This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Well, I wanted to begin tonight by offering a shout out, I think it's called, to Shakyamuni Buddha. for bringing all of us together in this wonderful place. You know, it took only 2,500 years and here we are. We're such lucky people. I've had a wonderful time here these last few days and the music and the art and the Zen practice and all the many ways that we all show our love for one another and for this beautiful, beautiful earth. So I was really inspired last night, as I think all of us were who were there at the... Hootenanny?

[01:11]

No, Hootenanny. Hootenanny, yeah. It's been a while. So I thought I would offer a composition this evening. First time I heard this, I was... Actually, the first time I knew of it, I read about it, and it sort of blew my mind. So I actually performed it at Green Gulch a few months ago, and I'm going to perform it for you this evening. So please just relax. If you're inspired to move or whatever, please do so. You can look around. Just a moment. Technical. I watched everyone tuning their guitars last night, so I got to tune my iPhone. Okay, so this piece was written in 1953 by the amazing Zen teacher John Cage.

[02:14]

And it was actually broadcast over the BBC in 1953. There was quite a response by the British public. So it's called Four Minutes and 33 Seconds. Have any of you heard of it? Oh, a few. Okay. Have you heard it performed in a zendo? No. Okay. All right. So the piece begins now. This is a case from the Book of Serenity. One day, Yang Guan called to his attendant. Is this working? One day, Yang Guan called to his attendant, Bring me the rhinoceros fan.

[03:19]

The attendant said, The fan is broken. Yang Guan said, If the fan is broken, then bring me back, the rhinoceros. The attendant had no reply. Zifu drew a circle and wrote the word rhino in the center. The first time I gave a Dharma talk was about 25 years ago. I was the Eno at Green Gulch Farm, and it was my job to find people to give Dharma talks on Wednesday nights, like tonight. So for some reason, everyone was out of town, Norman and Reb and Linda. Blanche and just nobody at Zen Center seemed to be available.

[04:23]

So I called the Berkeley Zen Center and I got a hold of Mel Weitzman. And I said, Mel, we really need a speaker for tonight. Can you please come over and give the talk? And Mel said, you do it. And I said, Mel, I don't give Dharma talks. And Mel said, you do now. So I think all of us have probably had this experience at one or many more times of our lives where the whole world kind of turns upside down. It's a funny time because nothing really happens. There was no special sound. The room looked the same. I was holding onto the phone. But my insides had sort of turned into kind of a pudding and it was shaking. And my mind was just racing out of control, you know. It's the kind of feelings and thoughts that one associates maybe with the word doomed, you know.

[05:30]

I was doomed. Or when, you know, that scene in The Wizard of Oz where the witch writes in smoke, you know, surrender Dorothy, that kind of feeling. So, I had had a very nice life up to that time. I was... I was a Zen student for about 10 years. I worked at Grains in the bakery, and I lived in the building, and then I moved to Tassajara, and I lived here for three years, and it was wonderful, and I worked in the kitchen, and had lots of friends, and lots of time to myself. And yeah, I was pretty happy, as I recall. And then now, somehow got me staring into this dark chamber where I, you know, had hidden all of my scary things, in particular my fear of public speaking. I don't know if all of you know, but there is a list in Buddhism of the five great fears.

[06:37]

The first one is, can you guess? Death, that's right. Death. Number two... is loss of reputation. And number three is destitution, loss of livelihood. Number four is losing your mind. And number five is public speaking. I'm not kidding, this is really true. Isn't it true? It's true? You'll find out very soon. So anyway, this is sort of an interesting thing for people who are drawn to Zen practice because we're mostly introverts. We didn't get here because we like public speaking. We came here to be alone and to be left alone. And so, you know, we do have a few extroverts that live with us, mostly to keep us from wandering too far away. But anyway...

[07:39]

So I think I went into some kind of panic because I remember hanging up the phone and then going to the library and taking books off the shelves. And I took home a stack about this high and I put them on my desk and then I stared at them for a while and I thought, you know, what's going to happen here? Osmosis or something? I'm going to learn all of these things all of a sudden. And, you know, so that wasn't working. And then I... opened one book, the one called The Book of Serenity. I thought that was a good title. And I just kind of used it like the I Ching. I opened it at random, and I just went like that, and I turned to page 108. Right? I mean, that's an auspicious number in Buddhism. That's how many beings are on a mala. So I thought, well, this is it. There's my sign. I needed a sign. So I read the case, and it was this one about the rhinoceros fan, and I thought, this is amazing, because this is just what happened to me.

[08:44]

Yangshan says to his attendant, bring me my rhinoceros fan. Mel says to me, you give the talk. The attendant says to Yangshan, the fan is broken. I say to Mel, I don't give Dharma talks. Yangshan says to the attendant, well, then bring me the rhinoceros. And Mel says to me, you do now. It was amazing. A little consolation prize right there. So, anyway, what had happened really, you know, when I look back on it, Mel in his kind of kind-hearted Zen masterly way had, you know, driven me into that cave of fear. And then he knocked on the door and asked me to come out and play, you know. Bring your fears with you. It's okay, you know. We don't mind. And I knew that he knew he couldn't make me come out. And also he couldn't make me give a lecture.

[09:46]

But he did let me know that that's what was going to be happening. And I knew that it was time. I knew it was time to come out or to risk never coming out at all. So Mr. Young told us introverts that if the first half of your life you're introverted, the second half of your life you have to extrovert. And vice versa. If you're extroverted, the second half of your life you need to introvert so that you're complete. You have the whole set of human experience. So there's a very famous image in Zen training about the mother hen pecking at the at the egg, you know, and the chick has to peck back. Or, of course, the chick will die in there. So, you know, I think this impulse to be born is much stronger than our fear. You know, otherwise there wouldn't be so many chickens, you know.

[10:54]

It's like we really do want to get out of there. We want to be born. We want to fly and do all those things. Well, not chickens, but birds. We do want to do the things that we're born to do. And it's the mother hen's job to help us to know that, to remind us it's time to come out. It's time to be born now. So I actually have preferred calling Zen training Zen learning because it is up to us to take on the lessons that are offered. It's up to us to respond to the requests. It's up to us to take responsibility. The teachers can call out, but we have to take those risks and respond. And like those Chinese finger puzzles, until you stop resisting, you can't get out. You just keep pulling. But once you relax, it just comes right off. So anyway, some years later, I remember saying to my therapist that I had to give a Sunday lecture.

[12:06]

And he said, you have to give the Sunday lecture? Do you want to give the Sunday lecture? And I had to think for a while. I'd never asked myself that. And I said, yes, I do, but I'm afraid. And then he said, well, ships are safe in the harbor, but that's not what they're built for. So I think this is a very important point to me. Again and again, I need to ask myself, do I want to teach? Do I want to talk? Do I want to go to the Zendo? Do I want to live in a Zen community? Do I want to be with all of you? And I do. I really, really do. And am I afraid? Sometimes. But it's not so important anymore. Fear doesn't scare me as much as it used to. And also, I think there's no way for us to go through this life without all of our parts.

[13:14]

Our fear, our jealousy, our lust, our anxieties. It's like tin cans tied to a cat. It really motivates us. All of these things that we're carrying around, it's what got Shakyamuni Buddha to sit under the tree. He was driven by his anxiety that he would grow old and sicken and die. Why must I suffer? I'm a fully grown, strong young man, and I'm going to die. What's the point of that? So it was these fears that drove him to sit under the tree, and there was this amazing outcome. He woke up. It was worth the trouble. So Mel had been kind enough to knock, you know, and yet it was the story of the rhinoceros that actually opened the door for me, you know, that gave me something to work with. I had to figure out what to say. It's my offering.

[14:16]

It's my song. Like your songwriters, like the artists who've been working this week, you know, we're nervous, you know, putting that pencil down on white paper, letting people hear you sing your songs. It makes us nervous, but we do want to sing, we want to draw, we want to dance, we want to play together. So these transformations take a lot of time. It's not just, you know, that wasn't it for me. Many, many years of facing my fear, you know, this evening I was, I told my friends at dinner. They said, are you nervous? I said, yeah. You know, we're going to do this thing. But, you know, I think once you begin to open, the process itself takes over. It's like a flower. It just keeps growing up and toward the sun.

[15:17]

So as you enter, as you're willing to grow and to Let your feelings be known and let yourself be seen. Little by little, you'll just continue to flower, to bloom. And this turning upside down is not something that we do for ourselves. We wouldn't. We wouldn't volunteer for the kinds of things that turn us over. But it's so important, and it's the way that we... have these major changes that take place in our lives. It's very freeing for us. So we need help, you know, from others. It's not always the kind of help we wish we'd get, but it comes from others because we care for others and things happen to them, you know. There are all kinds of phone calls we get that are, you know, not just do you want to lecture, but people we love have been harmed in some way and so on. The world turns upside down. And then something new happens.

[16:19]

something that we've never experienced before, because we're kind of torn open. And this light can come through us, can come out of us. Like there's a Leonard Cohen song about the crack and everything, so the light can get in. I was thinking about a time when our cat had died. My daughter was very upset. She was about five, I think, five or six. And The cat, you know, she found the cat. It was behind the dresser. It was really stiff. She got very scared, and I couldn't find her. I didn't know where she went. And then I looked under the bed, and she had crawled under her bed to hide. And I didn't know what to do, you know. So Grace and I went out, and we dug a hole, and I put on my robes, and I... wrapped the cat in a silk scarf, and we started walking around the yard.

[17:23]

We had a little circular pathway and chanting Kanzio, the Bodhisattva of Compassion, and carrying the cat. And by and by, Sabrina showed up in the doorway. I took her hand and we went down, we put the cat in the hole, put some flowers on top of it, and then she went back in the house to play. So, you know, we're all kind of magicians. We really don't know what to do, but we do something. We do something. We make a song or we do a magic trick, you know, some way of trying to tell our loved ones it's okay. We're here. We know you're frightened. We know you're hurting. We know you're, you know, anxious, but we're here. We're here with you. It's as close as we can get. We can't get in you, but we can be next to you. We can be really close. And we can hear you. So Yongshan's attendant thought that he was a bystander in his story.

[18:30]

He thought he was a prop. He was just listening to the teacher and other students having conversations. But there are no bystanders. None of us is a bystander. Every one of you is the star of the show. This is your show. Each of us is the center of the emergence of the universe. It's just being born right where you sit. You are that point of view, that unique point of view. There's only one like you, one like me. And everything radiates out from here in this bubble of awareness I call me. And right now we've got kind of a bubble bath going on here. We're all popped together for a little while. It's wonderful. So... So for the two things I wanted to talk about tonight were really... The first thing I wanted to say something about was our workshop that we've been doing called Learning to... Help me, people.

[19:44]

Learning to sit. Learning to draw, learning to eat. Learning to see. We changed it to eat. But it was, yeah, learning to see. So anyway, we've been having a wonderful time with our master teacher, Christine Bailey. Where are you, Christine? Where are you? Oh, there you are. Thank you so much. And it's been just a lovely... Everyone has gotten an A. We all got an A in our final showing. I got an A-plus, actually, but... I think they were just being nice, weren't you? Yeah. Anyway, very kind people, very sweet mind we had. And so I really also, other than mentioning the workshop, I wanted to also really just proclaim once again what an amazing... spontaneous and creative act our lives really are.

[20:49]

I think that's all I ever talk about. It's like, isn't this amazing? What's happening here? I mean, that we're alive? I've been studying the Higgs boson. Isn't it amazing? I mean, energy turns into matter. Right? This little thing. Really little. And without that... I was talking to a physicist, and I said, so tell me about the Big Bang. That's what they're looking at, the micromilliseconds before the Big Bang. You know, what happened? And he said, actually, it wasn't a bang, it was a stretch. Oh. Big stretch. So it's a miracle that we're here. It's kind of an accident or something. A funny thing. And... And we ignore it a lot, don't we? And we kind of walk around like, oh, gosh. Something's wrong with me.

[21:51]

My bosons are not quite lined up, right? I don't know. I don't know. We have to kind of look again and again and again. Really look amazing, wonderful world. Drawing is good because it helps you to sort of look at things. Christine was telling us, a lot of her friends tell her that nobody looks at the world the way she does. You know, she's like walking around, going like all the lines in her hands and every little vein on a leaf. You know, she just sees the world in great detail. And drawing can help you to start seeing that way. So we recommend that you all consider drawing. So anyway... The reason I chose this koan, actually, was I was trying to think of a koan that had something to do with drawing, you know, in honor of the workshop. And so then I remembered that the rhinoceros koan had this last line about Zifu drawing a circle and writing the word rhino in it, which at the time I had originally found this koan, I had totally ignored because it didn't make any sense.

[23:02]

I was like, I didn't understand what that was. This time I feel like that's really the heart of this story, you know. What he did was a very creative act. It was fresh. It was clever. It was brave. He took action. He could have done something else, but he did that, and it's been passed on for hundreds of years. He wasn't paralyzed. The attendant was frozen. Bring me the rhinoceros. He just froze. But Zifu, out of his kindness for the attendant, for the teacher, and for the whole world, and for all of us, drew a big circle, like a cartoon. In fact, I drew one, too, because I thought it would be really a challenge to draw a rhinoceros. And it was. It looked like a German shepherd. And I put a horn on it, and it still did look like a German shepherd.

[24:07]

And then Christine told us, you can't draw things from memory very well. And she had us try to do it, and it was true. We couldn't. Everything we tried to draw from memory was really very amateurish, like a kid drawing stick figures. So I had a dictionary in my room, and they're Webster's, and there's a picture of a rhino. So I copied it, which is what artists do. They copy other people's art. And so here it is. Good, huh? I copied it. It looked just like that in the dictionary. So, anyway, it's a fan, too. Feels good. You can pass it over. Whoever has it when the class, a class, whatever this is, talk is over can keep it for a souvenir. So anyway, this is what our workshop has been doing.

[25:09]

We've been drawing circles and squiggles and squares and rocks and flowers and rhinoceroses and this creative act we have been creating with our imaginations, being very brave. So I think that the reason I like this story about Zifu at this time is that my understanding is that You know, something like this. You know, we're all born. We learn a lot of things. We believe most all of them until we don't. And then at that point, we're on our own. And we basically journey out into the world. You know, whether we stay home or travel, it doesn't really matter. But we go off in the world to try and figure out who we are, where we belong, what we're meant to do. You know, and I think all of us are on that journey and have been on that journey, will be on that journey, you know. to the end of our days. So... And, you know, while we're out there, things happen.

[26:16]

The world turns upside down. There's no way to avoid it. I know it's happened to all of you. Some of you, many, many times. The longer you live, the more often. My... I promised the tanto that I would honor your need to sleep, and I want to do that. So what will I build to here? The world turns upside down. Oh, so then something, when the world turns upside down, you know, as it does for us, that means something new can happen. And something like this monk drawing a circle in the air. That was new. That was fresh. That was a great relief, a magic trick that he did. It made me smile.

[27:16]

It makes me smile. When people are creative, like last night was a wonderful thing, all that creativity. So he wasn't afraid. And I think that's more... Actually, what I think is... He probably was afraid. I mean, I don't think fearlessness means you don't have fear. I think fearlessness means that you have less fear. Fearlessness. And that you just basically go with it, you know? Take it with you and you move anyway. And so that's what we all can do. We can all, you know, practice fearlessness and really come to express ourselves fully and to let each... of us being known by each of us. Be friends to each other. Help each other. This is why Shakyamuni Buddha was willing to teach. And this is why Suzuki Roshi came to America. And why all of these people, all of you, have helped to take care of Tassahara.

[28:21]

It matters. It matters so much that we have a place like this in the world for all of us to come. So thank you all for coming. being here. I have a final verse from this koan. It says, As the fan is broken, he seeks the rhinoceros. The word in the circle has a reason. Who would have known that the thousand-year light of the full moon would subtly make a pervasive, luminous spot of autumn? As the fan is broken, he seeks the rhinoceros. The word in the circle has a reason. Who would have known the thousand-year light of the full moon would subtly make a pervasive, luminous spot of autumn? Maybe a couple of questions and then we'll end. If anyone would like to bring up anything or ask anything. Just now?

[29:24]

Pervasive? subtly make a pervasive, luminous spot of autumn, like in the forest. In the present moment, the thousand-year light of the moon is the Shakyamuni Buddha, and the shining in the moon, this light, is right now. A thousand years, this light is shining right now, here in this room, on each of your faces, I assure you. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click Giving.

[30:21]

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