So good morning. It's always so nice to hear the women's voices. It is different. I was planning to talk about women's practice, sort of whatever that is. I'm not sure what it is. I will not, I'll probably talk about Butch, but before we do anything, I want to say four things at once. I have such a feeling of us, particularly today, that we're practicing together as women is part of it, some sense of community, but also that one of our brothers has died and here we are. So I just have such a strong feeling of us bringing forth the Dharma together.

[01:01]

You know, not a feeling of like, I'm up here lecturing and I'm going to teach you something. You know, that this is us. It's just us. And I suppose that's all the Dharma ever is, but just feel strongly today that way. At any rate, one of our ancestors is Tara. Tara was a woman practitioner who said, you know, they'd said that you couldn't attain enlightenment in the body of a woman. If you did, at the instant of enlightenment, you'd turn into a man. And Tara said, no, [...] no. I will realize enlightenment. And I will do it in a woman's body, and she did. So she is a primary ancestor for us.

[02:03]

And there's a chant to her, a Pali chant, that's got a tune to it. And so what I'd like to do is for us all to do it together. And just keep going. Take a breath wherever you need to. You can follow me. Some of you probably know this. And I hope I'm close to the tune. If I'm not on it, I usually call Wendy Johnson before I give this kind of a lecture and get her to remind me of the tune, and I didn't get to it. At any rate, we'll just do it for a while, and then listen. I'll slow it down, and that'll be the last time through. So it goes like this. And please join me if you know it. It's om tare tu tare tu re soha, which is svaha in Pali, svaha, awake. Or I like to think of it as viva. Anyway, that's in Sanskrit.

[03:05]

So those are the words. OM TARE TU TARE TU RE SOHA OM TARE TU TARE TU RE SOHA OM TARE TU TARE TU RE SO HA [...] OM DARE DU DARE DU RE SOHA OM DARE DU DARE DU RE SOHA OM DARE DU DARE DU RE SOHA

[04:09]

OM DARE DU DARE DU RE SOHA [...] OM TARE TU TARE TU RE SOHA OM TARE TU TARE TU RE SOHA OM TARE TU TARE TU RE SOHA OM TARE TU TARE TU RE SOHA She's here. I was talking to Butch the other day about, you know, one of the teaching stories about Dengshan, Tozan.

[05:16]

Well, back up, about a case 55 in the Blue Cliff Record about Daowu and the condolence call. It's the one where a student hits the coffin and says, alive or dead, and the teacher says, I won't say, I won't say. And Mel gave me that case when my parents were dying, and my first response was, how rude. He didn't say, I don't know. He said, I won't say. But at any rate, I think that's, as I kept reading it and got into it further, I came to, have some understanding of it. I'll have that koan for the rest of my life, but alive or dead, what's the difference? What's a person? And reading that with the story about Dongshan, when he was a very young monk and he was studying with Nanchuan, and Nanchuan was arranging a memorial service for his teacher, and Nanchuan asked the monks in the assembly, he said, well, do you think he'll come?

[06:30]

And they were silent, and Dungshan, Tozan, came forward and said, if he has a friend here, he will come. So, alive or dead, you know. Tara is here. Butch is here. We bring them. And we can have them. anytime we want. And we could have, service will be dedicated to our teachers who have gone, our women teachers who have gone before. I think we invited you to give us names we didn't, I don't think we got any, but it'd be Mahapajapati, because she's stood up to the Buddha. And Maureen Stewart, who was a really important teacher for a lot of women in this sangha, including Meili, and probably Fran, I don't know.

[07:34]

And of course, Fran and Meili and Dolly. So they're here. But it's also true that they're not. It's also true that they're dead. And one of the things I don't, I won't say, I won't say means is that there's nothing to say about it. We just have to accept it. I'm aware that today is the last day of summer, the first day of fall.

[08:36]

Things are changing. If you have a garden, you're aware of it. Even though it still feels like summer weather, the plants know better. Leaves are starting to turn brown. My garden is, or our garden, is starting to look a little raggedy, a little funky, because things are going. The nasturtiums are mostly died back for this year. It's a great image, nasturtiums, because things change, right? Nasturtiums die back, but they'll be here again. Not a problem. At this time of year reminds us that things change, that fall and winter happen, that death happens.

[09:40]

We can see it. There's a turning inward as light fades. For the earth, you know, the seeds, all those little nasturtium seeds are kind of resting and waiting for, waiting for the spring or waiting, actually probably just waiting for the first rain, but waiting. And lots of seeds are waiting and plants are kind of waiting. Even the ones that are not going to turn brown and shrivel are waiting for the time of renewal. But first there's a time of rest. There's a natural rhythm. And there's a natural rhythm to our lives, even though we don't like it sometimes, we protest it. I sure as hell protest Butch's death. He was only 55 and he had such wonderful plans and he was doing such great work.

[10:48]

You know, he worked in the, He worked with people that had been in prison. He worked in the jails in San Francisco and then also with guys that were coming out of San Quentin. There was something called Sanga X. And he worked with them. He was about 55 years old. young by my standards. But protest all I like, he's still dead. And I still have to accept it. And I still not only have to but want to practice with it. What is this thing?

[11:49]

Can I Believe it. When I say shit happens, death happens. And it's going to happen to me. Can I remember? Can I live my life remembering? knowing this, it's one of the gifts. Blanche talked yesterday about how being with a dying person is a gift. You know, Suzuki Roshi's widow, Oksan, lived at San Francisco Zen Center for like 30 years after he had died. But then as she started to really feel her age, which was like in her, I think in her 80s or something, maybe not quite that old. She said she was going to go home to Japan.

[12:54]

And people were really upset, and they really, really wanted her to stay. She taught tea, and so she had a lot of her own students. And then, of course, people simply loved her as Suzuki Roshi's widow. But, and Blanche went to talk to her and kind of try to persuade her to stay and to tell her how important she was and so on. And she turned to Blanche and she said that, you know, being with, taking care of somebody when they die is a gift. And I want to give that gift to my daughter. So she went back to Japan. where she's still going strong, you know. She did a push-up. Somebody asked her, you know, how do you stay so vigorous and so on. She said, exercise. I do my qigong and I do push-ups.

[13:56]

And she dropped down on the mat and did a push-up. Could remember that too, you know. Butch died, he's 55. She must be around 90 now and she's doing push-ups. That's also true. And I encourage you to go and sit with Butch today and really look at him. He actually looks quite beautiful. But really look because it's in accepting that fact of death that we can really be alive and really be present. And that's one of the gifts that people give when they die is to remind us of our own death.

[15:00]

And the death really happens both for us and for people we love. And if we can live our lives remembering that, they're much fuller. And we're much less likely to part from a friend or a lover or whatever partner in anger. We're much less likely to let things fester. We're more likely to be willing to tell each other how important we are to each other. Have someone you really appreciate, did you tell them recently? Did you tell yourself? One of the many things which was, you know, I knew him at San Francisco Zen Center, I knew him at Tassajara, and I knew him at City Center, and worked with him and so on, so I've known him for a long time.

[16:03]

At any rate, one of the things he was, was very alive and very lively and very interested. I remember his brother, Teddy, who's been around here a lot, who took care of him. Teddy used to live in South San Francisco. And Butch would go sometimes and spend the weekend at Teddy's house. And when he would tell me that he was going, not just his face, his whole body would light up. And he'd say, I'm going to go and we're going to watch baseball games and we're going to eat. And he loved the Giants. I mean, just the other day, he mentioned the Giants. I'm a baseball fan, too. an Ace fan, but at any rate, we have baseball in common, we had baseball in common, and I said something about the Giants and he, again, his whole body lit up and he grabbed my arm and he said, it's my team!

[17:18]

And on this last Tuesday, Blanche, you know, she's a former Abbess of San Francisco Zen Center, and she's received transmission from Mel, and she started at the Berkeley Zen Center on Dwight Way. She's also part of the fabric of this place. At any rate, Blanche came on Tuesday morning, and I was there. I used to massage his feet. If you're not moving around a lot, your feet, your ankles get swollen. And I learned when a friend of Butch's and mine, a man named Robert, died at the Zen Center Hospice. And he had a friend who was a doctor, and she used to come and massage Robert's feet. And that's where I learned about it. Butch took some amazing pictures of Robert. At any rate, and again, alive or dead, you know, I would be, she massaged Robert's feet, and Butch was around then too, and then I massaged Butch's feet.

[18:45]

So Robert was there. Anyway, I was there, and Blanche came along with her husband Lou, and Blanche told him about how when Dogen died, You know, he wrote down, I take refuge in Buddha, I take refuge in Dharma, I take refuge in Sangha, and he put it on a pillar at the temple, and he just circumambulated that pillar, reciting, taking refuge, saying, I take refuge in Buddha, I take refuge in Dharma, I take refuge in Sangha, over and over and over again. He couldn't sit, but he could do that. So she talked to him about that, and about how when she had a heart attack, And she didn't know if she was going to live or not. She did that. And then she said she had developed some tunes and she kind of sang it for him. And then she recited for him the full moon ceremony, including the repentance.

[19:57]

He was on Tuesday, if you saw, he was very alert and alive on Tuesday. Anyway, it was a wonderful thing and it just, it pleases me so that that happened right before he died. At any rate, then Mel showed up and Butch lit up and he said, let's take a picture. And there was the photographer right there. You know, when he went, he had a Roloflex. He had a fancy, old-fashioned, but a very fancy, wonderful camera. And he took pictures, and then he had, Teddy took some pictures with another camera. But there he was. It was not easy for him, this dying stuff.

[21:16]

He was very present in a lot of ways. And he struggled with being present with the fact that he was dying. He was afraid, as I think we all are. And he acknowledged that, he was working with it. And he was working with his sadness. He wasn't ready to die, it was much too soon. He had a lot to do. And isn't that what practice is? Working with being willing to be present. That's what Sazen is, right? Being willing to be present. Over and over again we come back because we're not willing to be present. Why is that?

[22:23]

What is that about? What's so horrible about being present? Is it just because it's boring? I don't think so. I don't think so. But what is that? Every so often, maybe a lot of the time, I don't know. You're present, right? During zazen, other times, maybe you notice that you, afterwards, you notice that, oh, I was really present for that. Blanche talked yesterday about, I guess they studied the Sutra on the Four Foundations of Mindfulness, and there was homework, and the homework was, Be aware that you're walking when you're walking. Sounds easy, doesn't it? Be aware that you're driving when you're driving. And she said it took her two weeks before she did it.

[23:23]

We practiced for years and, you know, are you present for every breath in Sazen? Well, no. So we put our intention on it and we work with it with being present. And I think that part of the reason why it's difficult is our fear of death. Our fear of no self. You go deeply into this No, we say that you have to settle the great matter of life or death. You go deeply into it and one thing that comes up is fear of no self. It's like, what do you mean, no me?

[24:27]

This is all I know right here. So coming to terms with that, that's our work and that's Zazen. And that's a gift right now from Butch to each of us, a reminder And it's a gift of the fall too, you know, a reminder. Things change. Things die. What is in the nature of arising is in the nature of passing away. Basic Buddhism, right? Things arise and things pass away.

[25:31]

And I think if we can't remember it, if we can't allow ourselves to know it in our bodies, then we also are missing some of the joy that spring represents in our imagery. That case 55, the end of it, is the student finally has an understanding and wakes up. And he's, a few years later, he's in the zendo going back and forth with a hoe. And he says he's looking for relics of the teacher. And somebody else says, basically, they're everywhere. and he says something about strengthening his practice. So I like to think it was like he was, what he was showing was that, so you have this understanding.

[26:44]

Later on, he told another student about this, I won't say, and the other student said, I won't say, and then he woke up. So then years later, he's going around with a hoe, And for me what it's about is that you may have a great understanding or you may have some great insight and we still have to practice. We still have to come back to every breath and work with willingness, not willingness, to be present for our experience. So can we accept this painful gift that's lying right next door, that's here in the Zen Do. Can we accept this shining gift from Dali and Meili and Fran and use it and compost it

[28:00]

and bring forth the Dharma. Do you have anything that you'd like to say, questions or comments, or just bring up something for you? Yes. I think part of the gift is touching our own mortality. that was our friendly companions.

[29:15]

And the option of opting out was part of what made it possible to stay. And thinking about somebody like Butch, and I think also, maybe, and Dolly, who felt, I'm not through yet. I'm not finished yet. I really love being here. my life and what I do. When you spoke about which is aliveness and lighting up, I think that willingness to be here, really eagerness to be here, is fairly recent in my life. And recently I've experienced again that also simultaneous willingness to lay it all down and have it be over.

[30:26]

And so my practice is holding both of those, making space for feeling simultaneously really willing to go and really eager to stay. And the resolution of that seems to be that whenever I'm fully present, what I touch is enormous sorrow, that we reach a point of being willing to go, and that we go before we are willing. It's not that it stops being about willingness, it starts just being about loss. And it's as if the more alive we are in the present, the more sorrow there is at what we will be leaving when we leave. So when I touch my mortality now, I think I'm sadder than I've ever been.

[31:28]

And I think that's a product of being gladder to be alive. I had a chance to spend a lot of time with Virginia West once. And he was a very authentic person, one of the most just real about who he was and at ease with that. And in his process, he was very real with this humanness of both bravery and denial. I'm the one who told him that he had a terminal disease. And he took the news. grace, strength, and acceptance. And he did that sometimes. And then he would, four days before he died, he wanted to go for a car ride. And I have something that I have to talk with you about.

[32:30]

He took a car ride up to the Lawrence Hall of Science. And he saw that view like he was a child seeing it for the very first time. It was such wonder and amazement. Oh, this is so beautiful. And then he turned to me and he said, you know, I'm doing everything right. Do I have AIDS? Why am I wasting away? Do I have AIDS? That denial. There was a period of time when he just lived as if he were dead. And then about two weeks before he died, it was like the way that the sun sets, you know, the crepusculo that happens in the bright light, that he once again embraced his life before us. I learned a lot by watching his cycle, because his practice was so strong and so deep, and he was so human and had so much that was unfinished in his life, that he went back and forth and back and forth.

[33:35]

I do in practice, sometimes I study, and sometimes I'm just all over the map, so conditioned. And that's just kind of the way it is. That's a good description, thank you. I didn't know him for very long, but in a brief period of time I did know him. And there was an immediacy to the connection when I met him, because his light is so incredibly bright. And there was kind of a resonance between us. What I experienced was a real playfulness. Now, listening to you, Mary said, you know, he's dead and he's here. Yesterday, when I was sitting in the room with him, I had incredibly clear experiences of him communicating to me very specific things about my practice, and in a very playful way.

[34:52]

And not just about my practice, you know, on the cushion, but because there was that, but there was also How I lean into the sharp points, as Red Trunk was saying, how do you kind of lean into your life or your experience? How do I do that or how do I not do that? What is that about? Again, you were saying, why don't we want to be present with that? It was pretty powerful. It just sort of came on me. And I was just sitting in there. He was suddenly there talking to me. And the first thing he said was, you need to lower your eyes a little bit more. He said, I'll help calm you down.

[35:56]

Because I tend to sit when you tilt your head. And that's just the way that I started sitting. So I'd say, girl, you need to lower your eyes a little bit more. It was just really like the whole energy of it. And when Mel was talking about him during lecture yesterday, I felt him really strongly in here. And I saw him sitting on the head of the Buddha, smiling. He's like this Cheshire cat sitting up there. At one point, I mean, I sort of lost track of his energy, and at one point, when I was particularly kind of riveted to something Mel was saying, I was getting kind of really, my energy was getting really intensely coated, I just felt him, his, he just settled, kind of, like he, I, it was this feeling of him standing in front of me, and then just sitting down, like, into my body. His energy, like I said, him, I don't know if he's using that word, but it's him, it was like, that energetic of him just like settling down into my body.

[37:01]

And it just like totally, it was just like... So I felt really grateful to receive that encouragement from him so clearly. And at a time for me when things are all over the map, as Andrew was saying, there are times when things are just completely whacked and that's basically how I've been feeling recently. So I feel very grateful for that, the teaching of his death, and also of his life and his death. So, yeah. I feel very blessed to have that. So there's a friend here, and he's here. Big car, numberless.

[38:12]

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