To taste the truth of the Tathāgata's words. Good morning. Welcome, sweet springtime. I have a good friend who's also a Zen student, Sid Walter is his name. And he used to live here in Marin County. We used to take walks together, love to take walks together in the spring and the winter and the various seasons and enjoy ourselves. Speculate on life and the Dharma.

[01:02]

And one springtime, about this time of year, we were sitting up there by the lakes, Lagunitas, Fontampi. I lived in Fairfax then. And Sid looked around at the lupine and the poppies and all the different flowers in bloom. And suddenly tears rolled down his face. And he said, Oh God, it's all beginning again. It's all beginning again. No sooner do we look dead winter in the face than it's springtime. And the horses are stomping and stomping and it's time to take the reins.

[02:06]

It's like these periods of transition are not always easy. Springtime can be as difficult for people as autumn or as winter. For him and for maybe some of us, maybe all of us at some time, it was a time of transition. Not only a transition between seasons, but a transition in his life. One of those crises periods where everything seems to be in disarray. Up in the air. Pieces haven't come together yet. There's an old poem. That occurred to me today when I was thinking about this a bit.

[03:15]

It's funny, you know, we can read something or hear something over the years and everything will be forgotten, it seems, and then all at once some lines of poetry will return. Some odd bit of conversation that is stuck in the head comes back and speaks to us. And this was a poem, although it refers to Buddhism, actually it was from a nō play, a Japanese nō, N-O-H, nō play. That I was reading in the days when I was really interested in Japanese literature and hadn't actually started studying the Buddha Dharma yet. Usually in these nō plays, it's a spirit of some sort making a confession or talking, a ghost, as it were. The poem goes,

[04:19]

The old Buddha is gone. The new one has not yet come. And I am born as in a dream. Who will tell me what is real? Me, that's put on this human flesh, so hard to come by. The old Buddha is gone. The new one has not yet come. And I am born as in a dream. Who will tell me what is real? Me, that's put on this human flesh, so hard to come by. And I think that's a good summation of suffering. Of those moments when all the egoic self-reference points are blown away. And we feel naked and helpless. Of course, historically speaking, the old Buddha is gone, I suppose,

[05:24]

refers to the fact that after Shakyamuni had, you know, when Shakyamuni Buddha died, when he went into parinirvana, all the monks were weeping and wailing and crying and lamenting and so on. There's a future Buddha. There's always a future Buddha coming, called Maitreya in our legend. The future Buddha that will bring, after the generation of the Buddha Dharma, will once again come back and teach us the true path. So, the old Buddha is gone, but the new one has not yet come. We're in that transition period. And in the teachings, of course, as I said, there's the idea of the beginning of a teaching, the first enthusiasm that we have about something. The first flush of insight, recognition of some truth and reality about ourselves and the world.

[06:27]

And before long, after we practice that, or after the world practices it, or after a religion practices it, or a group of people practice it, and a kind of formalism sets in, it kind of loses its edge. The spirit becomes a little bit degenerate. Finally, there's a period where it fades away, just like the seasons, just like the teaching says itself, all things are impermanent. Fades away and that period is called, actually, in the teachings, Mapo. Mapo. So, maybe this play, when something about that, the spirit comes back, feels like a ghost. Felt like Sid felt. Felt like maybe some people in this room feel, even at this moment. The old way is gone, the new one has not yet come. And the crucial line, and I am born as in a dream.

[07:33]

There's a difference between saying, I am born in a dream and I am born as in a dream. The Buddha Dharma talks about life as, like a dream, but not a dream. It's not as if it's just a dream. It has these dreamlike qualities. How can you get hold of it? And who's going to tell me what is real? I look outside of myself. We look outside of ourselves for some reference point that will point the way. We've had a lot of them. The world according to Gospels, the world according to Muhammad, the world according to Freud, the world according to Marx, the world according to Buddha, the world according to George Bush, the world according to daddy or mommy or the teacher. And who's going to tell me what's real in all of that?

[08:37]

A monk comes to one of the teachers in the Chinese, one of our Chinese ancestors, and says something like this. This body is going to rot away. What is the body of the hard and fast reality? This body is going to rot away. What is the body of the hard and fast reality? Pretty good question. Same question that's maybe being asked in this snow play. The teacher answers, Mountain flowers bloom like brocade. The valley streams flowing or burgeoning. The color of indigo.

[09:49]

Mountain flowers bloom like brocade. The valley streams flow glistening like the color of indigo. Who's going to tell me what is real? Here I sit naked and afraid alone in a world I never made. Is that reality? The world stands out on either side. No wider than the soul is wide. Overhead is spread the sky. No higher than the soul is high. Is that reality? Who's going to tell us what is real? Particularly when you've lost. The winter's past. The spring is coming or the summer's past. The season of your life is changing. The family's gone. The job is over. The lover's departed. The dog has died.

[10:55]

The teacher tells you to get lost. I hear some recognition. How familiar it is to us, our suffering, this reference to the ungraspability of those moments when nothing seems to work. We look around, pull a book from the bookcase or turn on the TV or look for some new inspiration, some new beginning, some new place to start our lives. I bring this up particularly right now because we're in the middle of a practice period. We're actually past the midpoint of the practice period. We come as students to the practice for the first time and we're filled with enthusiasm

[11:58]

and a kind of openness to whatever is going to be. Everything's new. Everything's novel in it. All we have to do is study ourselves, whatever that is. Find out what the reality of that is. Sit on a cushion and face a wall and study the world as it arises and passes before our eyes. But little by little and feel that although we've had instructions to simply let things be in their own way and let the flowers grow, let the flowers fall. We hear poems like that. We hear poetry that says over and over something like, although we love them, the flowers die. Although we dislike them, the weeds grow. So we let the weeds grow, watch the flowers of our life fall and observe that phenomena without attachment.

[13:01]

That's the teaching. Watch all of this without getting hung up on any of it. Whatever this you is. And it's kind of exciting to do that for a while. But little by little that too seems to lose its edge. And the novelty wears thin and after a while we find ourselves sitting, simply looking at a wall, sore legs and tired of the food. Tired of endless teachers talking about obscure things. Wonder what we're doing here. Why are we doing this? The whole world is out there waiting for us to, our place in it and here we find ourselves ending up staring at a blank wall and paying for it even. We begin to question this whole affair, this whole ceremony that we've got ourselves caught up into.

[14:03]

I still don't know what's real. Yesterday I had this experience we might have, you know, sitting Zazen and all at once I understood clearly, but I woke up this morning and I thought, yuck! It's all gone. It's Monday morning. It always seems like Monday morning. It's no different than having to go out and get caught in the gridlock. So what am I doing here? This is a very common experience and in fact it's a very necessary experience of abandoning our egoic, what I call our egoic, our self-referencing to the unknown. You go to see the teacher and the teacher said, Ah, that sounds pretty good. Go back and sit some more. Well, I think I'd like to leave. Won't leave. Find out how that is. So one leaves. And then one goes back into the world, finds out it's very hard, not only is it difficult to rent an apartment,

[15:10]

but it's even more expensive now. Costs more money than ever to run your car. You're back looking for a job again. Everything is noisy, fast, aggressive, materialistic. Diversions on all sides and you forgot why you had left in the first place. And now you feel really trapped. You can't, you've left the monastery, just as you've left the other life. So now, who's going to tell me what is real? You go back to the old ways, but now that really hangs heavy on your shoulders. We're two-handed people, two-sided people. We have two sides, the right side and the left side. A worldly side and an ascetic side. A side that longs for some deep realization of some absolute, some ultimate truth. And a side that wishes it could just leave all of those questions

[16:15]

and wrap up into the diversion of the moment, the work of the moment. And for a time it works. But most of us are not really worldly, that worldly. We're not caught up in being a movie star or having a big name up in lights. And we're not, you know, we're not Dogen Zenji or Saint Francis of Assisi. We kind of have a foot, kind of mediocre, actually. Lukewarm in both. Can't really commit to either side, maybe. Looking for some kind of distraction, some kind of consolation, maybe. Consolation. Everybody wants to be consoled. In the midst of this. Manifest world of change. So we come back to the zendo and take our right hand and our left hand and put them together. The ascetic side and the worldly side.

[17:23]

Sit up in the midst of that and surrender. What is my identity? Which of the selves that we are is the real self? Do you know? Do you know without absolute assurance what your true nature is? That nothing can move you from that position, from that posture. Whether you're out in the midst of a traffic jam or in the office or sitting here. What is this true self? Is it something prior to all these other conditions? Or does it arise with the conditions? When the monk asks,

[18:27]

what is the hard and fast reality? The teacher gives him the most transient things you can think of. Flowers blooming on the mountainside, brocades. Rapidly moving stream, the colored indigo. Here today, gone tomorrow. Here today, gone today. We have all these written words about how to control it, how to read it. Conventional reality of words and philosophies. Endless philosophies. Do not pick the flowers, says the sign. But reaping gaily among them goes the wind which cannot read. This wind is reaping gaily through us. It doesn't read our philosophy at all.

[19:31]

It's better to study ourselves than to study philosophy. I hope that isn't too philosophical. Thank you. Some people feel the answer in the midst of their kind of slackening attention to the schedule, to the precepts, to the endless number of possibilities that have been presented to kind of pull up their socks as it were and straighten up and really get even more diligent, pay more attention, put more energy into it. Hit me on the back, wake me up, boom, boom. That's another way we do it. How can I wake up to reality? Who's going to tell me what is real?

[20:42]

The old Buddha is gone. Form is emptiness. The new Buddha has not yet arrived. And yet you look around and the flowers are blooming. The new Buddha has arrived. The new Buddha has never left. I breathe in, try to hold my breath. I have to let it go. I listen to the ocean. As you sit here in the morning, you can hear the tide coming in and rolling out, the ebb and flow. If you pay enough attention, you can feel your own heart beating, opening and closing. Diastolic, systolic. Diastolic. Now I see it. Now I don't. Now I have you. I understand who you are. Now you're a total mystery to me. Is this the way?

[21:56]

To get in harmony with that flow? If you think I'm going to answer this question, don't hold your breath. Well, you know and I know that sooner or later we're going to lose everything that we hold on to. How do we get in harmony? How do we attune ourselves to that reality? That's what all religion is about. Some religions say, I think, that we have to believe in a greater power than ourselves.

[22:58]

But all religions finally come back, probably to the same thing, that rather than trying to grasp at anything, is to open up to the fact that we are already something. Call it love. Call it the Buddha Dharma or the Buddha. Call it Christ Consciousness. Call it Allah. I have a friend who went to Marrakech not so long ago. And she met a young Muslim man who invited her to come and witness a great spectacle. And she, with some apprehension, being a single American woman by herself traveling, had a little, you know, a moment of hesitation. But decided to go with him. And he took her to an abandoned building. And he said, now watch.

[24:04]

And he flung open the doors in this old warehouse, as it turned out, old dusty warehouse, where the sun, she said, was pouring through the windows up toward the ceiling in a long stream. And the dust was rising in that. And as they flung open the doors, this huge flock of pigeons took off inside this building. Although it had a broken rooftop, that's how they got in. But anyway, they took off, and as they flew around inside, their wings catching the sunlight and so on, he said, do you hear it? And she said, what? Do you hear that sound as they fly about? They're saying, Allah, Allah, Allah. The flowers are blooming like brocade on the hillside. The snow is falling in thick sheets of white. The wings of the birds are beating the name of Allah into the air.

[25:08]

Who will tell me what's real? I've waited all these years to find out the answer to this question, what is real? Even though people have told me that whatever is arising at this moment is the reality. It's not satisfying. Something feels left out. Something's left out. Something is not quite right. And it is said, actually, in the Buddha Dharma, that when you begin to study the Dharma, it will feel as if something is missing. Something is not finished. But I can't find the finish because I can't find the beginning of it. I'm trying to remember a time I wasn't here. By here I mean that there's somebody here looking at somebody out there,

[26:15]

manifesting as I and Thou, you and me. I can't find a time when that wasn't the case. Although I believe, objectively speaking, that there's going to be a time when I'm not going to know that. But if there's not an I that doesn't know it, it doesn't matter. Does that mean, then, that consciousness is always, the conscious witnesser of I and Thou, of this phenomena called you and me, is always this present moment? And that we're making this up together. And if that's the case, how come we don't enjoy it? That we create all these different versions about this arising of you and me at this moment,

[27:21]

this mutuality, this relationship, this attention to this relationship. Not only do we do that, but we fashion all kinds of philosophies around it. And if you don't believe in my philosophy, you're wrong. And not only are you wrong, but I'll teach you the right way. Put you on the rack, put you on jail, lock you up, teach you a lesson. If this is love, how come it feels so miserable, so much of the time, so scary? How come we come here to listen to all of this, if we are already complete? The old Buddha's gone, the new one has not yet come. The old Buddha's always just left, and the new one is just coming. I know when I used to go hunting with my dad as a kid,

[28:21]

we'd go to these places to hunt ducks, and he'd say, oh, you should have been here last week. Well, we hear the weather's changing, and the weather's going to change, and the flight will come in. But today, not a duck is in sight. It always seems like that. Especially when you're trying to find, to shoot a duck. When you're trying to find Buddha, when you're trying to find the answer, how elusive it all is. So the tears roll down my friend's cheeks. Oh God, it's all beginning again. How many times have I seen this promise of springtime? And my mother saying the same thing in the autumn. Oh, it's so sad. I feel so sad. Watch the summer blow away in the wind. And I think to myself, how wonderful it is to cry and feel sad. Feel happy, feel sad.

[29:27]

The calms, the storms, the arid days, to what avail if not to prove that I am still alive. I can't remember a single teaching. I can't remember a single teaching. So it's all going. There's nothing, nothing to sustain this That I can hold on to, that I can take comfort in, I can't wrap up in Buddha's robes anymore and feel good. Not that I feel bad, it's just that the old Buddha's gone, and I don't know what's going to come next. You know what? It's great. I don't want to know anymore what's coming next.

[30:32]

I've waited all my life to see what's coming next, and it's always the same thing, in a new package. I thought, before I came here today, I'm going to say something that's going to be real. It's the last talk I might ever give. What if it's the last talk I ever give, the last thing I ever say to anybody, and I'm wearing this robe, what is it going to be? You know when I first came out, what I first said to myself was, love your life. All of it. And I thought, what a banal thing to say, you know? I'm supposed to have some profound understanding, and I said, just love your life. Be happy, don't worry. And I remembered this, being a literary sort of guy that I am, I used to love literature,

[31:43]

you know, if you've read The Brothers Karamazov, those of you who have read Dostoyevsky, there's a wonderful scene in that, in which the old priest, Father Yosima, is recounting his childhood, and his brother, he talks about this brother of his who was very cynical and hard-hearted, and the brother finds out he has what they call consumption, TB, and is dying. He has a short time to live, and suddenly there's this transformation. He totally transforms, his life turns 180 degrees around, and for the next chapter, he's telling everybody, darling and sweetheart, flowers, mice, everything that intrudes into our life is sweetheart, darling, I love you, how beautiful it is, love your life, love all of it. Just filled with, and we've had those moments, you know, and that changes, the father becomes

[32:48]

a priest, and to learn to love our lives, to learn to soften our hearts, to learn to open up, I guess the only way we can actually ever learn to finally do that is just to give up, just to surrender and know that we're dying now, and to love every bit of it, all the flowers and all the wind that blows them away, and that also means all the things I don't love about it, I don't mean because of my ego, but I mean the wind that blows it away, the mind of winter. I know I quoted that poem to you last time I sat here, Wallace Stevens, snowman. He said something, I don't know if I can quote this, but this is talking about just much

[33:50]

more eloquently than I can, poets, you know, they're the ones who can at least point to the moon. He says something like, one must have a mind of winter to regard the snow on the boughs of the pine trees, and to have been cold a long time, to behold the junipers shagged with ice, the trees rough in the distant glitter of the January sun, and not, and not to think of any misery in the sound of the wind, in the sound of a few leaves, which is the sound blowing in the same land, full of the same wind, for the listener who listens in the snow, and nothing himself beholds nothing that is not there, and the nothing that is, beholds the nothing that is not there, beholds nothing, nothing that is not there, all the form, all

[34:52]

the emptiness that is form, all these things, beholds nothing that is not there, and the nothing that is. That is to say, the old Buddha is gone, the new one is not yet come, I cannot get hold of this ultimate thing. One must have a mind of winter, that craving ego that keeps us in suspense, in perpetual desire, endless hunger, must finally freeze, so that our heart can beat openly, receive all that the world has to offer us, it is a consummation devoutly to be wished. I can't do it. I can't do it. It happens, spontaneously, more and more, but I can't make it happen. Sitting doesn't make it happen, studying doesn't make it happen, romantic love didn't make

[35:59]

it happen, political action did not make it happen, making the world better did not make it happen. It cannot happen because it's already the case, it's just that we can't see it, most of the time. Maybe you can. Maybe you must, before you die. In that one moment, when we open totally, and know that things are perfection, just as they are, then I think I understand what it means to save all beings, or that all beings are already saved. Life is nothing but love. The great heart of things beating, oh, cosmos, this great beating heart.

[37:04]

And then it's gone, and it's just little Dave again, and the wake-up bell is ringing, and I don't want to get out of bed. So that's it. Love your life. You only get one life millions of times, or so they say. And in this lifetime, and in your lifetime, you can already count millions of lives you've had. And the older you get, the more lifetimes you can remember. Day by day, now I'm getting messages from people that I used to hang out with, you know, drugstore cowboys in high school, the old gang of mine, death is breaking up the old

[38:10]

gang of mine. There were ten of us, now there are four. Mapo, the old Buddha is gone, the new one is not to come, I'm a ghost. Please tell me what is real. Go to your teacher, go to your heart, ask yourself what is real. And when you finally come to some answer, even if it's particular, if it's just, I don't know, embrace that I don't know with all your heart. In fact, Ikkyu Zenji said, I'll leave you with this, he said, I'd love to give you something,

[39:33]

but in the Bodhidharma or in the Zen sect, there's nothing at all to give. I think what that really means is you already got it. Thank you.

[39:50]

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