Isn't it a beautiful day? Are you going to do something fun after this? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Me too. Thank you for being here, dear Abbas. Well, my daughter is off in France right now, like French fries. She's in France, and she got really homesick. So today's better, and she's staying in an abbey in France, a nunnery. And it said on the website that this nunnery always had queens for the abbess.

[01:01]

So I mistakenly said to Linda this morning, good morning, your highness. So I have a story I want to tell you, and then you'll go do the children's program. I wanted to ask you a question, though. Any of you could, first of all, let's let the young people try. Do you know what your imagination is? Anybody know? What is it? It's when you're thinking of something? Yeah. Any other ideas about that? That's very good. Yes. So that's right. And you look, you do exactly what we all do when we imagine something. We look up at the sky. I'm imagining, can you name something you can imagine right now? What can you imagine? Yeah? A bird, you imagined a bird.

[02:08]

Anyone else imagine something? Tooth fairy, that's great, yeah, yeah. You, oh boy, he's sophisticated. Very good. I don't have to give the talk. That's great, very good. I'm imagining a toad. I don't know why, but he just hopped in there, just all of a sudden. So this book I'm gonna read to you, you may know it, some of you may know it, some of you don't. It's called Harold and the Purple Crayon. Who knows it? Oh no! know it see none of you know it so that's good so this is for the adults all right this is 55 years old this book a little bit older than most of you okay harold and the purple crayon this is from the imagination of crockett johnson so one evening after thinking who said thinking you said thinking after thinking it over for some time harold decided to go for a walk in the moonlight

[03:20]

I know you can't see it, but I'm sorry. You have to use your imagination. There wasn't any moon, and Harold needed a moon for a walk in the moonlight, and he needed something to walk on. So what did he do? He drew a path and a moon. He did, he drew a path and a moon, exactly. He made a long straight path so he wouldn't get lost, and he set off on his walk, taking his big purple crayon with him. And off he goes. but he didn't seem to be getting anywhere on the long straight path. So he left the path for a shortcut across a field, and the moon went with him. The shortcut led right to where Harold thought a forest ought to be. He didn't want to get lost in the woods, so he made a very small forest with just one tree. And it turned out to be an apple tree.

[04:23]

The apples would be very tasty, Harold thought when they got red. So he put a frightening dragon under the tree to guard the apples. It was a terribly frightening dragon. Was that a good idea? Yeah. It was so frightening that it frightened Harold. He backed away, his hand holding the purple crayons shook. So what's he drawing there? A little shaky line, huh? Yeah, yeah, you know that book really well. Suddenly he realized what was happening, but by then Harold was over his head in the ocean. But he came up thinking fast, and in no time at all, he was climbing aboard a trim little boat.

[05:24]

He quickly set sail, and the moon sailed along with him. There he goes, happy again, just like us. After he had sailed long enough, Harold made land without much trouble. Oops, sorry, that was me. He stepped ashore on the beach, wondering where he was. He even drew a little anchor there to hold his boat. The sandy beach reminded Harold of picnics, and he thought of picnics made him hungry, so he laid out a nice, simple picnic lunch. You might have a picnic today, huh? It's a good day for a picnic. You gonna have a picnic? Yeah? Good. There was nothing but pie at his picnic. But they were all the nine kinds of pie that Harold liked best. What a lucky kid, huh? When Harold finished his picnic, there was quite a lot left over, and he hated to see so much delicious pie go to waste.

[06:35]

So, what do you think he did? A moose. Harold left a very hungry moose and a deserving porcupine to finish it up and off he went looking for a hill to climb to see where he was. Harold knew that the higher up he went, the farther he could see, so he decided to make the hill into a mountain. He went high enough he thought he could see the window of his bedroom. Good idea? Maybe not, yeah, maybe. He was tired, and he felt he ought to be getting to bed. He hoped he could see his bedroom window from the top of the mountain, so he climbed on top. Oh, be careful. But as he looked down over the other side, he slipped, and there wasn't any other side of the mountain. He was falling in thin air. Oof. Uh-oh, uh-oh.

[07:36]

Free fall. But luckily, he kept his wits and his purple crayon, and he made a balloon and grabbed a hold of it. He made a basket under the balloon, big enough to stand in, and he had a fine view from the balloon, but he couldn't see his window. He couldn't even see a house. Where is his house? So he made a house with windows. And he landed the balloon on the grass in the front yard. But none of the windows was his window. So he tried to think where his window ought to be. So he made some more windows. He made a big building full of windows. Which is why my daughter's homesick. A building full of windows. He made lots of buildings full of windows.

[08:39]

In fact, he made a whole city full of windows. But none of the windows was his window, and he couldn't think where it might be. He decided to ask a policeman. And the policeman pointed the way that Harold was going anyway, but he thanked him. And he walked along with the moon wishing he was in his room and in his bed. And then suddenly Harold remembered. He remembered. What did he remember? He remembered where his bedroom window was when there was a moon. It was always right around the moon. And then Harold made his bed. And he got in it and he drew up the covers. I'm sorry, you guys.

[09:42]

I forgot all about the side of the moon. I'll give it to you later. And the purple crayon dropped on the floor and Harold dropped off to sleep. The end. Do you like that? Is that good? Oh, thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Okay, bye-bye. Have fun, all of you. Nancy, our friend Nancy, is going to do something wonderful. Teach you a song. Are there? Yeah, I looked at the bath. Which is your favorite one of those? Harry's Fairy Tales. That's good? Is that good? There's a castle. Okay. I'll look for that. Thank you. a quote by the composer John Cage.

[10:59]

The first thing I ask myself when something doesn't seem to be beautiful is why do I think it's not beautiful? And very shortly, I discovered that there is no reason. So a couple of weeks ago, I went to Tassajara with my drawing teacher, Leslie Katz, to do a four-day workshop that we called learning to draw, learning to sit, and learning to see. And since I was a little kid, I really wanted to learn how to draw, but even then I could see that what I drew wasn't any good. So I resigned myself to doodling in the margins of my study books. So then about two years ago, when my friend and partner, Ray Stammen, had an automobile accident.

[12:00]

Many of you have heard about that. It's been three years now. When she came home from the hospital and taking care of her, I realized that being in the house so much, I really needed something to do that was just for me. Something interesting. So I started to cook. And that was really fun. Still fun. I like to cook. I have plans for later today. But when I saw this notice from Leslie, who was retiring as the art teacher at my daughter's high school, saying, any of you who don't think you can draw would like to come and take a lesson or two, I want to offer a class. So about eight of us showed up that first night with our pencil boxes and paper. And I think for those of you who know how to draw or learned when you were kids, you've forgotten what it's like to learn something.

[13:05]

And as an old person, it's really hard to learn something new. So I was nervous that first class, as were we all. So the first thing Leslie had us do was to draw our own face from memory. Thank you. It was so mean. So we all, you know, hid our papers and did what we could do with that assignment, and of course it came out horribly. And Harold does a lot better, I assure you. So then she said, okay, now, and she gave us each a mirror and had us draw our face looking at it, which, you know, even I could see was a lot better, but still horrible, just horrible. So, you know, that was years ago now. And actually, I can draw in a way that makes me very, very happy.

[14:06]

So when we were at the workshop and the other people who were just coming to learn were sitting there torturing themselves with, you know, self-judgment, you know, I very happily drew a branch and a bell and a vase full of flowers. So even though it's been a miraculous thing for me to learn how to draw, I think the greater miracle is really in seeing the world in a new way. And truly, it's like someone's drawn the drapes back. The shadows and the shapes and the textures and the colors. You know, I stare. I mean, I think people must wonder if I'm okay sometimes. I just stand and stare. at tiny details along the path. And who knew? I mean, who knew? The light during the day, how it changes how objects look.

[15:12]

I have kind of a gross sense of all that. And drawing things, you really stop and pay attention. So I've begun to understand, maybe a little bit, why Paul says on spent hours and hours staring at an apple. Which is much the same reason that we Zen students spend hours and hours staring at a blank wall. What we humans are doing in this endeavor is confronting the great mysteries of our lives. Mysteries like red and round, sweet and mouth and ears. and mind and truth. So that's what I want to talk about today. I want to talk about the great mysteries. Confronting the great mysteries. And the two great mysteries I have in mind in particular are one that this young man gave away, which is studying the self.

[16:17]

Studying the self. And the other one is studying the object. So that would be me. And that would be you. Me and you. So if you imagine two sides of a transparent wall, a wall that is more felt than seen, on the one side of the wall, that's me. And the other side of the wall is how I protect myself from you. And it's not personal, you know, make you feel bad. But it's just what we do. It's how we see things. And staring at this wall is what these people who stare are up to. They're trying to see how the mind works, what it is we do when we create this idea that there are these two things.

[17:20]

Self and object, me and you. So Shakyamuni Buddha was such a person who stared at the world as it was arising before his eyes. And he grew up in a culture that had already an evolved practice of meditation and of yoga. So there were many, many people in his world who had done deep practices of this type, also hallucinogens and ganja and so on, to this very day. People entered trances of various kinds and through various means. So he was used to hearing the reports of the multicolored gods or the passageways to heaven or the gateway through the time, through time zones, in and out of time. He'd heard all of those stories. So what he had to say upon his awakening was the most startling thing of all.

[18:26]

He said, I find no evidence for or against anything. It's kind of hard to argue with that. In fact, the point of his teaching throughout his lifetime was ending argumentation, putting an end to quarreling and to fighting. Stop fighting, humans. Stop fighting with yourself. Stop fighting with each other. from the Dhammapada. 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 that's the outcome of the Buddha's teaching. That's the point of it. You know, living in harmony together. But how? How do we get there? How do we do this? How do we break the wall?

[19:28]

So this particular school of Buddhism is represented by the San Francisco Zen Center, is actually called the wall-gazing school. And that's because in order to replicate as best we can the conditions for the Buddha's awakening, you know, we sit and we face these walls, these very walls, with our eyes open for long periods of time. And all the while we are very intensely interested in knowing just what the Buddha saw. What did he see in that space before his eyes as he stared? Well, as far as I can tell, what the Buddha saw was fairly close to what Harold had to show us with his purple crayon. You know, if we grant that the crayon is the human imagination and the act of creation, then each and every one of us is drawing a fresh new world in each and every moment.

[20:36]

Like it or not. And we're drawing that world on the wall. So indeed, there are gods in a variety of colors. There are toads. There are passageways through time and ecstatic journeys to the heavens. You know, we all know these because we all have an imagination for good and for ill. So with the very same set of tools that we all have, you know, what did the Buddha do that allowed him to see how this works? Well, for one thing, he was very patient, like Paul Cézanne. And he could spend hours sitting there, staring at the space before his eyes.

[21:40]

And he let his imagination get the better of him. And then he watched. Well, first came... I think you all know this story, but I'll repeat it for you. First came the armies of demons. They attacked him, they threw rocks at him, they spit at him, and they called him terrible names. But he sat there and he stared and the army vanished. Just like that. So we know a little bit about armies, don't we? And logistics and... how much money it takes to keep an army, various places around the world. So how does an army simply vanish? Because it was a product of Shakyamuni's imagination. And next came the dancing boys and the dancing girls.

[22:48]

And they called to him as well. Come here, little Buddha. But he continued to stare. And they too vanished. And finally, Mara, the evil one, the master of illusion, appeared looking fierce, angry and menacing. And he said to the Buddha, I will now destroy you if you don't leave this place, this place of staring at the wall. But by then the Buddha knew what was true and what wasn't true. what was really there and what wasn't really there. And so he smiled at Mara. And Mara grew more intense and fierce. Now I will kill you. And the Buddha said, no, you won't, because I know who you are. You are myself. And in the words of Glenda the Good from The Wizard of Oz, he said to Mara,

[23:54]

Be gone. You have no power here. So like Harold, the Buddha kept his wits. And Mara also vanished. But unlike Harold, when the Buddha stopped using his imagination in that way that he had been, the world didn't grow blank or silent. And that's because the earth, the grass, trees, walls, tiles, and pebbles are all Buddha's activity. And they do not need our imagination. You know, what had vanished for the Buddha were the mental elaborations, the projections, the false assumptions, and the mindless chatter. His mind had grown quiet.

[24:56]

And without all that chatter and all that noise, he could really see, he could really hear, he could really feel, and he could clearly think. And what he said was clearly very good, very wise, very kind. And then he said, wonderful, wonderful. All of creation is enlightened at the same time. No evidence for or against anything. And he was a happy man. So what is it that we all need to encourage ourselves to face the wall of our mental apparatus? our perceptions, to see what's true and what isn't true. Now, what encouragement do we need?

[26:00]

Well, of course, a few good friends, as all of you here today. A few good friends is really nice. And so are mentors and teachers and guides, which reminds me again of the workshop down at Tassajara. I don't know how many of you have not been to Tassajara. How many of you have not been to Tassajara? Oh, well, please put it on your calendars. It's a wonderful place. It's a wonderful place beyond what I can imagine. It's beautiful and the food is great and we love the guests. Or if we come as students, which is even better, face the wall with us. Anyway, I try to go every year, so this year I went with this drawing class, this drawing workshop. And when we arrived, we found that there was a nest of canyon wrens that were making a great deal of noise in the women's side of the bathhouse.

[27:09]

Tassar was a hot springs resort that was established a long time ago for people to go take the waters, kind of like Calistoga, but much deeper into the mountains. So anyway... The wrens, when I got into the bathhouse myself and had hung my clothes up right beneath where they were perched, all the little babies were sitting in a row on the ledge, shaking and screaming, and the mother was up in a window dangling a yummy-looking grub from her mouth. It was pretty clear it was time to learn how to fly, and they didn't want to. I don't blame them. It was a long way down. So that was the first day. And the next day when I went to the baths, one of the baby birds was on the ground. Yeah, I know. There were a bunch of naked women standing around going, oh, what should we do? And it was trying very hard to get back up on the ledge, slapping its little wings and jumping up and down and, you know, and then panting.

[28:18]

So... one of the ladies got a lid from a basket and put the baby back on the ledge. You know, we all clapped. And then a moment later, the bird jumped back down again. Because it's time to learn how to fly, right? Can't be stopped. And even against our will. So, little by little, and we couldn't turn away, we all stood there. Finally, this little guy got back up on the ledge and he jumped back. Jumped on a backpack and then on a hook and then he got up. We were all applauding wildly. I'm sure they wondered, where are we? The women's bathhouse. And then the next day, the baby birds and the mother bird were all gone. Banish. And the day after that, so were we. So like these baby birds, I think it's pretty clear to all of us that we haven't gotten this far in our lives without a lot of help.

[29:37]

If you watch these kids, they're so lucky to have parents who are doing everything they can, as most parents do, to help these little birds fledge. So painful. My daughter called me the first night in Paris, of all places, saying, I just want to come home. I want to come home. Don't talk to me. Just tell me I can come home. I said, honey, maybe you just need to go to sleep. That would be good. First step. No, I want to come home. Anyway, heartbreaking. Because I knew I wasn't going to let her come home. That's the heartbreaking part. No way. You need to learn this. I know, and I don't want to. I don't want to stand by and watch her so unhappy, but now she's fine. She's having fun. Anyway, but we have been helped. And, you know, we've been helped by our parents and by our teachers and by perhaps our partners and our own children, by the government and by the banks and by the law, you know.

[30:55]

At the same time, we know that all of these depend on us for their meaning and what we think of them. We are co-creating this world, and it's our responsibility to do a better job. And I think in order to do a better job, we need to learn somehow, at our age, These new things like learning how to sit, learning how to draw, learning how to see, to open our eyes to this beautiful world that we need to take care of, all of us together. It's the only possibility. So yesterday, no, see, I'm sorry, Friday, I had the great honor of being invited to the graduation ceremony at Star Academy. Karen Marin, do any of you know Star Academy?

[31:58]

A few of you, yeah. Well, I want to tell you, it is an amazing place. It is, because we looked hard. My daughter has some learning differences, and we look everywhere for a school for her, or teachers or something, any kind of help. And I must say, it's pretty hard to find. And we did find a good school. And Star Academy is another good school for kids who have severe learning differences. So our friends have a daughter who I've known since she was a baby. And she was graduating from high school. And she's had a very, very amazing journey learning to read, learning to speak, learning to relate. So we were all sitting there just in awe of this school and these teachers and their way. They know.

[32:59]

They know how to teach. They know how to teach anybody. Not just these kids, but these kids are lucky enough to have been taken to this school. And as one of the administrators was saying, I know what you parents have done. You've mortgaged your homes. You've... You've given up your retirement. You've done everything you could to bring your child here. So these kids were a testimonial to the fact that this is an amazing place. One of the boys, just this adorable young eighth grader, came walking up to the podium full of confidence and bravado. He was just lovely. And he took the mic and he, you know, kind of riffing on the John Lennon song, he said something like this. He said, imagine a young man who knows that he's smart, but he can't say, write, or read the words on a page.

[34:00]

Imagine a young man who sits in the back of the room afraid to raise his hand because, as always, the other kids are going to laugh at him. Imagine a young man who the teacher has no time to talk with. Imagine a young man whose mother never believed what they told her about who he was and what he could do. Imagine a young man coming here to this school to be with others like himself, learning to laugh, learning to read, learning to speak. And then he said, as if we didn't know, that young man is me. Wild applause. Tears of joy And he said, I wish every kid could have a chance to be given this gift of imagining a new world and a new life for themselves. And why not? Why not? We all thought the same thing.

[35:02]

Why not? Why can't we do this? What's wrong, you know? Well, it's the wall. The wall of separation that leads us to believe that we're not responsible for them. That they're others. Not my family. Not my kid. But it is. These are our families. These are our kids. Every one of them. So, you know, we can thicken the walls or we can shatter them. It's really up to us to choose. And we get to choose when we fly free. Now, this is what the Buddha knew and this is what he saw. And it's what he did. So I'm going to close with a poem by Juan Ramon Jimenez. I feel that my boat has bumped there at the bottom into something big. And nothing happens. Nothing.

[36:04]

Quiet waves. Nothing happens. Or has everything happened? And we are already at rest. in something new. Thank you. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[36:49]

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