..续本文上一页andering along, asleep on our feet and when we can say we are in the Tao, when the gates of life are open.

　　And then I think some of the things we have previously valued can seem rather small. You know, when you”re a Zen teacher people give you odd things. And somebody for some reason gave me a gold coin a few years ago, some kind of English sovereign with St. George fighting the Dragon on it. And I looked at it and thought, how wonderful, I”ve never had a gold coin in my whole life and then I thought, what on earth will I do with it

　　 (Laughs) And you know someone will break into the house and steal it. Suddenly I had something else that I didn”t want to lose. And when I was planning this talk I just noticed that I don”t even know where it is and I don”t care if I”ve lost it. It”s hard to really care about a gold coin. It doesn”t hold us. It doesn”t hold the great Way. Or whatever your particular thing is, you know what it is that you”re greedy for or you hold onto.

　　And I think that”s why we come together in groups with other people who are just as strange as we are and don”t agree with us at all. And we make great sacrifices and do things like building this temple at Gorricks Run. What a marvellous thing. It is because when we have tasted the Great Way, the sacrifices are not so bad, you”re not so interested in the small way. When we have tasted the Great Way, it has an effect on us and it is almost as if we must be faithful to it or we become more unhappy. I think what”s true is that we have just become aware of our suffering in a way that we were not previously aware. I don”t know about you, but I have found out much more about my weaknesses and the things I do badly and am ashamed of the deeper I got into Zen. And that”s the kind of gift that the Way gives us. That we notice more and more the petty greeds and dishonesties of our lives and that they sharply hurt in a way I never noticed before. Or I thought, well that”s not too important. I”m good in other ways. Something like that, you know. But there is a way in which the Tao demands a kind of selflessness of us and when we are going against that, that universal process, then we suffer and suffer acutely.

　　So it is a very hard, tangible truth that we meet. And it is somehow greater than what we call our small self, that kind of eager level that makes plans and knows what is right and wrong and categorises right and wrong a great deal, which is not such a bad thing you know. But it nests within this vastly greater reality and we keep hearing the song of that greater reality. And then when we hear that song, whatever happens has joy. It is like water sparkling in sunlight, endlessly alive. We can say there is a mysterious essence of perfume, a light, not ordinarily visible in things. And it gives us the bright colours of the world. Everything we have lost is retumed. And it gives us compassion, so that I think when we begin to see that light, our lives begin to transform into service.

　　There is absolutely no doubt about it, when you can see the light, you are free really to do as you wish. The storehouse of treasures opens of itself, you may take them and use them any way you wish, said Dogen when he came home from China, very excited. And yet what we wish is in conformity with that greater light, that song at the edge of the mind. It is not what we would have thought when somebody said, well you can do what you want. It is not in the realm of getting away with things. It is more a kind of impassioned letting go, an impassioned release.

　　And when the light is not apparent to us and in some way it has gone dark, then it is very very dark, things are very very dark and we really know the meaning of the saying to be caught in the six worlds of birth and death, and endlessly we cy…

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