the practice of suchness and suffering. So we're in the middle of this practice commitment period that some of you are doing, participating informally, but all of us are studying this song of the Jewel Mara Samadhi or Precious Mara Samadhi. And this is about... The subject of this, the topic of this is the Dharma, the reality, the teaching of suchness, of reality, and the practice of how we meet and engage with reality. This is what has been intimately transmitted by the Buddhist ancestors. But also how we practice this. How do we... Now that we've heard about it, now that we have it, how do we take care of it?

[01:09]

How do we preserve it well? So a lot of what this teaching is about has to do with how we hear the teaching, how the teaching is conveyed, how we study reality, how we engage in reality, how we meet it. And this two-page text we've just chanted has a lot of wonderful and intriguing and mysterious images that evoke aspects of how we might meet this reality of suchness, how we see this a reality of suchness as we sit and face the wall and face ourselves and experience this body-mind here tonight. And there are many aspects to this, how language doesn't reach it.

[02:15]

As Hogetsu spoke of yesterday, ba-ba-wa-wa, wa-wa-wa-wa-wa. And yet, when we talk about it, or we listen to the sounds of each other's breathing, how do we make this? So our practice is about the study of reality. Reality constantly flows. And yet this is not some abstract academic study. The point of all of our wanderings The point of all of this exploration and settling and meandering and so forth, the point of engaging reality is how do we help awaken beings, including all the beings on our cushions?

[03:21]

So, amongst other things that this long teaching poem by our founder, the founder of this branch of Zen in China, Dongshan, in the ninth century, amongst the other things it says, is that, you know, our practice is to sit still. Outside still. When we sit still, there's a chance that we can see, we can feel, we can hear the wooden man start to sing, the stone woman get up dancing. When we sit still, some energy arises, some creativity arises. And yet, outside still, it may be that inside we are trembling, like tethered colts or cowering rats.

[04:30]

Part of the forms, the structure, the mudra, the mandala of our practice, the form of sitting upright in this noble posture, in this dignified posture, is that inside we may feel like trapped rats. One image of this, this is a yogic image, the snake in bamboo. We sit upright. Of course, our backbones are not exactly like bamboo. We all have a curve in our spine, but still, part of taking the form of upright sitting, and part of taking the forms of sitting in a zendo like this, where there's a particular form, particular forms to how a meditation space is constructed.

[05:38]

It's like a snake in bamboo. Very difficult for a snake. Snake likes to wriggle. And we're in the year of the snake. And yet the snake is... Here. Stuck. Upright. Not moving. Upright and straight. Like cowering rats. And it says in the middle of this song, the ancient sages grieved for them. Thanks to the ancient sages grieving, we have this Dharma. It's a strong word. Okay, so I have all these old Chinese characters with me. Ancient sages grieved. Grief, what is grief?

[06:47]

Maybe all of us have experienced someone in our life, someone we loved whose past is no longer with us. Hmm. Kanashii. Sorrowful. Sad, pitiful, sorrowful. Grieving. So the ancient sages grieved for all the suffering beings. So, you know, it says in the Lotus Sutra that the reason that Buddhas appear in the world is because they are suffering beings and need their help.

[07:59]

So, you know, when we're talking about this practice of suchness, a lot of it feels like we're talking about, oh, how do we find this reality? How do we find this mysterious essence of Zen truth? And, you know, that's a lot of what this practice is about. And yet underneath it, this came up in the discussion yesterday, well, there's also, you know, there are flowers and there are also bombs, someone said. So the ancient sages grieved for these tethered cults, these cowering rats, and offered them dharma. And, you know, the prescription and cure offered here, you know, maybe it sounds to us a little too simple. Led by their inverted views, they take black for white. That's the suffering people of the world.

[09:13]

This inverted view, inverted means upside down, topsy-turvy. Sometimes this character for inverted is translated as perverted. But really it just means upside down. It just means that we see things, we don't see things clearly. Identifying with all of us as suffering beings. We have views that are, you know, upside down. We don't see the wholeness of the world. We see suffering. We take black for white. Well, I don't know. When inverted thinking stops, the affirming mind naturally accords. Well, what does that mean? Does it mean that when we see that everything is really okay, then there's no more suffering? That doesn't work. That's not it. What is this affirming mind? What is this natural accord? So we have another mystery here.

[10:13]

I like this line, the affirming mind naturally accords. That feels good. I like saying that. What does it mean, the affirming mind? What is it we affirm? Can we affirm this and this and just this? Can we affirm the troubles of the world? And it says, if you want to follow in the tracks of the ancient sages, please observe these sages. And then it talks about this one on the verge of realizing the Buddha way contemplated a tree for 10 kalpas. So this refers to a figure in the Lotus Sutra who spent 10 kalpas. Do you all know what a kalpa is, how long that is? You all know that, right? Is there anyone who doesn't know that? Jan, you don't know what a kelpa is?

[11:24]

Okay, so I'll, for Jan, I'll talk about a kelpa. A kelpa is a very long period of time, and one description of it is, so I've talked about this before, but one version of it is there's a bird that's flying over the top of Mount Everest, and once every hundred years, she has a piece of silk in her talons, and she brushes the top of Mount Everest once every hundred years. The time it takes to to what to wear down on Everest to nothing in that way is one count. So anyway, for 10 of those, this ancient Buddha, or actually this person who was on the verge of realizing the Buddha way, he was sitting under the Buddha tree, under the Bodhi tree, he was just, just, just, Anyway, what is it like to almost be Buddha? This is the bodhisattva way.

[12:30]

This is really the practice of reality. So, what does that mean? Aside from all this poetry, how do we help suffering beings? Failure to serve is no help, it says later. How do we serve? What does it mean to help? Turning away and touching are both wrong. We can't get a hold of it, but we can't ignore it either. So, what is the sadness? You know, there's also this possibility of great wonder, great mystery, great creative, joy and openness in our experience of this wonderful short life. And yet there's also sadness.

[13:31]

Even ancient sages grieved at the sadness of beings trapped like cowering rats. So what do we do? How do we practice this suchness? Part of it is just You know, part of a Zen person's job is just paying attention. What is this? What is this suchness? What's this world I'm living in? What's this life I'm doing here? What does it mean? How is it? And we stop, and the middle of our busyness is, you know, Take some time each day or many days to stop and sit and be present and upright and, oh, what's going on? What is it like? Who is this person under my cushion? Apart from all our ideas and all our efforts to control who we are and our reality around us and all of that stuff, then how do we serve?

[14:34]

How do we help the world around us, the people around us, our family, our friends, our co-workers? the work we do, our neighbors, how do we take care of being helpful in that situation? And maybe it feels like sitting under this tree for 10 calculus, just sitting still, and being ready and willing to respond when there's something we can do to help. And if you're paying attention, there are things you can do. So this almost Buddha, who did eventually become a Buddha after ten kalpas, he was practicing kind of hidden, functioning secretly, kind of a fool. Maybe he was an idiot, I don't know. But it just continued. So there's no one right response.

[15:40]

Each of us has our own way of being helpful and serving. And there's many situations all around us. And, you know, there's taking care of all the different levels of community around us. And also I'm aware of the You know, there's so many problems in our society and in our world. And so I talked about in February when I went to Washington, D.C. because of the tar sands pipeline that The oil companies want to bring the Keystone XL pipeline. They want to bring from Canada to Texas. And many people went to Washington to protest that. And it's still up to President Obama what to do. But just this weekend, there was a big pipeline spill in Minnesota, not so far from us.

[16:49]

And I think just yesterday, there was what they're calling a major a pipeline break in Arkansas, lots and lots of tar sands, oil that's inundating many homes. This is not as bad as it will be if it's the tar sand, the Keystone Pipeline, when that pipe breaks and pipelines break. The industry assures us it won't. They say that the break a year ago in the Kalamazoo River near where Nathan lives is still not cleaned up. I don't know. But there's still time to urge President Obama and the State Department to not okay the Keystone Pipeline. So you can go and check on 350.org. to see how to respond to all of that, or you can call President Obama, 202-456-1111, and then you can ask me later for the phone number again.

[18:03]

So, you know, there are serious dangers to the health of, you know, this will affect climate change and climate damage. There are serious, serious threats to the health of the planet and a couple weeks or so ago there was Cecile Pineda as an author was here reading from talking about her book Devil's Tango, how I learned the Fukushima step by step. A few of you were here when she was reading and I started reading it and I'll talk about it more when I finish. There's a copy of it available in our library. And the Fukushima nuclear meltdown, still leaking radiation, was a global catastrophe. Of course, you won't read about it in the mass media. So there's serious problems in our world. Well, how do we respond to this?

[19:07]

Well, I don't have the answers, but I think This study of suchness, this grief the ancient sages had is not irrelevant. This study of suchness is looking at how do we respond. Failure to serve is no help. So it's all connected. Our own awareness of our own suffering Our own self-clinging is connected to the suffering of the planet. It's not separate. But I deeply believe that awareness transforms things. That change happens. We know it happens. That being willing to be present and upright allows some inverted thinking to stop.

[20:16]

That individually and collectively, as human beings, that the affirming mind can naturally accord. When we start doing that individually and in communities, small communities like this, something happens. And there's a group affirming mind. human beings can start affirming, wanting to take care of not just little spaces like this, but of our world. So, studying this Dharma of Suchness, studying this process of what is it like to be present in upbringing?

[21:23]

What is it like to not turn away from the suffering of the world? Not try and get a hold of it either. We can't control what happens. We can express our opinions, and it's just our opinions. You can say what you see, or see what you say. This practice of suchness, right in the middle of causes and conditions, time and season, We can find something that is serene and illuminating, that allows some openness, some flexibility, some creativity. We don't have to control everything in our lives. We can meet the shifting of stuff coming up.

[22:30]

With practice hidden, functioning secretly, like a fool, like an idiot. And sometimes, you know, the wooden man starts to sing and some woman gets up dancing. It's not something we can figure out. It's not reached by feelings or consciousness. How could it involve deliberation? So this guy sat under this tree for ten calipers. What a thing to do. And yet sometimes our points meet head on. And sometimes we just miss.

[23:35]

And that's okay. So, again, all of these images and strange phrases and stuff are just to point us to how to meet our life, how to meet the world. How do we use this study and engagement and practice of suchness to take care of our lives and the world? Penetrate the source, travel the pathways, embrace the territory, treasure the roads. Please respect this, do not neglect it. So, does anyone have any comments or responses for songs or dances to share with us?

[24:50]

Yes, Paul. Was this originally sung as a song? I just don't know. It's called the song, it's a character cock, which means a cat, and I don't know how you pronounce it in Chinese. So whether it actually, whether that was a rhetorical thing and it was just a verse, or whether there was actually a melody, I don't, you know, there are people who study, this is Tang Dynasty, ninth century Chinese verse, and yeah, there were ninth century, Chinese melodies, but I think they're all lost. Paul Kopp's going to be speaking here later this year. He's a University of Chicago scholar of Tang Dynasty stuff, and maybe he knows if there's any. I'm going to see him later this week. I'll ask him if he knows anything about it. If anyone knows anything about it.

[25:53]

If you want to try and put a melody to this, go ahead. We could have a modern American tune to this. Alan Sanaki is going to be here later in the year. Actually, he's going to be performing in a concert, but he has a song from the Lotus Sutra that some Tassajara students made up. So, you know, do it. question about the kalpas. I find it fascinating, I think it's maybe a holdover from earlier Indian thought, but this business of using numbers and including really, really large numbers. So, as I understand it, there's something called a grand kalpa that's something like 1.4

[27:00]

trillion years. I mean, this is what I read on Wikipedia anyway. And so a single kalpa, and supposedly the grand kalpa is made up of four kalpas. So in other words, it seems like this works on two levels. One is it just needs a really, really long time. And like wild things going on. I can respond to that, and then we'll get to your second question. Yeah, I never heard that Grand Kalpa thing, but there is a system, there's a cosmology, and it does come from Indian cosmology. And in India, they do like to have these huge astronomical, and they use astronomical metaphors in these large numbers as a kind of way of getting us outside of any limited perspective that we, you know, to get us beyond our little limited, you know, human stuff.

[28:07]

But there is this idea of four kalpas, a kalpa of arising, a kalpa of duration, a kalpa of declining, and the empty kalpa. So this, you know, I think of that as corresponding with a Big Bang and then the end of the Big Bang. So they have many of those. So, you know, I don't know how that fits in with string theory or whatever. There are, yeah, so there are many series of kalpas. So that's right, but yeah, so there, so yeah, it's a very long time and there's a whole system about that, yeah. It's just extraordinary, I mean, the idea that people so long ago, I mean, as compared to, say, the Western monotheistic traditions, which purport to have a long view, but then when they jump to the long view, it's more of just eternity or something like that, but it's not.

[29:11]

Because it's the perspective in terms of there being so many worlds, an infinity, pretty much, of worlds where there are other Buddhas and there are other I think of eternity as a real cop-out, you know, it's a way of not, it's, you know, just like ignoring a really wide perspective. Practically speaking, though, I think that thinking in terms of these long time durations is a very practical way of seeing a perspective on, you know, well, I mean, the stuff that's happening now, there've always been terrible things going on, you know, just here, you know, the whole cycles of slavery and racism and genocide of Native Americans and so forth. There have always been terrible things going on. So when I talk about what's happening with the climate or with the horrible horrors of nuclear power, I don't know. There have always been terrible things going on. You know, is this a different scale?

[30:15]

I don't know. But having a perspective of a very long time is part of the Bodhisattva idea, I think. It comes from this Indian origins, but it also just comes from, we have this, you know, we have Shakyamuni Buddha 2,500 years ago. We have Buddhas before Buddha, and Buddhas before them. We'll have Buddhas in the future. We have this perspective, and yet we also have the urgency of now. fierce urgency of now, as Dr. King talked about. So to see this range of temporal perspectives, I think, enriches our sense of the possibilities of response. And to say, to talk about eternity is just, you know, what is that? So anyway, that's just my feel. That's just my opinion. Well, that sort of goes to my second question that had more to do with suffering, but I think I'll just think about that a little more. Thank you.

[31:16]

Okay. We can come back to your suffering later. Yes, Jan. My mind is actually kind of racing, and I'm going from one subject to another. Well, just take one. The original thing I was going to say is about Terry Chemist Williams, when she interviewed Timothy Christopher. And she asked him, how could you be so serene? Because he was going to go to court, and he was going to get convicted, and he was going to get a sentence. So I'm not sure who those people are, and probably other people aren't either. So why don't you just briefly say who you're talking about? Well, Terry Chemist Williams. is a writer, and she writes about the desert, and she writes about, she wrote a book called Refuge, and it was about her mother's cancer, and how she handled watching her mother die.

[32:19]

And the refuge that she went to, actually is the place I went to, it's called Brigham City Bird Refuge, and she weaves in her, experience of the refuge with the experience of the devastation that she's feeling about other things. And she also wrote the Desert Technology or Trilogy, I'm not sure which it is, and she writes poetry and so on. And Timothy Christopher was a young man who, he went to an auction Oh, he's the one who bid on a, was it a forest? Well, no, there's not a forest there that I know of, but they were auctioning off federal parcels to people who were going to drill for oil. Uninvited, the only reason he got in was he wore a suit and tie that day or something.

[33:31]

And he had some of these little carts that he pulled up for auctions. And he wasn't going to do anything, but they started auctioning these federal parcels. And people were getting 10 acres for $8 and 20 acres for $10 and things like that. And so he started digging it up and increasing the price. And he had no money. And so everybody got very angry at him and he bit it up and he had done something illegal, he had completely disrupted the auction. And so he had done something illegal and he was tried and convicted and he got two years for this, he's in jail right now I'm pretty sure. Anyway, during this interview, it was in Orion Magazine, and during the interview, Terri Tevis Williams mentioned that her family and her friends say to her, you are married to sorrow.

[34:35]

And she says, I am not married to sorrow, but I do refuse to look away. Yeah. Good. I think that's our practice, is to not look away from sorrow. Sometimes we need to take a break and, you know, have fun and recreate and enjoy ourselves. That's important too. We need to take a rest. But we have to not, you know, so getting, being married to suffering isn't the answer, but turning away from it isn't it either. So sustaining the gaze, being willing to pay attention to the sadness. And I know that I think everybody in this room, in some ways, attends to sadness in one way or another, attends to suffering in one way or another, is willing to pay attention.

[35:37]

And that's our job as bodhisattvas, as healers, So how do we keep paying attention? And that's our practice, to sit and see our own suffering, which is not separate from the suffering of friends and family and loved ones and the world, and just be willing to sit upright in the middle of it, and be confused in the middle of it. And maybe not for 10 calibers, maybe just for 30 or 40 minutes until the bell rings.

[36:19]

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