Good morning. Between my eyesight and the weather, I'm not quite sure what to do. Either too warm or too cold, and I can't see. Do I have the right glasses? As some of you know, our friend and fellow practitioner Glenn Ray was just here for our summer retreat and then stayed on for another few weeks. Glenn gave us a gift of this piece in the window here of a blind sea turtle resting on the heart of an old spruce tree that he found on the beach just outside of Juneau,

[01:00]

made from some kind of unnamed green stone that he finds up in that part of Alaska. So as a way of welcoming the blind sea turtle I thought I'd like to talk a little bit about this myth about the blind sea turtle. And of course up there on the wall behind Sarah we have a painting by actually a pastel by Esther Roberts, Harry Roberts' wife, also of the blind sea turtle. And I'd like to both describe this description about the blind sea turtle as it relates to all of us, connected in a way I think, with regret.

[02:03]

So, first of all, the blind sea turtle is described as a sea turtle who lives in the bottom of the ocean for hundreds of thousands of kelpas. Not the realm of time that we even approach having a sense of. with these great passages of time, comes up to the surface of the ocean and finds a plank with a missing knot. So there's a hole in the plank. He not only comes to the surface, but his nose comes through the hole in the plank. This is the description of the rarity of encountering the Buddha Dharma. Not much, not often.

[03:12]

So, as I've been contemplating this sea turtle that Glenn made that I have known for a number of years at his place in Juneau, where the sea turtle welcomed whoever would go to the meditation room to practice. And then, of course, as having a sea turtle swim here, I've been contemplating this pointing out about the rarity of encountering the teachings and implicit in that the preciousness when one does.

[04:13]

And there is of course in different ways and different lineages but particularly expressed in Zen, don't waste time. Don't put off whatever one can do in engaging with the Dharma, the teachings, in particular from the Buddha and all of the awakened, realized ancestors. I don't know how it is for any of you, but I know for myself, when I look back over the years since I first began practicing in this tradition, I recognize situations or circumstances where I missed some opportunity for meeting

[05:27]

the Dharma. And I almost always can conjure up some explanation or justification for having missed out on something. But nevertheless, what I think is important, at least it seems to be for me, is to let those situations where I have a sense of having missed out on some opportunity to help me notice when I might be slipping into that moment of turning away rather than turning forward. My experience is that if I keep showing up, to use the language of our theme in the summer retreat, I'm less likely to not notice a turning away from a situation or an opportunity.

[06:46]

And, in fact, my experience is that daily life presents me with these opportunities over and over again. I met with someone recently who has been in the midst of a very difficult set of circumstances in his life. And as we sat together and I listened to this person talking, I was reminded again of the challenge of knowing what I don't know, the double bind of noticing what I don't know, acknowledging what I don't know, which I think in our

[07:58]

culture can be especially challenging. And climbing over whatever conditioning I have about, well, I should know, or I can figure this out by myself. Or, you know, variations on the theme varying from one mind to another. But nevertheless, what I'm quite interested in is how do I cultivate the willingness to see what I don't see? And what are the ingredients for increasing the likelihood that I'll be able to do that? Having good company, fellow practitioners, can make a big difference.

[09:09]

Regularly sitting in the student seat, even if one is also sitting in the teaching seat, to regularly sit in the student seat with some willingness to be in a feedback system, if you will, also helps. So at least this morning, what I am resting with is the importance of my cultivating my willingness to see what I don't see, and in so many cases, what I would rather not see. Over and over again I'm struck by how crucial the first of the six perfections is, the cultivation of generosity.

[10:14]

This cultivation of the willingness to see what I don't want to see goes more effectively if I'm doing that cultivation of that willingness with the quality of the heart-mind of generosity. of kindness. Because often what we are accustomed to not seeing is embedded with the potential experience of suffering. Do I really want to say this? I deeply appreciate the understanding and hue, if you will, coming from Buddhism as it's been practiced for so many centuries in Asian cultures, describing a teacher as spiritual friend.

[11:38]

I think that that quality of friendship, the implicit relationality is crucial. It's so easy for us to get isolated with, well, I should be able to figure this, whatever this is, out for myself. So I also think that an accompanying cultivation is the willingness to be taught. The willingness to be open to receiving teachings as they will come if I'm open to them. And they may not come in certifiable Buddhist packaging. The Buddha didn't have a corner on the market of what's so, but rather had the experiences of how to uncover, how to see, how to experience directly what is so.

[13:08]

And of course, sometimes our lives provide a kind of slap in the face for. Oh, I was asleep. Oh, I was gone somewhere. Oh. So I'm also talking about cultivating the willingness for the slap in the side of the head. with appreciation, maybe even joy. And how quickly what arrives is, why didn't I see that sooner? Or, what's wrong with me? Or, you know, coyote's line, I knew that, I just forgot.

[14:17]

But more commonly, that big wagging finger about, should and ought and what's wrong with me, etc. Our friend the judge. In the last week or so I've had several experiences where what I've heard from different people is variations on the theme of feeling surprised about something. Feeling surprised that what I expected, maybe didn't know I expected, but feeling surprised that what I expected isn't what turned out. And then how quickly anger arises because so and so didn't do what I think would have been reasonable for them to have done.

[15:33]

In that moment, there's a door closed to my being able to put myself in another person's shoes and wonder, be curious about, hmm, What are they expressing to me about their own mind stream rather than the habit of taking whatever comes to us personally and then reacting with, what do you mean? Fear and anger more likely arise. I know that some of you have heard me go on and on about the importance of curiosity and interest, and I probably will continue to go on and on about curiosity and interest, particularly curiosity and interest

[16:50]

In that moment when I feel surprised, when something happens that I don't want or don't like. In that moment when I have divided the world into friends and enemies. So, for me anyway, the blind sea turtle is not only about remembering the preciousness of discovering and uncovering this path which proposes the possibility of liberation from suffering, but there is also the

[17:55]

pointing out, if you will, about the condition of being a blind sea turtle living at the bottom of the ocean. I sometimes think of this path of meditation practice as the cultivation of being more accident prone. And the sea turtles finding the knot hole, the vacant knot, is a good example or instance of an accident, a kind of accident. the word accident, not happily followed by crash.

[19:04]

I think there's this very interesting edge between the cultivation of my capacity for those moments of the accident of waking up, of, oh, that moment of seeing what is so. There's a kind of tension between that willingness to cultivate one's openness to those moments of what I'm calling accident And attention with expecting the accident of a flash, a moment of being present, being awake. As I think probably all of you know, all of us know, the more focused I am on what I want to happen, what could happen, what I want to understand, all that about

[20:21]

the future, minimizes my capacity for the accident of that moment, that flash of being awake. Our friend Joe Goodwin, who was here recently, who worked with Glenn to make the altar as beautiful as it has been. He painted the surface behind the Buddha's head there. And Joe was telling us about meeting somebody in, I think it was in Oklahoma, a kind of as he put it, one of the old boys, who said, I've been having one foot in the future and one foot in the past, and I've been pissing on the present.

[21:38]

Pretty good. The pissing of inattention. And of course, there are those moments where there is a certain kind of insight or being awake that comes even when we have a strong habit of being focused on the past and future. There are certain life experiences that have so much energy that we wake up no matter what. But I also want to recommend paying attention to the little, almost invisible moments of slipping away from the possibility of showing up.

[22:52]

I talked, I think recently, somewhere, I'm never aware, about this analogy that the late Tara Tulku used to bring up periodically, that in our practice, what we're doing is akin to having a pile of tinder and two fire sticks. And we can do one of several things. If we pick up the fire sticks and we rub them together and we keep rubbing, will get a spark with which to light the tinder. But of course, what is more common is rubbing the sticks and then stopping, rubbing the sticks and then stopping, rubbing the sticks and then stopping. No spark, no lighting the tinder. So there's not only this

[24:02]

encountering of this path that is embedded in the story about the blind sea turtle. But there's also something between request and requirement for constancy. And I wonder how interested each of us is about What pulls me away from constancy? What pulls me away from understanding the possibility of picking up a practice in this hand and uncovering for myself how to work a practice, not only in formal meditation practice, but in the interstices of my daily life? Oh, but I need a day off.

[25:10]

A day off from the possibility of being awake. In that moment, is there the possibility of being curious about that thought? Oh, is that reliable? Or is that just some old habit of the mind. I recommend for any of you who have not been out in the walking garden where the Jizo mound is, that area where they're all bits of red cloth and paper messages of one kind or another.

[26:16]

All offerings that somebody has made on the occasion of the passing of some born or unborn child. Over the last few weeks Glenn has been puttering out there. He originally made a kind of stone seat from some of the stone that's here in the garden, which I thought was very beautiful and next thing I knew it had traveled over to the top of the mound and become a cairn. one of the most ancient style of gravesites, a big pile of rock. And over the course of the last few weeks, Glenn and I have had conversations about what it's like to feel deeply connected with where one is.

[27:38]

And I watched him in his delight with the clay soil and the rocks. You can feel that delight in the steps that he made that look like they've been there for a very long time. As some of you know, I've been working on a book of Harry Robert's. And in working with the stories and poems that are in this manuscript, over and over again, I've come up to Harry's both overt teaching, but his

[28:56]

covert teaching, if you will, teaching by the example of his life about this notion that to go deep we have to go slow. Something that Tess Gallagher pointed out in one of her poems. Something that we are very likely to miss given the time we live in. time and place where there's so much emphasis on not going deep, on staying on the surface and doing things fast. And then something happens to throw us up against the consequences of

[29:57]

staying on the surface and fast like this completely remarkable blackout. I heard a very brief snippet as I was driving home yesterday from an errand I had to do where a man who lives on Long Island and works in Manhattan was still Friday night at dusk trying to figure out how to get home. Descriptions of people in business suits with briefcases sleeping in doorways something that homeless people know a lot about.

[31:02]

I think this blackout is a wonderful example of the kind of whack on the side of the head that can happen to us directly and vicariously. How many of you remember the last big earthquake here in the Bay Area? And how many of us said, why can't we live like this with each other all the time? So what I'm lobbying for is not to take on anybody's say-so that the Buddhadharma is precious.

[32:22]

I think each person has to find that out for his or herself. But whatever we experience as so, whatever we uncover that seems to lead us to being more and more able to be present and awake in attention, is precious. And to consider the possibility that each of us has the ability to not piss away our capacity to be completely alive.

[33:29]

And to be curious about what hinders that possibility. One of the things I've learned in the years of my own following this path is that one can, in time, be curious about just about everything. Even with a clothespin on my nose, I can be curious. This is the hazard of a clock. It's been saying 4 minutes past 11 for the last 40 minutes. So I wonder if there's anything any of you would like to bring up or talk about or wonder about?

[34:45]

Years ago I read about an Indian saint named Ramakrishna who lived in a temple right on the Ganges. And somebody came to him and said, help me find God. And Ramakrishna walked him into the Ganges and put his hands on his shoulders and submerged him totally. And when the bubbles almost stopped, Ramakrishna lifted him back up and said, when you want God the way you wanted that next breath, you'll find God. In the two weeks of the retreat, I did find a quieter place in myself. A couple of, three years ago, I got hit upside the head. I've been meditating a long time, but it took up close real pain to really motivate me.

[36:00]

I'm back in the world now, a month since the retreat. This past week, my company announced it's closing our Boston office, 50 people, probably without a job. It's the group I work closest with. I got assigned to another job temporarily in the local office with a man who's about to go on paternity leave, and I know nothing about what this area so I'm trying to learn it so fast before his wife will. So I'm here for the weekend because I've tasted well both the pain of being hit upside the head and at a loss and the showing up briefly from sitting for a couple of weeks.

[37:08]

And I'm sitting here this weekend solving work problems. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, my experience is that there are a variety of tested, heralded ways of staying in touch with that deeper capacity that we all have. And the taste that can happen, for example, in an extended retreat, is mostly important from the standpoint of having tasted the possibility of the heart-mind.

[38:35]

And then the challenge is, how do I not let myself forget that experience? And to appreciate, I mean, what you're describing is this great pointing out that everything changes, nothing remains the same. And how we can get caught in reaction when yet another instance of everything changes, nothing remains the same arrives. closing the Boston office, you having to learn a whole new situation, with the whisper over here of, oh, well, maybe I won't have a job. Or what if I can't do this? What if I can't learn this in the time that I have to learn it in? I don't even know what that is.

[39:38]

All those places that we can go in the mind from fear. And there are two suggestions I would make. One is the not now practice. Sunday afternoon at four, I am willing to let myself spend an hour doing some strategic thinking about what is in front of me at work. And really make a serious commitment to an appropriate time and circumstance. And then between now and then, not now. And the other suggestion really comes from something that a woman I practiced with a number of years ago was a public health nurse and was working in a big hospital in the East Bay.

[40:40]

And after a long period of training in meditation, she went back to this work. She began the practice of just before she would go into a patient's room, she'd stop just outside the door and align the body and take one full inhalation and one full exhalation. And she said what blew her mind was that even when there was a call to go in and code someone, big medical emergency, if she was willing to just stop for a breath. And she said, it seemed like an eternity. And what would all my colleagues say? And she said, without failure, she would step into the room and see what needed to be done first. Her ability to be effective under those circumstances increased.

[41:43]

But she said, my thinking mind couldn't imagine that that would be the case. So fear, I think, the reaction of fear, if the fear itself is in the driver's seat, we'll fall back into our old coping strategies and not allow ourselves to keep returning to what we've uncovered as reliable ground. And of course, this is where having some ability to take what I learn in more formal practice into the interstices of the life I have is where the pay dirt is, if you will. And I think most of us will get lost in our conditioned reactive patterning if we aren't regularly revisiting

[42:49]

another way of being in the world. That's why I'm here this weekend. It doesn't feel frequent enough. You're such a pull. Sure. So, a little curiosity about, but this doesn't seem like enough. Oh. Well, hmm. Interesting curiosity in that thought. You know, the Tibetans are very skilled in understanding some things about how to practice, and one of them is, once you take on a practice, if you do it at least five times a day, somewhat at regular intervals during the course of your waking day, the practice, whatever it is,

[43:51]

drops in. And my experience is absolutely accurate. No matter what the practice is that I'm picking up, if I can do a particular practice, even one that's very brief, five, six, seven times a day, in a few days, I'm not having to make a certain kind of effort to think of doing the practice. I have to initially, but in a surprisingly short period of time, I begin to get the feel for how to integrate that moment of coming back into this moment. And for a nanosecond, for not even a whole breath, can make a big difference. Otherwise, I get caught with thinking about the future Oh my goodness, what happens if I don't learn what I have to learn before this guy's wife has this baby?

[44:55]

And does that mean I'll never be able to call him up and ask him a question? I'm out here without somebody else in the rowboat, much less two oars? And I mentioned the Ramakrishna because what is it that I want more? In the moment, it seems like, I want to learn I want to solve this work problem more than I want God. Wanting God, which is a Ramakrishna metaphor. When I was in crisis in my life, I really wanted each friend. But you know, there's, to me, a very curious resistance that many of us, most of us seem to have to being present. Because we haven't yet uncovered that the being present is sufficient.

[45:59]

That if I show up, I will know what to do, when doing is what's effective, what not to do, but out of presence, my capacity to to be effective in the world is far more available than I dare imagine. And I think until we have a little taste of what coming back into the present conditioned reactivity, mostly fear-based, about how, but what will happen if I don't do, you know, whatever is familiar? Yeah, thank you. I bet you're not the only person in the room facing variations on this theme. You talked about the turtle, another great amphibian is Suzuki Roshi's frog.

[47:09]

Oh yes, the frog. Suzuki Roshi so loved frogs. Sleepy frogs, apparently sleepy frogs. We have tree frogs that like to live under the lip of the cover on the hot tub. And I always feel a certain responsibility when I open the cover and there's a frog to put my hand between the frog and the hot water because if they jump into the hot water in that moment of swimming, gone, dead. But I'm interested in how long the frog will sit there, even though the cover gets taken off and my hand is there, the frog will just sit there looking either dead or asleep.

[48:12]

but watch some fly come by. The difference between looking sleepy and being sleepy is huge. Or can be. Betty? I wanted to bring up interview I heard on the radio yesterday, a brief interview with a man who lives outside of Cleveland with a deep interest in astronomy. He could not be more delighted with the black out. And he set up a telescope in his front yard for all of his neighbors. And he started describing what everyone could see with and without the telescope because it's so dark.

[49:18]

And he said, this is the sky as it was meant to be seen. They saw meteors about every five minutes. And he just, he said, and Mars. Marvelous Mars, which is by the end of this month, as close to the Earth as it has been for 60,000 years. Get ye to Muir Beach and hope there isn't fog. I think there's a metaphor somewhere in there about the lights and the sky that we can't see. Well, you know, one of the great treasures in my experience of living on this side of the ridge, is that we're on the dark side of the ridge. And even though there's a certain ambient light on the other side of Wolfback Ridge, in the dark phase of the moon, the night sky here is quite accessible.

[50:33]

And I know particularly when I drive home at night, down the Muir Woods Road, there's this palpable sense of coming into the dark side of the mountain. And we forget about all that. Or, if we remember, we think we have to travel who knows where. Yeah, thank you for that. That's a, how great. One way to keep people not worrying about losing their electricity. Break out a telescope. I also heard a wonderful interview with the chief engineer in a convalescent home somewhere in Manhattan where they have their own generator.

[51:36]

And This man just went on and on about how comfortable all his old folks are, and how they're having chilled water in their rooms, and food is being cooked, and if this goes on too long, we can at least move them into the basement. All kinds of, you know, contingency plans. It's like this little self-contained bubble that was enjoying sufficiency while the rest of New York is sweltering. Yes? I was in the blackout in New York in 1965. I was on a rush hour subway on my way home. I had not gone very far. And after an hour, I realized I was Everybody said it would be too dangerous to go above, but it was more dangerous to be in the sun.

[52:39]

And when I went above ground, the moon was closing in. And I had never seen a full moon in New York City. And I walked home by the light of the full moon. It was really great. Well, I suspect that there will be great stories coming out of this experience. So, my strong wish for all of us is that we uncover our willingness to be awake even for a moment without having too big a whack on the side of the head to bring it about. and to keep in mind the possibility of appreciating the whacks when they come.

[53:41]

Nice to see you all. Take good care of yourselves.

[53:46]

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