This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. I can't help, of course, many of you know there's a lot of grief in this room. I was planning as I was... Should we lower the sound some, or all good? Okay. I was planning to mention and talk a little bit about Jeffrey Schneider, who died a few, I think a few months ago, and just this week, a young guy. Caroline Meister student died in an accident at Tassajara, out walking.

[01:05]

Powerful. Powerful to feel, just to feel grief, the emotion of grief. And I know some of you knew her well. Others of you maybe didn't. And I... And actually what I was thinking I want to talk about in the midst of grief is living a full life. 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.

[02:09]

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. 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.

[03:13]

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. During his lifetime, he didn't sell more than 200 copies of his books. He became famous after his death. Yeah, something about... I know you never intended to be in this world. And yet, and yet here we are living, alive, again, grieving, and maybe also at the same time acknowledging, celebrating, celebrating the lives of these amazing, these two amazing people.

[04:24]

You know, I spent many, many hours in the Tassar kitchen with Jeffrey, and I always found him to be a very sweet, sincere practitioner and generous spirit. Carolyn, I was recently with her at Tassar Hara, 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.

[05:41]

I feel like they both strove to create warm, clear, open spaces in their lives as much as they could. 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 Tenzo's, 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?

[06:51]

Or I think he maybe could have asked, what... is most important to a human being. What does a full life look like? 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... I was standing outside looking at the Han, the wooden block that says life and death are serious matters.

[07:51]

Don't waste time. Life and death are serious matters. Don't waste time. And again, hear Mary Oliver saying the same thing, right? 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 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 of

[08:52]

who died in 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 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, you know... 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.

[09:59]

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 these separate drops as the time of our lifetime, but at the same time notices that 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.

[11:06]

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. And whether we're separated into drops or not, water is water. Life and death are the same.

[12:10]

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

[13:19]

true meaning in life you will discover and i love the statement um 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.

[14:20]

Because who wants to think about death? 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 a primary teaching all throughout Buddhist history and Zen history.

[15:25]

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. If we could just let go, Although he's, I think, strongly prodding the statement of you attach the feeling without knowing just how this kind of feeling is created. So this is, I think, a really interesting exploration, what that is suggesting as, I think, a core part of understanding our feelings, understanding how feeling is created, understanding how our 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.

[16:44]

and how much useless effort we've been making. This encouragement. And again, I think it's 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.

[17:53]

This is a poem by William Stafford. 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.

[19:04]

Using the lake as a metaphor for big mind. There's a lake somewhere. 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 to, that Shinryu Suzuki is suggesting, belonging, belonging, beyond belonging, right? Does the water belong to the stream? The water is the stream.

[20:07]

We are the stream. We are the stream, and our 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, 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.

[21:11]

that we're separate from the world, to practice that in our meditation practice with each breath. This sense of letting go of anything, 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. And I think of, when I think of Jeffrey Schneider's life and Carolyn Meister's life, in some way, or John Keats' life, or Mary Oliver's life, they were all whole.

[22:24]

They were whole in their own way. And this simple, profound teaching of Suzuki Roshi and this image of the waterfall, right? Water is water. I always feel my New Jersey accent every time people often correct water. That's 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.

[23:53]

But I think he's, again, this sense of... I don't feel like it's a... He's not stating it as a hypothesis. He's stating it something that he knows in his bones. Unlike one of my, 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. It was a homeless person. And in the character of a homeless person, she asked herself, what is reality?

[25:01]

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 Rishi 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.

[26:02]

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... It's so nice that I don't have to ask you to unmute. If you'd like to ask a question, please raise your hand. I'll bring the microphone over. I'm used to the Theravadan tradition, and that is new to me.

[27:11]

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? Like, how do you bless something that's so fragile? 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.

[28:22]

And I think, and therefore, it deserves great reverence, because it's fleeting. And I think that's my... 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.

[29:27]

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...

[30:30]

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

[31:31]

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, but 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.

[32:32]

Yeah. And also, I feel like within grief or the other side is appreciation, is immense, 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, you know, 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.

[33:38]

Yeah. It's still quite raw. I guess just lastly, I was noticing that grieving, we're 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.

[34:50]

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.

[35:51]

Mako, it's so good to see you. How are you doing? Happy birthday. Happy birthday. Thank you for being here. It's a challenging time. Thank you so much for your talk. Happy birthday. birth and death birth and death yeah 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 words, two great words from Zen teaching are, and yet.

[37:07]

And yet. Yeah. You know, practice is easy since we're all originally enlightened. And yet. Yeah. Find ways to love fully without being attached. And yet, and yet. You know, 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, right? Unwholesome attachment would clearly be, you know, where there's a lot of fear of loss and ego and sense of control or, or any of those things feel like a kind of maybe unwholesome attachment.

[38:17]

Wholesome attachment perhaps is just maybe it 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. 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.

[39:26]

But of course, You know, we're human. And so it's, 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.

[40:31]

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 I'm 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, not taking anything for granted. And what I'm wondering is how can I remember that without

[41:33]

having these events. 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... When we bow to the cushion, it's an opportunity to be present and remember, I'm alive.

[42:44]

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 reading cards.

[43:51]

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... Yeah, 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. Yeah, thank you. Maybe have time for one more question, if there's another question or comment. Over here. Thank you for your talk, Mark.

[44:58]

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 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...

[46:01]

I recently been, I've 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.

[47:17]

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. Even something like to love without being attached. To have good, clean, clear relationships with people. To have a good... to appreciate ourselves, to work through that voice that everyone has, the inner critic, to work with it skillfully, all those things.

[48:20]

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 look, they often look like two worlds and maybe they are two worlds, but they're one world. And yeah, so to me, that's the, that's our, uh, 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 a world of uncertainty.

[49:24]

Is that it? 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. Were you going to say something? Well, you beat me to it.

[50:29]

Thank you. Thank you all for being here. 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. For more information, please visit sfzc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[51:02]

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