Good evening. Okay, well I've been speaking about koans from ancient Chinese teachers and read often read poems from old Chinese and Japanese and people, but I thought tonight I would read a few poems from, we'll see how many, but two or three poems or so from one of my favorite American poets, modern American poets, Mary Oliver, and just comment a little bit on some of them and have maybe some time for discussion. So I don't know how many of you've heard of her. I have to read first a poem that the Wild Geese, have I spoken of that here? I don't know, but it's been a lot of Americans and people have talked about this poem and so some of you may have heard it. So I'll start with with this poem, Wild Geese. You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your

[01:04]

knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair yours and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on. Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers. Meanwhile the wild geese high in the clean blue air are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting, over and over announcing your place in the family of things. Read it again. Wild Geese, you do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on

[02:11]

your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair yours and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on. Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers. Meanwhile the wild geese high in the clean blue air are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting, over and over announcing your place in the family of things. So she starts off by saying you do not have to be good. So I think it's a a kind of trap or a problem or something that Zen students or any spiritual

[03:18]

practitioners fall into to think that we should be good, we should be perfect, we have to be something, we have some idea of something, we have to be. So she says you do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles to the desert repenting. Sometimes we may feel that way, that we may feel like to be spiritually worthy we have to go through some extremes. The Buddha proclaimed the middle way. So not to be indulgent but also we don't have to do these kinds of austerities. Sometimes we feel like to be ourselves we have or to be to be worthy we have to do such extreme things. Sometimes maybe for fun people may do, may go for walks in the desert or something but anyway you do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles. She says you only have to

[04:24]

let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. So I like this line a lot just to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. To trust, to me this has to do with trusting Buddha nature. To trust something that's deeper than our ideas and concepts and our conceptualizations about what is spiritual practice, what is good, what is what does it mean to be enlightened, all of these ideas we may have. Just let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. When we deeply, when we when we settle, when we settle, when we are willing to sit and face the wall and face ourselves and breathe we can, you know this is kind of what faith is about in Buddhism, to learn to trust this

[05:28]

process of being ourselves and to study actually what is it that we love, what is it that's deeper than our ideas of who we think we should be and who we think we should love and what we think we should do. Just to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. This reminds me of this thing that Suzuki Roshi used to say, to find out what is the most important thing, to see what it is that nourishes you, to see what you give yourself to and to trust that. And then towards the end, so I'm gonna mostly just comment on the beginning and the end, but we can talk about these two and I can read them again if you want, but towards the end she says, the world offers itself to your

[06:35]

imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting, over and over announcing your place in the family of things. So Mary Oliver is in many ways a nature poet, she talks about nature, maybe she's sort of Dallas, but she also talks about historical figures sometimes, but the world offers itself to your imagination. When we stop and look and see the world, the world of nature, the world of the nature within us as well as without us, it calls to us and this call to the imagination I think is important to let go of our idea, again to what we think we should be, what we think it is to be good, it calls to you

[07:40]

like the wild geese, harsh and exciting, over and over announcing your place in the family of things. So each of us has our place in the family of things, in the phenomenal world. This is like what Dogen talks about, about taking one's dharma position, being willing to be in the situation we're in, this body, this mind, this life. How do we take responsibility for our place in the family of things? But first it's this, what the feeling I get from this poem is this kind of settling into something that is wild in a sense, something that's unexpected, suddenly there's wild geese overhead or something appears in nature and calls us and something unexpected and yet over and over the world

[08:41]

announces your place in the family of things. We each have a way in which we are an expression of all of it, so the thunder comes and we can feel the wetness of our world, the cooling of a hot Chicago August, over and over announcing our place in the family of things. So Dogen talking about abiding in your dharma position means to, in some ways, to trust our karma. He talks about it in terms, you know, we can talk about that in terms of our place in our position in the sangha or something like that, he talks about it in that kind of monastic or residential context, but each of us has our place in

[09:45]

the sangha of the world, each of us has our place in our efforts to express something in the world. So there's a lot we could say about that and maybe I shouldn't read any more than that poem, but I'm going to and we can come back to this and I think there will be time for discussion. So I don't know that Mary Oliver is a Buddhist, as I said, she's a, you know, really a nature poet, but she does talk about historical figures sometimes and she has a poem called the Buddha's Last Instruction. It's a little bit longer and again I'll read it in and there's a few parts of it I'll comment on. Make of yourself a light, said the Buddha before he died. I think of this every morning as the East begins to tear off its many clouds of darkness to send up the first signal, a white fan

[10:52]

streaked with pink and violet, even green. An old man, he lay down between two solid trees and he might have said anything knowing it was his final hour. So you may have seen pictures of the Buddha passing away into Nirvana. He lay down between these two solid trees and his right side. Anyway, Mary Oliver says he might have said anything knowing it was his final hour. The light burns upward, it thickens and settles over the fields. Around him the villagers gathered and stretched forward to listen. Even before the sun itself hangs disattached in the blue air, I am touched everywhere by its ocean of yellow waves. No doubt he thought of everything that had happened in his difficult life. And then I feel the sun itself as it blazes over the hills like a million flowers on fire.

[11:53]

Clearly I'm not needed, yet I feel myself turning into something of inexplicable value. Slowly beneath the branches he raised his head. He looked into the faces of that frightened crowd. So she ends the poem there. But of course the next line is the first line of the poem, Make of Yourself a Light, is what the Buddha said before he died. So there's a number of interesting things in this poem. Often the Buddha's last statement, his last instruction, is translated as something like, Be a Light unto Yourself, which is a little different feeling. It's like, you know, trust yourself. Find your own way of finding your practice now that the

[12:55]

Buddha is gone. Be a Light unto Yourself. But this translation of Mary Oliver's is interesting. Make of Yourself a Light. That's a very different feeling. Maybe it's a little more Mahayana, although, you know, the difference isn't so important really. But both really have both. But Make of Yourself a Light. So it's interesting that she takes this last instruction and then mixes in this kind of scene of him going to this place and lying down, and the many beings gathered around him. And then this scene that maybe she's seeing, as she says, I think of this every morning, her calling forth of the sun. It's very interesting. She says, even before the sun itself hangs, disattached in the blue air, I'm touched everywhere by its ocean of yellow waves. No doubt he thought of

[13:59]

everything that had happened in his difficult life. And then she says, and then I feel the sun itself as it blazes over the hills like a million flowers on fire. So this image of the sun and the flowers on fire is very striking to me. It's like she's calling on not just the historical Buddha Chakyamuni, who we just chanted to, who passed away in the 400s BC, but the roaring of the Dharmakaya Buddha, the ultimate body of Buddha, that is the whole phenomenal world. So in Japan they call the Dharma... so this is a way of talking about what is Buddha. There's the historical Buddha, there are Buddhas like Amida Buddha, who's venerated in Japan, who's a kind of a meditation body Buddha. And then there's Buddha, just the awakened one, as the nature of all things,

[15:02]

or all phenomena seen in this awakened way. And so this is called the Dharmakaya, in a sense, but the reality body of Buddha. In Japan, in Japanese, it's called Dainichi-nyo-rai, or the Great Sun Buddha. So the sun is the great source of light and energy for us, and she talks about the sun in this poetic way. She says, and then I feel the sun itself as it blazes over the hills like a million flowers on fire. So, you know, the Buddha talked about the world of samsara being on fire, the fire of our greed, our passions, and our hatred or anger, and our confusion. And so in early Buddhism the idea of nirvana was to cool and to let go of all the passions, and to be free of the fires of this world and their

[16:03]

sayings, and to practice as if your hair was on fire, and this kind of intensity. But here Mary Oliver talks about a million flowers on fire, and it turns the image in some ways. It's more like, in some ways, feeling our place in the family of things for me. She says, clearly I'm not needed, yet I feel myself turning into something of inexplicable value. So we all have our place in the family of things. We all invoke the thunder from our own seats, in our own body and mind, from the soft animal body of ourselves. And yet, she says, you know, seeing these million flowers on fire, you know, the world as illuminated, clearly I'm not needed, yet I feel myself turning onto something of

[17:04]

inexplicable, or we could say in Buddhism, inconceivable value. Slowly beneath the branches he raised his head. He looked into the faces of that frightened crowd, and then again the first line, make yourself a light. So it's a beautiful way of turning the image of the fire of samsara into this. We also, in Zen, there are also various phrases about all Buddhists sit in the middle of fire. And in some ways, this evokes this, going back to this idea that from the wild geese, if I can find that again, of this, it's a kind of alchemical thing. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Sitting in the

[18:06]

middle of fire is part of the process of that. She presents the kind of gentle side. You don't have to walk on your knees to the desert. But also there is this, make of yourself a light. So our practice, our Zen practice, our Zazen, and then our practice when we get up is about this. Make of yourself a light. Each of us, when we are willing to sit through the fire of being ourselves, and we're willing to actually do this noble practice of sitting down and facing ourselves with all of our confusion and habits and grasping and aversion and confusion and all of that human stuff, all of the stuff that's also part of the soft animal body, something happens. And so she translates what Buddha is saying is, make of yourself a light. So maybe all of the precepts are just about

[19:07]

how do we do that? How do we make of ourself a light? How do we bring forth Buddha's light in the world today, in this time? Chicago, 21st century, whatever this is. So I feel something very positive and encouraging and challenging in that one. And the next one maybe even more so. So this poem is called When Death Comes. So we've had Casimir and Valjean pass away this year. We didn't do the well-being dedication tonight because there's not room enough to do prostration, so we'll do it next week. But, you know, there are people on that list

[20:07]

also who are facing that maybe at some point, maybe soon. But she turns it in a way. So I'll read this. When death comes like the hungry bear in autumn, when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse to buy me and snaps the purse shut, when death comes like the measle pox, when death comes like an iceberg between the shoulder blades, I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering what is it going to be like that cottage of darkness? And therefore I look upon everything as a brotherhood and a sisterhood, and I look upon time as no more than an idea, and I consider eternity as another possibility. And I think of each life as a flower, as common as a field daisy, and as singular, and each name a comfortable music in the mouth, tending, as all music

[21:11]

does, towards silence, and each body a lion of courage and something precious to the earth. When it's over, I want to say all my life I was a bride married to amazement. I was the bridegroom taking the world into my arms. When it's over, I don't want to wonder if I have made of my life something particular and real. I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened or full of argument. I don't want to end up simply having visited this world. So this is sort of a powerful poem, and again it maybe feels like the other side of you don't have to walk through the desert on your knees repenting for a hundred miles, but I find

[22:11]

something really positive and beautiful here. I want to step through the door full of curiosity wondering what is it going to be like that cottage of darkness. So the British poem poet William Blake said that death is just like a door walking from one room to another. This was how he imagined it. And in some ways in our meditation, our meditation is like a door. Suki Roshi talks about the swinging door of inhale and exhale, but to actually walk in the door even of a little room like this, sit down, and in some ways maybe we enter a cottage of darkness. Who knows? In each period of Zazen, there is some possibility. There is some door. He says, and therefore I look upon it. She says,

[23:13]

excuse me, and therefore I look upon everything as a brotherhood and a sisterhood. Again, this idea of the whole world as Buddha's body, as a flower of fire. And I look upon time as no more than an idea, and I consider eternity as another possibility. And I think of each life as a flower, as common as a field daisy, and as singular. Something about that, those two lines, as common and as singular, you know, speaks to something about the way in which we have this sense of, which I've been talking about, of something deeper, something, some possibility of wholeness that we glimpse when we do this practice. And yet each each event, each one of us, as in the wholeness of Sangha, each one of us as an expression of Buddha nature is singular, is particular. Each name a comfortable music in the mouth tending as all music does towards

[24:17]

silence. When it's over I want to say all my life I was a bride married to amazement. So that line, married to amazement, particularly I wanted to kind of talk about, and there's another poem that kind of points to that more, but maybe I won't read that. Just this sense of wonder, of appreciation. Maybe I'll just read a line or two from this other poem called Snow Geese, which is also about geese. But she talks about this sense of amazement. It's hard to do it without reading the whole thing. Okay, I'll read another poem, sorry. Snow Geese. Oh, to love what is lovely and will not last. What a task to ask of anything or anyone. Yet it is ours, and not by the century or the year, but

[25:19]

by the hours. One fall day I heard above me and above the sting of the wind a sound I did not know, and my look shot upward. It was a flock of snow geese winging it faster than the ones we usually see, and being the color of snow catching the sun, so they were in part at least golden. I held my breath as we do sometimes to stop time when something wonderful has touched us, as with a match which is lit and bright, but does not hurt in the common way. But delightfully, as if delight were the most serious thing you ever felt. The geese flew on. I have never seen them again. Maybe I will someday, somewhere, maybe I won't. It doesn't matter. What matters is that when I saw them, I saw them as through the veil, secretly, joyfully, clearly. So that captures for me this sense of amazement, of wonder, as if delight were the most serious thing you ever felt. So, anyway,

[26:25]

from these poems, there are a number of themes. This idea of becoming the light, of make of yourself a light, but also this idea of delight, of amazement, of wonder, of, you know, again, through her expressions of seeing nature, of seeing in the world, of appreciating the thunder punctuating Mary Oliver's poems tonight, just feeling this sense of something beyond. So, maybe I'll stop. Does anyone have any comments or questions or responses or I can read them again? Kathy? I had an association with the first poem by Geese because knowing that

[27:47]

geese and crane and a lot of birds have flight patterns that they, from the time they're born, it's like they seem to know where to go, so that the theme of going home, you know, it's like being aware of what makes them happy. It's kind of like there from the beginning and they don't have a problem knowing what that is, but I have a problem knowing what that is. And I was thinking about that theme of going home and that sometimes, like that almost makes it sound like go with what feels right, but sometimes when I go with what feels right, I'm in a pattern that is not that helpful. Exactly. So, we have to, you know, kind of trust the soft animal

[28:48]

body and so forth, but there's the fire also. We have to see what's just our, the habits from our greed, hate and delusion and what's, so this idea of returning home is really what all of these poems are about. The wild geese particularly, she talks about, you know, the Buddha, you know, the Buddha's last instruction in his dying and then also, of course, the, just this idea of dying, but the wild geese heading home again. So, for us, that's taking refuge in Buddha, whether you do that formal ceremony or just to come in and sit upright. It's turning towards something that, again, it's this alchemical process. We don't know, it's not our ideas of what home is. It's not our ideas of what we should do or even, you know, our desires or our impulses or, you know, it's something deeper than that and yet it's deep in the same way that birds, you know, will for centuries, for

[29:54]

many centuries, will follow the same migratory pattern, like they see the road signs in the sky. So it's innate, it's in there somewhere. Yeah. We can find it. That's what our process is, what our practice, the process of our practice is about. Yeah. Yes. I think geese have a certain luxury of not having all the external kind of worries and greed and things that we are trying to keep ourselves from participating in, so they can more easily direct themselves back to their home, whereas we're trying to maybe revert ourselves to a similar level of the geese almost, to where we have this calling that we can come towards without all the external forces playing on them as much. And yet somehow we have to go through, we can't run away from those things, we have to actually sit with, you know, these very deep patterns, this fundamental

[31:00]

ignorance that thinks, that makes, that allows us to think of things out there we want to grasp or get rid of or, you know, that's very deep. And yet there's also this process which, just because you're here tonight, all of you have partaken of, of seeing something deeper, of being on, we say on the path, you know, the path, Dongshan, who I'm talking about, the Thursday Night Koan class, talks about the bird's path in the sky as a metaphor for our practice. Other responses or comments? I like the last poem, you read the last line about not hanging on to a memory, but just basically enjoying it at the moment. I forgot what it was. That's from a book called, it has a kind of Buddhist title, Why I Wake Early.

[32:04]

Yes, especially in Chicago. You know, she has long sentences here, but anyway, she's talking about the geese flew on, I've never seen them again, maybe I will someday somewhere, maybe I won't, it doesn't matter. What matters is that when I saw them, I saw them as through the veil, secretly, joyfully, clearly. Just here and now, rather than a memory of them. So there's this sense of wonder and the sense of appreciation of the unexpected, like suddenly being in this small room and having to haul all the furniture out into the next room, which we're going to have to haul back at the end of this. Or, you know, wild geese, snow geese. So, you know, we're urban practitioners and, you know, like a lot of Zen poets,

[33:19]

Mary Oliver's a nature poet, and there's all this nature imagery, and maybe it's easier in a way if you're living out in the countryside or up on some mountain, but, you know, there's nature in Chicago too, there's the thunder, there's, anyway, maybe we have to look harder for things, notice more carefully a flower or a fragrance or something that stops us and says, oh, look at that. And maybe it can be the nature of, you know, the urban fauna. Which could be what? Urban fauna could be what? Just all of the sisterhood and brotherhood of all of those rooms.

[34:21]

This is the strangeness of people, the kindness of people. So we have this Sangha, those of us who come together on Thursday nights or sometimes for day-long sittings and partake of the communion together of this practice. And each of us in our own way is kind of an extension of this ancient dragon Zen gate. We all go out into the world and have many adventures in our daily life and the world around us. Thank you.

[35:52]

Thank you. I'm almost afraid to share this because it's a little trite, but I was watching the March of the Penguins movie yesterday at my neighbor's. I was cat sitting and spending time with his cats and watching this video. It's about, it's the real nature one. It's not the Happy Feet electronic version, but it's about the migration of the emperor penguins in Antarctica and their mating season. And it's incredibly touching to see how they form societies

[37:03]

and how they sort of work this whole thing. And what happens that I found so touching that these poems were kind of bringing up was when a chick dies or the couple breaks the egg and then, you know, OK, that's it for them this season. Or when the mothers all go back to the seat because they haven't eaten anything in like two months and sometimes they don't all make it back. And it's touching because you can see from the movie that they have a bond and that it matters to the group and to maybe their individual chick or their mate or whatever. It matters what happens to them. And, you know, just to see that happen on all these different levels is just very touching. And I feel like she's kind of saying that whatever it is, it matters.

[38:03]

We don't always necessarily see it on the level in which it matters. Yeah, there's this other level that we don't usually think of. It's the level in which we are animals, too. We are part of the nature of things. We're part of the world of things. And that even just the littlest thing that's happening matters. Yeah. So partly, to me, these poems are an encouragement to pay more attention, to pay more attention to little things, to the stuff between the things we have to do, to the, you know, when we're on our way from one thing to another,

[39:11]

what are the little things that happen that are actually part of the... How does she say it? The... She says, And therefore I look upon everything as a brotherhood and a sisterhood, and I look upon time as no more than an idea, and I consider eternity as another possibility. And I think of each life as a flower, as common as a field daisy, and as singular. Each thing is... So the Native peoples, Native American peoples talk about all my relations, talking about two-legged ones and four-legged ones and the winged ones and the grasses and trees, and so there's something of that in this, too, this sense of brotherhood and sisterhood, that we're connected in so many ways. And the things that we, you know, when we're going from one activity to the next,

[40:15]

there's lots of little things happening that we, even driving along the street, that we might not, you know, we might appreciate. Maybe we can notice them more when we're walking, but... Anyway, each event is an opportunity for, as she says, amazement or delight. Yes, Tammy? Well, I was lucky enough to see Mary Oliver read earlier this year, and one of the things that really struck me, just thinking about what you were just talking about, she maintains this sense of childlike wonder about the world that most of us lose or only can tap into on occasion. And that seems to just be the way she lives her life, which is pretty amazing. It's hard to imagine that you can still do that as an adult, and yet she does.

[41:20]

Yeah, so we have to take responsibility for our dharma position, for our place in the family of things, and yet can we be open to that kind of enjoyment and sense of wonder? Thank you. Thank you.

[41:41]

@Text_v004
@Score_JJ