July 26th, 1995, Serial No. 00919

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the
now i've already met you
i say if your people that i know from the south
south of there and mary
and some people who heard this talk already at tassajara so i'll have to give a whole different talk
that some of it may be a little familiar
i tend to be thinking of something for a while and
when i'm thinking about now in talking about him santa cruz and monterey i'd just like to bring up here i think they said
same questions are happening for you coming up for you
can anybody hear me now a great if i tackle is
now did you hear me here
hmm
real way
you know
also this isn't being recorded this is amplified
right
i haven't dead spoken here for many years
it's rather m
nice to be back we used to give the talks on saturday morning
so wednesday evening wealth and that i usually talk in santa cruz and last wednesday i talked at the at tassajara so it's just as a different time in tassajara the talk sir
eight for an eric forty five
i've been a
reading some poetry
and listening to the it
program on television language of life
can you hear me now
right it can't hear me would you raise your hand please
thank you
get my attention with it
this is a bill moyers program on poetry was it was many if you have seen parts of it
ah okay sir
and then
i've been a enormously moved by this program and the poet and their interviews with bill moyers and the poem as they have read
and it's brought up for me one of the questions i've had in my practice over the years about that
saving separation
between zazen practice or this the separation that i have made in my mind between zazen practice and the energy and the activity that that goes into poetry or painting
in my mind i made some division as if
spiritual aspiration or the practice of the no self
non attachment
was in one realm and the stuff of which of poetry or painting
or drama
i've dance maybe was someplace else and i was it
i would ask myself this question it was some part of me seems not to be included in my sauce and life
i don't have anybody else says this question
i think it's because in the early days i started in sitting in the sixty seven
we had suzuki roshi with us and we were beginners
little babies and we thought least i thought and i think others did too that my practice is to become suzuki roshi
we started talking like suzuki roshi
broke broken japanese of the with and
it was kind of cute

but it fit in
with my intention which was to come to practice and get rid of catherine
and actually become something else and i think this was a a common problem for us in
practice
we want to become something better than or more translucent more beautiful
lighter probably something lighter something with wings or a glow around us
right you don't want to be you guys you can be that any place but thirty one i wouldn't want to come here set hours in the sandow
if you weren't going to get so
relief from you
so as as in practice was some idea of relief or release
transcendence
and then to sookie rushing died and we had a his dharma heir and i kept up this practice of not being catherine and i think collectively we kept up this practice so we practiced being what we thought a good pray
and i'm mentioning this right at the beginning because i don't want you'd have to spend thirteen years thinking you're supposed to be somebody other than yourself actually practices to become whole
it's not to become perfect
i thought it was to become perfect for whole life i felt i was supposed to be becoming perfect practice to become whole
you're already whole you're already complete
but that wholeness isn't available to you because you don't believe it it's buried under ideas of becoming perfect becoming something other than what just naturally arises
becoming whole
for me is including that stuff that i didn't know how to include that i thought gee if i were painting and if i were writing poetry that was what i that's what i'd be thinking of that
that's fly be dwelling on
and actually there isn't any different i'm very happy to let you know that whether you're sitting in meditation
watching your breath and watching what's arising
watching the pain in your knees or your shoulders or your lower back
whether you are
paint angler
given to putting into language
some experience
but process is the same the processes to go deeply deeply
through
your experience go deeply down as completely as thoroughly as you can beyond what your mind can imagine
to bottom out to you go all the way down into your pain to your grief into your loneliness
the your shame your despair your fear
to your sexuality
completely
until it's no longer perk when you bought em out it's no longer personal that experience with no longer yours it's not uniquely you
it's communal it's shared
and you know it
that despair or that shame or that here becomes
everyone's
oh that loneliness that's the room where everyone lives
you actually have this kind of experience
that anger that's the anger everyone is afraid of
that shame
that's everyone's shame
that experience because communal it's impersonal
it's what binds us together it's what connects us
it's what allows our hearts to recognize each other
very important the mind separates the mind sees discrimination and separation and the heart sees identity

how so stanley kunitz
in featured on the program yet those of you were watching it
maybe not so today i was reading somebody was kind enough to give me the book
which is it
almost the transcript of the program it's not entirely literal mrs some poems and some of the interviews conversations are a little different but it's pretty good
and i found that when i was trying to copy some of the palms off the a video i couldn't go fast enough to catch them so this is pretty good so here's a conversation with stanley kunitz who i guess he's over ninety years old now and he won the pulitzer prize in poetry
and was poet laureate at one time
about poetry
he's talking to myers he says poets have always loved the language of dreams it's so full of secrets
bill moyers do you sometimes think you're carrying on a conversation with ancestors you never knew
it
the art by their nature
our our means of conducting that dialogue
where is the history of the race inscribed if not in the human imagination
one of my strongest convictions is that poetry is ultimately mythology but telling of the stories of the soul
we keep asking go ganz famous questions where do we come from who are we
where are we going
the echo that mocks us comes from the stone age caves
the poem on the page is only a shadow
of the poem in the mind
the poem in the mind is only a shadow
of the poetry and mystery of the things of this world

here
the pope the poem on the page is only a shadow of the poem and the mind
right the residences in the mind we try to put them down and we don't quite do it there's so much so many echoes so many energies the language doesn't quite get it
the poem in the mind is only a shadow of the poetry and mystery of the things of this world
so there's mystery and the things of this world there on grasp buddhist and tells us there ungraspable yet we resonate with them we respond to them
there is energy synergy all kinds of relationship
it's the mystery of the things that this world and the poem in the mind is only a shadow of that mystery of the things of this world
like a this is straight out of stock straight out of the zendo right that's our experience we can't quite
her mouth can't do it
and language or mind can't do it
we must try again for the work has never finished
i don't think it's absurd to believe that the chain of being
our indelible genetic code holds memories of the ancient world that are passed down from generation to generation
heraclitus speaks of mortals and in immortals living in their death
dying into each other's lives

suzuki roshi is alive
in my life my experience my body and mind category roshi is
and many others as well my mother and father
my zoomy roshi who died
two or three months ago two months ago maybe
is still alive for a still resonating
those of us who knew him studied with him practiced with him
and he encapsulated the buddhism up japan
his teachers his culture his tradition and he was carrying on a dialogue with his features you know when i come up and offer incense
especially in this room you know suzuki roshi is with me
kata gearing ratios with me
tension she is with me baker roshi
these are the people i watched four years
when i first went to tulsa her to lead a practice period i was haunted by baker rushing
because he had always held a certain he had held the position and lived in his cabin
i had all the attention that we had passed on to him given to him we carry
these feelings these images these residences these echoes in her bodies

we inherit
we inherit the unconscious
of our parents and get noticed
he get mad at that part you've got the shadow of your father or your mother or your grandmother and grandfather
maybe you've got their good part the bright side to but we kept inherit that stuff and we don't know how it got there suddenly we're speaking like our parents or grandparents or our teachers

where's the self
where's the separate self
where it sounding dryness and like suzuki roshi
johnson like good tension anderson she
i'm after well i got food when i started teaching a monterey and santa cruz as the
you know my teachers of albion men
and i've been find at what it is for me to teach i can't teach the way my male teachers taught that me them while to get that one
they are men they've had their experience they have their lineage and my experience and lineages different i had to figure out what it was to be a woman teaching on my own with all this wonderful know twenty five or so years twenty two twenty three
years of training
and i'm grateful for it incredibly grateful for it and yet i have to enacted as catherine

couldn't it says the poetry is the most difficult the most solitary the most life enhancing thing one can do
here's a poet speaking
i read that the whom the most difficult the most solitary the most life enhancing thing one can do then i thought the chi practice secretly working with them like a fool like an idiot
if he can achieve continuity you become the host within the host
and i teach people that practicing watching the mind practicing observing thoughts feelings perceptions impulses and not acting on just observing them as the most difficult thing to do the very solitary act
driving in a crowd and having a reaction with strong reaction and just sitting with it just watching it and not sort of blowing off the energy
just paying attention noticing the energy in the mind that thoughts on the line the energy and the body
i think that's the most difficult thing to do but then my practices saucer his practice is poetry
whatever you bring your whole self to is the most difficult thing in the world
ditto
and i want to tell you thinking about this that if thousand doesn't work for you try something else if if you don't loves us and if it doesn't invoke your deepest energy your deepest passion your deepest fear
find something that does
natalie goldberg said she kept listening to category roshi listing the category roshi and she didn't understand what he said about and him and he finally said your practice is writing
and when she put her complete energy into writing she understood what he was talking about in saucer
they have to he can't keep the funny stuff outside the door it has to come inside
your whole life has to be their fear has to be there have to bring the fear inside
it's there
it's there in that little the skies comes up as something else of bring it in
and i know we're not ready and know it takes a little time
and that's the practice of sitting still
i just i thought this was so wonderful
the poem on the page is only a shadow of the poem in the mind
and the poem in the mind it's only a shadow
of the poetry and mystery of the things of the world this world
so we must try again for the work has never finished

it can roshi says shakyamuni buddha is only halfway there
get over shakyamuni buddha is
right he's only halfway done the work has never finished
that's right three releasing to me
the idea that we can complete this work in accomplish something is one of our familiar delusions sort of things we like to play with
when i went to toss a hard for the first time i thought well three months i'll get it together and i'll get on with my life
that was not gained sixty eight
after three months i thought well maybe another three months
when there's no end to this practice of
opening
putting you
so somehow either wing image in my mind that
then
opening to
what is fluttering inside of us what is uncertain what is unrecognized
the stuff that's recognizable even that we have to pay attention to because that can get in our way to
we can stumble across people run across run over people that way
john tarrant when of a fake and russia's disciple says a practice is the inclusion of the excluded
think there's something you've excluded in your life perhaps you don't want to think about
going to pretend there isn't there it keeps coming up in zazen or it keeps coming up in relationships with each other but you'd like to kind of act like it's up their practices the inclusion of the excluded
vicki did a very nice article for the windmill couple of years ago on these cigar case ceremony which i happened to be looking at at tassajara this past week
feeding the hungry ghosts
that part of us it's never nourished
never satisfied
that part of us that cannot bear
our life
i cannot bear
to go through my life i cannot bear this life i am living
oh most of that ninety five percent maybe i compare but that five percent perfect to person
practices learning
gradually gradually learning to bear this life
after we brought in all the distractions in all the
her toys and games and delusions and everything that we can imagine
relationships positions fame and glory
all the attainments all the recognition
what are we left with bearing this life
the equation doesn't change was to still
this particular mind and body in during
recognizing itself meeting itself very deeply
the part that's hard to meet its the hungry ghost part the part that's never filled
never satisfied
when she says there that
the way we meet the hungry ghosts there are images
hungry ghost has long neck big belly
can't take in food
and during this a gawky ceremony we come in here with instruments that are really
can a mournful can wailing unusual instruments which summon this energy this unrecognized excluded an unresolved energy in our lives and we don't invite that energy to the this altar she said because this soldier might scare it it's tube yeah
pitiful
but we set up another altar
so when we summon that energy we'd take it off to the side a little bit and we welcome it but we try to meet it
where it can be met
this is the mind of compassion
this is the mind of non judgment
hardest thing to do
is to summon the mind of non judgment and look at your hard stuff
look at your pain
get your shame
look get your sexuality
look at your fear with a nod and judging mind to mind that doesn't want anything from this activity and mind it's completely at rest relaxed and open
it can be type i can tell you can be done with practice to bring that compassionate mind to what's arising
and just as we invite the hungary spirits
the hungry ghosts to the ceremony
and we feed them we offer them food we symbolically offer them food
we offer them recognition
what we want is to witness our life you know the deepest thing we want us to be witnessed
can be seen to be known just as we are we don't necessarily want to be helped that would be a little we know deeply the only help can come from here for my own witnessing of my own body and mind
it's very helpful if somebody else witnesses completely witnesses it completely to
without trying to kill me
we probably all have people who want to curious right
we cannot carry each other very easily

so i think these two thrusts in practice
the thrust the deepest intention which brings us here
to meet our deepest self
i don't use the word our highest self i use the word
the more we just let them go that which is not recognized which has not seen stays around as assault with thing as a hindrance
as an obstacle when it's recognized it just didn't you know like everyday life ah making the unconscious conscious that which is conscious is not so difficult for us it has welcomed into the circle of the recognizable

here's what john parents as about
character development or this part going into the excluded
this part of us he says is a mess
it's full of loose ends the uncalled for the unanticipated the unforeseen
it embraces what we know most dimly about ourselves and what we shudder at our secret passions and insomnia is helpless and almost indestructible longings despair
and the continuing undercurrent of knowledge that some losses are irretrievable
so that's the path toward character work compassion
the other transforming movement is the practice of
insight
the recognition
of emptiness
does everybody know what emptiness is
somebody know what empty innocence
you've heard about it probably right shattered the heart sutra little then
mima
being unfulfilled
before
failed
anybody else

it's really more fun to have a conversation
yeah
guess i'm has been i think of work a new fight global warming the for the screen anything
you trimming before noise
for emptiness is the field
which you are your thing the screen
but all the screaming garage
yeah the way you're saying it makes it sound like emptiness is a thing
so say it again
a better view
your videos
from which they are an emptiness is this world
yes you are going to say
i'm not like
wow

does that mean you what does that mean for you
about you

yeah yeah have emptiness means you we nothing exists independently nothing exists independently that's what you are trying to say and and it
i'm sorry it's a little different from what emptiness is not that part of us it's not filled emptiness is the fact that were all filled
with another way you can talk about emptiness is that it's fullness that
that we're than everything exists in this mind and body that i am not separate from any of you my parents and grandparents and my features
who is giving this talk you know
features my community
but great community i grew up in the berkeley community i went to school in i grew up in berkeley
the great church in oakland
my month in japan
i'm bob berman says the absolute is this relativity
this very relativity
we don't have to go any place to experience it is the way things actually are things are formless you noticed that thoughts come and go
hard to hard to catch them we do we hang onto them
and that's how we hang on to and create a form but actually things arise if we watch them closely we watch our experience closely things come and go past no breath know thought is exactly like the fuck before even if you've thought that thought before in
this moment it's not the same because the context the energy of this moment is different
irreplaceable replaceable unique
so we're here because we want to experience emptiness what we think we think of emptiness as freedom from the condition sell we think of emptiness as the unconditioned self one the ways since talked about unconditioned and then we think of unconditioned districts fair and angels flying you know
something out in the sky the space in which former arises we think of emptiness that way emptiness is this very form it's emptiness is than
absolute nature of how things exist and that
that's what really we're here were drawn by the emptiness side of us are true nature they
lack of solve itself the fact that things are transforming arising and transforming continuously everything is transforming simultaneously with its arising and passing and that's the meaning of emptiness one of the meanings
tick not on as a wonderful wonderful book on this subject the heart of understanding where he talks about
this piece of wood is empty of being a pretty call this
a little stand
a lectern
because this is just would basically though it's a tree
and a tree is fundamentally a seed in the ground with all the micro organisms of the ground and of the air and of the sun and the wind and rain all the elements of the universe which grew the tree allowed the tree to grow and then the person who came and cut it down
on and hold it away and milled it and
so that and the carpenter who put it together so this lectern
is empty because it's completely not separate from everything
all the elements of the universe and the human society and our human skills
and now it's a part of
this event so it's empty of own being are empty of separate existence
and you can find that in yourself if you're reading a poem and you're suddenly really moved and you resonate with the poem and is as the poet mind
your experience when were moved like that our experience kind of spreads out and encompasses so much we cannot say it's happening in a specific location
the energy is quite
the reaches everywhere

think
he was completed knife talk
do we have questions here
who can i read one poem and then you can ask your question great
thank you
somebody the thirteen year old girl did the yoga workshop and tassajara that we just can concluded that norman fishers they're now doing another workshop but we did yoga in san last week and she asked me one evening going to dinner what is the meaning of life
just as we were going into dinner right so i made an attempt to answer her and i talked about that it costs to her a bit the next day was telling judith because she
no judith came to that talk and she said it's the wrong question i wish she'd told me that the night you know the night before because i really tried to meet this young woman
what came to me later was you know like just is like flowers just a barn
morning glory is the rose is
and if nothing it like doesn't have meaning
then what's the implication for
our experience our activity
and that leads me to this poem and then even ask your question thank you and here is
if life doesn't have an overall meaning or purpose
well we can talk about it many ways than everything as it arises huh
has meaning and him
has meaning everything nothing is more important than anything else this is a fundamental axiom of buddhism that each moment
is the only moment each moment as it's arising
the next moment and the next moment
each moment is timeless

each moment we can realize our unconditioned nature by entering deeply our experience through this narrow concentration non-judgmental concentration on self on the experience we can discover and experience are unfunded
ocean side
so here's a poem by merwin w s merwin
place
on the last day of the world i would want to plant a tree
what for
not for the fruit
the tree that bears the fruit is not the one that was planted
i want the tree that stands in the earth for the first time
with a son already going down and the water touching its roots
in the earth full of the dead and the clouds passing one by one over its leave
i'll bet this again
on the last day of the world i would want to plant a tree
what for
not for the fruit
you know not not for something in the future
i don't have expectations of sasson i don't have expectations of this moment just this moment i want to plant a tree not for the fruit
the tree that bears the fruit is not the one that was planted
i want the tree that stands in the earth for the first time
with a son already going down
and the water touching its roots in the earth full of the dead
and the clouds passing one by one
over its leaves
just doing it for its own sake
that's doing one thing that we love for its own sake not for money or not for recognition

yes

ruth
i will the
no
yeah
wow
male person talked about having been tired at times and other times having a lot of energy
and you said why
and then you said something about is this related to not really connected to things feeling separate from things
you are
i think we can feel very connected and be tired
i think our energy comes and goes that if he wanted to make a study of your physical energy in your emotional energy or your psychic energy he might learn something about what
when you're tired and when when you have energy and you'll notice certain experiences give you energy and certain experiences and feel your energy drops you can learn a lot about your own state of body and mind by study that kind of question
and
that's probably connected to the the ego to the sense of separate self and your worries and your expectations and your hopes of recognition and love
but i think anyway most people i know
who'd been practicing for thirty years or so i still get tired
i don't know that answers your question

right and that's why i extended sittings are interesting so shane's are helpful because he watched your energy come and go and just when you think you've got energy for hours and hours you know
and when you think you don't have any energy suddenly there it comes i think a lot of this has to do with giving up attachment to a state of body and mind if we have expectations that this period were going up it's coming i feel that this was gonna be great i'm gonna get it this period
you know when we have that kind of energy going there are subtle attachment expectation and there's a subtle clinging not so subtle clinging that's that really takes our energy it stirs up previous experiences of wanting of whether we're worthy of what what will we
do when we get there when we obtain it all that stuff is very deep in this those are the echoes that cool it was talking about the mythology or psychic conscious and unconscious per so
what i've been talking about also was the practice hitting the cart you know there's a story buddhism if you have a horse and cart and you want cart to go the a hit the horse already hit the cart and you study this one
so most of us would say hit the horse
suzuki roshi said you we should also hit the cart and hitting the cart is working with the body it means bringing our body to the sendo means bringing our body to work
going to class if you don't whether you feel like it or not it means going through our life like this
because the way this energy works the way everything intertwines and connect and inter acts and reinforces stifles or encourages all of those connect connections we don't know their mysterious we can't figure them out with our mind so putting our bar
audi in the situation we allow that work the wisdom of the body the wisdom of the mind and body to
work without the interference of the conscious
when the conscious mind gets clear it doesn't want to interfere before it gets clear at once the interfere and direct
so we practice with the cart
it's very interesting i'm trying to understand this because japanese taught us form so strongly you just do the practice period you just come to the center they're teaching us or
we're immersed in and enamored with you know emotional life psychological work psychological work all that stuff we don't understand just form for its own sake but he was teaching us something about the wisp that we can't do this work consciously a lot of with the filling up the way
work happens on its own we can put ourselves in the place
where the energy can come and go and follow its own
meanderings

vision
no
why

i think you do
it could be sewing it could be cooking it could be gardening could be working with children
it might have to be cultivated it might have to be discovered
i was reading about peter focus the sarah listed
frameless ceramicist who's having an exhibit in oakland now
he was a painter in his early years and then he had a required class to take which was ceramics
once he took that class and ceramics that was that he fell totally in love with ceramics and he's devoted his life to it
so to me that the art of hitting the cart
because there was a required course
in that school he took that class and then he discovered something he might not have known about himself

and it may be
oh not in the activity so much in oh
some resistance some timidity
some lack of confidence so the practice of just doing one thing completely over and over again is to me everything right there so find that which maybe you don't even think you love it right now maybe you wouldn't talk about that
way it be are sort of luke warm
but the spirit of it is to find something that engages you and i don't at all mean to abandoned zazi and because i feel like
the practice of zazen
illuminates and prepares us
prepares us to do old to meet each moment each activity
zazen in itself is liberating it's formless it's the practice of watching mind and body transform formless nature and it also
seems to teach us how to enter other moments and other activities with that same sauce and mind sauce and body
yes

oh
but you would you say it again
clarity

no
i'm what i say clarity i mean cup being conscious
but maybe there's a difference
being conscious means being present being aware of what's happening inside and what's what's happening around you
so maybe you can be clear without totally recognizing all the energy inside and all the energy that's around us takes a long time to experience our own energy to be therefore it
not to have not to try to negate edward put it down or praise it just see it as it comes and goes as energy is just coming and going
takes time to see that about ourselves because we're used to hiding from ourselves not meeting ourselves or each other directly sanga is a wonderful opportunity to see that up didn't do it time
didn't make it that time didn't quite express myself fully on this moment i think there's gonna be another moment i think i'll have another chance
so i said this sanga life
gives a chance to go back and to try to just do it just be there with
all the voices inside all the energies inside
and stay there for that
don't know if i'm answering i'm speaking to your question
what he even

your question
love
what to try again we're not going anyplace anybody has to leave

hard to do it in public
how can you
how can you know

his head
that's the co on
how to do something completely into the same time
be free of it not have expectations
that your question
the only if you do something completely can you let it go
when you don't do it quite completely you still have some ideas about it you still have some intentions they don't completely that's beyond what your mind is thinking devising
expecting just go into it and allow the activity itself the energy itself to interact and to go where it wants to go
it don't know they're all saying and here they don't know what they're going to write when they start they don't know where the poem wants to go when we sit zazen we don't know where sobs and wants to go
we may have an idea of the self we want to meet in sauce and and the self we're going to cultivate in thousand but if we just enter the breath but feeling the sensation the perception the impulse we don't know where it'll take us
practices just following staying with
each thing touching it letting it go touching it letting it go unless something keeps coming back in sticks around doesn't go away than that you go into
become one with it this is same language becoming one with nothing's left outside
you bring your fear inside you bring your shame and side bring your anger inside everything everything's there
now says
no opposition well with there's no opposition nothing is opposite that moment to wonderful moment than everything begins to cook
thank you for your question
yes i would choose the how much time do we have to do we need to quit it a particular plan
maybe one more question
but
having compassion
yes
well written that
during the day
a
mama
i really
thoughtful
he said
but he said