Good morning. It's wonderful to see all of you here. It's just a little loud. I think it's ringing. To see all of you here on this beautiful spring morning. Can you hear in the back now? Yes? Okay. I'm just back from leading a workshop on photography as Zen practice at Tassajara, which was just really fun. also really just refreshing to be at Tassajara, kind of cleaning out various dharmic and personal cobwebs. So I feel very fresh and energized this morning. I wanted to just give a, before I actually get into the talk, a brief update. The last time I spoke, several weeks ago, I raised the question about going to the Gulf to see if there was some way to help in the cleanup.

[01:06]

And just to say, I have continued to research this and think about it. And I've been talking with Zen practitioners, particularly on the Florida coast. And right now, the situation is still There's not a lot of capacity to actually to handle volunteers. And also some of the volunteers that they need have to have training in handling hazardous materials because this stuff is really toxic. It's not like cleaning tar off the bottom of your shoes. So just to say, I'm still thinking about this. I'm still researching it. I'm actually looking into hazmat training, which takes a couple of days. And yeah, feel free to email me or talk to me about this. If and when something comes clear, I will put up some kind of notice.

[02:09]

And, you know, I invite fellow travelers if you're interested and to thinking about doing something in the form that we've been doing election sessions. In other words, really framing it in practice. and then going out for part of the day and working on the beaches or working in the grasslands. And I don't know if it's going to happen, but just to say I'm still working on it and thinking about it and researching it. So today, I'd like to talk about two related words. The first is composure, something that Sojin Roshi and Suzuki Roshi speak of often. And the second, in a sense, comes from thinking in the context of the workshop that we did at Tassajara, a relationship between composure and composition, which they both have the same root, which means to place things with.

[03:24]

The interesting irony is that the word composure or the word composition is itself a compound word. But at any rate, thinking about composition not just in the terms of some artistic creation, but also how we compose our lives, how we make a composition of our lives. So I'd like to begin by reading you kind of a model. Some of you have heard this before. This is the beginning of the Diamond Sutra, which is one of the really key sutras in the Prajnaparamita, the early Mahayana literature. And it starts in the way that many early sutras, Mahayana and early Buddhist sutras begin.

[04:30]

Language is a little different from sutra to sutra. But they all begin, this is what I heard, because these are oral teachings that then later got set down. This is what I heard. At one time, the Buddha was staying in the Jeta Grove near the city of Sravasti. With him there was a community of 1,250 venerable monks, nuns and devoted disciples. One day before dawn, the Buddha clothed himself in his robes and along with his disciples took up his alms bowl and entered the city to beg for food door to door as was his custom. After he had returned and eaten, he put away his bowl and cloak, bathed his feet, and then sat with his legs crossed and body upright upon the seat arranged for him.

[05:38]

He began mindfully fixing his attention in front of himself. While many students approached the Buddha and showing great reverence seated themselves around him. So, this introduction is quite visual, you can see it, right? And it is the model, it's a model of composure. You can see this moving slowly, deliberately, carefully, but humanly in the midst of the dusts and grasses and trees of an Indian town, a garden, a grove where he was established for sleeping and living. And each action is intentional, deliberate and clear.

[06:47]

He closed himself in his robes, you can see him putting on his robes, took up his alms bowl, walked forward to beg for food, came back, ate, set his bowl aside, bathed his feet, which were dusty from walking along the road barefoot, and then crossed his body and sat in Dozen, looking ahead of him while everybody else kind of clustered around. If we were all able to really to get this, that would have been the end of the sutra. It wouldn't need to go any further. But then, because our understanding is incomplete, people naturally ask questions which we all have to do. We all have lots of questions. Even though the Buddha was modeling perfect composure for us, we still struggle with how to find our composure.

[08:04]

In fact, in the Buddha's time, in the early days, maybe the first 10 years, 15 years of the practice, The people that he met, they were very sharp. And all they actually needed to do was to see him. And they would see him and they would wake up and he would say, he would say, come Bhikkhu. And they would be instantly monks. They'd be instantly arhats, freed from all suffering and attachments. that didn't last very long and the more time goes on the more thick-headed we are. But we have this capacity. We still have to find our composure and live our life in this world. This is what actually Suzuki Roshi talks about.

[09:07]

And this is very appropriate for people like ourselves. I really enjoyed being at the monastery and people here in the city, particularly people who haven't been to Tassajara, have this idea that the monastery is like some place that's pure and peaceful and everything proceeds at this really leisurely rate and everybody's mindful all the time. Well it's actually no different than here. a 20-mile dirt road that you have to go to get there. Carol knows, she was just there. So Suzuki Roshi said, in our busy life, we should wear this civilization without being bothered by it, without ignoring it, without being caught by it, without going anywhere,

[10:09]

without escaping it, we can find composure in this busy life. That's really pretty good. In our busy life we should wear this civilization without being bothered by it, without ignoring it, without being caught by it, without going anywhere, without escaping it. We can find composure in this busy life. So I think this is a wonderful statement about how to find composure right in the middle of everything. We should understand and not ignore how the world works and how we work and how we are creating the world without being thrown around by it. I think in this endeavor it's really important It's important to take what we do seriously, intentionally, at the same time as not to take ourselves very seriously, to be able to laugh at ourselves, to be able to find composure even in the midst of various kinds of pains, surprises, discomforts,

[11:36]

and see how that works. I was thinking the other day, I gave a talk at Tassajara, and about a half hour before I gave the talk, we were eating dinner in the dining room, and it was a wonderful Indian dinner, and the food was really good, and there was this hot green chili chutney, and I reached for it, not noticing that the spoon had been placed, it was over the candle. So I just, I really wanted this chutney, I grabbed the spoon, I wasn't looking, I heard the, whoa! And, you know, first there was a sort of a sense of shock, and then there was a sense of pain. And somebody kindly brought me, the waitress, the wait person, kindly brought me a burn cream, which did nothing. And then somebody brought me ice, which was very nice.

[12:43]

When placed on it, it's like, oh, it stopped hurting. And then I had to take the ice a little away. And it's like, whoa, it's still, it really hurts. It hurts worse, you know. And my attitude towards this was, meanwhile, we're having dinner, we're talking, and it's like, OK, I just really burned myself. I wonder what's going to happen now. I was amused. And I just thought, OK, I'm going to give a talk in a little while. How am I going to do this? And somebody asked me on the way to talk, so how are you going to work in this having gotten burned? And I decided I'm not going to mention it. But I'm telling you, now I can do it. But it was really interesting. I just thought, I'm going to see how this will be in five minutes. I'm going to see how this will be in 10 minutes. And I got an ice pack, which I could sort of put under my robes.

[13:47]

And I kept it on until I had to go to the Zendo. And the curious thing was, it stopped hurting really intensely by then. But my attitude was, yes, it hurt, it needed to be taken care of, but there was this sort of attitude of bemusement, particularly because I was thinking about this element of composure. It's like, well, if I'm going to talk about this, can I actually practice it, embody it? So what is it, though? As I said, it has a Latin root, to place with, something like that. And the dictionary says, composure means a calmness or repose, especially of mind or of bearing, appearance. And the word composition

[14:50]

seems to mean many things, quite related, the same root. It's the art of composing, of forming a whole, by placing things together, uniting different parts and ingredients. Another way to talk about composure, which I had sort of forgotten until I was researching this, people know about the eightfold path, which is the fourth of the Buddha's Four Noble Truths. The Eightfold Path is like how you wake up, and it consists of areas of right meditation, right action, right insight, and there's eight different steps. And the last one of the right meditation, which is sometimes translated as right composure.

[15:56]

It's really the heart of the practice that we do here, the Zazen practice that we do. And to think of meditation as composure, in our tradition, Suzuki Roshi's tradition and Sojin Roshi's tradition, there's a lot of emphasis placed on posture. on how we sit, basically how we compose and align, first of all, our body on the cushion or on the chair, how we walk when we're doing walking meditation, but also how we walk when we're walking in the world. And it's also the composition of body and mind. moment by moment, uniting them, uniting what is never separate in the first place, which is really inseparable, but to our Western way of thinking, there's body and mind, as if they were two distinct aspects.

[17:14]

So even though they are inseparable, In this practice, we make the effort of composing ourselves. In Dogen Zenji's way of framing practice, you might say we sit in zazen, we sit zazen, because we are already completely in composure. We're completely composed. This is, I want to say, I feel like this is an aspect, this is one of the aspects of the koan that Alexandra is sharing and teaching in the course of this practice period. Tozan's teaching on going where there is no heat or cold.

[18:21]

I'm not going to do her work. Yeah, I couldn't. But in a talk, I think last month, that Laurie gave, I forget what the circumstance was, she turned to Sojourner, she said, what is composure? And he responded very quickly, Somebody can correct me. What I remember him saying is, being at the center of every activity. Does anyone remember? And afterwards I went and talked to him. I said, well, where does that come from? Could you give me the citation for that? No, that's just what it is.

[19:28]

And so I've been thinking about that. How is it to go to a place where there is no heat or cold? How is it to go to a place where there is no difficult or easy? How is it to go to a place where there is no you and it. In Dogen's Genjo Koan, he writes, to carry yourself forward and experience myriad things is delusion. Means we go out in the world, we do this stuff, we think we're accomplishing something, we're working it's I'm doing this you know and the second sentence is that myriad things come forth and experience themselves is awakening so in that sense to be at the center of each activity means that the center is everywhere that

[20:55]

Myriad things also means myriad dharmas. That they come forth and experience themselves means that anything one does is in complete interaction and interdependence with all the other dharmas, all the other elements, all the other people. everything in the universe, which Dogen in another fast book calls Zenki, or total dynamic working. Everything is working together. That is the nature, that's the nature, that's Buddha nature, that's the nature of enlightenment. And yet, we fall in and out of this. I certainly do. to be at the center of each activity or each moment means to cultivate, let's say, responsibility.

[22:09]

And let's break that down to say, well, it's the ability to respond. It's the ability to act in accord with all of the causes and conditions that surround us, to do what's appropriate in each moment. When the bell rings, it's time for zazen. We sit down and we face the wall, we arrange ourselves, we arrange our robes just as the Buddha did, or our clothing, and we enter mindfulness. We enter a broad awareness. when the clappers sound we eat our breakfast in silence together not as in quite an amazing manifestation it was wonderful to eat breakfast this morning it was an excellent breakfast too but each person is acting independently and yet we're all moving through this activity

[23:24]

through the same activity in generally the same way, each with absolute authenticity, with individuality and yet harmony. So in that sense we're creating, with each of us manifesting the composure of eating breakfast in the zendero, we're creating this large composition that we call the Sangha, that we call the community, that is changing every moment. But, we don't... since we fall short of enlightenment, we don't stay there. This is why composure is not a state that you attain, it's a practice. It's an aspiration. In the Platform Sutra, The Sixth Ancestor says we should train ourselves not to move, not to be caught by the supposed or actual faults of others or the difficulty in our life or conditions.

[24:39]

He calls this quality imperturbability. We might call it not being caught by things not being pushed around by circumstances. But it's important to recognize as well that, for example, even though I had composure when I burned my hand, that did not make The composer had to be right in the middle of the discomfort. I got a piece, Bob Rosenbaum, who most of you know, he's not here, right? Sent me something he had written. He was also thinking just quite independently about these same issues.

[25:43]

And what he wrote was, don't make the mistake of thinking that composure eliminates pain. It doesn't. What it does, instead, is place it in a different context, which alters our experience. When you arrange the elements of your experience to function in a more harmonious whole, you are like an artist painting on a canvas, or a musician arranging notes into counterpoint and chords. So in this sense, in the macro sense, micro sense, you're finding composure. You're enjoying all the action of your senses. Listening to the vivid sounds of the birds. In the macro sense, you're composing your life with its joys and pains, with its quiet moments of meditation, and with its actions.

[27:05]

This is not a static situation. I think we're not trying to create something that is formal and fixed, like a composition that you could write down in notes and then, you know, like classical music that somebody else could play. Nobody else can play this composition. You actually have to be a jazz musician who can't even play the same thing that she played ten minutes ago. It's gone. It's the composition of the moment. So, These are some general thoughts about composure, composure as Dazen, but something else came up to me, which is just to think, just to realize, I was thinking about another expression of Suzuki Roshi's, and it's the near enemy of composure.

[28:07]

He uses this expression, looks like good. So it's the quality that masquerades as essence, but it's really a deception. Usually it's the person who's doing it is the one who is fooling themselves, because everybody else can see this, right? But sometimes we're fooled. Sometimes we think, that person's a really good Zen student. Look at how they sit. Really good. I'll never be like that. Huh? So I was thinking about this the other day. We went to visit some cousins. We met at a restaurant in St. Helena. Is that how you pronounce it? And we drove back at sunset down this beautiful road, side road. lined up, think about this in terms of photography, lined up by the side of the road in every place where the valley opened up were people with cameras.

[29:22]

And it's like, oh, I can take this. This is just like a calendar. No, actually, it's just like the Napa Valley. It's not like a calendar, you know. But if I take this with my camera, then I can take this picture of something perfect and beautiful. And it looks like good because how many times have we seen this? You know, why do you need, you know, this is just my prejudice, right? You know, you can go and get the calendar which has the picture or you can make it yourself. Anyway, again the sixth ancestor has some words on this which we read last time. We have a group that's been studying the Sutra. And what he says is, an unenlightened person may appear physically unmoved or stable. So in other words, may look like good, right? But as soon as he or she speaks, they talk about merits and demerits, strengths and weaknesses, good or evil, and they turn away from the past.

[30:33]

So, because they want to look like good, they fall into the pit of good and bad. That's not what we're looking for. We're not looking for perfect Zen students. If we were, I think this place would be cleared out within about 30 seconds. We're looking, when Suzukuro just said, We're looking for people to be authentic. We're also looking to be kind, various other qualities, thoughtful, mindful, but essentially to be you in the truest, largest sense. So I bring this up just to say that we don't always know what composure is or what it looks like. And I can't tell you.

[31:41]

The responsibility that you have is to find it yourself. That is the responsibility of this practice. To really find it yourself and to recognize that, to see. And I think this is what really drew me to the practice when I first came. There were people who, maybe they did look like good, But actually I don't think so. The people that I admired were people who were very, they just seemed authentic. They could be warm, open, helpful, irritable, and steady in what they were doing. And that was really inspiring to me because I felt thoroughly uncomposed. I felt like I was being battered around by really difficult emotions and circumstances and I wanted, I saw them and I thought, I wonder if there's a way to become like this.

[32:49]

And over the years, I'm not sure, I don't think I have come to that, but I really do see myself differently than I did 20 years ago and I see there's a lot of people here who've been here for many years, and I see us all, shall I say, growing up together. And even though some of us are in our 60s, it's like we still are growing up. And that means constantly trying to find the balance in our lives, to find the balance literally, as we're sitting in Zazen. To fall away and find it again. And when we find it, or when we live, not just finding it, but when we live with that effort, it has an effect on those around us. It's not an effect that we can calculate in any measurable or objective way, but we see it.

[33:56]

We begin to see it around us. We begin to see how the circumstances of our lives and the people around us mysteriously compose themselves. Now this is not a universal rule. Some people will not do it and some of us will not be able to somehow transmit that perhaps. But we should aspire to this. That is the purpose. If there's a purpose I should be stricken for saying this. If there's a purpose to sitting zazen, to me, that's it. To be composed in the largest sense, and to take responsibility for the larger composition of our life, our community, and our world. So, those are some

[34:59]

Just some brief thoughts on this today. We have about five minutes or so for questions and thoughts, so I'd like to open it up to you. Dean. Thanks, Alan, for the accessible language, which was very accessible to your talk. Thank you. when you were talking about how you burnt your finger and then you talked about how what happened after that and you know and I did something recently where I basically just stepped out of the realm of composure and after the fact you know my own emotional way I was I felt like I was composed as much as an emotional person can be but I kept thinking about the moment when I wasn't composed and coming up to that moment and I'm wondering I didn't hear you talk a lot about that you weren't paying attention and you didn't see or even if you thought about that you didn't see that you were doing that and how you felt about that you did something and it was because you weren't composed or weren't paying attention and I guess I'm wondering is that something that we

[36:24]

what has happened, it's done, you don't think about it because now you know what you've done and you're dealing with composure from now on. What happens to that, what got me to this point of not being composed? How do you engage that? That's a really good question. Thank you. That's the thing that was missing. Well, I think if you or I were Zen masters we would not spend time in recollection. Because, at least, I don't know about you, at least I'm not. I thought about, no, I did think about that, just like, in that sense, my, and I've had, this happens to me a lot, happened to me later that night, in a different, no, the next night, in a different way, because I was anxious about something, I did something else. There was no particular harm in it, but somebody else was irritated by what I did.

[37:29]

And I had to... He brought it to me. I hope this is nothing too... He brought it to me when he told me, because I hadn't noticed it. I had to think, what was my state of mind in that moment? Why did I do that thing that upset him? And I had to apologize. Yes, I reflect on that and that's exactly where, you know, burning my hand, there was no one to forgive or no one to chastise. It was just a lesson that I learned. Some things that people do have wider consequences and there is the grist for another talk which is on forgiveness. how do you, what is the process that one has to go through, first of all, to forgive oneself, and then to forgive others, so that we can move, because if we're caught in the mistake, then we can't move on.

[38:34]

So, I think, in that sense, if there's no real harm done, if it's just me and my body or something, then I can be amused by it. If I do something that's painful to somebody, I'm not amused. How do you learn from it? I mean, if it's something that you know, it's just a matter of fact, you just weren't paying attention. I mean, you just weren't paying attention. What do you do? You tell yourself, next time I'll pay attention? You're doing that anyway. No. What I tell myself, okay, let me just tell you, What Sojan has worked with me on for the last 20 years has been at least his perception of my energy. So the question is increasingly to be mindful of my energy. So if I make a mistake, it's like what I was saying with this other friend at Tassajara, it's like, oh, what was my energy like right then?

[39:45]

Where was I? That's what I need to reflect on, not to be unexcitable or boring or some kind of Zen automaton, but to really this is mindfulness, to be mindful in action of my energy and this is really, it helps me a lot and it's just it's not something you can throw a switch it's actually a cultivation and you know, if you set the intention to do this you can really learn a lot about oneself and you can learn about others and the lessons are painful but They're really important, because not to learn it is much more painful. Thank you. Really useful question. Walter? What about decomposition? What about this? The composure has this sense of creating a self in a moment, but what about jumping off?

[40:51]

What about decomposition? Well, first of all, That's one way you may put it. It may not be about composing the self. It may be about composing something or composing in a way that's non-self. However, composure is one side and decomposition is the other. Life is one side. Passing away of things is the other. That's always going to happen. That's a given. That's why composure is a practice. It's why what I said was we're always falling out of balance and making an effort to regain balance, but it's within whatever circumstance we have. Someday I won't be able to sit here. I could have some illness or something, so that ability would be lost. How do I find my composure right there? ultimately you're very composed when you're lying in your coffin, you know, in the state of decomposition.

[41:59]

You know, so where one is alive, one makes an effort towards composure, recognizing that one could never find it, never stay There's a Zen teacher, Nelson Foster. I once wrote something and he called me up really irritated on the phone. He said, I wrote something, you know, some Buddhist truism like, oh, stay in the present moment. He called me up really angry. He said, you can't stay anywhere. And it's like, whoa, I got that one. I got that message. So you can't stay in composure. This is where constantly the effort is to renew it. Again, and this is why Sojan Gosvami is giving zazen instructions. The instruction is don't move.

[43:02]

But really, we're constantly moving because we're not anything fixed. So thank you. One more question. Q. Is composure natural? A. Yes. Composure is natural. The universe is in complete perfect composure all the time. But I'm not. Q. What about chaos? A. Chaos is composure. What's chaos? Chaos is a word, to me, chaos is a word that comes out of a certain fear of disorder. I'd have to look at the Greek root of it, but wasn't chaos a god?

[44:04]

But there is an order at the same time as We don't always live in such a way that relaxes. In the same way, at the end of the... The story about the fan? That the nature of enlightenment is all pervasive and the master fans himself and said, you know, Basically what's being said is, how do you practice? What do you do? How do you take responsibility for creating? Because even though everything is in complete composure, it's also always changing.

[45:10]

And so how do you take responsibility for everything? That's at least a beginning. So thank you very much. Enjoy the rest of this lovely day.

[45:26]

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