Good morning. Tree planter and rock gardener. I brought a friend along. Actually, that's how I make my living, by designing and building gardens. Well, I can't seem to get it out of my mind, so I'll have to share with you a song that came into my head this morning as I was driving over.

[01:11]

The road from Marin, there's a little winding section with some curves around San Quentin. This BMW was just bearing right on my tail. I thought, well, should I pull over, let him pass? It wasn't so long, it wasn't such a great distance, but I pulled over and let him pass, and at that time, I felt pretty good. And the song that came into my mind was, I haven't done this for years, it's an old hoodie, Leadbetter, Lead Valley song, Goes like this. Relax your mind. Relax your mind.

[02:11]

Make you live a great long time. Sometime you got to relax your mind. Actually, maybe you could all sing that. We're warmed up doing that. We could do it as an echo, a lead and response. So I'll do it and then you repeat, okay? Relax your mind. [...] Make you live a great long time. May you live a great long time Sometimes, sometimes You've got to relax your mind You've got to relax your mind And when the light, and when the light Turns red, turns red You put the brick down to the bed

[03:19]

You've got to relax your mind. And when the light turns green, put your foot on the gasoline. That's the time you've got to relax your mind. Relax your mind. Relax your mind. Relax your mind. Make you live. Make you live. A great long time. A great long time. That's the time. That's the time. You got to. You got to. Relax your mind. Relax your mind. Well, that's a pretty good start. There was a word written over the tunnel in Marin one morning.

[04:34]

The word was Koyaanisqatsi. And a few hours later there was a big green, dark green paint mark covering up the word Koyaanisqatsi. I didn't see it myself, but my son James evidently was intimately associated with the event. He told me about it. I'm still not sure how they did that. Koyaanisqatsi, and evidently that was a bit too much for Caltrans. But Koyaanisqatsi is a Native American word. I believe it's Hopi. Correct me if I'm wrong on that, but roughly translated means life out of balance. And my experience as I live and work and make an effort to practice is finding balance is a real challenge.

[05:42]

Suzuki Roshi said at one time that in the realm of Buddha nature, everything is always losing balance. or constantly falling out of balance against the background of perfect balance. There are many kinds of opposites that we could set up that we want to find balance within. Traditionally, many people think of the whole stream of Buddha's teaching as being an effort to find balance and a teaching about balance or a middle way between self-indulgence and self-denial. So, we also think of Zendo, actually, this place as

[06:55]

Well, we think of it as a mountain. Actually, this is called... Isn't this Plum Mountain? Old Plum Mountain. Zen temples are traditionally named mountains or have the name of a mountain associated with the temple. So there's a balance between the mountain and the valley in our life. A wonderful early 18th century Japanese Soto Zen monk and hermit and poet once wrote these words, Down in the village, the din of flute and drum. Here deep in the mountain, everywhere the sound of the pines. So sometimes I feel that we need to make some special effort to remember and experience the sound of the pines on the mountainside in our village life with all of its noise.

[08:21]

And of course this was in the 18th century. And things are quite a bit noisier today, I believe. My main feeling in being here is just a feeling of gratitude. It's a rare, rare opportunity for us to be together like this. And I want to thank those of you who take good care of this zendo, this temple, and take care of your practice in this sangha, and take care of each other. It's a real treat for me to come here once in a while. And I also want to thank you for taking care of Sojin.

[09:29]

Weitzman, a good teacher. He's been a good teacher for me for many years. So when I was thinking about balance, I thought, well, this stone here is like our simple, wonderful practice. Isn't it beautiful? We have a wonderful, simple practice, which is actually very helpful. I think it's helpful that it's simple, that we can find it, and that there's a solid form to our practice. I think it's very helpful. So I think sometimes our practice Zen and being a Zen student is like this like this stone.

[10:34]

It's a beautiful stone and So it's kind of plain But but it has interesting texture there's a little hint over here of what's on the inside And so on the inside Stone is like this so I think sometimes we we need to appreciate the inside, the inner complexity of our simple outward practice. And I'd like to just pass this around so each person can take, say, three breaths with it. And I think we have time for that. And reflect on your balance of inner and outer practice. Now, when I was thinking about balance, I remembered when I was little, maybe, I think about five years old, I think it was my fifth birthday, someone gave me a Bozo the Clown toy.

[11:42]

And it was an inflated balloon kind of toy with Bozo's face painted on it and a little nose, well, a big nose. And it had these cardboard heavy cardboard, big black feet, shoes. And someone showed me how you can bop Bozo in the nose, and then Bozo will bob right back up. And I thought, wow, how does he do that? It was kind of fun for a while, bopping Bozo in the nose, and he bobbed back up, rocked right back up again. But I had to check, and underneath his cardboard feet, there was a weight that was glued to the bottom.

[12:44]

I think it was metal of some kind. Very heavy. So Bozo had a center of gravity that was kind of deceptive. It was much lower than you would have imagined. And now I hear that in Japan they have similar dolls that are called Daruma. Daruma dolls or Bodhidharma dolls that are painted with Bodhidharma's fierce, intense eyes. And yeah, there's Bodhidharma hanging on the wall in the corner there. Charming fellow. He's the first, well, he's known as the founder of Zen in China. And so it's an image of balance, an image of finding your center, that you bump the doll, it rocks back up. Bodhidharma always comes right back up. That's one image of an enlightened being.

[13:50]

It doesn't dwell on leaning one way or the other, doesn't lean, doesn't dwell or get hung up in hatred, doesn't lean, doesn't dwell and get hung up in greed, isn't confused which way to go, just upright. So when we sit, we're upright. When we don't sit, it's sometimes not so clear to us what our practice is. So we think, oh, I wish I had that feeling of clarity and stability. So I think sometimes we idealize the upright sitting.

[14:54]

Very important to do upright sitting. I was recently at Tassajara for our 25th reunion anniversary, and then we had a little discussion group in the afternoon, and I was surprised to hear there were a number of people there who had been old Zen students from early days, 20, 25 years ago, who felt and expressed that they were not practicing now, that they didn't have, because of their location where they lived, they didn't have a community to sit with, they didn't have a teacher. Some people were still mourning for Suzuki Roshi. But I think part of the problem for some of the people there was that they had an image of practice that was very limited.

[16:00]

And they actually excluded themselves from many opportunities to practice because they thought the only way to practice was to sit in the zendo for 40 minutes or whenever the bell rang. Sometimes it goes much faster than that, right? So another image of balance. There's a story about Laman Pong. Laman Pong was a Chinese Zen student who was an independent. He never wanted to be ordained, but he liked to go around with his family from temple to temple and ask questions and recite the poems that he made up about his various and many enlightenment experiences. And one day, he took his family with him.

[17:01]

He had a wife, a daughter, and a son, and they all trooped around. I think they made baskets, wove baskets to sell. They were some early homeless people with a mission. And one day, Laman Pong was crossing a bridge And as he just came to the end of the bridge, he tripped and fell to the ground. And his daughter, who was coming behind him, came running up and threw herself down to the ground beside him. He said, what are you doing? She said, I'm helping Papa. He said, shh, don't let anyone see us. So you see, Laman Pong's daughter was willing to help Papa whether he was up or down, whether he was upright, whether he was sprawling the ground. She was completely willing to be there and she had a big, a big, generous understanding of balance.

[18:10]

No problem, an unconventional understanding of balance. Lama Pong recognized that they couldn't look too foolish People wouldn't respect him, so he thought, we'd better get back up right away. Now, this ideal of bodhidharma sitting is characterized by a story about another Chinese Zen teacher. His name in Japanese is Gutei. In Chinese it's Chuchi or Juti. He was famous for raising one finger whenever he was asked, what's the Buddha's teaching?

[19:19]

But before he decided to teach by raising one finger, he was a serious Zazen student and he felt that the best way to practice was to go to a hut in the mountains and do a solitary retreat, unencumbered by the world's intrusions. And so there he sat, he dedicated himself to sitting zazen. And one day, a woman, a nun, came to see him, near the end of the day. And there he was, he was sitting, it was probably a little room, about ten by ten. And he was sitting right in the middle of the room. And Chi Chi came in, walked around him three times.

[20:30]

She didn't even knock at the door. She just walked right in. Walked around him three times, clockwise, the traditional circumambulation. Then she stopped and stood right in front of him and said, If you can say an appropriate word, I'll take off my hat. And Chu Ji didn't know what to say. He was silent. So she walked around him again three times more, stopped in front of him, said, now say an appropriate word and I'll take off my hat. And again, he was nonplussed, unable to respond. So she walked around him again, three more times, repeated the whole thing, and said, Now, say an appropriate word, and I'll take off my hat.

[21:37]

And Chu Chi sat there, dumbstruck. So she turned and walked out the door. suddenly realized, oh, and he called after her. It's getting dark. You could stay the night. She turned around and said, say an appropriate word and I'll stay the night. And then he couldn't say anything. He choked up. She left and We never hear from her again. Probably eaten by tigers. My guess is that she was a good Dharma sister.

[22:42]

Maybe had some acquaintance. She probably heard about him up there and was wondering how he's doing. Now it's interesting that Xi Qi, the nun's name, translates variously as true world or true reality. Sometimes her name is just translated reality or true encounter. This little scene can be viewed as a question of balance with Chi Chi's practice, sitting Zazen, and true world walking right in his door, reality coming in the door unannounced.

[23:50]

And he's paralyzed. doesn't know how to cope with that situation. His zazen's pretty good, like Bozo's zazen. Pretty good, as long as he's in one place with a weight under him, right? A little different situation. He didn't know what to do. The wonderful thing about Zhu Ji at that point was that he realized He needed help. So he packed up all of his things and decided he was going to go find a good teacher. But then it was real dark, so he said, well, I'll wait till the morning. And so he sat there kind of nodding over his backpack. And during the night, he had this vision.

[24:56]

of the Bodhisattva, the teaching deity of that mountain, appeared and said, Now you're ready. Just stay put and a teacher will come. So he waited a few days and Chen Lung came passing through. Chen Lung was a elder, a Zen master, going from one temple to another. And Chi Chi told him the whole story and said, what's an appropriate word? And Chin Lung pointed at it, one finger. So from that point on, Chu Ji felt that he understood something and he taught the one-finger method. There are more stories about it which I won't go into today.

[26:07]

But I wonder, what was his understanding? Where was his center of gravity? How do we practice when true world intrudes? Where's our center of gravity when something really knocks us for a loop? Big thing, small thing. Minor irritation, big disaster. Each of us needs to find our own way because we suffer when we're out of balance. And this suffering is a good teacher. And this suffering really is our life.

[27:12]

It's how we extend. It's how we grow. Sometimes we think that there's more suffering in dying than there is in living. Or there's more suffering in dying than in being born. You could ask your mother about that, about being born, whether there's any pain. So we really need to stay present with our experience. There's a phrase, we wear out the shoe of samsara, which is our painful existence. We wear out our painful existence by mindfulness and concentration.

[28:15]

There's a lot of work involved in facing life as it is. What's your center of gravity? In our culture, we value certain things, and as members of this culture, we tend to adopt what is given to us. As Buddhism moves into the mainstream... Oh, did you see that article in the Chronicle? Reverend Alan Sanaki is not here today, but it was quoted in the paper. We're all counter-cultural veterans here. That's right. But I understand right down the street there's a Thai Buddhist community. I think we have to be careful and examine, investigate what we inherited in our culture.

[29:34]

This word Koyaanisqatsi can be understood to give some perspective on the kind of damage that we've done to our environment, that we've done to the natural world. Here it is 500 years after Columbus. And we have a technology, knowledge-based kind of culture. We value what we can manipulate. We value the advantage that we have over our environment. But there's another side to that. Wes Jackson is a botanist, a scientist who studies plant genetics and he lives near where I grew up in Kansas.

[30:40]

He's very concerned about the state of the topsoil. Our good farmers have plowed the prairies. The rains come and the topsoil washes into the little streams and rivers down the Mississippi. It takes thousands of years to build just an inch of topsoil. And Wes is a scientist, but he says, our universities need to have another major. So right now, they just have one major, which is upward mobility. But what we need is a major called homecoming. And if we could major in homecoming, we'd begin to recognize that we're actually members that are knitted into the fabric of this place.

[31:44]

We need to actually see what our home is. We need to study it in detail. We need to take care of it. It's just like taking care of ourselves. It is taking care of ourselves. One approach to practice that's been helpful to me in finding balance is just this this notion that what is immediately at hand is actually a part of me. That what is immediately at hand actually produces me, actually is my mother in some sense. And that I need to listen to it. Now I think that Zen students generally learn something about listening.

[32:48]

But I encourage you to extend your practice of listening. When we sit, we tend to have a kind of a... We become aware of the inner listening and the outer listening. We become aware of some inner play. We hear voices in ourselves. memories, we hear fantasies, and then we hear sounds around us. Wonderful thing about listening is that it surrounds us. We're so visual. I think visual, we think that what's right in front of us means only on this side. But when I say what's in front of us, I mean what's right in front of us, 360 degrees in front of us. 360 degrees this way. And sound is wonderful because it arrives from all sides.

[33:53]

There are many kinds of listening. When my children were young, I remember practicing listening to them in a sense of trying to see What was beneath their request? What were they really asking for? Sometimes children say something and they're making an effort, but it's not the most fundamental thing. But that doesn't just apply to children. Adults have the same, we all have the same problem, how to express to each other what it is that we have to say or what we need. So in listening we need to listen beneath the words, listen from our heart, listen to the heart of the person in front of us.

[35:01]

So listening and In other words, cultivating situations for feedback to come to us helps us find our balance. And that's a way that we can all participate with each other, just like True World went and went all the way out of her way, went over and checked out old Chuji sitting there. That's an effort we can make with each other. How are you doing? So that's one of the values of Sangha. In that way, each of us finds our balance. We can't impose balance. We can only listen for it. When we see something out of balance, maybe we see an appropriate action, an appropriate response, how to correct this balance in ourselves.

[36:14]

others in our culture. Any questions or comments? Yes. I've been wondering about kind of being unbalanced. That, for instance, Voltaire when he wrote Candide, he was in a state of anger at life But it don't seem to me to be the most, in a lot of biographies of people I've known, being a poet, being the most balanced kind of people.

[37:37]

state rather than opening up to the old dragon form, you know, bringing it to great inspiration. So I'm just wondering what you think about being alive and unbalanced. That's what we are. We're alive and unbalanced. And you've cited some, there are many wonderful expressions of being alive and unbalanced. There's some danger, I think, in lulling ourselves. So we don't want practice to be a kind of a warm, insulating blanket that kind of masks pain or creativity.

[39:07]

So, even the state of rage is, When Suzuki Roshi says, everything is out of balance against a background of perfect balance, state of rage is out of balance against a background of perfect balance. Still a background of perfect balance exists. If the background of perfect balance didn't exist, we couldn't have a state of rage. We couldn't experience our suffering. But also if there's a background of complacency which is causing a lot of suffering, rage might be what's required for balance. Rage might be an appropriate word. Sometimes that's true. I think Zen students often are a little too polite. So when Rodney King says, we're all here together, and that's including a state of rage that we need to hear, I think.

[40:43]

Yeah, anything else? It seems to be a microphone. Thank you.

[42:29]

We can all help each other with that. Good point. Down in the village, the din of flute and drum. Up on the mountain, everywhere the sound of the pines. The balance includes all that. Thank you.

[42:58]

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