I hate to think how long it's been since I lectured here. It probably went just about exactly 10 years. I left 10 years ago in whatever, September or something like that. What I remember so clearly was on that day, I guess it was a Saturday morning. There was a fire, but the fire is now the more recent one, but the one before that. In 99, there was a big fire at Tassajara, and Vicky and Michael had been down there working on Dharma transmission with Sojin, and they came back. And what I remember is coming down the hallway towards them. This was on Friday, I guess. Coming down the hallway towards the door and they were coming in and they looked like kind of startled deer.

[01:07]

And one of the things I did in that lecture, that was my kind of going away lecture. I also talked about that experience, their experience at fire. So I remember that really clearly. But that's not what I want to talk about. I want to talk about the koan of everyday life. In a student group that I lead in Pleasant Hill, we've been studying the Genjo koan, and we've also been studying it in Vallejo. I don't know if you know, my name is Mary Moseen, and I am the abbess of the Vallejo Zen Center, and I trained here. And my teacher was surgeon Mel Weitzman, and Schoenberg Lange Hartman is my preceptor. And I say often, and it's true, that she trained me because she was the one day in, day out that would say, hey, and give me dope slap. Sometimes. So this koan of everyday life, how do we live in emptiness, which we do, and you have to function in this

[02:22]

where the myriad dharmas are everyday life stuff and nonsense. How do we do that? That's practice, isn't it? How do we do that? In the game show, Colin Duggan talks about the myriad dharmas come forth and experience themselves. That's awakening. not leaning into the myriad dharmas, allowing the myriad dharmas, letting be the myriad dharmas. But we don't get to ignore. The myriad dharmas are the things and thoughts and ideas of everyday life. Small d dharmas. And the poem I want to talk from today is called Tea at the Palace of Hulun. It's a Wallace Stevens poem. And I... see it as being about coming forward, about owning your life.

[03:23]

Owning your life. It's sometimes contrasted with a poem that was published at the same time, which he was not a Buddhist or Zen student, but even so he's a Zen master. And I think that this one, the other one I want to contrast with is Snowman is about emptiness. It's a snow person. It's not about frosty. It's that you must have a mind of winter. And it's been called a long time to see a winter landscape, to hear a winter wind, and not project onto it. He doesn't use that phrase, but not project onto it, not anthropomorphize it, just hear it. He says, for the listener who listens in the snow, Nothing herself. Who can hear nothing that is not there and the nothing that is. I think that's about emptiness.

[04:29]

The more thing that is. We make things of our experience. We objectify and we get tangled up with our experience. We want it to be solid. We want so desperately for something to be safe and permanent. So we thingify. So the nothing that is. The no thing that is there. There is something there. And I say that the myriad dharmas are there. But don't thingify them. Lou Hartman has a classic Shusel question. He says, the sixth ancestor says... From the beginning, not a thing is. Lou Hartman says that's why we make it up. Did I get that right? Go ahead.

[05:32]

That's why we have to make it all up. That's right. And we do have to make it all up. It makes itself up to us. That's a kind of a Spanish language locution. It makes itself up to us. In Spanish, things forget themselves to me, which I think is great, and I'm not so responsible. So things make themselves up to us. The million dhammas come forth and experience themselves, but I make them up. Whatever I is. So this is the poem that I want to talk about, Tea at the Palace of Hun. That P-A-L-A-Z, if you want to Google it, you can find it right away. And Hoon is H-O-O-N, and a lot of students like to play with words. I don't think it has deep meaning, and I asked Norman just in case that he didn't think it had deep meaning.

[06:33]

Not less, because in purple I descended the Western day through what you call the loneliest air. Not less was I myself. What was the ointment sprinkled on my beard? What were the hymns that buzzed beside my ears? What was the sea whose tide swept through me there? Out of my mind, the golden ointment reigned, and my ears made the blowing hymns they heard. I was myself the compass of that sea. I was the world in which I walked. And what I saw or heard or felt came not but from myself. And there I found myself more truly and more strange. I'll read it again. Not less because in purple I descended the western day through what you call the loneliest air.

[07:37]

Not less was I myself. What was the ointment sprinkled on my beard? What were the hills that basked beside my ears? What was the sea whose tide swept through me there? Out of my mind the golden ointment reigned, and my ears made the blowing hymns they heard. I was myself the compass of that sea. I was the world in which I walked, and what I saw or heard or felt came not but from myself. And where I found myself more truly and more strange. Or truly and more strange, and that's their job. Truly and strange. Find yourself truly and strange, fresh each moment. Leap and true, fresh each moment. It's easy to say, not so easy to do. These myriad dharmas come forth and experience themselves, Dogen says in the Genjo Koan.

[08:47]

So what does this have to do with me? What can I do other than simply respond to the myriad dharmas that present themselves to me? They'll just arise out of causes and conditions, right? We don't even know just exactly where they came from. Innumerable, myriad causes and infinite causes and conditions. Something is presented to me this moment. This is my experience in this moment. Right now, right here, right here, right here. And Paul during Sasheen talked about our job going to investigate these dharmas. turn towards these dharmas. What is it? What's going on in here? Huh, what's that? But that you are the boss of your life. That's what Suzuki Roshi used to say. You're the boss of your life.

[09:51]

Ruchiyama talks about you're the driver of your life. So Out of my mind the golden ointment rains. And my ears make the sounds they hear. And I am the compass of my sea. So wonderful images, right? And I notice even he says, not less because in purple I descended the western day. Took the arc of a day, right? The sun sets in the west. Purple is a royal color. It reminds us that we are in charge of our own lives. How do I meet these dharmas? How do I encounter each one? How do I investigate each one? Haritsu Suzuki Roshi says, well, zazen is how to do, how to do, how to do.

[10:54]

That's zazen. And I say to you that our life is how to meet, how to meet, how to meet. And in that sense, in the sense that we do, and we seem to have the freedom to meet these dharmas, to respond to what presents itself to us. My teacher, Mal Weitzman, says that's our freedom. We have that freedom. And I'm not sure whether even that isn't arising out of, my response to whatever is not arising out of causes and conditions too. I don't know. But my experience is that I have that freedom. I seem to have that freedom. I can take offense or not take offense to something that presents itself to me. I can have an illness and I can curl up in a little ball and just cry the whole time.

[12:03]

Or I can meet it. We have challenges in our lives all the time. And just things that we just have to deal with. Just have to deal with via the Tenzo. You have to think about dinner. All the time. Yes. And then lunch. Yes. I was Tenzo here years ago. And my sense sometimes was that I was just flowing through that. Constantly. It's a big mouth. That's what I experienced. It's a big mouth. So remember, it isn't necessarily unpleasant, but the universe presents me with some dharmas, and then I meet those dharmas. And it feels to me like I have the freedom to meet them as I will. And then I can, in that way, create my reality. Right? If someone is unkind to me and I smack them back...

[13:05]

then I am creating suffering for myself and that other person. Whereas if they're unkind to me and I don't smack them back, if I am able to step back a little bit and perhaps see the pain in their eyes, maybe I could respond to the pain instead. Nagarjuna says that we need to remember that when somebody is causing suffering, they must be suffering themselves. We don't cause suffering to other people just for the pleasure of it. Even when it looks like that, that's not the case. I think that's always true. Maybe it's not always true, but I think so. So how do I meet what comes to me? Can I remember that that person doesn't want to suffer?

[14:10]

And in my response, I can create my reality. I can wear my purple robe and remember that I am the boss of my reality. I am the queen of my reality. You are the king or the queen of your reality. Not less because in purple I descended. Not less was I myself. Perhaps in a way I'm more myself. If I take ownership of how I meet the myriad dharmas. If I take ownership of how I create my world. I am in charge of it. And yet. I have to keep that mind of emptiness, that mind of no thing, and meet those dharmas with the mind of no thing.

[15:13]

So these meru dharmas come forth and experience themselves and they define me. My world defines me. My mind right now, right this minute, it's that pragmia paramita there. So she defines me right now. She's my reality right now. She was made by a dear friend of mine and a number of people here, a woman named Rebecca Mayeno, who practiced for many, many years at the Berkeley Zen Center and now has Alzheimer's. This is my reality, meeting me right now. I'm meeting this. Rebecca is here for me. And my talking about her brings her here for a number of people in the room.

[16:15]

She went a couple of practice periods at Tassajara. And she has Alzheimer's now, and she just recently moved into some sort of care home. She doesn't recognize anybody anymore. But she moved that pragnia paramita for Zen Center. So that defines, that defines me. And I could, I mean, you know, that table is there because a man named Hekizan thought of it being there. And he was very pleased with himself that he thought of that. You remember that? He said that in a practice committee meeting. He suggested it and he said, oh, I thought of something. He was very happy. He was the Eno here, the last job that he had here. He died a long time ago. So that's, here were just examples. Your reality defines you. And, well, I'm not going to, I wanted to, this is like a whole chunk of things.

[17:25]

I want to say that we, all we actually see is our reality. All we actually see is our ideas of things. That's what we experience. When we cognize it with our mind, we're cognizing all of our ideas about a rooster. Do we actually see the rooster? The eye probably, you know, in some sense, the eye sees the rooster and the brain sees the rooster. But what I'm aware of, what I cognize, what I think about is all my ideas about a rooster. So in that sense, there's no question but that we make up our reality. The question always is, how do I relate to that rooster? Do I believe all my ideas about that rooster? Do I care about rooster in the process? Do I hold those ideas lightly? Do I hold those ideas with the mind of no thing? I was the nerve in which I walked, and what I saw or heard or felt came not but from myself.

[18:32]

And there I found myself more truly and more strange. More truly and more strange. So what is truth about our experience? The truth is, this is the truth. I'm going to tell you. The truth is when it's empty. That's it. The truth is that nothing at all has own being, not even emptiness, nothing. That's the truth. The truth is that there is nothing there. There is no thing there. And yet, of course, here we are, and if you walk into the table, you're going to stub your toe, and yada, yada, yada, yada. So that's also true. There's the ultimate truth and the relative truth. And they're both true.

[19:34]

One isn't better than the other. So can you find yourself truly? Can you remember what Avalokiteshvara says in the Heart Sutra? All dhammas in their own being are empty. And I think we sit sazan in order to remember that because it's really hard. really hard to remember. It's really easy to forget because the darkness come at you moment after moment and we want so badly for there to be something solid and safe and permanent. Right? It's our grasping after that. That's the first noble truth. We want it. I want it. Sometimes I don't. Sometimes I let that go, but we all want it, I think, a lot of the time. So can we find ourselves more truly?

[20:36]

Can we find the emptiness in our experience? Can we find the strangeness more truly and more strange? Strange is kind of a wonderful word. Strange sounds like science fiction or something. Truth is stranger than fiction. Maybe it is. Or am I saying the truth is fiction? But at any rate, more true and more strange. Can I let my experience be strange? That's the mind I think that Paul was talking about. I understood it. That mind that says, what's going on here? That lets it be strange. That does not assume that it knows. What would it be like if we didn't assume that we knew that other people were thinking, what we were thinking, what we're going to do next, and so on. And how many times have you had something that you needed to tell someone you were close to and you thought they were not going to like it?

[21:42]

So then in your mind, you have the argument before you even say anything. You have the whole discussion, and in your mind, you get really pissed off because they said they didn't like your idea. And then by the time you say anything to them, guess what? They get really pissed off. But you never give them a chance to have a different response, right? Could you let it be strange? This is looking where she said that maybe it's a good idea rather than say, Sally always does X, but at least Sally's liable to do X. Give Sally a chance to be strange. to be strange. So I'm going to read it one more time and then give you a chance to comment or ask questions because we don't have a lot of time. T at the Paris of Hoon. Not less because in purple I descended the western bay through what you called the loneliest air.

[22:49]

Not less was I myself. What was the ointment sprinkled on my beard? What were the hymns that buzzed beside my ears? What was the sea whose tide swept through me there? Out of my mind the golden ointment reigned, and my ears made the blowing hymns they heard. I was myself the compass of that sea. I was the world in which I walked, and what I saw or heard or felt came not but from myself, and where I found myself more truly and more strange. So do you have any questions or comments on this poem or what I've said? Yes? What if I don't want to be the master of my reality? That's a trust in itself.

[23:51]

I don't think I'm not sure that we ultimately have a truth in the sense that we are creating it. So what do you want to create? You want to create harmony with the myriad dharmas? You want to create dissonance with the myriad dharmas? I don't think it means that you have to decide to be the CEO of something. It's about wholeheartedly meeting your life, about meeting your life with willingness. But it's not about grasping after something and it's not about being the boss. I mean, it may be that you should be the very best shoe repair person that you possibly can. Does that make sense to you? Maybe. Maybe. feel like checking out, not needing the experience.

[25:00]

You do that as wholeheartedly as you can. I mean, I'm so joking, but I'm not really, because sometimes you do feel like checking out. And then know that you're doing that. And we have talked sometimes about If you can only function at, say, 70%, then wholeheartedly do 70%. And mostly, don't beat up on yourself about it. Don't get tangled up in it. I think denial, for example, is really useful. When somebody's dying or when I'm dying or whatever, and they have these five stages of death and dying, and often the first one is denial. And then we go, what is it? Denial, bargaining, anger, acceptance, grief.

[26:02]

They don't go in that order. But we don't do them in order, really. But we need some denial sometimes. Because we need the respite that it gives us. It just... Don't, don't, I hope one doesn't stay there. But we need recreation, we need to recreate ourselves. We need a time out sometimes. And that fallow time may be the most useful of all. Because there's, you know, on some level, there may be something cooking. Yeah. Interesting how you work the palette. Mm-hmm. There's... That image that feels so related, the Dengar fawn image of the circle of waters. And that's where I go and bring up the palace. So the way that the poem is kind of playing the relativity of our, like the subjectivity of our perception feels so

[27:11]

How do we relate it? Oh, yeah. I mean, it goes on and on and on. I kind of would say, no, just stop, stop, stop. Because the notion, I love the notion of I was the compass of the sea. Remember, I don't do it. We still teach with compasses in high school or whatever in geometry. You describe a circle with a compass and it encircles you. And it encompasses you. Our experience encompasses us. So, yeah, there's... Lots of Genjo Kohan in there, it seems like to me. Yeah. Genjo Kohan, the Genjo Kohan. Yes. Well, that's why it comes up so much, you know. But then you would think that Dogen Will did or something. Yeah. Mary, what would be your recommendation tonight for us how to study wisdom? In other words, how do you engage people want the myriad dharmas to study and maybe even realize their activities.

[28:19]

Zazen, Zazen, Zazen. Zazen. Okay, no, I'm sorry. It's fun to be Zen snider sometimes, you know, but it's not so useful. With study would be the study of emptiness, study Nagarjuna, study Rasavandhu, study, learn how we create the sense of self. And studying how we create the sense of self, I think helps us to loosen our grip. And the kind of thing that Paul was talking about during sarsheen, you know, mindfulness and investigation, mindfulness and investigation over and over and over again. And that is what we do in zazen. What's coming up right now and then seeing the damage that we do by not meeting our life with the mind of emptiness, with the mind that sees the lack of own being.

[29:30]

And then we just keep hurting ourselves and hurting other people and hurting ourselves and hurting other people and blah, blah, blah. And we're tired of it. And we also see how useless it is. And we, as Blanche says, you don't believe in it so much anymore. And isn't that the mind of emptiness? It doesn't believe in it so much anymore. My friend Alan Sinaki has a broker strip that says, don't believe everything you think. May I follow up? Sure.

[30:33]

That's right. I feel like Vasubhanda's teachings, to the extent I understand them, and I'm certainly not an expert, but to the extent I understand them, are part of me. And that was a short version when I said, you see the rooster, but you only see your idea of the rooster and don't get the rooster. There it is. There it is in a nutshell. And so I try not to kill my experience. I try to read it fresh and open my eyes and let it be what it is or what I think it is, which is all I ever know anyway. Is that? I mean, this is probably too much of a discussion for right now. Thank you very much. Okay. Yes. Of course I want to, as the myriad dollars are quickly encroaching and sort of coming full steam at us, of course I want to meet them.

[31:43]

But something about the word meet sounds cheap and incomplete. What is it that I mean? I just want to meet these things. In our workday, you know, he's got a hundred shoe orders in a lot of, you know, budgets to take care of, or reports to write, or policies, events to plan. I understand me that it's dharmas. But it seems like a great thing. How do you apply to dharma in the next, perhaps after meeting? Meeting the next one is, and I mean that. When I say, it isn't, and I use language like this too. When I heard you repeat it back, I thought, oh, that's not exact. It's not like they're coming at me. This moment is arriving fresh right now. And how do I, you in this moment, and then this moment, and then this moment, and so on, fresh, moment after moment. But it doesn't mean you don't, when you meet it, that includes entering into it.

[32:53]

I think of that meet, the way I was using it, is seeing it clearly, being completely available, wholeheartedly willing. to be with what this moment is presenting me. And it doesn't mean that you get dumb, you know, it doesn't mean that you're passive. Because if you have a report to write, then you need to write the report. And Uchiyama says we live in an information age, so for us, a fish swimming like a fish is us being in the age of computers. That's modern day life, swimming like a fish. So it isn't about passivity. That's the koan. That's why it's a koan. Or that's how it's a koan. We need our life. We're in charge of our life. And yet, in some sense, we're just making it up all the time.

[33:55]

So what's the story you're going to tell? Just don't believe it. But tell it. You have to tell it and do it. You've got to dance with it. Just, I want to call on people that have that. Yeah. Do you have any rule of thumb suggestions for reconciling effort without desire and not conventional gaining ideas? Let go with conventional gaining ideas and make effort without desire. Just sit up really straight. Well, I'm not afraid to give all the vision of the world. Yes, but you can write reports without a gaining idea. Just write the report. But without that idea of getting something. Well, Uchiyama is a wonderful phrase. You should have a direction, but not a goal. Which is just words, right?

[34:58]

You have to use words somehow. So what I understand, and you're talking about, is don't grasp after it. Don't hold it too tight. But of course you should have a direction. And so your direction is you need to get this report done. But when your email gets involved with it, that's what I think of as a gaining idea. And that's not useful. When it defines you and when it's like you're a success as a human being, if you get, I don't know, kudos from your boss or a raise or something like that from the report, rather than simply doing it as best as you possibly can. and letting go of the result, as we say in 12-step programs. Does that? Yes, it is. That's true. But the tensile cannot be, that's a whole other lecture.

[36:02]

I thought about talking about kitchen practice, but the tensile cannot be attached to that. You know, you might have an idea, for example, if you have a sashim, you might have this idea that on the third night, or the first night, you're going to offer pasta, and it's going to be wonderful, and da-da-da-da, or seba noodles or something. Well, for whatever reason, they don't eat very much for the day or two before that. So you have all those leftovers. Well, too bad. You don't make pasta. You make, what do you call it these days? Medicine bowl? I call it gruel. Right? You know, you can't, you can have those ideas, but if you're attached to them, you're going to be normal. There's no change that much, right? Yeah. So, I think we need to stop. Yes, we definitely need to stop. So, thank you.

[37:02]

I will, I will. See? See? Come on.

[37:09]

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