Good morning. And happy May Day. I won't give a whole history lesson, sort of peripheral to what I want to speak about, but this is International Workers' Day. It celebrates the victory of the eight-hour day. for labor. There's lots. What? Right on. Yes. Those of us who are lucky enough to have a job. And before that, it was a pagan holiday. But anyway, this is peripheral. I just wanted to observe. It's a lovely May Day. And so we should set up a maypole outside and go dancing around. I think it was two weeks ago that Sojin Roshi gave a talk.

[01:01]

The gist of it was about our mutual responsibility for maintaining the practice place in the temple. But in framing it, he spoke about the history of establishing first on Dwight Way and then transporting it here to Russell Street. And while he was speaking, what came to mind was a case, case four in the Book of Serenity, which is one of the classic Koan collections. And I think I'm going to circle around this. I'll read you the case and then I'll come back and redo the whole frame of it, but it's about the question of sanctuary.

[02:11]

So the case is actually very short and simple. As the World Honored One, that's the Buddha, was walking with a congregation He pointed to the ground with his finger and said, this spot is good to build a sanctuary. Indra, the emperor of the gods, who was in the congregation as they were walking about, took a blade of grass, stuck it in the ground and said, the sanctuary is built. The world honored one, smiled. So, I think the fundamental question is how do I create whatever it is that we are calling sanctuary?

[03:17]

How do you do it? What does sanctuary mean? I looked it up in the dictionary and essentially it means a holy place. My first memory of the word, when I was a kid in New York, we had this program called Million Dollar Movie. Does anyone remember that? It was great. You could never have anything like that today. They would pick a classic movie and they would show it every night for a week. And if you were into these things as I was, you could really absorb that movie. You could watch it. I remember watching King Kong every night and Yankee Doodle Dandy with Jimmy Cagney.

[04:23]

The Hunchback of Notre Dame, which to my surprise was not a football story. And I remember at one point in the movie, Quasimodo, who was the hunchback, who is incredibly played by Charles Lawton, he's in love with this gypsy girl and he who's been falsely accused of murder. And he takes her from the gallows and carries her off to the heights, in his arm, to the heights of Notre Dame. And then he's shouting from the top, Sanctuary! Sanctuary! What did that mean? You know, I had to go look it up when I was a kid, but it was clear what the effect of it was.

[05:27]

The army couldn't invade and take her away. It was like a safe place. So, I've been turning this koan over, carrying it lightly in my head for the last week and thinking about the various aspects of it. what, not in a scholarly, so much in a scholarly or technical way, but what it means to me. And I think it also resonated when I was listening to Sojan's talk, because I was also, I'm still thinking about it, I was writing about my experience in India in March. and to be, say, in Mumbai, to be in these really poor slums there, and see that in the midst of these really difficult neighborhoods that were kind of beyond my previous imaginings, people had created sanctuary.

[06:46]

They had cleared a space, They had set up the Buddha. They had garlanded it with flowers. They spread actually quite lovely carpets so that nobody was on the dirt or the gravel. And they sat down. And we chanted and we sat together. Sanctuary was created. The third factor has been rising in me all week and really came clear yesterday. There is an environmental disaster unfolding. one that we have some those of us who drive internal combustion engines have some involvement in in Louisiana with the oil spill it was as these things usually are minimized at first like oh we can contain this so this is very small nothing's going to happen but it is uh quite clearly in everyone's estimation

[08:17]

It's going to be larger than the Alaska disaster of the Exxon Valdez. It's happening in the most rare and precious of wetlands in the Mississippi Delta, that whole delta area of southern Louisiana, the Gulf Coast, which was so recently hit by Katrina. This is like the double whammy. And it's happening at a time, I was watching a news report on television last night, that the migrating birds are coming back. And this is mating season. And pairing season. And this is the most, it's one of the most bird populous areas in our country. This is a sanctuary for them, just as Dogen said when he was talking about how the water is a palace for the fish.

[09:35]

These wetlands, the water is a palace for the fish, the shellfish, crabs, the oysters, the shrimp. The wetlands are the sanctuary of the wild birds and all of the other creatures that live there. And it is threatened. So I sort of followed out my own thinking, first to determine what I felt a lot of grief come up. And then it occurred to me, well, people should go there to help. There's going to be a lot of work to do. And I sort of, I knew where this was leading for me.

[10:47]

But I put out a notice on a number of lists and on Facebook, sort of suggesting this, and also seeing what people thought. And all the way, sort of holding back in my mind, I thought, well, yeah, people will do this. I know people will respond. also just a little kind of checking thought that, like, I don't think I can do this myself. I'm too busy. We have a practice period coming on, all these things. This morning I realized I'm thinking about going. you know, maybe next week for four or five days, whatever.

[11:50]

I'm not sure. I haven't decided this at all. And I'd be happy to talk to any of you after the talk if you're interested in going also, or if you're interested in going yourself. I don't know how to do it. I know, because I've been looking around, there's lots of places to volunteer and help. And I think that all the help that can be mustered will be necessary. And it won't be just this week, it's going to go on for a long time. But, what is my sanctuary? What is your sanctuary? It's the Zendo. This is, as Sojin was saying, and I think if it weren't for this, the work that all those who came before us had done, my mind wouldn't have moved in this way.

[12:59]

I wouldn't have had community to talk about this with. And so it's important to, it's vital to take care of this practice and take care of this place. It's vital to return to silence as the title of the book by Katori Roshi. We do this day by day. His second book, I've said this before, his second book was titled, You Have to Say Something. From this silence, there is some responsibility. that comes forth. So these are the thoughts that kind of led me to contemplate this koan.

[14:03]

So I think, let me read you the whole koan, OK? We can come back to this. I'm going to just circle around. The pointer. kind of introduction to the koan says, as soon as a single mote of dust arises, the whole earth is contained therein. With a single horse and a single lance, the land is extended. Who is this person who can master in any place and meet the source in everything? As soon as a single mote dust arises, the whole earth is contained therein. With a single horse and a single lance, the land is extended. Who is this person who can master in any place and meet the source in everything?" That's pretty good. We'll come back to it. Then the main case.

[15:05]

As the World Honored One was walking with the congregation, he pointed to the ground with his finger and said, Indra, emperor of the gods, took a blade of grass, stuck it in the ground and said, the sanctuary is built. The world honored one, smiled. And then, is it Tian Tong? Tian Tong has a verse, which is commentary on the case. The boundless spring on the hundred plants, Picking up what comes to hand, he uses it knowingly. The sixteen foot tall golden body, that's the Buddha, a collection of virtuous qualities, casually leads him by the hand into the red dust. Able to be master in the dusts, from outside creation a guest shows up.

[16:13]

Everywhere Life is sufficient in its way, no matter if one is not as clever as others. So that's the whole case with the pointer, the case, and the verse. There's footnotes, and I'm not sure who did the commentary of these old Chinese guys. There's a wonderful footnote to this line Indra, emperor of the gods, took a blade of grass, stuck it in the ground and said, the sanctuary is built. The footnote says, repairs won't be easy. That's true. That's true in Louisiana. That's true because the sanctuary is what we create.

[17:28]

I was talking, so there's these difficult lines in the poem. able to be master in the dust, so the dust of the world, the red, he says, what is it, the 16 foot tall golden body, the Buddha, a collection of virtuous qualities, meaning the Buddha is composed of aggregates, composed of causes and conditions, complete interdependence, just as we are, nothing any different in kind, just the collection of virtuous qualities which are the manifestation, universal manifestation of Buddha nature. Sixteen foot tall, golden body, a collection of various qualities casually leads him by the hand into the red dust.

[18:34]

So you can see the Buddha walking hand in hand with his congregation. The red dust is It's an expression you find a lot in Chinese poetry and Chinese literature. I remember in college I read The Dream of the Red Chamber. All that I remember of The Dream of the Red Chamber is this one line which said, Another adventure in the red dusts. Which is just the world. The world that swirls. The world that changes. the world that kind of gets stuck on our clothes and our skin, the world that we inhabit. So the Buddha is leading, leading Indra, leading us by hand through the world. And then the next line is, able to be master in the dusts.

[19:36]

So in other words, This is very much like Suzuki Roshi's admonition. You be the boss. You be the boss of you. To be master. To be the active principle. I think Sojin Roshi has been lecturing on the five ranks. to be the host, in a sense. That's something that we aspire to. And then the next line says, from outside creation a guest shows up. To be simultaneously the host and the guest. To be simultaneously beyond

[20:38]

your conception of what the red dust or the world is to be simultaneously active and receptive. That's what makes... That's how we can create sanctuary in any spot. talking with Lori last night, I was reading these lines, her first response was, you know, it's like to be enlightened by all things. And this is in line with the first line of the of the pointer, as soon as a single mote of dust arises, the whole earth is contained herein. So, things come forth and carry enlightenment with us.

[21:50]

The blade of grass, the spot is pointed at by the Buddha. The blade of grass is planted by Indra. These are the things that come forth and are at hand. At the same time it means in order so there's things come forth and enlighten us but in order to build the sanctuary there has to be total interaction, which means we have to come forth and recognize that things are there, that Buddha nature is pervading everywhere, and then we have to act, we have to speak, we have to act. And it's only by acting that sanctuary is there, even if that act is the act of

[22:56]

our attention. That act of attention makes it precious. Let me tell you two stories about this. One is just the famous first two verses of Whitman's Song of Myself, and this one is directly relevant. I celebrate myself and sing myself. And what I assume, you shall assume. For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you. I loaf and invite my soul. I lean and loaf at my ease, observing a spear of summer grass. Once the sanctuary has been built, then we attend to it.

[24:03]

Then we recognize that there is preciousness in our midst, and we make it precious by our attention. I loaf and invite my soul. I lean and loaf, observing a sphere of summer grass. One more story. This may be a little off track, but maybe not. This is from Nasruddin, who is a Sufi teacher in the 13th century, contemporary with Dogen. Have any of you met him? He's a great joker. I think I sort of take him as my spiritual model. So, here's a story, also about sanctuary. Mulla Nasruddin's father was a highly respected keeper of a shrine, the burial place of a great teacher, which was a place of pilgrimage.

[25:12]

In the usual course of events, Nasruddin could be expected to inherit this position. But soon, after his 15th year, he decided to follow the ancient maxim, seek knowledge even if it be in China. I will not try to prevent you, my son, said the father. So Nasruddin saddled the donkey and set off on his travels. He visited the lands of Egypt and Babylon, roamed in the Arabian desert, struck northward to Iconium, to Bokhara, Samarkand, and the Hindu Kush mountains, consorting with dervishes, and always heading towards the farthest east. Nasruddin was struggling across the mountain ranges in Kashmir when, overcome by the rarefied atmosphere and privations, his donkey lay down and died. Nasruddin was overcome with grief, for this was the only constant companion of his journeyings which had covered a period of a dozen years.

[26:18]

Heartbroken, he buried his donkey and raised a simple mound over his grave. There he remained in silent meditation, the towering mountains above him and the rushing torrents below. Before very long, people who were taking the mountain road between India, Central Asia and China observed this lonely figure alternately weeping at his loss, gazing across the valleys of Kashmir. This must be indeed the grave of a holy man, they said to one another, and a man of no mean accomplishments if his disciple mourns him thus. He's been here for many months and his grief shows no sign of abating. Presently a rich man passed and gave orders for a dome and a shrine to be erected on the spot as a pious act. Other pilgrims terraced the mountainside and planted crops whose produce went to upkeep of the shrine.

[27:25]

The fame of the silent mourning dervish spread until Nasruddin's father came to hear of it. He at once set off on a pilgrimage to the sanctified spot. When he saw his son Nasruddin, he asked him, what happened? Nasruddin told him, The old Dervish raised his hands in amazement. No, O my son, he exclaimed, that the shrine where you were brought up and which you abandoned was raised in exactly the same manner by a similar chain of events when my own donkey died over three years ago. There is no holy land. There is no sanctuary. It's all holy.

[28:30]

And it's made that way by our attention. How do we take care of this place? which is very well taken care of. People walk in, I bring a lot of guests here, and they're just, they feel it whenever they walk in, everything in place, clean, not compulsively so, just orderly, as if it is something that people take as precious, but also as if, just as when you walk into an old church, you feel it's precious because people use it every day. I remember when I first started sitting here, it was in a late autumn, I think in November, and so I'd sat, quickly got into sitting daily, and then it came up on Rohatsu Session

[29:48]

which I didn't do, because you were supposed to do a one-day sitting first, right? But I came to Zazen that afternoon, no, that morning, it was that morning, like second morning of Sishin, because I think Sishin began on Sunday or something, and I was like, wow, something else is happening here. just the energy of people's attention. Not doing something precious. In the spirit of Bodhidharma's response to Emperor Wu, when Emperor Wu talked about all these sanctuaries and temples he had built, he said, what merit do I get from this? Bodhidharma said, no merit whatsoever. It wasn't about merit. It was just about The intention to come together and sit sāsana.

[30:53]

The intention to, in the broadest sense, to manifest Buddhadharma in the world. That's what creates the sanctuary. That's why the Buddha smiled. In one of the commentary I read, they said, well, was the Buddha smiling because he was just... because he thought Indra got it? Or was he smiling because... Or was it the indulgent smile of a father for a kid who just does something? I actually don't care. The smile is meaningful. The act of establishing this sanctuary is precious. the way we take care of the world, in all the ways we do, quite irrespective of whether I or any of us go to Louisiana, this is the work of our lives.

[32:04]

This is embedded in the heart of our practice. So we're building sanctuary after sanctuary. and leave time for some discussion. If you have any thoughts or questions, comments, the floor is open. Sue. Thank you. I love those stories you told. It was just a sort of literal-minded question about that koan that I never quite understood. Why did Indra, does he up a blade of grass and stuck it in the ground, but where did he get the blade of grass? Wasn't it already in the ground? Did they ever pick up a blade of grass one place and then stick it in the dirt in a different place by itself?

[33:08]

It just seems odd to me. I think that was my picture, yeah. And what a blade of grass is, we think of our lawns longer. It was more just the act, the immediate, it was an immediate response. It was a gesture. Yes. Yes. Even if it involved killing a blade of grass. Yeah, that's where I think that may be too literal. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I thought Sue was going to have my question. She didn't. I keep wondering why Indra? It's so rare that you see Indra. And there's two places I sort of go. One is, was there just some kind of everybody's attention turned towards this blade of grass?

[34:12]

And they describe that as like God stepping in. Or the other thing is just in the sutras he comes up as a kind of somewhat clueless or maybe kind of like an Emperor Wu figure who does all this, supports the Buddha but kind of has to be coached to really get the deeper meaning or something? I think it's both. I was looking around, searching around about Indra. There's another instance when the Buddha was cremated it was Indra who went through the ashes and extracted the Buddha's tooth and also caused two pagodas, two sanctuaries to be built in his realm, in paradise.

[35:16]

But I think what you get is The gods in the contemporary pantheon of the Buddhist time, they were there. They were figures as well. In this case, it seems like he got it. But getting it, we know, is not necessarily a permanent condition, right? As some of us can attest. One day you get it, the next day you don't. But I think they were just there in the congregation. And you often see, like in Vimalakirti Sutra when we were reading, the gods are there, the Bodhisattvas are there, the Arhats are there, they're just kind of the population of more or less great paranormal beings.

[36:22]

I don't have any deeper understanding. I really looked around to try to see what it signified, but I couldn't get much more. If anyone knows, Linda? I was looking for you. OK. I had a little comment on both of the questions that came up. One thought about Indra is just me playing scholar here. There's lots of evidence of the different religions everywhere, but say in India, the older Hindu tradition and then Buddhism, which is younger, picking up each other and appropriating each other in various ways. So Indra not only gets picked up by Buddhism and shown whether he's shown to be clueless or whether he's shown to be clueful, as in this story, or whatever, he'll be incorporated He's a disciple of the Buddha. It goes the other way around too. The Hindus also take Indra and use him in various ways because they leave behind the old order where he was king of the gods and they demote him and then he shows up later.

[37:30]

And they also incorporate the Buddha. So this is just the history of the Hindus. And about whether he actually picked up a blade of grass and killed it in order to put it in the ground. I actually feel that What he really did was he found a fish that was hanging from a nearby bush and he planted it in the ground tail first. Sit with that for a moment. Thoughts? Staying with Indra for a moment, I remember when I first read it I really liked the fact that it was the head of the gods reaching down and picking up something as ordinary as a piece of grass. You know, when I think of the Greek gods, I think of the nature of the gods, ethereal things, and it was just something very... that is hamster-eating.

[38:34]

Right, and the whole... the pointer and the verses, they emphasize this thing about dust, right? They're walking... walking through India, it's going to be or it's going to be dusty. Yeah, I think he picked an oil soaked bird. Well, that's quite likely. I'm not sure if this is going to turn into a question, but I'm mulling over sanctuary and the birds and the fish and the shellfish. And one aspect is sort of a sense of solidarity. If our sanctuary, our literal sanctuary right here, were being overwhelmed by oil that we couldn't control or affect and we would work hard.

[39:38]

And then also with this sense of attention, that not only the bird's attention is necessary for them to have sanctuary, but everything that affects them may need to pay attention. I'm wondering if there's some other way you are thinking about our connection. To which? To the sanctuary of the birds and the threats to it. It's no different. We... That land, the birds, the fish, are us. We co-create this world. Without any of us, without our actions, none of us would be here. So it's our responsibility to take care of it, but I come back to that comment, which is both amusing and, well, it's amusing, true, and troubling.

[40:57]

Repairs will be difficult. And yet, there is no alternative. But to do that, and one of the things that I think about this country, however deluded we may be in certain respects, I know that thousands of people, their hearts are open, and they're going to respond to this. And they're thinking about it now, and I know that everybody who's working down there now is working their ass off really hard, because whether they understand it, in a conscious way, a theoretical way, a spiritual way, they are just enacting their full connection. And that's kind of what I believe. Yeah, we have to end pretty soon. I'm deeply troubled at what it means to actually care for something, not in one's immediate environment.

[42:05]

To take this body there means spending a lot more oil. Good point. And this body leaves behind, by so doing, the things this body is connected to here and responsible for. So I've now had a lifetime of watching these crises come and go. I remember waking up the morning of this huge oil spill San Francisco Bay, everything was covered in fog, but the oil was drifting and we all just basically dropped everything we had and went and did something about it. We were here. And with all our heroics, it made very, it was only palliative to our hearts to do that. And it was important work to do. But the real healing of the environment was something that only the environment could do for itself over a long time.

[43:13]

This crisis that's happening now goes very, very deep. It's the spawning time for so many organisms, all of which are the base of the food chain. Everything else depends on it. And my running there to clean up whale-soaked birds does not address that. I don't know how to be effective. And then I think, How am I going to feed myself from within? In this place, in this life, it's time to start. That's what I'm trying to say. Well, I think that's quite cogent and important and affects me as you're saying it. And not by way of any justification, and to be very clear, I don't know what I'm going to do. That's why I actually brought it up, because I need input. But, I also think that on some level, I feel irrespective of the logic or the scientific case

[44:31]

the fact of humans trying to act compassionately and coming together and working together creates a potentiality that cannot be quantified. I don't know what that is but I have some faith in that as well. So those are the things that I feel like I'm trying to balance and this is extremely helpful. Thank you. Before we end, do you have any comment? Well, a lot of things came up for me, but the last thing, when you feel like there's a helplessness, just doing something is a way, it's not like I'm going to fix everything by, whether or not you are, whether or not your plan is a good plan or not. Just doing something gets you off the hook of despair.

[45:38]

And you don't know how that's going to work out or what the consequences are going to be. You just do it. And if you think too much, you're stuck. So you've got to let go of all your thinking and just do something. And then when you do something, something else gets hit, which hits something else, which hits something else. Otherwise, everything just stands still. So, justifications don't mean anything. Just do it. The other thing is, in Buddhist literature, all of the gods follow Buddha. So, all the gods are subservient to Buddha. They all bow down to Buddha. That's Buddhism. But there's one line about taking up what's at hand. That's the key. Taking up what's at hand. wherever you are, whatever you're doing, that's the answer.

[47:01]

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