I vow to taste the fruits of the Tathagata's words. Good morning. Good morning. It is a good morning, isn't it? There's enough rain to last a while and a lot of sun. I'd like to speak about Dharma Gates. When we say our vows at the end of session or even at the end of today's lecture, we say the four vows and we start with sentient beings are numberless, I vow to awaken with them. Or sometimes, even a little more difficultly, I vow to save them. And we go on to delusions are inexhaustible, I vow to end them.

[01:04]

And we used to say, I vow to put an end to them. And sometimes I found myself slipping into that. And then we say, Dharma gates are boundless, I vow to enter them. And Buddha's way is unsurpassable, I vow to become it. Three of those seem to be out of reach and a dream sometimes and part of the world of delusion to me. But I truly believe that Dharma gates are boundless. I think sometimes we just have to train ourselves to remember that. to keep our eyes and our no-eyes open and our ears and our no-ears open and our mind and our no-mind open and our body and our no-body ready for that.

[02:15]

And for me, lately, aside from our formal teachers and teaching and reading There have been two big groups of teachers of the Dharma, at least those in human form. One group are the people who give talks here, especially the Monday morning talks, when people just come at, what time is it, six in the morning or before that, and say what's on their heart then. and what is bothering them and what is helping them and where they are. And if it's their first student talk, they talk about how they got here, their first Dharmagate. So that's one Dharmagate, the Dharmagate that brings us here. Whether it's having all of the underpinnings of our life fall out from under us,

[03:25]

whether it's midlife crisis, whether if it's addiction or family problems, sometimes followed by what Mel calls the peep show. When everything falls away and there's nothing to cling to, suddenly sometimes there's a clarity or a light And I guess it's the kind of light, not the kind of light that you have to worry about whether it's matter or wave, but the kind of light that, you know, we call it fulgence, glory light. Unfortunately, that peep show is just that, you know, sometimes, and it goes away as fast as it comes. So that's one kind of Dharmagate. The other kind of Dharmagate.

[04:28]

Well, let's stop there. But I'd like to talk about three kinds of Dharmagates. The other group of Dharma teachers for me recently, who do about the same thing, are the children in my class. I teach second grade this year. And for the first time in my teaching, the majority religious group in my class are Buddhists. And I think given what's happening in the eastern part of this world, that may be a lot truer, or may be truer, true for a lot more people in a lot more classes in this country. Of my children, three come from Laos, And two are from recently immigrated Japanese families. And one is the daughter of someone who practices here, and her father is a priest who practices at Green Gulch.

[05:45]

So it's quite a varying group. Anyway, it makes an interesting group. And some of, I'd like those kids, you know, when we get up and share, it's show and tell time. And what they share and tell is rather amazing to me. So I'd like to share some of those with you in today's talk. But I'd like to go back for a minute. A lot of you will probably hear things you've said Of course, all your answers only raise more questions. There's a beginning Buddhist course going on, and during the discussion two weeks ago, someone whose name I don't remember said, you know, all of this stuff doesn't seem to have anything to do with what I know, with what I experienced in Zazen.

[06:57]

with those moments of clarity, all we've got are these bunches of lists. You know, these numbers, we've got the four vows, we've got the four, what, noble truths, we've got the eight paths, and I don't even know if we've gotten to the 108 delusions yet, but. They come with it. They come with it, they're all rolling in there. There was a lot of sympathy for him from various members of the class. And then just right after that, at Monday morning lecture, Merle gave the lecture. And he talked about experiences he had. And he read this thing that that he was kind enough to copy for me, and I will read to you.

[07:59]

And those of you who have heard it, I hope you will be kind enough to listen to it again. This is from the writing of Pablo Casals when he was 93. You have to remember that Pablo Casals was mainly a cellist, but this is not a typo about the piano. Each day I am reborn. Each day I must begin again. For the past 80 years, I have started each day in the same manner. It is not a mechanical routine, but something essential to my daily life. I go to the piano and I play two preludes and fugues of Bach. I cannot think of doing otherwise. It is a sort of benediction on the house. But that is not its only meaning for me. It is a rediscovery of the world of which I have the joy of being a part. It fills me with the awareness of life, with the feeling of the incredible marvel of being a human being.

[09:00]

The music is never the same to me, never. Each day, it is something new, fantastic, and unbelievable. And then in the discussion at the end of this, we were talking about sort of the wonder and the glory and the strength that you get from, and the feelings from being so completely involved and given to something, that you vanish and it's only, as Merle said, it's only what's around you, but you are gone in the glory of that. And I'm an oh-but person, you know, whatever anybody says I've got an oh-but for, I have to try to clamp my mouth shut sometimes, but my obit was, yeah, but that's what soldiers coming back from war say. They say, I forget that I might die.

[10:02]

I forget who I am. I'm just involved in killing. There's a tremendous release. I can feel the energy draining from my arms. And this comes back to the question of those lists. And Merle said, well, that's Zen. And maybe that's, and I'm probably misquoting him now, but bear with me. But that's the morality that we get from Buddhism. It tempers that. It says, you're different from the Samurai who takes all this power and this concentration and with it can cut off a head. So we can't come back around to our Eightfold Path. And I have to breathe deeply for a minute because I'm always afraid I'll get them all mixed up or forget and only remember seven. So we have right view, correct view.

[11:07]

And we have, which is what is sometimes translated as correct thought, right thought. And sometimes is right intention. And we often think about clear intention. And then we go on to right speech and right action. Right occupation or right means of getting living and right energy or right effort. And then right mindfulness and right concentration. And in the Zen-do, in our Zen-do practice, I think we have a lot of opportunity for the right concentration and the right mindfulness. I had a great experience with right mindfulness this morning and a chance to learn because I forgot my orioke bowls and I ate out of guest bowls and I had absolutely no idea of what to do with them.

[12:19]

I mean, I learned Oriyoki from a woman who was a black belt in Oriyoki, let me tell you. And over the years, I've grown to just love it and feel that, you know, that's one of the places where your fingers meet what you're doing and you disappear. You know, it's just, I may make a mistake, but I do feel one with what I'm doing. I felt like I had 200 objects in front of me to deal with, and not enough little pieces of cloth. And the pieces of cloth I had weren't big enough. And to make it worse, I could see people sitting next to me copying what I was doing. Anyway, it comes and goes, doesn't it? Comes and goes. So, I think what we do is we look We look for those Dharma gates, not just in the Zen dome, but we look for ways that we bridge them into our everyday life. And I feel that I've been very, very fortunate in finding the right livelihood, the right occupation.

[13:35]

Of course, I can destroy that. I've got this wonderful job working with wonderful people. doing work where I have a lot of freedom and a lot of support, but I can lose it, I can turn it into a mess sometimes, even after all these years, if I don't keep myself careful in the midst of all of the anger and the busyness and the mess and the things that happen around me. So there's one thing I've learned that tries to do in an instant, helps me, and I've said this before here, and it's, I think, the most valuable thing I've learned from Mel, in a way, and all the times I didn't come to this endo, it stayed with me, that when you gassho, the gassho isn't putting your hands together, or bringing them down, or bringing them up, It's the moment at Zazen, at the bottom of the bow.

[14:40]

And that, keeping that Gassho in my head, that moment, often saves me in a moment when I'm angry, when I want to say to a child, you're ruining everything here, everything. I worked to make this situation wonderful. And somehow at least I can drop maybe a half of the eye out of it in that moment at the bottom of the Kashi. Anyway, I'd like to share some of the sharing of three children. And the first is Lek. Lek is eight years old. And she comes up to the waist of some of the other children in the class. Let me start with my object.

[15:54]

You know, it is show and tell, not just tell around here. I don't know how well you can see this, but Lek's father sent this to her. Grandfather sent it to her from Laos. And Lek brought this to class to share. And she told us where each, she said, this is a model of my house. Now we're not sure if this is a model of the house Lek lived in, or it's the kind of village house that Lek remembers. And she said, this is where the cooking goes on. This is the kitchen part of the house. And then she started to tell me where everybody slept in this part of the house. And you can't believe that sentient beings are without number when you realized how many fit into that little space

[16:59]

Anyway, the children were just extremely interested. I mean, she had the palm of everyone in her hand. The children who can't sit still and the children who can go like this, you know, all through sharing and can barely wait, they were just her. So here I'm going to read you part of some of the things that Lech has written for our class newspaper. When we were in Laos, we didn't have refrigerators or TVs or showers. We took a shower on the hill. It was scary when you looked down. The water came over a rock. My house in Laos was made out of sticks. I was a baby there. My grandpa took care of me. My house had a room to sleep in, a room to cook and eat. My mom went to the well to get water. When we were in Laos, we tried to go away. This man, he found us, and they shot at us, but they let us go back inside the country.

[18:14]

Later, then we came to the Philippines. My sister was born in the Philippines. I was two years old when this happened. Then we came to America. The plane stopped, and we got to eat. Then we got in the plane again, and my aunt gave $100 to the US government for us to come in. We lived with my aunt when we first came. I slept in a closet with my aunt. When I was two years old, I went to a movie store with my big sister. She is still in Laos, there with my grandmother. When I get to be in high school, then my mother will be able to go to Laos and get my big sister. Remember this child is seven. This is what she's looking forward to. Then was Valentine's Day. I make a big fuss about Valentine's Day.

[19:17]

It's one of my favorite holidays. And I remember long ago at lecture in San Francisco, some person, I don't know who it was, asked Suzuki Roshi Is all this the same as love? And the answer was, no, but love is a beginning. So this is the Valentine's song that I didn't know, and Lech did know, and some of the other children in the class that learned it in first grade, and they taught it to me. I will not sing it to you, but I will read you the words. Peace is a flame in your heart. Let it burn like a candle to light up the dark. Love will shine on you wherever you are if peace is a flame in your heart. One of my other Laotian children's name is Batun.

[20:24]

And recently Batun's mother was killed in an automobile accident and he hasn't lived with his father for a long time because I have to stop for a minute and think what is unprofessional revealing of confidences but anyway he can't live with his father And it was Valentine's Day, and I'm always very careful not to say, oh, make a Valentine's card or a Mother's Day card for your mother, because so many of our children either live with many different adults, different times, or have neither a mother nor a father, maybe a grandmother, a great-grandmother, or an aunt. Who knows? Who knows? So I talked about, let's write a Valentine for the adult who takes care of us. And let's not have it with, you know, I love you and darling and dear and all those terms of endearment, but let's thank them for the things that they've done for us so that it's like giving evidence and we talk about them when we write, you know, oh, I say it's boring to just hear that was fun.

[21:50]

You have to tell me why it was fun. How did you feel? What did you do? So we talk about giving evidence, even with these little six and seven-year-olds and eight-year-olds understand that. So they give evidence. And I sort of kept my eye on the tomb because I was a little worried. It's been very recently that his mother died. And as part of their practice, he was ordained as a monk. And his head was shaven. And it was very hard for him to come to school without any hair. And he had this hat on. And I could see him sort of hiding under the hat. And I just sort of kept an eye. He was riding away and making this valentine with all his energy. And he came to me. He said, I made a valentine for my mother. And I said, that's wonderful. And he said, I have one really big problem.

[22:52]

How will I get it to her? I said, we'll get it to her. And one way we can get it to her is you've been with the priest at your temple. And we'll get it to them, and they will get it to her. Because they know how to do it. Now here I am, this dyed-in-the-wool Buddhist atheist Jew, but I really believed at that moment it was going to have to work. Anyway, that's Petun's valentine. And he came and told me that they had told him that they had gotten it to her. So that was quite an offering for him and for her and for me. I don't know how I'm doing on time. I've lost all... Can we stop it? Okay, well I'm going to share one more child who teaches me things and teaches the other children things.

[24:00]

And that's Linda, and I'll try to do it more quickly than I've done the others. Linda is also Laotian, and Linda comes from a Buddhist family. Linda lives in a part of Richmond where there is an awful lot of anti-Asian feeling now. And there's an awful lot of anger, no matter who it's directed at. One Linda shared that she had gone to the store with all of her cousins and her brother, her older brothers, and there are seven children in Linda's family. And her brother Jerry, who's in fourth grade, is the oldest. and the parents have to go away sometimes. They both work and they take the twin babies with them. And Linda is then in the care of her blind grandmother. So, Linda describes this going to the store and how excited she is about having some money that all the cousins and all the brothers and sisters that are old enough to go to the store have some money to buy some candy.

[25:05]

And on the way back, some children stop and say, Give us your candy." And they look around and they see that there are more of them for once than these other kids. But Jerry, the older brother, says, give it to them. Give it to them now. He's in my class at school. This is fourth grade. And he brings a gun to school. So Linda gave them and Jerry and all of the cousins Wendy and I won't go through all the notes handed over the candy. And of course my kids, the rest of the kids, what did you do? What did you do? Who did you tell? What did you do? Did you call the police? And Linda said, no, I'm telling you, Mrs. Mayeno, and I told my mother. And what did your mother say? Did she call the police? No, my mother said we can't go to the store anymore. Which is a very, very real solution for their life.

[26:06]

And sometimes we think of these children who have been saved from this agony and loss in our then, this wonderful world we've provided for them here. Anyway. But they're my Dharma teachers. They come to school and they're happy. They love the snacks. They learn. They write like crazy. Vitthun loves to write more than anything else. And sometimes I can't decipher half of it. And sometimes it sounds like circular Buddhist logic because it doesn't have a beginning and an end. It just goes around in a circle. But it's there. Anyway, I think a lot of us come with this dharmagate of this lifting for a moment, the peak show, and a lot of our favorite, for a lot of Zen students, we come back, and I've heard different people quote, you know, Blake, to see a world in the granite of sand, and a heaven in a wildflower, hold infinity in the palm of your hand, and eternity in an hour, and we have that, and we forget

[27:35]

I'm sorry, the other part of Blake, that's from the Auguries of Innocence. He who binds himself to joy does the winged life destroy, but he who kisses joy as it flies lives an eternal sunrise. So, we have the joy we're looking for and we don't have it at moments. We have all these things. Sometimes one of the pains of sitting with Zazen in this practice is that we become aware that no matter how good our life is that it ends. And worse and harder than that is that the lives of those we love end and the things we love. And I'm always grateful to Ivan for showing me this little part of Thich Nhat Hanh's writing that is, meetings end in parting.

[28:38]

Because as we love deeper and more those partings become more and more painful to us. I've been very busy lately making an ashes pot for a dear friend. And looking at this little ashes pot and trying to figure out how big the remains of Tom should be what will fit in it. I'm going to read one last thing, and that's by Philip Whelan. And I think that holds both parts of these Dharma Gates for me, the beauty, the joy, nature, the friendship, the people who are here, the Sangha, and also the terrible parts, the lives, that go on sometimes that seems so hard to us. Philip spoke here not too long ago. He's a poet.

[29:40]

He's a long-time Zen student. He is the abbot at, I can't remember. It's just called Hartford Street, which is also a hospice for people dying, mainly for people dying of AIDS, This is an old poem of his. It comes from Heavy Breathing, a good name for a Zen student's group of poems. But this is long before he was involved in Hartford Street. That darling baby, all wrapped up asleep, in fuzzy blue bunting, an extra blanket, careful, pinned around him asleep on the ground, between the overflowing garbage cans, all alone, throwed away. We have a few minutes for questions or comments.

[30:46]

I welcome your questions or comments. Yes, thank you for bringing the world of children here. It's a world I'm so lucky to have. Thank you. Yes? Just your sharing about children reminded me of something Roshi Kaplan once said. He said to his daughter, is it true that a child knows a parent the way a parent knows a child? His daughter said, I know all your tricks, daddy. Yesterday, I was My granddaughter, who's in fourth grade, has ski week at her school, and so she came to school to help me. Then my husband picked us up, and I had us in the back seat, and she was in front. I mean, there was this mess, you know.

[31:47]

Mindful debris. There were papers and books and dirty coffee cups. I always look at Ross, when I say this, because he's my bodhisattva of mindfulness. And I wasn't going to bother putting on my seatbelt for these few blocks home. And she turned around to me and she said, is your seatbelt on, Grandma? And I was all ready with these answers, but I knew these things were things she had already said to me. I don't have to put on my seatbelt because da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. She looked at me and she said, you put on your seatbelt so you can be a good example for me. Goes in a circle. Yes. It feels like poetry to me.

[33:00]

I'll be glad to do it for you. I know Meryl's busy. Meryl's busy getting ready to leave. Not to leave us, just to leave. Right. But what Paula consulted, it reminds me of my in-laws. I know they lost 9 million in August. And reading the journals up to the one she's working on right now, we collect it. And she creates each day. It's very clear. She does that. It's a real model. One of the, as I've been looking over things for a class in Buddhist images, one of the interesting dharma gates that came up was that as Buddhism started to spread, it had this great opportunity to spread along the self-roots, and the self-roots, all of these marketplaces and things, became a place for preaching the Dharma and instead of images like the Gandhara image that was, came and influenced by classical Roman and Greek art, they actually codified all the proportions and what the Buddha should look like in these little diagrams so they could go out and be made all over

[34:26]

And they're little maps of how to draw, how to make a Buddha image. So these could be sent out all over the Silk Route and all these different places so people could be inspired by this art and the image of the Buddha. And somehow that's a neat gate for me to think about all of that happening then. One of the things, you know, that kids are into is heroes.

[35:28]

And I'm into heroes, too. And I try to look for heroes, beware of heroes of mine that the children can understand and to get away from the superhero thing. And sometimes what we do on the Day of the Dead is we have an altar for the Day of the Dead, and people make things out of clay to offer to their heroes, and they can either be living heroes or dead. And my hero, very much in the same vein, is Matisse, who, toward the end of his life, when he had extremely bad arthritis, would have his stick taped to his hand, and at the end of the stick, charcoal, and he would draw with that, So what I do is I put up all these Matisse pictures which are attractive to kids because they're very bright and I don't say anything about them. And at the end I put a photograph of Matisse and his white beard.

[36:29]

And after a while somebody will finally say, you know, who's that guy? And I'll say, oh, he's my superhero. And he painted all these pictures. And I, you know, I don't like to hear from them. They say, well, why? How could that old man be here? Anyway. Thank you for sharing that because I haven't gotten that part of it. Yes, Sacha? Well, having come from a culture where I mean classrooms and I've observed how the teachers work and I'm always impressed how anybody can work with this. Each, so different individuals in different needs and so forth, half of them are not working there, you know.

[37:35]

And also then your teachers always packing all these festivals including Valentine cards and so forth, Mother's Day cards and so forth. I always treasure those books my children brought. And my question is, how do you not get burned up? Because I've known some teachers who have, especially because of Berkeley School District politics. I have a confession to make. I'm retiring from teaching at the end of this year, from teaching in this classroom. partly because I want to go to Tassajara and be here more. And one of my personal dharma gifts besides teaching and being with children is making pottery. And part of it, it's, and I did, and the thing that has made it easy for me to make this decision is that I'll be going back to my school to do consulting so that I won't be, you know,

[38:46]

Riven away from the children in that way. So it is hard. And it's especially hard, I think, for the people who like to teach as I do. And I do a lot of physical things. And I've just always told myself I would stop when the physical part of it got to be a burden. Because I work with clay a lot with the children. I take the children's camping. Children camping. I do a lot of heavy gardening with them. And just the physical work of doing that becomes more difficult now. And I don't want to get so dark. I want to stop when I still have a flame in my heart about doing it. Thank you. Beings are numberless.

[39:47]

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