Good morning. We have a very intimate crowd of people here today and I'd like to continue talking about creativity, re-creativity in our practice. I gather that the The activities of yesterday afternoon, the writing, painting and zazen seemed to go pretty well from all reports. There were great shouts that issued forth from the painting room. Give a shout and then plunge in with your brush. I think the writing was quieter, and the zazen was quieter still.

[01:02]

So, we'll try to continue that. So I've been thinking about... There's a fascicle of Dogens I've been thinking about for a while, reading and puzzling over, and I think it's relevant to what... some of what I was talking about yesterday, I think what we're trying to do by way of being creative in our life, to think of your entire life, moment by moment, as creativity, as composition, as coming alive in that act of meeting the moment with your body and mind. I was really taken with W.S.

[02:09]

Irwin's singling out of that line from the Diamond Sutra that I read yesterday. The mind that is nowhere must come forth. which is also the mind that is everywhere, or the true mind. And this is... Laurie gave a Monday morning talk a couple of weeks ago about her reading of, what's her name, Jill Bulte's book, The Life Stroke of Insight. I know that actually some people strongly disagree with the neuroscience proposed in that book in terms of the distinction between left brain and right brain.

[03:13]

I had a discussion with Bob Rosenbaum. He's not here, so he can't defend himself. pretend to know about that stuff. But I think that what she's pointing to, and I've been doing a little reading, it's not like one side of the brain has one function and the other side of the brain has another function and they're distinct. They actually interpenetrate each other and they're adaptable and they can change, etc. So it's not necessarily a matter of anatomy, but what she was getting at was to discover, oh, there's a function or there's a potentiality for merging, for feeling what is vast and unbounded, for experiencing and sinking into the mind that is simultaneously nowhere

[04:27]

and everywhere, but you don't live there. If you do that, you will die. Because in our life, that mind has to come forth. And I think that that's what Dogen is talking about in this fascicle The fascicle is called The Painted Rice Cake, or Painting of a Rice Cake, Gabio. And I think I'll read and talk about it. But I'd like to start with a poem, because my mind has been working over these questions. And I often come back to one of my favorite poets, William Carlos Williams. And there's a dictum of his that is kind of one of the key expressions that emerged as modern poetry.

[05:41]

It's a line of his in this poem that's called, the line says, no ideas but in things. both his writing, not so much this line, but his writing and his life, the idea of stripping away the external dramas, the self-dramatizing of life, romanticism, all of the things that characterize poetry from the, you know, moving through the 18th and 19th century into the early 20th century, stripping it down to a very basic language that is rooted in reality and perception. That's what he's writing about in this poem. And he's also advocating for creativity. And I think this is, you know, partly he was actually influenced by the Chinese and Japanese poets, as a lot of modernism was.

[06:50]

and by this, directly or indirectly, more indirectly, by this kind of Zen spirit, which is communicated, I think, in what Dogen is writing, and also in the poets that we talked about a little yesterday. So let me just read you this poem by way of preface. It's called A Sword of Song, and just there's one strange For me, I had to look it up. At the end, there's this, he talks about this flower, Saksafrash. Is that right? Saksafrash? Which is like a small flower that evidently, you find it in the cracks of stones. Is that? It maybe means rock breaker. It means rock breaker, right, yes. So you see them on cliffs. Right. And there's a whole family. Right. So, I just wanted to, Not exactly being Mr. Natural, I needed to look it up and find out what it meant, because it's sort of key here.

[08:01]

So, a sort of song. Let the snake wait under his weed, and the writing be of words, slow and quick, sharp to strike, quiet to wait, sleepless through metaphor to reconcile the people and the stones. Compose, no ideas but in things. Invent. Satsatraj is my flower that splits the rocks. That's the poem. I'll read it again. Let the snake wait under his weed. and the writing be of words, slow and quick, sharp to strike, quiet to wait, sleepless.

[09:02]

Through metaphor to reconcile the people and the stones. Compose, no ideas but in things. Invent, sapsafrage is my flower that splits the rocks. So, this fascicle of Dogon's begins very much in the same tone as Genjo Koan. In other words, looking at the nature and the koan of everyday life. He says, All Buddhas are realization, thus all dharmas are realization. Yet no Buddhas or things have the same characteristics.

[10:06]

In other words, everything is distinct, individual, and yet they are all realization. They are all part of the mind that is nowhere. None have the same mind. Although there are no similar characteristics or minds, at the moment of your actualization, numerous actualizations manifest without hindrance. At the moment of your manifestation, numerous manifestations come forth without opposing one another. This is the straightforward teaching of the ancestors. So that's the first paragraph. Then he says, to penetrate one thing, to realize one thing, does not take away its inherent characteristics. I'm using two translations here.

[11:09]

This one is from Cause, and this one is from Francis Cook. I like this first paragraph from cause. So, although there are no similar characteristics of mind or minds, in other words, everything is individual, distinct, a unique coming together of causes and conditions. At the moment of actualization, numerous actualizations manifest without hindrances. So at the moment that you come forth, everything else in the universe is coming forth as well. At the moment that we sit Zazen, the whole world is not sitting Zazen necessarily, but is manifest. Everything, the complete interweaving of all existence is right there

[12:16]

just as we sit, as we maintain this upright posture. And there's nothing that can hinder that. And cause translates as, to penetrate one thing does not take away its inherent characteristics. So anyway, this is by way of preface for this, and then he gets to this case. An old Buddha, Chamyan, said, the painting of a rice cake does not satisfy hunger. Among those who come from all directions to study this expression are those with such names as bodhisattva, disciple, and all are different in face and form. some being frail, some husky, and so on. Though they follow the teachings of both ancient and modern teachers, they are satisfied with the superficial meaning of the teaching.

[13:27]

Therefore, in transmitting what they believe to be the truth, they say that the study of scriptures and treatises has no influence on the attainment of true insight, and therefore the scriptures are like mere paintings of rice cakes which cannot satisfy hunger. So there's a case or a koan that this is referring to. You may have heard this, or at least part of it. Again, when Chan Master Chang-Yen was passing away under Chan Master Dawei. Dawei said to him, you are quite bright and seem to understand everything. This is already like, you know, it's like, watch out.

[14:30]

You are quite bright and seem to understand everything without any reliance on your learned treatises. From what you were before your parents conceived you, give me one single phrase concerning the way." So he says, you know, without relying on your books, give me one phrase that comes from before your parents conceived you. Try as he might, Sanghyen could think of nothing to say in reply. He regretted his mind and body and tried as he might to find some clue in the books. He could just see him going back and looking through all his books trying to find the answer. All the books he had accumulated over many years, it was no use at all. So, he set fire to all of his precious books, saying, rice cakes in a picture do not satisfy one's hunger.

[15:35]

I will no longer seek the Buddha way in this present life." So he's sort of giving up, which may be a good thing. And my practice will be that of serving rice to practicing monks. So saying, he spent many years serving meals to the monks. The expression, meal-serving monk, refers to someone who served rice and other food to the monks who were practicing. He's like, carrying the trays of food for the nobility or like the position of a waiter in our country. I'll just be a waiter. One day he spoke to Dawei. My mind is clouded and I cannot speak. Say something that will help me, chief priest. Dawei replied, unfortunately, I cannot say anything for you. maybe later you would resent my having done so. In other words, if I explained this to you, you wouldn't be able to find it yourself.

[16:43]

You need to wake up yourself. So, Shang-Yen travels to the mountains and he searches for another teacher and meanwhile he builds a grass hut, a hermitage for himself. And then he planted some bamboo nearby and spent his days in its vicinity, tending that. And one day, when he was sweeping the path, a pebble flew and struck the bamboo. And when he heard the sound it made, just... He had a great awakening. He bathed and purified himself. and then went back to Thawe to burn incense and pay homage. And he said, My teacher, if you had answered me on that other occasion, how would this thing ever have been possible?

[17:46]

The depths of your kindness exceed even those of my own parents. Then he composed this verse. This is interesting. It's like painted Rice cake cannot satisfy hunger. Any work of artifice or words, he burned, he took all his books and burned them. But here he is upon awakening and he writes a verse. This is the verse. With one blow of the pebble, everything I knew perished. What more is there for me to practice? What more to subdue? Moving about with ease, I conduct myself in the ancient way, and I never feel any despondency. Wherever I am, I leave no traces. It is conduct apart from forms and sounds. Those in all directions who are enlightened in the way are called those of the highest talent."

[18:52]

He presented this verse to Dawei And Dawei said, how thorough you are. So, moving about with ease, I conduct myself in the ancient way and I never feel any despondency. Wherever I am, I leave no traces. It is conduct apart from forms and sounds. And yet, what is this? that he inscribed on a piece of paper with a brush, but forms and words and sounds. This is where we have to come forth. So we abide in silence, we sit in stillness, and then we act. We cook the food, we do our work, we take care of those around us we take care of our lives, this is the mind that is nowhere constantly coming forth.

[20:03]

And I think that that's what, in this, as this fascicle continues, Dogen is making an argument. The materials used for painting a picture of a rice cake are like those used for landscape paintings. When you paint a landscape, you use green paint, and when you paint a rice cake, you use rice powder. That's interesting. I don't exactly know what that means. But thus, what is used is similar, and the actual work of painting is similar. you should understand there is no difference among paintings, rice cakes, and dharmas. Therefore, these rice cakes sitting right in front of you are all just paintings of rice cakes. In a sense, you could take this adage of William Carlos William, no ideas but in things,

[21:21]

And if Dogen were confronted with this, he also might turn it around and say, no things, but in ideas. Because this is the way we work as humans. People are often, particularly newer students, and I encounter this in prisons and different places, they have a feeling that the object of The point of meditation is to stop thinking. And I have to say, well, that will eventually happen, but you won't be there to see it. It'll happen when we pass away. Then our minds will stop thinking. But it's just thought after thought. This is what it, moment after moment, thought after thought, this is part of the translation of the Enmei Juku Kanan-gyo.

[22:35]

But we have some power and some ability to direct our thoughts, to look at them, to consider them, and to free ourselves from their grasp. We come into, say we, someone was talking to me yesterday about coming into a situation and feeling there was a lot of, just, there was a lot of anxiety, there was difficulty, And they felt that in the space and in the room. In our habitual life, our non-practice life, if we're not aware of that, what often happens is we just, somehow we take that on as our own.

[23:43]

We. And all of a sudden we find that we're anxious. or we're upset and we don't even necessarily know why. It's because we are completely responsive instruments that we respond to what is happening around us. That's part of the wonder and mystery of being alive. At the same time we have choice. We have choice and we have the ability to be mindful, be aware. You know, William's poem begins, Let the snake wait under his weed.

[24:48]

So that snake is always there. You can see it in these words, but can you see it in your life? Can you see the hazard? Can you also admire the fact, the existence of the snake, its complete liveness, its complete connection to this true mind that is nowhere, and yet, don't let it bite you. If you don't see it, and you're not aware of it, it'll bite you, and you'll become ill. So let it wait there, but be aware of it. He's warning us about it in this poem. At the same time, if we enter an environment where there is trouble, we should be always responsive and ready to act in what way is appropriate.

[26:01]

This is the training that we are cultivating as we sit here. This is a relatively stripped down environment where not a lot of bad things happen generally. Which means we can really tune into the fine distinctions of our mind, the states of mind that come up, whether it's joy, anxiety, boredom, exasperation, liberation, we can watch all this happen. And that's part of the responsibility or part of the job of sitting zazen. It's just to watch. Not to control, not to manipulate, but just to watch. The dogma goes on.

[27:12]

He's talking about this line, the painting of a rice cake doesn't satisfy hunger. The hunger of does not satisfy hunger means even though we are not enslaved to time, we are not free to encounter the picture of a rice cake. And even if we taste the rice cake, we still cannot cease being hungry. So even if we have, this is not enslaved to time, so even if we have a practice, even if we begin to see through the stairs of our life, we still are not quite there to fully encounter what he says is a picture of a rice cake. And even if we taste the rice cake, we cannot still cease being hungry.

[28:19]

So he's talking about a different hunger here. There is hunger. As lunch approaches, we will miraculously find ourselves hungry again. And we will put some substance in our body, and that particular that particular form of hunger will be assuaged. But there's the hunger that we feel that is eating at us very deeply and consistently, moment by moment. That's the hunger that he wants us to look at here. And old Buddha said, Enlightenment attained.

[29:31]

White snow piled layer upon layer over the world. The painting completed. Green hills and white snow appear in one painting. Enlightenment attained. White snow piled layer upon layer over the world. The painting completed. green hills and white snow appear in one painting. So, it then says, the Buddha's ten names and three powers are a scroll painting. If we can move freely in the realm of awakening and not be caught by the things of our mind, that our mind is actually free to roam, create, invent, compose, invent, as William says. At the end of this fascicle he says something, he gets to his point.

[30:47]

Generally speaking, such things as satisfying hunger, satisfying non-hunger, not satisfying hunger, and not satisfying non-hunger can neither be experienced nor expressed if there is no picture of hunger. You should study the fact that this world is a picture of a rice cake. And he says, since this is so, there is no remedy for satisfying hunger other than a painted rice cake. So the question, this is certainly Dogen at his elliptical best, but really the question is, how do we live? How do we compose our lives How do we invent our lives? Just as we are looking at how we invent a painting, a poem, a piece of music, our whole life is like that.

[32:16]

And our practice is like that. You know, it's an interesting thing. If I look at Sojin's life, for example, he's not here today, so I don't think I'm going to talk about him. Up until his thirties, he was fully involved in trying to make things. He was an abstract expressionist painter. And he did that pretty much. And then when he met Suzuki Roshi, that was it. He just stopped doing that. I often wonder about that.

[33:19]

I've talked about it with him. He just said bye. have any need or feeling to do that anymore. And I was talking with somebody, I think that what he found was his creative mode was this practice, was pouring his life, was actually creating his life. And one way that I think about it was he didn't have the tools previously So the conventional way to create is to be an artist. And he did that, and actually he was a pretty good artist, from what I can gather. There are a few snippets of his paintings around, and there's something in a book or two, but there was a big active art scene here in California, and he had good teachers.

[34:25]

But that didn't In that case, his abstract expressionist painting did not satisfy his hunger. But this practice did, when he met Suzuki Roshi. Now, your life may not be that way. My life is not exactly that way. There's no one way that it has to be. If you think, oh, I have to just do Zen to the exclusion of everything else, then you are, in a way, then you're really hobbling your practice. My first years, I think my first six or seven years, I had previously, more or less, made a pitiful living

[35:29]

playing music, and I would do some writing also. I think the first years that I came here and took up the practice, most of that kind of fell away. And the practice was, when I saw this, I said, oh, the practice is what's absorbing my creative energy. And that was okay. It was a little I had a little longing, a little sadness about it, but I felt like I was doing something that was going to save my life. At least my life. I don't know about anybody else's. And also, I will say, the hours of a Zen student are not compatible with the hours of a musician. That really is not a match.

[36:30]

But, little by little, I find these things coming back. The interests that I had, the abilities which you never lose, the ability to create, you never lose that. It may change form. in surprising ways, but you never lose it. And the way we create is not necessarily in some conventional form of being an artist, but it's creating on the vast canvas of our life. We give a shout and we plunge in. And I find that after eight, nine, ten years that started coming back and I started figuring out how to have those come forward in an integrated way.

[37:34]

Practice in music, practice in writing, etc. And sometimes that's what you should be doing. Sometimes that is your practice. When your practice is settled, you should just be painting rice cakes. Turning out one after another. or just be dancing, or just be singing, or just be putting out fires, or just be taking care of children. All of this is composing your life, to come back to this notion of composure. And the The principle method that we have for cultivating this is just sitting here. Sitting in this dynamic stillness and letting who we truly are, this mind that is nowhere, come forth.

[38:43]

Allowing it to come forth instead of chasing after it. And that's what I think you know I was doing when I came you know my kind of capsule life story previous to coming here was feeling that I was lost in the wilderness and it's like wasn't just slowly wandering around I was running off in all directions looking for the end of the wilderness. And my intuition when I walked in here was, oh, I'm home. Very lucky. We're, all of us in this room, to be doing this on Labor Day weekend. This is very lucky because

[39:48]

There's so much, so many people in the world whose hunger is just uncontrolled, who have no place, who have nothing to eat, literally and figuratively, and who have no place to be at home. So I think we should just keep painting rice cakes and gobbling them down. I think it's a good high-fiber diet. And creating, not necessarily in some conventional form of words or art or music, dance, et cetera, theater, although that's included.

[40:52]

But recognizing that the entire world is our place, the entire world is our studio, the entire world is our laboratory, the entire world is our home. And within that, we need to feel at ease, And when we feel at ease, we set other people at ease. And that's the essential act of creativity. It gets passed on and on. Let me close with a poem. Let me tell you a story.

[42:00]

This is William's words. On a hot July day, coming back exhausted from the postgraduate clinic. He was a doctor. His whole life as a poet, he was a doctor doing general medicine. Coming back exhausted from the postgraduate clinic, I dropped in, as I sometimes do, at Morrison Hartley's studio on 15th Street, that's in New York, for a talk. a little drink and maybe to see what he was doing. As I approached his home, I heard a great clatter of bells and the roar of a fire engine passing the end of the street down Ninth Avenue. I turned just in time to see a golden figure five on a red background flash by. The impression was so sudden and so forceful that I took a piece of paper out of my pocket and wrote a short poem about it. That poem is called The Great Figure.

[43:04]

Among the rain and lights I saw the figure five in gold on a red fire truck moving, tense, unheeded, to gong clangs, siren howls, and wheels rumbling through the dark city. Among the rain and lights I saw the figure five in gold on a red fire truck, moving, tense, unheeded, to gong clangs, siren howls, and wheels rumbling through the dark city. Having written that poem and showed it to his friends, he showed it to this artist, a friend of his, Charles Henry Demuth, who painted this.

[44:07]

You may have seen this painting before. Can you see it over there? This painting, I think it's in the Museum of Modern Art. And children love it. So the moment is passed on and on, from the experience, from the direct immediate experience to the works, to the painting, to the children and to us, and in that way awakening is directly transmitted. Yes, the great figure. Among the rain and lights I saw the figure five in gold on a red fire truck moving tense unheeded

[45:12]

to gong clangs and siren howls and wheels rumbling through the dark city. So, excuse me for rambling a bit this morning, but if you have any comments or thoughts, questions, we have a few minutes. Carl? I'm curious how you were talking about difference between the left and the right brain. You mentioned there was some controversy about that. First of all, how does that relate to Oh. And what is the controversy? I'm not quite sure what you're referring to. OK. Let me try to be succinct. The controversy as put to me by Bob over Indian food the other day at lunch was that you can't, you shouldn't measure

[46:31]

I wish Bob were here to explain it, that you shouldn't discern functionality from injury. In other words, to have an injury, and that's one of the things in Jill Fulte's book, she had an injury which was a severe injury to her left brain, which she posits as the area of the brain that is given to discernment to you know, to distinguishing things, to making decisions, differentiation. So it's like the relative side of the brain. And the right, she was left with more functionality in her right brain, which she was sort of positing as the absolute side. So what she had to reckon with in this, and it's a lot clearer in the book, is feeling over a period of months of recovery, a kind of yearning to just sink into merging, sinking to this feeling of oneness.

[47:44]

And then having glimmerings, it's like, wait, no, that's not what I have to do. I have to It's not like that isn't powerful or real, but it's like you still have to, it's like the mind that is nowhere that has to come forth. It has to come forth as distinctions, decisions, actions, etc., which is associated to redevelop, rebuild the functionality of what she was calling her left brain. Now some of that may have been dead, So this is what part of what Bob was saying was this great malleability and flexibility in brain function and you can develop these capacities and the brain can rewire itself. You can develop the left side of the brain and the right side of the brain. Yes, I think. Again, this is not... I don't know about this stuff. I don't purport to really I'm not an anatomist, I'm not a neuropsychologist or anything like that, so I hesitate to talk about it all, but I recognize these are potentialities that we distinguish as relative and absolute in Zen, but our life is actually in the meeting.

[48:59]

If you fall completely into the right side, then you sink into this bliss and death. And if you're caught, as our society just so much emphasizes the other side, then you're driven. So this merging, all art is like that. Gassho is like that. It's bringing these sides together. Art manifests as form. Our life manifests as form. This was quite an interesting talk for me in many regards to that. But I just wanted to ask, I couldn't understand quite how you interpreted the image of the snake in that poem. I wasn't quite clear what that was. I'd have to think about it more. What I was saying, I think, was I think this, you know,

[50:09]

symbolically the snake is often a kind of symbol of desire. It's there and actually it's part of our life and if you know if what I was saying is if you see that if you just if you can recognize oh the snake's there by the rock and you can really appreciate that as part of your entire life but if you don't see it and you walk by too close it can bite you and then you're at risk that I probably we could any of you others can probably go deeper but that's just what I hadn't thought about until just that moment so that's that's what I was getting at yeah I just want to mention that the uh the number five yes uh and then the number five O in Kabbalah is uh represents death, which contains the image of the snake and the image of the eagle.

[51:17]

The snake transforms into an eagle, this is the notion of it, and appears as a dove. And the death is not necessarily the death of the body, it's the representation of constant And all the series of fives in the number system are connected to that. Well, it's also five fingers. It's also five books of Moses. Five houses of Satan. Yeah, right. Five ranks. Oh, maybe I'll start another one. Let me talk about the five ranks. No, no, don't do that. Yes, Pat? I just want to thank you so much for some very wonderful teachings. I feel very grateful for what you brought to me this weekend. And mention that this made me a little bit more comfortable with the state of hunger as a driving force for the creative life because you can't ever really satisfy it.

[52:34]

No. This is what my friend David Loy writes about when he writes about lack as a driving force of our practice and a driving force of civilization. If you feel like this is always a hole that you have to fill, it's insatiable, it's endless. But if you recognize this is where you come back to, maybe this is a good place to end, a line that I love from Genjo Kōan, Dogen, when Dharma fills your body and mind, you realize that something is missing. That that hunger, the experience of that hunger is in fact part of the experience of being completely alive. Except, when Dharma doesn't fill your body and mind, you think that if you just get enough food, enough sex, enough things, you know, you'll be done with it.

[53:52]

You'll fill it. And you can't. But we also have to keep creating. Does the painting of the Berkeley Zen Center satisfy your hunger? Good question. Right now, it totally does. In this moment, it does. So I was going to ask, when it does, what's the quality of that, and when it doesn't, what is the quality of that? When it does, it's just... being together with my friends, sitting together. Kind of doesn't matter who's here, you know, yesterday afternoon I was sitting here for a while, just there were two or three of us in here and it just felt like, oh the room is full and that's fine.

[55:02]

my particular, the particularity of my life is my view shifts sometimes I see what's sometimes my eyes on what's really close and sometimes what's really close is also large and maybe even farther away. And it's just, that's what I've come, that's what I'm coming to terms with as I grow up in myself. And I also question it, you know, so. So that painting doesn't satisfy you, the painting of this larger... Yes, if that, well, and we're talking about, I don't want to be mysterious. If I talk about, I feel like I have some calling in the world.

[56:08]

And that's important to me. Where it's satisfying, the only place where it's satisfying is under the same conditions that practicing here is satisfying. It's when we are together as people, as friends. So when I go someplace and that's happening and there's a real connection, fine. If I say when I went to India, I felt like I was really in connection to people. But I'm not so interested, for example, in going around from Zen center to Zen center. The connections are momentary but the relationships are not rooted. So it's the rootedness of really being in each other's lives. Period. That's the thing that cuts across all of those circumstances for me. Does that answer?

[57:11]

It satisfies. Okay. Well, thank you very much.

[57:14]

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