Good evening. Good evening. So nice to see all 12 of us. Really lovely. Really, really lovely. I would like to start my talk tonight, as I always do, by thanking and acknowledging my late teacher, Old Buddha. of the East Bay, Sojin Mel Weitzman Roshi, great ancestor, great Zen ancestor. And to say that my talk is just to encourage you in your practice. And maybe I will add, if you're not resonating with what I'm saying, or I am confusing you, please just sit Sazen. Just take an upright posture and I would also like to thank the Tanto, Linda Gowdy, for inviting me to give this talk.

[01:07]

So, Ehe Dogen said, when you find yourself where you are, practice occurs. Actualizing the fundamental point. When you find yourself where you are, practice occurs. And you might think, well, duh, I'm right here. What's the deal? But am I really? You know? How often am I really right here? So that was up for me because, you know, we are finding ourselves where we are. And we are all climate refugees. And it's kind of a big deal. I believe most of the people in this room, climate refugees for two consecutive years.

[02:12]

And Linda said the Willow Fire was her sixth fire in an administrative role. Not her sixth fire, just her sixth fire in a leadership role. So this is, you know, what we get to practice with. Dislocation and relocation, abrupt, unexpected, unasked for. How do we, you know, come back? How do we come back to the body? This has been my study recently And in case you missed it, I've really been emphasizing taking it slow, emphasizing rest, being gentle with myself and others.

[03:19]

And in the process, I also get to study how I relate to the white supremacy cultural values of perfectionism, individualism, and urgency, to name a few. So that's bonus. Tonight, I would like to talk about something that I've been turning for quite a while. What I am... been thinking of, to myself, the taproot of Soto Zen. You know, the original root, the root of practice, according to what it is we're doing here. Not that I claim to have any answers.

[04:24]

It's just something I've been turning and would like to turn it with you a little bit. tonight, not in any exhaustive way by any means. This might be the first of a series of talks. Who knows? We'll see what happens. So what I consider the taproot of Soto Zen, yes, is what is referred to as suchness or thusness. The two expressions are interchangeable. you're more likely to hear the word thusness. The Song of the Jewel Mirror Samadhi, which is part of our standard liturgy, as we all know, starts out, the teaching of thusness has been intimately communicated by Buddhas and ancestors.

[05:26]

Oh, that water's so nice and cool. Thank you. William Powell's translation of the Jewel Mirror Samadhi, he says, the Dharma of suchness. I don't know. I kind of prefer suchness because I'm weird that way. For me, it's just got kind of more of a crunchy granola sort of feel to it. But it's the same thing. Ta-ta-ta. Thus come one. Ta-ta-gata. in Sanskrit. This is kind of a big task I've set myself. I already said I'm not claiming to have any answers. For me, suchness is not something definable or quantifiable.

[06:30]

But, and, Zen ancestors for many centuries have been pointing to this. The teaching of thusness has been intimately communicated by Buddhism ancestors. What? What? What is this teaching? What is this teaching of thusness or suchness? Yeah. I think... I can just scratch the surface. Scratch, scratch, scratch. Talk around it, maybe. For starters, I thought we could go in the Wayback Machine. Way back. Because I'm pleased to call this top root. So what are the roots in the polycanon?

[07:34]

in the time of Shakyamuni Buddha. No. Let's go further back. Kashyapa Buddha, the mythical Buddha before the current epoch, historical Buddha. During the time, during the eon of the mythical Kashyapa Buddha, there were these seven bhikkhus who were really diligent, and really keen to practice and encouraged each other. And they said, we're going to go up this deep mountain and we're going to sit, we're going to practice together until we attain our hot ship or crook. And there's a part on the way up the mountain, there was this passage where you had to go up a ladder. And when all seven of them had got past the ladder, they said, okay, this is it. We're going to kick the ladder away. It's your last chance. And none of them backed out, they kicked the ladder away, and they just practiced together.

[08:41]

One of them attained ultimate nirvana, left the realm of rebirth. Another got promoted, you might say, into a godlike realm, Brahma realm, and became a godlike being. And the other five all died without attaining arhatship, but due to their diligent practice in their subsequent births, cycled through either the deva realm, you know, angels and heavenly existence, or human existence. Kind of back and forth between human existence and deva realms. And one of them, in... The time of Shakyamuni Buddha found himself reborn as a human into a good family, a merchant family, in the merchant business which he took up.

[09:50]

And because he came from a place called Bahiya, he was referred to as Bahiya. Bahiya, excuse me, Bahiya Daruchiriya. And if I'm mispronouncing that, I probably am, but I'm doing my best. Bahia of the Wood Fiber Clothing. We'll get to that. Bahia was on a long trading voyage by sea out of a port in Gujarat, present-day Gujarat, and had probably gone all the way around the Indian subcontinent to around present-day Myanmar, and coming back again. His ship was hit by a terrible storm. The ship was lost. Everyone on it, as the scriptures say, became food for fishes and turtles, except for Bahia, who survived by clinging on to a bit of wreckage and floated for seven days until he was washed up in a little...

[11:03]

coastal village on the northwest coast of India, somewhere north of present-day Mumbai, and he was completely naked and obviously starving, dehydrated, almost dead, and had just enough wherewithal to grab some, I guess, kelp or whatever to cover his nakedness and found some kind of vessel that resembled a bull. And that's how the villagers found him. And they all thought, oh, this is a holy man. And he was like, oh, they think I'm a holy man. And they said, we should venerate this. He's doing really strong practice. We should venerate this man. And Bahi is like, okay. Okay, I guess they think I'm a holy man. I'll go along with it. And they take him into their village and they find him a shrine and put him up there and feed him and nurse him back to health and, you know, venerate him as a holy person.

[12:16]

And Bahi is like, okay, all right. They think I'm a holy person. I'll go along with it. You know, I guess this is the gig now. And so when they try to give him some nice clothes, he was like, I don't know. They're venerating me because of like... how I am now, so I better not accept it. So he doesn't. And then he makes some clothes for himself out of, like, wood fibers or bark. Bark cloth. So that's how he got his name, Bahia of the Wood Fiber Robes. And that's the existence he was enjoying. Yeah. Until... his comrade from the previous life who had entered into the Brahma realm thought to himself, I should check on my old comrades, see how they're doing, the five who were left. And so he looks in on Bahia, and he's like, okay, I see, I see.

[13:25]

And then he manifests himself in all his... God-like effulgence, radiating light. Bahia says, who are you? And he's like, I'm the one that you used to practice with in your past life, but you don't remember. But here I am. May I offer you some feedback? No, he didn't really say that. In fact, he admonished Bahia rather severely. He said, you're not an Arhat. You are not on the path to Arhatship. You haven't even started training for Arhatship. You're deceiving these villagers. However, I'm here to tell you that there is a Buddha in this world and he's preaching the Dharma right now in a town of Sarvasthi.

[14:31]

And Bahiya gets really excited, gets a fire lit under him. His zeal for practice is really ignited. He's like, I must go see this Buddha. I must go see this Shakyamuni Buddha. And so he takes off that very night. And he doesn't stop until he gets to Sarvasti, which is, by my reckoning, about 900 miles away, at least. The scripture said 120 yojana. And that would be 840 miles. So pretty close. Pretty close. He did that overnight. And when he got to, he met the Buddha Sangha. And very, very excited to be there. And the Buddha said, I can't preach to you right now, actually. We're going on alms rounds. would have kind of put him off because you could see he wasn't ready to receive the teaching.

[15:39]

He was too agitated. And then the Sangha said, look, we welcome you, Bahia. You know what you got to do? You got to rest. Yeah. Just rest. Take it easy. They give him a place to rest. And then they oiled his legs. They said, you should oil your legs, you know. They give him some self-care. You know, it encouraged him to do some self-care so he could be ready to receive the teachings. And he did that. And then the Buddha put him off again. And then he said, well, you know, I could die. You could die. Anything could happen. I really need to receive these teachings from you, Shakti Muni, please, please. And so then the Buddha delivered to him what has come to be known as the Bahiya Sutta, which is very popular. Maybe some of you have heard it before.

[16:41]

Maybe some of you are familiar with this. It's very popular with Buddhist teachers and Zen teachers for this reason. I'm just going to quote the meat of it. The Buddha's admonition to Bahiya goes like this, the central part of the sutta, which the whole sutta is pretty short. He says, then, Bahia, you should train yourself thus. In reference to the seen, there will be only the seen. In reference to the heard, only the heard. In reference to the sensed, only the sensed. In reference to the cognized, only the cognized. That is how you should train yourself. When for you, there will be only the seen in reference to the seen. Only the heard in reference to the heard. only the sensed in reference to the sensed, only the cognized in reference to the cognized, then, bahiya, you will not identify yourself with it.

[17:45]

When you do not identify yourself with it, you will not locate yourself therein. When you do not locate yourself therein, it follows that you will have no here or beyond or midway between, and this would be The end of suffering. Train yourself thus. In reference to the scene, there will be only the scene. In reference to the herd, only the herd. Can I hear that without like going? Canyon Ren, and Canyon Rens are cute, and how many Canyon Rens did I see today, and et cetera, et cetera. Can it just be the sound? This is Suzuki Roshi's things as it is. Just this is it.

[18:50]

He started out quoting A.H. Dogen from Genjo Koan, which I think most of you are familiar with. Elsewhere in Genjo Koan, Dogen says, to carry yourself forward and experience myriad things is delusion. That myriad things come forth and experience themselves is awakening. How do we just allow this? How do we just allow this? Slow down. Rest. Over the years, I've been saying variously that my practice is gratitude or

[20:05]

My practice is appreciation, or my practice is communication. All of this points to connection. How do we connect with what is? Coming back after the evacuation, I felt this so strongly. being back here with all of you again. And two adorable babies just really fills my heart. Something about

[21:08]

Making room for the mystery is what has come up for me today. I was thinking about the day we came back only a week ago. Today's Wednesday, last Wednesday. In the morning, before we came back, Linda and I went to Wilder Ranch north of Santa Cruz, and we were walking along the cliffs. They're very beautiful. I brought my binoculars on account of bird watching. And, you know, I think bird watching, birding, is a very graspy kind of activity. You know, you want to see that bird, identify that bird, look it up on the guide, you know, you have a life list, you check it off, whatever. I'm not quite that kind of birder, but I'm not that kind of birder, you know, and I experienced it as kind of a graspy thing.

[22:13]

On that morning, I got a first bird, first bird, pigeon gillemots, which were so cute, and they were nesting and raising families on those cliffs, on the cliff faces. Because I brought my binoculars, I also scanned out over the ocean, and because I feel like my eye is kind of trained for it, Way out, way out in the water, I see this little blow from humpback whales. It's minuscule. It's such a great distance. But it was a pod, a pod of whales. They weren't doing anything. They were just breathing. Whales can be very frolicsome. They're also really good at conservation of energy. They were barely moving. They were slowly moving out to open ocean.

[23:15]

I just spent a few minutes hanging out. There wasn't much to look at, you know, just... That's all. Nothing else really happening, but... It was a moment. of connection. And if whales are too special, I thought I could also talk about roast potatoes. You know, yesterday people were saying, oh, thanks for cooking breakfast. I'm like, oh, you're very welcome. Gusto's meal. No problem. I get it. You know, I feel like to the best of my ability, I was not locating myself in potatoes. I was not locating myself in salt or oven or anything.

[24:27]

No here or beyond or midway between. Just Participating. Just participating in the process. A small part of it. I think musicians understand. You get that groove. You're in the groove. Just doing. In the groove. By the way, I have it on good authority that the word groovy is coming back into popular parlance again, and I'm here for it. Sashness is groovy. Showing up for life, showing up for your community.

[25:36]

What's the name of the guy who drives the truck that delivers the propane gas? Martin. Martin. Hey, Martin, thanks for breakfast. You know what I mean? Oh, my gosh. Well, I'm done. And in the interest of rest... I was actually hoping to quit sooner than this, but that's all I have to say tonight, and I thank you very much for your attention, and a pleasant evening to you all.

[26:27]

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