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. Good morning. From the Book of Serenity, 100 Zen Dialogues. This is Case 25. Yang Guan's Rhinoceros Fan. Oceans of lands without bounds are not apart from right here. The events of infinite eons past are in the immediate present. Try to make her present it face to face and she won't be able to bring it out into the wind.

[01:02]

But tell me, Where is the fault? One day, Yang Guan called to his attendant, bring me the rhinoceros fan. The attendant said, the fan is broken. Yang Guan said, well then, bring me back the rhinoceros. The attendant had no reply. Zifu drew a circle. and wrote the word rhino in it. So I have just come back to Green Gulch from being at Tassajara for five days. I was co-leading a retreat with an art teacher by the name of Christine Bailey, who last year we taught and we hope to do so again in the summers to come.

[02:12]

We have a very nice time teaching together. And we call our workshop Learning to Sit, Learning to Draw, and Learning to See. So any of you who have ever had this urge to learn how to draw, or to sit, or to see, are very welcome to come and to join us in these explorations. So Tassahara is kind of an amazing experience. For those of you who haven't been there, how many of you haven't been there? Oh, quite a few. So many of us at Zen Center have spent time in monastic training at Tassahara. most of us who are still here, maybe quite a few years. I was there in the 1980s for about three years. And even now, when I go back, I feel that I'm going home.

[03:14]

So I wanted to think about that a bit while I was there this time. And it was interesting to me that a number of the people who had never been there before, who had come for the first time, also said that they had this feeling of coming home. Home to something in themselves that they hadn't experienced for a very long time. So I wondered what that might be, and I thought it might have something to do with all of the accessories that they had left in their cars. You know, the cell phone and the computers. And even before that, the house and the job and the car itself. All these many ways that we have created to make ourselves feel connected, to feel safe, to feel successful, and to stay very, very busy.

[04:20]

So one of the things that happens at Tassajara is that right away you realize you don't really need anything except some loose-fitting clothing and a towel. And then you find pretty quickly that your experience through the day is taking place between your sensory organs and the environment. And then there are these choices you need to make. Do I take another bath? go have something to eat? Do I take a nap? Do I go for a swim? You know, it's kind of hard in that way. So I watched myself turn into a human puddle after about two days. You know, it's a very soothing place and a very soothing way to live, particularly in the summer when it's so warm. It's very hot there, too. So even though I'm not usually walking very quickly anyway, I really slowed down when I got to Tassajara.

[05:31]

And quite a few times, I'd just simply stop. And I'd look at this amazing flower or rock or the water running by in the creek. My fingers. It helped to have a sketch pad, and people didn't think I was too strange. And I'd sit there for a long time. In fact, I spent most of one morning drawing my left hand. And I didn't even get close to how much detail is there. If you ever spend time looking at parts of your body, it's amazing. The whole universe is there. So I really didn't know. I couldn't figure out if it was the food or the heat or the graciousness of the monks or the morning meditation that was creating for all of us this very comfortable and soothing effect.

[06:35]

And it seemed to really deepen as we continued our workshop and learning to draw. As part of the invitation in drawing is that you... really look at what you're facing. You really try to see what it is that you're trying to draw. And oftentimes the drawing teachers will say, well, does that look like that? No. Okay, well, keep going. No. You want it to really look like what you're seeing, which invites you into this activity we call seeing. It's also true for people who really listen deeply to what they're hearing or taste what they're eating. feel what they're touching. We call it, you know, coming to our senses. When we're kind of a little crazed, then we come to our senses, come back into our relationship to the physical world, through our body, through our sense organs. Very comforting, coming home. So, you know, whether it's intended or not,

[07:45]

Places like Tassajara and Green Gulch as well, although we lack the heat and the hot springs, but still, you know, this is a place that's intended to provide us with an opportunity to engage in what the Buddha called mindfulness practices. Mindful of the body. That's the easiest one for us to perceive. Mindful of our feelings. How are you feeling? What are you feeling? Mindful of our thoughts. It's a little harder to stay mindful of what you're thinking. Or mindful of the elements of your existence, which is basically everything else. All of the textures and qualities that go into making our feelings, our physical sensations, and our thoughts. So while I was at Tassajara, I was asked to give a talk. And... I chose to speak about mindfulness of feelings.

[08:46]

In particular, I decided to talk about fear. And that may seem a little odd, given what I just described. Because most of the time, I wasn't feeling in any danger at all. In fact, the word fear, which I looked up, is an old English word that means about to be attacked. Under attack. Eminent. So it also brought to mind this body memory or body experience of fear, this verse that my grandmother used to recite to me when I was little that I never liked at all. It was, there was a man upon the stair, a little man who wasn't there. Wasn't there again today. Oh, how I wish he'd go away. Fear's kind of like that.

[09:51]

I don't know where it's coming from. It's about the future. Something not yet happening. When things are happening, I'm not so afraid. We've all been in maybe car accidents or something stunning has happened to us, fell off our bike or whatever. That's not scary. You're just awake. I'm ready, ready to catch this. But fear is about something that hasn't happened yet. Something we imagine. And yet it's one of the most powerful and amazing forces in our lives. In fact, it can determine the course of our lives. And certainly in many cases, I know how that's been so for me. Various things I didn't do because I was afraid. I didn't study film in college. I wanted to. Kind of funny. So I wanted to begin this discussion of fear by giving a little bit of background from Buddhist teaching, just a little theory.

[11:07]

Sometimes I worry that this Buddhist theory sounds like word problems or something that I often find myself like, oh no, not theory. But just a little bit. Here's a little bit. So what the Buddha said is that basically this that I call myself is really made up of many parts. It's a composite made up of parts. most of which we learned to name when we were very little, you know, eyes and ears and nose, tongue, body, mind. So that's what we mean when we say me, when I say myself. And then he also said that there are of those many parts, and as we know, there are so many more names than when we were children. If you're a physician or if you're a physicist, there are so many parts of It's kind of like beyond comprehension.

[12:12]

But the Buddha said there are only five parts that you really have to understand and study and realize in order to become free. So these five are your body or form. And then on the other side is your mind, your consciousness, your awareness. You can imagine that as the... bubble that follows you around all through the day, the bubble of awareness, like Glinda the Good. We all have a bubble of awareness, you know. Right now, we've all put them together. And here we are. Bubble bath. So... Consciousness, awareness, and the body are the two mains, kind of like a little sandwich, the two main parts. And in between are these very important elements of our experience. The first is feelings. The second is perception.

[13:12]

And the third is impulse. So feelings is, you know, I've got a body and I have some feelings. Feelings can be positive, negative, or neutral. It's just three flavors. I like it. I don't like it, or I'm not sure. Perception is what we think we see. What we think we see. So what we think we see results in a feeling. If I see a friend, I feel good. I go toward my friend. If I see someone I don't like, I don't feel good. I go the other way. It's kind of that simple. I like it, I don't like it, I'm not sure. The third one is the one that's called impulse, which is karma, action. So based on our feelings, based on what we think we see, we take action. We move away, we move toward. It's really just like that. And these five parts of the self are what drive our lives.

[14:18]

All the time. Round and around and around. Moving toward, moving away. or hesitating, because we're not sure. So the Buddha called these five the heaps, or the skandhas, the collection that makes up the self. I think those of you who've heard the Heart Sutra before, particularly the residents who've chanted it daily, the Heart Sutra really emphasizes the importance of these five heaps for purposes of our becoming free of the feelings we have of being trapped, feelings of fear, the feelings of being out of control. It says, Avalokiteshvara, the bodhisattva of compassion, when practicing deeply, when concentrated on wisdom, the teaching of the Buddha, clearly saw, perceived, that all five heaps, skandhas, are empty.

[15:19]

empty. They're an illusion. It's a trick. It's a magic trick. Like the little man who wasn't there. He wasn't there again today. Oh, how I wish he'd go away. Well, he does. Every moment. And then he's back again. Tricky guy. So the main purpose of breaking this self down into parts in terms of the Buddhist teaching, is that when we break it down into parts, we can get some kind of sense moving away from the impression we usually carry of being a singularity, of being defensible, and of being real. I think I'm here. I think my boundaries are very good. And I really believe that. And I will defend myself. Most of us to the death. self-protection.

[16:24]

So that's kind of normal. That's a normal way. Buddha wasn't very normal. He was kind of abnormal. He gave that up. He stopped wearing armor. He walked barefoot and unafraid. He wasn't thinking he was about to be attacked. And yet, when he woke up, he realized that all of his troubles as a human being had to do with this fantasy he'd been having of himself. He believed that he was a handsome young prince, and he believed that he had needs that were very powerful and very strong. His needs, in his case, were to be exempt from old age, sickness, and death. He was terrified of those. That's what drove him into a spiritual quest, his fear of aging, sickness, and death.

[17:25]

And he needed to find out how to accomplish his needs, but he had no idea. So he sat down. He sat down and began to study the workings of his mind, the details of his experience. And that's when he was able to to wake up and become free. So it was fear that drove him into this effort to awaken. He didn't know he would awaken. He hadn't dreamed of that. He dreamt of somehow becoming eternal. So among these three kinds of feelings that we have, the one I... going to talk about called fear is in the hate column. It's an aversion. The two other feelings, greed is an attraction, a lust, a desire, got to get it.

[18:31]

And the last is this confusion, which is, I really don't know what I want. I can't figure it out. Greed, hate, and delusion, these are the primary drivers of our lives. When Zen Master Dogen, who many centuries later came, himself awakened, he recommended to his students, to all of us, that we study ourselves pretty much all the time. You know, which is probably not a bad idea since there we are all the time, you know, doing these things we do. So why don't we just go ahead and pay close attention to what we're doing all the time? What's up? What's happening? What am I thinking? What am I feeling? How's my body doing? Am I dreaming? Am I here? Where am I? Continuous practice. And he said that if we make this great effort to study ourself, it will begin to loosen some of the hypnotic power that this belief we have in ourself has over us, creating us.

[19:43]

So by paying attention, you know, that little man gets kind of nervous. Who's looking at me? So we're looking in and out, exploring, very deeply curious. What's happening here? To study the Buddha way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be actualized by the myriad things, by the rocks and the trees and the flowers and the running water, by the fingers of your left hand. When actualized by myriad things, your body and mind, as well as the body and mind of others, drops away. Like that. Drops away. Moment by moment. Drops away. No trace of realization remains, and this no trace continues endlessly. No trace.

[20:46]

So maybe the little man is there after all. It's just that he's smiling. He's smiling. So this exploration I did around fear, I... I found this koan that I thought was really helpful, and I wanted to bring that up again this morning and tell you a little bit about some of the thoughts I had around my own experiences of being afraid. The first time I ever gave a Dharma talk was about 25 years ago, and at that time I was the Eno here at Green Bulge Farm. The Eno sits over there. That's the Eno. She looks comfortable, doesn't she? Yeah. In fact, she's sleeping. Oh, she wasn't sleeping. She's my student. So that's a very comfortable... She could be sleeping because it's a very comfortable position to be in, right?

[21:56]

So the Eno has the job of inviting speakers to give talks. So one Wednesday evening, I couldn't find anyone... to give the talk. Reb was away, Norman was away, Blanche was away, Linda was away. So I called Mel Weitzman over in Berkeley and I said, Mel, I need a speaker for tonight. Can you please come and give the talk? And Mel said, you do it. And I said, Mel, I don't give Dharma talks. And he said, you do now. So this was one of those moments that I think all of us have experienced when the world kind of turns upside down. And it's kind of a funny moment because really there's no special sound and nothing really changed. I'm still standing there holding the phone. But my insides got very dense and my mind just started racing like a little mouse in a wheel.

[22:58]

I've got to get out of here. I've got to get out of here. Something terrible just happened. So until that day, my life had been very pleasant. I had been at Zen Center for about 10 years. I'd worked at Green's and at the bakery. I'd gone to Tassajara and enjoyed being a monk. And I came back here to Green Gulch, and I was the Eno. And it was wonderful. I had good friends and plenty of solitude, excellent food, a little cell to live in. perfect life. And then Mel, you know, Mel did this thing to me and all of a sudden I found myself staring into this darkened chamber where among all the other scary things I had sequestered my fear of public speaking. So many of you know, but some of you don't, that there is actually a list of five fears in Buddhism.

[24:06]

And one of them, the first one, is fear of death. The second is the fear of losing your reputation. The third is the fear of losing your livelihood, destitution. The fourth is the fear of losing your mind. And the fifth is the fear of public speaking. I'm not kidding. So at least I knew I wasn't alone. in having this fear. So someone once said about Zen Center that we're a bunch of mystics and introverts, you know. I thought, well, that sounds about right. I mean, who would want to go to a monastery who's fond of public speaking or sales or anything like that, you know? We have very few extroverts among us, but we need them.

[25:08]

They really keep us glued together. You know, the introverts would just kind of wander off if they weren't... So anyway, I think I went into shock because what I remember doing next was going to the library and pulling a number of books off the shelves. And I took this stack back to my room and I put them on my desk and stared at them. And I... I don't know if I thought maybe osmosis would, you know, bring all that information into me so that I could have something to say that night. But, you know, that wasn't working, so I took one of the books and I opened it. It was the Book of Serenity. And I opened it the way you might open the I Ching, you know, like looking for a sign. And sure enough, I opened it to page 108. 108 is an auspicious number in Buddhism. It's the number of times we hit the bell on New Year, and it's the number of beads on a mala.

[26:12]

And I didn't really know why 108 was important, so I googled it just before I came down here. Now I know why, and it's not that important. So... Anyway, but I did read the koan. I thought, well, this is a sign. So I read this koan, and it was the one about Yang Guan and the rhinoceros fan. And I thought, this is exactly what just happened to me. Yang Guan says to his attendant, bring me the rhinoceros fan. Mel says to me, you give the talk. The attendant says, the fan is broken. I say to Mel, I don't give talks. Yangshan says to his attendant, well, then bring me the rhinoceros. And Mel says to me, you do now. It was amazing. I thought, wow, you know. What a gift. What a gift. Something I could talk about. So what Mel had done in his very lighthearted Zen masterly way was, first of all, to scare me.

[27:24]

And then to knock on the door and invite me to come out and play. With all of my fears, as of course one must. He knew that he couldn't make me come out. And he also knew he couldn't make me give the talk. He also knew that I'd been hiding for a number of years, as many of us do. And I knew that... it was time to either come out or to risk never coming out at all. There's a famous image in Zen of the mother hen pecking at the egg. It's just the image of Zen training. The teacher pecks at the egg, but as we all know, the chick has to peck back or risk dying in there. You have to put energy into meeting that request when it comes. And it seems to me that that impulse to be born is so much stronger than the fear, which is why we have lots of chickens, lots of Zen teachers.

[28:34]

Eventually, the response will come. We do want to be born. We do want to come out from hiding. So I've come to appreciate Zen training more as Zen learning. Because it's up to each of us to find our way out and to respond when we're called. No one can pull us out of that. It's like those Chinese finger puzzles. If you don't stop resisting, your fingers will just stay stuck in there. You'll have to let go. So... Some years later, I, you know, these things take a while. It's not like that was, you know, when I was done with it. Transformations of our lives take quite some time, some kind of deep time and repetition. So I had, you know, done more lectures over the years, and I went into therapy.

[29:39]

That was good. And I said one time to my therapist, you know, I have to give the Sunday lecture. And my therapist said, you have to give the Sunday lecture. do you want to give the Sunday lecture? And, you know, I really had to think about that. Do I want to give the talk? And I thought, yeah, I do, but I'm afraid. I'm afraid. And then he said, ships are safe in the harbor, but that's not what they're made for. So this is a really important point to me that I need to ask myself over and over again, do I want to sit zazen? Do I want to live in community? Do I want to teach? Do I want to give a talk? Do I want to learn how to draw? And so far, yes, I do. And am I afraid? Sometimes. But it's not that important anymore.

[30:42]

It's just part of the deal. You know, we can't really come home if we don't come home with all of ourselves, with all of our parts, with our fear and our lust and our boredom. You know, it's like cans tied to a cat's tail. That's what drives us and motivates us. It's what got the young Buddha to sit under the tree. He was afraid. It got him to do something. His karma changed his actions. was to look closely at himself and to see where he was creating this fantasy and this trap. And then he woke up, making it worth all that trouble. So even though Mel had been kind enough to knock on the door, it was really the story of the rhinoceros fan that allowed the door to open more than just a crack. So I think it's really important for all of us when the world turns upside down.

[31:48]

And these transformations take place. And it allows us to begin the process of turning away from the dark and toward the light of benefiting others. The darkness is self-concern. It's all about me. And the light is when we turn that effort toward the rest of the world as self. It's all about you. What can I do? How can I help? How can I help? And as the Buddha himself realized, his life's work was being there for you, and that you're there for him, and what could be better than that? Being there for each other. I don't know if you've all heard the story of the difference between heaven and hell, but in hell there's a banquet table... covered with delicious food, and everyone has a bowl and a set of chopsticks that are very, very long. And you can only eat with the chopsticks, but they're too long to get the food into your mouth. So in hell, everyone's starving.

[32:52]

In heaven, same scene, only everyone is feeding the person across from them. So... turning the world upside down is not something that we can do on our own. Because we are not on our own, we are in relationship with everything and everyone. So we need help, we need support, we need accidents, we need mistakes, we need this kind of revolution to help free us. Even when we're hiding, you know, we're hiding from somebody else. When my daughter was about five, our cat, our beautiful cat, died. And she found it. It was behind her dresser. And she was so upset. And then I couldn't find her. I didn't know where she'd gone.

[33:54]

And then I saw that she had crawled under her bed. So I looked under there, and I wasn't sure what to do. So... Grace and I went out and we dug a hole in the yard and wrapped the cat in silk cloth. And I put on my robes and carried the cat, and Grace rang the bell, and we walked around the yard in a circle chanting Enmeji Gukranangyo, to the Bodhisattva of Compassion. And after a while, Sabrina came out and she stood at the door. And so I took her hand and we walked over and we put the cat in the hole. And covered it with dirt and flowers and bowed. And then she went back in the house to play. So, you know, we don't know what to do. We don't know what to do. We're all magicians, so we just do something. We put on a show. We put on our outfits and we make a show of some kind.

[34:57]

And sometimes it works well and sometimes, I don't know. Can't really tell. But anyway, do something. Do something. So Yongshan's attendant thought that he was a bystander. He was like a prop sitting there watching these other people have conversations until the teacher turned to him. Give me my rhinoceros fan. It's broken. Well then give me the rhinoceros. So For a long time, I overlooked the last line of this koan. I thought that was the important part about the fan and the rhinoceros. But then I realized that Zifu drawing the circle and writing the word rhino was really the heart of how I came to understand this story. Because when the world turns upside down, something new can happen.

[36:01]

You know, all of us were born, we learned a bunch of stuff, we believed it, and then we didn't. And at that point, we had to go out, you know, whether we were afraid or not, and find out who we are and where we belong. And many times the world has turned upside down for all of us. I know that's true. And as we get older, it happens more often. Those calls in the night, you know, someone we love is in trouble or has died. But then something new can appear. You know, like the circle with the word rhino in it. You know, where'd that come from? Well, it came from Zifu, who, whether he was afraid or not, we don't know. But he did something, you know, out of love for his teacher, out of love for the attendant, for Buddhist practice, for his own creative energy. He made a gesture. And it's been recorded for hundreds of years.

[37:05]

Just that simple. Do something. Try to help. So I think this is where our hope lies for transformation, you know, that drastic things do happen in our lives, but if they didn't, we could never get out of the place where we're stuck, where we reside with our fears. You know, it's because the world turns upside down that something fresh and new can be born inside of us. So two weeks ago I was visiting up in Mendocino, and we went to a cafe. And in the bathroom they had decorated the walls with calendar pages from a Zen calendar. And the one I remember said, Zen is what happens after the talk. So please, all of you, have a very nice day. Thank you very much. Please help us to continue to realize and actualize the practice of giving by offering your financial support.

[38:26]

For more information, visit sfzc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[38:35]

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