Good evening, so much going on in the world, but tonight I'd like to honor a great poet whose birthday was yesterday. I've heard that he's considered the most popular poet in America today. Yesterday was his 800th birthday. Jalal ad-Din Rumi was a great Sufi poet. So it's interesting, he was born seven years after Dogan in the 13th century. There were many religious geniuses around, St. Francis and Thomas Aquinas in Europe and Rumi was born actually in what's now Afghanistan and then fled the Mongol invasion to move to what's now Turkey. The Sufis are not considered Muslims by many of the regular Muslim people, but they considered

[01:04]

themselves Muslims and still do. 13th century also in Japan, so Dogan and Shinran and Nichiren. Anyway, I thought I would just read some of my favorite Rumi poems tonight and talk about and I'll hopefully leave time for discussion and we can talk about them. So Rumi was a great poet and spiritual being and very different language from most Zen poetry, but actually in some ways coming from a very similar place, much more explicitly talks about love and loving kindness, but the message is the same, also a lot of wisdom. Anyway, this one is called Be Melting Snow. Totally conscious and apropos of nothing, you come to see me. Is someone here, I ask?

[02:06]

The moon, the full moon is inside your house. My friends and I go running out into the street. I'm in here, comes a voice from the house, but we aren't listening. We're looking up at the sky. My pet nightingale sobs like a drunk in the garden. Ring doves scatter with small cries. Where, where? It's midnight. The whole neighborhood is up and out in the street, thinking the cat burglar has come back. The actual thief is there too, saying out loud, yes, the cat burglar is somewhere in this crowd. No one pays attention. Though I am with you always, means when you look for God, God is in the look of your eyes, in the thought of looking nearer to you than yourself or things that have happened to you. There's no need to go outside. Be melting snow, wash yourself of yourself. A white flower grows in the quietness.

[03:09]

Let your tongue become that flower. So I'll read it over and just comment on a few lines. And then anyone else who wants to please join in. Totally conscious and apropos of nothing, you come to see me. Wonderful. Totally conscious and apropos of nothing. This is our Zazan. This is our Zanhar. Is someone here, I ask? And then it's in italics like a whisper. The moon, the full moon is inside your house. This is the truth always. This is what we start to see in Zazan. The moon, when they say the moon, and this is the month of the great October harvest moon. In Zen poems, they always mean the full round moon. Maybe Rumi meant the crescent moon. I don't know. But anyway, the moon is inside your house. We go outside looking for it, but the moon is right on your cushion.

[04:13]

He says, my friends and I go running out into the street. I'm in here, comes a voice from the house, but we aren't listening. So we sit, and often we're not listening. But I'm in here, I'm in here, I'm in here. This whisper, this voice that calls us back to something deeper, something beyond the daily chatter. But we're looking up at the sky, and it's OK to look up at the sky. The moon's maybe up in the sky, too. My pet nightingale sobs like a drunk in the garden. Ring doves scatter with small cries. Where, where? It's midnight. The whole neighborhood is up and out in the street thinking the cat burglar has come back. Sometimes it takes a thief. The actual thief is there, too, saying out loud, yes, the cat burglar is somewhere in this crowd. No one pays attention. So our job as Zen students, our job as Zen people is just to pay attention.

[05:21]

And with all the hubbub going on on our cushion or chair sometimes, just to notice that no one's paying attention. Oh, yeah, what was I doing here? Come back. The moon is right here on your cushion or chair. And then he says, Lo, I am with you always. Means when you look for God, God is in the look of your eyes, in the thought of looking nearer to you than yourself or things that have happened to you. So I could translate that for Zen and say means when you look for Buddha nature, when you look for the heart of awakening. Anyway, there are many understandings of God in Islam and in Christianity and in the Western religions. And some of those we can easily translate into Buddhist ideas. The point is, when you look for the divine, Lo, I am with you always. God is in the looking. So in Buddhism, we talk about bodhicitta,

[06:22]

this thought of awakening, this looking for, this searching for. So we're all here even if we're not trying to get anything out of our zazen. Still, we're all here because we wish to find how to express our heart more fully, how to find the deeper truth of our lives more fully. There is some looking, some searching, some look in our eyes, just the thought of looking. In the thought of looking, it's nearer to you than yourself, Rumi says. And then he says, there's no need to go outside, be melting snow. I don't know how much snow they had. I guess in some of the hills in Afghanistan they had snow, in Turkey anyway. Be melting snow, wash yourself of yourself. Dogen says, drop body and mind.

[07:27]

To study the way is to study yourself. Wash yourself of yourself. So a lot of what we do in our practice is to pay attention to this self. But can we let go, and let go, and then let go of letting go? And keep paying attention. Wash yourself of yourself. And then the last two lines, a white flower grows in the quietness. There's a line about zazen, sitting quietly, a flower grows in the back. Rumi says, a white flower grows in the quietness. Let your tongue become that flower. How do we learn to express this flowering? This possibility of the lotus growing out of the mud. This possibility of actually being present and paying attention.

[08:32]

This desire to share our love with the world, even with this cruel, difficult world. Even in a world with wars and cruelty. How can we let our tongue become this flower? So those are some thoughts I have about this poem. But any responses or comments? Outbursts. Thank you, David. Yeah, nobody knows where this comes from. Read it again. Be melting snow. Totally conscious and apropos of nothing. You come to see me. Is someone here? I ask. The moon, the full moon, is inside your house.

[09:33]

He says it's the full moon. My friends and I go running out into the street. I'm in here, comes a voice from the house, but we aren't listening. We're looking up at the sky. My pet nightingale sobs like a drunk in the garden. Ring doves scatter with small cries. Where? Where? It's midnight. The whole neighborhood is up and out in the street. Thinking the cat burglar has come back. The actual thief is there too, saying out loud. Yes, the cat burglar is somewhere in this crowd. No one pays attention. Lo, I am with you always. Means, when you look for God, God is in the look of your eyes. In the thought of looking. Nearer to you than yourself. Or than things that have happened to you. There's no need to go outside. Be melting snow. Wash yourself of yourself. A white flower grows in the quietness.

[10:35]

Let your tongue become that flower. So there's lots more, and I really love reading poetry aloud, so I can just keep going, but please feel free to just, you know, call out to me when you're on your way. Here's another one. The whole place goes up. It's the wrong season to read this one, but I'll read it anyway. Today with spring here, finally we ought to be living outdoors with our friends. Let's go to those strangers in the field and dance around them like bees from flower to flower, building in the beehive air our true hexagonal homes. Someone comes in from outside saying,

[11:38]

don't play music just for yourselves. Now we're tearing up the house like a drum, collapsing walls with our pounding. We hear a voice from the sky calling the lovers and the odd lost people. We scatter lives. We break what holds us, each one a blacksmith, heating iron and walking to the anvil. We blow on the inner fire with each striking we change. The whole place goes up. All stability gone to smoke. Sometimes high, sometimes low. We begin anywhere. We have no method. We are the bat swung by powerful arms. Balls keep rolling from us, thousands of them underfoot. Now we're still. Silence also is wisdom, a flame hiding in cotton wool. They had baseball back then?

[12:40]

They had some kind of game. I don't know. I don't know how he's translating it. This is translations from John Moynihan Coleman Barks, who's translated it a lot. So it's some game with a stick and a ball. They had polo. Polo? Some kind of polo? Huh? So I can read the whole thing again but I'll just point out a few lines that just particularly called me. Just this idea of today with spring here, finally we ought to be living outdoors with our friends. And the weather this past weekend was like that. It's nice to be outdoors. You could be out with everyone. Someone comes in from outside saying, don't play music just for yourselves. So when we sit, when we settle, when we, as we will weekend after next, settle for a few days, some of us, still it's important to hear someone coming in from outside saying,

[13:40]

don't play music just for yourselves. This is the Bodhisattva path we follow. We accept that we're connected, that the music of our sitting, the music of our heartbeat and our breath, is not just for ourselves. It's for all of our friends who are practicing in other ways. It's for the Burmese monks taking their stand. It's for friends and family and people we haven't met yet. We hear a voice from the sky calling the lovers and the odd lost people. We scatter lives. You may not want to be willing to join amongst the odd lost people, but part of our practice is admitting that there's a question sitting on your cushion or chair right now,

[14:48]

that we're all a little bit lost, we're all a little bit damaged. We can be willing to be sad, we can be willing to feel our anger when that comes up, we can be willing to be ourselves. This practice that we do, and that I feel Rumi talking about, is not about becoming some special great person, it's about fully being ourselves. Sometimes that's a little strange. Can you be the strange person who you are? This is the challenge of our Zazen. Can we get lost amidst the thoughts and feelings and winds blowing through us? I was talking two or three months ago about Zazen as the cauldron,

[15:50]

as a practice in which something happens and this alchemical process of transformation is beyond our calculation and discriminating consciousness. It's not that we shouldn't use our intelligence, but that doesn't get to it, really. Here Rumi says, if we break what holds us, each one of blacksmiths heating iron and walking to the anvil, we blow on the inner fire, with each striking we change. So there is this inner fire and the moon within and so forth. The whole place goes up, all stability, gone to smoke. So this world, this life, this sitting posture, all of it is very fragile. Nothing to hold on to, as some teachers say.

[16:52]

Rumi says, we begin anywhere, we have no method. Soto Zazen is kind of a school where we're willing to try on all the methods, but really it's just about just sitting, being here, being present, facing what comes up. You can't do it wrong, you can't succeed either, it's just, this is it, here we are. So we have no method, but we begin anywhere. Whoever you are tonight, however you are, in the next inhale and exhale, this is your heart, this is the possibility of love in our life. Now we're still. And Rumi also invokes silence, also his wisdom of flame. Hiding in cotton wool, strange image. Any responses? Nancy? It's very hard to hide a flame in cotton wool. Yeah. Yeah, how would that be?

[17:58]

It would just, the whole place goes up. But I wouldn't imagine that, you know, unlike other substances, cotton wool wouldn't burn very loudly. It would burn silently. It would be like smoke or clouds. I guess there's no, because earlier in the poem, there's the part about the, I can't even remember the words, but just that idea of the anvil, that it's the body in a way. I mean, I was thinking with those poems, just the kind of boundaries being lost between inside and outside, so that, you know, the moon is inside, but then in the second poem, the friends are outside, and then he said something like the wind's blowing through us, just kind of that, we scatter our lives. I thought of wind right away, you know, because just these things being scattered, but it's us doing it or that. You know, if I think of something being, an anvil being,

[19:01]

I don't even know if I'm using the right language for the anvil, but just that force. He says heating iron and walking to the anvil. Yeah, but isn't it, in the line, isn't there some closeness to the body, something to do with that flame? He doesn't say that, but it's there, yeah, that we allow this awareness to be in us and us, or for us to be in it. And there is somehow in this some transformation. So Rumi is just lovely, and, you know, Coleman Barks is a wonderful translator, and, you know, I could just keep reading, and I don't know what to do with this exactly, except that, you know, we have, as I've talked about, Zen is really, the teaching of Zen is in poetry and images and metaphors,

[20:03]

usually rather than, you know, kind of discursive argument or presentation. And here, you know, 800 years ago, starting yesterday, was this fellow coming from this totally other culture, and yet, actually many Zen, Americans Zen teachers talk about Rumi. I'll read another one, just, and there's one line in it that always speaks to me, but there's also, there's a lot more in it. This is called, There's Nothing Ahead. Lovers think they're looking for each other, but there's only one search. Wandering, this world is wandering that, both inside one transparent sky. In here, there is no dogma and no heresy. The miracle of Jesus is himself, not what he said or did, about the future.

[21:07]

Forget the future. I'd worship someone who could do that. On the way, you may want to look back, or not, but if you can say, there's nothing ahead, there will be nothing there. Stretch your arms and take hold the cloth of your clothes with both hands. The cure for pain is in the pain. Good and bad are mixed. If you don't have both, you don't belong with us. When one of us gets lost, is not here, it must be inside us. There's no place like that anywhere in the world. So, particularly for me, the cure for pain is in the pain. Can we be willing to feel what we feel? There's actually tremendous power in just being able to sit upright and be with the sadness or frustration or,

[22:12]

you know, and especially sometimes, you know, pain in our knees, that's the least of it, but anyway. The cure for pain is in the pain. There's, of course, lust more in this poem. Sure. Yeah, I don't, you know, I'm just reading these poems, and I don't know what to do with them, and, you know, feel free to, you know. Yes, David. Yeah. Yeah, looking for the future, looking for the, looking for some enlightenment somewhere else. Thinking that there's some, you know, that sometime in the future it'll all, you know, when we get, when we get this or when we get that or when we've gotten rid of this or when, you know, then it'll all be okay. So, yeah, he talks about that too,

[23:15]

that it's right here, there's nothing ahead. And that's the title of it, There's Nothing Ahead. Lovers think they're looking for each other, but there's only one search, wandering. This world is wandering that. Both inside one transparent sky. In here, there is no dogma and no heresy. The miracle of Jesus is himself, not what he said or did. Of course, we could say that the miracle of Buddha just as well is himself, not what he said or did about the future. Forget the future. I'd worship someone who could do that. On the way, you may want to look back or not, but if you can say there's nothing ahead, there will be nothing there. So he doesn't say don't look back or, you know, you may want to look back or not on the way. It's okay. But when you can say there's nothing ahead,

[24:15]

there will be nothing there. And here we can sit and pay attention and enjoy the next breath and enjoy just sitting together in a circle tonight. He goes on, stretch your arms and take hold the cloth of your clothes with both hands. The cure for pain is in the pain. Good and bad are mixed. If you don't have both, you don't belong with us. So in some ways, you know, Buddhist practice is not about being good. It's not about being bad either, of course, but can we see the good and bad? Can we realize all of it arising in us? Can we confess our confusion and greed and ill will and so forth and also confess our good and our caring and our kindness

[25:19]

and our love for the world and ourselves and even for particular beings? Good and bad are mixed. If you don't have both, you don't belong with us. When one of us gets lost, is not here, he must be inside us. Can anyone really be lost? Where does someone go when they get lost? Jim? When you grab your clothes, stretch your arms, you're a sail. I'm not wearing my Kuromos. But yes. Yes. Can we sail away without going anywhere? I was struck by the line about

[26:20]

I love that the only search is just wandering. It's not a search at all. It's just this wandering. I guess it's that lost thing. But then I wonder if you let yourself get more and more in touch with that lost quality, do you then just kind of stay upright with all the structures that are around you? I think about that sometimes, just that question of being lost and how that actually, how you deal with that in your life. The line about Jesus and it was who he was and not about what he said or what he did. Right. And your suggestion of substitution with Buddha.

[27:21]

It seems that what it's getting at is that it's the essence of him as a person and also just the miracle of personhood and that the substitution with Buddha, it seems to be, it can be substituted with anything, with anyone. It doesn't seem to be, it seems to be leveling the field and saying that this is the holiness of Jesus within all people. Absolutely. It's the miracle of Beth as herself, not what she says or does. And yet, of course, we all say and do things. And sometimes it's helpful even to share that with each other. So, you know, we have a Dharma talk after a period of just sitting together in the room, being ourselves, radically being ourselves.

[28:22]

We may be thinking all kinds of thoughts and the tapes may be going as we're sitting facing the wall. That's okay. Still, your body is there, your heart is there, sitting upright on your cushion. It's kind of strange. Where can we do that? I mean, you know, maybe it's not so strange. Maybe it's what we're always doing all the time. People at a Cubs game are cheering, but they're all just there in their chair or standing and yelling. Jim? Well, this is not believing in the future. The old line, the faith line, will understand it better by and by. It's what there is to understand now.

[29:27]

Right. It's not that there is no future. It's just that that's not what we're here for. We're here for that, just like we're here for everything. I think in a lot of spiritual practice, there's this trap of thinking, oh, if I can be good or if I can become a good meditator or if I learn to sit really still. Back in the old days of Macho Zen, we used to have this idea of whoever sits in the hardest position for the longest without moving is the most enlightened. Anyway, it's not about practicing for something else. It's not about living for something in the future. Our usual worldly way of thinking, our culture, but also our human consciousness, leads us to that. If I do this to get that, then maybe I'll get that. We try and manipulate things to get a better job or finish my degree or whatever it is, then everything will happen.

[30:31]

But actually, can you just be here enjoying this process without needing validation from the future? When the future gets here, that'll be here too. Can I also sometimes be not enjoying the process? Sure. The cure for pain is in the pain. Don't run away from that. Don't separate from the skin bag here and now. This is to really enjoy your misery, to really enjoy your confusion and frustration, to really enjoy the sadness or your heartache. Can we just be here and be present and be who we are? This is not easy.

[31:35]

And yet, you know, I think Rumi, like Dogen, is pointing to some deep satisfaction. In the earlier poem, wash yourself of yourself. I'll do one more. This one's called The World Which Is Made Of Our Love For Emptiness. And I guess he didn't mean it in the Buddhist way of emptiness, but maybe it works anyway. Praise to the emptiness that blanks out existence, this place made from our love for that emptiness. Yet somehow comes emptiness, this existence goes. Praise to that happening over and over. For years I pulled my own existence out of emptiness. Then one swoop, one swing of the arm, that work is over. Free of who I was, free of presence, free of dangerous fear, hope, free of mountainous wanting.

[32:45]

The here and now mountain is a tiny piece of a piece of straw blown off into emptiness. These words I'm saying so much begin to lose meaning. Existence, emptiness, mountain, straw, words. And what they tried to say swept out the window, down the slant of the roof. Well, that's really a Zen poem, isn't it? Praise to the emptiness that blanks out existence. Existence, this place, made from our love for that emptiness. Yet somehow comes emptiness, this existence goes. Praise to that happening over and over. Yeah, this is the boredom of Zen, over and over and over again. All of existence arising out of emptiness. All of emptiness overcoming existence. Jim? The boredom of breathing. Inhale, then exhale, then inhale, then exhale.

[33:49]

Ah. It's wonderful, but, you know, in the wrong mood it can be tiresome. I don't know, wrong or right, anyway. For years I pulled my own existence out of emptiness. Then one swoop, one swing of the arm, that work is over. It happens sometimes. Free of who I was, free of presence, free of dangerous fear, hope, free of mountainous wanting. It's good that he can confess that. The here and now mountain is a tiny piece of a piece of straw, blown off into emptiness. These words I'm saying so much begin to lose meaning. So, here's a poet who is willing to let go of his words. And, you know, all of the teachings of the Buddha were just commentaries on silence. And the point is, how do we, how can we be present and meet ourself and be willing to be this self

[34:52]

and find our way to share loving kindness and to express, I don't know, to just sing to each other? So, any utterances? I'll guess this one. I've just been recording that song, you know, the book of love is in your eyes. Can anyone sing that song for her, I guess? Nancy's good with songs. Well, I don't know the whole thing, but there's a... Look my arms around you. How long have I waited?

[35:54]

Okay. Mary, do you know any other ones? The book of love is on your face. Love, love, smile, and embrace. That's about as far as it goes. You know, I think the book of love is probably on Roger Yoshi's face. You're happily engaging in talk. Have you heard from him, Mary? Yes, I got to talk to Roger yesterday. After five days of Tongariro where he was doing many, many, many periods of sitting a day. And he had a wonderful time. He said it was nowhere near as arduous as he had thought. And he was very joyous. He said it was really wonderful.

[36:58]

Everybody should do it. He'd love to do it again, but maybe not right away. Where was he? He's at Tassajara Zen Center. Yoshi is Hoketsu's daughter and brother. And he's just starting a three-month practice period at Tassajara. In San Francisco, outside of San Francisco. Down in the mountains, the Monterey Mountains, way back in the mountains. He's entering a three-month practice period. That's wonderful. Great assignment. Great. Thank you, Mary. Good news. Thank you, Mary. Anybody else have a song for us before we call it a night? Nancy, go. All right now. Baby, it's all right now. Beings are numberless. I vow to free them. I vow to free them.

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I vow to free them. [...]

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