I vow to taste the truth of God's righteousness first. Good morning. It's nice to see everybody. It's a beautiful day. And as I was preparing, I was thinking about the similarity to preparing for the debates. Because there's something about being here that requires preparation and yet can't be too canned. And there's something about being here... Oops! There's something about being here that shows one's character and that's something that has been a real issue in the debate. But I must say particularly about the debates, that my favorite opening line was preempted by Vice Admiral Stockdale when he asked, who am I?

[01:06]

What am I doing here? So I'm not sure if he answered that very well in the debates. And I'm not sure I will either. But it's a little bit about what I want to talk about today. Particularly, I want to talk about what is the point of practice or why we practice, or what is the reward of practice. And one thing we've heard over and over again, if we've listened, is that zazen isn't good for anything. Zazen is good for nothing. And in fact, the last seshin we had in October The question came up after Meili's talk on the Paramitas. What is it that we're doing here? Or how does this affect our life? And she talked about how we are ground down here.

[02:08]

And, well, what's the point of that, people were trying to get. She said, well, we like being ground down. But there was something on the other side of the nothing that was missing. So I thought I would talk about that. And when I tell you that Zazen is good for nothing, and I mean it, and I'm going to wait to see if any of you leave, I think about why we don't leave when we're told that this practice is good for nothing. And I think, first of all, it's shocking to hear in our culture, which is so consumer-oriented, But zazen is good for nothing because you're usually told, well, this is good for something. Why don't you take it? You know, it's a fair trade. You put your time in here and you get this out of it. Another reason why you might not leave when I say zazen is good for nothing is that when you come to a store to get something,

[03:11]

And they tell you, I'm sorry we're all out of that item. I don't know about you, but I look around for something else to get. So if it's good for nothing, maybe there's something else here that it's good for. I mean, there's that hope. And then there's just a sense in being here. Well, I know you say it's good for nothing, but what is it good for? that's kind of what I'm interested in. And I think the reason that it's so commonly said that Dzogchen is good for nothing, and why it's so important for us to realize this, is that the something that it would be good for would be about enhancing ourself and our selfishness. What can I get out of it? So I think that's why it's so important to say it's good for nothing. Because when we think about The question, the question is, what can I get out of it?

[04:12]

And the answer is, you get nothing. You get nothing. It's about time you stopped asking for so much for yourself and started living, as Joko Beck talks about, leaving this self-centered life and living a life that is life-centered. So this is why when we say Zen is good for nothing, This is such an important part of our practice. But I'm very practical and I'm like you. I have a lot of things to do in my life and I wouldn't come here if it wasn't good for something. So I think the question is, if Zen is good for nothing, then what is nothing good for? So starting off from there, I wanted to talk about life as Buddhists see it. how practice and life intertwine and what they do for each other.

[05:14]

And this is not a small question because I think when we think about life, Dogen Zenji says we're born in the morning and we die in the evening. There isn't much time. So we ought to know why it is we're here. It's a very important question, what we're doing at this particular time. Because I have some interest in this question about life and how short it is, I often read the obituaries. Because while we take a kind of view of each thing we do in our life, each goal is very important, the obituaries sum up our lives as if we're looking at a photograph maybe of the tapestry that we've woven. It's very, it catches the themes and what we've actually made of ourselves.

[06:18]

One of my favorite Zen expressions is, water drunk by the cow becomes milk. Water drunk by the snake becomes venom. So what is it that we do with this life? I mean, we have, some of us, difficult circumstances. And others, we may look at others and say their life is easier. But what is it that we weave of it? What is it that we transform it into? Or how does it transform us? One of the obituaries that struck me, I'm not sure when this was, I don't think I have a date, was, in the New York Times, every day they have these obituaries. And some people read the comics, and I guess this is my idea. It's, it's very touching. This is the story of, I'm going to say his name Anglicized. I don't know what it would sound like if I gave it an ethnic touch. Jan Jacob Shmulewicz, 69, dies.

[07:25]

Doctor who survived Holocaust. Jan Jacob Szmulowicz, who escaped a Nazi death sentence by outsmarting concentration camp guards, and after World War II served as radiology chief. Let me tell you the story of how he outsmarted these people in the concentration camp. He was born in southeast Poland. He was the sole member of his family to survive the Holocaust. His father was executed in the German occupation, and his mother, sister, brother, and other relatives apparently perished at Auschwitz. As a teenager, Dr. Schmulwitz was imprisoned in a succession of slave labor camps, where he worked as a medic and nurse. Years later, he recorded his experiences, which other survivors verified. Among his most harrowing moments were the three times he was ordered to be killed. Twice the guards changed their minds. The third time came after he had escaped in a railroad boxcar, but was caught and returned to camp to be hanged the next day, death being the mandatory penalty.

[08:37]

Overnight, he switched his numbered prison uniform with that of an inmate who had just died of typhus. In the morning, compatriots presented the corpse as Dr. Shmulewitz's body, fearing contagion The guards declined a close inspection and accepted the identification. Shortly before Russian troops finally arrived, he escaped again. He helped liberate other camps, including one where Renata Grutz, it looks like, was held, and they soon married. He returned to Poland to study, but left because of lingering anti-Semitism. He completed his medical degree, and then it goes on to say he immigrated to Israel. He came to the United States to further his education at Long Island Hospital, and became Associate Director of Radiology there. Now, here's the part that's so striking to me. Besides all the excitement and drama in his life, in the courageous way, he turned to life, away from clinging to self, and really turned to life.

[09:45]

As an administrator, he reorganized and modernized the departments he headed, He also helped advance people of modest means, encouraging orderlies to become doctors and cleaners to become technicians. At Harlem Hospital, he founded a program to help neighborhood youth to become x-ray technicians. So water drunk by the cow becomes milk. How is it that someone and we don't know that he was practicing Zazen, but he was certainly practicing something. How did he turn all of this pain in his life into something that he could use for the benefit of all beings? I don't know. I really have thought about that a lot. I don't know how I would have performed in those circumstances. So many things about his life strike me and about the way we practice together.

[10:49]

I'm particularly struck by the way he had no fear or basically made a choice of leaping into this uniform which someone else wouldn't have touched when he was faced with the inevitable loss of his life by being hanged, and the possible loss of his life by getting into a uniform that was contaminated with typhus. He made his move. He wanted to live. And throughout his life, he affirmed it. He affirmed life. He turned towards life. He turned towards helping others. So, thinking about our practice and the way it's manifest through his life, I was thinking about the precepts, and, I'm sorry, not the precepts, the Eightfold Path, right thought, right understanding, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration.

[11:54]

And thinking how, in some way, he really manifested and followed this eightfold path. Certainly in his effort, which was unceasing, to turn towards life. Because not only did it take that courage to put on the uniform, but there was also, when faced, when in this prison camp, he kept trying to get out. I don't know what I would have done. A lot of us will stay quietly and allow some kind of horror to occur rather than take a bold move and stand up to it. And I particularly like this story because when I think about it as manifesting so many ideals of our practice, we often ask, you know, where's the line between just being part of life and standing up for myself? And I think that he really found a unique way to exemplify how you can make a move towards life and stand up for yourself appropriately.

[13:02]

So when I think about the way he lived his life, I'm really encouraged And I think about the weaving and what he's remembered for. He's remembered for his courage in standing up for life and what his life became. How many people he helped, not only in his medical profession, but how many people he tried to help in other ways. You can do it. You can stand up and live too. I have something a little bit on the other side of the expression. Water drunk by the cow becomes milk. Water drunk by the snake becomes venom. I got this gift when I was coming out of an aerobics class.

[14:10]

And Sharon, you know where we do aerobics. It's very crowded and it's very hard to park and there's always the issue of there not being enough. There's not enough time. You want to get that hour of aerobics into your busy life and you want to get in there and park and dolly, you know it inside out what it's like. So you try to get over there, get a parking place, get in, work out and get out. So one day, after a very nice class, that's my life. Go in there, get it done, and get out. It sounds a little like Ross Perot, I guess. OK. So I came out, and I was feeling very good, as most of us do feel after a good workout. And I came out to find this note. It's nice to know when parking is so hard to find on a regular basis that people like you can take the two places that this area supplies.

[15:17]

Maybe next time you'll think about it. Or are you always an inconsiderate pig? I got this note and while we're laughing now, I think we're laughing because we can all share the venom of it. And when I got it, it wasn't funny at all. It was just another expression of our life here together in this crowded place we share. And the anger, there's not enough for me, therefore I'll take yours or you took too much of mine. I, you know, that's your car, but I don't have one, so I'll steal it. Or, you know, I'm having a really terrible life, so I'm going to beat you up. So when I got it, it was really very upsetting to me. And for those of you who know the Enneagram, I'm an eight. And so immediately thoughts of vengeance arose.

[16:21]

Now you can see that there's a, this is on the letterhead here, national blast. immediately through my mind and thought, I'm going to find this person. I'm going to get this person one way or another. They don't mess with me that way. I'm just not going to let this happen. So that was the way it struck me at first. And by the way, not that I'm always right. I mean, I'm sure there was a time I thought I was wrong and I was right. Not that I'm always right. but I did not take two parking places. And this is also very important because it's so much about our life living in this space together where there's never enough for us or so we feel, you know. What had happened was, when I arrived, the person who was parked in front of me had pulled forward a little bit into the driveway. So when I looked at it, I couldn't, you know, this was a dilemma, I know, parking is tight. So I pulled as close to that person as I could.

[17:24]

And I left a half a space behind me. But when the person in front of me left, her car had been partway in the driveway, there was really only maybe two-thirds of the space left. So I had two-thirds of the space in front of me and half a space behind me when this person saw this. So that really is about What happens to us? You know, we come in at some point in the drama, and we look at it, and we come to the conclusion, somehow, my needs aren't going to get met because you did the wrong thing. But there's often quite a context around it, of what happened. And there was in this case. I was, I am an inconsiderate pig, but I didn't have to be. So I guess the answer to the question is, I'm not always an inconsiderate pig. So what I tried to do with this was really just to think about, now look, you got up early so you could do your meditation and you could do your workout before you went to work and now this thing, it's got your blood boiling and it's gonna wreck your day.

[18:32]

And what are you gonna do about that? And I think if anything, That's one of the things my practice has helped me with. And it's not for me. It does nothing for me. But it probably spared my husband a lot of grief, and my family, and maybe some people that I saw later on in their day. This reminds me a little bit of the story of the difference between heaven and hell, the Buddhist story, where You go into hell, and people have chopsticks, you know, three or four feet long, and the plates are right here, and the chopsticks are attached to their hands, and they can't get food into their mouth. And that's what hell's like. There's beautiful dishes, and you're hungry, and you can't get fed. In heaven, they were having a grand time feeding each other their favorite dishes from across the table.

[19:37]

So this is about transforming the water into the milk and not the venom. It's not for you, but if each of us do it, it's for the benefit of all of us. So I think it's very important to remember that. In thinking about our practice, oops, I pulled this out of the book where my page was. In thinking about our practice, I wanted to read a little about what Dogen Zenji says about practicing for the benefit of oneself or others. Students of the Way must not study Buddhism for the sake of themselves. They must study Buddhism only for the sake of Buddhism. The key to this is to renounce both body and mind

[20:42]

without holding anything back, and to offer them to the great sea of Buddhism. So this is the way we practice. We don't practice with the idea that we're going to gain something, only that we're just practicing. And in those moments, when you get these little love notes, you try it. You try practicing in that way. You must vigorously undertake even what is difficult to do and difficult to endure, without concerning yourself at all with right and wrong, and without clinging to your own opinions. You must cast aside anything that does not accord with Buddhist truth, even though it be something you most earnestly desire. Never attempt, through the virtue of your practice of Buddhism, to gain something good in recompense.

[21:46]

Once you have committed yourself to Buddhism, there is no need to reflect again on yourself. Because once you enter this practice, you may just follow it. It's not that we don't think about ourselves, but we have something to do. We have something to steer ourselves with. We have something to immerse ourselves in and to follow. And it's really quite a burden to have to be worrying about oneself all the time and taking care of oneself. And that thought seems to feed that hungry self. There's never enough. So once you turn yourself over to this practice, you can relax and just do it. Just practice in accordance with the rules of Buddhism and refrain from getting caught up in personal views. This has all been proven in the past. If your mind does not seek anything, then you will gain a great peace."

[22:52]

Well, I think that's the answer, a little bit, to the question, what is this nothing good for? Actually, nothing is good for peace. because this is as close as I could find to a Zen teacher saying that practice is good for something. If your mind does not seek anything, then you will gain a great peace. So it's not that you come in here and we offer you peace. Come on in and we'll give you some peace. But rather, by giving up, all the things that you desire and crave, you may gain peace. In a way, it's by emptying or recognizing this empty quality. This is what's left. When we take everything away, this is what's left.

[23:56]

When we get through the pain, when we take it in and we let it go, this is what's left. Just peace. It doesn't mean that all of our time is peaceful. Knowing that we will lose everything, that in the morning we're born and in the evening we die, does not mean we go through life saying ho-hum. I had a wonderful experience of this last night. My husband knows I am very partial to stupid movies. But the stupider the better. And he knows I also love animals. So he got me a movie called Beethoven about a dog family. You know, one of these shaggy dog movies. Well, you know the story, you know, the family first resists the dog, and then they take to really loving the dog, and then some disaster comes up where they're going to lose the dog. But you know it's a Disney movie, it's a family movie, you know, this isn't going to be an existential plot.

[24:59]

You know that in the end, the dog will be fine. That's like in our own lives. We know that we're going to be born and that we're going to die, and that's going to be the end of it. Well, you know the end of this story. Anyway, halfway through, as expected, the evil veterinarian was driving the dog away to be put down, and I'm sitting there crying my eyes out. And this is our life. We know the end. And yet, this is what makes our life so beautiful, is that even though we know how it ends, we continue to get in there and live. We sustain the losses and we cry. When we were in Japan, there was a group of women from the Zen Center and others that went to Japan. When we were in Japan, one of the women lost something that was dear to her, that her husband had given her. And she was very upset and she was crying. And one of the Japanese monks seemed to be a little puzzled, I felt he, maybe,

[26:08]

in a judgmental way. I was thinking, well, maybe he's being moralistic about this. But really, they didn't understand because in Japan, possessions are very different matters. It's like, they don't repair things. When things break, they just get another one. And so, he was having a hard time understanding why this woman was so upset about this loss. And he said, why is she crying about the loss, which was something given on an anniversary by her husband? when she will lose her own life and she will lose her husband, what does this loss matter? And I said to him, I'm not sure if our English and Japanese was adequate, but I said to him, she knows that. She knows that she will lose everything. And she still cries. And that's why people are so beautiful. because they continue to bloom, like our friend Jan Jacob.

[27:12]

He knew, in the end, he was going to die anyway. What did he die of here? Heart failure. So, he could have just packed it in. He knew the outcome of the script. He could have packed it in right there and then in this death camp, very easily. But he continued to bloom, despite knowing the outcome of this story. So I think the answer to what is the reward of our practice has to do with this knowing the outcome. How do we bloom? How do we blossom? How does our life live through us knowing how difficult it is and that we will lose everything? What is it that we do? So I think at this point I'd like to hear from all of you about What you think you do here or any other questions? Yes, well I reminded that we can help each other no matter which realm We're in and if in fact we find ourselves in the hell realm and the chopsticks are too long to get into our own Bowl that we can reach over and feed the person across the way So

[28:34]

How did you handle the letter? You found yourself really caught up in that, in that your day could have been ruined, but you were able to let it go. Yeah, I gave it to you. Thank you for helping me transform this venom back into water. Yes. Well, I thought about that a lot, too, because actually they could have keyed my car or let the air out of my tires or done any other number of destructive things. Instead, they were kind enough to leave me a wake-up call. They felt that I needed one. So it's a good question, though. Could have been an eight. Debra? Thanks. That was a lovely talk. You reminded me right away when you were talking about blooming. seen Robert Haas in a couple of years, and he read a long poem that was all about how sometimes people in this life, and the tragedy is, don't bloom.

[29:45]

And he talked about his mother, who was an alcoholic and went round and round in the same group her whole life, and was institutionalized, and he as a small boy had to go visit her, and the tragedy of that. And what was so amazing to me was to see him Bloom, as a poet and as a man in his 50s, partly due to the tragedy of someone dear to him not blooming. It was like something died for him to open up. More and more and more, the older he gets. And the art within that. It's very striking how he took what was so painful and poisonous and transformed it into something very life-affirming and gave you a gift of poetry as well. Yeah, and the art that comes out of that. So thank you. I've been thinking a lot about greed lately and how it just struck me that it really

[30:54]

and how interwoven with the fabric of our society in particular, probably because we have so much. And no matter how much I have, I can always point to someone who has more. And no matter how much I have, I never feel safe. I never feel like it's going to last. And I've just been watching how it determines my behavior and my choices. And I would like to know if you think that Zazen helps in transforming that. Well, I wonder if you're being greedy about asking your Zazen. to take care of your greed. Probably. Wanting one more thing. It's off the wall, that's what it is. I think that's why we won't give any guarantees. Because so much of what we come to practice with, you're so right, in our society now is grief.

[32:05]

I think, I'm a psychologist, and When we think about Freud's time and the problems with repression, that's not the problem. Our problem now is really about greed and addiction. And it seems to be so woven into our way of life. Then, a lot of psychological problems in the Victorian times were about fear and holding back. And now it's about, I want, I want, and the more I want, there's not enough. What you were describing applies a lot to what maybe most of us do, which is driving a car. You also sit while you drive. And let's say somebody does something really stupid on the street that causes someone anger. Right, you're warning me.

[33:33]

I found the answer and I said, no, I want to keep my ritual clean. How do you practice when you get angry in the car? Because I need a lot of help. It's interesting because what you do isn't very much what we do when we're sitting, which is to forget about, in a certain way, all of the thoughts and really concentrate our mind on the task of sitting straight, of letting go of the thoughts and so on.

[35:23]

Do you find that it helps you when you get angry? Absolutely. Thank you. Yes, sir? I was really moved by the story of Mr. Jan Jacob Shmulevitz. Shmulevitz, yes. I really liked that. And I had a lot of reactions to it, which I found somewhat verging on in the area of greed, actually. One of which was my son's doing some things that I don't like right now. in front of his nose. I'm like, see? How come you're not? And then I hold that up to myself. How come I'm not up to that point in my life? It's like I'm beating myself up or feeling guilty about it. This is really a common reaction

[36:25]

feeling inadequate to it. So I was noticing that, you know, as well as being very moved by this man, and also inspired. And I was thinking about the Heart Sutra, where it was nothing to attain, or Bodhisattva, you know, it depends on Paschal Karmita, lives in Nirvana, and all of that. And there's a way of looking at all of this without attainment, without grief. that brings peace to me. You know, I was thinking about your process as you were describing your reaction and seeing how it is that you transform something into a way to berate yourself, for example, and how you transform even a touching story into a way to make yourself not feel so good. Well, on the We have.

[38:02]

And then taken away temporarily. Uh-huh, yeah. We have. Right, but it's not until the last instant that we often realize it. Yeah, I think that's why what we keep reminding ourselves of is that we do have a death sentence. We just aren't so certain of when it's going to be carried out or how. And I don't know exactly what you're referring to, Merrill, when you said you had an alternate take on it. Well, I mean, I don't see an in quite such heroic terms. I see him actually as a fortunate man. Circumstances determine so much of our consciousness. These were circumstances that actually allowed him to have a higher consciousness. Right. I think that's so. I think that's a similar view, that I don't know if he meditated that night, or I don't know if somebody just said, put these clothes on at the last minute, and if that's how it happened. But I think what struck me was that as a doctor and as a radiologist, and they're not necessarily my favorite doctors, the way he continued to turn his life towards helping others.

[39:06]

I don't know whether I can call that an accident or not. You know, whether that was the circumstance, because he had a choice. Oh, certainly he had a choice. I don't want to, I'm not trying to, but somehow I resist a little bit. Heroes, we're not different than heroes. I mean, no, we're just not different than heroes. They're not other people than us. We all have those qualities. That's all I want to do, is just not set him up for something different. Yes, I appreciate that too, because I think that we all have that capability of doing what he did, and are doing what he did, transforming very painful lives into something that's productive and there isn't any difference. For whatever reason it struck me as a good encapsulation of that, yeah. I wanted you to elaborate just a little bit on the two ways you said practicing for the sake of Buddhism versus practicing for helping others.

[40:08]

There was one point earlier that you seemed to make that the goal and I was a little disturbed So what was the part that you... Well, the first part when you said, and not that that's bad either, but it was, it jarred me a little bit. It felt like, well, don't think about yourself, think about helping others. And it suddenly felt like, oh, I'm a missionary now. I'm just going to have a Buddhist outfit on and just do it that way. And I'm not against doing that, but it just, when you shifted and went from building You did read the line that said, practice for the sake of Buddhism. And then you also said it to me very supportingly, that if you just relax into the Buddhism, the whole cradle of it would be the guide. You didn't have to do something else to make yourself worthy.

[41:12]

And I don't know if I'm missing something in the two different things. Well, I'll tell you that. I'm not sure if they're separate, but I'll tell you a little story about something that happened when I was in Japan. We were on a tour of a monastery in Daitoku-ji, which is a whole complex of temples. And the priest spoke very good English. And there were visitors from all over the world as part of this little walkthrough we were having. And I think he was from Sweden. He said, you know, something about having gone to India. And in India, they do something in the mountains, they do a retreat. And he was asking the priest if we do that in this Zen practice. And it was a very clear moment that has stuck with me. He said, no. As Zen Buddhists, we always practice together. So that is our practice, is with each other, with chopsticks, with each other.

[42:16]

And that is what we put our attention to, to being the one that we really are. So it wasn't just you separate yourself from the community and go out. It's part of the whole, I mean, go out and do good. Right. You are good. Yeah, for the sake of itself. Yeah. Thank you. We're done.

[42:51]

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