How's that? Whoa, here we are. Good morning. OK. I'll be very careful. OK. It is very good. I don't know what that, oh, something's happened. Today, what I wanted to talk to you about was superpowers. Superpowers. You have some superpowers.

[02:34]

Do you know that? Oh, okay, well, we're gonna, we're gonna, you know, all right, we got one that knows that. They're like little miracles, things that happen that are kind of invisible to us, right? They're what? They're so tiny you can't see them. How's that? Ooh. Now I've got the superpower of holding this. Ah. Okay, so we're going to get ready. In order to get ready to really get the best of your superpowers, you have to get settled just like you're doing. That was good. And put your hands on your knees. I'm going to do one hand on my knee, yeah?

[03:38]

And then take a really deep breath. Because what we're going to use first, ready, is our superpower of listening. You might not realize this is a superpower. Okay, so let's get ready. We all settle. Take a big breath. And we're ready. And let's just see... I just said C, but anyway. Let's find out what we might hear. So get ready. Here we go. Everybody ready? Let's see if our superpower of listening kicks in. What might we hear? What was that?

[04:41]

Where did it come from? You didn't see it, did you? Yeah. No, that's true. You do see it. Let's see. Julian, hold your hands in the air because we're going to try this again. See, there's a bell, but he's got his hands in the air. Okay, let's see. Here we go. One. Superpower of listening. Two. Okay, ready? I'm hearing silence. Let's see if we can find a bell from somewhere. Bell? That's my magical bell ringer. Even though you couldn't see where that was coming,

[05:44]

your superpower of listening, you were able to hear that, weren't you? And then you knew that. That's another superpower. Now... Well, okay. She was using the superpower of vision. Okay, now we're going to try a different bell. All right? Everybody close their eyes. We'll... First, you can see, I'm going to use my magic powers of balance. Okay, see this bell? Okay, so that's your superpower of seeing. Okay, now everybody close their eyes, and then I'm going to ring the bell. Your eyes are open. That's cheating. Okay, closing eyes, and then I want you to see how long you can hear the bell. When you stop hearing it, you can raise your hand.

[06:44]

No cheating. Your eyes are open. Okay, here we go. Superpower of listening. And now you just used another power. What do you think it was? Well, I don't know about that on fire blasting it off, but yeah, it was the hand power. That's the power of your body to do things. Okay, I have one more for you. Okay, ready? Okay, close your eyes. Okay, when you open them, tell me what you see. Okay, that's your power of seeing and your brain to remember that somebody once told you this was a flower and you remembered it.

[07:59]

Do you know what color it is? Yeah, yellow, green, good. All right. Golden. So one of the, when you were before, when you were like really small and you were a baby, like the baby that's over there, and before you had words, people were talking to you and you could hear what they were saying and you were seeing things and And all of those were like little seeds of information coming in. You didn't see them coming in, just like we can't really see the little tiny seeds that are in here. And they went down inside you. And then later they came up as words, the power of words. When you put a little seed in the ground and the sun comes up,

[09:04]

And he gets water in the dark, the same way the little seeds were coming into you and led you to know that this was a flower. Things are coming into us all the time and things going into the ground. You're going to go into the garden here in a minute and you're going to see what happened, the superpowers of the earth that bring things up. You did not want to see that. Okay. All right. So you have the superpowers of seeing and hearing and tasting cookies. And muffins. Muffins. That's the power of taste. And then you know, because of your power of taste, you know if you like it or you don't like it. Okay. You like your hat.

[10:07]

Okay. So that's our everyday powers. And you have them. So use them well. And appreciate them. Because you know some of the older people here? They know that hearing is a superpower. What do some of the older people you know have to do? What do they put in their ears? Hearing. Hearing aids, yeah. Their superpower is getting smaller. And sometimes they have to wear glasses because their superpower of seeing is getting a little dimmer. So appreciate the superpowers that you have. They're little miracles. And use them to be... and generous and happy.

[11:13]

Why don't you go see what superpowers they're going to take you to in the garden. And don't forget, use your superpowers to help your friends. Okay? Thank you. So now you're going to use your superpower of getting up. Because your arms and feet, and then you're going to... Okay. Okay, bye-bye. Thank you. Okay. Look at all these powerful beings here. It's a miracle. Happy springtime.

[12:27]

Happy springtime. Yeah. We're so lucky to have all these little good friends or good little friends and big friends. Jumping power. Like a jelly bean. Jumping jelly bean. Thank you. Okay. Folks would like to move forward.

[13:37]

The seats on the floor are now available. You can probably hear the speaker better. And make it so that we're not all alone up here. I'm going to try and turn on the mic again. If you have sensitivity, please cover your ears. Is this working? It is working. Some people are using their superpowers of walking and bowing, coming forward. I'm ready, Katie. Say it again. There's static coming through. Great.

[15:01]

Hands on the knees, taking a deep breath. Using our power. power of focus. Severing old and tangling vines, that which has long been neglected, the ills accumulated, all will take time to dissolve. The training of a bonsai tree is a lifetime of devotion.

[16:06]

It requires patience, care, and constant pruning. Then you will end up with a living national treasure. In the human realm, we call this a Buddha. Please continue for a lifetime. We need living national treasures. That which has long been neglected, the ills accumulated, all will take time to dissolve. The training of a bonsai tree is a lifetime of devotion, requiring patience, care, and constant pruning.

[17:12]

Then you will end up with a living national treasure. In the human realm, we call this a Buddha. Please continue for a lifetime. We need living treasure. national treasures. In some ways, every Dharma talk is just about the same. We're encouraging us to realize stopping, listening, pruning, becoming familiar with the self, and then there's myriad ways of expressing and entering, accessing, how to appreciate and I'm going to use it, incorporate, that is, put in the body, incorporate manifesting.

[18:18]

And as I was and considering about today, I was listening to the radio. I was just watching what things would come across my screen. And I'm going to miss the exact title, but on Valentine's Day, maybe some of you heard this, KPFA had a presentation on love... Oh, boy. We'll have to see if it comes up on the screen. Anyway, it was the words of Jim Lawson, who was a minister and worked with Martin Luther King. And he was referring to nonviolence. And the heading was, what can people do to change the world of violence and hate?

[19:27]

And he quoted Mohandas Gandhi, Love is power, the greatest power on the earth, and we need to know how to use it. It's the most creative power in the universe. It's the greatest force available to humankind, and humankind needs to know how to use it. However, love, which is kind of a miracle, is a superpower, is invisible. So as I was being led through, I was remembering a conversation I had with a young man that was here in January that is studying to be an astrophysicist. So in our Zen tradition and in the Buddha's time, the Buddha used words like cultivating, carts, wheels, seeds.

[20:41]

Those were the objects of his time. And our Zen ancestors used mountains, rivers, rocks, tiles, trees. And today what I'm going to use, having had this conversation with my friend the astrophysicist, is because I became interested in dark matter and dark energy. So dark is not as in dark-like malevolent. But, well, guess what? I'm going to have to do the power of my memory. Wow. Speaking of the dark. So dark matter, I was asking him about it, he said, dark matter is that which we cannot see. And it's 97% of the universe, which means we can see 3%.

[21:50]

And the dark energy, again, it's not malevolent. But the dark energy is that which we can't see that's moving everything, that's moving the universe and it's expanding. The universe — this is going to come together, I think — the universe is made up in order of hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon, and other. in that order. We are made up of hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, and other in exactly the same percentage. We are part of the universe. So if it's true that the universe is 97% invisible to us,

[22:56]

I began to wonder about what's invisible to me. So maybe there's about 97% of us that we don't have any access to in consciousness. It turns out that there's something like 2,000 mind moments in a minute. we're being impacted by things that we cannot see and that are registering, but that's coming to us invisibly and then are registering what we call the alaya consciousness or the seedbed. And then when there's an appropriate time, it might bloom. And we catch about 40 thoughts or 40 of those mind moments. a lot that's going on in us and with us we don't know.

[24:01]

But there is 3%, and there was a woman who, her name is, and some of you may have already heard about her as well, her name is Henrietta Swan Leavitt. And she studied, this was in the 1800s, and she kept studying plates of the various stars that came in front of her, studying, studying, and judging how much luminosity they had. This is going to be science for the simplistic. And there may be somebody out here who can help me with this later. Anyway, she... basically discovered something that they then called the standard candle. And from this one point in the universe, they could measure the distance of all the other planets and constellations.

[25:05]

Referring that back to us, our standard candle, or the way that we know something about ourselves, is through how we act and speak and behave. in a given moment. And the question is, is this what you want? Is this how you might be helpful in the world? So there's a fascicle, a chapter that Dogen Zenji, who's the founder of Zen in Japan, called Miracles or Mystical Powers. And he talked about the six miracles that we have, which are seeing, hearing, tasting, feeling in our mind. And we do not even, they're not supernatural, they're just available to us all the time.

[26:08]

And that these miracles are the hands and eyes that we use to bring somebody a cup of water to make the teacher a bowl of tea in the morning, to bring our hands together and bow, to know when to sit down and when to get up. There are miracles like — there may be miracles — like being able to fly or being able to walk on water. But these are considered, these major miracles are not, are minor miracles. The major miracles are the things that we can do with our hands and our eyes and our voice that are encouraging and that are benefit in the world.

[27:16]

Recently, I was considering one of our Zen koans. And it starts out, the teacher asks, what does the bodhisattva do with the thousand arms and an eye in each hand? What does Avalokhi Tishvara do with the thousand arms?" And the teacher answered, It's like reaching for a pillow in the night. And then the student said, Oh, I understand. Do you understand? It's like reaching for a pillow in the night.

[28:19]

And he says, What do you understand? And he answered, it's like hands and eyes all over the body. That would be your, maybe that'd be your six miracles. And the teacher says, well, that's about 80%. He didn't quite get it all. And then he said, well, what do you say? And he said, throughout the body, our hands and eyes. This is the — how do we bridge this invisible, this skill that we have into the material world? How do we make this throughout the body? What's that little bridge that brings us into being a benefit in the world? And I propose — you've heard this

[29:23]

week after week in different ways. But it's your vow, your intention, your ultimate concern, appreciating your life, but articulating that down to some point. Like, I'm going to practice Generous Monday. Not on Tuesday, but on Monday. And everything that you do on Monday — Throughout the body, washing dishes, sweeping, bowing, resting, eating, it comes up through Generous Monday. But then comes Stingy Tuesday. And Stingy Tuesday is not a bad Tuesday. Actually, Understanding Stingy Tuesday and where that lives in you is a big support to understanding Generous Monday.

[30:30]

So our problems or the places where we think we're off are actually the great support to finding the place to where we want to be in attunement. So appreciating those stingy Tuesdays, or those bad mood Thursdays, all of those are the taste, the taste of wisdom that's just around the corner. All of those are part of this untangling the vines that have long been neglected. And the power of listening, I really am kind of focusing on that at the moment with the kids, really being able to hear. And hearing is not just with the ear, but we can hear with our eyes. We can kind of see what's going on, hearing with the eye.

[31:36]

When we really stop and listen to someone or to ourselves, we might hear the heart of what's being requested. So it turns out that some say we have three brains. Some actually say four. There's the brain of thinking, There's the brain in our heart, so I just brought in the heart, listening with your heart, and the brain in your gut. And the brain in your heart refers you back to what your values are, and the brain in your gut is what about what's me and what's not me, how to protect yourself. And the thing, just returning again, that bridges these things so that there's some kind of attunement

[32:44]

is can your intention or what's important to you line up with your mind, with your values, with your heart, and what supports you? And when you use that power or that way of uprightness, you find your way to being a benefit in the world. And I was thinking about this power and this generous Monday, and I thought, see, about these thousand arms with hands and eyes, and I thought, how would I use that? And I thought, I'm standing in line at Trader Joe's, and I have a basket full of stuff, and the person behind me only has three items. I might turn to that person and say,

[33:45]

please, would you like to go before me? Would that not make your day if you were the person with the three items? Or you're driving down Highway 1, and someone could be me any day, but anyway, you've left the house late, and you're gripping the wheel, and the person before you is just having a lazy day going down Highway 1. you might be thinking or feeling as you grip the wheel. And you use this power of your vision and you look in the mirror and you see this person kind of hovering on your tail and you pull over and you say, please go before me. That is a way, doesn't seem like much, does it? But that is a way of saving the world. Years ago,

[34:47]

I read a book which cannot be found now I think it was called An Infinite Tenderness or Intimacy and in this she related a story of getting on a bus and on the bus the driver met her gaze and smiled for a moment, all time stopped, and they met. And in that meeting, when they were both present, twenty years later she could still remember that. So can it be that something as small as taking a moment to just invisibly, visibly be present make a difference? something you can't see or taste exactly or hear, but it is communicated.

[35:58]

What will you do with your thousand arms, with an eye, a thousand arms and hands with an eye in each hand? How will you bridge the three brains that are gifted to you? What are the ways that we can actually appreciate the power we have of being able to grasp, to being able to bring a cup to my mouth? Right now, I have the ability to lift this lid off and with some steadiness, take a sip. I have a friend who has Parkinson's. This is not so easy for them. So this power of being able to be steady, to being able to grip something, this power of being able to hear, this power of being able to speak, how will I use my voice, matters.

[37:13]

So today My question for you is, how will you use those powers to change the world? How will you decide? In this tradition, we sit, we be still, For a small moment, we don't look outside ourselves for the answer. Go in. And I say, what's important at this moment? And I connect to that. in stillness and I let the rest drop away.

[38:17]

Stop. Listen to what your heart is saying. You will know what to do. Please take good care of it.

[38:46]

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