Speaker this morning is Megan Collins. Megan started practicing with Sojin Roshi in 1976 when BCC was in an attic on Broadway. She later lived for some time in Benicia. And while she was there, she began practicing with Sojin's disciple, Mary Mossine, and has since moved back closer to BCC, but continued to practice some of the time with Mary at Clearwater Zendo in Vallejo, and some of the time here. She was Clearwater's first Shuso in 2005, and she received lay entrustment from Mary in 2009. Megan is a mother, a grandmother, a harper, and an accomplished storyteller. Maybe we'll get to hear some of that this morning.

[01:05]

Thank you, Kathleen. Well, far longer ago than I can tell you, and twice as long ago as you can tell me, I was in school. And they taught us a song that I'm sure that everyone in adult here knows, and I'm pretty sure that they're still singing it in school now. And it's only recently that it has occurred to me that this song is a great Zen song, teaching song. And this is the way it goes. Row, row, row, row, gently down the stream. Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, how you start a dream.

[02:08]

Good, now I can tell you. We'll do that more later. Well, has anybody who has been speaking to you at Kidzendo brought up the subject of a metaphor? Do you know what a metaphor is? Well, I'm going to explain it then, because this song is a metaphor. And say, let's think, supposing we think of a rabbit, what do you think of when you think of a rabbit? What kind of a creature are they? They have really long ears. Yeah. And they hop around and eat carrots. Yeah. Well, that's really sort of what I think of when I think of a rabbit. You do? Anybody else? Yes? They're really quick. Quick, right, quick. So, what you're describing, and what's your name?

[03:11]

Leo. Leo. What you're describing, Leo, was more the physical characteristics. And what I was thinking of is more, and your name? Mira. Mira. What Mira said, which is the character of the way they are, which is quick and kind of scared, would you say? Well, they're just really alert. Hmm? They're alert. Alert. Okay. Good. So, we might use a rabbit as like a symbol or a metaphor for something that's very quick and alert. And so, in this psalm, the boat is, what it really means is your life. And when we're little babies, our parents row our boat for us. And when we're children, they continue to help us row the boat. But when we're grown up, we're supposed to row our own boat.

[04:15]

And we're responsible for that. So, you steer it, and you are alert about it. And then, when you come to the next line, gently down the stream, say you're on this river, and there are all these rocks and rapids and everything upstream, and the current is carrying you very fast this way, doesn't it make more sense to go down the stream than up? Yeah. Yeah. So, we can steer, because there's still going to be rocks as we go downstream. We watch, we kind of stay in the middle of the current. We don't get all caught up in the weeds and stuff on the bank.

[05:18]

But, gently, why not? I mean, there's no use to be fighting up those rapids and rocks the other way every minute when you can perfectly well go gently down the stream and look at the scenery and enjoy your rowing and maybe stop for a picnic and all kinds of nifty things. Okay. Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily. Sometimes, we get so caught up in all the things that we're doing that we get very intense and very serious. I don't know. And, as I say, enjoy the trip downstream. Let's row merrily, not so solemnly. Okay. And the last part is the most complicated.

[06:24]

Life is but a dream. Now, have you ever thought, had it happened to you, that you thought something was one way and it turned out it was another way? Have you, Leo? Do you remember? Can you tell me? No, I don't really remember, but sometimes it's with math problems. You think if you do it one way, you'll get it out, you'll figure it out, but then it doesn't actually work that way. You're supposed to divide this fraction and add this number or something. You could get mixed up. Well, that happens a lot in life, is that you'll go along thinking one thing is so, and then some new information comes to you and you find out you were wrong. And that particularly happens, I think, when we have an argument with somebody.

[07:29]

You notice when I have an argument with Mira, I think I'm right, and she thinks she's right. So it's all in your point of view. For instance, you never can really know. You're looking out of seeing what you see and from your point of view. But I'm looking at the front of you, but there's a whole backside I'm not seeing at all. And that's true with almost everything that happens to us, where it would be good to remember that these things I'm thinking are my point of view, and somebody else might have another point of view. So that's life is but a dream. And now there's one more thing that we need to do with this song. We need to sing it again, and it's a round.

[08:30]

You know what a round is? Yeah, we've all done that in school. Okay, so we're going to sing it three times through. I'm going to divide up the zendo. Everybody on this side of the... What do they call that? Divider. Divider. See? This side of the divider will begin. The people from the seats on back be the second group, and on the right side of the divider will be the third. Now, when you're supposed to come in is, this part here will sing, row, row, row your boat, then you, row, row, row your boat, row, row, row your boat. Okay? Three times through. Let's begin. Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream.

[09:34]

Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, I'll be on the stream. Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream. Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, I'll be on the stream. Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream. Nellie, [...] life is but a dream. Nellie, [...] life is but a dream. Oh. Now, what, yes, Mira? We sang that song in a round before we came down here. Did you really? How gross. Somebody is psychic. Lori Sanaki, I'm guessing. All right. The last thing I have to say about that song, as being a Zen song that we need to know,

[10:41]

is that everybody was singing their own song at a different time, but it all harmonized together, and it sounds good. So we can let that happen. We can let people sing their own song and row their own boat and be the way they are, but we can harmonize, right? Okay. So is there anything else you'd like to say to me or ask or tell me before you go? Well, then, thank you very much for listening to me. Thank you. Thank you.

[12:24]

I'd like to talk about, although actually I've told you about everything I know already with that, I'd like to talk about some things that I have faith in. And sometimes I tell a story as my talk, but just not today, except for this very short one, which most of you know very well. And it's the story of a Zen monk who went to his teacher and said, Master, I've been with you a long time now, but you don't ever teach me anything. I want you to teach me something. And the master's reply was, have you had your breakfast? And he said, yes. And then the master said, well, then wash your bowls.

[13:29]

Now, this parable or saying is a story has been a very good steadfast teaching for me, both in hard times and in regular times. One of my daughters has a favorite author whose quotation from that is, do what you need to do until you know what you need to know. And there are times when you just have to do that, some of the hard times. And also, you know, just as you go along when there aren't rocks and rapids. So I really have faith in that, and it's a part of my practice. But I also have the feeling that there is something else that I know that I want.

[14:36]

And the beginning of the Tao Te Ching is, something there is that existed before heaven and earth, I do not know what to call it, so I call it the Tao. And that's one translation, of course. And that Buddha Dharma Datu or Buddha Mind, Big Mind, Sojourn has called it Essence of Mind. That's something that I do have some faith in, but not enough to me. I would like to be really able to rest in it. And now I am able in my head to understand the concept of oneness or interconnectedness.

[15:49]

But it's sort of like knowing the world is round. I do know the world is round. And I've seen the pictures of the beautiful blue marble floating in space. But my sensory data is that I'm walking around on a flat surface with a dome over it. And that's just sort of hardwired to feel that way. So, in the same way, while I can grasp the intellectual concept of Essence of Mind, very often, or most of the time, what I feel like is that I'm walking around inside of my skin, looking out at other things through my eyes.

[16:53]

And so it's rare to really, really feel that oneness. But I know we've all had the experience of it. It arises in nature or sometimes in art, things that we do or see or experience, and also in relationships with other people. And even though these things may be brief or last a while, when those happen, we don't have any doubt. We know the feeling when we see it, when we feel it. And I believe that these times are so necessary for us to remind us because when we feel isolated from the universe,

[17:59]

it makes us uneasy and lonely and insecure. And that's what the Buddha called dukkha, isn't it? That feeling of something out of kilter that you don't know how to fix. And so what I've found over a long time is that while I can't always feel oneness, I can feel something that I call relatedness because I don't know what else to call. And that is, if I regard something in a very attentive way, I feel related to it. And I learned this from my garden.

[19:03]

I was just sitting there very quietly one day on a rare summer warm day. Excuse me, I'm at the tail end of a cold and I still cough. And I was drinking a cup of tea and just idly kind of looking. And all of a sudden, something about the garden, the space of it, the plants and the shadows on the ground and the way the sunlight was filtering through, it all came more alive in a very intense, luminous way. And that was a moment I'm not going to forget. And so by synchronicity, and I do believe I have faith in synchronicity,

[20:11]

I happen to be reading case 50 of the Blue Cliff Record in the Sikita translation. And it's called Particle by Particle Samadhi. And in one of the notes in the case, the focus of the case are the words, rice in the bowl, water in the pail. And one of his notes said, if you do this, and what he was advising was to gaze at the rice in the bowl and the water in the pail.

[21:12]

And he said, if you do this in samadhi, which is deep attention, as we know, you will find the rice becomes illuminating, and the water starts breathing. And he also said, if you gaze at the table in front of you, presently, you will enter into unity with the table. Well, yippee! I don't have a happy time most of the time with koans, but I really got this part because I had just recently had that experience with the garden. So I understood it more than with my head. And so it's relatedness that I have faith in.

[22:19]

And I have been thinking, how can I foster this quality that I see is so valuable and precious? In my life. And one thing I realized right away is that efforting does not help. You know, gently down the stream, for Pete's sake. You know, another great Zen book to me is Alice in Wonderland. Has anybody ever written the Zen of Alice yet? Okay, it's there for someone. Because she talks about trying to go through the looking glass. The more you go toward it, the more you can't do it. And so I think you have to go more gently down the stream with these goals that we have.

[23:33]

However, I do believe in aspiration. It's been my experience that if we aspire to some goal of the spirit, the universe will help us. And so that is one thing, aspiration. And another is a habit. I'm trying to make a habit now of noticing when this happens. Because we are so surrounded by a world of everything going on, that often we can have a moment like that and it just goes by. We don't realize that it's happened. And I do believe that forming the habit of noticing will foster the capability to be able to notice.

[24:44]

So that habit is another one. And when I was talking to Sogen about this matter that's in my heart, he said to me, bow to everything. Which I took to mean to recognize the Buddha nature or the essence of mind in everyone and everything. And in that regard, I was reminded of the movie Avatar. Now, I know that that movie has been given a lot of contempt by critics and everything as being, I don't know, what? Cliché or what? Blue. Blue? Anyway, I think it deserves some more praise than it got because I think it was an amazing technical breakthrough and quite, quite beautiful.

[25:55]

And I think it will be remembered as a kind of a turning point toward a new way of doing movies long after the actual winner of the Oscar. We won't remember the name of it. But what I especially loved in that movie was the greeting that these people gave each other. I don't remember the name of the tribe. But when they met each other, they said, I see you. And, you know, I can tell you, not to be seen is a very hurtful thing. And old people and especially old women can tell you about that. Sometimes you can just feel like you're invisible. I think also children are often not seen.

[26:59]

And serving people who supply us with many things in life can be not seen. Minorities, certainly, and others that I'm not thinking of right now. But on the other hand, to be seen is so nourishing. It's just one of the best things that you can do for people. And I would say that what that is, is bowing to their Buddha nature. I put in my good word for avatar there. And so in sum, I have faith in looking and in caring attentively for people in our lives

[28:11]

and the things of our lives, other humans that we meet, and animals, and our surroundings, and the tools, and our work, and what we meet. So when I am to give a talk, I always make a lot of notes and think about it a lot ahead of time. And when I got all this down, what I realized in the end, what I come all the way back around to was, have you had your breakfast? Wash your bowls. So that's about what I had on my mind for today. And I'd like to ask Sojin if you have anything to say before...

[29:12]

I appreciate your talk. I did have something, but I can't remember what it was. Okay. So maybe it will come to me. Maybe it will come to you. Does anybody else have... Yes, Kate. Well, first of all, thank you very much, as always. I really enjoyed your talk. Thank you. And we saw Avatar together. And that's what I remember from it too, is the overwhelming feeling of that I see you, My question has to do with the old rhyme. And I haven't really thought about this much, but I did today. How can you row downstream? That's a good question. I would use a canoe or myself, so I could see where I was going. I hadn't thought of that, because if you were rowing, you'd be going backwards.

[30:16]

Well, actually, I'm talking about the fact that you don't need to row, because you're going with the current. You need to steer, Kate. You need to steer. The water will help you. But you need to steer. River rafters, they paddle forward, right? Okay. That's probably the way to do. Rubber boat. Anyone else? Yeah, Linda? Oh, yeah. Somebody the other day said to me that I always ask the same question, which was sort of deflating, because I thought I was being original. Life is but a dream. Yeah. I recognize this ancient question of mine, but when you said efforting doesn't help, that's kind of a persistent question of mine,

[31:24]

because to give that attention, like you did to your garden or to the pail of water, seems to take an effort, because something in my karma makes me want to just turn away and distract myself, and so it seems difficult to stop and give the attention. So can you resolve this dilemma? Well, when I was sitting there, I wasn't really efforting. I was just sitting there with a cup of tea, and I was looking, but I wasn't thinking, now I am going to have an experience of relating to this garden. It just happened. There's something in your body-mindset, get up and get out of the garden. It's too creepily calm out here.

[32:26]

Go back to your computer. I take a deep breath and just sit down for a minute and try to see what was going on. Maybe the resistance would come up too much, but what I want to say about efforting and attention, everything is on a kind of like a pole or sliding scale thing. I mean, there's like a tension over here and efforting over there, and, you know, I'm going to pay attention. That attitude, it seems to me, is so tense and so stressful that you're not open enough to let anything happen, but if you kind of slide over on the scale when you can

[33:32]

or notice the moments that do come, maybe they'll build, but that's more like letting it happen or being open to it happening. Does that seem okay till next week? Okay. Okay. Yes. So does that mean then that right effort, you know, the eightfold path, one of them is right effort, and so right effort really means something like the Taoist doing without doing, the concept of doing without doing. I mean, so right effort in a way, I mean, I'm kind of struggling with this a little bit like Linda.

[34:33]

I can't think that right effort is no effort, but it's a certain kind of effort that is not, as you describe it all, tense. Okay. I think we've all wrestled with that one, because things that you're going to do, they take a certain energy, you know. You can't just sit and expect anything's going to happen. So what I said about aspiration, I think you can have intentions toward the way you want your life to be, and it takes a certain energy to just get up out of the chair and do something. But it's a sort of Puritan ethic,

[35:41]

I'm going to beat myself to death trying. It's so tense that I don't think it gets us where we want to be. Is that any help? Yes, it is. Somewhat. Okay. That's really the part of that. You need a certain amount of effort to overcome entropy. Yeah, energy, energy. Energy. Life force. But right effort means, yeah, I'm beginning to see it. You know, when I think about the Eightfold Noble Path, I really like the word wise effort, wise, instead of right, because right is so freighted for us, right, wrong, good, bad, you know,

[36:45]

that wise, for myself, kind of gets me in a frame of mind where I can feel that some efforts would be reckless or counterproductive, but wise effort would be the energy and the life force to have you going in a good direction. But it's also the quality of mind. Yeah. And I remember Mel once saying to me that, and it ties in with your row, row boat, that properly rowing to the other side is the other side. I mean, properly is not the right word, but there is a way of rowing to the other side that is the other side.

[37:53]

I like that. Boy, that sounds great. Yeah, I'd like to think about that. Let's see, I see Sojin. I remember what Sojin said. Oh, Sojin, okay. I didn't know I was going to say it. But we think that rowing, well, rowing is practice. In this case, rowing is practice. And going down doesn't mean down. Down is not a direction. Down is just being here on the other side. If you were actually practicing right now, it's the other side already. There's no place to go. So down is not necessarily a direction, just like east is not a direction in Buddhadharma. It's where you are now. So all of those things that you say, that people have been saying, is pointing to, as long as it's a stream, right?

[38:57]

Streams don't usually have waves, they have wavelets, but riding the wave and driving the wave, that's balance. When you say right effort or wise effort, it's all in balance, right? As long as our life is balanced between what we're doing and how we're moving our energy and taking into account what we're moving our energy with, it's called co-operation. As long as we have co-operation, there's balance. And balance is what moves the stream, moves us down the stream in a balanced way. So, I think that's what you've been saying. Thank you. Way back there, I see you Nancy, next. Yes, Omi? Well, since I raised my hand, somehow I've gotten far without raising it. What's coming up for me now is how useful the notion of attachment has been.

[40:03]

And when I think of right effort, which for me is wrapped up with intention, you know, I make an intention and I practice with my intention, and I never always fulfill it when I didn't notice, that it becomes wrong effort when it becomes ambitious when I become attached. So, it's not so much am I doing it right or anything else, it's like has it started mattering? So, I love your advocacy of lightness. So, I think narrowly down the stream really means unattached. Yes, thank you, thank you. Nancy? Well, Catherine, I think more or less just said what I was going to say. Thank you for your talk and I realize I get so caught up in the effort and it gets to be pretty grim. And I like to think of that merrily, merrily, merrily part.

[41:07]

So, that's all I was going to say. Thank you. Thank you, Nancy. Okay, we're about at the time. So, thank you very much.

[41:24]

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