Our ancestor Dogen spoke of settling down right here. We have a simple practice of constantly being devoted to being present, to sitting upright in the midst of what's happening right here. And speaking of settling down right here, Master Dogen speaks of two ways.

[01:32]

One is to go to the teacher, go to your teacher and ask about and listen to the teaching, and the other is to then settle with what's happening, including settling with the teaching you heard, without adding any of your own opinions and without going anyplace else. And I proposed to you that if you settle into what's happening, the true face of what's happening will reveal itself.

[02:51]

Yeah, I, in my mind, see the big word big word delusion and you know settling with that word or settling with delusions and just clearly observing delusions we will see right in the delusion right in the delusions we will see a reality, a truth which will liberate us and if we have any difficulty locating delusions then what we can do is sitting upright in the midst of truth

[04:14]

And if you clearly observe truth for a while, delusion will be revealed to you. So for most of us, there's a big true world, and if we just watch it carefully, gradually we'll see the darkness in the truth. And then if we don't run away from the darkness, we'll see the light in the darkness. Right in the darkness of delusion is the light of another pattern, a pattern which will set us free. But as it says, right in the darkness there is light, but don't try to see it as light. Don't try to peel back the delusion and look behind to see the light.

[05:18]

Just let the delusion be delusion. and the light will shine. Delusion is, in fact, great brightness. Some of us may have difficulty seeing the world of delusion. We may be feeling that things are still pretty well under control and working fairly well.

[06:29]

Or we just may see the beginning of the vision of delusion breaking through our true world. But my experience is that most people if they relax a little can notice that there's a lot of delusion around. and selfishness. I remember one of the first one-day sesshins I went to at Zen Center when we were still over in Japantown at Sokoji. Afterwards, I talked to one of the people

[07:34]

who I sat with and he was very discouraged because while he was sitting he just saw lots and lots of garbage. I think he had hoped to spend his Saturday looking at bright, clear, serene landscapes. But what he saw was a dynamic garbage throwing session. And he was discouraged. He didn't think it should be that way. I don't know what I said to him, but I think, as I remember, I thought, gee, that sounds normal.

[08:45]

And since that time, I've repeatedly had the experience of people being discouraged by revelation of their human mind. The human mind is mostly in turbulence. and turmoil and full of conflict. We have, you know, deep inside of our head here we have a brain which is sometimes called a reptilian brain. And it is a brain that when it sees something that it wants, it basically just wants to get it without any consideration for anything but getting it.

[09:59]

I haven't studied reptile society, but when they go after something, I haven't seen that they criticize each other for being rapacious or greedy. Whereas we humans have a conflict about just, you know, grabbing something. So we have many impulses and counter-impulses and judgments of impulses and judgments of counter-impulses and judgments of judgments, and most of that ... I shouldn't say most ... yeah, most of it we don't even know about. that's going on, usually we don't feel, most human beings don't feel that they can tolerate seeing how bad it really is. So we open up to some extent to it, but when people go sit, they tend to open up more than they have before and be horrified by what they see.

[11:11]

And early this morning someone, I won't divulge who, gave me a piece of candy. It occurred to me that that was given to me because today is Halloween, which I think you know is an abbreviation for hallowed evening. At some point in history it became the night, the holy evening before All Saints Day. But before that in Ireland, Halloween was called Sumain and it was celebrated on the last night of October and it symbolized or denoted the beginning of winter and it was a night when it was okay for ghosts and various other unfriendly creatures from the other world to come out and scare the living.

[12:39]

I don't know if we want to observe that here today and allow unfriendly things to come out and scare the living, but that's what has been done on this day over in the British Isles for quite a while. Segaki ceremony is different from letting the ghosts come out and scare us. Segaki ceremony is being nice to the ghosts when they scare us. Freud said that man is a wolf to man.

[13:51]

This is of course only men, not women. That they like to exploit everything, but particularly humans like to exploit other humans. They like to take what other humans have. They like to use them as slaves and objects of sexual activity and various other ways. Being upright is sometimes one of the meanings is to be morally, you know, upstanding and morally straight.

[14:57]

But the funny thing is that when you practice being morally straight, and especially if you do it in a very thorough way, you descend into the awareness not exactly moral crookedness, not moral crookedness, but a realm where morality has actually no issue. It's not even an issue. It's not like a reptile is immoral. I guess they're amoral, that's what we call them. Not immoral, amoral. It's not like they're contradicting their morality, they just naturally go for and don't run away from what's happening, you will sink down into the darkness. But even so, even if you go to a place where there's no conflict because it's just flat-out acquisitiveness, you still have to deal with higher levels of development where you feel in conflict about being that way.

[16:12]

I don't know if this is a reptile talking or what, but it might be a reptile talking. The reptile's saying, if there's anybody in this valley who's not in touch with this conflict, you're in trouble. And so are we, because you are a loose cannon in this world. But if you know about this world of delusion, this world of greed and hatred, not so much hatred like just plain hatred, but basically hatred of whatever interferes with what you want, in this world where you also justify all that If you are aware of this and all the discomfort that's involved, you can see that there's another possibility here, right, without changing anything.

[17:46]

But if we don't open up to this turbulence and conflict, it's established. It's established and it's always changing but the establishment will go on. There's tremendous support for it. Tremendous support. And not only that but the support pretends to be good, pretends to be goodness. The thing that supports this world of conflict and turbulence and aggressiveness and selfishness and cruelty Exploitation and oppression and me before you, that world and me separate from you, that world is proposed as, in various guises that it appears, it's proposed as kind of a nice thing. As a lovely thing.

[18:53]

It actually looks lovely to the type of people we are. And we tell each other it's lovely. Recently I went back to Minnesota to visit my family and took my daughter with me and one night at my brother's house she was watching TV and she was also reading a book at the same time. And the TV show she was watching was a Teenage Miss America pageant, sometimes known as the Teenage Miss America contest. or a competition. So, as you probably would guess, you have like 50 teenage women.

[19:55]

It's Miss, right? Not teenage Mr. America. You have 50 young women, maybe 18, 19, 17. You know, they're all gorgeous, right? And so that's pretty much it, they're all gorgeous. So then how are you going to choose? Well, partly by which one's most gorgeous, but in addition to being gorgeous, you choose them on the basis of which one's the nicest. Which one's the most unselfish? Which one's the most thoughtful of the other girls? Which one would like the other ones to win? This would be the one you'd choose. Which one most respects her parents' authority?

[20:58]

Which one most respects the judges? Which one is the most wholesome, unselfish, all-American girl? That's the one among all the gorgeous girls that you would probably choose as the queen. And for some reason or other, these girls have willingly come into the situation to help the other girls win. They've gotten together from all over the country and all over their states to go to a place where they're going to kind of pretend like they want the other girls to win. Sort of. And they come up and they ask them questions. when they ask them questions, they present themselves as unselfish and thoughtful of others, that would be good for them.

[22:01]

If they would happen to mention that they're selfish, they might or might not be rewarded for being honest. But if they convey a sense of concern for others and respect for others, And actually, wanting the other girls to win, they get high points. And now at this particular contest, they now have converted into something like the Olympics that the judges rate them, and then they flash those numbers up. After they answer some questions, they get these numbers, like 9.642, or 8.773. So of course, I don't know if the girls can see it, but even if they could, unless they had their calculators, they wouldn't be able to exactly keep track of who's ahead. I don't think they get to see it, but anyway, it's all kind of like, just like the Olympics, and they rate them this way, and the judges flash their ratings after each girl asks each question.

[23:05]

You can get kind of a sense of which one's ahead by that means, but anyway. It was, you know, a long pageant, so I'll just take you to the climax. The climax is, of course, when they announce who won. And the people who are watching, who are in the audience, who are watching the show, also, what are they watching? They're watching to see, the issue is, basically now, at this point, you've seen all the demonstrations, now what's left? There are no more questions, no more bathing suits, no more cute faces, you've seen it all, but now, one thing more, who's going to win? We're all concerned with this, how come? We're very interested in this. The whole thing's been set up to this thing, who's going to beat the other people? Why do people watch this? What's so interesting? What does it remind them of? My daughter wasn't interested in the show because she's already won.

[24:13]

So what they do is they usually start with the third place second place and first place, right? So you start with third. So all these 50 girls or whatever are waiting there to hear who's third. And then they say, you know, number three is, and then they say the person's name, okay? So this woman, this young woman, is supposed to be happy that she's number three. You know, that she beat 47. She's supposed to be happy. And everybody else is supposed to be happy for her because she did so well. And she got third place because she got third place, whoever this is, got third place because the judges thought, now if this girl got third place she would be very grateful. She's more or less committed herself to be grateful for any place she gets. That's why she got third place. The person, maybe the girl who would maybe get 50th, she may have presented to somebody who wouldn't have liked to get 50th.

[25:27]

But third, third's pretty much convinced everybody. This is a girl who would be very happy to get any position. She'd be happy to get third. So she's supposed to look happy when she gets third. So she, there's her face, you know, looking kind of like, oh, I'm so happy to get third and actually, You know, I'm sorry that the other girls didn't get third. But you can see in her face, and everybody knows in her face, she's also thinking, how come I didn't get second or first? And what's with these judges? Who are they going to choose that's better than me? Now she also has a thought in her head which is, you know, really these other people are better than me. So it's amazing that I got even third. But also, how come I didn't do better? And who do you think is better than me? Anyway, at least I am kind of happy because at least I did this well. Now the other girls are thinking, well, I'm really happy that she got that because I still have a chance to be second or first.

[26:39]

Or maybe some are thinking, Boy, I'm glad she got third instead of me because I… Or, Geez, I'm really happy she scored so high, that's so wonderful, but there's still a chance that I'll be second or first, so I'm so happy for you. Then comes second, okay, and basically the same thing. I'm so happy I got second, but why didn't I get first?" And you're supposed to be so happy you got second and so sad that you beat 48 people, and so they do. They're really sad that they beat 48. They're really sorry for all the other girls that they beat. They don't know who they are yet. They got a pretty good idea. They're actually really sorry, they're really embarrassed, they're embarrassed and sorry that they beat them and they're supposed to be happy that they beat them at the same time, right?

[27:43]

You're supposed to be happy that they chose you and sorry that they chose you. So they convey that very nicely and they are really happy that they're chosen, they're really sorry they beat the other people and they're really sorry that somebody beat them. So of course they cry, of course it's a very vivid moment. Because the person is pulled in all these different directions at once. They're grateful and ungrateful. They're appreciative and unappreciative. They're angry and happy. They're ashamed and proud. And they're supposed to be ashamed and proud. And they're supposed to look like that too. And they don't even feel the way they're supposed to look. They're a mess. And everybody's really enjoying that. And so it's a very bright mood. then comes number one. And number one then gets up, there's number one. Now she's supposed to be like the happiest. Right? And in some sense she is the happiest because she's the queen.

[28:44]

And she came to that thing to get that position. She went along with this. You know, in her state she was the queen, now she's the queen of the nation. The most wonderful teenager on the continent. Because Canada doesn't count. She got what she wanted. She's very happy. Not only that, and she's grateful, but she really does think the judges have good sense. She's the only one who did. The other one thinks... Even number two. Number two, it was good that you chose me second, but you made a mistake by not choosing me first. You're sort of on the right track. But she's the one who realizes they actually got the right choice. She's very happy and everybody really wants her to be happy and she can't not be happy. That would be ungrateful to the judges, to her parents and to the nation. So she's very happy.

[29:47]

Also she's supposed to be really ashamed to have been chosen and really sorry. Now she knows everybody wasn't, you know, she's better than everybody. She's really sorry about that and she's supposed to be really sorry and ashamed. So she's got to convey that too and she does. Because she won, she knows how to do that. She knows how to say, I'm really sorry, I beat you all. You know, you're really, all of you should have won ahead of me. And she really, really, really thinks that. And she puts aside the thought of, you got what you deserved. That's way, she's totally out of touch with that. Because she wouldn't have been able to win unless she really thought they were all better than her. And really, that winning would be the biggest surprise in the world to her. She was actually sitting there thinking, she's going like this, it's not gonna be me, it's not gonna be me. They're all better than me. And by thinking that, and really working at thinking they're all better than me, then she can really say, they're all better than me, and they choose her.

[30:50]

Because she's so out of touch with the fact that she wants to win. So they choose her because she's the most wholesome, most unselfish, one of the best looking girls in the nation. And she's a total wreck, you know? She's like, you know, a total wreck. The demons are like, you know, totally suppressed because in order to like present herself as pure, unselfish, modest, In order to do that, she's got to like have immodesty, you know, way far away, really immodest, right? Here I am standing up for the whole nation saying, you know, I'm the most wonderful thing in the world, and I'm immodest. She's got to get immodesty way out of the way, competitiveness way out of the way, thinking that she's even qualified to be in this situation way out of the way, and just be this humble, selfless person.

[31:52]

And if she can do that and talk that way, she wins, and she was able to do that, so she did win. Totally out of touch with the point that makes this whole thing interesting, namely that human beings all want to be the queen. And if that's impossible, then, you know, your friends or your children be queen. Now, of course, there's probably one person in this room who's not like that, right, and it happens to be you. You know, there's one person here, I'm not like that, maybe he is, maybe somebody is, but not me. In order to present yourself that convincingly as unselfish, you have to really have suppressed your unselfishness. and be far away from the conflicts between selfishness and unselfishness.

[32:54]

You've got to get the unselfishness way far away, no, no, unselfishness way up to the surface and the selfishness hidden. And then you can say, you know, you can even say, I'm selfish. See? If you're unselfish, you would say, I'm really selfish and I don't deserve to win this. That would be unselfish. And you have no, like, ulterior motives in the neighborhood. This is a turbulent situation and most people can't pull it off so only the best at this can win. And in fact the people who are best at this do win. They're the winners. Maybe some of you have won a thing or two before you came to Tassar. Now it's time not exactly to be losers but to take a chance on losing because This winning thing and losing thing are endless suffering. What you need to do is take a chance on losing, give up on winning, and descend into the realm of conflict and turbulence where this stuff's going on.

[34:05]

And not by going down there on purpose, just sit upright and you'll naturally descend. But when this happens to you and when you feel this torment and you admit it and don't even get an award for it, or maybe even get punished for it, who knows? But anyway, certainly you might punish yourself for it. Many people punish themselves. I'm trying to say, don't worry about it. You're starting to admit who you are. It is normal for human beings to be like this. Now again, there may be some mutations. It's always possible that every generation has some mutations, but if you're a mutant, fine, then you've got to deal with that. But if you find out, if you should happen to find out that you're as selfish as these other people, don't worry about it.

[35:08]

It is the normal situation. in which a Buddha is born. And right in the middle of this conflict and this messing around there is a vision, there is a way things are that's called… that the way things are is that they dependently co-arise. And if you can see the dependent co-arising of this turbulence, you see the dependent co-arising of birth and death. You see the dependent co-arising of misery, you see the Four Noble Truths. You see the dependent co-arising of birth and death means you now have the condition for the dependent co-arising of enlightenment. Without division of how the world, the most horrible or the slightly less horrible or whatever world it is, without a vision of the world

[36:12]

of birth and death. And without a vision of how it happens, you cannot become free of it. But when you see how it happens, you are immediately released. But you've got to be down in there and feel what it's like to be swirling around in this Self-righteous, self-concern, conflict, pretending like you're right, pretending like you're wrong, pretending like you're not selfish, being selfish, trying to help other people, but wanting to help yourself first, but wanting to help them first, realizing you don't want to do it, all that stuff, that's where you feel it. And somehow, when you see how it all works, you can become free of it. You can become free of being selfish and even become free of being selfless. you can become free of wanting the best for yourself, and you can become free of wanting the best for others. When you're free of both, you are just the best for everybody. When you start, or even before you start, to descend into actually feeling what it's like to be an ordinary human being, to have a first-hand experience of what it's like to be a human being.

[37:55]

Before you start, and as you start to feel it, it's very important to not have the slightest like or dislike. as you descend to really settle down and accept what's happening. Now of course what you're living in is a world of totally likes and dislikes. That's all of what it is. You're getting pulled and shoved and twisted by likes and dislikes. But to have no likes or dislikes about that is called being upright. That you can actually have like a real clear vision right in the middle of that. I just got this image of Joe Montana, you know, this human being, he's out there in the football field, you know, with these giants running at him ready to crush him, and he's just like looking, his eyes, you know, he's just like looking to see, where can I throw this ball?

[39:04]

He wants to throw the ball to one of his players, he wants that. That's what he wants. He even, in some part of his mind, wants not to be slaughtered any minute by giants. That's going on, believe me. You know that. His actual life is at stake right now and he voluntarily got himself in the situation. And he also now wants to throw the ball to somebody and not somebody else. specific group of people he wants to throw the ball to. However, there needs to be also a presence there which doesn't like or dislike, which has not the least like or dislike. Now it turns out that this does not, this does not I don't think have any bearing on whether or not the path is completed to the person he wants it to go to.

[40:17]

I don't know of any connection there. I'm not saying there is or isn't, but it does have a connection to being liberated in that situation and maybe that's what is really attractive about the game is the liberation that happens regardless of what happens. One time a follower of Islam was tossed into prison.

[41:25]

I think Islam means surrender. He was tossed into prison and one of his friends sent him a present. He opened it and was hoping it was a saw or a bomb or something. But it was a prayer rug. He was kind of upset and thought, you know, what kind of a friend? Anyway, after a while he said, well, got nothing better to do, I might as well bow on the prayer rug. So he started bowing on the prayer rug. And by becoming familiar with the pattern, he started to notice the pattern of the prayer rug. He noticed it was kind of an unusual prayer rug. He'd seen a few before. This was a unique one. And gradually it looked to him like it's kind of like a kind of a diagram or something in the prayer rug.

[42:34]

He looked at it some more and actually said it looked like the diagram of a lock and a diagram of a key. So he made himself a little key shaped like the the key in the diagram and opened the lock and walked out of the prison. And then he walked east for many thousands of miles and came to China. It was a mispronunciation of his Muslim name. But if you look at those pictures of Duryodhana you can see his Semitic background.

[43:42]

If you just keep bowing in the pattern of your imprisonment, the release will be revealed. Right in the way your imprisonment happens, right in the way you're twisted and turned, if you just stay present with it, the way clear will show itself. The way clear is no other place than in the midst of this twisted, tormented turbulence. No other place. If you lean a little bit away from this, try to fix it at all. Mess with it at all, and you're in prison one moment longer. Not forever, just at the moment you mess. Just at the moment you don't accept it. Just at the moment you don't settle. Just at the moment you try to get away. Just at that moment, you missed a chance. It's not forever. If you didn't face it now, it's okay.

[44:50]

Now face it. Now it turns out that facing it doesn't immediately teach you the whole dependent co-arising situation, you might have to face it several times. Virtually, you know, many. So you have to be patient, you have to be patient, you have to patiently Do it over and over, not mess. Over and over, find the one who sits there and has no likes or dislikes for this twisted situation, for this turbulent conflict scene. Who actually doesn't mess with it? Who's not busy? Who actually just accepts and settles? That one is the one who will see the pattern of release. Not only see it, but be made into it. the fruit of patiently sitting in this mess, this human mess of being present in the midst of Miss America pageants and 49er football games and Zen retreats.

[45:58]

The virtue of being patiently settling there is you become transformed and you turn into a released being without changing an iota. without becoming inhuman. You manifest the Buddha nature which was always there. So, I don't mean to be disrespectful of the various things which someone might do to fix the situation. To try to make it not so twisted and turbulent and tortured and conflict.

[47:05]

Okay, if you want to try to fix it, go ahead. That's all right. at least temporarily. But really, it's postponing the real work. That's what I think, seems to me. So in the Lotus Sutra, the famous story in the Lotus Sutra, you have a burning house, these kids are in the house, they have a really nice nursery with excellent toy facilities and the house is on fire. Their parents are outside saying, come on out, the house is on fire. The kids don't listen, you know, they're screaming at each other, having such much fun, they can't hear the request to come out of the burning house.

[48:09]

The various animals that live under the house are like getting freaked out and starting to crawl around the house. Poisonous snakes and stuff, poisonous insects, all kinds of little monsters are now released on top of the fire. The kids will not come out. So the parents get the idea, oh, we have even better toys out here than you have in the room there. Come on out. We have horse carts. deer carts and goat carts, and they're like really well, and the carts are also really well, what do you call it, appointed, really well appointed with all kinds of gorgeous ornaments and high-tech, you know, video installations and delicious treats. It's really great, come on out. So the kids come out.

[49:12]

When they get outside, all there is, instead of these three kinds of fabulous carts, all there is is a white oxen cart. It's a beautiful cart, but it's not what they were expecting. They might have come out if their parents had said, we got a gorgeous white ox cart out here for you. But they were using kind of like the scatter shot method of trying to get lots of different possibilities to get them out, rather than say, we just have one cart out here. Three, by the way, is shorthand for many or infinite. We have an infinite number of wonderful toys out here, rather than we have one toy. They get out and it's a white ox cart. So this is kind of the problem in Buddhism, where you should tell people they're just a white ox cart. and maybe they'll stay in the burning house and won't come out and practice, or whether you should say, we have all kinds, you know, any kind of practice you'd like to do, we've got it here, what do you want to do?

[50:16]

And then they come out and try some practice and then later you say, actually, finally, we only have one kind of cart. But at least they're kind of like they started, you know, they came out of the house in a You know, in a sense, the white ox cart is to just settle down where you are now. And then your reward for that will be where you are now will get more dynamic, more alive, more surprising, lessen under your control, and more more educational and more enlightening. That's your reward for not messing with it, is that you get more information.

[51:26]

Enough, finally, that you can see the way and that the way transforms you into the way. The one way is you just be present and upright in what's happening. And cope by being present and upright with what's happening. And cope by not leaning into the slightest like or dislike, not meddling, not being someplace else. Scholars plow with a pen.

[54:06]

Orators plow with a tongue. We poor patch-robe monks lazily watch a white ox on open ground. Okay. For 30 years, I've been eating Zen Center's rice and shitting Zen Center's shit.

[56:10]

I have not practiced Zen Center's Zen. I just see a single water buffalo. When it wanders off the road, I yank it back. When it trespasses onto other people's rice fields, I whip it. When it goes to the state fair to enter beauty pageants, I say, good luck. When it wins, I say, congratulations.

[57:19]

And when it loses, I say, is that so? I'm sorry. In this way, I've been taming it for a long time. Such an adorable one. I'll take care of it forever. It understands human speech. And now, it has transformed into a white ox. All day long, It's walking round and round in front of us. Even if you try to drive it away, it does not leave. Now this is a real delusion.

[58:31]

Happy Halloween.

[58:38]

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