Good evening, everyone. So today we had this unusual astronomical event, a full solar eclipse. At least where I was in Chicago, it was kind of cloudy and there wasn't so much to see. I know some of our Sangha members have gone south or north to where it was supposed to be more visible. I hope they had clear weather. It was noticeable that it got darker where I was, and my kittens freaked out a little bit because it got dark in the middle of the day. They didn't expect that. And I heard different estimates or different accounts of how long it has been since we've had a full solar eclipse and how long it would be until the next one.

[01:02]

And anyway, a rare event. And so I thought tonight I would celebrate the moon. and which provided us with this event by going in front of the sun. Or actually, you know, the moon just was circling around and the sun was just, and we were circling around the sun, and it just, you know, it was just from a certain perspective that it seemed like the moon was between us and the sun, but anyway. Of course, we have our perspectives. But I wanted to read some poetry from Tsai Gyu, who, you know, wrote many poems, but he wrote many poems about the moon. He lived from 1118 to 1190. He was a Tendai, Japanese Buddhist Tendai monk, in the period just before Dogen, who founded our branch of Zen, Soto Zen in Japan.

[02:06]

You know, we chanted the, we just chanted the inconceivable lifespan of Buddha from the Lotus Sutra, which is very important in our tradition, although... in a way that's not necessarily so obvious, but this text in the Lotus Sutra, this Lotus Sutra text says that, in there, the Buddha says that actually, even though he seems to have passed away, there's a way in which he's still alive, that his lifespan is very, very long. And this has been seen in different ways throughout Buddhist history and in our cycle of history. Sagya was one who was in the Tendai school. They very much valued the Lotus Sutra. In Sagya's time and in Dogen's time, some people thought that It was the end of the, it was the Mappo Age, the age of the end of the Buddhist teaching or the degenerate age of the Buddhist teaching.

[03:22]

And the practice was really impossible and enlightenment was impossible. And of course, we're in an age where things seem very difficult also. But Sagyo, in celebrating the moon, You know, he was looking back at Shakyamuni Buddha who lived, well, they had a different idea of history. So history changes, you know, the past changes all the time. We now think that Shakyamuni Buddha, the historical Buddha, lived in the 400s, well, we call the 400s BC. They didn't call it that then. But anyway, so some poems by Saigyo. And so I just, you know, by way of celebrating the moon. Sagyo said, those who view the moon over Vulture Peak as one now sunk below the horizon are men whose minds confused hold the real darkness. So here he's saying that people who see that the Buddha who preached the Lotus Sutra at Vulture Peak is now sunk below the horizon that this, that the moon, the moon as an image of,

[04:34]

Wholeness of awakeness, of the possibility of awakening, that that is gone. That the possibility of freedom and liberation is gone. Those people who see, who feel hopeless about that, those people whose minds are confused hold the real darkness. The moon is still here. In other words, he was saying, so again, the poem, those who view the moon over Vulture Peak as one now sunk below the horizon are people whose minds confused hold the real darkness. So he's rejecting kind of fatalistic pessimism that the Buddha's gone and that people, that this was a degenerate age and enlightenment was impossible. He saw it, you know, and Sakiya was a poet who celebrated nature, so he also wrote lots of poems about cherry blossoms and particular places in Japan.

[05:44]

He wrote one about the Ise Shrine, one of the great shrines of Shinto or of the native spirits. This one goes, over Vulture Peak, there in Buddha's time and place, a bedazzled, bedazzling moon, here, softly filtered, into Tsukuyomi, sacred shrine. So, somehow, this teaching, this practice that we are doing here, somehow we can still see it. Somehow the moon still is available to us. And again, the moon as an image in East Asia, particularly they refer to the whole moon, that circle that showed the sun today by by blotting out the sun except for the edges of it, which I didn't look at, we weren't supposed to look at directly anyway, even aside from the clouds, but if you looked on television you could see it from other places anyway.

[06:58]

The fullness of awakening is still available, it's still here. So I wanted to read some other poems by Saigyo about the moon and then just talk about the moon. But also this is about space, it's about time, it's about how the reaches of time, the reaches of awakening of the call of freedom, if you will, the call of liberation from the Buddha and from other people who speak of freedom still is available. So I'm just going to read a selection of these. We'll see, this one, I'll read the Japanese, too. These are from translations by William O'Flor, who was a great Japanese Buddhist scholar. Some of you know enough Japanese to appreciate some of this, maybe.

[08:02]

Excuse my pronunciation. Kumonakute oboronaritomo miyurikanakasunikakareru harunoyonotsuki. Clouds departed, and still it looks vague, dreamy up there, tonight's moon hanging in the haze of spring. So we get glimpses of the moon sometimes. and it looks hazy. And, you know, in Japanese Buddhist aesthetics, it's kind of appreciated more when it's a little hazy, a little bit of a cloud in front, you know. And as we're sitting upright, calm, sitting like Buddha, we get glimpses of something. We get glimpses of wholeness. And maybe they're still looking vague, dreamy up there. He says, tonight's moon hanging in the haze of spring.

[09:08]

Clouds dispersed and still it looks vague, dreamy up there, tonight's moon hanging in the haze of spring. So these, East Asian visions of nature are also metaphors for our own inner states, our own inner awareness. And they're also scenes of just the world out there, the world of nature. Another one. So taken with the faultless face and radiance of an alluring moon, my mind goes farther, farther to reach remote regions of the sky.

[10:20]

He introduces this by saying, under the moon, looking far into the distance. So it's possible when we see the moon to imagine something further. And this event today can carry us further back and forward to imagine how we are all stardust, we are all part of the universe, we are all connected to something that goes very far back. beyond just this planet even. So it's, kuma mo naki tsuki no hikari ni sasowarete iku kumoi made yuku kokorozou mo. So taken with the faultless face and radiance of an alluring moon, my mind goes farther, farther to reach remote regions of the sky.

[11:25]

So this solar eclipse today gives us an indication of something deeper, something further, something happening up there that's bigger than us. beyond us. Another one, and this is, he mentions 15, and traditionally the full moon in the lunar calendar in Japan was on the 15th day of the month, so they would, the monthly cycle was based on the full moon. The first day of the month would be the new moon. So he says, to be just 15, a time without infirmities, tis the moon's age tonight, as full in the midst of its life, it's suspended perfect now. The full moon gives us this image of perfection, of wholeness, a time without infirmities, full in the midst of its life.

[12:32]

And then there's a series of these, we also chanted the song of the grass hut, which is, Sagya was one of those, wandering hermit types. He was also a regular monk, but he wandered around Japan. He did many pilgrimages. So we have people in our sangha who also have been doing pilgrimages. Kitty just came back from Spain and Sarah's in India now. This is a traditional practice, and this is how Saigyo spent most of his life, wandering around Japan writing poems about what he saw. And he would stop and stay in these grass huts, like in the Song of the Grass Hut. And again, this is also a metaphor for our practice and our life. I'll read the Japanese first.

[13:48]

Abare taru kusa no iori ni moru tsuki yo soda ni utsushite nagametsuru kana. This leaky tumble-down grass hut left an opening for the moon, and I gazed at it, all the while it was mirrored. in a teardrop fallen on my sleeve. So even in the sadness of our lives, even in the difficulties, we can see reflected the wholeness of the moon in the openings in the grass hut, the moon falls through, the moonlight falls through. And one way to see our practice is this upright sitting, letting go of hundreds of years and relaxing completely, as our chant says.

[14:56]

We have the capacity and the power to be present and upright in face, the difficulties and the sadnesses of our life. This is the first noble truth that we can do this. A few more. Limitations gone, since my mind fixed on the moon, clarity and serenity make something for which there's no end in sight. Limitation's gone. Since my mind fixed on the moon, clarity and serenity make something for which there's no end in sight. So this is very, you know, it's a short poem, but it's about the whole of our practice life. Limitation's gone, since my mind fixed on the moon, since he determined to live his life for the sake of awakening, of wholeness.

[16:00]

Clarity and serenity make something for which there's no end in sight. There's no end to our practice. It's not about some particular goal. We live in this this grass hut and see the moon from time to time. Just a couple more and then I'll, and there's more I could read, but I'll read just two more and then ask for responses, comments. Not a hint of shadow on the moon's face, but now a silhouette passes.

[17:07]

Not the cloud I take it for, but a flock of flying geese. So again, a scene like, as he's wandering, something stops, something passes over the moon. Something blocks his sense of wholeness. What is it? Not a cloud, I take it for, but a flock of flying geese. The world is full of life and many critters. We're not alone here. The last one I'll read, and there's others I could read too, but anyway, this one says, by introduction, during a journey concerning the moon, as always, the moon, night after night after night, will stay on here at this grass hut I put together, and now myself must leave. As always, the moon, night after night after night, will stay on here at this grass hut I put together, and now myself must leave."

[18:18]

So that's Saigyo talking about his life and his connection to the moon. So I could read some more, but I'll pause. see if anyone has comments or questions or responses to the poems or the moon or the eclipse or anything else. Yes, Jan. It's so literally true that this layer, what we call our physical bodies, is much older than the Earth.

[19:49]

And it's just amazing. Well, maybe the Earth is much older than the Earth. Yes. Yeah, I saw Neil deGrasse Tyson talking about that. Neil deGrasse Tyson, the astronomer-scientist, was talking about how it all formed. And so when there's an event like this eclipse that happens rarely, we think about our situation. And it's easy to get caught up in the news and in what's happening this week and our problems personally and collectively. And of course, we can't ignore all of that. But there's this wider context of who we are, what all of this is.

[20:57]

And this tradition, in our tradition of looking up at the moon, comes up again today. And our tradition of looking back at the ancestors, this whole idea of this ancestral practice that's been handed down to us from India, China, Japan, that we are now responsible for finding how to carry in our time, how to take care of and make alive Yes, Michael. Yesterday, a patient gave a talk that started around the awakening experience of the woman ancestor, Luhat, do you know that?

[22:07]

And the story is something to the effect of that. Yes. Yeah, yeah, so this image of the moonlight reflected in, Doge talks about the moonlight reflected in the ocean or in the lake or even in a puddle or in the dew drop on the grass or as Saigo says, and then the bottom of the bucket falling out.

[23:08]

So this is an old expression for letting go completely, opening up completely, which happens sometimes. Some of us experience that sometimes. And that's not the point of our practice. But when that happens, the point of our practice is just to continue. But yes, in the middle of that, yeah, sometimes it all falls away. And then we have to get up and go out and take care of our life. you know. Yeah. The moon is the wholeness that is available everywhere and yet also and then there's this total letting go which is available to us but also don't separate from the skin bag here and now. We take responsibility for how do we take care of this life, this world.

[24:19]

Especially when we've seen the falling away of all of the things we think are important. Yes. That idea of letting go for a day in the solar eclipse, where I work, you know, everybody came outside, and I work in a school, all the students, the teachers, the staff, so it was a real, like, opportunity for me. It was a good kind of interruption, I think, you know. I felt suddenly, like, closer to people that you don't encounter every day. You're sort of letting go of whatever your typical schedule is on a Monday Yeah, it's a kind of celebration and actually, traditionally,

[25:29]

in Japan and I think in other cultures too, when it's the full moon every month, people go out and celebrate. They go out and sit under the trees and drink sake and look up at the full moon. How many people even know when the full moon is in our culture? We're out of touch with that. But in Japan, that's like a festival or a celebration monthly. So there are always those opportunities to celebrate something, celebrate nature, to celebrate the seasons, So we try and remember here the equinoxes and the solstices at least. Oh, David, hi. Kind of a query, if I could.

[26:48]

Yeah. Where I remember from having lived in Japan, people liked the movie because everything was And so it was the moon that was like that. And I'm wondering if, maybe related to practice, that it's a way to let go of our suffering to be in the moon. If we're in the sunlight, but we see everything that is imperfect, and we have our attachments to everything, we want it to be perfect. But in the moon, we don't see everything. And that is maybe a chance to let go? A chance to let go of suffering, maybe? It could be, yeah. Moonlight. When I lived in the mountains in Tassajara, you know, when the full moon or when the moon is, it doesn't even have to be a full moon, but when the moon is, you know, when there's a lot of moonlight, you can walk at night when there's no ambient light there, there's no electric light.

[27:51]

You can see pretty well. You can walk around in the trail, but it's a different kind of, it's a different quality of life for sure. And it's softer, that's right. And, you know, this is not, so here we live in the city and it's a very different kind of situation. But, you know, we talk about dark and light and in the Harmony of Difference and Sameness, they talk about dark and light and dark is where everything is kind of merged and light is where we see the differences and distinctions. So, you know, to some extent, we can see it the way you're saying it. Softer light gives us a chance to see things differently. Even if we do see distinctions, we can see them a little differently. It's like Sagya's poem where it's not a cloud, it's a flock of geese in front of the moon. Interesting, having been in the mountains, you see the mountains during the daytime, you see the mountains in the full moon, it's almost entirely different.

[29:06]

It's an entirely different position. Or it's like seeing a negative rather than a positive picture of something. So a lot of this has to do with letting go of our usual way of seeing. A lot of Zen teaching has to do with that, of not getting stuck in the usual way we see things, but of being a little more flexible, seeing other perspectives. So when something like an eclipse comes along, we see that our usual, we have a chance to see our usual view of things as different. Anyway, so today was a day for the moon and the sun. So there's a famous Zen story about sun-faced Buddha, moon-faced Buddha.

[30:11]

Master Ma was unwell, which is to say he was near death, at least, and his attendant, Maybe not his hospice worker, but his attendant came and said, how is your venerable health? And Master Ma said, sun-faced Buddha, moon-faced Buddha. So that's a good story for today. Sun-faced Buddha refers to a Buddha who lives a thousand years. Moon-faced Buddha is a Buddha who lives a night and a day. So here we are.

[30:51]

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