Thank you. A non-surpass penetrating and perfect Dharma.

[01:45]

is rarely met with even in a hundred thousand million kalpas, having it to see and listen to, to remember and accept. I vow to taste the truth of the Tathagata's words. Good evening. Good evening. Welcome to Beginner's Mind Temple. I particularly want to welcome the people that are here for the very first time. Please make yourself as comfortable as you can. And I would encourage all of us to just listen with the body and not try to maybe

[02:48]

argue with what I'm saying or agreeing with what I'm saying or to just let it kind of wash over you. And what will have any meaning for you will actually resonate with you, in you, and that will stay and the rest you can just dispense with. So it's not about following everything or understanding everything. That's not so important. My name is Kiku Hoetsu, Christina Lenher, and Kiku Hoetsu means loom, the weaving loom of emptiness, and Hoetsu means the joy of reality, Dharma joy, saying that actually there is joy in reality. and that there is joy when we meet reality straight on.

[03:51]

Even if it's a difficult reality, in the center of it, when we meet it directly, there is peace and a kind of bliss, not allowed, jumping happiness, but there is something about that's absolutely delicious to meet the reality on its terms. There's nothing getting in the way. And it can be a very painful reality, a very joyful reality, a very sorrowful reality. That doesn't matter. It's the meeting that matters. I'll give this to you. It's going to fall down otherwise. Thank you. So, we are, as a lot of us know, and if you are new here, you don't know, we are, for 10 weeks, we are engaging in trying to, cultivating a more intimate connection with the bodies we have.

[05:10]

which is not so easy for us, because I think because of the fact that we're all going to die, each one of us is going to die. We are all going to die. And that is the only... sure thing we can know about our life. Everything else is to be found out. That's the only thing that is inevitably going to happen to each one of us. So up by the Han, which was hit in response to saying, I'm ready to come give the talk. Today it's me, some other day it's somebody else. It's a signal the person who is giving the talk is ready.

[06:12]

It says, Great is the matter of birth and death. I just tried to memorize it. Great is the matter of birth and death. Fleeting, passing quickly, gone, gone. Awake, awake, each one. Don't waste this life. Do not waste this life. So I want to read a poem by Mary Oliver. not here interestingly well the poem is called when death comes and some of you may know it Paul you know it you know it by heart shall we try to

[07:45]

If you want to, that would be lovely. Isn't this wonderful? So then I'll tell you that Buddhism talks about five things we should be remembering every day. Those five things are that I am of the nature to grow old. Being born means I will grow old. I will get ill. several times probably during my lifetime.

[08:49]

I will die. That all that is dear to me and everyone I love are of the nature to change. They will grow old or they will move away or they will not be in my life anymore. there is no way to escape that at some point we will be separated from them, and that the only thing that is truly mine are my actions, and that I cannot escape the consequences of my actions. They are the ground on which I'm standing. So that we are going to die, that everything in this life, in this phenomenal life that we're having, and phenomenal in its meaning that it's a life in the world of phenomenon, where there are things that have a shape that we can touch.

[10:12]

that seem solid, even though physics tells us there's more space than solid matter in here. They are solid, and they create bruises on our bodies if we bump them hard enough. But it's also phenomenal in its metaphysical sense that we are alive in this universe, and that we're going to die. impermanence of everything, that everything that exists is in a transitory state. It's transitioning from face to face. Something's fast, something slowly, something... Thank you. See, that's another thing. I would have gone and made a copy or something, but here is... Thank you very much. Wonderful technology. Yes, it's actually the whole thing is there.

[11:20]

Thank you very much, Phyllis. So this is interconnection and interdependence and help and being helpable, receiving help, accepting it. It took me a moment, so thank you. When death comes, like the hungry bear in autumn, when death comes, and takes all the bright coins from his purse to buy me and snap the purse shut. When death comes like the measlepox, when death comes like an iceberg between the shoulder blades, I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering, What is this going to be like, that cottage of darkness? And therefore, I look upon everything as a brotherhood and a sisterhood.

[12:31]

And I look upon time as no more than an idea. And I consider eternity as another possibility. And I think of each life as a flower, as common as a field daisy and as singular. And each name a comfortable music in the mouth, tending, as all music does, toward silence. And each body a lion of courage and something precious to the earth. When it's over, I want to say, all my life I was a bride married to amazement. I was the bridegroom taking the world into my arms. When it's over, I don't want to wonder if I have made of my life something particular and real.

[13:42]

I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened or full of argument. I don't want to end up simply having visited this world. I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering what is it going to be like that cottage of darkness. I want to say all my life I was a bride married to amazement. I was the bridegroom taking the world into my arms. How we experience this world is thank you so much, is through this body that we have.

[14:51]

That's the vehicle through which we experience everything in our life as long as we have it. And our culture in some ways denies impermanence There is an adoration of youthfulness that we have to live up to, that we don't get a job when our hair is gray, that we have to get rid of the wrinkles with Botox and God knows what else, that we are denied to actually experience death. It's kind of hidden away. It's taken out of our life. And I think that is part of why it is so hard for us to be really, really intimately embodying the body we have been given.

[15:53]

Because this body has no problem with dying. It's our mind that has a problem. When you have been around animals and you've seen them get old and die or have a leg amputated, They just run with three legs. They are happy. They don't have the struggles we have when it's time to die. They die. And our body knows how to die. It's our ideas about it that create such a difficulty. And because we don't get the physical experience of people... dying, of seeing people dying, of seeing people lying there dead. When I grew up, we would visit my grandmother after she was dead, and there would be a wake at the house, and my parents, we had a wake for my parents.

[16:55]

My mother died at home, and my father died in the hospital three years later, and We took him home and there were all the family members that were still alive and the friends were coming to say goodbye. So that is, for many people, that's not part of how we live anymore. So I think that is why it's also so difficult to be in touch with this body. It has become an object rather than the subject of our life. the carrier of this life that we are living. So this training period, we try to get more in touch with that. And it's exactly the body as it is that... we want to get in touch with.

[17:58]

Because if we are in touch with it, we also realize how, still while we are living, how short or how changing it is. You know, we can wake up with aches and pains, which I'm starting to have in the morning. That's age-related. I start moving around, they go away. Probably one day they won't go away or it will take longer for them to go away. But there's change. So the body I wake up with is not the body I go to breakfast with, I go to lunch with, I go to dinner with, I go to bed with. It's changing body. It's through its senses we can access joy. So I don't know if you have met many Tibetan people, but to me they have something very full living to them, joyful living to them.

[19:18]

I never wanted to become a Zen master, never. I was always hoping in this tradition I would turn out like a Tibetan, not like one of those grim-looking, sent people that look so stern. And they have the practice that they would go and meditate on the charnel grounds, which in Tibet they have to actually meditate dismember the dead body so the birds can eat it because they can't bury them in the frozen ground. So they would sit in those just to get a sense of the impermanence of the body. And the people that I know that have that really understand that in their body and are connected to that impermanence, they are the most joyful people because they have they understand that every moment is incredibly precious and unique.

[20:23]

And they don't waste time planning for a safe future or worrying about the past. They are capable to be in the moment and experience the beauty of it and the miraculous fact that it's happening and that that's the only moment we are alive is this moment. In this moment, we are not living in the past and the future is just a fantasy. We're not there yet. And it may be very different than what we think today it will be. And I don't know if you have been here last Saturday, but a friend of ours gave the lecture who had a life-changing accident. And if you haven't seen the lecture and have the time, it's live streamed, and it's worthwhile watching. So this body also always offers us at any time, always, because it's always where our life is happening,

[21:47]

It's always in the here and now. It's not in yesterday and it's not in tomorrow. It always offers us means to be happy and be joyful and grateful. And it offers that to us through its senses. We can, for example, I don't know, it's probably still out, there's a beautiful moon right now. It was there the last two days. We can see the moon. We can see the sunshine. We can see each other. Look around. We're all in here. You have all bodies that helped you get here, that allowed you to come here, allow you to hear, to hear each other, to hear your loved ones, to hear your colleagues, allow you to speak, to smile, to greet each other, to take your children in your arms.

[22:58]

Even virtually we can see now the loved ones, we can FaceTime and Skype and Zoom them. Over big distances, we have a big online community that now participates in the practice period from Bali and Australia and Alaska, and we can see them. And we can see them because we have eyes. Our bodies have eyes. We can see, we can hear, we can taste the food that's on our place. We can feel the air on our skin. And if we tune into that and appreciate that, we start living in a life of abundance. We are not going to be only co-opted by a grief or a sorrow, even though it might be big. It's not all we are.

[24:01]

So these are the small things we can start to be in touch with our body and appreciate it. the gift it is giving us, and that it is the means and the vehicle for us to express ourselves and to receive what the world is offering to us, what this universe is offering to us. So those two things are deeply connected with allowing the fact that impermanent is a reality, is one characteristic of this reality we're living in, having a body and being born. And that things change, that everything change, and it's only like this just now. And then the next moment, maybe it's like the same or seems like the same, and maybe it's not.

[25:07]

Grace who gave the talk last Saturday, her life changed within one second radically. And that can happen to any of us. So the more we learn to be present with what is now and fully present, not just in our lives, life of ideas and thoughts and plans, but in our body, the more we will be able to be present what is next. Even what is next may be a next life. So Mary Oliver talks about that. I want to be full of curiosity, wondering what it is, that cottage of darkness, how it is there. Can you feel that your body is just breathing?

[26:53]

And how it is breathing? And how still it is in here? Or were you busy thinking about other things? happened when I didn't speak? Where did your awareness go? Did it go into tomorrow? Or into what happened before? Or what's going on? Why isn't she talking? Or did you just hear the stillness in the room? These are questions you can ask yourself from time to time.

[27:54]

Where's my awareness located? What is it focused on? Am I in my thinking mind? Am I in my sensing mind? Am I in my hearing sense, in my seeing sense? state is my body in? Can I feel that? What is the emotional landscape I find myself? And all of this is possible because you have the body you're having. I have the body I'm having. All of it is possible through it. So the more we are actually in touch with it and inhabiting it and knowing it intimately, rather than, oh, you're in pain today so I can't go running, and then we are harsh with our body rather than saying, oh, you're in pain today, what can I do to help you?

[29:20]

We use our bodies as our slaves, that we think we can boss around. And I think actually we should be the servants of our bodies to have a better life because actually it enables us to do, to live, to feel and to see and to hear and to love and to repair and to help and be helped. Can I have it one more time? Is it still there? just want to read it to end.

[30:28]

Don't try to find it, Phyllis. I'll read another one. I'll read another one. Changed my mind. In Blackwater Woods. Look, the trees are turning their bodies into pillars of light. are giving off the rich fragrance of cinnamon and fulfillment. The long tapers of cattails are bursting and floating away over the blue shoulders of the ponds, and every pond, no matter what its name is, is nameless now. Every year, everything I have ever learned in my lifetime, leads back to this. The fires and the black river of loss whose other side is salvation, whose meaning none of us will ever know.

[32:08]

To live in this world, you must be able to do three things. To love what is mortal, to hold it against your bones, knowing your own life depends on it. And when the time comes to let it go, to let it go, you must be able to do three things. To love what is mortal, to hold it against your bones, knowing your own life depends on it. And when the time comes to let it go, to let it go. Thank you very much for coming.

[33:11]

Thank you very much for listening. Thank you very much to maybe pick up the practice of appreciating the little things your body allows you to see, feel, hear, taste, touch that are always available. And you can interrupt your work to do a moment of that, look up at the co-worker and smile or receive their smile. You can do that while you watch the baby you're watching. You can do that feeling how your body is breathing without you, just allowing you to live the life you're living. Thank you very much. And I wish you a safe journey home or to bed if you're living here. And be well. Thank you.

[34:13]

May our intention equally extend to every being and place with the true merit of Buddha's way. Jujo muhen se gandho. Omoji se gandho. Thank you.

[35:18]

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