Good.
Tonight,
I'd like to continue our mini-series on failure.
And I'd like to think with you a little bit about my,
Our,
Addiction to failure,
To succeeding and failing to winning and losing,
Getting good grades,
Getting bad grades.
But I'd like to begin with an event that was sad for my family.
Three weeks ago,
Our parent died.
He was 11 years old.
He was 8 inches tall.
He had brilliant green feathers and blue tail feathers and vivid beady little eyes and a very powerful beak and a very powerful presence.
And when we got him,
He was my improvement project.
He was my pet project,
Literally.
I was going to train a parrot.
We got him as a baby.
And he sat there just looking dazed in his cage,
Rather adorably.
But as he grew to his full 8 inch stature,
He got really loud.
And I googled him and found out that we were not told when we bought him that his was one of the loudest species of bird on the planet.
And there he was in our kitchen.
So I was going to train Joey.
I stood by his cage and tried to get him to be quiet.
Whenever he squawked.
And of course,
When I paid attention to him when he squawked,
He squawked all the more.
And we tried to teach him to talk.
We would stand at his cage and say our names.
These grown people standing around this bird cage saying their names and this bird absolutely mute,
Staring back.
But somehow,
Joey had taught himself to do a flawless imitation of our Cuisinart.
So that all we had to do was walk toward the cupboard where the Cuisinart was kept.
And you would swear that someone was julienning vegetables over where the bird cage was.
So Joey also taught himself to laugh.
We would be at the dinner table laughing about something and we'd hear this demonic cackle from the bird cage.
And then we would laugh more and then the cackle would happen more and then we would laugh more.
And it got to a riotous time,
This pad.
All the while never uttering a word that we wanted him to utter.
And I tried to calm him and make him more tranquil.
And I did that by,
I found that I could hold him in the palm of my hand and he would lie upside down while I stroked his head and he would close his eyes.
And it seemed rather blissful and his little feet were up in the air.
And so I made the mistake of showing that to our neighbors.
I brought him out when they were over for dinner and we were sitting at the dinner table and I had him and I was stroking him and he seemed very tranquil.
So I gently turned him over and put him down on the table and he opened his eyes,
Opened his beak,
Screeched bloody murder,
Ran across the table and bit our neighbor.
My son,
Who sometimes sits with us at Hank,
Said,
Well it's clear he's not a Buddhist.
I realized that I approached the training of my mind the way I approached training Joey.
That I kept trying to get it to be tranquil and the more I tried,
The more noisy it got.
I tried to get it to have certain thoughts and certain feelings and it wouldn't have any of that.
It would have other things.
I tried to get it to be more peaceful and it would jump up and bite me when I least expected it.
Joey was a big presence in our home and he was supposed to live for 20 more years.
And three weeks ago,
I walked into the kitchen and instead of swinging upside down from his bars and tearing apart his toys,
He was standing at the bottom of his cage,
Breathing hard.
So I took him out and I lay him on his back and I stroked his head and he closed his eyes,
But his breathing was more and more labored and then finally it stopped.
And I sat there in disbelief and got increasingly sad.
But one phrase kept coming to mind.
Birds and trees and stars and we ourselves come forth in perfect harmony.
And of course,
We had come forth in perfect harmony.
Not the harmony I wanted or thought I wanted.
It wasn't the Joey I wanted,
It was the Joey who was.
And we all arose together to moments of joy and frustration and shock and hilarity and sometimes a little bit of bloodshed.
I had expected that we would be taking him with us to a nursing home and complaining about him bitterly 20 years from now.
And suddenly this little lifeless,
Beautiful being was gone.
Joey never worried about whether he was a success or failure as far as I could tell.
He never gave himself grades.
He just showed up.
He didn't show up the way I expected him to or anybody else.
He just showed up.
He lived in that place where there is no good or bad.
No failure,
No success.
It's just what is.
He lived in that place that we all know is available to us right here,
Right now,
In every single moment.
So why the self-improvement projects?
Why the training programs?
I want to do koan better.
I want to do more zazen.
I want to get good dharma talks.
Or how about those secret,
Secret agendas that Barry Magid sometimes talks about as our secret practices?
I want to finally feel loved.
I want my body not to play tricks on me.
I want to be less afraid of dying.
We go to these agendas over and over again,
Even though they cause us all the pain that we've been describing at this sisheen.
Is it because we love the agendas so much?
Well,
I would wager that there's something else,
That we're addicted to those projects,
Those report cards.
Because to put them down is to be in a very strange place.
To be in a place of not doing,
Radical not doing.
Sitting with no agenda.
And I notice what that's like for me.
When all the busyness subsides,
All the errands,
All the shoulds,
And I'm just sitting,
Just receiving,
And there's just phenomena arising,
Coming and going,
Coming and going,
And there is nothing to hold onto.
No trace.
And then I notice myself getting a little bit scared,
And then I think,
Ooh,
I better check my jisha list and make sure I brought in the right people.
I better make sure my mat isn't sticking out too far in front of the others.
I reach for something to do besides just sitting and receiving.
And I wonder if all of us do that.
Because as much as we don't like telling ourselves we're the worst Zen student,
It's a nice familiar place.
It's like comfort food that gives us indigestion,
But it's so familiar.
And we have been bathed in a sea of right and wrong and good and bad since before we had words.
So it is the most familiar place to be.
This other place,
This place where there is nothing to fix,
There's no one to train,
Least of all ourselves.
That's the scary place.
But that's the wondrous place.
So if there's encouragement to be had in a talk about a dead parent,
It's to find those moments when your projects just aren't at center stage.
You can just set them aside a bit,
But you can be in that place of absolute non-doing,
Of receiving,
Of what in Dogen's terms is waiting for the 10,
000 things of the universe to come to you.
Not seeking anything out,
Not seeking anything to do.
Look at that place.
Look at what you do there.
Give yourself more and more space to be there.
Because that's where the truth shines through,
The truth that never ever fails us.
The truth that birds and trees and stars,
And we ourselves just exactly the way we are,
Come forth in perfect harmony.
