Good evening. The teacher once asked the children, how did the world come to be? And one child replied, once long ago, there were butterflies. They had no place to land. And they got mad. They said, let's work together. They made a big swarm, but that did not work. Then they made

[01:03]

a circle, and they said, let's call it the world. So, I've been thinking and feeling a lot about Daigon and his surgery tomorrow. And one thing I noticed was that I find it difficult to fully appreciate just one remarkable individual. When, in this life we share, we are surrounded by so many human beings of profound intention.

[02:04]

The butterflies are swarming. And even though we live together day by day, and in some cases year after year, and we relate to the schedule and to the teachings of the Buddha, to each other, to our chores, to our vows, it seems that we don't often mark our relationships to one another and their depths. And I don't know about you, but sometimes I wait until

[03:11]

my friends are close to death before I tell them how much I care, and about that secret place that's held for them in my heart. Now, maybe it's enough just to bow. I was with my mother. She made a special meal for me for my birthday last month, and we've always had a separate feeling. And at the end of the meal, I was thanking her, and she reached up and she bowed. I was so deeply touched. I'm not sure if it was the same time last

[04:24]

year or maybe even the year before, but there was another mother, a young mother, who came to visit me here. Well, not me, she came to talk to somebody, because her little boy, one and a half years old, had just died. He had drowned in a little pond in her backyard. And I don't think I've ever experienced a more grief-stricken human being. So, she and I spent about two hours together down in the Peace Garden, and we laughed, and we cried, and we talked about her little boy and my little girl. You know, I can't really imagine that these wounds ever heal, but they do open us wide,

[05:35]

and they do reveal to us the nature of our tenderness, our vulnerability, and our enormous capacity for real love. What I learned about myself from this woman and her lost child was that joy and sorrow are inseparable. They seem as though they're two polar emotional destinations, but they are simply the conjoined twins of the human heart. And you can't find one without finding the other. I think it's this turning of this particular

[06:44]

set of opposites that reveals most vividly to us this experience we humans have of non-duality. Not joy, not sorrow. I used to think that the practice of Zen was going to save me from all suffering, and I used to think that the Buddha was an island unto himself, sheltered and protected from all that would ever scare or hurt him. And I think I thought that because it is possible to barricade yourself through various tricks of mental fabrication or through various substances, both legal and

[07:52]

illegal, into an invisible cocoon. And this cocoon appears to be safe, at least for a while. We can call it me and mine. Me and mine. My friends and my stuff and my things and my views and my opinions and my way. But inside these little cocoons, that self, that vulnerable self, will slowly and inevitably begin to rot. In order for the butterfly to be truly free, it must run the risk of learning how to fly.

[08:58]

I once approached Sojourn Mel Weitzman, the former abbot of the Zen Center, with this question. I said, dreams are sweet. I love to sleep. What do you have to offer? And he said, pretty sternly, go wash your face. I didn't have another response, and I did feel ashamed, and I knew why. And now, and as I did then, I feel deep gratitude for this fine teacher, for his courage and his wisdom.

[10:07]

So like it or not, this is what I came to the Zen Center for, this forest of swords. I came looking for tough love. I wanted people who would be direct and honest and impeccable in demanding of me, because that's what I already demanded of myself. The trouble was, I couldn't convince anyone else to get into the ring with me, to join me as a witness to all of the resistance, non-compliance, and flat-out indifference. Indifference? No, but indifference to what? Resistance to what?

[11:20]

I don't know how many of you saw the Fight Club. I don't recommend it, but it seems that whatever we're resisting is ourself, and what we truly believe to be right, to be correct, to be true. The butterfly is slugging it out with a caterpillar. I will be free. Oh no, you won't. So the ring that I'm talking about is a ring of light, of awareness. It's a place of no excuses, where this is so, and I know it to be so. And when we are at that very place, in that very time, all of our systems are balanced.

[12:36]

The mind, the heart, the passions, in an upright row, completely revealed. When I asked my daughter the other day, do you know who you are, who you really are? She responded without any artifice or hesitation, no. And then she said, Mom, do you know who you really are? I wavered, and then I lied. Zentatsu Baker Roshi wrote in this introduction to a book called The Timeless Spring, Open yourself to the power of respect and others' expectations.

[13:42]

Accept others and let others accept you. Then you will be in the midst of lineage, in the midst of the power of everyone. And what does everyone expect of you? They want you to be Buddha. So, with some regret at the loss of alternatives, I actually have come to believe that the only safety I will ever have in this life is when this life is located precisely here, right on this platform. Sitting right here with my palms sweating, facing all of you.

[14:48]

And the funny thing is that this place doesn't feel so safe. In fact, it doesn't feel safe at all. It feels like I'm falling through air. How about you? Are you falling through air with me? Can we make this swarm into a circle and call it the world? I don't know if that's possible or not, but that's what I'd like to do. That's what I invite all of us to do. To practice together. It's really the only product that we produce here at Green Gulch Farm.

[16:03]

And it's the only one that's not for sale. The Song of Joy. So, even though I know this, I forget it all the time, and I wonder what I'm doing here. And what we're doing here. And why we go to all this trouble. And then somebody recommends a book or a movie or a play or a story or a poem, and I reconnect with how I got here and why I stay. I find my roots. The conjoined twins of my heart. So this time it was a woman named Anne Baker who was here in January who sent me a book.

[17:06]

She sent me a book called Ender's Game. Do you know it? Yeah. It's a story about a very young boy who happens to be unimaginably bright. And he's being trained to lead a great battle for the salvation of the human race against an alien species called the buggers. And the buggers have attacked the earth twice. The second time they were barely repelled. So this young boy, Ender, is our only hope for counterattacking the home world of the buggers and saving humankind. But he must be proven to be worthy of the task.

[18:11]

And so he's tested to the ends of his limits and beyond. So I don't want to give it away if you haven't read it, but what I got out of reading this book, other than a lot of pleasure because it's a really fun book, was a remembering of myself 23 years ago and how I arrived here in the first place. I did want tough love and I wanted great expectations, but there was a reason and that reason was burning me up. When I was a young woman back in the 1960s, you've all heard of the 60s,

[19:11]

along with many of my peers, I was waging a war against the United States of America, the buggers. And it was pretty painful because I'd been taught to love the United States of America. I knew all the songs, you know, God Bless America, My Country, Tis of Thee. And I had come to hate this country for what it was doing. It was a little war called the Vietnam War that we watched on television. So I know you all know the story of the Vietnam War. I don't want to tell it to you all again,

[20:15]

but when I was thinking about it, I started to, I don't know the word, it's a thing women do when they wail. Cree is it? I could feel that pain and I remembered the napalm and the children running. So even though, you know, it was a long time ago and for many of you it's history, for me it's the reason I get up at four o'clock in the morning. Because there's something terrible happening between the people and the plants and the animals of the earth. We are out of balance.

[21:21]

And it's a way beyond killing for food. We are out of rations. This word out of round is dukkha in Sanskrit. Dukkha, it means, we translate it as suffering. The butterflies are swarming, but that doesn't work. This little poem I've been quoting was written by a seven-year-old girl named Morgan Flannery, who's a classmate of Sabrina's. She's very cute. She wears flowery hats and likes being babies. So it is my tiny hope that we will be able to move forward.

[22:24]

And I think it's the tiny hope of all parents that the children are our one last great possibility, you know, like Ender Wiggins, for both revealing through their unveiled suffering and showing us the great wound of our collective life, but also for administering through their great wisdom the medicine that may save us all. All sentient beings, whole beings, Buddha nature, they just have to go on seeing what they see, and saying it, and being encouraged. So they need teachers, and they need people who love them.

[23:29]

Because they're bright, and they're loving, and they're capable, and they're soft and flexible, and they swarm. I was working very, very hard yesterday with a swarm of 25 high school students who came here to receive Zazen instruction. They were the urban pioneers, and we began our time together out here in front of the Zendo. And I was telling them the virtues of silence and stillness, listening to the birds, the frogs, and as I was talking, some of the practice period were quietly raking the lawn. It was just perfect. They fidgeted, and then I invited them to take off their shoes, which they resisted.

[24:43]

They didn't want to walk around this building in their white socks. These are city kids. So finally, after a brief pillow fight with the Zafus, which miraculously ended, we all were seated in more or less the Zazen posture, and I suggested to them that they count their breaths from one to ten. And it was really amazing, because all of a sudden, all of them, all 25, quieted down, and were still, just about at the same time. So I was only going to have them sit through three or four rounds of counting to ten. I

[26:03]

thought that would be plenty long. And just as we were beginning, this incredible loud motor turned on outside the door here. So I feigned indifference, and I got up quietly and walked over there, hoping to find a Green Gulch vehicle that I could silence with a gesture. But unfortunately, it was Roto-Rooter, and they were sucking our waste material out with a giant rubber straw. So I knew at a glance it couldn't be stopped. And I returned to my seat and began counting my breaths to quiet my mind. And then, little by little, I calmed and melted and opened to the affection I was feeling for

[27:15]

these young people and their noble effort not to move. And I am feeling that same affection for all of you, and for myself, and even for Roto-Rooter. Our great effort making a circle and calling it the world. I do not want my friend Daigong Root to die. I know he doesn't either. That's what he said. So I, and he, and all of us must sit right in the middle of that not wanting, because that's where we are. We're not in control. We have no plans.

[28:17]

And we are facing the unknown together. We are called to this home by the Mother of Creation Herself to witness the birth of each moment, kicking and screaming, with new life. With no place to land, they get mad. So the people made a god, and the god was a bird. Then the god turned into a bird. Then the bird was real. Sophie Redfern, age seven. So the people made a god, and the god was a bird. Then the god turned into a bird. Then the bird was real.

[29:25]

And then finally from my own genius child, the one who splits open the silence separating each of us from the other. Another version of how the world came to be. The world had no one on it, but then the only person was alive. His name was Jake. His mom brought his bike. The end. Thank you very much. May our intention equally...

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