Good evening. So tonight's passage from Dogen, from the only a Buddha and a Buddha, is a Buddha's practice is to practice in the same manner as the entire universe and all beings. If it is not practice with all beings, it is not a Buddha's practice. Tonight, as I was standing watching some of you walk by and thinking about this, I thought we are practicing with bats. There were many wonderful bats flying around in the sky, helping us with these flies, practicing with them. So... That's what we're doing.

[01:02]

We're practicing with all beings. We're practicing with whatever beings show up wherever we are. So obviously, right now, we're practicing with fire and smoke. And, you know, you've probably heard Steve Stuckey, who was the abbot during the 2008 fire, said, we're not really fighting fire, we're meeting fire. We're finding out what it is to practice with fire. So I had a few memories. I've been here for the three big fires so far, and now the fourth big fire. I've basically missed almost all the small fires. I wasn't here for the Campo Shed. I wasn't here for the Jamesburg Fire. I wasn't here for the fire that was just up Creek in June of 2013. There were a few small fires I was here for. But the big fires... Actually, I only actually met the fire face-to-face in the first one.

[02:08]

The other two, the one in 99 and 2008, actually, I was here and then was evacuated to Jamesburg and then drove over the road several times during each of those fires and saw where the fire had been. And sometimes where the fire still was, like there would be flaming trees alongside the road. I was never driving through fire. They don't let you do that. I wouldn't want to do that. But I did see, you know, I was in the midst of the fire. But that first one, you know, when I was a fairly new student, I was a fairly new student. I'd been at Tassajar for, it was my... Second summer, I guess. I'd been here some number of practice periods, five practice periods or something, second summer. And I was at Doan that summer. And back in those days when you were at Doan, there were three Doans.

[03:14]

There was an Eno and three Doans for the summer. And we did all the Doan jobs. People didn't volunteer to do Doan jobs. And we also... oversaw, like, the student dishes. There was no crew for student dishes, so we oversaw the student dishes and did them, if there wasn't anybody else to do them, and didn't really do much of anything else. That path, the path that goes in front of the kitchen, from the office all the way down to the dining room, had just been built by one of the other doans. And he was kind of our own little work leader. So we spent a lot of time raking that path. And if you ever want to know how to rake that path correctly, I can tell you, because we're not doing it very well. These days, we're obviously not doing it well. But even before we got distracted by a fire, we weren't taking really good care of that path. And we did that summer. And let me tell you, by August, I was so bored.

[04:15]

I was like, I don't think I can make it through this summer. And then the fire came, just like that. And each of those big fires was different than this one, were started by lightning storms. So in each of them, there were lots of fires around from the beginning of the event. There were, you know, different fires going on. This one was just started by a person, and therefore is like one fire moving toward us. So... Last time I lectured, I told you a little bit about we got evacuated, and then people kept coming back, and then they came in and they backburned, they called it then, on the other side of the creek so that we could have a safe place to go to. So here are a couple of my memories from when we came back in. I remember clearing with a whole bunch of people, trying to clear and make wider the Overlook Trail.

[05:15]

We were trying to make some kind of a fire perimeter. So we were up there on that hillside, you know, with our McLeods and just like some of you have been, trying to make that overlook trail wide enough to be a fire break of some sort. Actually, I think we did that before we were evacuated. And then when we came back in, I remember being up at the, you know, at the little tiny helicopter site, Can't even find anymore because it's so overgrown. It's up above the Ashes, Suzuki Ashes site. At that point, you had to climb over rocks and everything to get up there. But it was a helicopter site then. And some of us, I was assigned with a man named John Steiner, who none of you know, I think, but in his memory, I will say, we were assigned to be at night. We had night watchmen, because we didn't have all this... electronic or internet stuff about where the fire was.

[06:20]

So at night people would go to the high spots, various high spots around and look for it and sort of see where was the fire. So he and I spent a night up on the helicopter site as far out to the edge as we could get. And it was coming, that part of it was coming from the narrows up the valley. And we, could see it, you know, it would be just embers and stuff, and then you'd see it shoot up the canyons, just shoot up the canyons. And it was a ways down there, and it was taking its time, but it was a little exciting to be sitting up there and watching this, you know, move forward just little bit by little bit in the night, shooting up the canyons. We stayed, anyway, and watched it. And I remember my actual meeting with fire, fire fire, was very anticlimactic.

[07:25]

I was assigned to the lower garden detail. So we would stand, we didn't have the fence around the lower garden then, so we'd stand like on the road or in the garden with a shovel. And things, the fire went, that fire, that same fire came just across the top of Flag Rock. It slowed down, came just across the top of slide rock, and things would roll down, burning things, and we would run over it with a shovel and throw dirt on them. I guess while I was doing that or sleeping because I'd been up all night or something, other people like Keith helped light a backfire that the Forest Service helped us do a burnout from behind the hill cabins. So they had a lot of fire, and I never saw it. And then at some point we heard that Jamesburg was in danger of the fire coming to Jamesburg.

[08:29]

So a bunch of us jumped in vehicles. It was in the evening or maybe after dinner even. And we drove up the road to go to Jamesburg to... do clearing and things around Jamesburg, and it was dark because we could see there was just flames up on the ridge, lots of fire up there. So we turned around and came back, and the next day in the morning, a bunch of us, Baker Roshi, Richard Baker, was here, and he was along with Ted Marshall, our fire marshal, and a forest service guy who was kind of leading us, decided that some of us should hike out to Arroyo Seiko and then hitch a ride around to clear around Jamesburg. So I was the only woman for some reason. And we probably got a ride up to the horse pasture trail and then walked the horse pasture trail, you know, on out.

[09:38]

towards the Royal Seiko, and the horse pasture was, like, totally moonscape, just black and gray and some smoldering things going on as we walked through it. And we were sort of, maybe I've told this story before to you. I've told it before for sure, but I don't know about to you. So we walked, and it wasn't burnt all the way. There were... various places where it was still green. And when we were crossing, you know, where Willow Creek and Totsahara Creek come together, we stopped and had lunch, and that was not burnt there. And then it wasn't burned at the horse bridge. It wasn't burned at the horse bridge. We went across the horse bridge, and we were walking down the road, and we were in two groups, and we were walking groups. And down the road, the fast group, and we were in... was ahead, and two groups. The slow group, which I was part of, was behind. And the fast, we were walking along a race group with Joseco Road toward the campground at the head, and try to hitch a ride when we slow group, which I was this roar, part of just this roaring happening.

[10:53]

And the fast group came running back, and we're like, run, the fire's coming. We were in a not-burned area then, so we ran back. to where it was burnt. And then we walked very slowly back to Tasmania because it moved away from the road, and I didn't go on that. So those are my memories of the 1977 meet the fire, you know, how to meet the fire. So I've been thinking, you know, how does this practice go with meeting the fire or how, what does that mean? Practice with everything, with, you know, all beings. And how do we actually do that? And I don't know if this is right or not. I don't know if this is true, but my feeling is basically we, when we can, for some amount of time, we sit down and

[12:03]

and we try to get close to this being because we have to see with everything, how we are living with everything. You know that part in the Genjo Koan where it says if you're riding a boat and you look at the shore, you might think the shore is moving. But if you keep your eyes closely on the boat, then you see that the boat moves. So if we're looking around at everything, we tend to think, oh, there's me, and then there's all this stuff happening. Like, I was in the dining room or the kitchen or on the cabin crew, and now there's a fire. But it's me. I'm just, here I am doing this thing, and the world is changing. You know, the world has changed. Now I'm in the office, and instead of meeting guests, I'm whatever it is you're doing in there. You know, so we have this, like, looking out. That's our kind of normal way of experiencing, actually, not just... thinking about, but actually experiencing the world.

[13:05]

You know, like, here's me. Fine. You know, solid being. And there's the world. All this crazy stuff is happening in. And how am I going to live with it? And so in Zazen, we actually sit down and, like, turn our attention to the boat. You know, put our attention on the boat. And then what do we see when we put our attention on the boat? We see that the boat moves. And that... as Genjo Cohen says, nothing at all has unchanging self. Right? Okay, the boat moves, and the fire moves, and the world moves, and nothing at all has unchanging self. Okay? So, basically, I think the question that raises for us is which is always there but not usually conscious, is what can I rely on?

[14:07]

If everything has an unchanging self, you know, so I think usually that question doesn't come up because we're just saying, well, there's everything and it's happening, but here's me. Okay, how am I going to take care of me? Well, I'm going to think about it. I'm going to decide what to do. I'm going to, you know, I have my plan of how to take care of me, and sometimes it's working better than other times, but basically I know, not because I'm thinking it, because unconsciously I'm, like, trying to make it work. In my various ways, I, you know, I might decide, oh, I have to rely on something else, like, you know, I need a good partner so I can rely on them, or I need a good job, or... I need a good fire chief or, you know, I need the forest service, you know, but unconsciously basically we're saying, okay, I need to figure out what can I rely on. So when we sit down in Zazen and we actually look at the boat and we see that the boat moves, you know, we're sitting there in Zazen, kind of whether we notice it or not, we're getting at that, okay, I'm not so solid, you know, I'm like...

[15:22]

Things are moving around over here and it's not so trustworthy. I think that's really, that's the reality that strikes us is, oh, I'm putting my faith in this. Suspiciously insecure. When we actually look at that, then we also perhaps notice that this has always been the case, and yet life has gone on. We have gotten this far, and day by day things are happening, and there's some way that being in touch with that part of reality, this everything has unchanging self, everything is moving, everything is dependent, actually is uh it's not comforting exactly but it's like solid like oh that's the way life is can i live that way and we we just like get naturally without thinking about it it's not done by our thinking but just by seeing that's the way life is we get more in line with reality we

[16:51]

can't quite as wholeheartedly be trying to control everything and think, that's the way I'm going to make it work. We're more there for the way things are actually working, how we're actually practicing with everything. You know, in Buddhism we call it, you know, taking refuge in Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. That's one way of describing it. And there are many things that can be said about that. about each one of those. It's a full lifetime study, but one kind of simple way that I think of it is taking refuge in Sangha can be pretty clear. We are definitely taking refuge in ourselves, in each other. Here we are living with each other day by day, sometimes not liking every part of that, but but at the same time really dedicating ourselves to helping each other and pasajara.

[17:58]

And so we're taking refuge in each other. That's pretty obvious, I think. At least some of the time it's obvious. That sangha can actually be expanded as your faith or trust can stand it to include everything. Everything can be your sangha because, in fact, we are living with everything and we are dependent on everything. And we are dependent not just for our survival, but for the way we are. The way that I function as a human being is dependent upon you, and it's also dependent upon... You know, many, many, many, many, many people and things. You can name them yourselves. And, you know, some of them you're like, oh, great. And some you're like, oh, no. I'm dependent on, meaning made by, these events.

[19:03]

But also making these events. So taking refuge in Sangha. Taking refuge in this Sangha. Taking refuge if we're able or when we are able to. with the whole world sangha. Taking refuge in Buddha, I like to think taking refuge is the same thing, really. It's like taking refuge in the universe, taking refuge in a universe that is dependently co-arisen, and taking refuge in Dharma is the same thing again. It's like the teaching that everything is, what did I just say that it says in the Goan, Genjo Goan? Dependently co-arisen. Dependently co-arisen, but the way it says in the Genjokan about the boat. Unchanging. Nothing is unchanging. Nothing has unchanging self. So the Dharma is that. Nothing has unchanging self.

[20:06]

Everything is changing and everything is dependently co-arisen. Everything is making everything. So there's this universe that's functioning that way. There's this dharma that is telling us that that's the way it's functioning because otherwise we might not have thought about it. We might not have noticed it. You have to be kind of still to actually notice, oh, this is how it's happening. And we can get there. It's not like a deep samadhi that only sages can get to. We can actually see it. but we might have been stuck in our idea of how things are working, but here the Dharma is like this gift, like, oh, see if you notice that everything's changing. See if you notice that everything's making everything else, that we're actualized by all, by myriad things.

[21:06]

And then this Sangha of beings that are actually living in that world, and some of them... wonder of wonders, and thank goodness, are actually trying to live in that way, trying to live in the way, doing a Buddhist practice, practicing with all beings, doing the same practice that all beings are doing. So I think that this practice we're doing, you know, where we go and we sit some and then we live with other beings, here we're... lucky enough to be living with other beings that are trying to live in harmony with that, this is how it functions. It's actually that we get a little taste of reality. We get broken out of our idea of, oh, I'm making my life work, or I'm not making my life work, or I can't make my life work. And we see a little bit, oh, life is working, and I'm part of it.

[22:12]

And there's a kind of trust or a kind of trust or settledness that happens from that. And then things, you know, things like the summer guest season or like a fire in preparation for a fire happen. And we may think, how is this practice? Can't really see how it's practiced. And yet, you know, in some ways I think, both the summer and then to an even greater extent, the fire, are more like Japanese monasteries than like our normal monastery. Now, I've never been to a Japanese monastery, so this might not be true, but what I've heard about them is that it's much less like time to think and question, why are we doing this? Well, should it really be like that? It's just like, do it, [...] do it. get up, do it, you know, get up, you know, do it, you know, do it, do the whole thing, just don't question it, just do it.

[23:24]

So there's a kind of breaking through our, I'm going to, I need, wait a minute, wait a minute, I need to figure this out. Is this the right thing to do? Why would we get up at that time of the night? Well, why would we sit for that amount of time? Well, why would I have to work in the dining room? Well, what good is this, you know? How does this work? Is this zazen worth anything? And, you know, I've heard in Japanese monasteries, it's just like, fine. If you want to find out how... Welcome back, Yvonne. Welcome back, Michael. If you want to find out how does this work or does this work, you just do it. It's a normal way. This is kind of what this is. Not so much time. Maybe some of you are questioning, but I don't get the sense that very many people are really questioning. I mean, some people question a little bit.

[24:27]

Should I still be here? Why do they get to stay and I have to leave? But mostly, we're all kind of just absorbed in what we're doing. And there may be a few minutes of for time to question, but a lot of it is like, okay, do the next thing, do the next thing. And again, we might say that that's the practice of letting go of ideas, but I think it's also the practice of trust what you're trusting. You know, don't have time to figure out how am I going to make this work. It's actually admit that how out of control things are. You know, have your nose pushed into how out of control things are. And certainly the fire is an amazing place to see that, right? And it's not then if things are out of control that we just give up and float along with it.

[25:31]

No, we use everything that we've got to meet it accurately. And yet... while we're making all our contingency plans and, you know, training and everything, it's pretty clear we don't know exactly what's happening. So still, we'll meet it. We'll meet it. And then as we do that, our settledness, our trust grows because that's reality, because it's not some made-up. Oh, and then we'll, you know, I'll get my doctor's degree and I'll... meet the perfect person. It's like, not that you won't do that too, but the reality that's here right now, we're actually testing, can I live like this? Can I live in this reality instead of thinking about it? Okay, stop there. Let's see what time it is. Do you have anything you want to say? Oh, there's the clock, which I can see this one much better.

[26:33]

8.30, just like she said. Yes. Is there anything any of you would like to say or ask? So, do you feel that the questioning, is it always just intrinsically separation, just because there's... It's just like a first thought and then you're back to physical activity. Is a thought always resistance? Is a thought always selfing? Is a thought always separation from what's going on? No, I don't think always. I don't think always. Because, you know, I think we are thinking beings and sometimes the thought is like, oh, do that. Or, wow, I was just separating. Yeah. You know, we might have that thought like, oh, I was just separating myself. That was suffering.

[27:37]

What I was just doing was suffering. Sometimes we don't realize that until we have that thought that it was. So thoughts can be useful, but a lot of the way that we get embroiled in thoughts is, you know, it's just kind of a rut, just like doing it. And I think it's a kind of... Desperation of... And it doesn't always feel desperate, so sometimes maybe it's just habit, but sometimes it's like, I really can't... I really want to be in control. It's a desperate attempt to make things happen in a right way without noticing, oh, actually... I can't do what I'm trying to do. I'm going to have to live with the unknownness of it, of what is the right thing.

[28:40]

And still, you know, I have to act. I have to act. How do you feel that the habit, habitual thinking, helps keep us from experiencing a certainty that is life? How that habitual thinking keeps us from experiencing the uncertainty in this life? Well, just like that, right? That's one of the things it does. It lets us pretend like when I figure this out, finally it'll be okay. So we just keep that little bit of space between us. We keep looking out there like, what am I going to do? What am I going to do? And we don't notice, oh, it's all in motion. It's happening. And we might have this question, like, okay, I'm going to have to do something. There it is, and I don't know what it is yet. Fine. And yet we keep doing, and when we get there, maybe we help decide what we're going to do, along with everything else.

[29:48]

Thank you. Yes, Muhammad. I've been reading also one of those 30 verses. The teacher who she's coming to? Yes. And he talks about watching phenomena and being upright with it. Is that the sort of thing you're trying to convey? To us being upright no matter what the phenomena? No matter what the phenomena? Right. Yes. I mean, being... Go ahead. You want to say something else? I mean, how does that... How does one do that now? you become afraid, you become anxious, et cetera, et cetera. It's not really a lot of your conscious ability to do it. Well, I don't think being upright means that you don't become afraid or anxious, that you don't have any feelings. You can basically have any feeling that you have and still you stay actually upright.

[30:55]

But sometimes you might need to be laying down upright. Or you might even have to bend over and still try to be like, okay. I think it's basically staying with it instead of trying to get away from it. We put a lot of effort into various ways of getting away from it, like distracting ourselves or getting angry is basically a way to try to get away from our own feeling. almost always like we're having some uncomfortable feeling and we think if you weren't talking to me like this, I wouldn't be having this feeling. So get away from me. So it's just, it's like finding yourself and letting yourself have the feeling that you're having, whether it's anxiety or, I mean, I don't mean to make it sound like it's simple. Sometimes it's really hard because our feelings kind of rock us, but it doesn't mean not having the feeling.

[31:58]

So I have a hard time fully accepting that everything's changing. Because I'm always looking for something that's not. And it seems that maybe the dharma would be the one thing that's not changing. Not changing. Maybe. Well, I don't think so, you know. I think the dharma... is our human way, or Buddha's human way, but passed down to us, of describing the nature of reality. So it's described a little differently in different countries. It's actually described fairly differently here than the various places that it came to us from. It's described often in a much more psychological way here than... It isn't always psychological here, but we have a lot more psychological things in it because we seem to think that way.

[33:07]

Also, you know, there's a lot more, you know, of diversity of people practicing, men and women, lay people and priests, priests in our lineage, but monks in other lineages. Yeah. And that actually changes something about it. So then the core of the Dharma, this everything is changing, everything is dependent upon each other. Yeah, you could say that change is the only thing that doesn't change, but it's not real comforting if you're looking for something that doesn't change. So yeah, I think noticing doesn't change. That's a good place to start. It's like, okay, there's that feeling. Can I be upright with that? Can I stay close to it, not try to get rid of it, but not hold on to it like it's the truth either?

[34:10]

And that's where freedom is, I think. Can we actually be with who we are right now and let it change? I would look at the mountains. Could you talk a little bit louder? So before the fire, I would look at the mountains here and they were always something that was completely safe for me, something I could lose myself in that I felt proud of. And now I look up at the mountains and I see the smoke and I see this potential to harm me. And there's something that wants to feel connected to this fire, to feel not separate from the mountains again. And yeah, I don't know how to do that. Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting. Yeah, we'll see how it comes to us this time.

[35:14]

You know, if you're just needing to stand in the lower garden and throw dirt on a yucca root that is rolled down, you may feel all the way through it like, okay, I can do this, right? If it gets more intense, Still, I'll bet when you're doing it, you will feel part of it. And then I have to say, after a fire, like especially the next spring, it's the most amazing thing. You know, it's just like the wildflower, totally different wildflowers come after a fire, and they're dense and amazing. So I hope that the fire gets close enough that we can actually experience that, not right in Tassajara, but all around it. And, uh, also, you know, it's amazing if it burns strongly enough so you can actually see like the contours of the rocks and the whole process is, it's, I think you will find that your, um, experience, your relationship with the mountains is just grown by leaps and bounds through this, including the kind of like fear of it.

[36:25]

I mean, anything that's, um, close enough to us has the potential to hurt us. If you have a child, you're in real danger. If you have a lover, sorry, it just makes you vulnerable. So now the mountains, there they are, you're close enough to them that their nature is like, oh, I need to be a little bit careful. I need to do this well. not just like wander off into the mountains, right? But actually know where am I going and how am I going to relate with it? Yeah. Okay. Thank you all very much. And thank you so much for being here and taking care of you all very much. And thank you so much for being here and taking care of me and each other and Tassajara. May our intention be fully established to agree in place.

[37:37]

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