This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good morning. Someone say foo? Oh, that's me. Good morning. Excuse me. Spring. I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas.

[01:10]

I'm frightened of old ones. John Cage. So I want to talk about my newest hero, John Cage. You know, I didn't know too much about him, actually, even though I knew the name. I know a lot of names, a lot of people. But, you know, what they did and the nature of their art, I really feel quite ignorant. So... I do remember that when I was in college, some friends invited me to attend a concert that he was doing at Mills College. And I came away thinking it was very weird. But I also didn't think it was unpleasant. And I remember it 40 years later. So that's interesting. So a few months ago, I was visiting one of the museums here in the Bay Area.

[02:12]

We're so lucky. I think it was the De Young. And I went into the bookstore there, and under the staff picks was this book called Where the Heart Beats, subtitled John Cage, Zen Buddhism and the Inner Life of Artists. So I bought it. And it's really a wonderful book. I highly recommend it for many reasons, some of which I'll talk about. The woman who wrote this biography of John Cage is named Kay Larson. And she's also a writer, good writer, a critic, an editor, and a practitioner of Buddhism for many, many years, Tibetan and Zen. And somebody says on the back of the book the following things, the composer John Cage, whose joyful, exuberant creativity, which is, I think, the main clue to what makes him so special, joyful, exuberant creativity, transmitted his influence beyond music into art, literature, cinema, and multiple forms of cultural experiment as he stood at the absolute epicenter

[03:27]

of the international avant-garde of the 1950s and the 1960s. Where the Heart Beats is the first biography of John Cage to address the phenomenal importance of Zen Buddhism in freeing him from suffering and opening his heart to bright new possibilities of thought and actions. The Cajian Revolution, as it's been called, touched many artists of the day, including the man who was to become his life partner, Merce Cunningham, as well as Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol, Yoko Ono, Alan Capro, Morton Feldman, and Leo Castelli, among others. Actually went online to look up each of these names, and each of them is a whole world of wonderful creativity in themselves. So I, again, you know, just, we're so lucky. We can see things very fast that we may have missed, you know, over decades.

[04:31]

So this story is of a profound spiritual transformation where the heartbeats reveals the blossoming of Zen in the very heart of American culture. You know, and who knew? I didn't. I missed the whole thing, you know. So what was really wonderful about going online and starting to research, I wanted to listen to some John Cage. I thought when I read the book, maybe I should listen to some music. And I did, and it's still weird. But there was also, along with the things you could, you know, listen to, there was a episode of a TV show called I've Got a Secret. Now, those of you with gray hair remember I've Got a Secret and the rest of you don't, I'm sure. So we're the baby boomers. We've had black and white TVs, TV, and this show, along with You Bet Your Life, were our family favorites when I was a kid.

[05:40]

So I clicked on I've Got a Secret, and that particular episode was... The secret guest was John Cage. So he comes out. I think Bill Cullen was the name of the moderator, wasn't it, Bill Cullen? Is that right? Yeah, yeah, great. Go team. Anyway, so Bill Cullen is sitting there, and then these four panelists who are, you know, 50s kind of mad men clothing with narrow ties, and the women have the bouffant hairdos, and they're both blonde. So John Cage whispers his secret, and we get to see it. It's printed on the screen. And his secret is that he's going to play a piece of music using a bathtub, a rubber duck, a blender, ice cubes, a pressure cooker, four radios, a martini shaker, a fan, and so on.

[06:46]

Yeah, and so everybody's laughing, you know. My family's laughing and the audience is laughing. In fact, Bill Collins says to John Cage, who's a very dignified man, do you mind when people laugh? And John Cage says, I don't mind. I'd rather they laugh than cry. So they don't even bother to try to guess what he's going to do. They just open the curtain and there's the bathtub and the blender and everything. And so he plays this composition called Water Walk. And what was really amazing to me is that I remember this. I saw it when I was probably 12, 11. And we were laughing, and so was the audience. And yet this time when I watched it on my computer, it wasn't funny. It was wonderful. It was fun and beautiful.

[07:52]

All the sounds of water that we hear all the time and ignore. The tub, the blender with ice in it, the martini shaker, the dripping faucet. He dropped something in the tub and the big splat. So what he was doing was making sounds of water. And he did it with a lot of dignity. You know, he moved around the stage like a dancer, like his partner, Merce Cunningham, was an amazing dancer. So he was moving in a very dignified way among these absurd, seemingly unrelated objects. So, you know, my family was, like many, was not so open to new things. I mean, I remember my dad being really offended by the... haircuts on the Beatles, too, you know. It's like, oh, that's just ridiculous. And my grandfather sold his Coca-Cola stock because it didn't taste good, he thought, you know.

[08:55]

So we're kind of conservative a lot in my side of the gene pool. So I looked up this word absurd, which had come to mind as I was trying to describe what we saw or what we thought. as people viewing this performance. And it's a very interesting word because it comes from the Latin word absurdus, which means out of tune. Out of tune. Which in turn is related to another word, certus, which means deafness or inability to hear. So the absurd is on the part of the hearer, not what's being heard. It's how we hear. We're hard of hearing. And we're conservative. We're conserving what we already know, the old. We're not ready to let that new stuff in. We're very guarded.

[09:58]

So this word, absurd, is really appropriate to the reaction of the culture at the time to what he, John Cage, and other artists were doing in trying to help us to re-listen, to re-see, to kind of re-hear the world around us. They were really pounding on the door. There's another book I read last year called Proust was a Neuroscientist. Any of you read that? Yeah, yeah, it's great, isn't it? Really great. And in that book, another well-written book, a good writer, it's always good to have a good writer, he takes all of the major artists of the last century and says how each of them was tuned in to one of our senses and preceded what neuroscience is now confirming to be so, about how we see, how we hear, how we read, what words do inside of our minds. So, you know, Gertrude Stein and Stravinsky and Cezanne, you know, they were all doing this stuff, which is exactly the way...

[11:08]

We perceive reality, only we've overlaid it with imagery that makes us think that the images are more real than the thing we actually experience, if you know what I mean. The book will help. It's a very, very easy read and pleasant read. Proust was a neuroscientist. So, you know, in some cases there are actually violent reactions to the new, like in Stravinsky's... Stravinsky's case, the audience, when he premiered Rite of Spring in Paris, no less, rioted during the first part of the ballet. There was a riot. People were punching each other, screaming at them, and they had to run away. Anyway, Rites of Spring. So, you know, we are being called to re- hear and rethink and, you know, to open our minds. Open-mindedness in some places is considered a virtue, you know.

[12:12]

Some parts of our culture view open-mindedness as a virtue, as a developmental quality. John Cage called the revolutionary work of his contemporaries the transitory and ephemeral poetics of the here and now. transitory and ephemeral poetics of the here and now, like ice in a blender. That's what we get all the time, transitory and ephemeral poetics of the here and now. Ambient sound, ambient sight, all day long. And where are we? What are we doing? Are we absurd? Are we missing out? Are we dulled? So the reason that I decided that John Cage was my new hero, and in fact, I even made him a superhero, is because I've actually been noticing sound since I started to consider his message.

[13:13]

I've gone, whoa, what have I been missing? I didn't, you know, I'm listening. There's my refrigerator. It's the last time I heard my refrigerator, you know? And my clock in my room. Somebody just made a little breathing noise. You're creaking chairs. It's amazing how much we miss, actually. And I've noticed we have a new baby in town. His name's Miro. And Miro, when he first came home, was kind of like a little grub. He didn't really respond much to anything. He was just like internal and feed me and make me comfortable. But over time, I have the privilege of getting to hold him just about every day. His lovely parents allow me to hold him while they put the dryer, clothes in the dryer and stuff. So we're getting to be good friends. And Miro, just all of a sudden, he put his hand out like that toward my face. And I was like, oh my God, you're coming in, you're coming in.

[14:18]

And now he grabs my glasses. It's enough. Anyway. So first, you know, first we reach out. We begin by reaching out, by hearing and seeing, responding to everything. When the dog goes by, Miro is just like all over it, you know. What's that? What's that? That's just a dog. You may give it a name. That's a dog. Oh, it's a dog. Okay. Dulling down. Damping down. So, you know, we can be reintroduced. It's not too late. We can be reintroduced to the wondrousness of sound and odor and taste and so on. It's right there for the taking, for the noticing. So one of the things that first drew me deeper into John Cage and not only his sounds that he was playing with, but the thoughts he was having about what he was doing.

[15:21]

He was very conscious. He was also very intellectually astute. And he taught his generation. He was truly the epicenter of many of these artists and how they began to experiment with things were based on his understanding of Zen Buddhism, which he was getting from D.T. Suzuki, who was one of his mentors. He visited Japan. I don't know if he meditated. Seems like he did. But he certainly studied the teaching of the Buddha. And he says, John says, the first question I ask myself when something doesn't seem to be beautiful, the first question I ask is, why do I think it's not beautiful? And very shortly I discover that there is no reason. So that's deepening your looking. Look again. Look again. What do you mean it's not beautiful? You sure? Really? He also said, If something is boring after two minutes, well then try it for four minutes.

[16:25]

And if it's still boring, try it for eight minutes, 16, 32, and so on. Eventually, one discovers that it's not boring at all, but very interesting. This is zen. In a nutshell. You don't like sitting for two minutes? Try four. Try 40. Try seven days. There was a teacher that lived nearby us, a wonderful teacher, named Charlotte Selber, who eventually died, but she was 104 when she did. It was inevitable, but she kept saying, why don't I die? And I said, Charlotte, you keep eating. She was a voracious eater and a lot of fun. She was a lot of fun up to the last minute of her life. Great spirit. Last time I visited her, she said to me, would you like to take a nap? I said, yes.

[17:29]

So we both took a nap for about an hour. And then I went home. It was the best visit maybe. So she said to her class one time, I took a few of her classes, which were wonderful. And she said, all right, everyone lie on the floor. And please stay there for as long as you can, because if you lay on the floor long enough, something will change. And I assure you, it won't be the floor. Same message, same message. Something's going to change. Well, what's going to change, you know? What are you going to see? What are you going to notice? So hopefully one of the things that might change is our ability to tune in, you know? Our ability to pay attention and to listen. And listen for what? What do you hear? What is it? What is it? Well, maybe the first thing you'll notice, like most of us who talk about what we notice a lot together, is our convictions about beauty and pain and suffering and other people and so on.

[18:50]

That's what we notice. This busy mind is spinning its convictions all day long. One after the other. Ceaseless. And our deep belief that what is spinning is so. We begin to notice that. It's painful. Like that ice in the blender. Where's the off button? But that's what we're called to do. That's what the Buddha recommended in his life-changing program. Please pay attention to what you're thinking, what you're feeling, and what you believe is so. Pay attention to that. Don't be ignorant. Don't ignore it. Listen to your thoughts. And along this same vein, our founding teacher, Dogen Zenji, this very famous instruction for studying Zen, he said, I'm sure most of you have heard, to study the Buddha way is to study the self.

[20:06]

To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be actualized by myriad things. When actualized by myriad things, your body and mind, as well as the bodies and minds of others, drop away. No trace of realization remains, and this no trace continues endlessly. So to study the Buddha way is to study the self. So what's that? Who's that? That's this one sitting here. Well, in my case. I believe that's true. And each one of you has got one of those, most likely. Right where you're sitting is what you're called to study. The one you believe is here. The one I believe is here. Study that. To study the self is to forget the self.

[21:10]

In other words, study itself is liberative. When you study something, there's a gap between a student, And the object of study, right? The subject matter. Me, study me, is a kind of funny thing. But that gap is some spaciousness. It's like normally we just identify with ourselves. We don't consider what we're thinking, what we're feeling. We just feel it, think it, and act on it. Like a, you know, tank. So we're going to get out of the tank. And we're going to review the instructions. What is it? You know, what is it I'm thinking? There's space there. There's a gap. And it's a kind of freedom from identification with your thoughts, with your feelings. They're just feelings. They're just thoughts. Not that big a deal until we start to kill each other, right? So if we continue working in this way, studying ourselves, there may be even further relinquishments that take place as we layer down through our beliefs, our old habits, our childhood memories.

[22:34]

And if you've been in therapy, there's a lot in there, a lot of stuff that shows up as if it's true right now. One of the perennial habits we have, it comes along with the territory of being born, like little Miro is already getting it, which is self-love, self-concern, self-protection, defensiveness. We defend the territory of me, the empire of me. At all costs, apparently. So little by little, we begin to see how absurd the whole thing is. It's absurd. It's blindness. It's deafness. It's ignorance. Is this not true? It's a false premise. And that this little abstract, limited, and frightened concept that we call ourselves has got to go.

[23:36]

Study the self. Forget the self. Bye-bye. To forget the self is to be actualized. Actualized means inspired, enlightened, awakened, enthusiastic. By myriad things, like spring that's happening all over right now. Every place I look. Like just overnight. The cherry tree in my yard is just like... Last time I looked, it was... Just a little bit. Today it's... When actualized by myriad things, your body and mind, the old worn-out shield that you don't need anymore, that false concept of a self, drops away. And so do the bodies and minds of others. In other words, all the ideas you have about others drop away.

[24:42]

So the meditation image here is of snowflakes falling on a hot iron skillet. When you're very quiet, if you've been meditating for a bit of time, that full 40 minutes, a couple times in a row, you might be able to experience how transitory your life, your moments of time are really just like snow on a hot iron skillet. The sound of steam, nothing lasts. Nothing holds for long. Just quiet. It's very pleasant. We can't live there, but we can visit. We can see it. The core of our life is very quiet, very still, peaceful. And this no trace of realization, no trace of this realization remains, and this no trace continues endlessly. Therein lies our immortality, the endlessness of continuous change, the immortality of moment-to-moment freshness, aliveness.

[25:59]

So, you know, I've heard this teaching many times, and I've thought about it a lot, and sometimes I think about it differently, and I'm thinking about it this way right now. But it's always struck me as a combination of both liberation and terror. Because on the one hand, liberation, you know, the shell is gone. The shields are down. And the other hand, terror, the shell is gone and the shields are down. You know, now what? It's like someone who's been in prison for many, many years. Suddenly they, you know, let them out and they're standing there. Now what? What do I do? How do I protect myself? How do I even walk or think or find food? So unfortunately, once this fictionalized version of our self has been damaged or eliminated, it's very hard for us to go back and do it again, put it back on.

[27:11]

It doesn't fit. It doesn't hold. It just won't work. It's not who we are. We know we're not that. That face breaks, broken. There's an image of the face being broken. Can't use those muscles anymore because you're not pretending. You're not masking how you feel. So at this time is when we really need good friends to come along. family, loved ones, teachers, mentors, readings, whatever. Take a class, you know, learn something new. It's a good time to be close to others, to realize, no, you're really not alone. You live in community. You are of community. I was sharing with my class on Friday that I received a wonderful teaching from my dear friend of many years, Brother David Stendelrost, who's a Benedictine monk.

[28:17]

who was down at Tassajara at the same time I was last summer. And while we were having lunch, he told me about this new teaching that he was really enjoying sharing with people, which is that there are three responses that we humans have to the universe. The first one is awe, kind of like the little boy, Miro. He's in awe. He's just, he doesn't have any words. He's just in awe, big eyes. So we're in awe of this amazing universe, this world all around us, surround sound universe. That's one of our responses. The other one, complement to that, is shy. We're very shy of that awesomeness because it's also awful and awestruck and awe-inspiring can be very frightening. It's a little too much sometimes.

[29:18]

to be confronted by the vastness, the unboundedness of reality. So we're shy. Like the turtle or the snail, we contract into our skin as if. We try to boundary ourselves for protection, security. So that's shyness. That's our second response. And the third one is called communion. And that's the moment when we get scared. that we say help. And then people come running. People respond to our cry. And they do. It's amazing. It's wonderful. Help. But you have to say help. You have to say it. I need help. We can't guess. Everybody looks fine. You all look fine. So if we tell each other what we need, maybe we can get it for you.

[30:19]

Maybe not. I don't know. It depends on what it is. Last night at a friend's birthday, we played a game called, if you had a million dollars and you had to spend it on yourself, what would you buy? That was really fun. I think almost all of us came up with a little house with a nice view in Marin. And then we all agreed, well, not for a million dollars. That's not going to happen. I settled on an airstream trailer. You can drive it somewhere else. So in the Buddhist literature, the one who responds to the cries of the world is called Avalokiteshvara, the Bodhisattva of Compassion. This wonderful lady figure right here. She's called Tara. She's the... Tibetan depiction of Kwan Yin, Kanong, Avaluki Cheshwar. It's all this image.

[31:20]

And she has one leg out because she is ready to get up. She's ready to respond. You need something. She can move fast, gracefully. She'll get there, though. So when the Buddha... awakened from his own dream of being alone in the forest, and then of being under attack, and then of being seduced, but worst of all, of being special. He was either the worst or the best of all people. He woke up from that. And when he did, he said, now I see that I and all beings are awakened at the same time. I'm not an I. I'm an I and all beings, hyphens, you know. I in all beings is who I am. This is I. There's no I without you. Just imagine all of your senses shutting off at the same time.

[32:24]

What do you got left there? Well, that's what we're scared of, isn't it? So until that day, if it ever comes, I have no idea. It's not the business of the living to be concerned with such a thing. They don't know. Until that day, you know, here we are together. I and all beings realize enlightenment at the same time. And at the same time he had that realization, he had this great wish that everyone else could see that too. Of course, you know, that's what you want for your children, for your loved ones, for everybody. Please, see how we're all one giant body. So in a very real sense, the Buddha had forgotten himself, fought all about himself, and he just gazed in awe at the wonderful, beautiful world that surrounded him.

[33:26]

And at that moment, his entire body, one of the ways it's described in the scriptures, became like a, if you can imagine such a thing, an acoustical, tactile, reflective, auditory, olfactory mirror. was able to resound to all of the impulses and input that was coming, not only that was around him, but actually was making him, was creating him. Just like right now, we're being created by all the sounds and the sights and the odors. That's how we're made. We're made of that. We're nothing but that. Can't live without it. We're trying to live with it. from the Book of Serenity, subtitled, 100 Zen Dialogues, the unique breeze of reality. Do you see? Continuously, creation runs her loom and shuttle, weaving the ancient brocade, incorporating the forms of spring.

[34:33]

This is it. This is it. So, in my understanding of awakening, It's simply a new way of seeing what's already here. And it's always already here. Just this is it. The Buddhas and ancestors kept saying that. Just this is it. And we're going, what? What do you mean? Just what is it? Just this. Which this? We want some more clues. I've got a secret. Let's see if we can guess what it is. But they really do want us to rub our eyes, get the sleep out of our eyes and clean out our ears in the sounds of the running water, you know, of the ocean, of the river, of the ice in the glass. Wake up. Wake up, you sleepyhead. Get up, get up. Cheer up. The sun is red.

[35:36]

And so on. So in... Buddhist art, the awakened experience of the Buddha is often depicted with a halo, like this one, around the head of the awakened one. She has a kind of crown, but it's the same feeling, you know, that there's a radiance which has to do with shifting from self-concern, that enclosure of self-concern, to the radiant receptivity. It's like, you know, all your bars on your smartphone are up. can hear everything. It's clear, clear sailing. Very open-minded, open-hearted, clear-eyed. So I imagine this shift from self to self-forgetting as being kind of like osmosis, where the balance between inside and outside of yourself is no longer considered as being

[36:43]

you know, a different pH. The balance has taken place. I like the image of slipping into a hot tub, you know, where the body temperature and the water temperature are the same. And it's just like, for a while. Until you get so wrinkled and bored, you know, do something else. But anyway, it's that feeling of being in balance, being in balance. So in the spirit of opening our eyes and our ears and our minds to the present moment or when we were hippies, we used to say to be here now, I would like to play for you or perform for you a piece of music by John Cage that was first performed in an old barn in New England. So it's appropriate we're in an old barn in California. And it's considered one of his two most radical compositions I'm going to tell you a little bit about it.

[37:44]

His biographer said that between 1950 and 1953, John Cage's life and work changed dramatically, that he had made a great turning of his heart, opening to the boundlessness of the world, and particularly the world of sound. And then he said, I don't study music anymore. I study noise. I study noise. So during this time, he introduced certain concepts which also run through the other artistic endeavors of our age, such as chance and indeterminacy and immediacy and happenings. Their happenings were happening, right? Just for now. I just watched one on YouTube. They built this ice wall in a very hot day, huge, out of ice, big blocks of ice, I think in Central Park or anywhere, in New York somewhere. Giant ice wall. Way up high. And then I think within 24 hours, the whole thing melted. Great.

[38:47]

Brilliant. So in 1952, John Cage accompanied David Tudor to a rustic barn, music barn, in Woodstock, New York. He handed him a score with instructions, which I will tell you later. And sat him down at the piano to play this piece. Now, I'm going to ask, how many of you are familiar with four minutes and 33 seconds? Oh. All right. For those of you who are not, those people, ignore them. They're going to be up to mischief, I can tell. OK. All right. So this is four minutes and 33 seconds. Please be comfortable. Don't worry. It's not painful. And, well, actually, I'm not sure. It's up to you. But if, you know, don't worry.

[39:50]

I mean, if you need to scratch or, you know, do whatever, sneeze, cough. I don't know about talking to your neighbors. Maybe that's too much. But anyway, just relax and open your ears and it'll all be over in four minutes and 33 seconds, okay? So... You ready? Here we go. Okay.

[44:50]

In 2004, the BBC Symphony Orchestra performed this piece in London, and it was broadcast all over Britain. And here's what a reviewer had to say about that. Four minutes and 33 seconds of Dead Stop Quiet, which was broadcast all over Britain today, was played in three movements called... tacit one, tacit two, and tacit three, plus two interludes in which the audience and orchestra stretched, breathed, rustled around, and then resumed their concentrated attention. I skipped that part. It'll take too long. As another reviewer claimed, a collective crescendo had built in which the hall had become one body, one mind, with everyone awake and full of questions, such as, what is this? And why is it so riveting? And what do we make of it? Anyway, it was a revolution. He dared to make a revolution.

[45:57]

Some people throw spitballs when you do that. They're uncomfortable. Like, what is it? Why are you doing this to me? I don't know what's happening. So these are the very same questions that the monks who were attending the Buddha's lecture in the Lotus Sutra asked of him after he did this performance piece of opening a through this circle of white hairs between his eyes, I guess his eyebrows, he had this ray that he opened. Everyone could see in the ray one quarter of the entire universe. And then he shut it off. And the same question, what is it? What is that? What are we supposed to do with this? And why is it so riveting? So this is the same thing. What is it? We want to know.

[47:01]

We want some answers. And we won't stop until we get some. So the Buddha spent his entire life trying to answer the questions. That's why there's so much literature. But really, he showed it right there. It's right here. This is it. You're there. I've told this before, but I remember saying when I was a young woman to somebody, I used to love to go to astronomy lectures, and I had this idea that once we got out there, we'd know what was happening. I don't think that anymore, but I really did think that. And my friend said, wait till we get into outer space. And my friend said, Nancy, we are in outer space. Wait a minute. So one of the things that allowed John Cage to become happy was his willingness to enter into the darkness at the base of our human life and where we're afraid, the places where he was afraid.

[48:12]

Because his abundant talent and his charisma and his gifts of intellect did not, you know, make him happy. He was not happy. And eventually he learned that it wasn't what he was going to get, like fame or fortune or whatever. It was what he had to relinquish that would make him happy. Like fame and fortune and whatever. Give it up. You know, and his homophobia. He had to give that up so he could love the person he loved, the man he loved. And many of his friends had to give that up so they could love their people. And they suffered it, as we still make homosexuals suffer. Shame on us. We should make people suffer. No, we have to stop that. Please. But even more than that, all of us are going to have to relinquish our belief in a separate self, that we're separate, we're different, that we're special, either the worst or the best of all people. We have to give that up. And we have to give up our fear of our mortality.

[49:17]

Can't do much about that. So for me, John Cage's story reads as a modern parable of the Buddha's own journey. And I thought of that because of our reading of the Lotus Sutra, which our central abbess has been teaching to the practice period. helping us to enter. It's a very hard text to enter. Unlike the book that I recommended, I do not recommend The Lotus Suture, only because it's very hard to enter. Once you do, you may find that it's a wonderful, wonderful book. The best of all books. But kind of like other great books, like Moby Dick or whatever, it took me years to get past the first chapter. I kept trying, and I just put it back on the desk. along with Proust and everything else I've tried to read. So it's okay. You don't have to read it. We'll tell you the stories from it, and someday maybe you'll find yourself in.

[50:21]

But if I'd had John Cage's advice about boredom, I might have been able to do it a lot quicker. Well, then just read two chapters, and then read four chapters, and pretty soon you'd be done, and you wouldn't even know that it happened. So one of the... big chapters is this one on Avalokiteshvara, the Bodhisattva of compassion, regardor of the cries of the world. And Bodhisattva, for those of you who are new to Buddhism, is a being that lives to benefit others. And this Bodhisattva specialty is responding, first responder to the cries of the world. So I think that for each of us, the challenge really is to, you know, amplify our own first responder-ness to really begin to realize how deaf we've become, how absurd we've become in not hearing and seeing the cries of the world all around us. The Dalai Lama recently in a talk said, you know, it's natural for us when we're hurt, if our leg is hurt, to reach down with our hand and provide comfort and healing.

[51:28]

It's natural. And we're one body. Humanity is one body. It's one life on this earth. It's natural to reach out and help those who need something. That's what you do. That's what we do. That's what we do. Except when we don't. So I want to invite all of us to be more open to the sounds of both suffering and happiness that's all around us. Don't just sit stuck on the suffering. That can be, you get depressed. That's no good. Just another depressed person that needs to be helped because now you get more suffering over here. So don't do that. But, you know... Be happy. You get to be happy and help people. It's the perfect combination. John Cage was a happy man, and he was still willing to have people laugh at him to try to help him to hear the sound of water. So we want to really encourage our ability to respond, our responsibility for others, for each other, for ourselves, and so on.

[52:33]

So along with these big ears, Abhilokiteshvara has a thousand arms and a thousand hands. And if you imagine that each of us has two of those, we almost have it right here in this room. Because compassion is not a singularity. It's not a person. It's a community of generosity, of kindness, of love, of consideration for others, for other communities, and so on. You know, it's the kind of place I think we all truly would like to retire to, don't you? Our new senior living facility. So thank you very much. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our programs are made possible by the donations we receive. Please help us to continue to realize and actualize the practice of giving by offering your financial support. For more information, visit sfzc.org and click giving.

[53:38]

May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[53:41]

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