Recently, I went to Texas and I was going to do some retreats there. I was going to do three retreats and two Bodhisattva initiation ceremonies and two public talks and some radio shows, and also I was going to do quite a bit of exercise. So I went to Austin, Houston, Texas, and then I went out in the country and did a retreat on the last weekend of September. Can you hear me okay in the back? I did a retreat at the last weekend in September, and the topic of the retreat was renunciation as a practice for entering into Buddha's wisdom and compassion, and I've been talking about

[01:07]

renunciation intensively recently. So we did that weekend, and at the beginning of that weekend, I said to the people in the retreat something I'd said to them years before, but which I think has the quality of renunciation, and it's something that my teacher said, Buddhism is not one of those religions like Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Islam, and Buddhism. It's not one of those. Buddhism is when Christianity and Judaism and Hinduism and Daoism and Islam and Buddhism

[02:28]

go beyond themselves. Buddhism is when you let go of Buddhism. Buddhism is when you let go of your idea about what Buddhism is, including that idea of Buddhism. So Buddhism is to let go of Buddhism and let go so completely that you can hold on to it, but you hold on to it just for the moment if it helps people, and if it doesn't help people, give it away. It's just to do what's helpful in the current meeting of the moment. There's wonderful Buddhist teachings, there's wonderful Muslim teachings, there's wonderful Christian teachings, there's wonderful Jewish teachings, there's wonderful Hindu teachings, and so on. All these traditions have, you can find, teachings which will realize unhindered love and peace

[03:41]

in this world, but in order for these teachings to flourish in this world, we have to apply them in a mode of renunciation. That's how I started the retreat. And to elaborate on that, which I've done here many times, it means that if you want to realize righteousness, you have to not be self-righteous. If we hold on to a limited idea, any idea of righteousness, grip it, if you grip any idea of what is right or righteousness, you make righteousness into something small, graspable, and you become, you go against righteousness. But to use some idea of righteousness with a light touch, just to use it for the moment,

[04:50]

to try for the moment, do our best, and move on, then maybe righteousness can thrive. So, at that retreat, I gave the people in the retreat a little piece of calligraphy, which I did, a Chinese calligraphy, and it's a Chinese expression from the Zen tradition. And I also have some, if you want, you can have a copy of that, I have brought some for you today. I'll give them to you afterwards, if you want. It's a four-character expression, which literally means to meet objects, or to meet the environment, in other words, to meet the world, to meet each person, to meet whatever, with no mind.

[05:51]

Meet the world with no mind, that's a Zen teacher's expression for how to practice meditation in every situation, how to practice wisdom and compassion in every situation. And to meet with no mind means to meet with no ordinary, discriminating, dualistic mind, to meet without grasping the distinction between yourself and others. Your mind creates the distinction between yourself and others, it's a wonderful thing that we can feel different, that we can look out there and say, oh, that's not me, that's totally wonderful that we can do that, that we can imagine that what we're looking at is not us. It's a great thing we can do that, but in order to meet the person with wisdom and compassion

[06:57]

we have to, like, not grasp that apparent duality between us, even though it's a strong sense that that person is not me, that religion is not mine, that country is not mine, even though there's a strong sense that we need to meet that object, letting go of that mind which makes the distinction. We have to renounce that distinction between our suffering and others' suffering, which our mind makes, which our ordinary mind makes that. But we have a Buddha mind which does not make any distinctions. It lives in the world of distinctions, distinctions are all over the place, but it doesn't grasp any of them. It meets them with complete relaxation. To meet every moment, to meet every experience with complete relaxation.

[08:00]

And that doesn't mean to meet each situation like, you know, like not caring, it just means to meet each situation without tensing and gripping and clinging and seeking. And then great energy can come forth through your body and mind to deal with the situation in a wise and kind way. Then when you meet even a hostile environment, you can meet it with intelligence and interest and a willingness to try to understand this hostility, to study it and study it and study it. Of course now this is our great challenge, for us in this culture, this American culture,

[09:04]

this American country, to understand another civilization, another religion, with an open, relaxed, alert, unattached mind. And this mind is interested in other cultures, wants to study them, wants to understand them, and wants them to understand us. And then the retreat ended and I went back to Houston and the next morning I got up to do my exercise program, got on a bicycle, very nice bicycle, and I started walking. One of those really nice, I don't know, these new bicycles cost a lot, they cost as much

[10:06]

as cars used to cost. It looks like one of those $2,000 jobbers, very nice bicycle, loaned to me by an affluent Houston person. And so I go riding on this bicycle and I go to a gym where I have a nice workout and then I leave the gym, it's high noon, riding down the street on the bicycle, and something happened, I don't know exactly what, but I felt a little crowded by the cars, the cars were driving next to me, I felt a little crowded, and the road was kind of bumpy, so I looked over to the, and I saw there was kind of a sidewalk nearby that looked really smooth, and it looked like the sidewalk was almost at the same level as the road, so I thought I could just drive up on the sidewalk, but then suddenly I lost control of the bicycle and in an instant I had this incredibly strong meeting.

[11:08]

The sidewalk and me had this very, very powerful meeting, and the meeting was concentrated right on my hip. And I also didn't have hip pads on. When I used to play football, I used to have these strong confrontations with the earth too, but it was usually grass, we didn't play football on cement, but even then we had these really nice hip pads and shoulder pads, so if you did go flying through the air under your hip, you know, under the grass, you wouldn't break your hip or your leg. But anyway, I hit the ground very, very hard and I immediately thought, hmm, I think this may have broken my leg, it was so powerful.

[12:12]

I was kind of hoping that it didn't, but maybe dislocated, but it was so powerful. It didn't hurt too much actually when it hit, but it was really hard. And it was like I hit, boom, and by the end, the upper part of my body was on very nice grass. So it was almost 100% on that one point. And then like that, somebody said, there was a car next to me and said, are you alright? And I said, I don't think so, but I'm not sure, don't go away. Very nice black ladies. So they stopped and then many other people came and so, you know, I was trying to meet

[13:23]

this situation with complete relaxation. But it was very challenging, you know, each moment was bringing me new things to like meet and take care of, but relax with. One young man who was very helpful, very helpful, he drove behind the first car and he made a U-turn and came around and he told me later, he said, it was like a magnet, people came from all directions to that spot, doing what they could do, you know, bringing water, bringing an umbrella. And also the ambulance got there very fast because this one young man had a cell phone. Can you hear me in the back, am I talking too quietly? Okay? Yeah, and then the hard part came of moving. Very hard to get moved when you have a broken leg, but they had to do it, so they did it.

[14:33]

And also I did the bicycle, I didn't want the bicycle just to be lying on the street, so I was trying to find somebody to take care of the bicycle, and I asked the ambulance people if they could go by the house where I was staying, so I could drop the bicycle off, and they said, sorry sir, we can't do that, we'll get in trouble if we go by the house, but this very nice young black man said, I'll take the bicycle for you. So I had to relax and trust this young man to take that bicycle, and he did, and he was very kind. So then they moved me onto this board, and they said, this is going to hurt, sir, this is going to be uncomfortable, and I think they said, but that's just the way it's going to be. So I was holding my leg, but you know, when you've got a broken leg and you're holding

[15:39]

it, you've got to hold it, but you can't be too tense, you've got to be able to adjust because you're going to get moved, so I was trying to relax and at the same time take care of this broken leg. And then also part of relaxing is to really make a loud sound sometimes. And this is not a complaining sound, this is just an expression, it helps, it helped a lot to make the sounds, to make these sounds. Also then they knew, they knew that, you know, I was having some difficulties, so anyway, all together, one, two, three, we made these movements, these various movements to get in this ambulance, and also Houston, Houston is very wet and it's on very, you know, it's very low, almost at the sea level, so it has lots of potholes. The ambulance drivers in Houston call Houston the pothole capital. So a very bumpy ride, and every bump, this broken leg was moving all over the place,

[16:48]

so it was a very difficult experience at the beginning, but fortunately I got to the hospital and I was trying to practice, I was trying to practice, trying to practice, trying to practice, you know, letting go, letting go of my ideas of what my life was going to be. At first I was doing, excuse me, but my mind did think, let's see now, I have a talk schedule for tonight, I wonder if I'll be able to make that one, well, maybe not, and then the next night there was going to be a Bodhisattva Initiation Ceremony, I thought, well, maybe I'll be able to make that, who knows, maybe, if I didn't know it was broken, maybe dislocated, maybe they could put it back in and I could go to the Bodhisattva Initiation Ceremony. But I was trying, you know, to relax with the situation, so I kept making that effort, and

[17:57]

I think I really feel like it was a good practice to try to do under those circumstances, it was like really the best practice to try to do, for me at that time it was good. And then I went to the hospital and fortunately the ambulance driver called the emergency room of the nearest hospital and they were saturated so they didn't take me there, so otherwise I would have been waiting in the hallway for a long time. So they took me to a far, one was farther away and I got into a room right away, and it was a little bit difficult because I didn't know how to get in touch with anybody in Houston because I had memorized telephone numbers and stuff, so then I finally thought, oh, I should tell them to call Green Gulch, and then Green Gulch, Green Gulch people can tell them who I'm staying

[18:58]

with in Texas. So finally that got worked out, so then people started to find out where I was, and things are moving forward. And then they took me in to get x-rayed, and that was difficult because they didn't want to give me any pain medication until after they x-rayed me, for whatever reason. So that was kind of difficult, but the x-rayed people were really, you know, kind. They said, could we straighten this leg out? And I said, you know, I just, it's going to be, I don't know, I think that's like beyond my practice. So they managed to take pictures from all these strange angles because I was holding my bent leg, I was holding it up on my chest, you know, and I looked up there and I saw

[19:58]

that it was, you know, that the one leg was about three inches shorter than the other one, that one thigh was three inches shorter than the other one. So, you know, I knew things had changed, but I just somehow couldn't picture them like straightening that thigh out. The slightest motion was like really something, so they took the pictures without moving it much, and they could see, and the doctor came in and said, I'm sorry, but it's broken, and it needs to be operated on. So they did operate about 24 hours later, and that wasn't too bad, to wait that time. They gave me some painkillers, and that was some pain medication, so it wasn't so painful. And I had the operation, and they took a piece

[21:03]

of the bicycle and put it down the center of my thigh. Anyway, they took titanium and put it down the center of my femur, and then put screws in so that the actual leg is back together now and fairly stable, but the bone will take quite a while to become solid around the break and so on. But I can actually stand up now on both feet, so this one leg can carry half the weight now without too much pain. So I gradually now try to eventually be able to put full weight on the healing leg. That will take a while, I don't know how long. So I'll probably be able to walk just fine, and I don't know if I will be able to sit

[22:08]

cross-legged or not, we'll see. But you know, I had 34 years of cross-legged sitting, and that was nice. So if I can't sit cross-legged, I'll practice sitting in a chair or walking, and standing, and reclining. But maybe I'll be able to cross my legs again and sit in Zendo, that way. But it's, you know, it's again, it's a great opportunity to relax with what comes, you know, to relax with what our life becomes, what our life changes into. I'm a little bit kind of apologetic to this leg, which has been such a good friend for 58 years. Nice thigh, doing a good job, still doing a good job. Sorry that I took you for

[23:13]

that bicycle ride and that you got broken, but you know, I hope you're okay now. The muscles are working, so it's pretty good. And I kind of think, you know, part of our practice together is to, you know, sit together, and walk together, and, you know, I think that, and when we sit together, we are given physical challenges, so you can see, oh, that person's sitting there, and we don't know exactly how much difficulty people are having sitting, but we know that, you know, that probably they, we can see, whatever difficulty they're having, we can see them handling it. And whatever difficulty we're having, the way

[24:19]

we respond to our physical difficulty in our sitting meditation, everybody can see us, or, you know, feel us, so we share the way we deal with our bodily challenges. Inwardly, sometimes we have challenges, and we have to talk usually to see how we're handling that. So now I have this external challenge, so I can share with you how I conduct myself with this leg, and these various adaptations, which is basically the same practice, just sharing how to relate, how to respond to having a body, and a mind. So I feel really fine about the situation, and I pretty much let go of my past life. And, when I was in the hospital, you know, my mind did have a tendency to go back to

[25:22]

that moment, that crucial moment, when, if I had just driven straight, instead of turning the wheel a little bit, or if I had just stopped the bike and got off and put it up on the sidewalk, it went back to that moment, that crucial moment, that made this big change. But I felt, you know, I felt it wasn't a good thing to use my mind for. Now, I think it might be possible to go back to something like that and deal with it creatively, but there was some tendency to deal with it in terms of, like, some other way it could have gone other than the leg being broken. I wasn't going back to many other ways that the leg could have gotten broken. I didn't go back and say, well, if I had only turned this way I could have got hit by a car. But I found that there was a kind of clinging there, a little clinging to, like, you know, being a person without a broken leg, being a person

[26:27]

who could do those retreats that I'd planned on doing. A little bit of clinging was bringing me back there. And then I found that if I just let go, my mind didn't keep going back there. And I came up to this situation called the present, which was, you know, just being there in the hospital and so on. But the more I, like, stopped going back to that moment and that, and the more I started to come to the present, the more life I felt, until I felt that this present moment was actually as good as any present moment I've ever had. It's just as alive as any of them, actually. And the thing that made it more and more alive was the, you know, more and more willing to give up the person I used to be, to give up whatever that person was, which is basically very healthy and somebody who's able to get around really easily physically. But not to let go of that, not to say that person isn't going to come back, but to let go of that person, just keep giving it up, giving

[27:33]

it up. And the more I gave it up, the fresher, the more alive, the more grateful I felt, and the more willing I was to deal with these little challenges. So, I'm willing to keep living with this body, it's not so bad, and I'm really happy. I can't drive a car now for quite a while. I can ride in a car, but I can't drive a car because I can't lift my foot up fast and press down on a brake. But I was scheduled to do a retreat in Sacramento next weekend, so I think maybe I can do it.

[28:40]

I asked them to change the venue to a place that doesn't have stairs, so I'm going to try to do that. Stairs are pretty hard still. And this Zen Dojo is wheelchair accessible, it's really nice. There's a nice little ramp there, it's really fun to ride on. Before September 11th, I was already interested in studying Islamic culture, particularly because I've been studying Islamic culture in relationship to the way women live in that part of the world. And someone gave me an article which I highly recommend, I think it's really good, and if you want to you can get it from my assistant Bert, I guess on

[29:43]

the internet or something. And it's written by a man named Bernard Lewis. And he starts out the article by quoting one of Thomas Jefferson's letters, where he remarked that in matters of religion, quotes, the maxim, the maxim, the maxim, of, [...] of civil government, unquote, should be reversed. And we should rather say, quotes, in the realm of religion, we should rather say, divided we stand, united we fall. So in government, united we stand, divided we fall, but in religion, united we stand, and divided we fall. No. Divided we stand, united we fall. So this is one of the expressions of this country

[30:50]

of so-called religious freedom. I think one of the key points of this article after some discussion is to say that the author feels that what we're experiencing, and he wrote this article around ten years ago, what we're experiencing is a clash, a clash of great civilizations. And the author of this

[32:01]

article feels that Islam is one of the great religions in the sense that it has provided great solace and encouragement to not just the upper classes, but to great masses of ordinary people. That Islamic teachings, in some cases, have made it possible for masses of peasants and impoverished people, people who have difficult lives, it's been a teaching which has made it possible for them to express. I'll just read it. There is something in the religious cultures of Islam which inspired, even in the humblest

[33:11]

peasant and peddler, a dignity and courtesy towards others never exceeded and rarely equaled by other civilizations. And maybe someone could say that about Buddhism, too. Something in the teaching that gives dignity and courtesy to others never exceeded and towards others is what Islam has made possible for millions and millions of people for centuries. I remember quite a few years ago, a man came to Zen Center and gave a talk, and he had

[34:22]

just recently come back from, I believe, spending time in Jerusalem, and he went jogging one morning. He's a big, tall, American, Anglo-Saxon kind of guy, Irish, I think. He went jogging down those twisty old streets of Jerusalem, and he came around a corner one morning, and came upon a few Palestinian, or anyway Arab, hod carriers, you know, that carry the mortar for the masons. So they had their mortar in their shoulder packs, came around the corner and met one of them, and as he ran by one of them, the guy reached out to him in his sweaty running, and dropped some razors in his hands, and said, bless you. That fast

[35:27]

to a stranger. So this is also Islam. Islam is an immense event. You know, since Islam arose in the 7th century, 1400 years ago, is it? No, 1600 years, no, 1400 years ago, Islam arose in the Near East. And for a thousand of those 1400 years, Islam was, I think, from the perspective of Western scholarship anyway, Islam was the greater, or the greatest civilization in the, you know, besides China maybe. And looking East, it saw nothing to rival it. You know, towards India, there was no great tradition to rival it. It couldn't see China

[36:35]

and Japan at that time. Looking to the West, however, it did see a rival, and the rival was what's called Christendom, and Christendom is virtually identical for most of the time with Europe. Europe was the only thing in the world that Islam couldn't completely overcome. It made inroads, they conquered all the way into Southern France and over to Vienna, but Christendom managed to withhold its cultural integrity in the face of this dominant culture. So for most of the history of Islam, Islam has a perspective of being the dominant, superior culture of the world. That's been their perspective, and well justified in a lot of ways. I mean, it's historically a fact. And not only that, but Islam has been beneficial, I think, to

[37:37]

other parts of the world in great ways. They're very beneficial to the West in all kinds of science and all kinds of good teachings. But then starting around, what is it, 400 years ago, the West rose, Christendom rose, and gradually has come to dominate the world and to dominate the Middle East. And there's been various back and forths, but lately there's been a strong feeling of being overrun, overwhelmed, and dominated by what they've had a thousand years of conditioning to think of as an inferior culture. So they're having big adjustment problems. This is a very difficult situation for them. Some of them are responding in very

[38:37]

good ways. They're having a hard time, but they're responding still with dignity and respect for others. But there's something about the culture that also somehow, even some of the leaders of them, in response to this humiliation by this other religion, they somehow can underwrite extreme hatred, assassinations, kidnaps, and slaughter of these people. The fundamentalists within the huge body of a billion Muslims, the fundamentalist movement is a part of it. It's not the whole thing. And the fundamentalists and the rest of Islam have to work this out. It's not really for us to work it out. They have to figure out

[39:39]

how they're going to deal with this very powerful rival religion. Christianity is growing rapidly too around the world. So, and part of the way they're dealing with it is, you know, not helping, irrational, crazy. But the whole culture is struggling with dealing with the West. And how can we not go into counter-reaction? How can we not be provoked into an irrational response? And one of the irrational, I don't know if it's irrational, but one of the responses would be, united we stand. In other words, let's eliminate these different religions,

[40:43]

rather than allowing religious freedom on this planet beyond our borders. And studying, studying, studying, and learning, and learning, and understanding better and better, and appreciating more and more, which includes appreciating how it could be that people would feel so humiliated, and so frightened, and so endangered, that they would reject, reject and then hate another culture. For me, on my little scale, you know, it's just like, you know, I feel like there's not much I can do. I kind of have to just be operating on the small scale of learning how to walk

[41:49]

again. But I do feel like the attitude with which I move my legs, and the mindfulness with which I apply to every little motion, of trying to learn how to move without rushing, to keep active but not too active, how to deal with the pain in a mindful way, all this, this is my work now. At the same time, I wish to continue to study the situation and be open to this situation and try to help until I have more mobility. So I'm just going to read a little bit. At the end of this article, he says, Mr. Lewis

[43:01]

says, the movement nowadays called fundamentalism is not the only Islamic tradition. There are others, more tolerant, more open, that help to inspire the greatest achievements of Islamic civilization in the past. And we may hope that these other traditions will in time prevail. But before this issue is decided, there will be a hard struggle. This is written ten years ago. I don't know if he knows this, but he says, and I knew it when he wrote this, how hard the struggle would be. But before these issues

[44:03]

between fundamentalism, Islamic fundamentalism and the other aspects of Islam are resolved, there will be a hard struggle in which we in the West can do little or nothing. Of course, we can do a lot to make it worse. But this is their family. They have to work it out. This is a great tradition that's got an adjustment problem to this powerful factor in the world called United States and what is it, G8. Even the attempt to do something about this might do harm. For these are issues that Muslims must decide among themselves. And in the meantime, we must take great care on all sides to avoid the danger of a new era

[45:12]

of religious wars arising from the exacerbation of differences between different religions and the revival of ancient prejudices. To this end, we must strive to achieve better appreciation of other religions and other political cultures through the study of their history, their literature and their achievements. At this time, we may hope that they will try to achieve a better understanding of ours, that they will understand and respect even if they do not choose to adopt for themselves our Western perception of the proper relationship

[46:15]

between religion and politics, namely that they're not the same. To describe this perception, I shall end as I began with a quotation from an American president. This time, not to justly celebrate Thomas Jefferson, but to the somewhat unjustly neglected John Tyler. He's one of the speeches in San Francisco named Tyler. Well, this is Tyler. John Tyler, one of the presidents, who in a letter dated July 10th, 1843, gave

[47:19]

eloquent and indeed prophetic expression to the principles of religion and of politics and religious freedom. Islam is the most important religion in the has rejected a lot of Western things, but one of the things which they haven't really rejected, one of the things that's kind of like got in there and they haven't gotten rid of it yet, is the idea of freedom. It's a kind of Western thing. The United States have adventured upon a great and noble experiment

[48:29]

which is believed to have been hazarded in the absence of all previous precedent. Did you get that? We tried something without having the background of precedent. That's always dangerous. That of total separation of church and state. That this government would actually let the religions stand on their own without interfering. They don't even tax them. They'd like to. Sometimes they'd like to, but the other side of it is they know that they respect this principle. So you can have a place like this, you don't have to pay taxes just to have the place.

[49:35]

If you have a restaurant and make a lot of money, you have to pay taxes, but if you just live in a place, they don't make you pay a property tax. And if you get donations to support your institution, they don't tax you. Matter of fact, they even get the people who give you money a tax break. This is like separation in the money, in the land. No religious establishment by law exists among us. The conscience is left free from all restraint, and each is permitted to worship her maker after his own judgment. The offices of government are open alike to all. No tithes are levied to support established hierarchy, the hierarchy of priests.

[50:52]

Nor is the fallible judgment of man set up as the sure and fallible creed of faith. The Mohammedan, if he will come among us, would have the privilege guaranteed to him by the constitution to worship according to the Koran. And the East Indian might erect a shrine to Brahma if it so pleased her. Such is the spirit of toleration inculcated in our political institutions. The Hebrew, persecuted and downtrodden in other regions, takes up his abode among us with none to make him afraid.

[51:55]

And the aegis of the government is over him to defend and protect him. Such is the great experiment which we have tried, and such are the happy fruits which have resulted from it. Our system of free government would be imperfect without it. The body may be oppressed and broken and manacled with titanium, and yet survive. But if the mind of humans be fettered, the energy and faculties perish. And what remains is of the earth, earthly.

[53:04]

Mind should be freed, mind should be free as light or as air. President John Tyler. Thank you very much.

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