Good morning. Every time I find myself sitting in this seat ready to give a talk and we do this verse which we chant on the occasion of opening a sutra or text or before lecture, I always feel like, oh my goodness. I certainly hope that whatever I have to say this morning will be of some use or help. But I also want to encourage you to not worry about it if it isn't. One of the things that I love about the tradition of Buddhism stemming from the words of Shakyamuni

[01:02]

Buddha is the encouragement to listen and pay attention to teachings, to find a way to integrate them into our daily life and into our actions moment by moment, but also not to accept anything blindly. That's the part that I find most attractive. The encouragement that each one of us must investigate and examine whatever we hear or read and check it out for ourselves. So it is a kind of encouragement that we not turn away from our own experience and what is true for us moment by moment, but to check in and listen and trust ourselves as deeply as we can, albeit with the tentative attitude that we could be wrong, but to not give up

[02:08]

our experience in the face of what someone else tells us is true. So I want to encourage you to remember that part of listening to a talk or a lecture. So here we are in the Zen Do at Green Gulch on the 20th of August, which I always thought was summer. I always thought that was when everyone went on vacation. I thought that was when we would go swimming because it would be hot. On the 7th of August, I was trying to figure out where we were in the moon cycle and I picked up a calendar that I have, which is a kind of Taoist Confucian calendar, but it has lots of moon material on it. And I noticed on that particular calendar that August 7th was announced as the first

[03:13]

day of autumn. And I thought, hmm, pretty interesting. So since then, I've been paying attention to what's going on with the bushes and the trees, and it sure looks like autumn to me. And this morning, when we were blessed with heavy fog or light rain, depending on your information and point of view, it feels particularly like autumn this morning. In listening to various teachers and studying various texts, I am struck repeatedly by the description in this great tradition stemming from Shakyamuni Buddha's teachings and before him even, by the description that what we are doing has to do with mind training.

[04:13]

Mind training or transformation. Developing the mind. So I find myself thinking about what does this mean? What does it mean to develop my mind? And I think that there are some implications. Essentially, there is some basic assumption that there are different kinds of minds or states of mind. And maybe we're talking about developing some and transforming others. That's certainly what I imagine is going on. That there is in fact some notion that there are virtuous or wholesome states of mind, and there are non-virtuous or harmful states of mind. So, what we are attending to is paying attention to the quality of the state of mind which

[05:15]

is arising in this moment. And making some effort, albeit an effort that involves energy but also allowing, a curious kind of effort to pay attention to what is in fact my condition in this moment. My textual references this morning come from two sources. One is Atisha, a great meditator and yogi who lived in India in the 10th century, the 15th century. Another one of these inspiring practitioners who started out in life having everything from some point of view, a prince and wealth and living in a beautiful part of the world

[06:17]

and all of that. He was a great disappointment to his family because from the time he was very young he had no interest in worldly affairs. And by the time he was in his early teens he was deeply immersed in an inner life or spiritual practices and lived a long and beneficial life as a practitioner and great teacher. My other reference is Mel Torme, whom some of you may know. I was asking myself last night, is this another instance of dating myself? Could be. Particularly I thought of that when my husband who is somewhat younger than I am didn't know the song. We can make whatever conclusion from that we want to.

[07:20]

Thank you. After sitting quietly, sitting and walking quietly for the day yesterday, I went to see a friend who has been diagnosed with quite a serious cancer. And I want actually to talk about her life and her situation this morning. As I drove into the driveway after visiting with her last night, Mel Torme was singing this song that goes, love and the weather can't be depended upon. I thought, ah, yes, an impermanence song all about those things we can't count on. You want it to be sunny and it's rainy. You want him or her to love you and he or she is fickle and so it goes. It's a great song if you don't know it and Mel Torme does a superb rendition.

[08:25]

I, as some of you know, am looking for dharma texts anywhere. And the newspaper and the radio bring up some great versions. My friend is someone that I've known for quite a while. We were roommates in the early part of July during some dharma teachings. And during that time, my friend was commenting to me about the difficulty she was having with periodic blindness, brief episodes of blindness or blocked vision in her left eye. And she thought, oh, well, I've been doing a lot of yoga and I've been doing headstands and I probably pinched something. So we both discussed it and she said, I guess maybe I should stop doing headstands

[09:33]

and go check into what's going on. So she came back home and she went to the doctor and there was some possibility that she had a breast cancer. She was pretty upset. She said, oh, no, not that. I love my breasts. I want them. No cutting. It was pretty difficult. And then subsequent tests showed that she was clear. And then further tests showed that she has cancer in her lung, her right lung, and in the bronchial tube that goes into that lung. And she has a tumor in her brain, which is, of course, what was causing this series of episodes with some blindness. So we've been hanging out together in the last couple of weeks since she got this news.

[10:43]

And I am once again struck by what a great teacher a terminal illness can be. And I'm once again struck by what a great teacher someone in this phase of living, called dying, what a great teacher such a person can be, both for that person. We become our own teachers and our lives become our own teachers in that situation. But we also have some possibility of being a teacher for those around us. And my friend is certainly doing that for me. She said a week or so ago, isn't it interesting? I would take that early diagnosis in a minute. How different it looks to me this week than it looked to me two or three weeks ago.

[11:52]

I was really struck by that. It made me think of Thich Nhat Hanh's admonition about enjoying the toothache you don't have. I almost never enjoy the toothache I don't have. I don't even think about my teeth until they don't work, until there's some problem. And then I think, oh boy, did I ever used to have good teeth or gums or back? Do I think about the teacup that I enjoy drinking tea from before it's broken or only when it's broken? And what comes up is regret or anger that I dropped it or someone else dropped my favorite teacup, etc.

[12:58]

So I said to my friend last night, if you don't mind, I'd like to use some of our conversations in lecture tomorrow morning. She said, no, that's fine. So we were talking again about how she still is noticing how many different possible versions of cancer here and there she could happily live with. Take my breast, take my arm, just let me have my life. And yet what strikes me in her situation is how I see blooming before me the fullness of her life and the fullness of her capacity to be present. How much she is on the path meant intent fiercely to cultivate her capacity to be calm and to be happy in each moment.

[14:09]

Because she very much wants to be calm and happy at the moment of dying. And this is, of course, a great inspiration to practice. Over and over again in teachings and in texts we read an admonition about practicing daily to remind ourselves that we know we will die, we do not know when or how. Sometimes I hear people say, oh, but that's so gloomy, that's so macabre. But in fact, my experience is quite the opposite. To the degree that I can let the world around me and within me, the world of human life and the life of all beings, of plants and animals, of rocks and the hills, of the clouds and the sky, the weather,

[15:19]

provide constant opportunities for meditating on the impermanent nature of all things. And that I can keep that attending very particular so that I do not forget, at least for not too long, that I know I will die and I do not know when or how. Yesterday, my friend had another friend visiting her in the afternoon who took her through a kind of meditation practice where she would place her hands on different parts of her body and let her hands stay in that area for about five minutes. And just breathe quietly and attend to that part of her body with as much presence and attention and gentleness as possible.

[16:23]

She said she did that with 12 particular areas of the body. That would take a while. And my friend said that she had just finished doing that when she heard my car drive up and she heard the car door slam. And immediately she thought, oh, Ivan is coming. And she noticed how quickly she moved away from the moment to anticipating my being in the room sitting next to her. And she realized she had an opportunity to go back to attending to the detail of physical body and breath, not anticipating my ringing the doorbell or her standing by the door waiting expectantly so she could open the door the minute she heard me there, which is what had occurred to her.

[17:26]

She said, I just went back to breathing. Until you in fact rang the doorbell and came into the house and walked into the room. And much to her surprise, she was actually able to stay present with each breath. She was quite surprised. She said, I did it. I had the sense that she surprised herself. And that what she is learning is how to stay present more and more a few moments at a time as an alternative to living in the past, longing for what is gone, for her dear husband of many, many years who is no longer alive. And also as an antidote to fleeing into the future, which is filled with fear and anxiousness.

[18:39]

She had another impermanence experience, which I thought was particularly lovely. She's a rather slender person. And she's been eating a lot of vegetables, fresh vegetables and a few grains and seaweed. She said, I am drinking so much carrot juice, I'm going to turn orange. And now I've been taking her stinging nettles. And she said, I'm either going to be orange or green. But on a diet like that, she's also getting thin. She was already thin. She said to me last night, you know, I looked in the mirror a little while ago and I noticed that my ass had fallen off. It was my one curve. And it was so cute. I love that little bit of curve and it's gone. It's just not there.

[19:42]

She said, I sort of waved it goodbye and thought, maybe I won't have that curve again, but then again maybe I will. But for the time being anyway, that curve is gone. She told me that and we both laughed. My ass has fallen off. There are of course some of us who would love to have that experience. But maybe this is also like the weather, right? I want what I don't have. And I want what I have to go away. So the encouragement is that we use every immediate circumstance as an opportunity to meditate.

[20:46]

To meditate on impermanence. To meditate on the cultivation of generosity. To meditate on the cultivation of virtue or of patience. The possible objects of meditation are limitless. The other thing my friend said that she noticed was that while she and her visitor yesterday afternoon were talking, her sense of emotional sense, the way she felt, was very different than when they sat together quietly, not talking, breathing and guiding her hands on 12 different parts of her body.

[21:52]

While she and her visitor were talking, there was some difficulty, some upset, some focusing, attending to this big trouble she has in her life. But she said during that hour or so when we did this hands on the different parts of the body and attending to each of those areas in the breath, she said suddenly things became very light. And she saw her hands like the wings of angels because she placed her hands in this gesture which reminded her of angel wings. She said there was a kind of sweetness and gentleness and simplicity as we sat together not talking. She has been describing a taste of that quality of intimacy and connectedness with oneself and with another person that arises so surprisingly when we stop talking, when we attend to breath and simply being in the moment.

[23:18]

So my friend had a taste of that space which for those of us who practice meditation understand as the deep space, the deep stillness which is like some vast container for compassion and wisdom. So my friend has the quality in her of wanting to practice as if her head is on fire. And I'm reminded again of the admonition on the wooden board that we hit with a hammer, the Han, which sounds to mark the call to come to practice Azen. Practice as if your head is on fire.

[24:25]

Meditate on the great matters of birth and death because of course our head is on fire. And when we can be inspired and fueled by that sense of no time to waste but also paradoxically not being in a hurry, cultivating the state of mind called having nothing to do and nowhere to go. There is a kind of vividness and joy which arises in our lives. And so my friend described to me this hour or two visit with her dear friend as a great joy, a great occasion, and a glimpse into a way she can be for however long she lives. She's learning how to practice generosity in every moment.

[25:42]

Generosity with whatever arises. It's pretty easy to do when what arises is a calm mind. But what about generosity with oneself when we do something silly or stupid or mindless? Early yesterday morning I was up in the attic of the house pulling down cushions from the back of the attic for our sitting together for the day. And I was moving quickly. And of course I whacked myself in the head on the eve. And I still have that lump. I woke up this morning and I could feel it. And I started to do a kind of cranky conversation with myself about my mindlessness. And in the midst of it remembered, this is an occasion for generosity, for kindliness, for paying attention to what was going on in that moment.

[26:55]

What was I thinking about? What was feeding the speed with which I was moving? Is there a way in which I can learn something from that moment? Is there a way in which I can accept the causes and conditions of my life that lead me to be attentive in one moment and inattentive in another? How do we practice meditating on impermanence? How do we practice daily reminding ourselves about our dying? And in fact, how do we practice dying itself? At the end of some breaths there is a space. And if you pay attention, let your attention follow your breathing as it comes in and goes out,

[27:58]

you can attend to that space at the end of the exhalation as a kind of minor dying. Gee, that wasn't so bad. That wasn't so scary. Hmm, that was rather interesting. I can also practice dying when I go to sleep at night. Because when I go to sleep at night, it is a kind of dying at the end of the day. Shakespeare in one of his sonnets says it so beautifully, sleep as death's second self that seals up all in rest. How could I not be welcoming to that dying of sleep which seals up all in rest? And then at the end of that sonnet he says,

[29:02]

this thou perceivest which makes thy love more strong to love that well which thou must leave ere long. This is of course the joyful side of a meditation on impermanence. There is that delicious enjoyment and touching of that which we know we will have in our lives briefly. We tell ourselves stories about that which we want to hold on to. And we rob ourselves of a particular kind of lightness and joy in that clinging, that holding, that possessing. I keep being struck by how much this way of practicing with ourselves,

[30:14]

letting every circumstance provide an opportunity for meditating on impermanence or whatever it is we're cultivating in our lives, in our minds. I'm struck by how much it is like what I remember as a child learning to ride a horse, and which I know for some of us came up when we wanted to learn to ride a two-wheeler. In both cases, I know for a fact, there is a certain part of learning to ride a horse or a bicycle that's called falling off. But if you really want to learn to ride the bike badly enough, you get back on again. You probably didn't even think about the falling off as being anything other than part of learning to ride the bike.

[31:15]

It's just what happens. It goes with the territory. This way of practicing, of every time we are not doing what we intend to do and we return to our intention, practice includes all of it. The first step on the path called practicing generosity is noticing that moment in which what arises in me is not generous. How else will I know what I'm looking into? So there is a kind of attitude about mistakes as being part of the path called doing it right. Doing it wrong is part of the path of doing it right. For my friend, she is learning everything about living

[32:22]

as she considers the detail of dying. We both noticed yesterday, we've both been dying since the day we were born. We just hadn't noticed it. Oh that, I can live with that. That's not different from what all of us are going through. But it is different when a doctor says, you have cancer in your lung and in your brain and you won't live for more than six months. There is a difference. For one thing, you tend to believe this person, like he or she knows something. We forget, maybe this is an educated guess. And then lo and behold, we find out that there is someone living in Stinson Beach

[33:26]

with exactly the same cancer showing up in exactly the same sites who was diagnosed in March of 1988 and is still very much alive. So what's going on? So my friend wants to live and wants to die calmly and happily. So she can say, I want to practice, I want a spiritual practice. I want to live long enough so that I have time to die the way I've heard I could. I find great inspiration in hearing her say that. I think that's the message that's on the Han which we hit

[34:33]

to announce the beginning of meditation. May we each live for whatever length of time we need to, to get our act together. And the only way we can do it, according to the ancient wise ancestors, is moment by moment. Using each moment, each circumstance, no matter what it is, as the occasion to be awake and alive in the moment. Yesterday, as I was driving over to see my friend, these words came up in my mind.

[35:38]

I know I will die. I do not know when or how. Oh, I will die. Today is a good day to die. Thank you very much.

[35:56]

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