Good morning. So nice to be here. I'm so happy to see all of you. My name is Joan. And I just, I wanted to say that, Susan, thank you so much for being so caring with all my books. I'm sorry for the awkwardness of it. But as I was offering incense, taking the incense from Susan, I'm shaking. I'm pretty nervous. And I remember it as the last time, or one of the last times I was nervous. It was for a Suzuki Roshi memorial, a ceremony that I was kokyo for. I was leading the chanting. And standing right next to Suzuki Roshi's image down at Tassahara, and I had my hands in gashou. And just before I was about to announce the chant, I kind of looked at Suzuki Roshi and said, help, to myself. And the response I got back was... you're on your own. Very compassionate.

[01:02]

Yes. So I'm really happy for a couple reasons to be here. This is my first time taking this seat on a Saturday lecture. I have kind of a special fondness for Saturdays because Saturdays at Zen Center, it always reminds me of my first time coming to Zen Center, which was... Some years ago, I wasn't living at Zen Center. I came for the Saturday program, and maybe there are many of you here for the first time. You've maybe received Zazen instruction this morning, and just kind of getting a first little taste of Zen. And also, some people here I know have been coming for many years. maybe just on Saturdays for the lecture. Maybe you've never been down to the Zendo. I also know there are some people who only come for Zazen and have never been upstairs before, so you're probably not here right now.

[02:04]

And many people, or some people, I imagine, who maybe even used to live in the building, or former chuseaux, or who've... gone on in your lives and maybe touch back every now and then and maybe you're here today too the Maha Sangha keeps growing which is a wonderful thing and maybe there are some people who just sat their first session here which ended last week although it seems like a long time ago also ended a practice period maybe for some I know for some people who are here it was your first practice period so congratulations on that So, yeah, just a little bit more about my own first experience coming here. I remember I was so grateful to come that Saturday. It was a rainy, cold Saturday in January.

[03:07]

And, you know, it was kind of a, I remember kind of a bleak, sad time in my life. I was really tired, for one thing. And coming to Zen Center, there was this richness or this color and texture just of the schedule of the Zazen instruction and coming to lecture and the cookies and tea afterwards and maybe staying for lunch. I used to stay and do the dishes, and that really made me feel a part of things, too, of helping to take care of the temple. So maybe some of you can relate to what I'm saying. Now, I've recently moved back into the building, and I feel a tremendous amount of joy to be able to pay back the gratitude that I feel to Zen Center and to all of you, even if you're new here today, all of you for, you know, the Sangha is part of the triple treasure of the tremendous encouragement and nourishment that we receive to just keep going.

[04:15]

I also do want to say the particular kinship and solidarity I feel with the residents of the temple. It's not such an easy job. It's kind of 24-7. You never know who's going to ring the doorbell and under what conditions and at what time of day or night. So it's a wonderful practice and it's also a difficult practice to live here. So another reason that I'm particularly happy today to be able to speak is, as you all probably know, we're approaching the winter solstice, and we actually had a ceremony this morning, even though the solstice isn't officially until Monday. We're on interim then. It was a beautiful, simple ceremony. Many were here, who are here now, were there this morning. We were in the courtyard, and the wonderful thing about it, the completely uncontrollable, unpredicted thing, was the wind. We had candles that we were to light, you know, the symbol of light, and the wind just would not cooperate.

[05:24]

And I thought that was perfect. There are things that we can't control still about the earth and the natural world, no matter how hard we try. But someone did, I think it was Kwong, managed to come up with some matches, and we did get our candles lit, and some of them actually stayed lit for a few minutes. So... The solstice, just to talk about that a little bit, you probably already know this, but in case for some people who don't, because I looked it up, soul is sun, and stis is from cisteri, meaning to stand still, and this refers to the apparent movement of the sun's path. It actually, on the solstice, stops its trajectory before it starts turning back the other way. There's some deep meaning we can draw on this about our own lives, our own karmic trajectories. But anyway, one thing in particular I thought was interesting, a friend of mine emailed me what's actually happening with the amount of darkness and light right now.

[06:33]

So today, for instance, we will lose eight seconds of daylight. Tomorrow we lose five seconds. On the 21st, we lose one second. And on the 22nd, we gain two seconds of light. And so looking at this, seeing the seconds and thinking about the sun in this way of those seconds diminishing and then stopping and then coming back... Paying attention to that and being aware of that for me as I was thinking about it in the last couple of days, it makes the sun and the earth not feel so far away from each other for me. And also the other thing happening, as many people I know are aware of, is that Copenhagen, the largest summit on climate change, is happening or I think is finishing, finished. to major mixed reviews, lots of disappointment, but still an unprecedented number of world leaders gathered to talk about the earth, and not just to talk about the precarious situation we're in, but to actually put forward some solutions, addressing not only the issues, but also

[07:58]

behaviors and attitudes of ours that we really need to start looking at and actively changing. So this is what I wanted to talk about a little bit today. There's a koan, a Zen teaching story that I think addresses one of these attitudes that we might take a look at. And it's called Bai Zhang's Wild Ducks. Many people are familiar with this, I'm sure. It's one of my favorites. I'm taking the translation from this book, of Andy Ferguson's called Zen's Chinese Heritage. Wonderful book. I really recommend it. It's the kind of book that you actually want to buy and you will read. You'll keep referring back to. Many times, if I've had a question or some particular problem in my life, there's something in here, some story, where one of the ancestors, you know, 8th century China, someone back then was dealing with a very similar issue. It's pretty comforting. Oh, and just a little bit of background about Bai Zhang.

[09:03]

He was a very well-known Chinese master, Zen teacher, practitioner in the 8th century. And he's the one who's credited with... establishing kind of the monastic rules, which represented kind of a major cultural shift in Buddhism away from the tradition of begging, not takuhatsu, but begging for alms, and actually moving in the direction of temples and monasteries being more self-sufficient. So he's credited with the saying, a day without work is a day without eating. When I think of, I've thought of that many times, especially during the Tassajara guest season, for anybody who's worked down there, hard work, and it's definitely a fair trade, which you get down there. Anyway, so, Bai Zhang's wild ducks. One day, Bai Zhang accompanied Matsu, his teacher, on a walk.

[10:07]

A flock of wild ducks flew past them. Matsu said, what's that? Bai Zhang said, wild ducks. Matsu said, where'd they go? Bai Zhang said, they flew away. Matsu then twisted Bai Zhang's nose so hard that he cried out. Matsu said, so you say they've flown away. Upon hearing these words, Bai Zhang attained enlightenment. LAUGHTER So for me, this koan has long been kind of an environmental koan. This word away in particular is what catches me. And I've long associated it with the Tassajara septic system. I've told this story maybe once or twice before.

[11:09]

For those of anybody here who spent significant time at Tassajara, you might know what I'm talking about. Okay. Anyway. Well, first of all, who hasn't been to Tassajara? Okay, yeah, lots of people. I want to just pause here and say I spent some years at Tassajara. It's Zen Center's training monastery. It's the jewel kind of Zen Center in the mountains, in Big Sur, off the grid. And before going there, I was here at City Center. practicing, and I didn't feel like I could go down there to begin monastic training until I got out of debt. I had some financial debt. So I had to wait a while. I had to wait a couple years. And in the meantime, there would be people at City Center who, you know, it invariably comes off Tassajara, and I would hear, what? You've never been to Tassajara? Over and over again. It became kind of like Tassajara took on this kind of

[12:11]

mythological image for me. I mean, it did get annoying, mostly. In fact, to this day, I find tassahara to be kind of a difficult word. It's one of those words like zen that has these hooks and racks that you can easily get hung up on, getting attached to some idea of what this is. So, anyway... If you haven't been to Tassajara, those of you who haven't been, please go. Whether you're inclined to go as a guest or a student, experience it, enjoy it, and then when you leave, just share it with the rest of the world. So anyway, the Tassajara septic system. You know those movies where the bad guy is... like flushing a kilo of coke down the toilet while the police are pounding on the door, you know, like he's flushing it down the toilet. This is hysterical to me. When I think about Tassajara's septic system, it just wouldn't get very far.

[13:14]

I mean, there's a few septic tanks down there, you know, and a couple times a year, maybe once or twice a year, the guy from Salinas will drive his truck in, this big truck, and he'll pump the tanks. So it's very intimate. It's also true that you don't really throw anything away down at Tassajara, you know, into the trash. I mean, I myself have done one or two dump runs or taken the recycling out, and it's pretty hands-on. Very intimate. And, you know, personally, I never wanted to be the one whose tampon was found in the septic tank and traced back to my cabin. It's this kind of stuff that you... pause, you know, and you pay attention to the consequences of your actions. It's great training. And in fact, I feel like kind of the enemy numero uno in modern city life or just in our human life in modern times is this concept, this idea of anonymity, the lack of intimacy, the feeling that I can get away with just flushing my tampon.

[14:29]

So... Anyway, there seems to be this ruling concept of a way, I think, that people over there whose lives I don't affect by my actions, really nothing can be further from the truth. So, let me just read it again. One day, Bai Zhang accompanied Matsu on a walk. a flock of wild ducks flew past them. Matsu said, what's that? Bajang said, wild ducks. Matsu said, where'd they go? Bajang said, they flew away. And this, another translation has Matsu saying, in response to they flew away, when have they ever flown away? When has anything gone away? And I was trying to remember with Blanche, there's this story, maybe some of you know, of Suzuki Roshi with tea drinking, drinking tea and kind of the aftermath of drinking tea.

[15:38]

And he just very simply, he just went like this and then like that. You drink tea and then, do you get it? So there's this kind of... flowing, you know, an all-flowing, a continuous flowing, kind of just the circle of life, like the Enso sometimes that you've seen associated with Zen. Circle usually with an opening, you know, not so clear inside and outside. So today I was getting a little update on Copenhagen. Yes, this difficult process of... what that was like to deal with some of these emotionally charged issues, how many people are disappointed, how there's this deep division between rich and poor nations, and the fear of being betrayed, of who's going to pay for this enormous situation that we've got ourselves into, who's going to pay for all this ecological damage, who's responsible.

[16:42]

And I was thinking that that gets... abstract and I feel in my own body that I start to feel overwhelmed and it gets daunting. And so just as a little exercise to bring it down to an immediate, personal, kind of everyday event, something that's happened this week in my life that I just wanted to talk about for a minute. So here in the building, someone moved out recently. And this happens fairly frequently. People are moving in, moving out. But in this case, for whatever reason, the person moving out left some stuff in his room. And so when the new person came in to his room, kind of got stuck with his stuff. So at some point, just moving in, moved the stuff into the hallway. And so, you know, this... And then I'm walking down the hallway and I'm seeing the stuff and...

[17:45]

It's kind of a bummer, you know, stuff in the hallway, and it's shelves, furniture, and there's dirty socks and pieces of paper, you know, kind of a bummer. And my response is, yuck, you know, someone get that away, take it away. Someone do something. Finally, after a few days, I realize, okay, you know, it's still there. Is there anything that I'm willing to do? Is there a way that I'm willing to get involved to, you know, is there something I can do? And so, you know, I took the socks. You know, and then the question is, do you wash the socks and put them in goodwill? And I have to admit, I put them in the trash. They had holes in them. The pieces of paper I put in recycling. And then I happened to see the Sheikah, the guest manager this morning, and said, you know, did you know all this furniture is here? No, he didn't know, and can't deal with it right away, but in a couple days, it'll be moved somewhere, you know?

[18:48]

But you pay attention, you start to relate. What is the place for these things? But most importantly, there was an opportunity there to talk with people, to talk with the person who'd moved in, And for me, what was important was to, first of all, at least a little bit to acknowledge, you know, what a drag to be stuck with someone else's stuff. But to interact a little bit, to offer maybe some help to bond, connect, interact, turn it around maybe a little together. And it ended up being a wonderful encounter. I really appreciated it. It definitely takes two people. He was definitely there for me. But so... When I think about Copenhagen and the world, I mean, without being hypocritical, I can look at my own life and where can I start? And then I thought about it starting with one person, Dogen Zenji, in his teaching of taking the backward step and turning the light inward here, kind of quieting down, quietly exploring the farthest causes and conditions of

[20:03]

whatever's happening, whatever's arising within and without. So this way, this concept of a way, how it also manifests in relationships of this thing about if I'm having difficulty with someone, well, maybe they'll just go away. Or in Zazen, and this is so in Zazen, or in the course of your day, if you're not sitting Zazen, right now, just in the course of your day when difficult emotions arise, when anger is arising or jealousy or resentment or greed or whatever, what mind am I going to turn to that? Or am I going to push that emotion away? Especially in Zazen, do I think anger is not supposed to arise? Do I think that just because this posture looks so calm and contained that there's not like a volcano or a tornado swirling in here.

[21:11]

Is it okay if anger is arising? Well, I think zazen is just what's arising is whatever's arising. That's all. And all you have to do is just sit there. What's arising is simply what is arising. There's nothing that's not supposed to happen. It's just happening. So this turning to this, just basically starting with an acknowledgement of, oh, wow. I think this is part of the gift of, I never realized how pissed off I am. Get to see it. You're sitting there, getting to know yourself and not acting on it, just meeting it. So, If anger is arising, then that's what I get to work with. That's my fodder. And how to work with it, what does it mean to work with it? What I'm thinking about these days is just, this is a word of Darlene's too, Darlene Cohen's, plowing it back into your posture, your practice, your zazen.

[22:23]

Just whatever's arising, if it's anger, plowing it back in. Many people have heard Blanche quote Kategori Roshi in his description of zazen as this self settling itself on the self and letting the flower of your life force bloom. Zazen is to settle the self on the self and let the flower of your life force bloom. And when I think about So plowing back in anger or bliss, if you're experiencing that, or resentment or jealousy, grief, plowing all that back in, not wasting the opportunity to plow that back in as fodder, you know, not pushing it away, plowing it back in as fodder. It's compost for that soil.

[23:24]

so that your life force can bloom. That's how I'm seeing it these days. Your particular life force, your particular flower, so it can bloom right in the middle of that. Right there. So there's nothing gone to waste. There's no way. There's no need for a way. A way is a wasted opportunity right here. So I feel like I've been speaking kind of graphically of septic systems and So I wanted to read a poem, a lovely poem. And it's a poem that's written by a Japanese poet. And I first read it with a group of people last summer for the summer solstice, actually. But we read it. It was over at the Redwoods community. Maybe some people know the Redwoods over in Mill Valley. You really couldn't call it a senior citizen's home.

[24:27]

I mean, these are, no, right? I mean, these are, they may be 70 or 80 years old, but they're out there with their honk for peace signs. They're rollicking activists. They're very engaged. And they have all kinds of activities, including a weekly, or bi-weekly meditation group. And so I happened to be there for the summer solstice. So we read this poem together. And unbeknownst to me, one of the women in the group, had just lost her daughter. Very difficult thing. She's like in her 70s or 80s and did not expect to lose her daughter. So this was an unexpected kind of emotional element in the group that day. And as it turned out, I feel with this poem that it's not only praising the earth and the cosmos, but in some way it touches... this interplay between connection and aloneness, this backward step, kind of quiet, individual place.

[25:31]

And so doing touches the mystery, this great mystery of birth and death. So the poem is called A Love Letter, and it's by Nanao Sakaki. Within a circle of one meter, you sit, pray, and sing. Within a shelter 10 meters large, you sleep well. Rain sounds a lullaby. Within a field 100 meters large, grow rice and raise goats. Within a valley 1,000 meters large, gather firewood, water, wild vegetables, and mushrooms. Within a forest 10 kilometers large, play with raccoons, hawks. poisonous snakes and butterflies. Mountainous country Shinano, a hundred kilometers large, where someone lives leisurely, they say.

[26:32]

Within a circle 10,000 kilometers large, go to see the southern coral reef in summer or winter drifting ices in the sea of Okhotsk. Within a circle 10,000 kilometers large, walking somewhere on the earth, within a circle 100,000 kilometers large, swimming in the sea of shooting stars, within a circle a million kilometers large, upon the spaced-out yellow mustard blossoms, the moon in the east, the sun in the west, within a circle 10 billion kilometers large, pop far out of the solar system mandala, Within a circle 10,000 light years large, the galaxy full blooming in spring. Within a circle 1 billion light years large, Andromeda is melting away into snowing cherry blossoms.

[27:39]

Now within a circle 10 billion light years large, all thoughts of time, space are burnt away. There again you sit Pray and sing. You sit, pray and sing. That really moved me this time. This great mystery that we get to study together in Zazen, the great mystery of Zazen. I am so happy you're all here. I'm very happy to be here with you. Happy solstice to you all and happy solstice to the earth. Thank you.

[28:19]

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