I wanted to start by thanking all of you. It's been a really wonderful experience and I'm really honored to have been doing a practice period with each of you. I wanted to talk today about the sense of wonder. Can you hear me okay, John? Not the Van Morrison album by that title, but the Tassajara sense of wonder, the important aspect of our practice that I feel right now.

[01:00]

It's very easy to feel what a Tassajara means, just walking down the path of flowers and mountains and blue sky and clouds sometimes. So we usually think of something wonderful as something really special, and it is, something, a flower is very special. But it's also very ordinary, just a flower. So I remember very much Kategori Roshi when he was leading the practice period here talked about when you see a flower, when you see a sunset, and you say, wow, but the wow is too much. Just that feeling of before the wow, before you say anything, say everything I'm going to say today is too much, please forgive me.

[02:06]

But there's also something we bring to, there's something that we have to arouse to make sense of wonder also. You just have to notice something, that flower, ah, or just a neat stick that you maybe were going to throw for Zori and then you notice it looks like a dragon or something. It's very easy to feel that at Tassajara, I think. The time when we came out of the Zendo and there was snow on the ground, if you're living in a city in the northern latitudes and you see snow on the ground, well, it's just snow,

[03:07]

particularly if it's there all winter. Probably Tassajara, I'd see snow on the ground and snow is really miraculous. I was sitting in my seat, told a few people about this, before the Sashin, a week or so, it was a sewing class, there were only a few of us in the Zendo and these doors were open and right in front of me, I was sort of just sitting, facing out and the doors were open and right in front of me was this iris bud, it was before the irises had opened and I noticed it as I sat down, the third period, and somehow I kept watching it and over about 30 minutes, the right petal opened.

[04:08]

I mean, you couldn't possibly stay and watch a flower open unless you were sitting inside Zendo Tassajara. It's just, it was just amazing. It was just, it was wonderful. It just, it was like one of those slow motion, one of those speed it up time lapse films, except it wasn't speed it up, it was just, there it was. One petal opened. Then we got up and did Kinhin and I sat back down. And then, right after I sat down, within five minutes, the petal on the left opened. All the way down. And I think by the time everybody came back for service, the third petal was just amazing. Just a flower. So part of being satisfied, being content, being whole with our life is to appreciate

[05:12]

the wonderful things in our life. See the wonder in our problems too. All of our difficulties are wonderful opportunities, even though they hurt. In the morning these days, I've really been appreciating when the birds start to sing. It feels like I'm in a soup with these little strange dinosaurs. It's like I'm in a soup. [...] It feels like I'm in a soup with these little strange dinosaurs flying around. I don't know if that's true. I saw somewhere recently that birds are descended from dinosaurs. So, we can read something like the Avatamsaka Sutra, which is this jam-packed with wonder,

[06:29]

and they talk about each atom containing innumerable worlds, each of those worlds containing innumerable worlds and bodhisattvas, and it gets kind of spacey and it's very wonderful and it feels kind of special. But you can go out in the garden here and take a square foot of ground and sit there and look at it, maybe even a square inch, or get a microscope, and it's full of wonder. So, I'm talking about sort of things in nature, but in some ways, Zen says that everything is mind, right?

[07:30]

Books say that. And I feel like all of us, when we bring our wonder to a flower, a tree, a dog or a cat or a butterfly, it's in some way a mirror, that it's not inside or outside. When we sit zazen, it's just this wall. So, we can look at the wall in some imagined patterns, but really we're going within and just have a sense of wonder there, too. All the amazing and wonderful and strange and unexpected events that we are, each one of us. And, of course, we get involved in trying to sort out all our complicated emotions and

[08:42]

histories. And it's strange and it's difficult, and there's also there a sense of wonder. It's quieter again, to realize how much we don't know about whatever it is that's happening. So, wonder is also just to question or to wonder. I wonder what I'm going to say next.

[09:42]

We've talked about, in the Dogen-Zak class, about questioning and doubt. I think at times in my life and times in my practice, questioning has been some really deep existential questions, some really big ball of doubt. But mostly it's more this kind of sense of wondering about what is this and what is this? Bringing our wonder to each thing, bringing our fresh beginner's mind that doesn't know what it is, that wonders, what is it? Who am I? Who is this person in front of me? To know that there's no end to the wonder, no matter how many microscopes or telescopes or

[10:43]

Buddhist treatises we bring to anything, there's still more that we don't have any, that we can only wonder at. So, I've been wondering how to practice with the sense of wonder. I just went through this extraordinary experience with all of you where questions were flying around my head.

[11:52]

It was so wonderful that all of you asked such wonderful questions and didn't let me get away with easy answers. And I don't know if I gave good answers or bad answers. I was so dazed afterwards. Hey, where's water? So, I think the most relevant aspect of practicing with sense of wonder is how do we practice with each other?

[12:55]

My experience is the more I get to know someone, the more I see how much I don't know them. How much more there is to know. I mean, a flower is pretty complicated and amazing. Human beings are that much more so. So, to not know anybody here, and yet we've all told our stories and they're wonderful and amazing, each one. So, for me, sense of wonder has to do with Shepo was talking about Joshen Tsang's life of gratitude and gassho. Just to really be grateful for this life, for this opportunity to go through all the difficulties and all the wonderful difficulties and wonderful pleasantries.

[14:12]

And then to respect very deeply whatever, whoever happens to be in your field of wonder. Sometimes respecting someone means giving them a hard time, asking them a hard question. So, it has something to do with keeping our freshness, bringing up this energy of something new could happen that will change my life today, in the next minute. And it's true. Whatever we've been brought us here and it just keeps going.

[15:21]

And we'll see. It'll be interesting to see what happens. Thank you. So, this Mountain Wonderland is going to go through some changes soon. There'll be all kinds of strange people coming to share the wonder.

[16:26]

And I'm kind of envious of those of you who are staying. And I'm very sad to not be myself. It's just not what I can do right now. But to bring a sense of wonder to each new day's load of guests, to each new, to the busyness of summer guest season, even in the busyness of the kitchen, in the busyness of the dining room, in the busyness of the cabin crew. Something wonderful is there. Some opportunity to remember, to be busy, but to remember to not be busy. To take a breath, to see a flower, to not know what will happen today. It's always fresh. It's always new.

[17:32]

Sometimes it's easy to forget that. We need our habits to just get through the kind of conventional stuff of each day. The bell rings, oh. That's okay. But right there, too. To have some freshness. So, I think that's actually what I want to say right now. But I'm interested in hearing. We're not going to be together so much longer. Anybody who wants to say anything about anything, it would be nice to hear all of your wonderful voices. I think Aristotle said philosophy begins with wonder. Yeah. I think maybe you brought up that one of your aspects of your life is social equity.

[19:03]

Can you say something about the sense of wonder? Functions in that aspect. Well, when I think of, when I see the problems of the world in that realm, the problems of the world in the social realm, the social institutions and processes that go on, as opposed to all the problems of the world in this body and mind, which is not separate, but... You know, I wonder what to do. I've been wondering what to do for a long time now. And usually when I'm wondering what to do, I don't do so much. I'm just aware that sometimes in my life there have been times when there was something clear that I could do

[20:07]

Sometimes in my life there have been times when there was something clear that I could do that actually felt like it was a useful thing to do. Sometimes it meant getting arrested. And I think there are things to do. And it takes a lot of energy to do a lot of them. One has to actually decide to put some attention and energy to doing something. And then when you decide to do something, to keep wondering if this is really of any help at all. But not in terms of what it does in the world and the effect, but also in terms of how does it feel. After the difficulties that Red had when he was loved and chased by his mother,

[21:15]

my response and a few other people's response was to be concerned about the neighborhood because we'd sort of forgotten we hadn't been taken care of. And some of us, Laurie Schley and Tom Geraghty, helped to organize a tutoring program with projects. I don't know if it's still happening, but it's just something happens in front of you. It might be in the newspapers or it might be in front of your house. And you want to hear what to do. But officiating also can be active.

[22:16]

You might see a flower in water. But yeah, it's... I'm sorry. Right. I think it's, you know, I feel like it's real central, at least in my sense of this practice, but I think it's basically what religion's about. Basically, what religion's about is that sense of, like all religions, sense of mystery, sense of something sacred. Sacred means something wonderful. And part of what I like about Zen is that it sees the wonderful in the ordinary everyday. You know, whatever is there walking down the path. Do you feel like it's a child's practice?

[23:26]

Like what? Like a child's practice. Yes, it has a lot to do with being childlike or keeping one's sense of one's own child of playing. It's play. We have to have a sense of play. A sense of, oh, all these toys. I mean, sometimes it's very serious business, but also a sense of enjoying, sense of simplicity. It can be wonderful to get into something very elaborate too, you know, and fancy pictures and fancy philosophies and fancy stories, but it's not different from just ordinary, wonderful day-to-day stuff. Thank you.

[24:42]

Do you think when Paritama said, I don't know, it gave you some space for yourself? Most of all, we don't know ourselves. Most of all, we can wonder it ourselves. How can we get to right here? How can we get to right here? We really like to have kinds of descriptions like greed, anger, delusion types, or astrology, or enneagrams. We love those things because they give us some kind of fluid, some way of looking at the inconceivable, wonderful, strange, ungraspable being that we are, that we really don't know.

[26:15]

So I feel like this wonderful Tassamara practice period, Fletcher asked me the question that I had asked myself and had not known the answer to and was afraid of right off the top, and I still don't know what is, you know, is there any difference now or three months ago? I don't know. Maybe, you know, three months from now I can have some sense of that. But we don't know what is, something as wonderful as Tassamara. Tassamara practice period, how can we know what that is? And yet, something happens. I think you're right, sort of a danger or something like that. In, maybe given the extremely chronic and infectiousness.

[27:25]

Yep. I can't remember if that's kind of coming up here or something. I forget that. What holds, I'm not quite sure what it is, sorry. But there, that people like the porcelain, even though it's incredibly fragile. It's because it's fragile, you know. But that willingness to sort of use things, nods at people's impressions. Right, we can't hold on, no matter how wonderful something is, we cannot hold on to it. Because if we're holding on to it, if we feel how precious something is, and we try and hold on to it, then we're not open to the next opportunity to wonder at whatever it is. Or to change it. Or just to be fresh. And we may not see the wonder in something. We may go through, you know, a day or a week or ten years of not seeing how fresh our life really is.

[28:31]

You know, that happens. It doesn't mean it's not fresh, it's just we don't see it. Yeah, for some reason it came into my mind when you were talking about butterflies and so on. And I thought, isn't it funny, butterflies and wild animals and beautiful wild birds in the park, they scare us, you know. Because I think there's this, in wonder, in the moment, they have this sense of how we're trying to hold on to things and make impressions. And if that's what it is, stay with it, you know. At waiting to come up here at the Abbott's Cabin, Fletcher and I noticed something wonderful and terrible. A little field mouse about this big that I guess one of the cats had got at. It's right there in the ground, below the hump. That was wonderful. And terrible that there was this life that was gone. And terrible that there was this life that was gone.

[29:33]

It's very fragile. I don't know if you can hear me. I'm moving. I think I'm moving. And what it was looking at was something like this. It sounds like the wonder is the bridge, the bridge between self and others, the bridge between right and wrong. It's the same about the philosophy, the human philosophy. It moves you towards the right. [...] I think a lot of times we, it's just kind of natural maybe, but it's something that the human mind does too. If we know someone else,

[30:43]

someone you've been friends with for a long time, or two dozen people you've been in some way very intimate with for three months, we have some sense of, oh, this person is like this, this person is like that. And we actually, we like to put those little labels on ourselves and each other. But to actually somehow not be so sure, to be open to not knowing who you are and who the other person is, helps new things to happen. And it's difficult, our habits are to kind of fix things and hold on to things. We like to have things in place, and actually we sort of need to, and on one side in a conventional way we need to sort of, I need to be able to know that I can call you Hannah, and you'll say yes. And so that we need some kind of conventional kind of naming, I guess.

[31:48]

And that includes various qualities that we might attribute to each other. But to be open to the wonder that we don't know, just to kind of have that sense somewhere, and bury it amongst all the other senses we have. Well, anybody else think?

[32:53]

Thank you very much.

[33:03]

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