacle, it becomes the key. or a tool with which to practice. I've been reading my son, Daniel, the novel, Monkey. Monkey is supposed to be one of the most popular books in the East, the Far East. It's a story of Monkey is... The first part is, a monkey is a... well, represents the monkey mind, right? But he's this great character.

[23:58]

He's a monkey. And I don't want to tell you the whole story. But he gets to the point where he can do anything. He's so clever that he can... jump clear over the moon. And he even has the Jade Emperor intimidated. The Jade Emperor is like the king of the gods in Chinese mythology. But he finally meets up with the Buddha, who puts him in his place. And it involves the story of Xuanzang. Xuanzang, you know, was an actual character who, in the very famous Buddhist monk, who in the 5th or 4th century, I can't remember exactly when, went to India to get the sutras, to get the scriptures and bring them back to China.

[25:11]

And at that time, he had to travel over the Palm Years and the Gobi Desert to get to India. And it was a really arduous journey. He said, I'll be back in three years. And he was back in 20 years. But the story of Monkey is that Quan Yin wants to recruit some people to accompany Xuanzang on his trip, on his journey. This is the kind of story part. And so Quan Yin meets these various demons. And the demons all need redemption in one way or another. And so Quan Yin recruits all these demons to accompany guardians and the way that they work out their redemption is to take this journey with Xuanzang and in the process to become reinstated or whole again.

[26:44]

And this is kind of like not asking the demons to give up their demon side in order to do this. They go as demons. They practice as demons, except that they're actually trying to do something. So all of us are like that. We're all these demons trying to do something. We don't have to give up our demon side in order to practice. Otherwise, no one would be here. So, we take what we have, we offer this up, our demon side, to practice. Can't get out of it? All you can do is merge with it. Be one with it. Go into it. for the sake of getting anything out of it. The thing about desire is that we want something.

[27:54]

We want something, either we want something or we don't want something. Those are two aspects of desire. The two polarities of desire. I either want it or I don't want it. And so it's aversion and grasping. The two aspects of desire. And both of them are attachment. So, what happens when we get into a situation we don't want, we don't like, we want to get out and we can't, is that we become attached to the situation. And once we become attached to the situation, we are the victim of the situation. And once we become attached to the situation, then the situation becomes the tail wagging our dog. We get wagged by the situation we don't want to be in. And the more we want to get out of it, the more we get wagged. The more we get pulled around.

[28:58]

So how to let go of the desire to escape and just allow ourselves to flow with the situation without liking it or disliking it. but just being with it. And usually you find that you begin to enjoy it. Strangely enough. Yeah. It sounds to me a little bit like an escape from the choices. Oh, I said, if you don't have a choice. I said, if you have a choice, move. But actually we I mean, the nature of American life is that we have so many choices that it's almost a style of torture. Yeah, that's right. I mean, we've raised this pursuit to such a level that it's unbearable.

[30:01]

Yeah. Absolutely. So how do you make choices? That's the question. I mean, that's a good question. See, a lot of people don't have choices. That's their suffering. Our suffering is we have too many. And it is. The fact that we have so many choices breaks up the family. It does. Everybody should do what they want. And therefore, they don't have to do anything together. Because you're supposed to look out and take advantage of all these choices. And if you don't, there's something wrong with you. And then we become very isolated. And every choice we make to go in a certain direction can become a whole lifestyle. Everything we do can become a lifestyle.

[31:04]

So we take it up to a certain point, and then we take this one up to a certain point, and that one. And we get very stretched. How many phone numbers do you have, people? How many places do you have to go to? How much do you have to drive? Where do you have to go to find fulfillment? So, the necessary thing is actually to limit ourself. But it's very hard. Because whenever we get into it, it has so many connections that we feel we have to, we're obligated to fulfill all these connections. It's really hard. In the old days, you know, the Zen teacher would be on his mountain and never leave for 30 years. That's good.

[32:07]

I like that. But it's very hard to do. In talking about choices, it seems to me that it would be like if you're in a situation that you don't like, that you need to get out of, how to make a good choice. The question would be, how do you know what's like a true feeling like arising from you know, the unknown, or from your belly, or whatever you want to call it, the true feeling that would direct you to right action, or just, say, what you might call a small feeling, or a habitual feeling, based on old habits that you could really distinguish. And I think that you would want to come to terms with the habitual feeling, and be free of that, so that you could, the true feeling of, you know, right action could be available to you. Yeah, I think that's right. So when you let go of desire for one thing or the other, then you allow the space for true feeling to come up.

[33:16]

And the true feeling may not be the feeling that you like or the feeling that you want. Yeah. So true feeling is We may not know exactly what that is, but one way of thinking about true feeling is if the true feeling matches your intention, your true intention, then you have some way of checking. So if you use your intention as a touchstone for your feelings, then you can ascertain what is a true feeling and what is just some desire. I think there's a guideline. Rebecca? Every time I hear that story, I think of what must be lost in translation from Chinese to Japanese to here.

[34:21]

Because that decision touches on what Merle just said. We have so many choices. It's nothing to get up and leave your mother and father and move 3,000 miles away. That's sort of expected. No, in a way. And to think of Sejo in that period, the filial loyalty, and probably all for a woman. That's right. And how far away the next village down the river was. It was like, dark as death. Yeah, well I'm sure that filial piety played a big role. and her wanting to come back and see her father. But the part that's left behind in that case... Oh, yes. That's right. ...but cannot act. Yeah. And that's something different than a fairy story or an allegory about Zazen. Well, you know, the story is a story, and so the koan was adapted from the story.

[35:27]

Right. So what we're interested in is the koan. Anyway, I think it's time. Almost. Almost. Do we have another question? I'm surprised you haven't been, probably you haven't in past lectures. I can't do any of this. I can't do this by myself. It is completely hopeless. I might as well just give up. But if I ask for help, then at least in my own experience, most of these decisions are made for me.

[36:32]

That's good, to ask for help. This is a more pure land attitude. to say that we can't help ourselves. There's no way that we can do that. So we just give ourselves over to asking for help. My feeling is that by making the effort, we're asking, we're not asking exactly, but creating the conditions for response. So We can't do everything by ourselves, but we can do something by ourselves. And by initiating and making the effort means that the universe responds to us. So when you make your effort from a pure heart without any motive other than to make the effort, that's a kind of asking or a kind of prayer, actually.

[37:46]

So Pure Land is actually a different sector? It's different. It's like saying, you know, Shinran said, there's no way that Buddhists, in this age of decline of the Dharma, that was in the 13th century, in this age of decline of the Dharma, there's no way that we can reach enlightenment through practice. So we should just stop trying to do that and just recite the name of Buddha all day. And so that became a very popular way to practice. But Dogen said, you know, even though this may be the decline, the age of the decline of the Dharma, I don't believe it. Since I have a lot of energy to practice, I think it's possible to practice.

[38:52]

Even though our practice is not perfect from a perfectionist point of view, it's perfect in and of itself, if it's done with a pure heart. So whatever practice you do, whether it's reciting the Buddha's name or sitting zazen, if you do it with pure heart, That's the main thing. You're not trying to get something. You're just offering yourself. This enlightened practice means you're not trying to get something. You're not trying to get enlightenment. You're just making an offering. Your whole life is an offering, moment to moment. Then, when you recite the Buddha's name, or sit zazen, or eat your dinner, cut the vegetables, drive your car, You're in Buddha's world, which is not somebody else's world, it's your world, our world, this world.

[40:00]

Alan? I think the aspect that Andrew was talking about is also there, in our practice it's Question of intention. How do we find intention? Well, first of all, I think we have to have inspiration. You know, we have to... We're led to... This little monk inside of us has led us to some place. And then we feel, well, I feel the reality of this place where I am.

[41:12]

So through some kind of inspiration, we're led to a starting place. When I first came to Zen Center, And I sat in Zazen the first time. I realized, you know, this is a starting place. This is the place I'm looking for. And so I was inspired to practice. And then my intention grew out of my inspiration to practice. Yeah, I made a choice. I said if I don't do it now I said I got into this place through a lot of searching and I'm not gonna I'm not gonna Drift away, you know, because I know this is the place this is the place where it stops So after I made that choice I

[42:24]

I never had the desire to make a different choice. So that's my own experience about choice. And then, you know, the thing about choosing is that whatever we choose, we will be inspired by, and we'll be uninspired by, also. So, when we're inspired, we think, this is great. And when we're uninspired, we think, well, maybe I should do that, instead of this. And so, we give up what we're doing, and go do something else, because we only want the good part. This is the thing about choice. We only want the good part.

[43:27]

We do not want the bad part, or the part that we don't like. That's why I say it has to be beyond your feelings. It has to be your intention, because your intention will carry you through, I like and I don't like. As soon as like and dislike come up, you're lost. And you can argue that one all day. And you will. This reminds me of the difficulty of staying with the part of Zazen that does bring peacefulness. It's so odd how I drift away. It's almost like I'm moving away. stuck in my mind that it seems so difficult to grasp on some level that it takes a whole lot of doubt to create a whole lot of faith.

[44:39]

I've never forgotten that. It kept me going. It put it in a perspective that no matter how much doubt, it's the fuel for the faith. So just being able to stay with something when the wind blows, whichever way the wind's blowing, you know, that's what gives you the backbone. And the problem is having a nice time. So we don't look for something nice. and pleasant. Because then, when you don't have that, you think there's something wrong. And then you go look for something nice and pleasant. And you're always looking for something nice and pleasant.

[45:43]

So you get divorced, you marry somebody else. Because that nice, pleasant thing didn't last very long. And then just slugging through. But the thing, the valuable thing is that you've decided something, okay, good or bad, doesn't matter. That way you develop your character. That's the important aspect. It doesn't matter whether the thing is good or bad. I mean, of course it matters, you know, you like good things, you don't like bad things. But it's all, it all comes together. The good stuff, goes with the bad stuff, and the bad stuff comes with the good stuff. You can't make, you can't choose. You just try to make it better. But, you just keep, you know, we just keep changing our equipment around so we feel better all the time.

[46:52]

And then it doesn't last, and we change to something else, and then it doesn't last, and we change to something else. And we think that what we want, but do you think the important thing is to be happy? That's a problem. That's a problem. If we can realize the important thing is how we deal with our character, then we realize what's important. It's important to be happy. It's great, you know. But what is that? What is happiness? Satisfaction? I think satisfaction is desirable. And it is. But it's not the most important thing. No.

[47:58]

I'm trying to understand the duty and intention. Yeah, that's good. That's a whole other lecture. This will be the last question. What about it? I'll wait for your next lecture. Well, I'm just sitting here the whole time when we're talking about intention, or thinking about it, and trying to dismiss the idea of duty and saying, Or, you know, it's just a word anyway, but when you just said that about satisfaction, I felt that that wasn't the point of living. Satisfaction, then I thought, well I have to at least put it out in the atmosphere.

[49:01]

Because I don't feel it's just synonymous. But at the same time, it's not just external, and it's not just about loyalty, but her coming back to her father. Oh, yeah. I don't want to get into the psychology of it. The point is not whether she came back to her father or not, but coming together with herself. That's the point. And duty and desire. When they come together, then you have what you want. So is that intention? When your intention and your desire... When your intention and your want...

[49:51]

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