I know that preparing Dharma talks doesn't necessarily make them any better, I know that. And all my forethought and even writing talks down doesn't really make any improvement. But the reason that I do that is just for the fun of it, for myself, and also because I feel it's respectful, you know, not to just show up and speak off the cuff. To do that always struck me as disrespectful. However, I'm making myself a little crazy with preparing too many Dharma talks. So, excuse me, but I don't really have a Dharma talk prepared today. I'm just going to talk to you a little bit, just because, well, it's easier, you know, basically. It's going to get me through the week. Let's see, one thing is that it says on a poster in the other room, quoting Henry David Thoreau,

[01:03]

that you can't, something, this is a paraphrase, you can't, you can only see beauty with a calm mind. Which I think is true, and a wonderful saying. And so it's nice to practice at a place like this today, with so much beauty around. And when the mind becomes calm, you appreciate the beauty of it. There's another poster in there that says something like, Have you hugged your camp cabin counselor today? So, that was a thought-provoking saying, I thought. I asked myself, have I hugged my camp counselor today? I think we all should hug our camp counselors every day. Coming in here was a thrill, driving in this morning.

[02:11]

Did you notice all of the turkey vultures sunning themselves? And I guess they must have a lot of gnats and things like that. If they open up their wings, maybe they air it out, and it must be very comfortable for them. We saw that, we were going by a high pole, and we couldn't figure out what that was on the top of the pole. It looked like something really weird, and it was two turkey vultures sort of huddled together with their wings about three-quarters open. It was very, I don't know that I've ever seen that before. Then there was another place where there were many of them on a, one after another, on a post. What were you saying? They do it every morning. They used to do it in the fall morning. Oh yeah? They do it in the morning when they're coming out of bed. Oh yeah, they do it in the morning? Well, I can imagine. I'd want to do that. What? They're drying their wings. Drying? Ah, because in the morning their wings are a little wet. Well, that makes sense.

[03:13]

Then we saw a bluebird go by, fly across the road. We think it was a bluebird. So, and I've been in Gompas in Nepal, where the walls are covered with murals, very colorful murals all over of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas and Buddha realms. And, of course, as you know, in Zen the style is very spare, you know, nothing, no art at all in the room. In a Zendo, there isn't even really much of an altar or Buddha statue. In Zen Center we have big Buddhas because the Zendo's double as Buddha halls. But in a Zendo, there's nothing, no adornment at all, and maybe there's a little tiny Buddha somewhere. But today we have a Tibetan Dharma hall, and I'm really enjoying these murals.

[04:15]

They're really kind of wonderful because they are the depiction of the ecosystem of this place, of this area. And I think they're supposed to show you the entire wholeness of it. You know, the water running off and coming up and coming down, and animals feeding each other in a cycle of birth and death. You know, the sky overhead, the waters. And I really think that what we're trying to understand in our practice is that, you know, So in the Gompas, those murals depict the inner space, and these murals depict the outer space.

[05:17]

But I think that what we're trying to understand in our practice is the non-difference of the inner space and the outer space. That the world that we live in, the trees, the plants, the animals, the grasses, the waters, the buildings, the other human beings, that all of that is our own mind. And when we look inside of ourselves, our hopes, our fears, our thoughts, our aches, our pains, all of that is nothing but the world. And that we're not separated and isolated, but we're in a, you know, the whole world realizes itself through my body. And my body is taken care of when I take care of the whole world. So, I think that recognition, that realization, is what our practice is fundamentally about.

[06:24]

And that's how we come to feel at home in our world, and appreciative of our world. And that's the root of compassion, is the recognition of identity. So, that's why this is a perfect mural, you know, for us. This is the inside of our mind. Surface runoff, condensation, precipitation. That's our mind. And I remember, I had a wonderful experience many years ago. I used to, when I first started going to the Pacific Northwest, every time I went, I would go out and go on some trip, you know, to see, learn more about the area. Now, I don't do that so much anymore, but I used to do that. And I remember, I would look at a lot of art of the Northwest peoples. And then, one day, I remember, after looking at a lot of that art, seeing, I think it was geese.

[07:29]

A huge flock of Canadian geese were walking around in some park, public park. And I realized that, for the native people there, it was really true that the people that inhabited their dreams were the same people that were the geese people and the fish people and all that. Their images of the art of the Pacific Northwest peoples is very dreamlike. It's stylized, but it's based on salmon and eagle and so on. And I realized that the dream world and the inner world of those people and the outer world of the animals was one and the same. And I think it's, although we don't dream animals maybe so much, they're not as prominent in our psychology, it's really true that the planet, the outer world, is our inner world. And that's why when we live in such a way that we ruin other species and so forth,

[08:35]

we're losing part of, we're literally losing part of ourselves when that happens. So I was thinking about that today, how nice it is to be in this room. And this place is dedicated to environmental education and so on, as is the headlands where we usually meet. So it's a good thing. Anyway, what I want to do today is appreciate with you a poem. And I think what I'll do is I'll read the poem through, it's a little long, and then I'll talk about it, and then I'll read it through again, and that'll be my Dharma talk. Okay? This is the Eighth Duino Elegy by Rilke.

[09:41]

With all its eyes, the natural world looks out into the open. Only our eyes are turned backward and surround plant, animal, child-like traps as they emerge into their freedom. We know what is really out there only from the animal's gaze. For we take the very young child and force it around so that it sees objects, not the open, which is so deep in animal spaces, free from death. We only can see death. The free animal has its decline in back of it forever, and God in front.

[10:58]

And when it moves, it moves already in eternity like a fountain. Never, not for a single day, do we have before us that pure space into which flowers endlessly open. Always there is a world, and never nowhere without the know. That pure, unseparated element which one breathes without desire and endlessly knows. A child may wander there for hours through the timeless stillness, may get lost in it and be shaken back. Or someone dies and is it. For nearing death, one doesn't see death, but stares beyond, perhaps with an animal's vast gaze.

[12:10]

Lovers, if the beloved were not there blocking the view, are close to it and marvel. As if by some mistake it opens for them behind each other. But neither can move past the other, and it changes back to world. Forever turned toward objects, we see in them the mere reflection of the realm of freedom which we have dimmed. Or when some animal mutely, serenely looks us through and through, that is what fate means to be opposite. To be opposite and nothing else forever. If the animal moving toward us so securely in a different direction had our kind of consciousness, it would wrench us around and drag us along its path.

[13:24]

But it feels its life as boundless, unfathomable and without regard to its own condition, pure like its outward gaze. And where we see the future, it sees all time and itself within all time, forever healed. Yet in the alert, warm animal there lies the pain and burden of an enormous sadness. For it too feels the presence of what often overwhelms us, a memory, as if the element we keep pressing toward was once more intimate, more true, and our communion infinitely tender. Here all is distance, there it was breath.

[14:29]

After that first poem, the second seemed ambiguous and drafty. O the bliss of the tiny creature which remains forever inside the womb that was its shelter. Joy of the gnat which, still within, leaps up even at its marriage, for everything is womb. And look at the half-assurance of the bird, which knows both inner and outer from its source as if it were the soul of an Etruscan, flown out of a dead man, received inside a space, but with his reclining image as the lid. And how bewildered is any womb-born creature that has to fly. As if terrified and fleeing from itself, it zigzags through the air the way a crack runs through a teacup, so the bat quivers across the porcelain of evening.

[15:43]

And we, spectators, always, everywhere, turn toward the world of objects, never outward. It fills us. We arrange it. It breaks down. We rearrange it, then break down ourselves. Who has twisted us around like this, so that no matter what we do, we are in the posture of someone going away? Just as, upon the farthest hill, which shows him his whole valley one last time, he turns, stops, lingers. So we live here, forever taking leave.

[16:46]

It's a beautiful poem, isn't it? Quite a wonderful thought. So I'm going to just go through it and say a little bit about it. Not that it needs it, but I just thought I would do that. So, with all its eyes, the natural world looks out into the open. The natural world, you know, the open has a capital O. The open is this space of eternity, in which there are no objects, only relationships. There's nothing over against. There's only endless sharing. This is the natural world. Everything shares, just like this mural. Everything is in one system, recycling and re-emerging and disappearing and coming back again.

[17:53]

And I think he's saying that in the natural world, this is how life goes. Life manifests and understands itself. But only our eyes are turned backward. It's interesting, because Dogen uses the backward metaphor in exactly the opposite way. Dogen says, take the backward step, by which he means, when Dogen says take the backward step and turn the light inwardly to illuminate himself, he means enter the open. Let go of objects and enter the open. And here, he's using the opposite, the same metaphor in the opposite way. We are turned backward, not facing the open, but turned backward. And we surround animals, plants, trees, like traps, because we make them into objects. We evaluate them with our ego. Is this good for me? Is this bad for me? Do I like this? Do I not like this? Do I want this? Do I not want this? What does this do for me?

[18:54]

Whenever we look at the world in that way, full of fear and desire, we have made the world into an object and we've cut ourselves off from the open. We know what is really out there only from the animal's gaze. For we take the very young child and force it around so that it sees object, not the open, which is so deep in animal's faces. And it's true, you know, when I was sitting in the little room next door, there was a deer, I don't know if you saw the deer, outside eating. And whenever you see animals, you know, if you're fortunate enough, especially wild animals, but domestic animals too, if you ever look into their eyes, you know, there's something immense there. There's a beautiful passage in Martin Buber, where he talks about his house cat, looking into the eyes of his cat.

[19:56]

I know you have a cat story. You know, our animals, seeing them, giving ourselves, you know, usually we don't, I know we have a lot of pets, I usually don't really pay attention to them. You know, or look at them particularly. But if you let go of everything for a moment and look into the eyes of an animal, really allow yourself to be affected by the animal, you feel some sort of sense of infinite belonging that is a natural part of an animal's life. And we're not like that. We train ourselves from very young to see objects, not the open, which is so deep in animals' faces, free from death. Animals are free from death. Because, you know, there isn't any such thing as death. Did you know that? Is that news? I mean, death is, there is a concept, we have a concept called death.

[21:01]

But there isn't such a thing as death. There's only life and transformation. Certainly, we breathe in, we breathe out, then we don't breathe in again. The flesh transforms into something else, goes back to the earth. But that's not death, that's just breathing in, transformation, change. Animals don't have this burdensome concept called death that they can project huge ego fear onto. So for them there is no death, it's literally the case. With animals, if you tell an animal, you're going to die, they say, you're crazy. Only we can see death. The free animal has its decline in back of it, forever.

[22:07]

And God in front of it, the open, infinite space in front of it. And when it moves, it moves already in eternity like a fountain. We don't move in eternity until our life is over. Then we're like a fountain. Until then, we're plagued by our conceptual minds removing us from this world that is already complete. The earth is our body. We can touch the earth by really entering our own bodies and inhabiting our own bodies. So it's there for us. It's not that somehow we're doomed not to have it in our lives. But we so deeply ingrained is our habit of ego thinking and conceptual thinking that we're removed from it.

[23:11]

Never, not for a single day, do we have before us that pure space into which flowers endlessly open. Always there is world and never nowhere. And that's what's so nice about taking a day like today. And why I think we need to do this every day and intensely once in a while. Because, you know, today is a day for nothing and nowhere. It's a day for allowing the apparatus of conceptual mind, of ego mind, to simply just fade away. You don't have to do battle with it. You just have to let it go its natural way by not encouraging it more. And so you can let everything fade away and enter nowhere and nothing.

[24:14]

That pure, unseparated element which one breathes without desire and endlessly knows. Again, Dogen has a line, effort without desire. And people ask, you know, what kind of effort to make in practice? I always say effort without desire. And then the next line of the poem is, A bird flies like a bird, a fish swims like a fish. So you make effort, as animals make tremendous effort, but without desire. Just the effort of this moment. Without, I'm going to get something out of it or something is going to happen for me because of it. Something like that. Without, just the effort to pay attention, be still, to let go. And there's a feeling of endlessly knowing. Endlessly being held when you make that kind of effort.

[25:19]

A child may wander there for hours, though the timeless, through the timeless stillness, they get lost in it as children do. The thickness of time, the openness of time is something children experience. That's why play is so important. Play is how children enter this realm. And animals play a lot, you know, animals are very important for them. We want our animals to play, and all animals play. We forgot how to play. And then it says, where someone dies and is it, becomes it. Becomes this openness. That's why if you've lost someone in your life, close, when you enter this openness, they're there. They're not really gone. They're really there.

[26:24]

And you sense that. You sense, sometimes you're touched deeply by your connection with those that you've lost because in the openness, they're there. For nearing death, one doesn't see death, but stares beyond, perhaps with an animal's vast gaze. And I know that some of us here have worked with the dying and know that that's true. But sometimes, not always, because many people facing death have tremendous fear. But sometimes, even when they do have tremendous fear, despite that, every now and then, something they see, and they're like, they have that quality to them, like an animal, just that pure being, sense of pure being because of their closeness to death. Then, this part about lovers is one of the themes in the Duino Elegies and also of Rilke's life.

[27:39]

Lovers, if the beloved were not there blocking the view, are close to it and marvel. As if by some mistake, it opens for them behind each other, but neither can move past the other and it changes back to world. So, I think this is really, this really seems true to me. I can really understand and relate to this because I think it's true that that's why I often say, you know, it's unbelievable how 99.9% of all songs that you hear on the radio are about love, falling in love and all the different angles on love. Why, I mean, there's a lot of things going on in the world, you know, why is that so interesting? But it really is interesting, the soap operas and all the stories and they're all about that. Everybody's really interested in that because it's such a powerful thing in our lives. And then, so everybody's, you know, out trying to cultivate these relationships

[28:46]

and then there's such problems with these relationships, it's huge problems and difficulties. It's very hard to, you know, have an intimate relationship with a person. So, but I think that he's onto something here, to me, because I feel, because why it's, we so desperately need and want these relationships is because it is in the feeling that comes up inside of us of loving someone. We feel this openness that he's talking about, the feeling of love is so close to this and it evokes it for us. And then, when we take the Beloved and turn them into an object and don't allow ourselves to embrace the Beloved through the Beloved to enter the openness of the world, instead of, you know, if we have our egotistical expectations of the Beloved and that's when we have big problems. And then that which is so important to us and so powerful in our lives

[29:48]

becomes so problematic. So it's not easy, but it's the only chance we have, I think, is to remember over and over again that it's through, it's love that inspires our lives and opens our lives and if we have another person in our life who can help us to practice love and evoke love, that's wonderful. And we have to honor that person and through our relationship with that person go beyond so that the other person is not standing in our way. I think that's the problem with our relationships. We get our relationships organized in such a fashion that the other person is standing in our way. Even though we've spent 20 years... That's very confusing and difficult. So we have to find a way to, if we're ever going to have these kind of wonderful and important relationships in our lives, which I, myself, am a believer in these relationships. In my life, something really wonderful and opening

[30:51]

and beautiful, but we have to find a way to not create the other person as a stumbling block in our path. That's just a few lines here in the Elegy, but in the other Elegies he speaks about this a lot and his own life was like that. He couldn't figure out a way. I have many problems with Rilke. I always get annoyed with Rilke. One of the problems is that Rilke could never figure out a way to be a human being in the world. He always had his head in the clouds. Anyway, forever turn toward objects. We see in them the mere reflection of the realm of freedom. Forever turn toward objects. We see in them the mere reflection of the realm of freedom, which explains... which we have dimmed.

[31:53]

The mere reflection of the realm of freedom, which we have dimmed. Which explains, once again, my favorite concept, the economy. This explains the economy. This is why we all like to go shopping. I do. I get extremely excited when I get a chance to go shopping. I go to the mall and everything. Because there's a reflection of the realm of freedom in that desire for possession and enhancement that we're going to get out of our shopping. So, we make the world of the objects. And then, when we relate to those objects, we feel a reflection of the possibilities that we have dimmed. And then we go out and shop. I realize, you know, that shopping is... You know, you could throw the things away. You know, you can just get them, bring them home, and then put them right in the garbage. You could do that. Actually, it would be fine. It's not... because it's not...

[32:57]

It's that thrill of, you know, shopping. Because the objects have a reflection of the realm of freedom which we have dimmed. So, that's why we have to keep our practice a secret. We don't want to get too many people involved because it would be very bad for the economy. Because, mostly, people should shop. It's very beneficial. It would be good for the economy, but bad for the garbage dump. Yeah, right. So, or when some animal, mutely surveilling, looks us through and through. In other words, when an animal looks at us and we're not relating, we can't enter the space of that animal. That's fate. That's what fate means. Fate in the sense of being a captive. Of time and space. A victim of time and space. That's fate.

[34:01]

When you're a victim of time and space, you're a victim of fate. Fate is to be opposite. To be opposite and nothing else forever. Opposite means not to enter in, not to be in relation. Not to allow something to come in and change your life and you to change that thing's life. To merge and mesh and listen and be changed by everything that you, every moment of your life. It's the opposite of fate. That's freedom. It's engagement, always, with what happens. I think I was writing a little blurb about every day is an end. Because I have to always kind of change the thing on the web page. And I wrote something like, what we want to do is change the world and be changed by it, moment by moment, in a dialogue. So it's not that we have a truth that we're going to impose on the world. We don't know what the truth is.

[35:03]

We're going to be changed and challenged by the world as we meet it. And we're going to talk back. So we're receptive and directive all at once. Then we're in dialogue. Then we're not a victim. Then we're free. If the animal moving toward us so securely in a different direction had our kind of consciousness, it would wrench us around and drag us along its path. Because that's how human beings are. They make the world in objects. And then one of the great objects, of course, is belief. I notice this. I believe this, and so you should believe it too. Otherwise you're wrong. That's all. So if the animals were like us, they would grab us and they would say, OK, you should be like us. Animals would wrench us and drag them along in their path. But the animals don't do that. We need to do that.

[36:03]

I need to get you all to believe what I believe. Then I'll feel better. But animals aren't like that. They don't need that because they feel as if their life is boundless and unfathomable and without regard to its own conditions. Pure. Like its outward gaze. With a sense of self-sufficiency in animals. That also is in us, if only we can find it. We don't need to talk somebody into something. We don't need to make things go the way we want them to go. How limiting that is, you know. How limiting that is to make things go the way I want them to go. As if I was so smart that I could figure out the best way for me for things to go. How much more wonderful to be totally surprised at the way things go. And to learn every moment from what happens that I didn't plan on, that I didn't predetermine.

[37:05]

Animals are self-sufficient enough to be able to not need anything more than what they find. And where we see the future, the animal sees all time and itself within all time forever healed. And that's a surprising and wonderful word to add there, forever healed. Because that's what heals us, you know. What heals us is not getting what we want. Because one finds over and over and over again that you do get what you want and it's not what you want. Have you ever noticed that? That's why shopping is so great because you know, shopping is about the fantasy of getting what you want. You bring it home and then you have it and then who needs it? It's the shopping that's important. Yeah.

[38:07]

Yeah, right. Because it's never quite... But in the moment of shopping, it really feels right. So, we are healed not by getting what we want. Either in an inner or outer way. See, we all are beyond shopping all this year. Because we know that what we want is not something we can get in the mall. We want happiness. We want love. We want peace. So what's the difference? We might as well go shopping, you know. But animals don't want any of that. You see? They don't want any of that. They see. They just live in time. They just are in time. And they see themselves as non-differential time. And that's their healing.

[39:10]

And that's our healing too. Our healing isn't to get something outside of us or inside of us. Our healing is to just live. To allow ourselves to live. Just to live. In time. In this body. With this conditioning that we have. To release ourselves to being what we are. Whatever that may be. Whatever inadequacies and limitations and desires that we may have. Just to have those desires as they are. And to honor what it is that we are. In time. To be there with it. That's our healing. In time. And then he says, Well, animals aren't perfect either. Because animals also suffer too. And they also have, like we do, a memory. Because we all know. This is the thing that's so tragic about human beings.

[40:12]

And so wonderful about human beings. We all know better. It's not like we're doomed to this horrible thing of, you know, all this thing that he's talking about and that's it. We all have the memory. As if the element we keep pressing toward were at one time more intimate. More true. And our communion with the world was infinitely more tender. We all remember that somehow. We all know that. And I think that's the source of our spiritual longing. Is we know something. We can almost taste it. That there is another possibility. And so we're given to go in that direction. Here, all is distance. That means in the world of objects. There, it was breath. Isn't that interesting? The contrast to the world of objects, which is only distance and alienation,

[41:14]

is breath, which is so intimate. And that reminds me of another poem. About breathing. Breathing. You invisible poem. Complete interchange of our own essence within world space. You counterweight in which I rhythmically happen. Single wave motion whose gradual sea I am. You most inclusive of all possible seas. Space grown warm. The breathing is space-worn. Right? The breathing is. How many regions in space have already been inside me? There are winds that seem like my wandering sun. Do you recognize me, air?

[42:17]

Full of places I once absorbed? You who were the smooth bark, roundness and leaf to my words. And this is why our practice of breathing is so profound. You know, there's nothing, honestly, I really feel there's nothing more beautiful or more profound in this life than just to breathe and to pay attention and be with and enter fully breathing. Which is basically our practice. Just to sit and be present letting go of everything but the breathing. That's the intimacy of connection. It's literally our connection. And our entering and being entered by everything. And then we get up from our seat and it's a world of objects we live in. We sit enough we practice enough and we cultivate this heart enough and we recognize that it's all the breath.

[43:18]

Every person every cloud every object in the world every emotion is all the breath. It's all intimate. It's all space warmed. And then he has this funny part about tiny creatures. In other words so the animals have this little bit of longing like we do because they remember something more intimate. It's only the little things like gnats and little ants that are crawling along on the ground. They are still they've never left the womb. Animals because animals are womb born so they have been in a womb and they've left the womb and so there's some longing there that they experience. But these other little creatures they don't have that. For them everything is womb. And womb is an interesting word. I was reading a poem I couldn't find it but to bring it and read it for you but there's a poem I was reading by Yehuda Amichai the Israeli poet

[44:22]

which turns on this the idea of womb. And it turns out that in Hebrew I think the word for the word womb is the same root as the word for kindness and compassion. kindness is the quality of to return to kindness is to return to this womb connection feeling. So the little creatures the gnats are still in the womb. Then there's birds. The birds are sort of in between. I always thought that about birds. I always looked at birds and I thought this is very unlikely. You know what I mean? Birds they're like where did this come from? This strange thing is birds. The birds they're not just not human. They just don't quite be to me to me to me

[45:13]

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