This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Welcome everyone to Green Dragon Temple. Beautiful spring morning. It's cherry blossom festival time and Japan Town, San Francisco. We are... I was looking at the calendar. We're halfway between Buddha's birthday and Earth Day. Buddha's birthday a week ago was also... Although, when is Buddha's birthday being... Celebrate it here. 28th.

[01:04]

So the nominal date in the northern part of Buddhism, or at least in Japan, is April the 8th. But we can do it any time. We can celebrate Buddhist birthday any time. And here it's... About three weeks after that, the city center already celebrated it. And April 8th of this year was also Holocaust Remembrance Day, which is on a different calendar relating to Passover. But this year I was struck by that. So I want to acknowledge that how is it that human beings get caught in a kind of delusion of wanting to get rid of some part of ourselves.

[02:15]

And Earth Day is coming up next week and next Earth Week. It's good every once in a while to remember that we are earthlings. Sometimes I think we do forget that. Maybe not only, it's not only Trekkies who forget that, but many of us, because we are so enamored of and involved with our technological, industrial, fossil fuel based civilization, we may fail to realize in any direct way how we are earthlings and how we are actually supported by the wild, supported by the natural world. And the ways in which our behavior and activities impact that

[03:28]

can only be ignored at a considerable price. One of our great Zen masters, Dogen Zenji, said the entire universe is the true human body. The human body is much more than we usually think. and is not separate from the entire universe. So to understand that, I think, is a practice in Buddhism we call right view. There's basic teachings of the Buddha, the Four Noble Truths, we say, that have to do with how we create suffering for ourselves, and how things are actually not substantial and permanent the way we think they are, is quite involved already in the first of the four noble truths, usually called recognition of dukkha, or suffering.

[04:49]

And the second noble truth, investigating how that is, seeing the causes and conditions and the roots of that, And the third noble truth being the realization of freedom. The freedom of actually being completely who we are. Being true to our deep nature, which involves both being independent individual beings and being completely interconnected. with the totality of things. And then the fourth noble truth, the first of the eightfold path, is right view. The word right, I think, is maybe immediately we think, well, what's wrong? Right view, what's wrong view? So it may be that to say a little bit more about that would be helpful.

[05:53]

This morning I'm thinking of it as realistic, complete view. The word actually in Sanskrit that we translate as right actually has more of a connotation of complete. So to have a realistic, complete view is right at the heart of our practice. Shinryu Suzuki, who founded San Francisco Zen Center, had a nice way of putting it by saying our way is to see things as it is so that's all we need to do everything follows from that to see things as it is and someone asked him Roshi don't you mean to see things as they are thinking

[06:57]

He didn't quite have his English syntax correct, right? No, he said, no, I mean to see things as it is. So a stroke of genius, combining the oneness and the multiplicity, the myriad aspects of the phenomenal world in one simple phrase. One of the great writings about, let's say, realistic, complete view is Zen Master Dogen writing about what he called mountains and rivers. It's actually the expression of mountains and rivers, the Mountains and Rivers Sutra. An exploration of how we misunderstand and misjudge mountains by thinking that they're still, fixed, immovable beings, pointing out the mountains are walking.

[08:04]

And pointing out that water is not just the way we see water, that we see water as human beings see water. But he said that water is not just limited to the way we human beings see water. So he said dragons view water as pavilions or palaces. How did he know that? The dragon point of view. He said hungry ghosts view water as raging fire or pus and blood. that human beings see water as water, but that the phenomenal world, the entire phenomenal world, is not actually existing the way we think it is.

[09:12]

So to expand our view is to include multiple perspectives to realize that, say, plants view sunlight We don't see that they have eyes, right? How can plants view sunlight? How can the sunflower follow the sun? How can the roots know to go down into the earth and the plant leaves to come up and orient to the light? We think we know what light is and we talk about the colors of the rainbow, but... So when I say that there are no colors in nature, people are surprised usually. No colors in nature. The colors that we see are our own, say, particular spectrum of light that our eyes are equipped to see.

[10:27]

So it's always amazing to me to discover some other examples. Recently someone pointed out or sent me a link to an email which was kind of pointing to a nifty little dragon-like creature maybe some of you know, the mantis shrimp. Some people are nodding their heads. Maybe it's going viral. News about the mantis shrimp is really out there. but I didn't know about it until a few days ago. But the mantis shrimp is maybe, you know, about this long, maybe shorter. But then I looked it up, and there are like 400 different species, mostly living in subtropical waters, but have quite a range. And we have in our eyes the receptors for

[11:31]

basically three kinds of color that then we combine into the various shades. And butterflies have five, five different kinds of color receptors. And the mantis shrimp has 16, 16 different kinds of color receptors. What are they seeing? We actually can't know. We can't know what they're seeing. So I am just appreciative. They're kind of amazing also, and they themselves are often in many colors, so maybe they're seeing each other. Some of them have neon, kind of neon coloration. We can see neon, right?

[12:33]

We can call it neon, but what do they call it? And they're pretty tough little shrimp. I mean, they actually sometimes attack other... It's very rare that shrimp would be so aggressive, but this particular kind is... They have a little kind of... Like a little hammer that they can hit so hard. Sometimes if they're kept in an aquarium, they've knocked right through the glass wall of the aquarium. They can hit something with a force of like a .22 caliber bullet. And very fast. So they go over to a little oyster or clam, right? knock it knock it out and have it for lunch and they live for many years 20 years or so maybe longer many were different varieties and some of them I understand are monogamous and some aren't depending on the species so so here's a whole kind of

[13:57]

kind of dragon, kind of little dragon. Here we call this Green Dragon Temple. So I've always thought of Green Dragon Temple as being like we have this sense of being linked with the tail of the dragon in the ocean and the body of the dragon coming up through Green Gulch and the head of the dragon being up in the clouds above a huge dragon. But These are little dragons, but really, really powerful. And so I looked at a video and their eyes, their complex eyes, are kind of out there moving around independently. How can they process all that information? So it's helpful, I think, for us to... Cultivate humility.

[15:00]

To recognize that there is so much that we ourselves do not know or see. So much that we do not feel or hear. That the whole of our existence is supported by many, many beings harmoniously. functioning together beings that are so small we don't know how we are dependent on them beings that are so large that we don't know what their influence may be So right view, realistic, complete view, must include perspectives from all kinds of beings.

[16:15]

And it must include our connection, our interconnection with all the many beings. So the antithesis of right view or complete realistic view would be a kind of blindness. A kind of blindness that may be, say, one-sidedness. In our most extreme forms, it would be, say, narcissistic selfishness, self-involvement. or solipsistic notion that everything actually revolves around me. And then my view is what really is important. And unfortunately, you and I go around much of the time with that, captivated by that.

[17:29]

having many many thoughts all based upon my own view my own preferences my own desire my own preconception of of what there is and what there should be so this practice of seeing things as it is then When we take it up, taking up the practice of seeing things as it is means to carefully investigate and see how one's own preconceptions cloud what is the experience of this present moment. In other words, the ideas that we have in advance cause us to misinterpret and actually misperceive what's happening as we go through our day.

[18:39]

So what if we set aside our preconceptions? As we do that, it's... And in order to do that, it begins with a kind of confession. Oh, I must... Maybe I have preconceptions. I have to confess that I have some maybe some bias. Waking up in the morning, how do I feel about what is happening right now? Am I open and appreciative to the experience of waking up in the morning? Do I already start to cloud the experience of waking up in the morning with some resentment toward the alarm clock or resentment about something else that happened during the night or that it was too short?

[19:48]

Resentment is a kind of a a screen that separates one from what is, right? One wants to hold what is apart from oneself, going to protect oneself away from things. But the experience of one's having is actually already in one's own body-mind. I think I'll read... poem of Mary Oliver's. Mary Oliver spent quite a bit of time in nature. And this is a poem with some insight on what it's like to be a human being in nature, in Blackwater Woods nature.

[20:59]

Many of you, I think, would know this poem, but it's good to hear it. Look, the trees are turning their own bodies into pillars of light, are giving off the rich fragrance of cinnamon and fulfillment. The long tapers of cattails are bursting and floating away over the blue shoulders. of the ponds. And every pond, no matter what its name is, is nameless now. Every year, everything I have ever learned in my lifetime leads back to this, the fires and the black river of loss. whose other side is salvation, whose meaning none of us will ever know.

[22:06]

To live in this world, you must be able to do three things. To love what is mortal. To hold it against your bones, knowing your own life depends on it. And when the time comes to let it go, to let it go. This poem has really three parts. The first part is seeing trees and cattails and ponds beyond their names. Often when we name something, our naming is a way of kind of holding it apart from our own direct experience of it.

[23:07]

So she's saying that every pond now is nameless now. And the trees are light, luminous, luminous pillars of light. So with this realization, this is realizing beyond her preconceptions even though she knows the names of many things and knows the trees are trees but now they're they're luminous luminous being so with this realization then she goes into this acceptance where she says every year Sounds like she does this meditation and comes back year after year or time after time and realizes again. And she says, everything I've ever learned in my lifetime leads back to this.

[24:12]

Fires and black river of loss whose other side is salvation. Whose meaning none of us will ever know. But this turning point in here of fire, loss, loss as a black river. We say sometimes that the teachings of the Buddha take us across that they're like a raft. But this raft is actually following the process of realizing that nothing is permanent. So realizing this black river of loss, whatever it is that we are holding on to, needs to be released so that we can cross over.

[25:17]

Sometimes we call this grieving. So in this there is this maybe heartache. This feeling of a kind of anguish which is simply pointing to how I have held onto something. Now I've held onto something and now it's no longer what I'm holding onto. So there's some confusion. How can this be? I thought it was something that I could hold on to. And now it's so confusing. It's not there. This may be a person. This may be a relationship.

[26:19]

This may be our favorite toy if we're little or if we're old. It may be a favorite memory even that we don't want anyone else to say anything about. I remember it this way and now when someone says that, I don't like to hear that. So this is a courageous statement for her to say the other side The other side of this is salvation. The other side of this is liberation. The other side of loss, the other side of realizing that you can never have what you think you have. Thinking what you have is simply your thought.

[27:25]

And if you hold that thought beyond its own balance in the present moment, confirmation of it, if you're holding it beyond the present moment confirmation, then you're in delusion. We say you're in delusion. And the more you're in delusion, the less you're actually able to participate in with a realistic, complete view. And she also says that the meaning can't be known. The meaning of this, none of us ever know. And yet this has some meaning for us. The meaning of actually being fully engaged with life and the freedom of the feeling of this process of pain and letting go and a fresh feeling, something new can be seen.

[28:53]

So you can meet your old friend fresh. All of us may be old friends. And we don't know it. But you could say, you know, oh, whoever shows up. Whoever shows up is already here. So I can meet you as an old friend. But not an old friend with some friendly feeling. Not an old friend that I necessarily know the latest news about. So then, that's the question. What's the latest news? What do you have to report from your own life adventure? Mary Oliver has this last section, which I think of as a kind of vow. She says, three things to live in this world.

[30:01]

Three things. Love what is mortal so she's pointing out excuse me pointing out what what is mortal is what is something that does not have some permanent or essential existence now Dogen's pointing out that everything is like that even water does not have some essential existence. Water is different for different beings. To love what is mortal, to hold it against your bones, knowing your own life depends on it. This is a profound recognition. To know that what is passing away is something that at this very moment, this life, depends on it.

[31:12]

And it's passing away. In fact, it's already gone. We say, gate gate, par gate, parasom gate, gone. Going. And yet this life, this moment of this breath arising is completely dependent on it. It's so scary. So this is a practice then of cultivating some confidence in what we call, sometimes called Buddha nature or true nature. The true nature of things She says, hold it against your bones. So hold it very close. Knowing that your own bones are it. And then when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.

[32:15]

So that is, what time is that? When is that? Is there ever a time not to be letting it go? Sometimes we accumulate, in our conceptual mind, we accumulate things, and then we think we know what it is, and it's a big thing, and then it's hard to let it go. When you realize that grieving is always happening because things are always changing, then you're always grieving tiny little moments. There's a kind of poignancy which actually deepens the beauty of life. Simultaneously appreciating it and receiving it and letting it go.

[33:17]

So I think if we do this, genocide is impossible. Holocaust does not happen. But we have to be very careful not to get involved in feeding our delusions, nourishing our selfish thoughts that reify or crystallize or substantialize some fixed view of things. Some fixed view of myself and others. This is very, very much a matter of how we live our lives every day. How much do you get caught in a particular rut?

[34:37]

thoughts follow the same pattern. And then your behavior follows your same thought pattern. And you're still mad at the person today that you were mad at yesterday. Sometimes these go on for years. Lifetimes. I don't know if it's helpful, but I was in a rut the other day. I don't know if it's helpful for me to talk about it. This is a physical rut. I was driving into Tashahara. Some of you know the Tashahara Road. It's not so good right now, I'm sorry. I'm actually going to Tashahara tonight again. This was just two weeks ago. And it had... And over the course of the winter, there's this section of the road past China Camp where it's clay.

[35:48]

People may know that part of the road. Go past China Camp and then there's... And so over the course of the winter, various vehicles going through there made deep ruts, deeper and deeper. But then, you know, it didn't rain much at all, really, in January and February, it didn't rain. So the ruts became very, very hard. Then it did rain the day before I went into Tassajara. So the top of the soil was slippery, muddy, very slick. And then in the ruts there was water. So I'm driving in with my little Honda. I'm noticing that the ruts are getting deeper and deeper and there's and it's pretty clear that the water is is deeper up ahead and and I could see that if I go farther along this path I'm gonna get really hung up and possibly do damage so it's good if you notice that your rut is leading to damage

[37:06]

that something is going to be hurt, right? When you notice that, it's time to do something about it, right? To get out of the rut. So in this case, I kept trying to get the car to go out of the rut, but it was so slick that it would not go out of the rut. I backed up again and tried it again. We'll go back three or four times. Finally, I got out. of the car in the mud and got out my trusty shovel. So it's good to always carry a shovel. It's good to have some tools, right? How do you get out of a rut, you know? In this case, we're working with the same material. We're working with the earth to get out of the rut made by earth. It was only after I started digging that I realized that underneath the one inch of wet, slippery, kind of almost like grease clay on the top was hard, dry walls of the rut.

[38:22]

But I was able then to dig some ways, some kind of little ramps coming out for the wheels to come out of the rut. So that was a wonderful experience. And I was really grateful that I had a friendly shovel. And I was also grateful that there was dry, dense, hard material underneath. So I was actually grateful for the very same material that was making the rut impossible to get out of, because that actually made it possible. We say, fall down by the earth and get up by the earth. It's an old saying. So this is how we actually use the same material, how we actually use our delusion to shift our perspective.

[39:32]

So when you notice that something's not working, it's good as soon as you notice something is not working how to make some sometimes just a little shift using what the parts of what is working and what's not working that the medicine is right at hand Some people are leaving because to stay any longer would be in a rut. I know they're realizing they have other responsibilities and need to take care of. Thank you all. And that means it's also time for me to stop talking. But then I thought, well, maybe we should end with singing something.

[40:43]

And since it's spring, and I saw a robin yesterday when I was walking past the guest house, I thought we could sing the Red Red Robin song, which many people know here. I learned it here, actually. And, you know, in the song, there's a part where it says... Well, it says, you know, wake up and so forth. And then it says, what if I've been blue? Now I'm walking through fields of flowers. Raindrops glisten and still I listen for hours and hours. To me, that's just a... It's wonderful to turn that. Okay. I've been down, I've been in a rut... And the red, red robin comes along and wakes me up. So it's good to let the, say, the passage of birds into your life.

[41:53]

Let whatever flies up wake up, wake you up. So when the Red Robin comes Bob, Bob, Bob and along, along There'll be no more sobbing when he starts throbbing his old sweet song Wake up, wake up, you sleepyhead Get up, get up, get out of bed Cheer up, cheer up, the sun is red Love, laugh and be happy. What if I've been blue? Now I'm walking through fields of flowers. Raindrops glisten and still I listen for hours and hours.

[42:58]

I'm just a kid again doing what I did again. Singing this song. When the red, red robin comes, bob, bob, bob and along. One more time and the rest of you can join in. When the red, red robin comes, bob, bob, bob and along, along. There'll be no more sobbing when he starts throbbing that old sweet song. Wake up. Wake up, you sleepyhead. Get up. get up get out of bed cheer up cheer up the sun is red live love laugh and be happy what if I've been blue now I'm walking through fields of flowers raindrops glisten but still I listen for hours and hours I'm just a kid again doing what I

[44:08]

Thank you for listening and thank you for singing. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our programs are made possible by the donations we receive. Please help us to continue to realize and actualize the practice of giving by offering your financial support. For more information, visit sfzc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

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