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 evening. My name is Greg Fane and I'm the Tonto or head of practice at Tazahara. I'm really happy to be here talking to you tonight. I'd like to begin by first thanking and acknowledging my teacher, Sojin Mel Weissman, the abbot of Berkeley Zen Center, and to say that my talk is just to encourage you in your practice. Also, I want to say welcome to Bodhisattva Training Academy, Tassahara Zen Shinji.

[01:00]

I feel like our summer practice period is off to a great start. There's so much good practice energy here. So much great energy. It's very inspiring to me. So this weekend, I'm so fortunate to be leading, co-leading a retreat with consulting ecologist Diane Renshaw. Gloria Lee and Flip Dibner. The wildflowers and birds of Tassahara. And we are 22 other awesome people. We're having a blast. I've had a couple of first birds this weekend, so that's really exciting for me. So given that we're doing this wildflowers and birds, birds retreat I thought I would talk tonight about a flower and a bird so the flower I want to talk about is the Udumbara flower Udumbara flower is a symbol or a kind of meaningful poetic trope in Buddhist scripture

[02:31]

It means something very rare and special. There actually is, it turns out, an Udumbara flower. According to... So, Udumbara flower is the title of an essay, fascicle, we call them, in teacher Ehe Dogen's masterwork, his life work, The Shobo Genzo, The Treasury of the True Dharma Eye. It's one of those essays. Number 68, to be precise, in the usual recension. Dogen is the founder of this school who brought this school of Zen from China to Japan. The fascicle is about a famous teaching story, pretty important for Zen school, because it's about dharma transmission. It's about the living transmission of the teaching.

[03:34]

We say that Buddhism is living tradition, a living thing. The dharma is alive, transmitted from warm hand to warm hand, from Shakyamuni Buddha's time until our own. So this is a story about the first Dharma transmission from Shakyamuni Buddha to his disciple Mahakasyapa. The story goes that there was a big assembly of people, kind of like this, only a million people. And the Buddha picked up a flower and blinked or winked. It was a secret message just for Mahakishapa. It was just like one person, you know, just heroes over there. He seemed way over there. And Mahakishapa smiled. He got it.

[04:38]

That's the story. That's the whole story. And the fascicle has it that it's an Udumbara flower. Now, in Guru Nishijima's translation of Shobhagenzo, the first complete English translation, it turns out he says there actually isn't an Umbara flower. He says it's ficus glomerata. But Diane Renshaw says it's ficus rasamosa. I'm inclined to believe Diane. He might have been a Zen teacher, but Diane's the botanist. Anyway, some kind of fig. Actually, there's a tree in Asia. There's some kind of fig, which it doesn't have a flower that you can see. Diane said, the flower's inside the fig. And actually, there's this quote-unquote, she said, complicated sex.

[05:45]

This social... What? I think you said socialist wasp. Is that right? A socialist wasp? Anyway... Some kind of wasp. I didn't know they had political parties. This wasp has to, it lays its eggs and pollinates the flowers actually inside the fig. Crazy. However, I mean, that's all fun. But the point is, you know, back in the day, people saw this tree, this fruit-bearing tree that had no flower. There's no visible flower. Where's the flower? We got cherries and plums and apricots. Of course, they all flower and then they fruit. This tree, where's the flower? It doesn't bloom. Well, maybe it blooms, you just never see it. Maybe it blooms only once every 3,000 years. So that's kind of the story.

[06:48]

That's the lore. The Udumbara flower is something very rare. and very precious. It signifies something very rare and very precious, like realizing the truth in this lifetime. It's pretty rare and pretty precious. In the Lotus Sutra, in Chapter 2, It says, the Buddha addressed Shariputra. Wonderful Dharma like this, the Buddha Tathagadas preach only occasionally, just as the Udambara flower appears only once in an age. So, I'm not going to read you the whole fastball, even though it's pretty short, I could. It's only about three pages long.

[07:49]

I'm just going to read you a couple of paragraphs from it. At the assembly of a million beings on Vulture Peak, the world-honored one held up an Udambara blossom and blinked. Then Mahakasyapa smiled. The world-honored one said, I have the treasury of the true Dharma eye, the wondrous heart of Nirvana. I entrust it to Mahakasyapa. No matter how many times a flower is held up, it is transmission and entrusting of the Dharma face-to-face, heir-to-air. The world-honored one's holding up of the flower has not been abandoned. Your holding up the flower that the world-honored one held up is your inheriting the world-honored one.

[08:52]

As the moment of holding up the flower is throughout time, you are with the world honored one holding up the flower. Something rare and precious. The Buddha says, I have the treasury of the true Dharma eye, the wondrous heart of nirvana. Now, as I said in my last Dharma talk, Buddha means awakened, woke. The Buddha was woke. He woke up. When the Buddha woke up, what did he wake up to? The Buddha woke up to the truth of dependent origination. Nothing that exists, exists independently. or arises independently. Everything that exists or arises, exists, arises interdependently, dependent on everything else, as a matter of fact.

[10:05]

As a matter of fact. By some accounts, when the Buddha, sitting under the Bodhi tree, saw the morning star. He said, I and all beings together attain enlightenment at the same time. I and all beings together attain enlightenment at the same time. That means all of us. That means all beings. Crickets, owls, horses, hummingbirds, humans, humpback whales, the moon, the planets, the stars, everything, everything that exists, exists within a matrix of life.

[11:12]

It's just life, everything, all life. That's how it is. This fascicle is about Dharma transmission, and the ceremony of Dharma transmission is a ceremony of authorization, entrustment, and empowerment. You are empowered. I and all beings together attain enlightenment at the same time. Dogen really wants us to know this. Whether he's writing this fascicle for his assembly, for the monks practicing with him, or for all of us.

[12:13]

Same thing. He says, you're empowered. holding up the flower. You're holding up the flower that the world honored one held up is your inheriting. What are you inheriting? You're inheriting the world honored one. You're inheriting his realization. When we sit zazen, we inherit. When we take up this posture, we say, this is the Buddha mind seal. Or, you can say, one minute of zazen is one minute of Buddha. This is

[13:17]

This is finding your seat. The Buddha sat under the Buddha tree. Mara gave him a hard time. He said, what right have you to be here? The Buddha didn't get defensive. He just touched the ground and said, I call on the earth as my witness. That's all. You know where you are. You found your seat. You found your center of gravity. You know exactly where you are. This is power. This is flower power. As a matter of fact, we gotta bring that back. I'm for real. We gotta bring that back. There's a lot of people, it seems to me, feeling pretty shaky these days.

[14:27]

They don't know where they are. They don't know where they stand, where they sit. The Lotus Sutra also says, great bodhisattvas give the gift of non-fear. I think that's what we have to offer. And, you know... It's pretty scary times, I think, for a lot of people. I think a lot of people think that. Speaking of birds, when I was a little boy, little boy, just a little one, I remember Rachel Carson published Silent Spring. That was a revolutionary book. I remember my mom and dad and grade school teachers talking about it. It had a huge impact. I never read it myself. Rachel Carson, this one woman, she got these big corporations to stop making DDT.

[15:36]

Pretty much single-handedly she did that. I think a big part of the impact of that book was the title. We, we, people, humans, we evolved with the seasons and the birds. Imagining a spring with no bird song, it's just like, you know, whoa. And her premise was, that could happen. Actually, that could happen. It could. And now we're facing this crisis, which is completely unprecedented. In human history, not in geologic history, people are awesome. People are so crazy. We made the Great Pyramids, Golden Gate Bridge.

[16:40]

Hey, don't stop there. We're going to name a geological epoch after ourselves, the Anthropocene. So now people say we live in the Anthropocene. The human impact on the world, so significant, we're going to name a geological age after it. Completely changing the climate of the planet. That ship has sailed. The CO2 in the air is over 400 parts per million and counting. There hasn't been that much CO2 in the atmosphere since the Miocene era, which ended five million years ago. There weren't people around then. So we don't really know what's going to happen. It's unprecedented. There were hominids, you know, but they weren't people as we know them.

[17:47]

So that's pretty scary. You know, if you're scared, I don't blame you. It's pretty scary. What will happen? We don't know. Actually, we don't know. Maybe, I think, the ice caps will continue to melt. They're melting now. You can watch it on YouTube. That's this thing they have outside of Tazahara called the Internet. You can see it. Chunk of ice the size of Manhattan Island. Pretty impressive. Scary. Also, a part of me kind of secretly wishes I could have seen that IRL, to be honest.

[18:56]

Wow. Wow. That's happening. That is happening. You know? Yeah, so maybe they just continue to melt. Maybe the... sea level just keeps going up. Maybe a lot of formerly expensive real estate becomes worthless. You know? Mar-a-Lago will be just Mar. I've been waiting for a week to say that. Fear, fear is okay, actually.

[20:10]

Courage doesn't mean banishing fear. Courage means going forward in the face of fear. Maybe what's worse than fear is letting fear paralyze you. Ancillary emotions like guilt, hopelessness, apathy. It doesn't have to be that way. I think this practice has something to offer. A great Buddhist philosopher and activist, Joanna Macy, a great bodhisattva, she talks about the necessity for a paradigm shift in this world.

[21:25]

And she calls that the great turning. Maybe tonight I call it picking up a flower. The great turning meaning a shift at the basis from an industrial growth society to a civilization that's life-sustaining and nurturing. We could do that. We could do that if we wanted to. People are awesome. Just, we can't let fear hold us back. We can't let apathy hold us back. We can use what we've inherited.

[22:51]

We can use our power, our flower power. The World Honored Ones holding up of the flower has not been abandoned, has not been abandoned. I haven't abandoned it, and neither have you. As I said earlier in my talk, I feel practice at Tassajara is very strong. This is what we're doing here. We're creating, manufacturing and exporting non-fear. We're manufacturing and exporting loving kindness and equanimity and confidence in our way. The world honored ones holding up with the flower has not been abandoned.

[23:57]

Excuse me. If you were paying attention, I said I was gonna talk about a flower and a bird. So the bird is the black Phoebe. That is, or I should say, the family of black Phoebes that are living above my bedroom window. I've lived in cabin 1B for seven years. That's longer than I've lived anywhere else in my life. Three years ago, a pair of black Phoebes built a nest above my bedroom window. It's made out of mud from Tassajara Creek.

[25:12]

They build good nests. They do. And Linda and I watched as our... A bedroom window just got plastered with mud and bird poop. Didn't mar the view at all. Not at all. And raised little fledglings. Black Phoebes are monogamous. And they will reuse the same nest. If they had good success... Then they'll come back to the same nest. So this pair of black Phoebes has used the same nest three years in a row. Very happily and massively entertaining to us. I just love them. I just love to watch them come and go and watch them rear their little families.

[26:17]

Feed them, the mother and father, Black Phoebe, share equally. Although the mom builds the nest. Isn't that interesting? Female builds the nest. And they feed the little ones, you know, they're flycatchers. Thank you. Thank you, Black Phoebes and all the other flycatchers and the bats. that subsist on flying insects at Tazahara. Eat hearty. So they come and bring a big mouthful of regurgitated insect parts for the little ones. So this winter, if you are from the coast like me, if you're from California, I don't have to tell you, you were in the same atmospheric rivers that we were.

[27:37]

I guess they feel more dramatic in Tazahara because it's a little less mediated. Our experience of nature, maybe. Particularly, I think, for those of us who were in this past winter, a lot less mediated. Yeah, we had a lot of rain. Thank goodness. Thank goodness. You know, the Sierra snowpack right now is 185% of average. Woo-hoo! Anyway, some big storms. And what do you know? That nest that they used three years in a row got demolished. Got demolished in the storms. I noticed, oh, it's not there anymore. And that same pair of black Phoebes came back and the mom built a new nest in the exact same place.

[28:38]

I watched them build it this spring. Watched her build it. It's a little bigger. They went bigger. Exact same location. And a couple of weeks ago, I was watching them. As I like to do, sometimes I walk around the corner of the cabin and watch them. And Papa was... flying out and catching insects and flying up to the roof of the cabin and then coming under the eave to the nest and feeding the little ones and just standing there on the edge of the nest, perching up there, kind of looking around like, yeah. Vigilant. They're very vigilant about their territory. And, you know, they're little guys, but he was just like so dignified.

[29:40]

So noble. As noble as any bald eagle. I'm here. Yeah, we're back. We rebuilt. We got little ones. We're doing this. We're doing this. We need that kind of spirit. Particularly the dignity of And nobility. And I think that's something else that this practice has to offer. Finding that. And if you've lost it, be gaining it. Because it's your birthright. It is. It's your birthright. And you need that to face a crisis. You need that to confront, not run away from something that's scary, seems maybe unworkable.

[30:53]

What do we do now? Figure it out. That's what. Just do it. That is our way, you know. That's what Suzuki Roshi said. We have to do it. We must. We must. Thank you for your attention. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma talks are offered free of charge, and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma.

[31:56]

For more information, visit sfcc.org and click giving.

[32:02]

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