I vow to tell you the truth, I vow to tell you those words. Good morning. Good morning on Julian Morgan's celebration day. Did you know we were having a Julian Morgan celebration? Yes. No. No? Yes. Yes? Today is Julian Morgan's, I think, Julian Morgan was the woman who built, designed and built this building. She was a, not an industrial engineer, a structural engineer in the 19th century. She was a structural, she was a woman structural engineer at the end of the 19th century. Unheard of. Right? And, on top of that, she was an architect. Also unheard of. Definitely unheard of. Of course, she didn't marry, nor did she have children. She didn't want to. She wanted to work.

[01:00]

And she did. And she created a really wonderful building. She was the architect, designer and on-the-site builder of San Simeon castles. Did you know that? No? Yeah? Yeah. And she also made that place by, cinema, by the sea, right? Big complex. And she made the women's, in Berkeley, the women's club, women's society building, the Berkeley Women's City Club. Yes. Thank you. It's a great building. Have you ever been in there? We took a tour of it. Vicky, our director, is also an architect. And she took us, about a few months ago, she took us to Berkeley to look at some of Julian Morgan. Julian Morgan has lots of buildings in Berkeley. So we went to that one. And it's a fabulous building inside. Anyway, this has nothing to do with my talk. As a matter of fact, if I don't start talking, I will never finish.

[02:02]

But I do want to say, I'm supposed to make an announcement, two announcements. Lunch today will be at 11.30. So questions and discussion will be here, right after the talk. And also, because I'm the one that makes the announcement about the Saturday Sangha, at least for a while, that's what I'm calling it, for lack of a better name. On January the 31st, those of you for whom Saturday is your main Sangha event, and who have a practice at home, a sitting practice, and want to deepen that by doing what we do, which is working together and then figuring it out from there, right? Do you know what I mean? They say in the monastery, everybody is like a little stone. And the monastery is like, probably it used to be like a rushing river or the creek, the Tassajara Creek.

[03:05]

But the way I heard it was, it was like a washing machine. All the stones were in a washing machine. Anyway, they bump up against each other. They become smooth, and the sharp edges of our egoic sort of self gets worn, slowly worn away. So we wanted to offer that delightful experience. To anyone who is interested, by turning over Saturday to those people who might want that. So we're having a meeting on January the 31st at 1230 here to discuss what that might be like. So. Okay. Julia Morgan, the woman whose aesthetic and courage we celebrate to this day, this day, had no idea the building that she so passionately designed and built

[04:09]

for a single Jewish woman, I think in the 1920s, 1923, I think it was first inhabited. Do you say inhabited? Is that a little rude? We are animals, really. Anyway, in 1920, what was I saying? Oh, she would have no idea that today we're talking about it, I'm going to talk about it in terms of Zen. She wouldn't have imagined that, I'm sure. But as we look closely at the building, at the attention to detail, and I hope that you do look at the building, at the way she handles space, and the way one's mind can find a wonderful silence sitting out in the courtyard. If you sit on that side of the courtyard and you look towards this way, there's a wonderful relief of a woman right set against the brick. It's really nice, and you can sit there, and there's a nice kind of peaceful quality about it.

[05:11]

We might be able to imagine her sitting at her table, empty of self-concern, patient, concentrated, open, present, creating from her empty mind the design for this building. So this day, it seems to me, full of aesthetic appreciation, I thought was a good day to begin a discussion about what I could call the mind of creativity, maybe, and Zen Buddhism. This is a subject quite dear to myself, close to my heart. Like, for example, right behind you is a magnificent display of orchid flowers. And I think behind me also, is there not? So today is a day to just sort of allow ourselves to appreciate loveliness, and I might suggest to appreciate as art also things that are not so lovely.

[06:14]

Because with an empty mind, a mind that sees things without holding to discrimination, a mind of non-discrimination, everything can be art. And art can be our daily life. A year ago, I think, a year ago, anyway, Darlene Cohen, one of the practice leaders here, asked me to come to Tassajara to do the music day of what was called the Women in Buddhism at Tassajara. Somebody did a day of tea, and somebody did a day of massage. That was a nice day. And somebody did a day of body stuff, and I did a day of music. And I really liked it that she asked me because I've been doing Zen for a long time, and before that I was doing music, and I always wanted to sort of find a way to connect those two. And so it gave me an opportunity to go back to that and to think about it a little bit.

[07:17]

So I did. And I did some partial kind of something that made me feel pretty good, but not enough. And so I spent this year thinking about it some more because I'm going to do it again in the summer. And I think I'm a little bit closer, but maybe not completely. But I want to share with you what I've been thinking about. What do I mean, anyway, by the mind of creativity or the aesthetic mind? The mind I'm talking about is released from self-clinging long enough, at least for a moment, to experience a sense of being, just beingness. In the Buddhist tradition it's called bare awareness, when there's no separation between the medium and yourself. There's no watcher. There's just awareness being one with activity. So this is the mind in Buddhism

[08:22]

that is brought to our experience of everyday life. And I'm not talking about a particular state of mind. That's important to note. But a mind that's free of any state of mind. A flowing mind of awareness, free from self-referencing. And what Buddhism does, I suggest, is, and this is what we do, we take awareness and we take this mind of not self-referencing and we bring that mind into everyday life. And that becomes the, that is our intention. That intention, plus the vow to, I was going to say save all sentient beings, but I don't like that word, but to walk with all sentient beings towards freedom, and to help or whatever. Towards freedom is our way, is the Buddhist life. Those two sides. So that's how I want to connect,

[09:26]

that's what I want to talk about about art, that kind of mind and the difference between what art does with it and what Buddhism does with it. But the mind, that mind from that experience, that insight, if you have it like that, is not so different, I don't think. A long time ago when I was in school in Berkeley, when I was in school in Berkeley, I was taking a class in literature. It's a great class. We read Shakespeare and so on and so on and so forth. And I knew as we were reading things in that class that I was listening to the teaching. I didn't know it was Buddhist teaching, but I knew it was down there and I knew that it was important stuff and I knew that it could somehow influence your life. But when I was looking at the person who was teaching this class, the person was a mess, a total mess. I had no, excuse me for saying this, I had no respect for this person. He was just nasty.

[10:28]

But he was full of all of those words and he would say those words to us and let us, give us things to read that were transcendent stuff. I was going to read you from Shakespeare, but I have no time, so I won't. You want to hear Shakespeare? Well, I read this last time, so I thought I'd skip it, but all right. It's so good. It's from The Tempest, you know, it's the one I read last time. Our revels now are ended. These, our actors, as I foretold you, were all spirits and are melted into air, into thin air. And like the baseless fabric of this vision, the cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, the solemn temples, the great globe itself, yea, all which it inherits shall dissolve. And like this insubstantial pageant faded, leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life

[11:31]

is rounded with a sleep. I love it. Anyway, soon after that, I left thinking that college was going to give me answers, and soon after that I met Suzuki Roshi, who I felt actually embodied what he was talking about, and so I was interested in how, what he did. So I'd like to take a look, no wait, yea. So Buddhism, I sensed, would be able to show me how to forget my sense of being a small separate self. That was my pain. And not just in momentary conditioned experiences, this is a key, which I had already experienced anyway in music and dance, but to take that experience with some insight of myself and live it into one's daily life so you could live

[12:31]

with some sense of no self-referencing every day, all day long, which of course I don't do, but I sort of thought Suzuki Roshi was close, you know. So I was reading a book many years ago in, where did I see that book? Oh, Katagiri Roshi first told me about this book. It's called Beyond Boredom and Anxiety and it's about, and it's written by a man named, how do you say it? Sixenmehali. Sixenmehali, yea, I bet you could get that from this. His name is C-S-I-K-S-V-E-N, there's Zen in there, how do you like that? T-M-I-H-A-L-Y-I. How do you say it? Sixenmehali. Great. So this book, in this book he describes

[13:35]

an experience called flow, flow experience, which I want to also share with you. It has different aspects to it and he's divided it all up. See if you, see if it strikes a bell. And the reason why I say it strikes a bell is because we all have these experiences. This is not a usual experience. You have this experience if you're totally focused without self-referencing, no watcher, I'm telling you what it is without reading. No watcher, you know, where the, basically where the rules that we're doing you can understand, you have the basic things necessary for you to be able to do it, like you know the scales in music or you know the moves in judo or you know how to play basketball basically and then you kind of loop into this other thing. In music it'll be that you actually play music. You're not practicing a minimum or more, you're practicing as done. Right, you got that down and now you're playing the music part. You know, when you loop into

[14:35]

that kind of thing. And, so I told you already. So there's a merging of action and awareness where the, you don't have self-reflection and you don't have There's a centering of attention, no time. Right, because you're completely in the present. There's kind of a fusion with you and your environment. And like I said, the basic rules and the basic skills you have under your belt but the activity is just enough so that you're, you're not bored either. You need to totally be there and you know how to do it. Right? And, there's clear feedback of what's happening in your realm and there's also no goal. There's no goal. You're not doing it, you're not climbing the mountain actually to get to the top. You're climbing the mountain because the process

[15:36]

is so incredibly there that you just want to keep climbing and climbing and climbing because you want to be in that space, that kind of space. Now I really want to make, I'm walking on thin ice here. But anyway, I'll keep talking about it. This experience, this activity where the self kind of drops away includes everything. It's not some special kind of state of mind necessarily. Everything is included in it because in this state of mind you can use everything. Everything, it's non-discriminatory because everything that happens, you know, if you're playing basketball and somebody throws you a set of keys, you catch the set of keys, put it in your pocket and continue right on down the court. You're that present. You know? And the reason why we can be that present is because the self-reflective mechanism is not there. It's not, and when we're really present we don't need it.

[16:37]

Anyway, there's a difference between awareness and this self-reflecting watcher. If we ground in awareness and present, this watching thing it's just an idea that we have and we call it us but it isn't us. It's just an idea, a sense of a separate self but it's just a function of mind, this watcher, this observer. And what we do in Zen is when this watcher comes up and makes a story of our, we become an object and it makes a story of our lives. Like just before you came over here I was taking a bath and it's really amazing what we do, you know? It's so normal but it's so pathetic is the word that came up. I don't mean it that way. It's not pathetic, it's just tragic. It's not tragic, it's us, you know? It's just us. We do it. I'm taking a bath and in the bath I'm telling myself I'm taking a bath, you know? I'm taking a bath

[17:39]

and I think I'll turn on the water and maybe it's a little bit too cold and then I'm, you know, and I'm talking to myself during the whole thing and then I think, because I'm, you know, doing this talk so I thought to myself, you know, stop it. Would you just take a bath? You know? Right? And really, so here's the interesting part. The part that's telling yourself the story is the self and it comes up in lots of different ways. It struggles. Whenever you have to struggle that's the self. When your mind is caught somewhere and you have pain that's the self. When you make a judgment that's the self. And hold to it. That's the self. Whenever you see yourself creating an identity that's separate from actually just things going on what we're doing then is we forget it. And this is our intention. This is our vow. We live day to day in that vow.

[18:39]

And we live in Sangha to help us with it. Trusting that everyone else is also doing the same thing. And really it's I can't tell you from my heart how important that is to, if you want to. Everybody doesn't have to do this. You know? Really, it's a pain in the neck. And we don't remember it half the time anyway but that's our intention and there are all kinds of things around here to remind you. That's why it's helpful to live in a situation where other people are doing it. I've told you the main thing. That was a secret anyway so if I don't finish the rest of my talk it's not a total loss. So I was going to mention a quote from Dogen but I want to get to Cézanne because it's just so fabulous. The quote from Dogen you know. You know it's the thing about hear sounds. When you hear sounds fully engaging body and mind you understand them intimately. To study the self

[19:40]

to forget the self to forget the self is to be basically awakened by all things. That stuff. And then I was going to read something from a musician but I'll explain it real fast to you. You know when you play music you have this experience. Oh I won't. You have. I don't need to tell you that. Okay. When you play music what happens is is that I'm sure it happens in other things as well but music is how I've understood it. I play the flute. You're standing there playing the music and you're completely aware of the music you're playing. You're hearing what you're about to play. You're listening to what just passed because music is you'd say in time but actually when you play like that there is no time. It's all really totally present but there really isn't any present either really. You're just completely there. The music ahead of you is there. The music behind you is there. And you feel like you're not playing it at all.

[20:41]

Your body is playing it and you're just listening. You're just aware watching this thing happening. It's really a wonderful thing. And I think all of us have these kinds of experiences actually. So I was going to talk a little bit about Slazan which I will. I don't know why I'm rushing. My watch is five minutes fast. Now I remember see. My watch is always five minutes fast because it helps me not to be too late. I have a tendency to be late so it helps me not to be late. Now I'm thinking to myself I have five more minutes than I thought I would. Don't you get a kick out of yourself sometimes? It's good to appreciate

[21:42]

when you do get a kick out of yourself. You know? Because a lot of times when you don't get a kick out of yourself. So you should notice when you do get a kick out of yourself. Slazan was a record. I love Slazan. He's a friend of mine because he's another person who sort of takes me there. But again, look at what I'm saying is you don't get a kick We do have these insights but the point is not to be taken somewhere else. The point is to have that mind here. Or not that mind even. That's not said correctly. But to see through the creation that we make all the time. These little experiences just give us the insight that our small self is totally a fiction. But it's here that we have to live. And we can't live here with a mind that doesn't hold that doesn't self-reference all the time. Anyway, Slazan was a reckless

[22:45]

reckless? Reckless. Reckless. And he didn't he didn't get along so very well with people. he was but he was this genius of a painter so he would he lived he would walk in the hills and he would he was basically alone most of his life most of his adult life. And this is a quote from Slazan about the process his understanding of what he went through when he painted. Do people know his paintings? I brought two just in case. Okay. The process of realization takes place it's interesting the words he uses I'll tell you. The process of realization takes place all at once with a single effort I draw everything together into a single relationship at that moment the scene itself disperses vanishes what is it that lies behind the phenomena of nature

[23:45]

perhaps nothing perhaps everything I clasp them all together these phenomena right left here there everywhere I grasp these tones of color these subtle shades and put them together and they create lines they become objects without my even thinking about it my canvas has it all clasped within its hands mind you if I betray the slightest weakness above all if I think while I'm painting if I get in the way of this process then everything collapses and is lost the artist is a receiver a sensitive plate but to make the plate sensitive there have to be several different immersions study meditation joy sorrow

[24:45]

these are the preparations that are so necessary and this is a quote from a viewer of pictures of Cézanne Cézanne used color to unify a picture there is no motion from the objects or the atmosphere there is stillness everywhere light too seems timeless or neutral perspective is broken up so that there is an absence of tension in perspective depth there is Cézanne created forms and space with color objects appear to form themselves to grow out of the surface of the picture and to dissolve themselves in it again Cézanne looked deeper to find the still point the absolute he looked through the forms

[25:47]

to a deeper emptiness the ungraspable element that is the true nature manifest by form his paintings attain a vital contemplative peace and then emanate that peaceful serenity to the viewer and this is getting close to what I think art is really about which I'll just tell you I think that the amazing thing about an artist be it the medium of paint form or sound or words or dance movement you know whatever it is the great artists what they're able to do is take this mind of not self and then show it to people and then somehow

[26:47]

communicate it and enable the viewer to enter that space so that in music for example because that's why I understand better in order to be a really good listener what you need to do is focus your mind drop your chatter it's harder to be the listener than it is to be the musician in a way you have to really focus your mind drop the self chatter and give yourself over physically almost to the music and the music will take you Coltrane Mozart Beethoven Bach Schubert and rock and roll it does if you forget that's why if I may say that's why people should I say this you know sometimes

[27:49]

you do drugs and stuff like that and then you put music on and stuff in a sense it's kind of a laziness in a way because with the drugs they help you drop your self reflecting thing right so you're able to surrender to whatever the medium is more easily alcohol you know all that stuff but ultimately it's not really because it's so conditioned and it's destructive anyway right and we can do this without the drugs we don't need drugs to anyway so I don't want to lecture anybody no no no no so so here's Cezanne I'm sorry that this prints are not very good but anyway this I have in my kitchen and of course Cezanne

[28:51]

he was the we now understand although at his time they thought he was a complete idiot but he is the he's now considered the father of modern art right and this is what really great artists do they take the regular forms that we're used to and they re-create them in a different way poets use words in a different way right so they cut through our habitual way of seeing things yeah you see how the perspective is distorted and how he unifies the picture with the way the colors are how the picture seems you can't really the things are there but you can kind of they're not quite they're kind of ungraspable a little bit the other picture has better at that yeah all of the forms are there but there's somehow something else is happening and if you look at his

[29:51]

and you can look and [...] look at his pictures for a really long time because they're not quite there somehow to me he really he really gives us a sense of the the ungraspableness of form the emptiness of form this is I have this in my living room picture and I just sit and stare at it see everything is there and he unifies it with color so it's very interesting the way he uses color because he's got pinks and all kinds of things in the sky and in the mountain and down in the valley and greens

[30:52]

are all over the place because it unifies the picture anyway so and one last quote yes from Rilke and I could have I could have brought actually I have I have something from Rilke's mythology but I think that will take too long because Rilke himself also in words anyway he's a he's a great poet this is what he says about Cézanne okay speaking about the role balance plays in the art of Cézanne between the reality of nature and the reality of the image which when Cézanne achieved it he said was like a folding of hands his was

[31:53]

his was an infinitely responsive conscious which which so incorruptibly reduced a reality to its color content that that reality resumed a new existence in a beyond of color without any previous memories in this beyond where even notions of ugliness and beauty lose their meaning what exists is being revealed as existent or in other words artists regular artists would paint I love this here Cézanne paints here it is to be more explicit first artistic perception had to overcome itself to the point of realizing that even something horrible something that seems no more than disgusting is and shares

[32:54]

the truth of its being with everything else that exists but how of one piece is everything we encounter how related one thing is to the next how it gives birth to itself and grows up and is educated in its own nature and all we basically have to do is to be but simply earnestly the way the earth simply is and gives her consent to the seasons bright and dark and whole in space not asking to rest upon anything other than the net of influences and forces in which the stars feel secure isn't that great so so we have presence total presence undivided activity just being

[33:55]

or flow we have experiences of no self the artist the great artist is able to communicate that experience and at its best enable other people to have that sense of no self and the difference between great art I'm suggesting and Buddhism is that the intention of a Buddhist is to integrate that mind and again when I say that mind it's not a particular state of mind and the insights that come from such a mind which is the insight that our separate sense of self is a fiction the sense isn't a fiction that's not feeling but that we think it's true is a fiction that we think we're separate is a complete fiction and that we actually

[34:58]

lose that understanding in our daily life like I said how I said before that when we see ourselves creating a self like if we tend to be depressed or if we are if we've given up if we think we're a failure all of those thoughts are just creating who we are again and even though they have feelings that come along with it like pain you know physical pain those thoughts hurt us actually what we do is we go completely back to the activity we go to the body and go back to the present activity forgetting the self forgetting those thoughts that we were just telling ourselves that's our practice that's the practice that we do all the time

[35:59]

as much as possible again and again and again every time it comes up humiliation is really good for that kind of thing embarrassment apologizing being jealous you know anger is good to look at in that way everything everything everything excluding nothing is a place to see the Dharma so we've just begun a practice period here and we that's what we do during the practice period we get to focus or re-intend to practice like that re-intend to do that and and I'm suggesting today I guess that one way of doing that is to appreciate

[37:00]

in our daily life what could be said somehow is like art art there is art all around us whether it's the flowers behind me this lectern the blackness of this lectern the green of my bowing cloth the uniqueness of each individual face you know this person's glasses and that person's glasses different shape so as we walk around the building or if you're going to leave it's a lovely day maybe today you can when you look at something you know really really look really look and if you're listening really listen

[38:02]

and if you're walking really walk and notice when your small self rushes back in and then see if you could sort of forget it you know and we can all do that together because that's what we do as Buddhists so if you look at the building and there are tours at 1.30 today if you look at the building if you go outside or in the courtyard look up at the soffits there's designing up there and there's ceramics she did ceramics all over the place or look at how she does the arches and you know around and the symmetry of that wall it's really beautiful and enjoy your day

[39:05]

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