Good morning, everyone. Can you hear me? So happy Valentine's Day. Feels auspicious somehow to be giving a talk on Valentine's Day. May we have open hearts today. And I don't remember whether it was Suzuki Roshi or Ehe Dogen Senji who said, please cherish yourself. But that phrase has become very meaningful to me, so I hope you will each cherish yourself.

[01:01]

today and let's cherish every being both in this room and in all of Zen Center and our city and beyond. So thank you very much, Wendy, for inviting me to give this talk today as a session talk and talk about nature and experience. My theme for today is poetry, nature, and practice. And in my talk, I'm going to share some poems from different periods of time and talk about the connections between poetry, the mind of zazen, and nature. In preparing for my talk today, I found a few things that surprised me, which I will share with you.

[02:03]

And every poem may give rise to a surprise, both to the person writing the poem and to those reading or hearing poems. So this theme was partly prompted by hearing the poems that David and Wendy shared in their Dharma talks and how they wode the poems into the themes of their talks. And also, last weekend, I had the, I consider it great good fortune of attending a poetry retreat with the contemporary Mill Valley poet Jane Hirshfield. And it was interesting, and I didn't know in advance that the retreat was going to be in silence. It was at a Catholic retreat center on the grounds of Dominican University, run by nuns, and we were in silent except for during the meetings with Jane Hirshfield when we listened to poems and read some of our starts.

[03:25]

poems but otherwise we were silent and that silence I found really supported the mind of poetry so I've loved poetry for a long time I like hearing it I like reading it writing it revising poems and I'll talk a little bit about how I came to the practice of poetry and also talk a little bit about how I came to love nature, which loving poetry had something to do with. So I want to start with a poem by Jane Hirshfield. It's Tree. It is foolish to let a young redwood grow next to a house.

[04:31]

Even in this one lifetime, you will have to choose. That great calm being, this clutter of soup pots and books. Already the first branch tips brush at the window. Softly, calmly, immensity taps down. at your life. Softly, calmly, immensity taps at your life. So during the retreat, one thing Jane Hirschfeld said is that house, the image of a house, is often used as a metaphor for the self. So I wonder when you hear these words, what does that great calm being evoke for you? Could it be the mind of practice, the being of practice? And do you remember the first branch tips touching at the window?

[05:36]

Softly, calmly, immensity taps at your life. Perhaps that's happening for you during these days of sitting silently. Some of you may not know... much about Jane Hirschfield. When she was in her 20s, she spent three years at Tassajara, and she still talks about that as a transformative time in her life. And she describes herself, she was layordained, and she describes herself as a tea lady kind of practitioner, teacher. Someone... In some of the Chinese stories, there's this wise tea lady sitting at a crossroads who meets a monk, and they have some kind of exchange, and inevitably the monk wakes up or changes his direction, or there's some wisdom in this tea lady sitting by the side of the road.

[06:42]

And I found... I have copies of... many of Jane's books. One of her books of essays is called Nine Gates. And in my copy, I found an interview that Susan Moon, a Zen teacher who is also a Bay Area person, Susan Moon interviewed Jane Hirshfield about poetry and dharma in a journal called Inquiring Mind that used to come out twice a year. and it no longer is being published. This interview was in the Spring 2013 Journal, and Sue Moon asked Jane Hirschfield, might a poem teach the Dharma? Might a poem teach the Dharma? Jane responded, poems, I think, lead us toward the same thing sashins do.

[07:47]

a relationship to self, world, and understanding that isn't available to us by any other means. If it could be had more easily, we wouldn't need the poems or the sashims. So I thought that was a wonderful insight to share with you. And Jane also said, any good poem is a vessel of transformation. And I think the poems that Wendy and David shared were ways of experiencing how poems can transform us. And Jane says, if a person isn't changed between the first line and the last, or in the moments after the last lines, when the poem completes itself inside your own life and understanding, there's not yet a poem.

[08:59]

That's quite a lot in that sentence, so I'll read it again. If a person isn't changed between the first line and the last, or in the moments after the last lines, When the poem completes itself inside your own life and understanding, there's not yet a poem. And that sentence really struck me because I see it as so similar to our practice of zazen and practice in sashin, and realizing that sashin doesn't end with the last bell, it continues to ripen in us afterwards. So Jane also talks about a poem is a step-by-step enactment and reenactment of some kind of discovery, alteration, and enlargement. So poems can help us see the world freshly, and even poems we don't understand at the first reading may leave us with an image or a question, just as koans do.

[10:13]

often leaving us with a question, an image, and a pathway to discovery. So Jane also said, every good poem is a release from self-clinging, a reminder that identity isn't fixed, a reminder of interconnection, transience, intimacy, compassion, the large. So poems often... open us to what we don't know, to surprise, to that big mind that can come when we sit. So I thought I would tell a little bit about my own path to nature and poetry, my nature and poetry-seeking mind talk, mini-talk, anyway. because many of you don't.

[11:14]

Actually, when I began thinking about this, I learned some... I found some threads that I think brought me to appreciate Zen practice that I wasn't so conscious of. So I grew up in New York City, in the Bronx, in a large building with many apartments in a... on a street with similar buildings with many apartments. And the grass was fenced in. There were little patches of grass behind some of the buildings, but you weren't allowed to walk on the grass. And I think what helped me really begin to experience nature when I was young was trips to the Bronx Zoo with my parents. My father really enjoyed particularly the snakes and the monkeys. So we saw snakes and monkeys, but I saw some animals that were truly amazing, like a duck-billed platypus and an electric eel, as well as the tigers and lions.

[12:25]

And I think there's a downside to zoos and animals in captivity, but for a city child, that was really... a way into a sense of wonder and seeing the great diversity of the natural world. We had pets. We had not all at the same time, but we had two cats and a parakeet and a hamster. And taking care of pets was another way of connecting with the natural world. And my mother and my sister and I would spend parts of the summer outside New York in a bungalow that we rented. And my father would come up on weekends because he worked during the week. And there was a lake where my father taught me to swim and learning to just be supported by water and be in water. And it's one of the things I still enjoy at that point.

[13:31]

was another way of connecting with the natural world. And then in my first year in high school in the summer, I went to a Girl Scout camp near Bear Mountain and learned how to canoe and hike. We did some overnights. And that was another way of really being in nature. And that was totally new. You could be outside for three days or longer. cook over an open fire and sleep on the ground. And I really loved that. Then in high school, this is kind of where I first really discovered poetry. I had an English teacher named Mrs. Barnes who recommended learning poems by heart. And one of the first poems I learned by heart, I still know, I'm going to share it with you because it's a poem about nature.

[14:34]

And one of the first books that I bought, I still have, it has the date 1958 in it, and it's the poetry of William Wordsworth, or some of the poetry, and you can see it's quite aged, this book. and I've kept it all these years. Another book that I bought when I was in high school is a book of Japanese haiku. So I was drawn to nature poems, because most haiku are also nature poems. And there was a series of these small books of haiku published by Peter Papa Press, and this one cost a dollar. It's amazing. At that time, a dollar was worth more than it is now, but still a bargain.

[15:37]

So the poem I want to share is called The Daffodils by William Wordsworth. Some of you may know it. I wandered lonely as a cloud that floats on high o'er veils and hills, when all at once I saw a crowd, a host of golden daffodils. beside the lake, beneath the trees, fluttering and dancing in the breeze. Continuous as the stars that shine and twinkle in the Milky Way, they stretched in never-ending line across the margin of a bay. Ten thousand saw I at a glance, tossing their heads in sprightly dance. The waves beside them dance, but they outdid the sparkling waves in glee. A poet could not but be gay in such a jocund company. I gazed and gazed, but little thought what wealth to me the show had brought.

[16:45]

For oft when on my couch I lie, in vacant or in pensive mood, they flash upon that inner eye, which is the bliss, excuse me, they flash upon that inward eye, which is the bliss of solitude. And then my heart with pleasure fills and dances with the daffodils. So that poem, that sense of the inward eye, the bliss of solitude, were very precious in a way. had a lot of meaning for me at that time in my life in high school. My mother had a third child when I was 13, and our house, our small apartment, three children and my parents, was very crowded and noisy, and I think poetry was a way in which I could find another...

[17:57]

reality, another way of being in tune with myself that I really couldn't find at home. So I also found, as I was preparing for this talk, a poem that I wrote in response to Wordsworth. So I thought I would share this poem with you. It's called To Wordsworth. Dear William, I hold a yellow volume of your poems, its pages brittle as my aging bones. While in my teens I learned your words by heart, not knowing how your art would guide my life. I'd think of daffodils, recite your poem, and feel how images can heal a troubled mind.

[19:05]

I'd recall getting and spending, we lay waste our powers. That's a line from another Wordsworth poem, getting and spending, we lay waste our powers, little we see in nature that is ours. I'd recall getting and spending, we lay waste our powers, and question success as commonly defined. I vowed to simplify my days, embrace the ways of a mountain monk, left city and livelihood behind. I learned to cherish and protect, to meet each living being with wonder and respect. So I see all of those experiences as, in a way, leading me to Tassajara and to really immersing myself in nature and practice. That didn't come right away. I started practicing Zen in the city at Berkeley Zen Center and Green Gulch on the weekends and lived here for a year and a half before I went to Tassajara.

[20:20]

But that time at Tassajara totally changed my life. And though I'm still a city girl, I think, I do love this city. I think that the experience of Tassajara is one that stays wherever I am. So I want to talk a little bit about Japanese poetry and nature and practice. So one of the wonderful things about a haiku poem is that it's very short and yet contains usually not only a nature image, but can provide an insight into us.

[21:28]

There were some longer poems that Jane Hirshfield translated from the Japanese with a Japanese translator named Mariko Aritani. And they're poems by two women who lived around 1,000 years ago in medieval Japan. One of them is named Izumi Shikibu, and I want to share a brief poem. These aren't haiku. They're a little longer. They're 31 syllables instead of 17. This poem just, I think, touches on how... Even when things are difficult, we may be able to wake up and... It uses the image of moonlight, which is sometimes thought of as an image for enlightenment.

[22:34]

Although the wind blows terribly here, the moonlight also leaks. between the roof planks of this ruined house. Although the wind blows terribly here, the moonlight also leaks between the roof planks of this ruined house. And I think of moments when I've experienced where it feels like there's a wind blowing. Perhaps you've had moments during Sesshin when you were in pain or... emotional, physical pain, or having strong physical sensations or emotions. And perhaps you have also experienced moments when the moon leaked through and you were able to move through that difficulty. So another

[23:39]

Japanese poet. We don't always think of him as a poet, but it was Ehei Dogen, who wrote many poems, especially in the years near the end of his life when he lived at Ehei-ji, which is... I haven't been there, but I've seen pictures of it. It's in the mountains, and it's surrounded by nature. And Dogen... Dogen's poems use language and symbols that can help us find our way to big mind or to the absolute. And Dogen's poems, some of them were in Japanese, and they were also these waka poems with 31 syllables. But he also wrote some poems in Chinese. Both of... Those kinds of poems use natural imagery a lot relating to the changing of seasons, symbolizing impermanence.

[24:47]

Here's one of his poems that spoke to me. In the heart of the night, the moonlight framing a small boat drifting, tossed not by the waves, nor swayed by the breeze. In the heart of the night, the moonlight framing a small boat drifting, tossed not by the waves, nor swayed by the breeze. So in this image of the moonlight and the small boat, perhaps Dogen was that small boat drifting, but not being tossed by the waves. and at times we may also feel ourselves being tossed by the waves. I think the contrast in these two poems, the ruined house, the wind blowing, the night and the dark waves, in contrast with the moon, the light of the moon, the ability to access that sense of spaciousness,

[26:03]

at times when we're having difficulty. It's a great gift, I think, of practice. So there's another aspect of poems that I want to share, which is poems can sometimes ask questions or raise questions, and they're not always questions we can answer, which is also true. true of many koans and poems in Zen literature. And the question can stay with us and kind of live in our body minds. And there may be more than one answer to some of these questions. So I thought I'd share a poem by Mary Oliver that has some questions in it. The Summer Day Who made the world?

[27:05]

Who made the swan and the black bear? Who made the grasshopper? This grasshopper, I mean. The one who flung herself out of the grass. The one who is eating sugar out of my hand. Who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down. Who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes. Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face. Now she snaps her wings open and floats away. I don't know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down into the grass, how to kneel in the grass, how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields, which is what I have been doing all day. Tell me, what else should I have done?

[28:07]

Doesn't everything die at last and too soon? Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? So that poem with... The unanswerable questions, I think, who made the world, the swan, the bear, the grasshopper, just leads me to wonder. And then at the end, this question, doesn't everything die at last and too soon, is so poignant. And then this question, which we also see on the Han, what is it? you plan to do with your one wild and precious life. Don't waste time. So I want to come to a close.

[29:12]

If you need to move, please feel free. I've been sitting a long time. I wanted to tell you about this plant. It's an amaryllis. A friend gave it to me. on January 4th, and it was just, you can maybe see the tip of the bulb, it was just this brown, rough bulb that she had planted very carefully, and it had a tiny tip of green at the top, and it had a card with it with instructions to water it and to keep turning it so that it wouldn't bend too far towards the light in one direction. So I followed the instructions and I watered it every two days and I waited and waited and a week went by and then another week and nothing seemed to happen and I thought maybe I was killing it.

[30:14]

I was either watering it too much or not enough. And then suddenly it started, the stem started to grow and then it grew about an inch a day and then Gradually, those leaves behind the amaryllis were also very, very tiny, and it began to grow, and then there was a little bump at the top, and that became a bud, and then the bud opened, and there were four flowers. Two of them died, and these two are on their way out, but then this second bud appeared, and there are going to be four new flowers on this plant. And I just was amazed at how it was to have this plant in my room. I usually have flowers in my room, but I don't have any plants.

[31:16]

And I began to have, I felt like we had a relationship or we have a relationship with Yeah, and to have something growing so amazingly from what looks like just a dead bulb has been very encouraging to me. And I also appreciate that there are two generations of flowers in this one plant. So I wonder what you see when you look at this plant. I mean, certainly for me... exemplifies impermanence and the life cycle. I think it is possible once a plant has finished blooming to nurture it and have it bloom again in the following year. I thought I would ask Bran about that. Anyway, I wanted to share that with you.

[32:17]

And I'll just end with one more quote from Jane Hirschfield. and her poem, Tree. So Jane says, one breath taken completely, one poem fully written, fully read. In such a moment, anything can happen. The pressed oil of words can blaze up into music, into image. into the heart and mind's knowledge. The lit and shadowed places within us can be warmed. So here's tree again. Tree, it is foolish to let a young redwood grow next to a house. Even in this one lifetime, you will have to choose.

[33:19]

That great calm being this clutter of soup pots and books. Already the first branch tips brush at the window. Softly, calmly, immensity taps at your life. Thank you very much for your attention. And I just want to remind everybody that it's... You know, it's sometimes tempting near the end of Sushin to begin thinking about what you're going to be doing when you leave Sushin and maybe have a little more difficulty holding the silence. So I encourage you to fully experience Sushin until the very end. It's such a rare opportunity. Thank you very much.

[34:12]

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