everyone thank you for coming today if you have a cell phone with you if you can turn it either off or turn it to airplane mode so that it doesn't interfere with our wi-fi connection and our zoom connection thank you so much Sir, I was penetrating on the earth at dawn.

[12:45]

It is literally invented even in a hundred thousand million of us. I get to see the answers to remember that we said, Good morning. can't help, of course, many of you know there's a lot of grief in this room.

[13:49]

I was planning as I was... Should we lower this down some? All good? Okay. I was planning to mention and talk a little bit about Jeffrey Schneider, died a few, I think a few months ago. And just this week, a young Carolyn Meister student died in an accident at Tassajara, out walking. Powerful, powerful to feel, just to feel grief, the emotion of grief. And I know some of you knew her well, but others of you maybe didn't. And actually what I was thinking I want to talk about in the midst of grief is living a full life.

[14:59]

What does it mean to live a full life? I want to start with a poem by Mary Oliver. I know you never intended to be in this world, but you're in it. all the same. So why not get started immediately? I mean, belonging to it. There's so much to admire, to weep over, and to write music or poems about. Bless the feet that take you to and fro. Bless the eyes and the listening ears. Bless the tongue, the marvel of taste. Bless touching. You could live a hundred years. It's happened or not. I'm speaking from the fortunate platform of many years, none of which I think I ever wasted.

[16:03]

Do you need a prod? Do you need a little darkness to get you going? Let me be as urgent as a knife then and remind you of Keats. So single of purpose and thinking for a while, he had a lifetime. I wasn't aware of it. I had to look up. John Keats, famous English writer, died age 25 of tuberculosis. When he was eight, his father fell off a horse and died. His mother remarried and then soon left and took him and his brothers and sisters. His mother died of tuberculosis when he was 14, and he was raised by his grandmother.

[17:05]

During his lifetime, he didn't sell more than 200 copies of his books. He became famous after his death. Something about... I know you never intended to be in this world, and yet here we are, living, alive, again, grieving, and maybe also at the same time, acknowledging, celebrating, celebrating the lives of these two amazing people. You know, I spent many, many hours in the Tassara kitchen with Jeffrey, and I always found him to be a very sweet, sincere practitioner and generous spirit.

[18:12]

Carolyn, I was recently with her at Tassara, She was like the only staff person standing over New Year's. I was there helping to co-lead a nine-day retreat for wildland firefighters. And Carolyn was our host, our hostess, and was just so, again, sincere practice, generous. I think of one of the phrases that came up for me when I was thinking of each of these people was something about creating islands of sanity. I feel like they both strove to create warm, clear, open spaces in their lives as much as they could.

[19:15]

There's so many stories from their lives and so many stories in Zen. And one that I think of is from a Zen teacher, Dogen, who, a great patriarch in our lineage, who somehow, it's interesting, he was always drawn to learn from head cooks from Tenzos, and he traveled to China, and one of the conversations that I think of is a conversation he had with a head cook in which he asked, what is Zen, or what is practice? Or I think he maybe could have asked, what... is most important to a human being. What does a full life look like?

[20:28]

And this particular head cook, without hesitating, said, nothing in the universe is hidden. Nothing in the universe is hidden. And to me, that's the message of this poem. There's so much to admire. There's so much to weep over. Bless the feet. Bless the eyes. Bless the tongue. And also the same message that I couldn't, standing outside looking at the Han, the wooden block that says life and death are serious matters. Don't waste time. Life and death are serious matters. Don't Waste time, and again, hear Mary Oliver saying the same thing, right?

[21:31]

And do you need a little darkness to get you going? And maybe that's the, you know, it's part of the gift of grief, the gift of uncertainty. What I had planned to talk about this morning, and maybe I'll just mention it, and I'm also, I am, it's a special weekend for me, I'm flying to Los Angeles tomorrow where I'm hosting a celebration of life for a friend who died, London a few months ago and she had reached out to me when she thought she had a few months to live and she ended up having a year and a half where we spent every Friday morning on Zoom sitting together for 15 or 20 minutes and every Friday morning we would read a little bit almost always from the same talk by

[22:50]

from Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, called Nirvana, the Waterfall. And it's the most, I think, profound, mysterious, and accessible teaching that I'm aware of on birth and life and death. And he's... I know many of you are familiar with it, but as he says, it's not enough to be familiar with it. How do we live? He presents an image and a philosophy of life that he says, if we could live this, it would change everything. And this comes from when he's... at Yosemite Falls, and he watches the water coming off the top of the stream and uses this as an image, compares the separate drops as the time of our lifetime, but at the same time notices that

[24:15]

the water was all one. There was no separation before the water came over the stream. And of course, he's comparing this to our birth in which we are separated into separate drops. And he says, you know, it must be painful being separated. And it's painful because we have feeling. And he says, before we're born, we're all part of this stream. We're all part of what we call water. But after we're born, we're still water. And he says, therefore, life and death are the same thing. And before we're born, he says this is called big mind, or mind only, or essence of mind, or emptiness.

[25:25]

And whether we're separated into drops or not, water is water. Life and death are the same. Talking about this is easy. So he then describes that at the bottom of the waterfall, we return. to the river and we're no longer separated. And he's using this as the metaphor for our death. Again, talking about this is easy, living it not so easy. And he says in this chapter, you attach to feeling that you have without knowing just how this kind of feeling created when you don't realize that you are water that you are no different than everything else in the universe you have fear when you realize this fact you have no fear of death anymore and no actual difficulty in this life you will find true meaning in life

[26:45]

you will discover, and I love the statement, you will discover how meaningless your old interpretation of life was and how much useless effort you had been making. Your everyday life will be renewed without being attached to an erroneous interpretation of life. So I think we all, you know, it's easy. It's kind of the default in our, not only in our culture, but I think worldwide, right? There's many, many interpretations of life, interpretations of our birth and life and death. Mostly, I think, people don't think about it too much. Because who wants to think about death?

[27:48]

Because death is usually something we kind of push away. But here he's presenting, I think, a profound and transformative... I even hesitate to call it a model. It's something I think of as beyond language. It feels like something that Suzuki Roshi knows deep in his bones as truth. And it's something that has been passed on to him from generation to generation to generation. The historical Buddha may not have used this language, but this was the teaching of the historical Buddha. This was, I think, kind of the primary, a primary teaching all throughout Buddhist history and Zen history, but there's something about Suzuki Roshi's way of expressing it, his expression of it, and making it seem so easy, in a way, and accessible.

[29:06]

If we could just let go. Although he's, I think, strongly the statement of you attach to feeling without knowing just how this kind of feeling is created. So this is, I think, a really interesting exploration that he's suggesting as, I think, a core part of understanding our feelings, understanding how feeling is created, understanding how our feelings desires, what we desire, what we push away. To become intimately familiar with that feels like a course step along the way of discovering the meaninglessness of our old interpretation and how much useless effort we've been making.

[30:12]

encouragement and again I think it's the same the same encouragement of Mary Oliver you've never intended to be in this world but you're in it all the same so why not get started immediately belonging belonging to it belonging to it writing music and poems And blessing, blessing everything, our eyes, our ears, our nose, our tongue, our body and mind. I want to read one other poem.

[31:17]

This is a poem by William Stafford. And now has come an easy time. I let it roll. There's a lake somewhere so blue and far. Nobody owns it. A wind comes by and a willow listens gracefully. I hear all this every summer. I laugh and cry for every turn of the world. It's terribly cold, innocent spin. That lake stays blue and free. It goes on and on. And I know where it is. Again, I think he's talking about this big mind, using the lake as a metaphor for big mind.

[32:31]

There's a lake somewhere, and every summer I see this lake, whether I'm laughing or crying. The world can sometimes be terribly cold or innocent. But it's always available. It's always available to us. I know where it is. Again, this is, I think, the deep kind of belonging that Mary Oliver is suggesting and the deep belonging that Shinryu Suzuki is suggesting. Belonging. Beyond belonging, right? Does the water belong to the stream? The water is the stream. We are the stream. We are the stream. And I think this erroneous view that he's referring to, again, there may be many of them or many ways to talk about them, but I think any idea that we don't belong,

[33:51]

It's a really profound thing about being human. One way I think of talking about our lives is growing into and growing up to belonging. And you could say that Zen practice or meditation practice is... reducing or dropping this erroneous idea that somehow we don't, that we're separate, that we're separate from each other, that we're separate from the world. To practice that in our meditation practice with each breath, this sense of letting go of anything

[34:53]

any ideas of separation, any idea that there's something lacking in us, if only, again, these are all these, I think, erroneous views, any sense that we're separate, any sense that there's something that we need in order to be whole. You know, and I think of, when I think of Jeffrey Snyder's life and Carolyn Meister's life, in some way, you know, they, or John Keats' life or Mary Oliver's life, they were all whole. They were whole in their own way. And this simple, profound teaching of Suzuki Roshi and this image of the waterfall, right?

[36:04]

Water is water. I always feel my New Jersey accent every time people often correct water. how they say it in New Jersey. I know you all Californians say water. It seems so weird. It's water. So this simple, accessible, profound model that Suzuki Roshi is presenting is really kind of a different version, an unconventional version of reality.

[37:16]

But I think he's, again, this sense of... I don't feel like it's a... not stating it as a hypothesis. He's stating it something that he knows in his bones. Unlike a line in a play that I often refer back to, it's called In Search of Intelligent Life in the Universe. And I think I saw this play on Broadway many, many years ago, and Lily Tomlin starred in it. And she played many, many different characters, from royalty to a bag lady, a homeless person. And in the character of a homeless person, she asked herself, what is reality?

[38:25]

after all. And she answered her own question, nothing but a collective hunch. Nothing but a collective hunch. And I feel like this version of reality that Suzuki Roshi is presenting is more than a collective hunch. I know you never intended to be in this world, but you're in it all the same. So why not get started immediately? I mean, belonging to it. There's so much to admire, to weep over, and to write music or poems about. Bless the feet that take you to and fro. Bless your eyes. Bless your ears. Bless your tongue. The marvel of taste. Bless touching. You could live a hundred years. It's happened or not.

[39:25]

I'm speaking from the fortunate platform of many years, none of which I think I ever wasted. Do you need a prod? Do you need a little darkness to get you going? Let me be as urgent as a knife and then remind you of Keats, so single of purpose and thinking for a while that he had a lifetime. I think I just want to open things up to have a conversation. I hope that... So nice that I don't have to ask you to unmute. If you'd like to ask a question, please raise your hand and I'll bring the microphone over. I'm used to the Theravadan tradition, and that is new to me.

[40:34]

And one of the central suttas that I've studied is the Fire Sutta, where the Buddha says, eyes are burning, like all the senses are burning, with delusion, aging, death, sickness. And I'm wondering, in that sense, where does blessing those senses come? Where does... How do you bless something that's so fragile and make you astray? Yeah, I mean, I think they deserve even more blessing because of their fragility, because of their fleeting nature of our senses, of our life, the fleeting nature of our life. How sacred and... You know, I think it's, you know, there's a teaching, I'm not even sure what the particular tradition is, where the teacher holds up a teacup and says, you know, this teacup is already broken.

[41:44]

And I think, and therefore, it deserves great reverence, because it's fleeting. And I think that's my understanding. feeling or interpretation of what you just quoted, the teaching you just quoted is, yeah, it's all, whether you call it broken or on fire, right? We're all, you know, there's a practice that I will do from time to time, you know, acknowledging that every breath that we take is one less breath. that we have on this earth while we're alive. And to approach that not with a morose sense, but with wake up, pay attention, practice, let go of erroneous, right? To me, an erroneous view, an example of an erroneous view would be to take anything for granted.

[42:49]

Does that resonate? Yeah. Thank you. Thank you, Mark, for speaking about the recent death of Jeffrey and Caroline. It's what got me here this morning is when I woke up and the first thing, when I looked at my phone, was the notification from Facebook that she had been found. And I...

[43:53]

So I'm thinking about the belonging and the need for ways to grieve together. That's what I got in touch with. That's what brought me here. So I'm just feeling into that space of... I think grief for me is not an easy... not easy. Yeah. No, it's not easy. It's powerful. It's powerful and it is amazing. This human life and human emotions of our ability. I think of it as, in a sense, it's like

[44:54]

another quality to be blessed. Bless our eyes and ears and bless the grief. Bless the lack of easiness. It's not that it's easy. It's easy when we don't resist it, I think. And it hurts. So maybe, again, our language doesn't serve us. It's available. It's available to us. And then there's something about grieving together, right? And I think we all grieve alone, but we also grieve together. Yeah, I guess, yes. And that's what I wanted to, or thank you for that, because I feel like I'm going to keep looking for ways to do that, to grieve with others and share that. Yeah.

[45:55]

Yeah. And also, I feel like within grief or the other side is appreciation, is immense, again, like this question about if, you know, what about that everything is on fire? What about the uncertainty, the fleeting nature of our lives, our friends, our practitioners? lives, and to grieve. Again, it's not about avoiding or suppressing or pretending that we don't feel deeply saddened and we will miss them profoundly. And now we, I think, also And again, maybe when the time is right, we celebrate their lives.

[47:01]

Yeah. It's still quite raw. I guess just lastly, I was noticing that grieving, being here together and being in a shared space, feeling into it in my body feels, I feel lighter, a sense of more the ability to not get sort of sunk down into that alone place or weight of it. Well, I think that's also the beauty of this teaching, waterfall teaching by Suzuki Roshi, that That, again, if we could live that, live that sense of this profound connection and that, of course, life and death are not the same thing.

[48:12]

Of course they are not. And yet they are. And to somehow have access to that Truth, that teaching, which is harder to grasp. We've been everything about our, you know, I think that the cells in our body are live, live. They want to live, you know, and that's great. But it can kind of produce erroneous views. It can produce fear. It can produce all kinds of things that I think are a kind of separation from ourselves and from everything. So how can we live both? Thank you. Thank you.

[49:13]

Mako, it's so good to see you. How are you doing? Happy birthday. Happy birthday. Happy birthday. Thank you for being here. It's a challenging time. Thank you so much for your talk, and happy birthday. birth and death birth and death my question is how does one love without attachment well it's kind of impossible in my experience and yet and there's the you know great

[50:23]

Great words, two great words from Zen teaching are, and yet, and yet. Practice is easy since we're all originally enlightened, and yet. Find ways to love fully without being attached, and yet. And yet, I think though, again, this word attachment has many, many layers and meaning. And one might say even that there is wholesome attachment and unwholesome attachment. Unwholesome attachment would clearly be where there's a lot of fear

[51:24]

of loss and ego and sense of control or any of those things feel like a kind of maybe unwholesome attachment. Wholesome attachment perhaps is just maybe doesn't have a lot of attachment to it, but is very loving. and cares more about the object or person that we're being attached to than we do our own self. And to get as much clarity about that. And again, I think this teaching, this teaching of oneness also, you know, this relationship, like the teacup, is already ended.

[52:28]

That can help with not being quite so attached in an unwholesome way. And to, yeah, again, this, you know, bless, bless, bless this other, bless this other person, love this other person. But of course, you know, we're human. And So I think the way we practice, I think, with wholesome attachment is to recognize our unwholesome attachment, to recognize it, own it, work with it, transform it as much as we can. Thank you so much. Thank you. When you said that, I was thinking probably the most poignant example of and yet is a really heartful haiku by Isa Kobayashi who had just lost a child and the haiku was this dewdrop world is just a dewdrop world and yet.

[53:51]

Yeah. Thank you for that. Yeah. Another question? Thank you so much for your talk and thank you to everyone that's here and online. Yeah, I can just feel that the difference Feelings in me are really held in this space, so appreciating that. I have a question around something that came up strongly for me with these events is just the preciousness of life. Like you were saying, you're not taking anything for granted. And what I'm wondering is how can I remember that without... having these events.

[54:58]

What would stop you? What gets in the way? Why isn't it there all the time for you? I forget. Distracted maybe by thinking about how things will go or what has happened past and future. Other kinds of concerns that feel more real at the time. I think this is, you know, maybe there's various reasons why we have ritual, but this is one of them, you know, ritual. You know, when we bow, We bow to the cushion. It's an opportunity to be present and remember, I'm alive.

[56:06]

I'm bowing. What a joy. Morning meditation. So at least remember, or do your best to remember Maybe you need to put a big note on your pillow that says, remember. After I left my residency at Zen Center, I started and I can't explain how this happened exactly, but I started and ran a greeting card company and in which it was mostly we were publishing quotes to help people, quotes by Thich Nhat Hanh and Rumi and the Dalai Lama. And I was surprised to hear that many people didn't send our greeting cards.

[57:13]

They tacked them on their walls or put them on their desks because we need to remember. So maybe it's a poem or a line or... Find ways to trick yourself. We need ways to trick ourselves because it's easy to forget. Our lives are busy and we work and all kinds of things. So find some tricks to remember. Thank you. We have time for one more question, if there's another question. Comment? Over here. Thank you for your talk, Mark.

[58:20]

I'm picking up on the reminder, the post-it concept. And in the poem it said, do you need some darkness to remind you? And as I picture the wholeness of water going over the falls at Yosemite, there's moments when those separate drips are saying, it used to be so good, what's going on here? And I'm asking you, in the points where we are born and recognized individual expression, Is it an erroneous view to believe in an individual expression? And if it is or isn't, is that the point at which we recognize, if I see myself separately, I need to look behind this and find the conditioning or the state that causes me to feel separate? Yeah, I mean, I think we...

[59:22]

I recently have been studying Thich Nhat Hanh, one of Thich Nhat Hanh's more recent books called Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet. And he uses the language there, you know, Zen often uses language of the ordinary world or the everyday world or the, he uses historical, the historical world. And I kind of like that. And that, so I think, you know, We have to live in the historical world, but it's forgetting this other world that gets us... The practice is to, at the same time, right, or to fully integrate that we also live in this big mind, whether you're big mind or emptiness or many different descriptions. So I think... But again, so much of the practice, I think, is finding healthy, wholesome ways to live in the historical world.

[60:39]

I get worried sometimes about premature enlightenment syndrome is a problem. People thinking you can somehow not recognizing how hard it is just to live with healthy emotions, right? Even something like to love without being attached, right? To have good, clean, clear relationships with people, to have a good, you know, to appreciate ourselves, to work through that voice of criticism that everyone has, the inner critic, to work with it skillfully, all those things.

[61:42]

And at the same time, I think in some way, the viewpoint of practice, the viewpoint of oneness can help us work through that self-stuff. And that self-stuff can also help us to access the world of practice more. And they're not two worlds, but they often look like two worlds, and maybe they are two worlds, but they're one world. And yeah, so to me, that's our... our opportunity, challenge as human being, right, to course in those worlds and to enjoy it and appreciate it even while we're grieving, even while we're grieving the world of uncertainty.

[62:46]

Thank you. Thank you. It is, I think, a really useful, healthy thing to grieve and to grieve together. You don't need to worry about saying the right thing. I don't think it's necessary to say anything. Sit together. Maybe hold hands together. Cry together. Are you gonna say something? Well, you beat me to it.

[63:49]

Thank you, thank you all for being here. and to agree in that place with the true man in the love of God's way. The angels are numberless. I am not allowed to save them. Given the chains are already exhaustible, I am not allowed to end them. Thank you.

[64:55]

Good morning, everyone. My name is Kevin. I'm the Eno here at City Center, the head of the meditation hall. I have a few announcements. As always, you are invited to come and practice with us. We have daily Zazen in the morning and the evening, Dharma talks, classes, events. We love having you here with us. So please come and see us. I thought there were going to be Zendo forums, but I don't see Eli here, so maybe no Zendo forums. There's no Dharma talk this Wednesday evening as we will be on the first evening of Sashin, but we will have a full moon ceremony here at 7 p.m. in the Zendo, and you're welcome to come for that. The next session will begin on Wednesday. It'll be a four-day session, March 27th through 30th, and the Sashin will end our winter practice period. Yes? Okay, 525 for the full moon ceremony.

[67:34]

Sorry for the misinformation. It was fake news. 525 for the full moon ceremony. PM. 525 PM. You can also register for the Sashin either online or here at, actually we at Unity Church right down the street. You can register for online or being present for the Sashin or you can do a combination of both. April 6th will be a special day here. It's today's Mako's birthday, but April 6th will be Buddha's birthday. A wonderful family-friendly event immediately following morning lecture. This annual outdoor ceremony incorporates forms that reenact part of the traditional mythical story of the Buddha's birth. Following the annual outdoor ceremony across the street in Koshnam Park, You can join us in the Conference Center for the first event of April Zen-a-thon, Buddha's Birthday Party.

[68:38]

There will be music, activities for kids of all ages, a light lunch offering, and of course, birthday cake. Everybody is welcome. Please register for this free event online so that we can make sure that we have enough food for everyone. Please consider supporting San Francisco Zen Center with your donations and your presents. There is a donation box in the gaitan, the hallway right outside there, right at the end of the cubicles. You can also donate online. And April starts our Zenathon fundraising event, which Buddha's birthday will kick that off. And so it's our annual way to bring in new members and support for Zen Center. There will be tea and cookies in the conference center. right next door, right after this. If you don't know where the conference center is, when you go out the door, make a right, go up Page Street, and it's the very next building. Walk up the stairs and go into the door on the right, and that's where all the tea and cookies will be.

[69:41]

I also want to mention Urban Gate Sangha. If you're an Urban Gate Sangha, can you raise your hands? So Urban Gate Sangha is our Saturday Sangha that comes in and runs, takes care of the 925 Zazen period. As you can see, they ring the bells, they hit the Han, and have a class and a discussion after this. So if you're interested in joining Urban Gate Sangha, please talk to any of the people who raised their hand. There's also a sign-up sheet on the shoe rack in the Gaitan, where you can also sign up for Urban Gate Sangha or get more information. If you're able, please stay behind for a few minutes. I'll put the Zendo back together. I could especially use two people to help Tabriz, who's doing the audio and visual today all by himself. It's usually a two-person job. So if two people could meet up with Tabriz right after, that would be great. And once again, thank you for coming.

[70:41]

And once again, wait. Oh, Eli's here. So there will be Zendo forms. So if you are interested in learning more about the Zendo, how to move in the Zendo, where to bow, when to bow, who to bow to, please meet up with Eli right after this, and he can show you all of those things. So once again, thank you for coming. Once again, happy birthday, Mako. And we will see you soon. Thank you. I've never seen that have been any other venue, ever.

[74:58]

So it's like, oh, wow. Yeah, constant buzz. I could do it, too. Yeah, so one step you're ready. Yeah, beautiful. Thank you. Oh, you're kidding me. I was just checking you. Oh, wait, you're starting. I'm doing it on Zoom. Well, OK. I'm using it like me. You need to . Can this just go out or are you going to set it up before we load it up yet?

[76:31]

I can describe it. And there is a... There is a box that's just behind that show. The camera just goes. Right. Pretty well. I think it'll be clear. So there's no points to get. So that should be. Oh, yes. Yeah, that's it. Thank you. Almost been assumed. And I think that's all we do.

[77:33]

We do have a resident to help treat an altered... Yeah. And then, I think we need a nice... Return them off. Return them off, okay.

[77:49]

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