It's great to be here. It's very relaxing. Just before we did the chant, I sort of suddenly said, oh, I was doing zazen and enjoying it so much that I almost forgot that I had to do a lecture. Well, actually, I want to do something a little bit different this morning. Not exactly a dharma talk in a way, although maybe close. Last night, I was very honored to be able to give a talk and a poetry reading at New England Arts in San Francisco, which is a gallery and performance space.

[01:18]

But over the years, they've had poets come and present. some major statement about their work, so I was very lucky to go and do that last night. And I took as my topic, I gave a talk, and the topic was word and silence. So what I propose to do this morning is read you that talk in the hopes that you'll find it interesting. I think I see one person who was there, right? You were there, so I'm sorry. So maybe it'll bear repeating, or if you like, you can go home now. You don't want to stay? I won't mind. Go get a nice cup of coffee at Pete's or something. So, maybe some of you know that along with practicing Zen over many years, I've also been practicing poetry.

[02:24]

I actually started writing first ever since a child. Only later, only lately actually have I realized that, for me, the process of writing, and I think it's true of any form that we participate in, is a contemplation. To confront a form and deal with it over a lifetime is a very calming and wonderful thing to do. And for me, any form that we take up can provide us with that kind of mirror over a lifetime. So, but I couldn't, I began writing and I couldn't really write very well. It was very painful. It never worked out very well. It was more frustrating than useful.

[03:28]

And then I began very early on as a writer, I began practicing Zen, maybe out of the painfulness of confronting form and finding that one was not able to merge with it, maybe. Maybe that's why. The suffering at that occasion, maybe that's why I began to practice Zen. But anyway, then I had the problem of becoming serious about practicing Zen. I then had the problem of, well, should I abandon my literary pursuits or should I drag them, kicking and screaming, into the practice to find a way to make that work? And I did the latter. And it was very helpful to me, actually. I don't think it's too good to be too wrapped up in our practice, actually. It's good to have a little doorway, a little window, you know, where you can look out at the rest of the world so that you have some perspective.

[04:34]

and vice versa. If you're too wrapped up in the world and you don't have a window where you can look in on something that stands behind the world, that's not so good either. So it's nice for all of us, I think, to have both perspectives. So that's what happened to me. And that's how I became a poet, because I started out being a prose writer, but you had to sit there at your desk a really long time. But you could write a poem in maybe one minute, a short one. So because of the schedule and the monastery and so on, one only had a few minutes here and there. So you could read a poem also in a few minutes. But a novel took a long time. Your mind was more geared toward facing the present moment. And you forget what happened in the novel. So I began reading more poetry and writing poetry. And finally, thinking over many,

[05:35]

years about the relationship between poetry and practice, or maybe poetry using words and not using any words. So the talk that I gave last night, which I'm going to now share with you, maybe is the current state of my thinking about this. that I've been doing for many, many years. It's kind of an interactive talk, in a way. You'll see what I mean. I want to begin by acknowledging that I don't know much about what I am talking about If I knew what I was talking about, it really wouldn't be what I was talking about.

[06:42]

Because of this, it requires a good deal of cooperation, and I cooperate. I make an effort to cooperate. I try hard to think about what I am talking about, but I am not much able to. I think it is in the nature of thinking. to be impervious to language, or language is impervious to thinking. If language and thinking are an identity, things are still worse. I can't think about it, only around it. I can be in the neighborhood, but I can never find the house or go inside. at least not through thinking in the usual sense. The kind of thinking I need to do is an exercise not of intelligence but of co-operation.

[07:50]

Through the widening of our affection we might be able to get somewhere and having arrived there again for we were probably there when we began. We may be more relaxed about it, and even if we are not relaxed, we may be more able to bear our anxiety with good humor. Now I would like to spend a short period of silence with you. You will likely notice, and we might not notice this here, I think we noticed it last night in a different setting, but here's what I said last night. You will likely notice that there are four movements to this silence. First, feeling uncomfortable and wondering whether it is alright to be silent, or whether someone is doing something to you.

[09:00]

Second, relaxing a bit, or at least forgetting to feel uncomfortable, Third, listening. And fourth, being bored and wanting the silence to end. Or, as an alternative fourth, cooperation. Okay.

[10:40]

Huh! Okay.

[12:44]

I am here and there is nothing to say. If among you are those who wish to get somewhere, let them leave at any moment. What we require is silence.

[14:48]

But what silence requires is that I go on talking. Give any one thought a push. It falls down easily, but the pusher and the pushed produce that entertainment called a discussion.

[15:59]

Shall we have one later? Or we could simply decide not to have a discussion. Whatever you like. But now there are silences and the words make help make

[17:14]

the silences. I have nothing to say and I am saying it and that is poetry. as I need it. This space of time is organized. We need not fear these silences. That was a quote from John Cage's 1959 lecture on nothing.

[18:35]

Now I want to tell you about a welcoming ceremony practiced by the Maori people of New Zealand. This ceremony is performed whenever anyone comes into the village from outside. It is a way of presenting those who are coming to the ancestors. so that they can be welcomed into the village as family members rather than as outsiders. Even family members who have been away for some time must be welcomed in this manner, since their time away may have changed them in ways that might make them diverge from the village ways, and so they may have become to some extent outsiders. It is very uncomfortable to have outsiders in the village. When outsiders appear, it is therefore necessary to convert them into insiders. The ceremony takes place on the mirai, a long outdoor ceremonial place, like a long playing field.

[19:48]

The outsiders must wait for a long time before entering the mirai, and they are told to wait in complete, complete silence. This is the phrase used, complete, complete silence. After a long time of waiting in complete, complete silence, an old woman of the village invites the outsiders onto the mirai with a strong chant or wail sung with all her power and emotion. As the outsiders enter the mirai, The young warriors of the tribe enter from the opposite end and in a ritualized aggressive dance make mock attacks on the outsiders with fierce looks and gestures and with ceremonial weapons. But the outsiders are to remain completely, completely silent.

[20:58]

Finally the warriors lay down fern fronds and the outsiders pick up the fern fronds as a sign of peace. Then the warriors and the outsiders and all the men and women and children of the tribe come to the center of the Mirai where there are hours and hours of speeches by the men who speak their hearts, making clear the ancient and present state of the village. After each man's speech, a woman stands up and sings a supporting song. Sometimes this doesn't happen. It's very embarrassing for the man to give a speech, because a speech doesn't count unless a woman spontaneously gets up and sings a supporting song. this process may take several hours.

[22:08]

After this, outsiders and insiders exchange greetings by pressing noses together twice. The point of pressing noses together is to exchange breath. After everyone has exchange breath, they all become insiders, relatives, full members of the village. And I heard this story from Brother David Steindl-Rost, who told it in a talk at Green Gulch. He went through this ceremony several times in December of 1991 and January of 1992 in New Zealand. Let me now present several definitions, also inspired by Brother David.

[23:21]

Word, a sign that embodies its meaning inseparably. Language, as I am talking about it now, is not only a series of significant sounds made by the human lips and tongue and vocal cords, but is anything that exists and fully embodies, projects or encompasses its own meaning. Word is that which is completely itself and needs nothing further no reference, no instrumentality to complete it. There is no meaning outside the Word that is brought into the Word from outside. Rather, the meaning is inseparably embodied in the Word. The Word is the meaning. It is all inside.

[24:28]

The Word does not project beyond itself to get something done or to say something. A rather word is what has meaning for us in and of itself. We say of something, it speaks to me. It has meaning for me. A tree, a person, a situation, a particular state of mind, a phrase, a sentence has significance for me. It moves me. It influences or changes or inspires me. This is what I mean by word. It sounds as if word and poetry are the same thing. Almost the same thing. Poetry. Saying nothing outside of a saying which embodies itself meaningfully.

[25:30]

So you and I are word. What happens to us is word. Whatever manifests, appears, is word. In the beginning was the word. I distinguish between word and signal. A signal is a sign that has its meaning in reference to something else. A green traffic light means go. An exit sign means here's the place to go out. These things could also be words, of course, but usually they function as signals. They don't embody their own significance. Their significance is outside of them. What we call language is sometimes word when it is poetry, and sometimes not when it is signal. This, of course, has nothing to do with whether the words are arranged rhythmically or in a pleasing manner. but with how we approach them.

[26:34]

The meaning of a word is in the use of it, because there is only meaning when I am listening, when I am breathing together with what I experience. Words are distinguished. They distinguish They are a way a unified reality finds expression in differentiation. When we actually hear words as words, we find in them their meaning, their unity with all else. When we come to the end of a word from the inside, we come to its meaning. that within which you can find rest. And what you can find rest in is nothing, literally.

[27:41]

Anything contains within it the essence of restlessness, its limitation. To find meaning in something, in an experience or a perception or a thought, is to find rest in it, to find limitlessness in it. Meaning is the opposite of purpose, of doing something. Meaning can't be grasped or held on to or apprehended. It is given. We give ourselves to it. Meaning has a sense of destiny, a sense of pattern beyond our thinking. When we think to approach, meaning we only go so far, thinking can't get inside the house. Thinking may be the coat someone needs to wear to ward off difficult weather, but it is always taken off at the door.

[28:47]

Then someone goes inside. Do not suppose, however, that there is some other experience outside of what we can think about. What I am given to, what expresses myself most clearly, is what is meaningful to me and gives me peace. So, silence, rest, limitlessness, Unity, nothing, meaning, these are synonymous. Line of hill in light.

[29:52]

Sky's edge. exact. Twisted bare branches, twigs, dried brown seeds. Fields green, such bright winds free, blowing off water beyond. Sheen of old fence boards shows grain brightly near hill's crest. Hill's shadows taper. I do not think of anything.

[30:58]

Sun at that angle above hills makes light as if appearing here from a separate world, coming up over the edge, dropping down into view. no silence, outside things, nowhere else to be. It is the writer's object to supply the hollow green and yellow life of the human eye. It rains with rains supplied before I learn to type along the sides, who when asked what we have in common with nature replied, opportunity and size.

[32:13]

Readers of the practical help. They then reside, and resistance is accurate. It rocks and rides the momentum. Words are emitted by the rocks to the eye. Motes, parts, genders, sights collide. There are concavities. It is not imperfect to have died. This poem is the first poem of a book by the poet Lynn Heginia. The title of the book is The Cell. It's a series of poems. That's the first one. I take this poem to be talking about what I am talking about. It is the writer's object, she says. The writer's purpose, but also the writer's protest. or the speaker's protest, the speaker's destiny and limitation against which one naturally objects as song, though it is useless to struggle, to supply the hollow green and yellow life of the human eye, hollow, nothing inside, though it is beautifully colored outside.

[33:26]

It rains with rains supplied before I learned to type. Rains that soften, that moisten and nurture everything, wetting everything equally, glazing every surface perfectly with a clear and crystalline wetness. Rains that are supplied before I learned to type, to speak, to divide things into the various types that enabled me to distinguish them. and myself from anything else. Along the sides, who when asked what we have in common with nature replied opportunity and size. The rain slides along the concavity. The rain can't get inside, but it outlines things. It defines shapes. And this is a kind of speaking that says, What appears inside and what appears outside share possibility, which is what is always what is inside, and size, appearance, which is always what is outside.

[34:45]

Readers of the practical help, they then reside to take on the practical is an act of reading the surfaces of things for what's implied in them, and this helps. Then we re-side, put on new siding, preserve what appears so we can have a place to dwell. And resistance is accurate. It rocks and rides the momentum. Words are emitted by the rocks to the eye. To read is to reside, is to resize, is to resist a force or coating that protects, pushes against and defines a surface. Pushing against the edge produces shockwaves that rock. Rocks fall in earthquakes that make people holler in an eloquence of fright to see that there is anything at all there to be talked about.

[35:55]

Motes, parts, genders, sights collide. There are concavities. It is not imperfect to have died. And out of that hollering, every difference appears. And insofar as the hollering is done out of love, in a breathing together that includes silence, that respects the restfulness and cooperation, that is to be found in the nothing, that's the hollow inside things. It is a difference that is inside, not outside. We live and die for this. We have to live and die for this. It couldn't be otherwise. Now, a little more silence. I think we can all appreciate that there's no silence, right?

[38:38]

There's listening. Maybe most of you know about John Cage's famous experiment. He became really interested in silence years ago and got himself into a scientifically prepared room that was absolutely impervious to any exterior sounds. And he was very excited to have the opportunity to actually maybe be the first human being to hear silence or not hear silence. So he went in the room and to his astonishment he heard, thump, thump, thump, thump. And then realized that As long as there is human subjectivity, there is no silence. And yet there is silence inside of every sound.

[39:40]

That's what I mean by the hollow, nothing inside. Somewhere I found this quotation. which, according to a note I've made for myself, is Jacques Derrida quoting Heidegger. I don't know where I got it from. There isn't any reference. Within thought, nothing can be accomplished which could prepare or contribute to the determination of what happens in faith. If faith were to call me in this way, I should shut up shop. Of course, within the dimension of faith, one still continues thinking, but thought as such no longer has any task to fulfill.

[40:46]

Why is it that thinking in the neighborhood of word and silence and meaning, we come upon faith. We can't think ourselves through to faith. And yet, if we find some meaning, if we encounter some word, if we find some rest that isn't a distraction, I think we feel called by faith. By faith, I don't mean faith in something. I mean exactly the opposite, faith in nothing, faith in the meaning that is inherent in things and thoughts. Within a dimension of faith, one still continues thinking, but thought as such no longer has any task to fulfill. There's no job in thinking. One can shut up shop and go fishing.

[41:56]

Like breathing, thinking is a pleasure, a necessary, interesting thing to do. Language is not something to be dispensed with or gone beyond. There's no word without silence and no silence without word. Listen. you won't hear silence. Speak, you won't say anything. Before you open your mouth, it's already said. But if you go on speaking glibly, you'll lose the meaning. I'm talking about an attitude, a concentration within language. Zen teachers are notorious for giving very little instruction in meditation.

[43:10]

They say things like, become the koan. But what does that mean? And how do you do it? When you know, you know. When you don't, you don't, they seem to be saying. What's it like seriously, thinking, by not thinking. This leads to finally a mind, no experience, experience, possibility, nor pointed toward. It is to be with the mind. nor non-thinking. But by thinking, eventually, without much thought, a curse is alive.

[44:21]

Only it can't be the meaning, the words. Neither taking it, rejecting it, not with no center, a quiet mind in which, but this not to every possessed is not in the words a sense of living, prayer. I'm out at you, at your corners. I don't fight it.

[45:25]

I only eat it. Later, light my way up out of your basement. Hold my tower in the alleyways of your beams. Allow me to speak as if I were a bird and it was very late at night. Hollow me out of what I bleat to myself in my heart of hopefulness and scant dreams. Allow me to weep for nothing continuously and consciously. for everything, forever. Finally, here is a quotation from linguist and critic Roman Jakobson. The words come at the end of his essay, What is Poetry?, just after he, in the essay, rejects the idea of poetry as being inherently vague and unstable and therefore not to be discussed.

[46:37]

One can, however, he says, discuss the poetic function of language, which he calls, uses the word, poeticity. Talk about that. And here's what he said. But how does poeticity manifest itself? Poeticity is present when the word is felt as word and not a mere representation of the object being named or an outburst of emotion. When words and their composition, their meaning, their external and internal form acquire a weight and value of their own instead of referring indifferently to reality. Why is all this necessary? Why is it necessary to make a special point of the fact that sign does not fall together with object? Because besides the direct awareness of the identity between sign and object, A is A prime, there is a necessity for the direct awareness of the inadequacy of that identity.

[47:42]

A is not A-prime. The reason this antinomy is essential is that without contradiction there is no mobility of concepts, no mobility of signs, and the relationship between concept and sign becomes automatized. Activity comes to a halt and the awareness of reality dies out. Now I invite you to join me in one minute of silence in which I am going to raise the spirit of questioning in myself. Who am I? Why am I here? What is anything, whatever question, that does not have an answer occurs to me. I invite you also to question yourself in this way. I mistrust language.

[49:49]

I can't do without it. I am it, but I mistrust it. It can't really say what I need to say. It may look like it is saying it, But it is not, and that is worse. It gives a false impression. But there isn't anywhere else to go. And the act of saying is the act of living. We are always misunderstood. Yet in another way, not in the expressions we use, but somewhere around them, in the we can't fail to be understood. I have confidence in language. It ruins me. It causes me to ruin everything else. It saves me.

[50:54]

It causes me to make an effort to save everything else. So I try to use it as beautifully as possible. with as much attention and love as I can muster, but without much expectation. This trust and mistrust, this use without expectation, dwelling happily within this unanswerable question, opens up the possibility for freshness in my experience, which always comes to me in terms of language. Speak, but should it cease? Masonry crumbling from the wall flows out

[52:06]

to the end. That's it. Thank you for being so patient. It lasted a little longer than I thought. I want to invite any of you who would like to move your legs or relax a little bit to do that. And we can either end right now or if someone has questions or comments, we can talk for a minute. It doesn't have to be about what I just said. It can be about anything. Yes? Were any of your high school students that enlightened at last night? No. No, I didn't tell them that. Is there silence in between heartbeats? It's a wonderful question.

[53:17]

I recently spoke to a teacher about taking vows, and he said, well, let's develop more of a relationship first. And then I wrote him a letter with a lot of questions about, what is relationship? What does that mean? And then at dawn that night, I didn't know how ridiculous that was, Yeah. So, in your talk it was about listening, but you also mentioned cooperate. So, I don't know if you have any comments about that. Yeah. It seems to me that to appreciate being alive

[54:30]

means to be open to silence and word and see the relationship between them. And that's exactly it. It's a relationship. To be in relation. To understand that we're not independent operators, but we're co-operators, always. And one forgets that constantly. And that's the source of all of our difficulties. I saw a I had a toy catalog that came in the mail, you know, it had a thing in there, Zen blocks. The other day Green Gulch gave a talk about Zen blocks because I was reading a blurb from it. And it described these blocks and at the end of the parenthesis, I guess to explain why they called them Zen blocks, it said, Zen is about total organic perception. which I thought was pretty good, you know, for a toy catalogue.

[55:32]

And I talked about this at Green Gulch and said that total organic perception was to, and it's very similar to what I was saying this morning in the talk, is that total organic perception is to see ourselves in a field of activity. Our own thoughts and feelings and wishes and desires are certainly part of that field. But they're not the whole thing. There are many things going on. The sky and the birds and other people and so on. And so to see ourselves as part of all that, each moment of our consciousness is a moment of totality. We're organically involved with everything. And to begin to trust that and have faith in that and develop the listening ear that it takes to really see that, you know, moment after moment. So that is relation, relational. That is, it means, you know, living is relational totally. So one could not find a moment where there is not relationship, actually. And I think that what we use as conventional meaning of the word relationship is something like, you know, we're all alone and therefore we're sort of leaping across that gap and it's very hard.

[56:46]

So we have trouble with relationships. We're vulnerable and we feel that it's difficult to engage in relationships, but when we really listen and see, perceive how we are, then relationships become constant and much more fluid. Not that we ever escape the selfishness of being a human being with an individual consciousness, but we certainly have a lot more flexibility around it. We appreciate this. So I think as human beings we want to, we need to share with each other, because we're all a little paranoid, right? By virtue of being humans. Human equals slightly paranoid. Everybody's slightly paranoid. We have to reassure each other. So in reality, I mean, theoretically, the reality is we're all best friends. We don't even have to say anything to each other.

[57:47]

That's the reality. I think in Zen practice we often get some sense of this, in sitting together. But actually, since we're all human, and therefore a little paranoid, we have to tell each other we like each other, and when we have problems with each other, we say, well, you know, I have a problem with this, it can't be working out, and all that stuff. Not to do that is to not, you know, take into account who we actually are. And sometimes Zen practice has forgotten about that part, which doesn't really work out so well. Anyway, that's a very long one. Sorry. Yes, please. Yeah.

[58:58]

And then you have to use some form. Yes. And one thing I like about, and I've always appreciated about the sense of practice, Buddhist practice, and that has changed my way of thinking quite a lot over the years, is to realize that form is not limited to the traditional, what we think of as artistic forms. Form is everything, you know. Just to be in a body is already form. So that, I think, as we open our hearts in living, we can find the spirit of creation in everything that we do. I think that's the hope. That's our kind of ideal. And we can make that real to a great extent in living, I think. So it's a matter of how we, what we bring, like I was saying in the talk, it's a concentration within language. It's not a poem or a particular form. Yeah, so we take what's to hand and use it beautifully. And I think our living can be a poem or a song.

[60:03]

We must have a remarkable mother-in-law. Someone's telling me that it's time to leave, right? We continue outside, though. Oh, we continue outside. Yes, well. Thank you very much for inviting me. It's always great fun to come over here. This is, maybe many of you know, and some of you don't know, this is where I began my practice many years ago. Not in this location, but when I was in Berkeley Zen, that was in another location. So, it's very close to my heart. Thank you all.

[60:41]

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