So, good morning everyone. This is the last day of the winter intensive and also of our five-day sishin. And for those of you who are not participating, I want to welcome you to Beginner's Mind Temple. Thank you. As some of you know, the theme of this intensive has been nature and experience, which is both a kind of an obvious and ambiguous topic. What is nature? What is experience? I think that ambiguity has arisen in the classes, in the talks, and all the various interpretations and applications of that topic. So there's been a wide view of Buddhist teachings, the natural world, the environment and the threats to its sustainability, images of nature as metaphor and symbol, and experience in practice and meditation, and wonder and the elements of the natural world that support our spiritual experience, and so on.

[01:27]

I think that Sashin has a tenderizing effect usually. I think the silence and the effort. So there's that atmosphere in the room and in the building these last few days and today. This morning we commemorated the pari nirvana or passing away of Shakyamuni Buddha. And I don't know about the other people who, when you listen to that story, there's, I always feel some emotion, some little teariness. So even though in Buddhist iconography, we sort of come up with this idea of eternal Buddha kind of hanging up in the heavens and always with us. The Parinavarana, Sutta says, All things in this world break up.

[02:31]

Even the Buddha without peer this day has passed on. So in the descriptions of the life of the Buddha, he is, before his realization and after his realization, he basically lives outdoors. That's where his home is, and also the monks and ascetics who he lives and practices with. And even during the rainy season, lay followers would invite the monks to stay in buildings and that sort of thing, but often they would stay in pavilions, sort of open pavilions that were not buildings. Also, he was born... in a grove of trees, and his mother held onto a tree to support her in her labor.

[03:34]

And during the days before his enlightenment, he remembers as a child sitting under a rose apple tree, quite secluded from sensual desires, secluded from unwholesome things, I had entered upon an abode in the first meditation, which is accompanied by thinking and exploring with happiness and pleasure born of seclusion. And he thought, might that be the way to enlightenment? And he decides that it is, and that memory is what inspires him to sit there in a certain way, And he experiences his enlightenment under a ficus tree, a bodhi tree. And as the story went this morning, he dies between two sala trees.

[04:41]

And these trees, when they bloom, have very fragrant blossoms. And in the Pari Nirvana, it says that the trees burst forth in an abundance of untimely blossoms which fell upon the Buddha's body, sprinkling it and covering it in homage. And nature participates in other ways. Animals, birds, and frogs pay attention to this passing of the Buddha, and the stars and planets shine brightly. So I wonder, you know, how do we remember how important this outdoors, life, and these trees are so significant in the life of the Buddha? And how do we remember that in terms of our own spiritual effort and seeking? In an earlier talk, I referred to Evelyn Underhill's description of the role of nature in spiritual development.

[05:53]

Visible nature as the medium whereby the self reaches out to the absolute is not rare in the history of mysticism. The mysterious vitality of trees, the silent magic of the forest, the strange and steady cycle of its life, possess in a peculiar degree this power of unleashing the human soul, are curiously friendly to its cravings. to its inarticulate needs. So this is part of what I've been addressing about climate change and the threat to the environment that we are causing, and in many ways don't really care about that. And it's not that not caring is because we're deficient in the ability to care, but because we benefit from the destruction. You know, it provides us... with so many comforts.

[06:59]

And these are basically our comfortable, convenient lifestyles and our access to water and food and light and fuel and so on. Electricity for our computers, everything, you know that. And I think our human nature tends both towards complacency and complacency and concern, and how we can bring those more together in how we see the world and care about it and see what our place in it, the impact, and how we can be responsible for that. So in a sense, you know, what are we losing? And what impact does that have on spiritual endeavor and experience, but actually, ultimately, the meaning of life and being alive?

[08:06]

So during a practice period or intensive practice, we have noon service every day, and there's usually a special chant that's in the theme or spirit. of the practice session. And the one we've been chanting is a fascicle from Ehei Dogen called Hoshou, or the nature of things. And many of you know this, but Dogen lived in 13th century Japan, and he is the founder of Soto Zen. So in one section of Hoshou, he gives a perspective of the nature of things as continuous. Shakyamuni Buddha said, such characteristics, such nature. So, flowers blooming and leaves falling are such nature. Yet ignorant people think that there could not be flowers blooming and leaves falling in the realm of the nature of things.

[09:16]

Bringing it up as others have said it, you should investigate it over and over again. There will be escape from before. The affirmation thoughts are not wrong thinking. They are just thoughts while not yet having understood. It is not that this thinking will be caused to disappear when one understands. The whole thinking of thinking of the nature of things is such an appearance. So what Dogen is often addressing in these somewhat repetitive and contradictory writings is the function or concept of emptiness. And you don't really need to know too much about emptiness, but he brings emptiness into our experiential, unreliable, and transformative context of our daily experience in life.

[10:22]

The images in Hasho are these flowers and leaves, and in other fascicles they are rivers and dew drops and oceans and mountains and twining vines and the moon and so on. And the quote from Shakyamuni Buddha is from the Lotus Sutra, so can't be sure he said it, but nevertheless, another translation is, form as it is. and nature as it is. Suzuki Roshi, in Send My Beginner's Mind, describes a perspective of emptiness. And he's talking about form is emptiness, emptiness is form. And then he brings it around and he says, form is form. You must be true to your own way until at last you actually come to the point where you see it as necessary to forget all about yourself.

[11:26]

Just to continue should be your purpose. Form is form, and you are you, and true emptiness will be realized in your practice. And the first time I read that, I wept. I understood something about it being a very deeply compassionate and understanding expression. of effort and vulnerability in this continuing situation. There's no break. In some sense, we think of the Buddhist intention to be to live in the present moment, but the present moment includes the past and the future. As I was saying, there's this or this complacency of imagining there's a place where we can step aside from our life is just not feasible. So what I think stopping means in spiritual practice and experience is to engage in it without fantasy or ignorance.

[12:39]

So Duggan says, the aforementioned... ignorant thoughts are not wrong thinking. They are just thoughts while not having yet understood. It is not that this thinking will be caused to disappear when one understands. So I think it's interesting that in the collections of early Buddhist teachings and discourses, there aren't that many allusions to the natural world. It's ethics and mind sort of exercises and analyses and philosophical and metaphysical topics. And this is very engaging and even can be sort of entertaining to think about how your mind works and how to work with these teachings to understand it. And it also can be difficult to study it and apply it and understand it and to teach it.

[13:44]

But what I think meditative experience helps is to clarify those teachings and to bring us again and again to a new level of ignorance that again unravels in a transformative way. And as I quoted Abba Tabora, he says, we can't finish with this life, no matter how hard we practice it. And of course, there are endings. The Buddha passes. We will pass. And they can bring a form of liberation as well as a sense of loss. And in the Parinirvana, it says, those monks who had not yet let go of their desires wept and tore their hair. raised their arms, threw themselves down, twisting and turning and crying out, the light of the world has gone out.

[14:54]

But those monks who were free of clinging, endured mindfully and clearly aware, weeping softly. So it's not that the ignorant monks are wrong for their dramatic grief. As Dogen says, you know, these aforementioned thoughts are not wrong thinking. They're just thoughts while not having yet understood. I mean, yes, you will be in a state of not understanding and it's not wrong. And perhaps these monks don't quite understand yet that they too will die and all the things around them will and that this is something in some way to be accommodated, not... or become sort of blasé about, but to accommodate it. And this living and applying practices and teachings, I think gives life vitality and our practice, vitality and meaning,

[16:11]

and enough ambiguity to be always unfolding in our humanly awkward way towards understanding or realization. The sutra says, what I have taught shall be your teacher. All living beings shall be your teacher. This bright world and your very mind itself shall be your teacher. So we have everything we need, but perhaps we want something more flattering. to our vanity, our dreams, our hopes, or our status, or something like that. But it's the Buddha's memory of himself as a child, sitting under a rose apple tree, quite secluded from sensual desires, that offers him the hint that opens into enlightenment. And I wonder how is it that sensual desires hinder us and how we sometimes purposely allow them to hinder us and not sort of feel what's underneath that we could examine and consider and see if we can develop our freedom in and through what's underneath.

[17:39]

those desires and also our aversions and our confusions. Can we allow ourselves to kind of sift down through all of that? And again, you know, this is what a practice like Sashin or a practice session like an intensive or practice period allows us to do. And it is a little awkward and it is very wonderful at the same time. So... Yesterday, Tova gave a talk during the sishin, and she read several poems that had a theme or a symbol from nature. And I found them very moving and poignant. And as I was thinking about the Buddha's parinirvana and about trees and nature, I was reminded of one of Shakespeare's sonnets that's related to trees and death. That time of year thou mayest in me behold, when yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang upon those boughs which shake against the cold, bare ruined choirs where late the sweet bird sang.

[18:58]

In me thou seest the twilight of such day, as after sunset fadeth in the west, which by and by black night doth take away, death second self. that seals up all in rest. In me thou seest the glowing of such fire, that on the ashes of his youth doth lie, as the deathbed whereon it must expire, consumed with that which it was nourished by. This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong, to love that well which thou must leave ere long. So this loving and understanding the world and the effort applied to that is a form of vitality and a gift to the natural world and all that it is sustained by and all that it sustains.

[20:03]

In our grief for the destruction of the environment, and our reluctance to renounce the comforts that that destruction provides, I think it's possible to develop a deep listening and understanding, offering our love and gratitude back to the environment on which we rely for air, water, fire, earth, and the combination of those elements that supports life and continuity. To love that well which thou must leave. Thank you very much.

[20:50]

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