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. Good evening. Good evening. I'm going to start this evening with a quote by the wonderful Zen master John Cage. He said, 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 discover that there is no reason. So... I'm here at Tassajara with another great master of art.

[01:02]

Where is she? There she is. Higher. Christine Bailey, who let us see some of her work today, and it's really quite extraordinary. And it's been a delight, once again, teaching with Christine. We're doing a workshop called Learning to Sit, Learning to Draw, and Learning to See. And this is our third year, and... It's really been wonderful and I think all the people in the workshop would agree. It's been a real treat. So thank you. So one of the people in the workshop said to Christine and to me, so what does Zen have to do with drawing? And we looked at each other and went, oh dear. What are we going to say about that? It's interesting, if you look at the catalog for Tassajara, like all the workshops are, you know, zen and bread baking, zen and cooking, zen and drawing, zen and poetry, zen and motorcycle maintenance, you know.

[02:04]

We seem to be able to attach zen to just about anything anyone does. And so I thought, well, you know, what is this zen thing, really? And of course there are lots of answers to that. But today I was thinking the Zen thing is meeting. It's about meeting. And each of us is meeting the world each and every moment. As we walk around through the day, we are meeting what we call objects in the form of trees and rocks and food and other people. And the way that we behave, how we meet, is what we call practice. How do we meet on the path? How do we meet one another? So another one of the people who came to the workshop and joined us for the sitting told a story about Zen Master Dogen that I had not heard before.

[03:09]

This story was about a monk who had been very eager to meet with Dogen, so he traveled a long way. from his small village and was able to have a dogsan with Dogen. And he went in and he said to Dogen, what's the secret of practice? And Dogen said, good judgment. And the monk bowed and he left and he was very happy and he headed home and he got about halfway home and he thought, oh no. And he ran back and he said, I have to see the master, you know. He went in and he said, Master, how do you know what's good judgment? How do you learn good judgment? And Dogen said, bad judgment. So I think this is the key to art as well, you know, and probably poetry and cooking and everything else that we call Zen is that it's about making mistakes, you know, about bad judgment.

[04:17]

We try all kinds of things, you know. Ah, that's not quite right. That doesn't look quite right now. Not having learned this great lesson from John Cage yet that, you know, of course it's beautiful, but we don't think so. So we keep trying, and eventually we find something that we don't think is quite so bad. And we go on from there, but there's a problem there too. If we stick with what we think isn't so bad, then all of a sudden we're back into bad judgment again. So... I don't know how it is for all of you, what your talents are, but I always wanted to know how to draw since I was a little kid. But again, because I didn't understand about learning from making mistakes, I thought, because my drawings weren't any good in the second grade, that I couldn't draw. So I stopped trying. I just thought, well, I can't draw. This don't look good. I suppose I didn't have a good teacher there at the time.

[05:19]

So I basically settled for doodles most of my life, and the margins of my notebooks I would doodle, because I do like to draw. And then about seven years ago, I found I had a lot of time on my hands, because the person I lived with for many years, and we'd been raising a child together, and my friend, A partner for years has been, her name's Grace Damman, was in an automobile accident, which some of you know about. It's actually movies been made about us. And so that accident transformed my life in a big way. And I ended up spending a lot more time in the house than I ever had helping Grace. And so I was trying to think of ways to, you know, entertain myself that were just... things I could do just for me and I started by cooking and that was great but you know you can only eat so much and then I thought well I need something else and about that time the art teacher from my daughter's school offered a class for anyone who would like to learn how to draw and I thought that's it so I went to the first class and just like Christine did to all of us she gave us a blank piece of paper and she said okay now draw your face

[06:42]

And, you know, it's just like, yeah, right. So I drew my face. It was absolutely horrible. But everyone else's was, too, so that was good. And then she gave us a mirror. And she said, now draw your face, looking at your face. And, you know, it wasn't any good, but still it was better, by far, than the face I drew just from my recollection. So Christine had us do the same thing, like draw the place you like to sit at home, your favorite chair. I drew my couch, you know. And I did. It looked like the couch, but it wasn't my couch. Because, you know, our recollection isn't very accurate. We can't remember details of things that we assume we know really, really well. So one of the things about drawing is that you need to look at the thing that you're drawing. You need to keep looking at it and looking at it and bringing it onto the paper. So anyway, after many years I actually feel like I no longer say I can't draw because I kind of can.

[07:48]

I can draw and I enjoy it and things, you know, they look nice to me and other people say, oh, that's nice. So it's been a wonderful and miraculous thing for me to learn how to draw. But I think the greater miracle really has been in learning how to see the world differently. And that's why we call this workshop you know, learning how to see. Because when you start to look at something in order to draw it, you know, you really look at it. You spend a lot of time with it and the detail of it. And I think everything I've ever drawn, I feel like I have a real intimate relationship with that object. You know, I look at the drawings and it evokes the time I spent with that, whether it was a bell or a flower. You know, I drew my father's face as a way to bring it into my body. And it was a lovely thing, and I feel like I've never noticed those tiny wrinkles, those little marks on his face. So, anyway, I think this learning to see is sort of the key for me about what's very special.

[08:53]

Any of these disciplines, really, is like coming into intimate contact with this meeting, meeting the world, meeting objects. So I think I began, after a while, to understand why, you know, as I read about people like Paul Cezanne, why he spent so much time staring at an apple. And he spent hours just looking at an apple. And I think it's the same reason that we Zen students spend so many hours staring at a blank wall. We're trying to understand the great mysteries of life. And by sitting there and spending time with ourselves and with an object, you know, the wall or an apple, These mysteries begin to become intimate for us, you know, like ground and red and taste and touch and vision and thought. I mean, for Zen students, we spend a lot of time noticing our thought. Because clearly, not much going on on the wall.

[09:54]

It's amazing. People say, oh, I saw this and I saw that. And I say, yeah, really? That's something really amazing. So... We're confronting great mysteries. That's kind of our practice is to confront the great mysteries. So there are a couple of great mysteries in particular I have in mind for this evening. One of them is the mystery called the self, you know, me. And the other great mystery is you. And I'll tell you, you're really a great mystery at the moment. I'm like, whoa, what is this? It's very hard to focus. Where's the focal point in this scene, Christine? Maybe it's shocking when you do that. Actually, I was thinking about all you, and I thought, I don't want to be insulting, but like this mass of people, what do you do with it? It's like a blank sheet of paper. It's a little intimidating initially.

[10:56]

What do you do with this? How do you create... a meeting. How do we make a meeting together in this form? I don't know. So there's these two mysteries of the self and of the other. The self and the other is called the double enclosure or the double barrier, the barrier that blocks us. And if you imagine that that barrier is like a transparent wall that we all see through, on one side of that transparent wall is me. And the other side is everything else. And, you know, this wall, I don't so much see it as feel it. And it's, and I have an instinct to protect inside the wall. It's kind of the shape of my body. And I protect it from you. And from the world and anything that might come at me. It might get at this inside the wall.

[12:01]

person this self so even though it's not personal it is how we tend to see things we tend to see things as separate from us as outside of ourselves right and so those of us who stare at the wall are trying to see how this scene is taking place how are we doing that how are we separating ourselves you know there really isn't a barrier of any kind in any direction i'll never find myself i could You know, we could do some surgery and I'm not in here. It's been proven. You might find a heart and some lungs and bones, but you won't find me in here. So this is the exploration that we're undertaking as students of art, students of Zen, students of the world. And Shakyamuni Buddha was a person like that. You know, he was very interested in the great mystery of the self and the other, of the wall, separate. you know, separate self.

[13:02]

And the idea that that self was in danger from these very frightening things that he'd heard about called old age sickness and death. This beautiful young man found out that he was going to get old and sicken and die and it terrified him. So he ran away from home. And he went into the woods and he sat and he looked at the wall for long periods of time like Cezanne with his apple And at the time the Buddha was young, there were many yogis in India, many mystics, and many testimonials about what one would find when one stared at the wall, like, you know, green-colored gods, or access to other planets, or traveling through time. There were all kinds of reports in that day, all the way up to our day, of what kinds of things we can find when we go inside the self.

[14:06]

And then at the time of his own awakening, the Buddha said, his great discovery, which was probably the most unusual one of all, was to declare, I find no evidence for or against anything. It's not very exciting, but, you know, it was... had the ring of truth. I find no evidence for or against anything. He basically was not argumentative. And I think the point, actually, of the Buddha's life was to end argumentation, to stop the quarreling, which leads to fighting, which leads to harm. So if you don't hold a position, you can have one, but don't hold it, it's less likely to turn into conflict and therefore perhaps we can live in harmony. In fact, in the Dhammapada, his famous verses, he says, Many do not know that we are here in this world to live in harmony with one another.

[15:11]

Those who know this do not fight against each other. We're 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, San Francisco Zen Center is a member of this school, officially. For a long time has been known as the wall-gazing school. The wall-gazing school. And, you know, we do literally spend many, many, many hours staring at the wall. I have many fond memories of staring at the wall. And some not so fond memories. So the point of it really is to replicate the conditions under which the Buddha woke up. We'd like to actually have that experience ourselves. I think it's not a secret. We're all interested in finding out what it would be like to be awake, to be Buddha.

[16:12]

Buddha means awake. So what did he see when he stared at the wall, you know? So I wanted to mention what I think is one of the best stories of the Buddha's understanding of inside and outside the wall, and that is a children's book called Harold and the Purple Crayon. Who doesn't know Harold and the Purple Crayon? Really? What kind of childhood did you have? We have to get into the bookstore, it's really fabulous. So Harold, who himself is drawn with the Purple Crayon, He's a little cartoon boy and he has a purple crayon himself and so he decides to go for a walk one day and he draws these two lines which converge at the horizon and we now know that's called the vanishing point and it looks like a road. So he's heading up the road but he doesn't get anywhere because the vanishing point is at the horizon.

[17:16]

So he's getting kind of tired and hungry so he draws an apple tree and then he draws some apple pies and he eats some of them And then to protect the rest of them, he draws a dragon behind the tree. But the dragon is so scary, it scares Harold, and he backs away from it and, with his purple crayon, draws water by mistake, and he falls into the ocean. So then, being a clever boy, he draws a boat, and he gets in the boat and draws a sail, and he sails on. has more adventures. He draws a mountain and he falls off the mountain and draws a balloon and a basket to catch himself and things like that. It's quite exciting and a wonderful story. And then eventually he's getting a little tired and he wants to go home, but he can't find his home. So he starts drawing homes, but none of them are his. He draws a whole city and he can't find his house. So he draws a policeman and the policeman points.

[18:17]

That doesn't help. So finally, Harold remembers that when he was in his bed and he looked out the window, there was a half-moon out the window. So he draws the window and the half-moon and he draws his bed. And he gets into bed and goes to sleep and drops his purple crayon. And that's the end. So I think this is pretty much what Shakyamuni Buddha discovered, you know, when he stared at the wall. that the formations in his mind were products of his imagination, that he was creating the images that frightened him and that delighted him. In fact, the story of the Buddhist enlightenment is really a wonderful story because, you know, when he first sits there, he's attacked by this army of orcs and things and monsters and... They throw rocks at him, they spit it in, they call him mean names and stuff.

[19:19]

And he just sits there. He's got a lot of resolve. He's really going to sit there. And so then the army vanishes, you know, like, gone. You know, I've never heard of an army like that, right? It'd be nice if they just vanish. So what kind of an army is that? Well, it's an army of Shakyamuni Buddha's imagination. So then he's sitting there and these dancing boys and girls show up and they start calling to him, come on, you know, they want to play and they want him to come and get off his seat and come and play with them and again he just sits there and, you know, they vanish. So this time Mara the evil one appears who's, you know, like the worst ever and Mara is the master of illusion. And he's really irritated because Shakyamuni has gotten rid of his army and his dancing people, and he's still sitting there.

[20:27]

And so Mara says, you know, I'm going to kill you now. And Buddha just sits there. And then he smiles at Mara, which is really infuriating. And he says, no, because I know who you are. And Mara says, you don't know who I am. He says, oh, but I do. You are myself. And with that, Mara. Drops the purple crayon. And there he is under a tree. It's a nice day. Some butterflies and a young lady brings him a bowl of milk. Kind of like here. or cabin cleaning or cooking. So, you know, what are we thinking? What are we dreaming? How are we frightening ourselves and drawing ourselves away from our sanity, our basic good judgment?

[21:28]

But unlike Harold, when Shaky Muni stops this imagining, the world doesn't disappear. Because... As Dogen says, grass and trees and earth and walls and tiles and pebbles all engage in Buddha's activity. So therefore, they're not in need of our imagination. The world arises together with all of us. On the inhalation, the world arises. On the exhalation, the world descends like a bright green turtle on the open ocean. Wonderful, wonderful. So what advantage for the Buddha were these mental elaborations, projections, false assumptions, mindless chatter. And without all that noise and chatter, he could really hear and he could really see and he could taste and touch and feel and he could know his mind. His mind was purified. So how do we, basically, for ourselves, how do we enter into this

[22:38]

a possibility of experiencing ourselves purify, our minds purify. You know, how do we face the wall of our own mental and perceptual apparatus? Well, it's nice to sit with other people, and it's nice to have a warm, dry place, and it's really nice to have some guidance, some teachers or some friends to help us. So I was thinking about... helpful guides. And I remembered during the 2011 drawing workshop was the year before, Christine and I came down. I did a workshop with the art teacher that I'd first taken lessons from. And while we were here, down in the women's bathhouse, there was a nest of canyon wrens. And the first day we were there, the little babies had come out on the ledge, and they were getting kind of plump, and they were fluttering a lot and squawking a lot, and it looked like the mother bird was dangling this little grubby thing, that thing, grub at them, and they were just squawking and squawking.

[23:46]

So we all watched and, you know, it looked like, oh, time to fly, you know, this must be getting, this is the time, they're fledging. And not much happened that day. Next day we came down and there were more noise, and one of the babies had fallen on the ground. was trying to get up and, you know, kept flapping its wings. And so one of the... We were all naked. One of the naked ladies reached down, it was all very lovely, and picked up the baby bird and put it back on the ledge. And right away the bird went right back down the ground again. So we all went, okay, all right, stand back. And we waited and turned off this little baby bird, did all these things and grabbed a backpack and grabbed a towel and made it back up to the ledge and... was panting and we were all going, yay! We were clapping. So that was the second day. Then the third day, we came back and they were all gone. And then the day after that, we were all gone. Yeah.

[24:53]

We're leaving tomorrow. It's funny. Things like that are funny. So anyway, I don't think any of us have ever gotten anywhere in life without help and support, you know, of others, from teachers and parents, and our children eventually kick in. As they get older, they start telling us what to do, and it's wonderful. And, you know, the government, Medicare, Obamacare, I mean, it's wonderful how much help we're getting. Even the law these days is looking better. Supreme Court, yay. So... I think that it's important for us to realize that it's not just they helping us, but we're the co-creators of this world which then helps us and that we help others. And so we have a lot of responsibility for how that goes. And I think we know that we need to do a little better job.

[25:54]

There are lots of things that are not quite done and lots of people needing help and support and encouragement. learning how to fly, learning how to see, learning how to draw, learning how to cook, all these skills and learning confidence in themselves and maybe the most important skill of all. So the week I got back from Tassajara that year, I had the great privilege of going to a graduation ceremony for Star Academy in Marin County, which is a wonderful school for kids who have severe learning disabilities or differences. Right. And one of the young women who was graduating from the eighth grade is a daughter of a friend of ours. So we were there, and there were about eight kids graduating. They each gave a speech, and they were all wonderful, and they all... It was just wonderful to hear them, and the gratitude they felt for this school, which had really benefited them tremendously.

[26:57]

So then this one very nice-looking young man got up on the stage. He had a suit on and a tie, and he was very confident in himself, and he said 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. 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 or couldn't do. 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, you don't have to imagine that young man because that young man is me. And he said, I wish all the kids who had trouble learning could come here and learn. and be seen and taught how to imagine themselves in the world as full and whole human beings, you know.

[28:03]

So we were all, of course, we were all kind. It was very sweet and very true. It was very true. And, you know, we can help people. We can help everybody, you know. There's really nobody that we can't help if we try. So I think we know that, and I think our problem is the wall. We think we're separate, us and men. And that's the thing that's keeping us from seeing ourselves as one, as together, as one family or one community, one nation, one world, humanity. So I think this wall of our imagination can either get thicker or it can break. The choice is up to each of us, to be free or not. It's a job. You know, it's the job that the young prince did in the forest. It's the job that, you know, Buddhas do.

[29:04]

It's what they do, it's how they think, and it's what they see. So I want to end with 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. Are there any questions? I don't know. Greg, how much? What's the time? I have a watch. Just tell me the time and I'll Five minutes. So, if anyone has a question, I'd be happy to. Or a comment or a prayer. I feel that my boat has bumped there at the bottom into something big.

[30:22]

And nothing happens. Nothing. Nothing. Quiet. Waves. Nothing happens. Or has everything happened? And we are already at rest in something new. Last chair. Wish you all a good evening, a good night's sleep, good rest. And I appreciate being here, and I appreciate all of you being here as well. Thank you very much. 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.

[31:24]

Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, visit SSCC.org and click Giving.

[31:34]

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