Kaizan Doug Jacobson began practicing Zen in Minneapolis in 1974 with Dainin Katagiri Roshi, and had Jukai in 1977. A householder, father, contractor, and civil engineer, Doug received priest ordination in 2010, and transmission in 2015, from Shoho Michael Newhall at Jikoji Zen Center. He currently serves Jikoji as one of its Guiding Teachers, and also assists prisoners with Buddhist practice. Doug also helps maintain and develop infrastructure at Jikoji, where he enjoys getting his hands dirty as a mode of Zen practice.

Full Transcript

Well, good morning, everyone. Really happy to be back here one more time. Let's go around and introduce ourselves. Doug. Michael. Bob. Bill. Logan. Thank you for having me again. I've had the privilege of being an interim teacher here for the last three years plus, and appreciate having that opportunity to visit this town that 45 years ago brought my family to a while. Three of our boys were born here, and the adventure continues.

Last time I was here, my talk was "I will disappoint you," and I spoke about how our ego will trip us up time after time. Today I'll continue with that topic again. I want to draw from Kodo Sawaki Roshi's book, "The Homeless Kodo." He was a teacher that helped Kobun early in his life when, I believe, he was a young teenager, and he started sitting sesshin with Kodo Sawaki. Kodo Sawaki has influenced many, many people.

Today I want to read from section 68, where a burglar breaks into an empty house. Kodo Sawaki once said here, a monk asked Master Longya, "How did the ancient master finally cease doing things and completely settle down?" Longya replied, "It's like a thief slipping into a vacant house."

Kodo Sawaki goes on to say, "A burglar breaks into an empty house. He can't steal anything. There's no need to escape. Nobody chases him. Understand it's nothing. Satori is like a burglar breaking into an empty house. Although he had difficulty getting in, there's nothing to steal. He doesn't need to run. Nobody's after him. The whole thing is a flop."

So his student Uchiyama Roshi goes on to say that Sawaki Roshi often spoke of a burglar breaking into an empty house. Someone who happened to hear this wrote that Sawaki Roshi had said, "When you do zazen, you shouldn't do it like a burglar breaking into an empty house because there's no gain in that." When I read this, said Uchiyama Roshi, he said, "I was amazed. It was an unbelievable understanding. If Sawaki Roshi were alive, I can't imagine how he would react."

This burglar breaking into an empty house is Sawaki Roshi's translation of Lungya saying, "It's like a crook slipping into a vacant house." This is the answer to the question, "How do we finally settle down?" Or "Where's the true refuge in our lives?" After all these efforts, the thief gets into a vacant house. There's nothing to steal, nobody to flee from. There's nothing but the self. That is only the self in the empty house. At this point, there's nothing to give or take. And there's no relation to others. We might feel such a life is not worth living. But Satori, the final place to settle down in one's life is to take this basic attitude that which lives out my life is nothing other than myself. Satori is simply settling down here and now where things are unsatisfactory.

And then Uchiyama's student, Okumura Roshi, who's still alive and in Bloomington, Indiana, he goes on to say in case 96 of the Book of Serenity, Sakesho Kisho said, "Cease doing. Stop the separation between subject and object. Be like one moment is 10,000 years. Be like cold ashes and dead trees. Be like a strip of white silk." To be like cold ashes and dead trees is to be without discrimination. To be like a strip of white silk is to be without defilement.

Okumura goes on to say that Longya said it's like a crook slipping into a vacant house. This saying shows Longya's understanding is very different from another head monk's. He understands ceasing as relinquishing the struggle for gain based on our desires and settling down here and now. Some see ceasing as equivalent to death. This is a common misunderstanding of the Buddhist teaching of emptiness. But as Sawaki Roshi and Uchiyama Roshi have said, our zazen is not a negation of life. It's simply stilling ourselves in the here and now without chasing satisfaction. According to Uchiyama Roshi, this is the attitude of living out our lives by ourselves without relying on others or other particular dogma.

There was a haiku poet, Masaoka Shiki, who wrote when he was suffering severely with spinal decay in his final days. He wrote an essay for a newspaper where he said, "Until now I have misunderstood Satori in zen. I mistakenly thought that Satori was to die with peace of mind in any condition. Satori is to live with peace of mind in any condition."

So does the burglar, the crook, the thief, then finally see there is finally nothing to gain? There's nothing to grab onto? Maybe it's helpful to see the burglar as our ego. Our ego is a thief out to steal for self-gain. A crook willing to deceive self and others to get what we want. A burglar bringing the tools we use, stealth, deception, blame of others in our way, narratives that imagine objects of great value in this house.

When we actually settle down into the deep calm that we can experience in our zazen, we fundamentally find that mind is calm. We find that calm. We can, as the burglar, see our lives' troubles as a desolate plane of loss or as a shipwreck of chaos. We can also see our life as a roller coaster where we can enjoy whichever instant we experience along the way. Meet it with openness, gratitude, and calm abiding.

The idea of a shipwreck is something that sometimes we get to experience as well as how can our lives come totally apart? There are examples of how to make this best use of the shipwreck, like Robinson Crusoe. Shipwrecked on an island thinking he would die and makes a paradise for himself out of the wreckage of his life.

The unpredictable nature of our existence is something we can fear or we can embrace. If we can tend it kindly, gently, softly, perhaps we can open to this calm, this deep calm that we all have, that we all can experience. It just takes time to open and that opening can happen like that fast in the now. Or we can struggle to find it, struggle to attain it, struggle to try to understand it and get lost many ways along the way. But fundamentally it is always here, right with us.

So I'd like to hear if I've touched you in any way of anything you'd like to share. Thank you.

[Audience member]: So if the burglar or the crook is part of us, and our crown is part of us, how do we meet each other?

I think the crook is looking, hunting for the gold, and stumbles upon the calm and finally realizes there's no crook. There's just the calm. So maybe it's just in the finding. In the being with that, that it's not a place of, it's not an extraordinary place, it's just a place of calm. And yet it's in our lives where we are, after something, create narratives about our existence. We lose our way. And it seems as though when the thief, the crook, the burglar finally enters this empty house that was so preciously sought that the narratives are gone. It's just, it's just this existence. And maybe then a flood of gratitude is experienced. A sense of awe about this existence as such a precious gift. And we just then go from there, that gently stepping into what's next and with openness so that whatever arises, we can, is available. Even what we don't like, is available.

I've held a notion, I guess it's a notion or narratives too, of that there are allies and non-allies. And yet fundamentally, every being is an ally. Everything is an ally. And Robinson Crusoe made use of his shipwreck. He probably saw his life as a disaster and from that he was able to take care of fundamental needs and step forward. So while on the ship before it wrecked, he had aspirations and dreams of where the ship was going to take him to lands of, distant lands of wonder with great riches that he would be able to bring back with a shipwreck. If he stuck with those narratives of like, dang, I should have, why this shipwreck, why did, why this happened to me? And instead he turned and saw the resources that were right there for him to make best use of his life.

So sometimes it's difficult what we encounter. But as the Haiku poet wrote in sensing that Satori was something other than what he was immediately experiencing even in the midst of his pain, he was able to appreciate life as it was for him.

There's another story I was reading. Martin Buber was writing about some of the six generations after the Baal Shem Tov, the founder of the sect in Judaism. And one of the rabbis was in immense pain much of his life. And his friends wondered why, why do you have a smile on your face? Here you're in agony, can't you complain a little? And his response was that the pain was cleansing. He embraced the pain as cleansing for his existence and was grateful for every moment of that cleansing.

In our Zen practice, it's sometimes quite difficult to sit and with this body, with our mind. And yet, perhaps staying with the difficulty with the pain really helps us to cleanse, cleanse ourselves.

[Audience member]: So, what I got out of this talk was what only one crook, only one thief? You could call it the ego, but the ego has many facets. So I was wondering if there was a whole group of thieves coming into this empty house. It reminds me of Rumi's poem, The Guest House. This being human as a guest house, every day a new arrival, the joy, a meanness, a sadness, all these things coming in the house, that's all part of ourselves. And we look around at each other and go, it's all empty. So let's party down. I don't know, what do you think of that?

I like that. Yeah, it's so maybe a gang of thieves. They work on their way to up the slopes to this house and how are we going to get in the window and all these different ways to go. So I wonder what happens to all of them. Are they all settled down? Do you think they're all settled down, the crooks within us?

[Audience member]: It's a process, especially when the doors open anyhow. They don't even have to break in. What? We didn't even have to do that? There was a welcome man.

Thanks, Bob.

[Audience member]: I'm curious about how you, in your practice, how you take responsibility for those choices. You know, we have agency. The burglar makes the choice over and over again. You can talk about all our ancient twisted karma, but the burglar makes the choice over and over. And I'm wondering how you, the burglar, knew who was the burglar and who, how you took responsibility for those choices. Because it's not a shipper. I mean, it is a shipper. Life is a shipper. But we're making the shipper. I'm wondering what you do in your practice to take responsibility to make a way to stop the harm.

There are many approaches. One of them I heard recently in a talk on the precepts was some of these archetypes that we live by, where if you tell a lie, there's Pinocchio with his growing nose. He's made out of wood. So I wonder if the deceptions and lies that we tell, if they could all be, draw the carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere to make wood, we could actually end global warming.

Another motif was George Washington and the cherry tree, which in hearing that, I realized that that archetype was important to me in my life, which is I will not tell a lie. And that's gotten me in trouble. But when you have an example like the first president of the United States on a story about a cherry tree, I embrace the responsibility that comes from not telling a lie that might actually have hurt somebody. But it's the hurt that we feel, what others feel, we need to be soft towards it. And sometimes it just, it's hard. There are so many other aspects that come into it that make it hard to see.

But the narrative about ourselves, the narrative about myself, of being here, as I was asked to be a guiding teacher here, and it's like I didn't want to do it, really. I was asked to do it, and I stepped into it, became a teacher, and I was asked to do it. Became what I had to meet. The time comes to an end when we transition from one thing to another, when we transition from being a child into an adult. The narratives we have as a child of what we like to do and how we like to be free suddenly transform into, dang, I've got a ton of responsibilities. So you embrace that. I try to do that the best I can. Is there anything you'd like to ask more?

[Audience member]: I wanted to make a comment. I was reading the reading list. I was reading a work, and I came across a line that's really stayed with me, and it seems to echo in everything I'm hearing today. So I was just greatly appreciate you to comment upon it. Someone had asked, what did the Buddha teach? What did he teach? And the reply was a positive response. It's not a positive response, an appropriate response. I would just greatly appreciate if you comment on that if you'd like an appropriate response.

How do we find an appropriate response? By making mistakes and finding our way. When we make a mistake, we can go, dang, I wish I hadn't done that. We make another mistake and oh my God, if we can see that a mistake is actually when we're stepping across the stream, another stone to step on to cross the stream, we see aha, then the next step may be a more appropriate response. Maybe a more appropriate response is made of what's there.

As a parent, as a young parent, I remember getting fiercely upset with a child misbehaving and striking my son. As I was about to hit him, I was sorry I already did it and didn't do it again ever. So that mistake may have traumatized my son. It traumatized me. It recognized that that possibility is in me. So I go forward with what's a more appropriate response. A lot of other mistakes are made like ignoring, yelling, like grabbing them and removing them from the room. Finally, it almost seems like the way the most appropriate response in those kinds of situations is like taking this child and redirecting their attention at something else and being with them completely. That's enough. Their distress can be refocused. That's where it's fun to take our kids to school and see an effective teacher actually do that. You get a glimpse of it. It's like, of course, that's how it's done.

An appropriate response is we have to go through countless mistakes, I think, to find all the appropriate responses that we need to in our life and also find that the inappropriate responses are also our friends. And the mistakes we make if we can own them, if we can examine them, if we can honor them and make use of them, then I think that's even an appropriate response. Does that touch enough on this?

[Audience member]: Thanks. I'm trying to remember Robinson Crusoe and the full story, but it's been a long time. But what came up for me is, from what I remember, he finds an islander, his friend, and calls him Friday and teaches him, I guess, English. Is that the story?

Yeah, that sounds right.

[Audience member]: Yeah. I hear the academic in me is like, oh, well, this is a colonial story. He goes on an island, makes his house out of this wreckage, and preaches this culture on the population. Also, he's the white guy in the story. That was coming up for me. Also, George Washington, I guess, a person of power, in terms of their positionality. It's hard to talk about Zen and positionality, like you were saying allies, non-allies, because then we draw distinctions. But I was thinking of this idea of building your house out of the wreckage. It's a metaphor that can apply to anyone, I guess. But it also reminds me of this idea of resilience. When cultures expect people to have resilience, it's actually something they talk about a lot in feminist studies. It's like we expect the precarious people to have resilience, so your life's a wreck. Pick yourself up, build a house. Why can't you? Maybe not everybody can or has the means to build a house from the wreckage, or has the power in our culture or our society.

Also, I'm thinking George Washington and Robin Soekrusal, they didn't have PMS. I get PMS once a month and I become a monster for a day or two. I don't know, do you have a story that's not about a white guy?

Thank you. I have a close friend who went through some struggles at work. Hierarchical struggles and racist struggle in the midst. Where my boss was a racist, misogynist. I guess when you're a racist, you're also misogynist, you're a homophobe. They all go together. This man who's non-white has led a remarkable life where it isn't because people have asked him to be resilient that he is. I think it's because of his culture that he's with, that there's a resilience within that, that remains invisible to white guys, white people. And yet it's a resilience that is rich with love and sharing, and rich music and dance culture, literature culture. And yet it is because it's non-white, it is not recognized as profound, and yet it is deeply profound.

I'll work on non-white guy shipwreck stories, because I'm still probably a certain mindset being a tall white guy. But in a moment where he asked my boss, hey, you think I'm a liar? I hear you think I'm a liar? And my boss turned to him with his finger pointing at his chest like this. You're a liar, you're incompetent, you're ignorant. Which was the motif that the right wing used on Obama. And my friend kept his hands in his pocket while this guy was doing this to him. I happened to take a picture of that moment, and it just surprised me that I was able to, because it was emotionally I was disturbed by this action this boss did to my friend.

But my friend kept his hands in his pocket, and two weeks later the boss was gone for other reasons. But it was brought out that he was engaged in this inappropriate action to a person working on the job. And my friend said he has a young man went to Howard University he learned taekwondo there. He entered into a meet there in Washington, D.C. at the time. There was a guy there with cowboy boots and a big cowboy hat who was competing, Chuck Norris. And he was in a taekwondo match with another student, another person. And he said there was a Korean, I think, judge during that match. And my friend won the match. And then the teacher of that student was Bruce Lee. And he said Bruce Lee came across the match, shoved the judge aside, and came at him, started kicking him. And my friend pulled an armadillo. He just curled up in a ball. He wasn't going to fight, but survived. Because that was the one student Bruce Lee had, and the student lost. Bruce Lee couldn't contain himself, apparently.

But my friend kept his hands in his pocket when this guy was calling him a liar, incompetent, ignorant. And yet he knew that in a second he could have his teeth in his hand. But he knew he'd also be in jail. So it's just kind of a... appropriate response. And I probably, if I were in that situation, I don't know taekwondo, and I don't know all those other martial arts, I probably would have had an inappropriate response. And so I'd have to go through many more steps across. You know, sometimes there are steps across the creek, the river, are pretty varied. But his life experience, I mean, I just see how could this guy not react, but his way of reacting was not to react, and he knew that was an option. So I... That's one story I can offer. Thanks for your important question.

I might probably have to say that I can offer you that. There's a lot of religious nuns, but even there's a woman in this room who's like this often a shipper. She feels on a monthly basis like, Oh my God, how about this house? And yet she's a son of a nun. And yet she's a shipper. And yet she's a shipper. And yet she's a son of a nun. And yet she's a shipper. And yet she's a shipper. And yet she's a shipper. Thank you. You're welcome.

An appropriate response and an example of another story occurred to me when you began talking about this. It was happened. I wasn't there for it was actually something happened to was brought to the attention of the world by David Letterman. He had the person on the show. And they told the story before. This construction worker, black construction worker was waiting for a subway and he's, he had his daughter with him, he's holding her hand. And there was another person on the platform. Who what's what's the disease where you suddenly can't control yourself. He had an epileptic bit collapsed on the platform there about 50 people on the platform too and no one did much for him and covering got up. The construction worker was watching this happen and the attack happened again. And he rolled into the subway tracks. And at the point the subway train was coming out of the tunnel.

So this construction worker that called his daughter's hand jumped into the tracks. Hold the guy straight between the rails and put himself on top of the guy was still struggling. And he said, calm down, calm down. And the guy was not very heavy. Small, but he kept the guy down. The train went over the two of them. And stop and took them 15 minutes to back train up. And everybody was yelling they thought that both of these people were dead under the train. And they were yelling and screaming healed from under the train and said, would you shut up and tell my daughter I'm OK down here.

So they brought him on David Letterman that night. And Letterman said, how did you do that? Appropriate response. So I said that was a wonderful thing. How did you come up? I didn't think anything. I just saw something and I did it. I don't feel like a hero at all. It was just what I appropriate at that moment. Doesn't come out of karma at that point or at least obvious karma. He just did it. And there were 50 other people on the platform who didn't do it. And all suddenly this guy just he said I had no reflection. It just wasn't the appropriate thing to do. So there's another approach to the appropriate point. But also almost as though his mind was empty and ready to respond. It didn't go through a fear reaction. And that's what he talked about. And you can still get it on. You can do this subway hero on YouTube. It'll be the late Dave Letterman interview with this guy.

So he left his daughter on the platform. Could have died at that point. An absolutely amazing story. It seemed to me that the question Letterman was asking, what drew you out to do this? It wasn't me. I wasn't doing anything spectacular. I was just doing it. I was responding. Beautiful story.

Joan Halifax talks about the story and standing on the edge in the altruism chapter. I was just reading it recently. And he talks about like right altruism without slipping into pathological sides of it. Anyway. And I think that was probably some practice he had too in working as a construction worker. Where the hazards are regular. And it's like knowing how mass works, how equipment moves, how tight spaces are. And I think that was all naturally there for him to embark on. It wasn't like he was writing literature and had that response. He probably understood matter and gravity and how they function together a little bit too. That brought that appropriate response. And then leaning to the word confined space. Yeah. Certainly, yeah. All of the dangers that one risks in New York City. This was in New York. When you're up on some skyscraper, you're used to that potential danger. And yet you learn to handle that danger. Thank you. Yeah, thank you.

I think we have time for one more question. I have one more. Okay. Yeah. So what I gather is that in a way narratives that we built in our lives or goals that we define. Please correct me if I summarize it incorrectly. They're kind of linked to maybe the egoic mind or like it's driven by ego. And the story with Robinson Crusoe, the shipwreck, and kind of redefining his narrative or purpose. I'm wondering if it is the narrative that we built around us that creates suffering or is it more the non acceptance of when the narrative potentially changes? Like, is it more about because in a way we need some sort of narrative or goal in our lives in whatever we do. I mean, also us just being here, it's some sort of narrative or goal that we have by being here. So I'm wondering if it's more about accepting the change of narrative, rather than not having a narrative.

The narrative is a story. Or let's say it called a goal. Or we do have our goals. There are stories that go along with our achieving our goals or people getting in the way of our goal or the obstructions that are in the way giving up our... When we are in this moment totally with what's arising, we're drawn out of it when we begin thinking about, I've got places to go and things to do and people to see. I've got troubles that I need to ameliorate. So in this moment, we have enough air, our body has enough water, our hearts, our lungs are working, all of our organs are working, gravity is functioning. We can rest and relax that this moment is okay.

We're not going to be able to, in many moments in our day, if we can do that, we're liberated to meet it as it is. There are other times where I'm driving down the road and it's like, I've got this and this to do tomorrow, but I'm missing something. What is it? And then our minds search around and it's like, oh yeah, I remember now. We need to scan our life and look at it too. But when we get fixed on it, when we're meeting that narrative like that's... and then become despondent over it or become righteous about it, then we're not in the moment anymore and the narrative is taken over.

So I think that's another place where sometimes they're useful to have that story. It's useful to have our life goals. Sometimes the goal that we actually imagine we have is not the goal, the real goal that we're after. We're after satisfying our hunger or our thirst or our... and we get temporary reprieve one place or another and it's to recognize, ah, this moment is just fine. I can be just fine right here now. Next moment will take care of itself.

I was talking with one of my sons last night and he was saying that he can get all... a tweet about what's coming up next week and anxious about what's going to unfold next week. There are probably tens or hundreds of steps to take before that situation arises to take best care. But if you're in this moment with this anxiety, you're not in the moment and you're not taking care of what's happening next week when really next week's event or circumstance has a place and a time with certain people maybe involved and certain kinds of material, the present, that in a way will be there when that time and place arrives.

So perhaps our sense of relaxing into this moment, realizing that that time will come and it will... I'll meet it like I'm meeting this moment, that trusting that moment after moment we can trust being in this moment and it will take care of itself in a way, is along with a bunch of other things that are going on up here and out there, which is all in our head anyway. Maybe when we can relax and trust, then those stories, even the goals become immaterial momentarily. It might be that's where we're heading.

But there are people that are looking for a meaningful life and they try to find meaning with people or group. And it's important to... do we find meaning that way or do we turn our attention to what is positive? Ah, it's time to wash dishes. I'll wash the dishes, clean them, put them away. And that's taken care of. What's next? And it's step by step, taking best care of each grain of sand in our existence. That when we actually deeply trust that and pay attention to all these different parts, our whole life is taken care of. So it's... there's no exact answer, but there's just taking best care. Moment to moment. Gently.

Okay. So shall we end with the four Bodhisattva Vows on page 41? We'll do it three times. English, Japanese, and English.