It is the case that I don't see Norman yet, so let's just give it a minute. He may be trying to get online. Haven't encountered this so far this practice period, but perhaps we can just give it a minute or two and enjoy some stillness together. Hi, can you hear me and see me now? Hi, Norman. Sorry about that. I did have trouble getting on. I'm not used to the... Usually someone sends me a link. I'm not used to getting the meeting ID number. Besides that, I have a new computer and I have...

[01:09]

problems figuring out how to work it so but here i am welcome well shall we begin with the opening verse before the dharma talk uh if you'd like to participate in the the opening verse assembly we'll have the text coming up here in the chat in just a moment and we'll chant together with microphones muted unsurpassed, penetrating and perfect dharma is rarely met with even in a hundred thousand million kalpas. Having it to see and listen to, to remember and accept, I vow to taste the truth of the Tathagata's word. So happy to welcome Norman Fisher with us at City Center as a continuation of our study of Lojang in this practice period.

[02:30]

Thank you so much for being with us, Norman. Thank you. Sorry for my difficulty getting on. great to be here with everyone let's see if i can get myself on a gallery so that i can see everyone's faces or at least some faces wow thanks everybody for coming i see carol schmidt i probably lots of lots of friends yeah who there's there's tim hey tim Anyway, Tova, so many people. I wish I could say hi to everybody.

[03:30]

Well, there's Mel from Vancouver. I'm Mel. I have a little more time on my hands now because I'm not going on airplanes or getting in cars, going anywhere. So I'm able to... read stuff that I wanted to read for a long time, but I couldn't read because big fat books, you know. But I did recently finish reading this really long novel called 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami. How are we doing? Can you hear me? Everything all right? Yes. Okay. So I finished this novel. It's 925 pages long. 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami. Maybe some of you have read this novel. It's pretty famous. And like other Murakami novels, this one is a mixture of sci-fi, crime novel, magical realism, realism, and also a super romantic love story.

[04:50]

Murakami is... kind of an amazing novelist. His plots are really intricate. They're full of suspense and cliffhangers. You know, you end a chapter and you can't wait to get to the next one. His characters are somehow like really deadpan, innocent, straightforward, without any guile at all, you know, self-consciousness at all. but they at the same time have complicated inner lives. And I found out when I was reading a little bit about Murakami, I found out that he had a grandfather who was a Buddhist priest. And I have a feeling that although as far as I know he's not a Buddhist practitioner and has not been in any way directly influenced by Buddhism, I think there actually is a lot of dharma in his writing. particularly Japanese kind of Dharma his tone and his themes remind me actually of some of the Japanese priests that I've met over the years who have a very light touch in their practice and a kind of cartoon profundity

[06:15]

There's a famous story about how Murakami became a novelist. Although both of his parents were professors of literature, Murakami, as a young man, had no interest at all in literature. And he came of age in the 60s, and so he was a kind of a dropout. And he was obsessed with Western music, especially jazz. And he married young, and he and his wife borrowed money and started a jazz bar in Tokyo. And that was his life. He stayed up all night, you know, mixing drinks and serving bar food. And one day in that period of his life, he went to a baseball game in Japan. And, you know, there were a lot of American, sort of failed American baseball players who played in Japan. So Dave Hilton, one such American baseball player, was playing in this game.

[07:23]

And Hilton hit a double. And Murakami is in the stands watching this. And somehow, with the solid crack of the bat and the ball soaring into the outfield, Murakami had a sudden realization that he could write novels. Apparently, this idea had never occurred to him before. It was not something he had ever thought about or ever aspired to. But all of a sudden, when Dave Hilton hit this double, he had this idea. So that night he went home and he started to write a novel. And he finished it, and he submitted it for a prize, and he won the prize. And he continued writing novels after that his whole life. And he's now probably the most famous and well-read novelist in the world. So this certainly sounds like a Zen story to me.

[08:26]

You know, it starts with a moment of great awakening, something very vague and sudden that comes out of nowhere that might happen to you, and actually you might not even notice it or pay any attention to it. But you could pay attention to it. if you were ready for it. And then you could make a kind of vow and completely change your life based on this sudden, weird, meaningless, and otherwise incomprehensible experience. Anyway, they tell this story about Murakami, and it's repeated over and over again. And it's probably true. So 1Q84 plays off of Orwell's great dystopian novel 1984. In Japanese, the word for nine, as in 19, is Q. So the title is a double language pun.

[09:37]

And the Q, you know, The English letter Q stands for question. A world full of questions. A questionable world. A world that doesn't make sense in the usual ways, and so is raising many unanswerable questions. The novel, like Orwell's novel, is set in the year 1984. although Orwell published his novel in 1949 and Murakami published his in 2009. In the opening scene of the novel, the very beginning of the novel, the hero, a woman named Aomame, is stuck in traffic in a cab on a Tokyo freeway. She has an important appointment to keep,

[10:43]

And the cab is not moving at all, so she gets out of the cab, walks along the crowded freeway, finds an emergency stairway that leads down to another level beneath the overpass that is the freeway. And at the bottom of the stairway, she vaguely recognizes, although she's not sure, that she has somehow entered another world. A world full of questions. A world that appears to be the same as the regular world. But if you pay attention, you notice it's just enough off to make you wonder. In other words, walking down that stairway, she has left the world of 1984 and entered the world of 1Q84. And for the rest of the novel, she remains in this world until the very end of the novel, 900 pages later, when she now, from the bottom, walks up the same stairway, back onto the same crowded freeway, and returns to the regular world of 1984.

[12:07]

So she's the heroine of the novel, but the novel also has a hero, who's a young man named Tengo. And the novel's chapters alternate between Tengo's story and the story of Aomame, so chapters back and forth. And these two main characters don't know each other, and they have separate stories, they're unconnected. But as the novel goes on, we learn that they were both lonely children living with parents who did not appreciate or understand them. And that in fact, they attended elementary school together for a few years. Although they didn't know each other, they were in the same elementary school. And during that time, there was a moment when they met and Aumame

[13:13]

seized Tengo's hand and held it firmly. And in that one moment of trusting hand-holding, they both felt something they had never felt before. They felt loved. They felt met. The moment ended very quickly, and neither one of them ever forgot it. Before that moment, as I said, they had never spoken to one another. And after that moment, they never spoke to one another, and soon after that, Aomamame's family moved away, and they never saw each other again. And yet, that moment was, perhaps like Dave Hilton's double was for Murakami, the defining moment of their lives. So during the whole novel, in which many drastic and hard to explain things happen, they are consciously and unconsciously in search of one another.

[14:29]

And at the end of the novel, they find each other. And they fall in love. Although they both realize that they had been in love with one another their whole lives. Now this seems hopelessly romantic. I know. But somehow, hi Ben. Somehow, and there's Hakusho. I just got an email from Hakusho this morning. I say, it seems hopelessly romantic. you know, how could anybody pull this off? But somehow, Murakami does it, because he mixes up so many crazy, outrageous, and outlandish things, including murders and all kinds of things with this, that by the time you get to this at the end of the novel, it's very moving and completely believable.

[15:35]

Don't worry, I am getting to Lojong. Trust me. So as I said, the novel proposes that there are two... Oh, Teresa Rivera. Hi, Teresa. How great. I'm getting distracted. I have to stick to my talk here. So the novel proposes two worlds. The world of 1984, as I said, and the world of 1Q84. And these worlds are the same, but not quite the same. Now, how do you know that you're in 1Q84 and not in 1984? You know because when you look up in the sky, you see that there are two moons in the sky. When you see two moons, the usual moon and a smaller moon beside it,

[16:43]

you know it's not 1984, and it's not this world. Now in the novel, it's not clear that anybody but our two heroes see these two moons. That may be because no one else can see them, or it may be because no one else in the entire city of Tokyo ever thinks, to look up at the sky and see the moon. So we don't know. But in any case, this is more or less how Tengo and Aoma may find one another in the end. Both of them gazing up together at the two moons in the sky. Now, I find it very hard to believe that Murakami does not know the Zen story about the two moons.

[17:46]

Maybe he doesn't, but I find that hard to believe. And you know the story. Yun Yun is sweeping the floor, and Da Wu says to him, too busy. And then Yun Yun replies, you should know there's one who's not busy. And Da Wu says, oh, then there are two moons? And Yun Yun holds up the broom and he says, which moon is this? So you all know that story, right? So I don't want to give a facile interpretation of this story, make it too simple. But also, it probably is pretty simple. In one world, the usual Saha world of suffering sentient beings where we're living here, busy doing this and that, there's a lot of suffering.

[18:59]

It's a stressful world to live in. But at the same time, we're not in this world. We're in the Buddha world. dharmakaya, in which everything is the body of Buddha. Everything is perfect, awakened, and at rest. And we couldn't possibly be stressed out because there's nothing that needs to be done. And of course, these are not two worlds. This is just one full and complete world. Maybe we could say there's two ways of living in this world, two ways of viewing this world, two ways of feeling this world, but it's one world and only one world. But when we don't feel the two worlds in one world, when we take this Saha world of busyness and struggle as the only world,

[20:08]

then we can suffer a lot and we can make a big mess, not only out of our own lives, but collectively, altogether, we can make a big, messy world, as we have noticed. So that's why we have to practice. We have to continuously discover in our body, in our breath, in our fingertips, in our feet and hands, in our hearts. The second world that we are also always living in anyway, the Buddha world, that brings peace and a sense of bowing and purpose to our life in this Saha world, this world of suffering. As I say, it's very hard to bow for me to believe that Murakami doesn't know about this story when he makes the idea of two moons so prominent in his big novel.

[21:15]

I have to figure out who I can get a hold of, who knows Murakami, who can find out about this, but I haven't figured out who yet. Maybe Ruth Ozeki. Who knows? Maybe Ruth Ozeki is even here. Maybe Ruth knows. I'll ask her. Anyway, I think, whether or not Murakami intends it, I really think that this is the point hidden in the adventurous and romantic plot of the novel. And this is the way it relates to Orwell's novel. Of course, it must relate to Orwell's novel, 1984. Orwell's novel describes what is going to happen when we believe that we live in just one world this material world of science and economics and data in which people are reduced to cogs in a wheel to their data points they become explainable ciphers consumers producers workers managers and nothing more

[22:37]

this world in which we are all lost and lonely and scared. Yeah, when there's just that world, when that's the only world we live in, dystopia is all too likely. Like in 1984, Big Brother will rule everything. The thought police will control our every word and thought. Total control in a kind of fascist nightmare. Complete shrinkage of the soul. And of course, a totalitarian government that rules by distorting the truth and exercising raw naked power. The kind of world that since Orwell wrote his novel, we have been fearing. And that now it might even look like we are actually almost living.

[23:44]

And this world will come about, Orwell is implying in his novel, if we're not careful, if we're not vigilant. In this world, there is no such thing as love. There's sex and power, probably. Some sorts of fractured relationships, but not real love. Because love requires soul. Love requires imagination. It requires a second world. So I think Murakami in writing a novel that references 1984 is telling us that when we live in two worlds, the world of imagination, the world of Buddha, Dharma, on the one hand, as well as in the material world, which of course we cannot not live in, in these two worlds, which are one world, love is possible.

[25:03]

Love is real. when we're not limited to the material world only, when we do not define ourselves only according to our conditioning, when we do not see ourselves as cogs, when our imaginations are free to see beyond this world to the real world that is this world, a world that is inside us as well as outside us, then love is Everywhere. And when love is everywhere, there can be a world that operates not on power and money alone, but on benevolence, on caring. A world that can be meaningful and lovely, even when times are very, very tough, like they are now. Interestingly,

[26:05]

Murakami has been very criticized in Japan for being too westernized. All of his sources and references are western. And there's nothing at all of traditional Japanese cultural values in his work. Or so they say of him. And yet at the same time, I think he's very, very Japanese. And in this novel, I think he's saying, without ever coming out and saying it, that Western cultural values, you know, our scientific materialism, our body-mind split and all that, I think he's saying to us, yes, that only, that alone, is going to bring 1984. But those values, that after all Murakami deeply loves, diffused and modified by Asian wisdom and practices, can open us to I1Q84, a livable world in which not knowing, imagination, mystery, and love can prevail.

[27:33]

Not that there's no struggle. Because the world of 1Q84 has lots of struggle and lots of danger. But as it says in the novel very explicitly, this is not a struggle between good and evil. It's not a desperate struggle. It's just a struggle. And when you apply yourself to it and you meet it, you're going to be okay. So I think I've already pretty much said that I think this novel is really just like our practice. Because we're sitting every day to open our hearts to the world beyond this world, which is this world. When we cultivate the practice of Dharma, we are seeing two worlds.

[28:38]

we are feeling two worlds in this one world. And in this one world, we take up a broom and we sweep. In other words, we're taking care of this world as best we can, without stress or strain, but with love and compassion. And when someone says, which world are you living in? We hold up our broom in the midst of our activity. And we say, which moon is this? Because this is 1Q84. A world of questions, not necessarily answers. Which moon is this? What world is this? We don't know. Living and dying. What is it?

[29:42]

Me and you. Who are we? As you all know, Dogen writes at the beginning of Genjo Koan, As all things are Buddhadharma, there is delusion and realization, practice in birth and death, And there are Buddhas and sentient beings. That's one world. But there's another world, as he writes in the next sentence. As the myriad things are without an abiding self, there is no delusion, no realization, no Buddhas, no sentient beings, no birth and death. Another world. But the two worlds are one world. And we go beyond. This one world. As he says in the next sentence, the Buddha way is basically leaping clear of this dichotomy.

[30:52]

Suzuki Roshi puts it in a very simple everyday way. He says, you are perfect. Just as you are. Everything is perfect. Just as it is. That's the Buddha world. We live in that world. And you can do better. That's the world of sentient beings, the world of suffering. We can do better. One world. And that's why we have such patience with this world of suffering and confusion. Because we know that right within it, exactly as it truly is, There's something more. So finally, I get to the Lojong part at the end here.

[31:55]

Mary tells me that you're studying the Lojong teachings this practice period. And I think she said that, among other things, some of you are reading my book, and I hope it helps. Maybe it's a good book for Zen students who want to study Lojong because it is written from a Zen point of view with a Zen spirit. Anyway, if you are reading it, I apologize for the many misunderstandings that there are no doubt in the book and all the missed opportunities that should have been in the book and weren't. I wrote that book in a fit of enthusiasm. I didn't think too much about it. So, anyway, glad that it's helping, if it is. So you know that the centerpiece of the Lojong teachings in this text that we're using in my book is the practice of Tonglen, sending and receiving practice.

[33:07]

When you think about it, Tonglen, is the practice of two worlds, right? One world is the Buddha world, which is expressed in the slogan, rest in the openness of mind. And the Tonglen practice begins with rest in the openness of mind. This is so beautiful. The mind itself, Your regular mind. Awareness itself. Consciousness itself. Cognition itself. Is not as we think it is. Just stupid old me. With all my problems and shortcomings. Yes, that's there.

[34:13]

But it's there because of awareness. And awareness itself is already awakening. Awareness itself is the Buddha mind. What an astonishing thought. Lately in our Dharma seminar, we've been studying Dogen's Mountains and Water Sutra. And in this text, Dogen uses the idea of waters to mean pure awakening. flowing impermanence, the dharmakaya that flows everywhere and through every moment without ever staying the same. He says, water extends into flames. It extends into thought, reasoning, and discrimination. It extends into awareness and into Buddha nature.

[35:17]

When we sit in Zazen, we might notice we still have lots of perceptions and thoughts in our minds. And maybe we get all wrapped up in them and we forget that we're sitting in Zazen. But maybe we're lucky and once in a while we get a glimpse of the big open sky of awareness in which the clouds and airplanes of our minds float. This big open sky, this flowing water is limitless, it is loving, and it is fearless. So that's one world, the openness of mind, the peace of awareness itself, in which all that we are aware of occurs. And once we establish this world, as much as we can anyway, we can then open ourselves to the other world, the world of suffering.

[36:34]

Because now we're big enough to hold that world, and it won't hurt us. Because there are two worlds in one world, we can always feel love. And we can be confident that we and the love we feel will always survive because it cannot be taken away. So we can breathe in the suffering. And it can be alright. And it can be more than alright. It can be beautiful to receive the suffering. Because it expands our love. And with that love, as our healer and as our protector, we can breathe out healing and relief because we have that capacity. And that's how Tonglen practice works.

[37:37]

So I end my talk, if you're willing, with just a few moments of Tonglen practice. Just a brief moment and then we'll end. So let me ring the bell to start and just a little bit of guidance. So feel your body.

[38:51]

No body there really, but some sensations, feelings. The feeling of embodiment. Feel the breathing, strong, slow, steady breath in, strong, slow, steady breath out. Coming and going. And grounded in the body and breath.

[40:21]

Notice the awareness itself. Without bounds. Without shape. What is it? Is it anything? This loving, forgiving awareness. And just rest in this awareness.

[41:30]

And now when you breathe in, breathe in the suffering, whether it's your own personal suffering, the suffering of a loved one, or the suffering of the whole world in this scary time of pandemic. Breathe it in. And if you feel to do that breathe in your fear breathe it in and know that in this field of awareness that suffering just dissolves and becomes healing and so when you breathe out send that healing to the whole world Breathe in the suffering.

[43:32]

Breathe out healing. Breath by breath. and finally just for a few more breaths now to the end rest again let all let go and just rest in the openness of mind the vastness of mind So that's the end of my Dharma talk.

[45:27]

Thanks everybody for being here and for listening. I wish I could see everybody and know everybody who's here. It's fun to see everybody while I'm talking.

[45:41]

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