I wrote down on a piece of paper that I was happy to be here. And now that I arrive here, I wonder if I am. I think I am. I think I'm happy to still be alive and have another day to try. Also, I want to mention something to you, and that is, some time ago, a friend of mine said, referring to someone else, how did he put it? Anyway, he was referring to someone who was able to sit in a room or be in a room full of intelligent people and do most of the talking.

[01:11]

And when he said that, I said, I thought to myself, do I sometimes do that? So here is a room full of intelligent people and I don't want to do all the talking. It doesn't make sense in a way. And yet it's set up like that. So basically I want to let myself out of that trap. and think of myself as in a room full of not only intelligent people but probably compassionate people, or at least people that are trying to develop compassion. And that I won't be doing all the talking, but what I will be doing is singing.

[02:19]

I feel maybe it's all right for me to sing in a room full of intelligent people. Maybe it's not, but I feel more comfortable thinking of what I'm doing as my song. I'm just singing my song today. all trying anyway. A basic piece of information which comes to me quite often and yet is not necessarily mentioned because it's assumed, is that Zen practice is a form, a particular form among, in the midst of, a huge, a very huge movement among living beings.

[03:51]

It's a very big movement among living beings, which is the dedication to the welfare of living beings. Sometimes it's called Mahayana Buddhism, or the vehicle of universal liberation. or the way of the bodhisattva. And in some way, Zen is trying to do, Zen is pointing to a way within this huge movement among human beings to help all human beings and to help all living beings. Maybe in Asia it's assumed, everyone understands that, but when Zen was transmitted to America, that point may not have been emphasized or brought to our attention as much as we need it to be brought to our attention.

[05:15]

Or another way to put it is, in my particular case, I was attracted to Zen meditation by hearing the stories of Zen practitioners. The stories attracted me because I felt that they were stories of compassion, but not only were they stories of compassion, but they were stories of compassion where the The monk was acting very close to the way I personally act, but just a little bit different. A slight change of attitude, a slight shift in response changed his behavior into something which was very inspiring to me, or her behavior into something that was very inspiring to me. The slight difference between, if you have something in your hand, the slight difference between holding on to it and handing it over to someone.

[06:32]

It's a really small difference in a way. It's just a simple muscular movement. And yet it makes such a big difference to hold on to your money or to say, here, I heard other religious stories which I thought were impressive or awesome or spectacular, but I couldn't understand how they related to my life. But the Zen stories were situations quite similar to the ones I'm usually in, with a slight change. So I was very attracted to this way. I thought, if I could behave like them, all my problems would evaporate. And not only that, but it would probably be very helpful to those around me. And then I found out that they did a meditation practice. So I started to do the meditation practice.

[07:34]

But somehow in the process of doing the meditation practice, I a little bit forgot about my original inspiration and just got into the meditation practice itself. And a lot of us, I think, are attracted to the meditation practice itself. Or we're attracted to the way of compassion. But when we get into the practice, we sometimes forget the context in which we were originally attracted. So I want to today, again, reemphasize that the point of Zen practice is just so that we become effective in in helping others to be free of suffering. And of course, that applies to ourselves. All the words and actions of the Zen teachers are to help us learn how to be free and how to help others to be free.

[08:37]

As one Zen teacher said, all we want to do is just join hands with all beings and walk through birth and death with them. To join hands with beings and die and be born with them. That's all. And in fact, that's all we're doing anyway. The question is, are we aware that we're joining hands with all beings? We are dying and being born with them all, but are we joining hands with them and walking with them? That's the hard part, is to actually join them and be joined by them through these changes. So the Zen teaching is to enable us to do this rather, in some sense, difficult task of actually embracing all beings and going through these enormous changes of our lives.

[10:04]

And then someone asks, well, how can they do this? How can these Zen adepts and Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, how can they join hands and walk through birth and death with beings? And the answer is, they can do this because they have ended all leakage, all outflows. That's how they can do this compassionate activity. And then it mentions that there's three types of leakage, three types of outflow which undermine and undermine and block the activity of compassion. I don't know if I have time to go into all of them today, but I'll just mention them anyway.

[11:09]

The three types of outflow, the three types of leakage. Before I say them, basically all the leakages are basically leakages of gain and loss, fame and infamy, is and is not. These are the basic dimensions that we get caught by and thereby are weakened by. Or you might say, burned out by. So another way to say this is how can the bodhisattvas join hands, how can the Zen practitioner join hands with all beings and walk through birth and death with them without burnout?

[12:17]

Because if our attitude gets off, we will either become inflated or depleted by our work. For example, you hold hands with beings and walk through birth and death with them, you might think, well, I'm holding hands with these beings and I'm helping them. I'm the helper and they're the helped. And I really am the helper and they really are the helped and there's a thing called helping. And these are three different things and all three really exist. It is said that Buddha does not reach down and pull people up out of suffering. Although Buddha has, the Buddha, you know, had and has great powers, the powers are not used to do people's work for them, to pull them up out of suffering and relieve them of suffering by you relieving their suffering, by you being the helper, them being the helped, and the helping being the pulling them up out of the muck.

[13:48]

Buddha's activity is rather to give teaching to the person so that the person may awaken themselves. So, for example, if a person is in trouble, rather than pull them up out of their trouble, the Buddha might ask them, what is the trouble? How is your trouble? What kind of trouble do you have? Tell me about it. So the three kinds of, the three modes of burnout are the burnout which is the leakage which is called views, views, leakage of views, which means the leakage of fixed views. And then the next one is the leakage, emotional leakage, or the feeling leakage.

[14:50]

And the next one is verbal leakage. So the leakage of views does not mean that you have no views. If you're in the process of relating to people, you have views. You have views of what might be helpful, of what might be harmful. These are perfectly good views. The problem is only to hold on to them, to have a fixed view. If you have a fixed view of what's helpful or what's harmful, it's the possession and the holding on to the view that causes the problem, that causes the leakage. So, I mean, you know, usually if someone is hitting themselves with a hammer, that's harmful. Probably, I don't know. Or at least I should say, I have the view. that if someone's hitting themselves with a hammer, it's harmful.

[15:54]

But I don't have to be fixed on that. If I see them doing it, I might say, please stop. But I might say that with the feeling of, maybe there's something helpful about this massage technique. I might be wrong. In other words, I don't have to say, I don't have to question them about hitting themselves with a hammer. And I don't have to question them that with the spirit of, I know that's wrong. I could question it more in the sense of, I think that's wrong. Is it wrong? What are you doing? How does that feel? What's the point of this? I don't have to be sure that that's wrong in order to be helpful. Naturally, I have some question about it without working at it at all. I learned from childhood not to hit people with hammers. So I have that well instilled, and yet I don't need to hold on to it. Or, you know, a teacher of Buddhism could have a student come to her or him.

[17:06]

And the student could be, could appear, the person could have the view, this is a classical bad student. They're lazy, they're rebellious, they're dishonest, and yet they present themselves as a Zen student. That's my view. But maybe that's not so. Maybe this is actually not a bad student. Even though I have the view, definitely I have the view. This is, I mean, if there was ever a classical bad student, this is it. That's my view. I can't stop my view. And I might try to stop my view, and then they would do one more thing to make me sure that I was right. In other words, not make sure that I was right, but make sure I would hold that view. I went to visit my mother recently, and she lives in quite a nice place out in the country, not too far, a mile from my brother's house, and she lives in a retirement community.

[18:36]

I went to visit her, and at one point she started to tell me about the rest of the family, about my aunt. who I have nice memories of. My aunt taught me how to use a fork and a spoon. My mother never taught me how to use those. We'd just use them, and I think she would say stuff like, that's not the way to do it or something occasionally. But I don't remember her actually sitting me down and showing me precisely how to grip the spoon and how to grip the fork and how to use them. My aunt taught me that. So my mother told me that now my aunt is very close to death, and... And my uncle, who also had a big impact on my life, he's very upset because he's lived with her for 55 years and worried about his life when she dies.

[19:42]

And their son, my cousin, he has some problems too because both of his sons have problems with chemical addictions. And then my mother told me that a little later she told me that looking in this place where she lives, in this large, in this wing where she lives, she said in the five or ten years that she's lived there, all the people there have died except her. And she told me, and then she told me, well, in one sense she told me that she's happy. quite happy, but then she also told me that her life is TV. And when she told me that, I felt it kind of hurt me for my mother to tell me that her life was TV.

[20:45]

So she watches TV. Since her life is TV, she figured she should watch the TV to find out what her life is. But when she said that, when she said, my life is TV, I was completely caught. I thought, how terrible for life to be TV. But I couldn't even hear that in saying that my life is TV, right in that expression was freedom. I couldn't hear it. I thought she meant my life is bad because all I have in my life is TV. And yet the wisdom of her, her own wisdom was saying her life was TV.

[21:58]

which means both that she has nothing to do but watch TV, and also it means that life is TV for everybody, and she knows that. But she didn't, you know, she didn't tell, I was caught by those words. That's an example of verbal leakage on my part. I was weakened and distracted by grasping those words in that superficial way. Then she said, so I watch TV during the week, but on the weekends I just read because there's nothing on TV on the weekends. I said, there's nothing on? And she said, well, there's just stuff for kids. And then I said, and sports? And she said, yeah. She said, for a while there, I got into the twins, the Minnesota twins.

[23:03]

They were world champions two years ago. She got into them. And she said, in particular, I like that one player. What's his name? Puckett. Kirby Puckett. She likes him. She likes to watch him. I think he's right now either first or second in the American League batting. She likes to watch him bat. When he holds a bat up, she likes to watch his butt. She said he's got a cute little butt. But then she said, it's like two basketballs.

[24:12]

And since she said little but, I thought she really meant cantaloupes. But later I found out from some people that actually, basketballs is right. And she says, and when they go out in the field, you can always tell which one he is. because you see those basketballs going out there. When I left my mother, I said goodbye, and she said, don't look at me like that. And then I said, I love you. And she said, don't look at me like that. But later, when I thought about my life as TV, I realized that, not I realized, somehow something changed for me.

[25:27]

And it's been changing ever since. In a sense, many of us are trapped in a retirement home and we have nothing but TV, or our life is just TV. And right in that sentence, both in the verbal sentence and in the sentence, the judgment, that we have been sentenced to life as just TV, Right in there exactly is where the world turns around and sets us free. In my falling for not necessarily what my mother meant, but with my falling for what she said, I was demoralized and felt pity, as though her life was not as good as mine, because I don't say my life is just TV. Why don't I say my life is just TV? Am I too arrogant to say that?

[26:31]

Is my life really better than hers? I don't even have a TV. And even if I did, we don't get reception here. This is an example of verbal leakage. and also fixed view in the sense that I think, you know, that it's not so good to have your life just be TV. And to tell you the truth, when she said that, I even thought, gee, my mother seems to be not have much in her life. Maybe if she was thinking about helping other people, she would be happier. I even thought that. I even had the fixed view that, which again is my view, I have it, that if all we're concerned about is watching TV and our own happiness, this makes us pretty unhappy.

[27:37]

And if we would be more concerned for other people's happiness, this would be, this is, our great happiness. But even that, to hold on to that, will flip me in the air and throw me into a poisonous ocean. And also there's a slight nuance here. I don't know if it's a slight nuance, but anyway, partly I feel like if my mother says my life is TV and I feel bad about that and I'm caught by that, on some level I feel like, well, that's good that I feel sorry that she says her life is TV. It's good for me to feel sorry for her and to feel her suffering. And if in my mind or in my heart the whole thing should turn around and I should realize that actually she's very happy and she's completely liberated from TV in a sense, I don't do that to escape her suffering.

[28:58]

I don't do that to release myself from being concerned about her and laugh off her problems. It's more that I realize that right in her problems, right in her diagnosis of her problems, right there is where the whole thing turns. And right in the way I hear her problems is where it turns in my mind. And also where I am able to hold hands with her. Because if my mother says, my life is TV, and if I fall for that, even my own mother, I will let go of her hand. Even if I'm a bodhisattva, supposedly, and dedicating my life to help all beings, and even my mother tells me,

[30:02]

my life is TV and if I fall for my life is TV I will let go of her hand and let her go through birth and death without me because I cannot stand to live that life which is just TV I can't stand it and nobody can in other words if you have a fixed verbal understanding or a fixed view about what life as TV means, nobody can stay with that. Everybody will run away and be depleted. But because my mind, maybe out of its suffering, shook itself loose from what those words did, I could again take my mother's hand and walk through the next sentence, the next trick of words which makes life sound intolerable.

[31:09]

One time I was on a vacation with my wife and daughter. We were going to go to the Grand Canyon. And out in the middle of the desert, we stopped someplace to get gas or at some kind of a rest station. And I noticed that there was black gooey stuff all along the side of the car. And somehow I figured out that the black gooey stuff was coming from

[33:00]

the car itself. The car was extruding black gooey stuff. And it was coming out from behind the front wheels and then spraying the side of the car. And so then I drove a little further and went to a gas station and we lifted up the hood and we found out the very nice guy he pointed out to me that the stuff was probably oil, and it was coming from some unusual place, like the air filter or something. We're out in the middle of the desert, sort of, Going to the Grand Canyon, this is kind of upsetting.

[34:01]

We're supposed to be having fun, right? This is a vacation from such things. So... And this is like a Friday afternoon. We would kind of like to get to the Grand Canyon rather than be out in the desert. But somehow it seemed a little risky to be... to sort of head out into the desert with this oil coming out of that place. Now the guy said, well, maybe, he said, don't do it. I wouldn't do it, he said. Then he said, well, maybe you could do it. Just keep your, if you keep your eye on the oil and just keep putting oil in, maybe it'd be all right. If it's coming out, you just keep it coming in. But somehow we decided to sort of cool it. And and not try that heroic journey across the desert with the car in that condition.

[35:08]

See, it was Friday afternoon, too. It was Memorial weekend. No, Labor Day weekend. And so all the car dealerships, I mean, the repair places were closed, too. Now, this was in Barstow, California, this thing happened. Barstow is big enough town to have a place that does work on foreign cars. So we could have had it repaired, except it was the guys that knocked off for the day. So the question is, should we stay in Barstow the whole weekend up till Monday or Tuesday? Now everybody knows about the Grand Canyon, right? Grand Canyon is a very beautiful place.

[36:11]

A lot of people want to go there to see it because it's so moving. It's a great international cathedral of earth. So we kind of wanted to be in Barstow for our vacation. I mean the Grand Canyon, but we're in Barstow. Now not so many people know about Barstow, right? Actually, I heard about Barstow before I even got there. And you don't have to go through Barstow. When you're driving by, you can miss Barstow entirely. It's possible that you're not forced to go through Barstow. You can go on the highway and just get kind of close to Barstow. And actually, the part of Barstow you see from the highway is a, at least what it was at that time, was a kind of a wrecked train station. So you might think, boy, Barstow's almost a ghost town.

[37:12]

I'm glad we don't have to stop there. So anyway, we decided to stay in Barstow that weekend. And we looked around for a place to stay. And we finally found a place, a brand new place that, because it was new, I think, they had a special deal. So we got to stay in this new hotel. at a low rate. And not only that, but since it was Labor Day weekend, and nobody wants to be in Barstow on Labor Day weekend, we had the hotel basically to ourselves. And the whole swimming pool, too, a brand new swimming pool, all to ourselves. And it was a nice hotel. Nice, inexpensive, and basically a horse. And when we went to restaurants, too, they were very happy to see us because nobody else was in Barstow.

[38:19]

Anyway, we had this wonderful weekend. And for us, you know, Barstow is like... That word is a very beautiful word in our family. LAUGHTER We loved Barstow. We had a great time in Barstow. And it just felt good to kind of give up, you know, give up our idea of our vacation. Grand Canyon, success, beauty, all these things, you know, just to give up and accept we're in Barstow. And we did. We really accepted. We said, let's just stay here. And I just felt kind of like, I just felt really good just to kind of give up, to surrender to where I was. Part of me went, okay, across the desert, let's go. But another part of me just felt like, well, what's the point, you know? Especially with my poor family with me. And sort of, anyway, we gave up.

[39:23]

And we were richly rewarded for our surrender. by having a very nice time, very nice vacation in Barstow. I recommend Barstow on Labor Day weekend. Then on Monday or Tuesday, whenever it was, I took the car into the place and the guy looked at it and said, there's nothing wrong with the car. Apparently what happened was I think I put too much oil in it. I got kind of nervous back at Bakersfield and just kept pouring oil into it. I put too much oil in, so the car, in its own way, got rid of the oil. And the only way it knew how was to blow it out through the air filter.

[40:26]

Okay. so it was just my stupidity and it really didn't hurt the car I got it all oily and dirty but I washed it in Barstow they have a nice wash place there if the world is really a bad place if it really is well then we're done for there are tremendous difficulties here but the point is not to dedicate our life to the reality of these difficulties and make sure that they're true and everybody should be miserable the bodhisattva way is to see the emptiness to see the stupidity of taking this stuff as real to see through all these problems to see that these problems are created by our own fixed ideas

[41:30]

Our own leakages are what's causing the problem. And it's what's causing the problem for others, too. If we can see through this, we can join hands and be born and die together without getting pooped out and scared by, you know, being in Barstow or your mom's life being TV or cancer or anything. I'm talking about birth and death. But we have to be pretty alert not to be caught by our own understanding of what's going on. Or at least when we're caught, to be alert enough to realize, I'm caught, I'm leaking, I'm holding on to a fixed idea, I'm caught by these words, I'm being thrown around by these emotions. So I know quite a few of the people in this room today.

[42:58]

I know many of you. And those of you who I know, I know to a person, each of you, really, really, you do feel the suffering of beings in this world and you do want to help in any way you can to make everyone happy. and enlightened and do whatever you can with your life to make that possible. And some of you I don't know I'm not sure that you have this same attitude. It's possible that all the people I know are really have deep a deep wide heart that wants to help all beings, and then just the people I don't know are not that way. It's possible, I suppose, but I think it's unlikely that, I think it's unlikely.

[44:04]

I'm usually impressed by how kind people are and how much they really want to help others. So I'm speaking to you as though that was your life, that you are, that you have either officially or unofficially, directly or indirectly, joined in this movement among living beings that's been going on now for quite a long time, that you are part of this movement to bring happiness and peace to this world. by working for and dedicating your life to the benefit of others. I assume that. That's why I'm speaking from that assumption. I'm only emphasizing that we must protect our own good efforts from leakage, from fixed ideas about what it means to be helpful, from fixed ideas about

[45:08]

who it is that's being helpful and who it is that's being helped and what help is singing about this morning. Okay? So now I'd like you to again so I'm not the only one who gets a chance to sing I'd like to end by a song about this which somewhat summarizes what I've been saying in the context. Again, the context here is the context of the great vow to save all beings. In that context, we sing this song. Are you ready? Please join me if you feel like it. It's a simple song. Okay. It goes like this. Walk right in.

[46:08]

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