This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good evening. I'm Happy to be here tonight, and my name is Judith Randall, and I'm helping to lead the Wildflowers and Birds of Tassajara retreat with Diane Renshaw and Gloria Lee and Flip Dibner. And we're, the last day, actually, we've seen the bird called the dipper. a lot, which is a big treat. And I hope you will see it too while you're here.

[01:00]

It's displaying itself right out in the creek outside the tea and coffee area with a young one. And this bird is unique. I suppose all birds are unique, but this one is unique in the way that it is a woodland bird with with feathers like a robin or an oriole, which we're also seeing. But they have a waxy substance on them, and their eyes have the capacity to send down a little film over the eye, and they actually dive under the creek and feed. It's the only woodland bird that does that. And so we're seeing them do that. And they also will stand on a rock and go up and down and up and down. So if you see them doing that, that's the dipper. And I wanted to ask you to indulge me to read a Mary Oliver poem called The Dipper.

[02:06]

I've been telling the group about it, and I didn't read it to them this afternoon, and I told them I would tonight. So you get to hear it too. Once I saw in a quick-falling, white-veined stream, among the leafed islands of the wet rocks, a small bird, and I knew it from the pages of a book. It was the dipper, and dipping he was, as well as, sometimes, on a rock peak, starting up the clear, strong piping of his voice. At this, there being no words to transcribe, I had to bend forward, as it were, into his frame of mind. I had to bend forward into his frame of mind, catching everything I could in the tone of

[03:13]

cadence, sweetness, and briskness of his affirmative report. Though not by words, it was a more than satisfactory way to the bridge of understanding. This happened in Colorado more than half a century ago, more certainly than half my lifetime ago, and Just as certainly he has been sleeping for decades in the leaves beside the stream, his crumble of white bones, his curl of flesh, comfortable even so. And still I hear him, and whenever I open the ponderous book of riddles, he sits with his black feet hooked onto the page. his eyes cheerful, still burning with water love.

[04:19]

And thus, the world is full of leaves and feathers and comfort and instruction. I do not even remember your name, Great River, but since that hour, I have lived simply in the joy of the body as full as and clear as falling water, the pleasures of the mind like a dark bird dipping in and out, tasting and singing. That's what we've been doing the last two days. We've been bending forward into the frame of mind of the birds and the flowers. and catching everything we can in their tone. So watch for the dippers out there in the creek.

[05:22]

I've been thinking how this moment is unique, how we all followed our own unique path here, this night, this place, never before, never again, just like this. And we came into this valley that we call Tassajara and that we call wilderness. And I've been thinking about wild and wilderness and aliveness. This wilderness we were talking about this afternoon is... often defined in terms of human activity, the lack of it. So I've been thinking, well, what is wilderness apart from even thinking of human activity? What is it before we even call it wilderness?

[06:31]

And what is the wild place in us that's not defined by human nature. As I thought about this, one of the sections of the Genjo Koan came to me. And the Genjo Koan, for those of you who don't know, is a teaching of Ehe Dogen, who is the founder of our school of Zen. Well, he actually brought it from China. And this section, this koan, this writing is very... I guess to me, esoteric. And so I'm not talking about its deep meaning here, but I am going to share with you some of the things that came to me around wildness and wilderness and aliveness.

[07:43]

So this section is, A fish swims in the ocean, and no matter how far it swims, there is no end to the water. A bird flies in the sky, and no matter how far it flies, there is no end to the air. However, the fish and the bird have never left their elements. When their activity is large, their field is large. When their need is small, their field is small. Thus, each of them totally covers its full range, and each of them totally experiences its realm. You better be listening to this with your belly and not your head. If the bird leaves the air, it will die at once. If the fish leaves the water, it will die at once.

[08:46]

Know that water is life and air is life. The bird is life and the fish is life. Life must be the bird and life must be the fish. Practice, enlightenment and people are like this. So I think this is about being fully and completely alive and completely at home in our element, this element, whatever element we're in at any given time, that the possibility of being completely at home there, completely filling that range and flexing with the largeness or smallness of the activity in our range is possible.

[09:56]

I think that's what he's telling us. And if we leave our natural element, if we leave our true selves, if we stray from our Buddha nature, I don't know if that's actually possible, but we think it is, then that's a kind of death. And especially if we leave ourselves or leave our place to escape, definitely a kind of death. sometimes very enticing, like before you come into this room. If our activity is large, our field is large, if our need is small, our field is small, we can accord with circumstances. We can do what needs to be done with what's in front of us.

[10:58]

And this is teaching us that that's always possible. I think he's asking us to release limiting thought and limitless thought. And just be in the is-ness of what is. In terms of no matter how far this fish swims, they never run out of water. Suzuki Roshi says, there's no end to our practice. Isn't that good news? We'll never run out of material. And that's the field of is-ness. no end to our practice, no conclusion. He says it wants our constant effort. So in the wilderness, these plants, these birds are life.

[12:11]

I think that we were talking about this this afternoon, the place where it says... life must be the bird and life must be the fish, my sense of that is that aliveness, energy of life is vast and constant and filling everything and taking shape. So it takes shape in the bird, it takes shape in the fish, what we call bird, what we call fish. It takes place in in the human. But that's just a temporary manifestation of this energy that is always and forever moving and taking new shape. And that's our Buddhist impermanence, too.

[13:13]

So what can we learn from the wilderness and from these creatures completely living out their natural selves, their natural way of being? What can we learn from that as thinking creatures? Because they don't think about whether they're going to fly or swim. They just do it. And what can the wilderness teach us about that? And how can it teach us? I think that observing and absorbing the teachings of the wilderness, being with, breathing with the yucca and the native morning glory and the pair of bald eagles that were circling around us this morning. Noticing them and letting go of thoughts about them, just observing and absorbing what you're seeing, hearing, tasting.

[14:41]

We were tasting various plants. And studying them with the mind, not this one, but the heart mind, which is down here somewhere. that just absorbs and receives. What can we absorb from the coulter pine or from the flowing creek or from my favorite, current favorite, wildflower, the elegant Clarkia? It's a very delicate purple and white and red little blossom in that rough terrain out there. What can we observe and absorb from our own heartbeat as we stand there and see these things? So it requires of us, it asks of us that we slow down and pause.

[15:42]

In the retreat, when we're out on the trails, we use the mindfulness spell. So every once in a while I get to wring it out there and we all stop and breathe. a little bit and just absorb the wilderness at another level. This aliveness is a felt sense. It's a body experience. The wilderness invites us to experience its energy and the energy moving in our bodies. And sometimes out there, there's a heightened sense of well-being so that, I don't know, when I come back into the main area of Tassajara, everything's a little bit more vivid than it was. And I feel a connection with what's right in front of me. When we slow down this way and pause and turn toward body and breath, we can listen for our own wisdom and our own intuition.

[17:03]

They get a little easier to hear. Beneath words, beyond words, before naming. There's another poem by Mary Oliver called, What Is It Before Knowing? So what is it to look at a tree? And you can actually take your naming of it back and look at it again without the label tree. It really takes effort to do that because we just name everything all the time. And so can you pull back? because you probably can't look at it without naming it a tree. If you can, I'd love to hear it. And then, you know, can we turn that to our partner or our spouse or our child? Seeing them before all those things we know we know about them, is that possible?

[18:11]

So in this same Genjo Koan, Dogen says, to carry yourself forward and experience myriad things is delusion. So we can move with this intuition. We don't have to try to make life happen so much. He says that myriad things come forth and experience themselves is awakening or awareness or aliveness, I would say. And all this is nourished by stillness, silence, and simplicity, what we call zazen. We sit and observe and experience. And in Katagari Roshi says, we let the flower of our life force bloom as we sit and let the self settle on the self.

[19:16]

It's also true that aliveness is nourished by being fully with the dark and the difficult. And I've come to this question about aliveness recently because in the period of a year not so long ago, I experienced four deaths, two in my family, one of a friend and one of our abbot of these temples. The grief was really strong, and I had a lot of help from family and friends, but it was a very difficult time. And from many places I heard this in some way or other. You know, the darkness, if you can go there, if you can stand it, if you can... be curious about it, it will open up in ways that you have no idea.

[20:32]

Well, I had to trust people because that was really hard to do. But then, gradually, this ice began to thaw, and I felt a liveness coming to me from unlikely places. And one of them was in drawings. in playing with, not working with, but playing with oil pastels, which I had never done before. And the physical experience of the energy of those substances on the paper and the body. The hand making the motion and discovering the layering and the blending of colors and letting them teach me. That was a real experience of letting the myriad things come forth and experience themselves. I didn't want to learn how to use them. I wanted them to teach me. And that was a wonderful part of the play.

[21:34]

And then... onto the page, this shape would come. It wasn't about thinking, I'm going to draw a tree. It wasn't about thinking, okay, I'm going to use this color. It was just totally letting this other place of knowing play. And so there was this amazing shape. Where did that come from? So in the act of drawing, I found, found and still find aliveness in that activity. And it's emerged in other ways, in music, in reconnecting with music, which was part of my life as a young person, and reconnecting with poetry, connecting with music, a particular collection, a particular choral composer.

[22:41]

These were just coming up, and then I'm thinking, wait, you're a Zen Buddhist priest. How does all this fit in your life? And that question's still there. So I want to share with you another poem, this one from David White, and it's about this finding aliveness in the dark. and it's called Sweet Darkness. When your eyes are tired, the world is tired also. When your vision has gone, no part of the world can find you. Time to go into the dark, where the night has eyes to recognize its own. There, in the dark, you can be sure you're not beyond love. The dark will be your womb tonight.

[23:42]

So there are these gifts of darkness that he's describing. The night will give you a horizon farther than you can see. You must learn one thing. The world was made to be free. Give up all the other worlds except the one to which you belong. And that's the true self that we don't want to stray away from into those little deaths. Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet confinement of your aloneness to learn anything or anyone that does not bring you alive is too small for you. Anything or anyone that does not bring you alive is too small for you. And I don't think he's talking about, completely, about external experiences.

[24:47]

I think he's saying your aliveness needs to be stirred up and enlivened. And if there are changes to be made in your external life, that will follow. There again are the myriad things experiencing themselves. Sweet darkness. So some kind of creative force has... been released from the bonds of my carefully constructed self. And I'm in the wild. It's wild out there. So I wonder then, what takes us away from our aliveness? And for what are we willing to sacrifice our aliveness?

[25:51]

What is important enough or seems important enough to give Turn away from that. I know I'm quoting Mary Oliver a lot, but I think she's a Zen poet. She asks, listen, are you breathing just a little and calling it a life? And she asks, tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild, and precious life. And then she gives instructions for living. Pay attention, be astonished, and tell about it. So I think what takes us away from our aliveness is our ideas, our habits, our points of view, especially when we hang on to them.

[26:56]

And don't make them the enemy. Come to the zendo and get to know them. So what is it in your life that enlivens and nourishes? It doesn't have to be a big thing. It can be a lot of little things. And we can observe, we can experience in the body, we can listen to our inner wisdom, and we can move with it, as a friend of mine says, even if it's arduous. And sometimes it is. So if you take one question with you tonight, let it be that. What is it to be truly alive? Maybe you'd like to share that with us.

[28:05]

What is it for you to be truly alive? Or if you have a question. Does the dipper eat fish? The dipper was seen today catching a fish in its beak. And came out on the rock, and I don't know if the person is here and could tell it more explicitly, but killed the fish and then took it to its young one who was screaming for food. I think it's interesting that somebody just randomly the other day pointed that bird out to me. Yeah. And so I was watching it, and I'd never seen anything like it. It seemed like an odd color for a water bird. You know, it just didn't look right, you know. And so it's interesting that you made a point.

[29:11]

It's in its own element, which is perfectly its. Okay. Let's go to bed. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click Giving.

[29:55]

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