This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfzz.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good evening. Well, that was the lecture. I thought I was getting dressed. Am I really going to put on three layers of clothing? Yes, I am. I'm Fu Schrader. I live at Green Gulch Farm. I'm very, very happy to be here. I lived here for about three years a long time ago. And I've sat and I always kind of check out the seats where I used to sit. Over there and over there and over here. I had the thought when I was coming down the road and the stage, you know, oh, I'm going home.

[01:11]

So tonight I want to talk about one of the primary teachings of the Buddha, at least it's my feeling. His primary teaching is from the Dhammapada. And the very first verse is, what we are today comes from our thoughts of yesterday. And our present thoughts build our life of tomorrow. Our life is a creation of our mind. That's going to be it. So one of the best illustrations of this teaching that I've ever found is a children's book called Harold and the Purple Crayon. Do some of you know it? I mean, many of you? Anybody not know Harold and the Purple Crayon? Yeah, I didn't either. And someone mentioned it, and so I went and got it, and it's marvelous. And I actually had it on my table to bring, but I didn't.

[02:12]

So I'll have to have you imagine what's in the book. It starts with this little boy in his pajamas, and he's been drawn as if with a purple crayon himself. And he has a purple crayon. and he's getting somewhat bored so he heads out of his house by drawing his way out of the house and then he draws a tree an apple tree and he draws some apples and he takes the apples and he draws some apple pies lots of them and he eats them and he can't finish them all his stomach has gotten quite large and so he draws a monster to protect the apple pies and then the monster chases him so he He's starting to, as he's running away, he trips, and then he draws a cliff by mistake, and he falls over it. And as he's panicking, he draws the ocean. And now he's, you know, struggling in the ocean.

[03:14]

So he, clever boy, draws a boat and gets in and draws a sail. And I'm not quite sure. I wish I had the book. I think he draws a shark because he gets bored or something like that. But anyway... Then he draws a balloon and finally he realizes he wants to go home. So he draws a city with lots of windows and he looks in every window and he can't find his room. So he's very scared, he's very lonely. He draws a policeman and the policeman just stands and points, doesn't move. So finally he remembers that when he was home, the moon was shining in the window. of his room. So he draws the moon and the window and his bed and the covers and then he gets inside and he drops the crayon. So this is the Buddha's teaching.

[04:14]

We are creating the world that we then enter and we either delight in or we suffer. And it's really true. But it's very hard for us to believe that. It really does seem as though the world's coming at us from outside, like the monster and the shark. So I also want to offer a quote from John Cage, the composer. The first thing I ask myself when something doesn't seem to be beautiful is why do I think it's not beautiful? first thing I ask myself when I think that something is not beautiful why do I think it's not beautiful and very shortly I discover that there is no reason so four years ago no not four years ago last year time that's another drawing draw a clock calendar

[05:26]

Last year, about this time, I asked my drawing teacher, whose name is Leslie Katz, if she would come with me to Tassajara, and we tried doing a drawing workshop. So we did, and we called it Learning to Sit, Learning to Draw, Learning to See. And we had a wonderful time. And so this year, I thought, well, I'd like to do it again, but my drawing teacher is... her daughter's getting married or something. Anyway, so it turns out that Christine Bailey, who's sitting in here somewhere, where are you? Somewhere? Oh, there she is, yeah. She's a wonderful art teacher as well, and we're having a very, very nice time learning from her. So we, again, learning to sit, learning to draw, learning to see. So I don't know if the rest of you had an ambition when you were small to be able to draw well, but I had one.

[06:29]

And I was pretty sure I couldn't. And everything I drew, first, second, third grade, didn't look like what I wanted it to look like. The cats looked like chickens and that kind of thing. So I decided I would never be able to draw. And so I just basically stuck to doodling. And I'd been doodling for 50 years. I doodle on everything. All my notes I've taken throughout college and at Zen Center are full of doodles. In fact, I have really learned to understand the Buddhist teaching by doodling because it's really quite accessible. For example, my favorite, not my favorite, but one of my favorites is non-duality. It's a seesaw. And there's a fulcrum in the middle, and on one side is... is, and on the other side is, is not. And they join in the center, which is the middle way. It's good, huh?

[07:30]

So if you can think of a doodle, you can probably remember some of these teachings much easier. So anyway, I'm not putting doodling down, but I still wanted to learn how to draw. Some part of me did. So when my daughter's high school drawing teacher, Leslie, offered a course to teachers or parents of the school as she was retiring. For those who always wanted to learn to draw and were afraid to ask, I signed up. So the first day of class, I showed up with my little pencil box and my notebook, as everyone did for this retreat. It's very sweet. We all have our new school supplies. And Leslie said, OK, I'd like you to draw your face from memory. So I think you all should try that this evening when you get home or sometime. You know, it was horrible. And so anyway, I thought, well, this isn't going to work.

[08:38]

I'm obviously not going to ever learn how to draw. So then she gave us each a mirror and said, OK, now do it again. It was still horrible, but it was better. You know, actually looking at my face and drawing it was entirely different from trying to imagine my face, which I can't imagine at all, ever. I don't know what my face looks like right now. I can see you. I can see your faces, but you can't see your faces, can you? Yeah. It's kind of a funny trick. So, you know, you're more my face than I am my face. But I drew the one I saw in the mirror. And that was the beginning of learning something about this wonderful, miraculous thing called drawing. And I still think it's a miracle. But the real miracle that came from drawing was this gift of seeing the world in a different way. And I feel like I've been, it's kind of embarrassing as a Zen student to feel like, you know, I'm a Zen student.

[09:42]

I've been looking, you know, studying the self and all these things like that. But I feel in a way I was looking at the dark and pretty adept at staring into the dark. I'm not afraid of the dark in the way I was. But to really look at the world, to look at the light and the way it touches all of these objects, all of you right now in the light, it's just what... that what we know of the world is what we see, what we touch and smell here. It's amazing when you start to attend to the details of your senses. You know, our thinking takes over so much of our attention. We're like, you know, kind of running this show all the time, blah, blah, blah. And it's very dominant. So by drawing brings us into our sensory contact, as does the yoga. There's a yoga workshop. as well going on.

[10:43]

All of these wonderful sensory arts that help us to make contact with the world outside of this constant chatter. So as I was beginning to learn more about art and beginning to get closer to paintings and realize what an amazing thing it is that these artists have done in creating images of the world, I began to understand why Paul Cezanne spent hours staring at an apple. And he did. Hours. Well, we spend hours staring at a blank wall for the same reason. We're trying to understand the mystery of life. What are we? Where are we? What is red? What is thinking? What is smelling? What is truth? So this is what I want to talk about tonight, is confronting the great mysteries.

[11:46]

And there are two in particular that I have in mind, and one of them is the mystery called me. Who am I? And the other great mystery is you. Who or what are you? So this, what's called the double barrier in Buddhism, self and objects, as if they're separate. as if there are two things there and in between them some kind of invisible wall behind the wall is this whole set of defensive gestures I am protecting myself against you and you against me and it's not personal I don't mean to do it it's just that I was born that way I was born seeing the world as outside of myself. So those who stare at the walls and those who stare at apples are trying to understand the way things are, trying to understand how it is that we come to see things that way so that we might break the spell and wake up from this dream of separation.

[13:01]

So, you know, we We know that Shakyamuni Buddha was a person who did this very study. He stared at the world before his eyes. He studied the world and its intimate details. He studied what seemed to be the world inside of himself. And he came to an amazing understanding. At the end of seven days, something quite amazing happened. And we'd love to know what that was. What did he see as he stared out into space? Made him very happy, what he saw, what he understood. In the Buddha's time, there were many yogis and many meditators who were engaging in deep states of trance. And they would report on

[14:08]

various visions that they had. They saw different colored gods, and they traveled through the heavens. They found passageways through time and space. And they created religions out of their visions. Most of the world's great religions come from visionaries and what they saw as they meditated. What the Buddha said at the end of his meditation was quite remarkable. He said, I find no evidence for or against anything. You can't really argue with that. And I think that was his point. Let's stop arguing. Let's stop fighting. Let's live together in harmony. This was his primary teaching. How can we live together? How can we stop imagining ourselves to be separate and defending? also from the Dhammapada.

[15:17]

Many do not know that we are here in this world to live in harmony with one another. Those who know this do not fight against each other. So this particular school of Buddhism, which is called Soto Zen, practiced at the San Francisco Zen Center, is also called the wall-gazing school. And we do. We spend a lot of time staring at a blank wall. And the point of this is to basically replicate the conditions under which the Buddha attained enlightenment. Soft gaze, still, quiet, as best as possible, not moving. Christine was saying that sometimes when she's about to paint, She just stands in front of a blank canvas, waiting, waiting, waiting for the creative process to begin, to move her body, to move her hand.

[16:29]

So this is pretty much what you know, I think Harold was doing with the purple crayon, you know. This creative process has begun. And he began writing on the blank wall, as we do. And the crayon represents our human imagination. It represents this creative process. So this is what we're doing every moment. Every moment is a fresh creation of our imagination. You know, we're coming out of the dark. You know, really, I mean, right now, you know, you are appearing out of the dark, into the light. You don't know how you're getting here. What's bringing you forth? It's creation. You are an active creation. So...

[17:46]

You know, the gods really are a variety of colors. And there are passageways through time and space. We can travel the universe and walk through walls because of our imagination. I once read in a sutra, I've always been curious about these tales of the yogis who walk through walls. You guys all heard about those? I mean, it's part of why we do Zen in the first place, right? We want these magical powers. I mean... We don't tell people that. Don't tell your practice leader that, but, you know, I really would like some of those things to happen. And so I read in the sutra that part of the jhana practice, jhana means trance, deep meditative trance, one of the practices in the higher jhanas is to create a mind-made person. And then the mind-made person walks through walls, travels through space. I was like, oh, that's it.

[18:47]

Of course, you know, we can all do that, right? You've been doing it forever. Imagining yourself in Paris or wherever you like, you know? Back in high school. So... And the trouble is, our imagination can be for either good or for ill. There's a story I heard Wednesday night from... dear Diana Jarrett, about a Tibetan story called The Painted Tiger. And there was a yogi who was a very good artist, and he carefully painted a tiger for several years on the wall of his cave. And when he was finished, it scared him. So as the Buddha was sitting under the Bodhi tree, What he was doing was basically allowing his imagination to run free. And it really did, you know.

[19:49]

First thing that appeared was an army of demons. And they attacked him and they spit at him and they called him nasty names. And then he didn't move. He stayed still. And the army vanished. You know, what kind of an army is that? Certainly not ours. They're taking forever to get out of the Middle East, you know? So then, these dancing boys and girls appeared and called him sweet things. Said, come on, Shaki. And again, he sat still. He didn't move. And the beautiful people vanished, too. Like that. So finally, the last appearance was... Mara, the evil one, himself, or herself, it's not quite clear. Mara's kind of fuzzy. Mara appeared in the clearing and said, now I'm really mad, you know, and you are going to be destroyed.

[20:57]

And Buddha said, no, I'm not, because I know who you are. And Mara said, you don't know who I am. But he was getting a little nervous, like Harold with the crayon. And Buddha said, I do know who you are. You are myself. And with that, Mara vanished, leaving Buddha sitting there under the tree to the sound of the crickets at peace with a deep understanding of suffering, the cause of suffering. Our life is a creation of our mind. What you are today comes from your thoughts of yesterday. Your present thoughts build your life of tomorrow. Your life is a creation of your mind. Now, unlike Harold, when...

[22:09]

Buddha awoke. The world didn't vanish. You know, the trees and the grass and the crickets and the beautiful sky. You know, they didn't require his imagination. The world doesn't need us to imagine it. We are the world. We got here without our own cleverness, you know. That's something late. That's a late arrival, that thing we do. with our forebrains imputing interpretation on the world. So grass and trees and walls, tiles and pebbles all engage in Buddha's activity and they are not in need of our imagination. But what did vanish for the Buddha were all of his mental elaborations, all of his fantasies, all of his daydreams, all of his mental chatter, the false assumptions, accusations.

[23:18]

How many times have you said to yourself, oh, I know what they're thinking? Right? You don't. I'm sorry. Neither do I. I don't know what anybody's thinking. I really know what I'm thinking. I said to one of the men I'm working with, it goes to meetings where there are lots of irritating people, apparently, so he says. And I said, well, you might be one too. He said, yeah, maybe. But anyway, I told him this little trick that Reb had been telling us recently. He said, just think to yourself, I do not believe what I'm thinking about you. So he tried it at a meeting. He told me last week, he said, that was great. He said, I had the best meeting ever. Every time I'd have this thought about someone, I'd say, I do not believe what I'm thinking about you. First of all, it made him smile. And then that changed his feeling about the person and probably how he talked to them as well.

[24:22]

We can be a lot nicer than we are to each other. And we're pretty nice. You guys are really nice. Here at Tassajara. I haven't been in the kitchen. I assume. It's just like heaven. It's like bag lunch and the shop. Wonderful. So the Buddha said that very thing, wonderful, wonderful. All of creation is enlightened at the same time. No evidence for or against anything. So, you know, how do we encourage ourselves to engage in this very realization, to take up this practice of looking at reality for real, you know, seeing the truth? Well, one way is to stick together, help each other. You know, one of the fantasies we have is the fantasy of I, you know, you shift over to we.

[25:24]

I like it when the community members talk about we. Oh, we have a new truck and we have some lettuce and we, you know, it's wheat. This is a wheat. And that's true. This community is ours to care for. So last year when I was at Tassajara, there was a family of canyon wrens that had nested in a women's bathroom. So when I got down there, there were a group of naked women standing around. Imagine that. And we were all looking at the canyon wrens, and the baby birds were chirping very loudly. And the mother bird was sitting in a window with a grub. dangling it, and they're going, and she's going, come on, come on. So it was pretty clear it was time to fly. And we were all like, whoa. And one of them fell out of the nest and was on the floor. And so the mother kept yelling, and the other siblings were yelling, and the baby couldn't do anything. So finally, one of the women took a basket top and put the baby back up, and it jumped right off again.

[26:30]

So we decided that wasn't, you know, we weren't helping. So then it got itself back up. It was amazing. It was like an Everest climb. Worked its way to a backpack and then up to the ledge and finally got back on there. It was like, ha, ha, ha. So this, you know, it was wonderful. The next day we came in and they were all gone. You know? And the day after that, so were we. Amazing, huh? No evidence for or against anything. So I wanted to close by telling you a story from a graduation ceremony I went to I guess two years ago. A friend of ours has a daughter who's somewhat severely

[27:31]

disabled at birth. And she's going to a school called Star Academy in Marin County. Wonderful school. And all the kids there have rather severe learning disabilities. But they do an amazing job. And they do an amazing job educating these children. Because the kids, each one of them, stood up and gave a graduation speech. And they were absolutely beautiful. And there wasn't a dry eye in the house, including mine. So one very handsome young man stood up there, and I think probably inspired by the Beatles, no doubt. He said this. Imagine a young man who knows he's smart, but he can't say, write, or read the words on a page. Imagine a young man who sits in the back of the room, afraid to raise his hand because, as always, they will laugh at him. Imagine a young man who the teacher has no time to talk to. Imagine a young man whose mother never believed what they told her about who he was or what he could do.

[28:33]

Imagine a young man coming here to this school to be with others like himself, learning to laugh and to read and to speak. And then he said, that young man is me. And he said, I wish that every kid could be given this chance to imagine new worlds and new dreams as I have. And I thought, you know, I think as adults we need to imagine a better world for the kids and for the other adults and for everyone. You know, they do a better job than we're doing. But something's holding us back. You know, what is that? Well, it's this imagination of a wall that separates us from one another. You know, we're afraid. We're judgmental. We're all of these things that have to do with imagining ourselves as separate. So each of us, you know, that wall can either be thickened or it can be shattered. And each of us is going to have to choose whether or not to fly free.

[29:37]

So that's what the Buddha taught and that's what the Buddha saw. A poem by Juan Ramón Jiménez. I feel that my boat has bumped. there at the bottom, into something big. And nothing happens. Nothing. Quiet waves. Nothing happens. Or has everything happened? And we are already at rest in something new. Thank you very much. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our programs are made possible by the donations we receive. Please help us to continue to realize and actualize the practice of giving by offering your financial support. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click Giving.

[30:43]

May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[30:46]

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