Good morning. This is the final day of the Fall Aspects of Practice, practice period, with just the Sashin tomorrow to go, and my final talk of this practice period. It's just been a wonderful, rich practice period for me, and I hope it has been for you. Whether you've been a formal participant in the practice period or continuing your practice in your own way, side by side, all the aspects and elements work together. The foundation of the practice period is increasing our commitment to sit Zazen together. When we sew our robes or okesas and raksus, there's a mantra with each stitch, Namu Kie Butsu. Blanche Hartman,

[01:13]

who is the teacher of all sewing teachers in the lineage, one of the ways she translates that, the way that I like the most, is, Oh yes, I plunge in and rely on awakened mind. I plunge in and rely on awakening mind. And when I come into the Zendo and bow to my seat, I feel like I'm plunging in to something I can rely on completely, like plunging into a river or an ocean, where I can rely on the water itself to bear me up. The teas have been really wonderful for me, the teas with

[02:20]

those of you who've been participating in practice period, where we've gotten together in small groups, routine cookies and crackers and apples, or actually had breakfast together. And for me, they've been a wonderful opportunity to be nourished by, to nourish and enjoy Kalyana Mita, spiritual friendship. I really love the story about the Buddha, where Shariputra asks, Is it true that friendship is half of the holy life? And the Buddha says, No, friendship is all of the holy life. And I think he means that kind of friendship, that kind of intimacy in the Dharma.

[03:25]

And that's been happening in the classes too, again and again in the teas, and also in more informal conversations with people, I hear people remarking on the liveliness and the intimacy of the discussions in the classes. This lively energy and the feeling of people completely trusting the water there, to say what they have to say, to explore, to be together in the Dharma. It's kind of an experience of the Dharma and the Sangha kind of bubbling up and arising together, coming into being together, and just bubbling up and have this quality of freshness and bubbling up. And I've also been finding my way through this practice period

[04:43]

with the koan that Hozan gave me to live with, to sit with, to study in, and be with. And I feel like I've been kind of sitting at the intersection of the class text, Gakudo Yojinshu, Guidelines for Studying the Way, and this koan, Dao Wu's Condolence Call, Alive or Dead, kind of at the intersection of impermanence and practice, enlightenment, awakening. Dogen, the founder of our school of Zen, makes one word of practice and enlightenment. His great insight that came to him in

[05:54]

exploring his own koan, if we're already enlightened, why do we have to practice, is that they're not two, they arise together. It's not we practice so we can become enlightened, but they both arise together, not two. So kind of the intersection of that, of impermanence and that arising, that arising of practice and enlightenment and awakening. So Gakudo Yojinshu opens right off the bat, Dogen is quoting Nagarjuna, saying, the mind that sees the impermanence of this world of constant appearance and disappearance is called bodhi mind, awakening mind. In Moon in the Dew Drop, which is maybe the translation that a lot of you are more

[06:57]

familiar with, bodhi mind is translated as the thought of enlightenment. I like to think of it as awakening mind. And the koan, this koan that I've been living with, opens with a coffin. What more powerful signifier of impermanence, of appearance and disappearance than a coffin? And a Zen student who's pounding on the coffin and asking a question, wanting to know what's inside. So I'm going to read that koan aloud. This is case 55 from

[07:58]

Blue Cliff Record, Dao Wu's Condolence Call. Dao Wu and Qian Yuan went to a house to make a condolence call. Yuan hit the coffin and said, alive or dead? Wu said, I won't say alive, and I won't say dead. Yuan said, why won't you say? Wu said, I won't say. Halfway back, as they were returning, Yuan said, tell me right away, teacher. If you don't tell me, I'll hit you. And Wu said, you may hit me, but I won't say. And Yuan then hit him. Later, Dao Wu passed on. He died. And Yuan went to Shi Shuang, who was Dao Wu's successor, and brought up this story. And Shuang said, I won't say alive, and I won't say dead. Yuan said, why won't you say? Shuang said, I won't say, I won't say. And at these words, Yuan had an insight. One day, Yuan took up a

[09:15]

hoe, and took it into the teaching hall, and crossed back and forth from east to west and west to east. Shuang said, what are you doing? Yuan said, I'm looking for relics of our late master. Shuang said, vast waves spread far and wide, foaming billows flood the sky. What relics of our late master are you looking for? Shui Tou added a comment, saying, heavens. Yuan said, this is just where I should apply effort. Fu of Taiyuan said, the late master's relics are still present. So I won't say alive. Oh, that's a coffin after all. That would be manifestly untrue. It's about the disappearing end of the appearing and disappearing that Nagarjuna talks about, this world of appearing and disappearing. The coffin is at the disappearing end of that continuum. And for Dao Wu and Qian Yuan, standing next to the coffin,

[10:41]

it's not really a theoretical concern. They're standing there in breathing bodies, knowing particularly keenly that there's a coffin ahead for them too. And that concentrates the mind. There's a wonderful poem in the November issue of the newsletter by BCC's storyteller, Megan Collins, that tells this story in a really well-crystallized way. It's called A Courtesy. Winding, winding down a narrow canyon, I saw death waiting beside the road. Not yet, I cried. Perhaps another time? Another time, he vowed. But not perhaps.

[11:45]

So I won't say alive, but I won't say dead. What's going on there? Dao Wu, pointing at how these words don't tell the whole story. And in fact, the whole story is really beyond these kinds of dualities, these dualities that word mind produces. It's not in that realm. Can't nail it down like that. In Buddhism, there are sort of interlocking heresies. I love that word, heresy. One is nihilism, to say that nothing exists in the coffin. Nothing exists in this self.

[13:04]

That it's utterly annihilated. The other is eternalism, that there's something that lasts forever. Something that goes on forever. So both of those are not true. And Dao Wu says, I won't say. I won't say. Disappearing and disappearing is not about some thing that changes from one state to another. But here it is, right in front of them, this very solid coffin. That's what's in front of them. They're standing next to a box with a dead body inside. It's both solid and it's empty.

[14:07]

And they've come there. The reason that they're there is to be present with the suffering and the sorrow of the people in the house who have lost, who are experiencing loss. I think it can be... I'm a hospice chaplain, so I'm with people who are experiencing loss often. And it can be very tempting to deny that. To say, well, actually, your grandma is living on forever in heaven. Actually, what's really important about grandma doesn't die. But there's loss. There's real loss and we suffer with it.

[15:28]

So they're there to be with that. To be with that loss. We're here together in the Sangha and in the relationships of Kalyanamita, of spiritual friendship with each other. We're here in bodies. In warm bodies. Warm hand touches warm hand. In our school, that's how we say the Dharma is transmitted. From warm hand to warm hand. Outside the scriptures. Outside the words. Warm hand to warm hand. And at death, something happens to the warm hand. Something we can't get our heads around. Something unthinkable and unspeakable.

[16:41]

It happens to the self of some body that we've touched. And to the self in the warm body that each of us sees in the mirror every morning when we wake up. I was reading a book by a Tibetan teacher. And it was about, part of it, about the bardo. The in-between state after a person dies. And he said, well the first thing to do if you think that you're in that bardo, if you think that that's what's happening, is you need to confirm that you're actually dead. So he has a list of some ways to do that. And the first one is that you look in a mirror. And if there's no faith in there, looking back at you, things aren't looking good.

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Then you can, you know, that confirms it. You're dead. You're in the bardo. You're, you know, whatever warm body self you were, disappeared. Disappeared. The warm body, the warm hand isn't warm anymore. Chen Yuen might just as well, when he says alive or dead, be asking the person in the coffin as well as Da Wu, are you alive or dead? Are you in there? What happened to you? What's going on here? What's going on here? Wants to know. Urgently. And the coffin answers very eloquently. It's solid. It's empty. It's wordless.

[18:50]

And his teacher answers along those lines too. I won't say, I won't say. The coffin really is the teacher in a very important way. In connection with the previous Dharma talk that I gave on this koan, a couple of people asked me, are you alive? And what came up for me was, I'm a grandmother. Of course I'm alive. I'm a grandmother. I'm in a warm body relationship with another very precious warm body being. Very precious. One of the things that's been going on for me as I've prepared this talk, and actually through a good bit of this practice period, is that yesterday my two-year-old grandson had surgery.

[20:08]

He had surgery on his vocal cords. And he was in the hospital. He had general anesthesia. There's risk involved. And I felt on a very body-to-body level connected to him. And I felt the precariousness of his little precious body, his life, that has appeared. It appears as jasper. And felt the energy, the urgent energy of being alive myself in relation to him. There will be a time when I will return to the silence of my original face.

[21:12]

The face I had before my parents were born. The face that doesn't show in the mirror. And he will too. Two-year-old Jasper, that'll happen to him too. And if it happens to him before it happens to me, sorrow, sorrow, sorrow. Loss. So, get up and go, Grandma. Go to Portland. Go to Doernbecher Children's Hospital. Go to that little guy. Get up and go, you know. Do something with this precious life right now. Um, so I know, so I stay alive. But I know that that doesn't tell the whole story.

[22:18]

Any more than dead tells the whole story of that lineage of teacher and student and teacher and student and teacher and student coming down from Shakyamuni to Dogon to all the teachers and bubbling up in our classes. Bubbling up the Dharma and the Sangha. Bubbling up fresh and alive still. Those relics. Not really relics. Live. Alive. Bubbling up. So, there's this kind of uninterrupted flow that flows through the appearing and the disappearing. And that is as true or as present as that solid coffin, that warm body.

[23:36]

That we can touch. So, the Buddha in one of his first sermons when he was bringing movement to this flow, said the perceiving of impermanence removes and abolishes all conceit of I am. So, the realization of impermanence arises together with the realization that the self is insubstantial. That it's appearing and it's disappearing. Not that it doesn't exist. Not that it ever is annihilated completely. But that it's more nearly an activity or an event than a thing. More like the waves in the ocean.

[24:53]

Somebody, and I wish I could remember if it was Huston Smith or Alan Watts, somebody probably knows, said that as the ocean waves, the earth peoples. So, it's like an activity of the ocean and an activity of the earth to be us. Each of us. And the Garjuna said seeing that, seeing that constant appearing and disappearing in that flow, that flux, that movement, seeing that is awakening. Each person, a manifestation of the whole earth, not separate from, not in a box, but an activity of the whole of Buddha nature.

[26:02]

And in Gacchato Yojinshu, shortly after Dogen says, or Dogen quotes Nagarjuna, he says, reflecting on the transiency of your bodily life, practice as diligently as the Buddha did. And in the koan, when Ch'en Yuan has his realization, he takes up his hoe, he takes up his hoe and begins seeking the relics of the late masters. Seeking that which is continuing, searching for it under the surface, just as we plunge into the field far beyond form and emptiness in Zazen and in our practice.

[27:13]

Plunge in. We take up Zazen. We take up practice period. We take part in the life of the Sangha. We plunge in and harmonize with that flow and flux of appearing and disappearing, with that bubbling up of the live Dharma. We plunge in and rely on awakening mind. So, that's what I have to say. I think there's time for questions or comments or whatever bubbles up in you. Thank you, Catherine. Can you say again, near the beginning of your talk, there were two things that were not true? Would you repeat those?

[28:16]

There are nihilism and eternalism. Nihilism being that nothing really exists and that things can be completely annihilated to nothing, to zero. Sometimes people think when they hear the word void in connection with Buddhism that that's what it means. It means nothing. But it doesn't. And the other one is eternalism, that there is some thing that lasts forever, some me, some Catherine that lasts forever, somehow, as me, as a self. So, my next question is in relationship to your grandson who has, I hope, came through his operation successfully.

[29:25]

He did, yes. There's something that's made the decision, you know, what is your process in deciding you've already made the choice to stay and not go to him as you saw, right? We didn't know when his surgery would be, so I couldn't make plans. Yeah. And it's wonderful what the surgery was. He has some nodules on his vocal cords and he's two and a half and he hasn't been able to make a voice. He has just had these sort of whispery, hoarse, whispery, raspy sounds because his vocal cords didn't work properly. And so, now he can produce a voice. Now that my son emailed, we've heard Jasper's voice for the first time.

[30:28]

And he said, no. He said, no. Should have waited until three. With your, you were talking about the passage from the Tibetan instructions, who is looking in the mirror? That's a very good question. Who? Sergeant often has the answers in the question. One who or another. Thank you, Catherine. What do you bring to your condolence calls? What a good question.

[31:30]

Presence. There really isn't anything to say. Just presence. You're not alone with this. I've come to be with you. And to listen. I think it's, one of the things I appreciate about Dao Wuz, I won't say, I won't say, is that it's very easy to give easy, it's very tempting to give easy answers. To say things, to smooth over the enormity of the mystery of this. One of my mentors as a chaplain said, you don't have to have an answer to everything. Let the mystery be a mystery.

[32:34]

But presence. We come together around this mystery. Megan. That's a wonderful thing to remember for people who sometimes think, I don't know what to say, so they don't go or don't say. And just to be with people. I'm holding you in my heart. I'm thinking of you. I know something of what's happened. You've lost something. You've lost someone. Someone has disappeared from your life. In their warm body anyway. Eric.

[33:47]

I don't really have a question. I just want to say that I really loved your talk. Thank you very much. Laurie, did you have your hand up? Yeah. I don't know if I'll be able to say this without forcing you to tear it, but what I think, what I was thinking of just now is, my dad died when I was nine. So that was kind of a pivotal time for me in the way that you talked about your period of death. There was some period of time that I was comforted by the idea of reincarnation. Like that we would meet again. Or I could see that we would be together again because through reincarnation. And then at some point I realized that that just really wouldn't do it. That wouldn't work. Because it wouldn't, he wouldn't smell like, you know, I mean nothing about what I was connected to would ever happen again.

[34:52]

It just wouldn't work, you know. Something about that, and so in a sense I do feel that he's everywhere or something. I mean I feel that he's not gone, but yet not in that sense, you know. That he is himself your father. And with the particulars, which is really what love is about, you know. The particulars, yes. I think so, yeah. I had one very funny conversation with a hospice patient, a very elderly woman. And she has been raised with a religion that teaches her that after she dies she'll be reunited with her husband. Who died about 20 years ago. And I said, you know, do you think, are you looking forward to that? Do you think that's going to happen? And she said, no.

[35:56]

You know, I don't know. He may have found somebody else by now. Oh my God! It's only till death do you part. The particulars just don't hold up. I'm reminded of another story you told of the lady who had, and whether she had had a former husband. Oh yeah, she was having a hard time too. She said, well, she'd been married three times. And all of her spouses had also been married more than once. You know, was this going to be some kind of group marriage? And I hope not. After the warm body's over, you know.

[36:57]

You're doing so well, too. Well, thank you so much. It's really a moving talk. And I just wanted to ask you. When you were talking, you said the importance of the impermanence makes us now the importance of being alive how we're alive. Just act, so act grandma. Get up there to court life. And I was very touched by that. Well, maybe you're going to go the day after tomorrow or something. I don't know. But you decided not to go. I'm asking you more about wanting to understand the impermanence when you said, okay, so do something grandma. Because that really touched me too. Well, that's the energy that comes up, you know. It's this reach. Actually in the arms, you know. You feel it in your arms. We didn't know that he was going to be able to be scheduled for surgery yesterday until after the first of the week. In fact, thought it was very unlikely.

[38:03]

So I'm going up at Thanksgiving. But that wasn't, when you were saying to yourself, so go grandma, that wasn't a complaint to yourself, was it? No, it was just the kind of energy, the kind of, you know. I think the energy of practice to do something, to manifest, to activate, to connect. One of those books that you recommended that I read, the one called Grace in Dying, she says something in there about death is safe. And I've been chewing on that. She apparently has sat with many hospice patients that she's uttered that to

[39:08]

or had some sort of exchange about that with them. And I just wondered if you have some sense of what that might mean or how. Because the first thing that comes up in me is like, whoa, what do you mean it's safe? How do you know that? We don't know. So how can we say it's safe? Can you say something about that? Yeah. I don't know that I would use the word safe. But what I say to people who are entering the dying process is, even though you've never done this before, something in you knows how to do it. Whatever has borne you along through this life will continue to carry you and guide you.

[40:12]

You can trust that. You can trust that. It's not easy, but you can trust that. And that trust is maybe what she's pointing to. And also, I hear people say, it's life that's not safe. It's life that's hard. It's life that is where all the risks are. I don't know. Maybe nothing is entirely safe. But I think we can trust it. This whole practice seems to be based on radical trust.

[41:17]

Not just the practice of Zen Buddhism, but the practice of life. Trust came up in Thursday night's class. Yeah. Radical trust. And acceptance. Yeah. Trust in not knowing. Not knowing the answer to death. Yeah. Not nailing it down. It goes in conjunction with what you just said. That was beautiful. Trust that you know. But also be open to any trust that you don't know also. Yes. Trust that you don't know also. How are we doing on time, Everett? Is it time? It is. There's a man with a big stick over there.

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