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, everybody. And welcome to Green Gulch Farm. Welcome to Green Dragon Temple. particularly to those who are here for the first time. May I see a show of hands who is here for the first time? Very welcome. So my name is Anna Thorn, and I am the Tanto, in the role of Tanto right now, very new to me. The Tanto has the function to take care of the practice. The Tanto is the head of practice.

[01:00]

to take care of everybody's practicing the path, and also for the community to practice together as one practice body, however that might arise. So at this time we are, as usual, in a deep transition time. This time it's a seasonal transition. We just finished the spring practice period last week, on Tuesday. And the summer is about to begin. The new apprentices for the farm and garden and grounds arrived. So welcome to the new apprentices. And I think this is a time to remember what we are here for, why we came to this place, to remember our commitment, to remember our vows, and to come home to our true selves and also to completely leave home at the same time.

[02:23]

So coming home to ourselves opens a reservoir of joyful being with our surroundings. We often forget that we need to pause, that we need to stop, that we need to step back, that we need to give space and time to be with an open landscape or to be with the ocean or to be with something that is not reached by any measurements. I think that's one aspect of us gathering here. This is a time for some of us to settle and settle anew, to find our seat in meditation.

[03:25]

For some of us, it's the time to make a strong effort to continue practicing. For some of us, this is the time to practice the bodhisattva vows, which are beings are numberless. I vow to save them, to liberate them. Delusions are inexhaustible. I vow to end them. Dharma gates, opportunities to understand, are boundless. I vow to enter them. Buddha's way is unsurpassable. I vow to become it. So our intention to practice with, to be present with whatever is our life is expressed in these bodhisattva vows.

[04:27]

They give us the ethical framework for being present as a human being. In the first vow, the intention to liberate all beings is actually the intention to endlessly engage in the liberation of beings. It seems to be an intention that can never be fulfilled because, yeah. Because at the same time, it's also the only way liberation can happen. As long as liberation doesn't include everybody, it's compromised, as we are all deeply interconnected. So the vow of saving all beings is personified by Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara, the Bodhisattva of compassion.

[05:29]

And you might have seen portraits or depictions where he or she has a thousand hands with many different tools, like something that could help in every situation. And in the Blue Cliff Record, there is actually a koan that reflects this situation of Avalokitesvara with these many hands. It's a dialogue between Yunyan and Dao Wu. And Yunyan asks Dao Wu, what is it like for the great Bodhisattva of compassion to have so many hands? And Dao Wu answers, it is like groping. for the pillow at night. It's kind of like a surprising picture, I think.

[06:33]

For me, this image of groping for the pillow at night is an image of immediate response of no concept of self and others. It just intuitively doing what is needed. to help the situation. It's a metaphor for non-separation, I think. So this is a way of not thinking, I'm the one to help others, but rather inquiry and response come up together. It's instantaneous. I think the next, the three next bodhisattva vows give us kind of instructions on how to understand or how to enable us to this way of liberating beings, to this way of being.

[07:53]

Well, the second vow is to uproot our delusions which are endless. So we need to study how we look at the world to understand what we see and what we don't see. We need to study the mind to understand our way of perception. We need to interrupt this way of how we recapture the world and open to what is really happening. To save all beings, we want to realize that we are not separate, that it's not me here and others over there. There's not some separate, independent self in charge of the world that I perceive. but that is the basic situation of how we operate. So how do we enter into understanding this way of perception?

[09:07]

How do we enter into studying the self to understand the mind, how it functions? A simple way to say it is we sit down in front of a wall and become very still. If we stop moving, we become actually able to see the movements of mind. We stop being busy. We open to the opportunity of letting go of our habit of thinking, thinking of ourselves and others as separate entities. with independent inherent selves. When we can become immediately available to this moment, when we let go of the fear of the future or the preconceptions through memory, we can explore and meet what is right here.

[10:10]

Every situation can become a teaching. A Darmagate. Franz Kafka captures this moment like this. There is no need for you to leave the house. Stay at your table and listen. Don't even listen. Just wait. Don't even wait. Be completely quiet and alone. The world will offer itself to you and be unmasked. It can't do otherwise. In raptures, it will writhe before you. The fourth bodhisattva vow is Buddha's way is unsurpassable. I vow to become it. It is a commitment to wake up.

[11:13]

It is commitment to be available, to truly understand reality, commitment to love all beings just as they are. It's a deep wish for all beings to wake up to their incomparable nature. As we can see, the four Bodhisattva vows guide us in being right here, where we are. We are concerned with this moment and how we experience the world around us. The Bodhisattva vows can inform us on how to be present. I would like to enter the Dhamma gate of water. not only because it's raining today.

[12:19]

It has many reasons. One reason is that I have felt that my innermost feeling around water has completely changed during the last 20 years. My intuition about water is not something I can rely on anymore. So the deep changes in weather and climate have also initiated some huge uncertainty in me reacting to my environment. Dharma gates are boundless. I vow to enter them. How can I understand water? How can I become water? How can I enter water? How can I completely become devoted to water?

[13:22]

Water is an all-pervading experience. Without water, there is actually no life or especially no human life on this planet. And water is always with us. Dharma is always with us. We are often not caring for water, and we are often not careful around dharma. We imagine we are far from its environs, but dharma is already correctly transmitted. We are immediately our original self, but we often can't see that. To take care of water means to take care of dharma, to take care of ourselves. For the most part, in this region of the world, we have taken water for granted.

[14:25]

We open the faucet and it comes out, right? But it seems to have changed during the last 20 years. We don't take it so much for granted anymore. We have moved from the experience of abundance to the experience of scarcity. We have gone through a serious drought for some time and only recently received abundant rainfalls to replenish our water resources. Green Gulch Farm is its own watershed and with our own water operating system. And the water operator explained to me that at this time of year, our drinking water comes from surface runoff, or what we call the spring. And hopefully this works well until July. Around that time of year, we have to start to supplement our demand of water and rely on the well.

[15:35]

So the rain brought us to our flowing time of the year, meaning that the spring is flowing and currently produces more water than we use. Gradually, it flows less until our demand is greater than the spring can meet, and hence, we start to substitute from the well. At the time of year when we use the well, we also start to be more consistent around conserving water. And our conservation efforts are by low-flow toilets, like many people do, and shower heads, and special requests and descriptions on how we can take a shower or not. And our farm is conserving water by dry farming and drip irrigation.

[16:40]

And also, the farm only uses stored surface water, so the water that has gathered in the three reservoirs that we have to operate the farm. And it takes about 13 inches of winter rain to fill these three reservoirs. So we just use surface water and no well water to operate the farm. The head of the farm comments, the notion of normal weather is obviously tricky. We have gotten close to what used to be normal precipitation this year. But the way that it comes and whether there is snowpack in the Sierras is more important, is a more important indicator for the water situation in the state. And we all know about that, the water situation in the state, in the country, on the planet.

[17:43]

And I will not go further into this Water is life. Water makes this an environment where plants, animals, and humans can exist. And for the first nine months of our life, we actually live in our own little ocean inside our mother. And we basically go through the drama of human evolution. We go through all the stages from a singular cellular being to an amphibian being to a mammal that finally makes this huge transition in birth and starts taking in oxygen through our lungs.

[18:47]

So we never really leave the ocean. We are mostly an ocean as long as we live. Our body consists of more than 70% of water. It is our mind that fools us into feeling different from water. All that makes us look at the ocean to be the ocean, an object. action. Buddhism teaches that the four elements, earth, water, fire, and air, appear in their particular being. Earth appears to be solid and functions as support. Water appears to be humid and functions as a function of cohesion. Fire appears to be hot and has the function of existence.

[19:50]

of maturation. Air appears to be mobile and has the function of extension. So this is the early Buddhist kind of version of understanding the elements. Suzuki Roshi comments on this teaching, the nature of water is to contain things. Wherever you go there is water. Water contains everything. This is opposite to the usual way of thinking about water. Instead of saying there is water in the trunk of the tree, we say that water contains the trunk of the tree, and even also the branches and leaves. So water is something vast in which everything, including ourselves, exists. So the elements are not understood as substances. they don't exist as self-sufficient entities, but rather appear as qualities in everything.

[20:56]

As I said, as when we look at our body, we consist of minerals. Our bones are related to the mountains around us. And as I said, we consist of water. So that more than 70% is like in the blood that is 92%, and in The brain and the muscles is 75% of water, and even the bones are 22% of water. We have been living in oceans a long time ago, and we continue, and the ocean continues to live in us. And we have a deep relationship to water. You can see that when you Go to the beach and look, and you will find people who sit or stand on the beach and look at the ocean, unless they are grabbed by their cell phones.

[22:03]

But there are still people really just looking at the ocean. We might ask, what are they looking for when they look at the water? What is it that makes them look at the water? And when you stay there for a while, you might understand. You might feel a deep relaxation, some diving into another realm of being, a nourishing connection. Water seems to make us listen to ourselves deeply. And when we listen to water, we listen to our own being. When we study the principles of water, we study the principles of mind. We deeply resonate with water.

[23:05]

Water is moving and changing all the time, like everything is. And it seems like in water we can. get a very strong impression of this, a very strong experience of this. Water is the element of cohesion. Our founder, Dogen Zenji, wrote a phasic called Mountains and Water Sutra, which I think is very eye-opening or ear-opening. So I will quote from that. Water is neither strong nor weak, neither wet nor dry, neither moving nor still, neither cold nor hot, neither existent nor non-existent, neither deluded nor enlightened.

[24:07]

This is not merely studying the moment when human and heavenly beings see water. This is studying the moment when water sees water. Because water practices and realizes water, water expresses water. Actualize the path where self encounters self. Go forward and backward and leap beyond the vital path where other fathoms other. When we see water only as flowing, we limit the mystery of water to a partial perspective that we can take, that we can see. We limit water to flowing in order to control it. We try to have a word that can capture water to be able to hold on to it, to hold it in a place where we can know it.

[25:13]

This is a way in which we perceive our environment. We put language in our experience. And it's not good or bad, but it's diluted and causes suffering because we try to hold onto what we can grasp. We always want to hold onto it, at least take a picture of it, to make it last, as if we could possess any moment as if we needed to prove that we were there. Often we are too occupied with possession and miss being present. This is not working? Oh, can we do something about that? Sorry.

[26:17]

So, water expresses water. There's nothing to add to that. And we, when we truly express ourselves that cannot be captured in words, so this is what we can learn when we really let go and just be with water. I continue the quote from Dogen. Water's freedom depends only on water. In this way, water is not just earth, water, fire, wind, space, or consciousness. Water is not blue, yellow, red, white, or black.

[27:36]

Water is not forms, sounds, smells, tastes, touchables, or the objects of mind. This resounds the Hatsutra here. But water as earth, water, fire, wind in space actualizes itself. So the last sentence means that water actualizes itself by being empty of water and by being everything else. The teaching that Dogen expresses is that there is concepts of water that are not water. And there is freedom of water, that is freedom of concept. We have to let go of everything to experience water expressing water. And we might need some more steps to be able to let go of everything. So we can step back for a moment to see how we can learn about how we produce water.

[28:42]

our images, our concepts, our wording. We can start to see how we perceive the world and things out there, and that it is just our minds that we look at when we think we look at the world. And this also lets us see that everyone produces their own world and that all our worlds are very different from each other. And in some ways, our suffering evolves from this cognitive enclosure, from this constant cognitive production. So we try to explore how to enliven an openness and how to let go of this... rut of thinking in a certain way.

[29:43]

And one way to open is sitting meditation or looking at the ocean. So coming to the end of my talk, I wanted to bring up two what I feel like archetypal pictures of our reflection in the water. One very very well familiar with Narcissus, the myth of Narcissus, the Greek mythology. Narcissus was a hunter who was known to be very beautiful, and he was the son of the river god Cephasus and the nymph Lyriope. He was proud in that he disdained those who loved him. And Nemesis, the goddess of revenge, observed this behavior and attracted Narcissus to a pool where he saw his own reflection in the water and fell in love with it, not realizing it was merely an image.

[30:54]

Unable to leave the beauty of his reflection, Narcissus lost his will to live. He stared at his reflection until he died. radical story. The other story that I would like to juxtapose this with is the story between Dongshan and Jungian. So Dongshan asked his teacher Jungian, later on if I'm asked to describe your reality, describe your teaching, How should I respond? After a pause, Jung Nian said, just this is it. Dong Shun was lost in thought.

[31:58]

He didn't get it. Later, while wandering across a stream, he saw his reflection in the water and awakened to the meaning of the previous exchange. He then wrote the following verse, Just don't seek from others, or you'll be far strange from self. I now go on alone. Everywhere I meet it, it now is me. I now am not it. One must understand in this way to merge with suchness. I would say Yulian's answer, Just this is it. He is emblematic for the effort of paying bare attention to this moment and not get carried away. You can hear this as a code and a reminder of being mindful of what is happening right now.

[33:01]

There's nothing but this, and it is completely unfathomable. Dongshan's verse says, after his enlightenment experience, seeing the image in the water, tells us that what we might name being present is a dynamic process. Dongshan says, it now is me, I now am not it. And this exactly captures the dynamic of changing images that are always just images. that are always projection of our mind. The I that comes to be in these projections is permanently changing and co-arising. There is a dynamic of how our experience of I comes to be. This dynamic is both the way we experience true reality, but also

[34:07]

This is the way we get caught in delusion and misperception. And this is how close enlightenment and delusion are living together. If we objectify the I into a separate thing, as we usually do, we have lost the contact to true reality. And if we don't get stuck in wanting something to be I, we have the chance to see that it is beyond our perception or our wording. This experience of the possibility of an undefined and open eye is accompanied by a deep feeling of connectedness and joy of being alive and freedom of holding on to any identity. It is an experience of dropping body and mind. And this is certainly not something we can do.

[35:10]

We can remember the code, just this is it. And that can maybe be an entry point for us. And we can remember gentleness and generosity in seeing our projections. So now I close with a poem by Rumi. To these eyes that we have now, what looks like water burns. And what looks like fire is a great relief to be inside. And the fire and the water themselves are accidental and done with mirrors. Thank you very much. Please help us to continue to realize and actualize the practice of giving by offering your financial support.

[36:21]

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

[36:30]

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