Description
It’s a very strong thing to be human, you can be subjected to all sorts of great forces. And sometimes you can win through, and sometimes you die. But weāre all of us doing that, all the time. So I was thinking about how good it is to love each other, to meet each other, and to make peace in our hearts.Ā Sunday talk with John Tarrant, recorded June 14 2020.
John:Ā
Weāre just backstage hanging out. Waiting for the universe to reveal itself. Doing nothing. Sitting silently, doing nothing. Maybe weāll just begin, while people are ticking on, you know the little wheels are bringing us on. Weāll just sit a bit. Doing nothing at the center of everything. Harmonizing with the universe. [bell]Ā
So welcome, everyone. Thanks for coming. Itās one of the great things we can do in tumultuous times, is sit. Meditate. And have some kind of peace in our hearts for whatever weāre doing in the world. And sometimes just holding a place to sit is what we can do, or is enough, or itās the right thing. Thatās sort of what Iām doing, really. Other times we can sit and just take the clarity and empathy of that out into the world. And some of you are doing that.Ā
So, feeling the time. Kind of like sorrow and difficulty and hope. I just readāBob Dylan just gave an interview that I read in Rolling Stone and he was asked about mortality and how he feels about it. And he said, āWell, Iām not really worried about mortality for me, Iām worried about it for human beings.ā And he wanted to talk about the Sands Creek massacre in Colorado, which was something before slavery happened. It was sort of touching to hear what he was concerned about and feeling, oh, I do notice that myself. Life and death donāt seem that different. That thereās the coming and going. Getting born and dying, when will you stop, you know. So thereās a certain sense of humor about the way that we come into the world and we live between and then we go out. Where do we go? Into another between. We go back into the greatness of it all. But we are always a part of the greatness of it all. So there is that. That each molecule of the universe contains the universe and that that includes us.Ā
A couple of things coming on. I notice that over a long course of practice Iāve had different phases of meditation, and today I want to talk some about our time and I want to talk some about meditation and what its value is, because I think itās a precious thing. And itās something we can do no matter what our circumstance. If weāre dying and canāt speak, meditationās still there. If weāre just born in a certain way, the universe is just holding us and doing the meditation for us.Ā
I remember when I first started meditationāyou know I learned to meditate in the forests and mountains in Australia, and in a way they taught me because I had to go out there and stop doing things with my mind, which actually I wasnāt capable of stopping doing. But eventually the forest, the lake just cleared by itself, the lake of the mind. Then when I was workingāI had this passion for indigenous land rights in Australia and I was working for that. I noticed that thatās where I learned meditation in action because I noticed that because otherwise I was so consumed with sorrow and rage that I wasnāt very effective.
In fact, everyone was so consumed with sorrow and rage that everyone was always getting into fights all the time. I thought, one thing I can do, I can not do that. Youād be in a room with everybody scheming and plotting and giving speeches, and whatever else people were doingāgetting drunk, fighting with each other. Not that I objected to any of that, but I could somehow not get tangled with it. Youāll notice that this is the great old charm, the great old solution: Try not to get tangled with things so much.
Thereās a certain modesty about that. What we can do in this life is what weāre deeply called to do. Faced with the beauty and the sorrow of the world, we wonāt know what to do immediately. If we have some kind of openness and peace in our hearts, the universe, in a way, uses us and comes through us and out of us. So itās like that … it comes through us, it holds us, in a way. We are, we are just the hands and the eyes of the universe. I like that. And then I thought, wow, I like this meditation stuff but I can tell Iām really caught by everything that comes into my mind. I kept believing whatās in my mind, and things like that. Getting enraged or getting grief-stricken. Nothing wrong with that but it seemed to take up a lot of bandwidth.Ā
So, then I decided Iād try to get enlightened. That seemed like a good thingāIād heard of it. Actually, before that Iād just heard of meditation instruction and didnāt know anything about meditation, but just knew I wanted to do it. I decided to work with koans and concentrate. The style at that time was to just have no other thought but the koanāthe one word of the koan. Sort of let my mind fill itself with the koan, and naturally my mind wasnāt very good at that. So then I had a long sense of failure about what was happening in my mind until at some stage I realized that the sense of failure itself was just something else happening in my mind, and I didnāt need to worry about it. It was just an opinion, inherited no doubt from ancient days.
That was kind of good and the beginning of compassion. The compassion for what happens in oneās own mind and what happens in other peopleās mind, and therefore for the things they do, is a profound thing in Chan. Thatās why the temples in the old days were places of refuge during a war. Sometimes they got burned or things like that but whenāthe great story that [PZI Roshi] Sarah Bender told the other day, that when in Kamakura the city got burned but all the fire and destruction had spread to the neighboring villages. What the temples could do was take in the villagers and feed them and everybody would work together on the land to feed people.Ā
And so there was that kind of attitude of trying to have a place of refuge and calmāa green glade, weād have called it here. A way to appreciate the sacredness and the sanctity of this moment. Thatās a beautiful thing. Then I had whatever experiences I had with the koan. Somebody asked me to be a teacher, to teach zen one day in the middle of a retreat. For reasons still not clear to me I said yes and so that determined the rest of my life. I thought I was just saying yes to a day of teaching. But here I am.
Recently Iāve been thinking of those very early times when I really worked with my mind in a very disciplined way. Just the koan. Iāve noticed that when I wake up in the morning, the four great vows are with me. Partly itās because weāve been attending a lot of meditation, going most nights. I try to sit when I can. Itās a great thing. I found that thatās what appears and for me itās the second vow particularly. āI vow to set endless heartache to rest.ā In a wayāthere are a lot of things to say about that. There are things to do. Shelter people who need shelter. Also, thereās an inner path with that, where we realize the whole universe is this vast being. The old teachers used to think of it as a golden-haired lion on the tip of every hair was a galaxy. And on the tip of the tip of the tip…thereās us. I liked the modesty of that and also the inclusiveness.
And we can feel the truth of that if you look at the night sky and you feel yourself falling up into the stars. Or if you look at grass and the insects and the bees. I was watching a big black bumblebee carefully going over her pot of flowers and just taking every little bit of lavender pollen that it could get. And then five minutes later, along comes a hummingbird to exactly the same flowers. Itās like, oh, theyāre all us. With the hummingbird, with the lavender, with the sky. Another image for the totality was that itās a brocade. That we are part ofāwhen we wake up and see our true place in the universe, itās as if we had stepped out of the painting and then were willing to step back into it. We go back into the brocade. So then we have our true place in the universe. We can see, oh, weāre being held by these vast forces. Weāre not different from them, weāre not separate from them. So, thatās to say.
Another thing that sort of struck me recently, was sort of the intimacy of things. I like the fact that whenever I look in my mind and I reach for a thought, actually what I get is one of the four vows. I was looking for a thought, and I got that. Itās sort of nice. It shows that my meditation practice is doing me, rather than me doing it. Which is always nice.
I remember a story that Rilke, the great poet Rainer Maria Rilke told after the horrible First World War where people were just massacred by the millions, bodies stacked up. Then he came back to Paris, heād lived in Paris, been a secretary to Auguste Rodin, the sculptor. Then after the war, heād written some marvelous poems but theyād sort of gone into abeyance. Then, after the war, he came back to Paris and he found the same humble, small people. Theyād survived the war. Theyāre still selling flowers on the street corner or theyāre blind and theyāre still singing, or theyāre holding out their cup on the same street corner. And he was very moved by the humbleness of life and the parisian flower seller
of the humbleness of life. Something I wanted to say, you know, thatās really important. And that every piece of the world and every being in the world is alive with some kind of illumination.Ā
And so the tenderness of things and the fragility and the tenderness is very present, I think, and I notice in my dreams and memories and people I knew long ago or people who are dead nowāthey appear. I feel a welcoming quality towards them. I knew people who had been in that First World War and had been gassed and things like that. I grew up with people who had been in the Second World War and had been tortured and had been on the Burma Road and things like that. Very strong thing to be human, you can be subjected to all sorts of great forces. And sometimes you can win through, and sometimes you die. But weāre all of us doing that, all the time. So, I was thinking about friendship and how good it is to love each other and how good it is to have friends and to make peace in our hearts to meet each other.Ā
This is Li Bai, the great Chinese poet, of the Tang Dynasty. āSeeing Off A Friend.ā His friend is the great Du Fu. The two greatest poets of Chinese history.
Green mountains lie across the outskirts of the city,
white water winds around the eastern city walls.
Once we make our parting here in this place,
like a solitary tumbleweed, you will go
ten thousand miles.
Floating clouds are the thoughts of the wanderer,
setting sun is the mood of my old friend.
With the wave of the hand now you go from here,
your horse gives a whinny as it departs.Ā
Thatās the great Li Bai. And hereās his friend, thinking of him later. āDreaming of Li Bai,ā in this poem this is Du Fu. What happened to Li Bai, and dreaming of Li Baiāin this poem. This is Du Fu. What happened to Li Baiāwho was fairly often in trouble for not keeping his mouth shut, basically. It just wasnāt his strength. He was a wonderful poet and he just sang and said what he wanted and wrote what he wanted. Heād have to apologize. Then he got exiled to the far south and there was more sickness and things like that. This was the person who set off with his horse giving a whinny.
Dreaming of Li Bai
Death at least gives separation repose,
without death its grief only sharpens. Ā (So, he doesnāt know about his friend.)
You drift malarial south lands beyond the Yangtzeās distances,
and I hear nothing, exiled friend.
Knowing I think of you always now,
you visit my dreams, my heart frightened.
It isnāt a living spirit I dream.
Fathomless miles, youāve come so far from bright Asia green maples,
night shrouds pass when you return.
Entangled as you are in the nets of the war,
with what birds wings could you fly?Ā
Flooding this room to the roof beams, the moon sinks.
You linger in its light.But the waterās deep and into long swirls,Ā dark dragons.
Take good care, my friend.
Heās pretty sure his friend is dead but he says, āTake good care, my friend.ā Heās still here in his dreams. I guess I wanted to do another little thing on friendship. This is actually about love. This is Czeslaw Milosz, the great Polish poet. I think it was translated by Robert Haas with Milosz.
Love means to learn to look at yourself the way one looks at distant things
for youāre only one thing among many.
And whoever sees that way heals their heart
without knowing it from various ills.
A bird and a tree say to them āfriendā.
Then they want to use themself and things
so that they stand in the glow of rightness.
It doesnāt matter whether you know what you serve.
Who serves best doesnāt always understand.
The great impartial quality of love and intimacy.Ā
The other thing that really has struck meāhereās an old meditation instruction used as a koan in the Book of Serenity [Case 45] and it was a sutra. The Sutra of Complete Enlightenment, the sutra says, āDonāt give rise to delusive thoughts.ā Sure, ok. āWhen delusive thoughts do arise, donāt try to get rid of them.ā Mmm … ok. āWhen you find yourself in a realm of delusive thought, donāt add explanation to knowledge.ā When you donāt know about a realm of delusive thought, donāt jump to the conclusion that thatās the truth either. You can tell that this is one of those great things like, āThereās no true foundation to rely on, we all rest walking on emptiness.āĀ
Weāre walking on light really, I suppose, but light doesnāt really hold us up or solidify things. So, donāt give rise to delusive thoughts but as soon as you say ok that immediately gives rise to delusive thoughts. Then donāt try to get rid of them. So, you can see thereās a sense of humor about this, that theyāre all empty anyway. And when you find yourself in a realm of delusive thought, donāt start explaining it to yourself. Donāt add knowledge, it says, but you know how annoying it is the way the mind explains itself and justifies itselfāāWell, the way I felt that way was … or the reason was this that and the other,ā or āThe real solution to the current crisis is ā¦ā You just know that you yourself are going to disagree with everything else in there. So, donāt add delusive thoughts.
Weāre going to sit a bit, Iām going to give you a koan to sit with. Weāre going to get two koans today. But hereās the first one coming up, ok? [bell]
Just hearing.
Who is hearing?
Who is a bell?
Who is a sound?
Who hears?
Just feeling, what is it like being you?
Even though you know what a you is or what a me is. What is it like here. What flows through. What is the universe doing with me at this moment? What is my true destiny here at this moment? Itās all in the sound. What is that sound? The only thing over and overāone of the greatest things youāll find meditation does is you notice that, oh, just donāt find fault, donāt attack what comes up in the mind. And then freedom will appear. And itās not just freedom. Youāre not making a war to make a āme.ā Youāre not making a you or a self or a me by conflict, usually with oneself. Whatever comes up, not to find fault and to just return to the koan and hereās the koan:
Ā In Japan long ago a great minister called Yu Di asked a master who was called Xi Yu DaotangĀ about a line in the scripture. So the minister, a high government official, asked the master about a line in the scripture.
āWhat is meant by āBecause of unfortunate circumstances, fierce winds blew the ship off course and set it drifting toward the land of the flesh-eating demons?āāĀ
Rakshasas, they call them. They are demons whose existence is to eat human beings.Ā
āWhat is meant by āBecause of unfortunate circumstances, fierce winds blew the ship off course and set it drifting toward the land of the Rakshasas?āā
And the master replied, āMinister, why are you so ignorant? Why are you asking about that?ā And the ministerās face turned white.
And the master said, āBecause of unfortunate circumstances, fierce winds blew them off course and set them adrift toward the land of the flesh-eating demons.ā
And the minister understood.Ā
Just let yourself keep company with that story without necessarily trying to sort it out too much. What happens when the ship is blown off course toward the land of the flesh-eating demons? There is a secret laughter inside this koan. And you know peace is not something Iām very good at manufacturing. But if I stop sailing toward the land of the flesh-eating demons, peace just takes care of itself. So, itās good when I realize that there are larger forces than me that Iām depending on. The other great thing is, itās not just to get rid of the drifting toward the land of the demons, itās that even those forces are themselves the gate. Itās like, āIām reaching for the light, please help me. Never mind the light, give me the reaching.ā Iām drifting toward the land of the demons, please help meāgive me the drifting. What is it like? Even that drifting. The vast peace and spaciousness, the kindness. When suddenly, you canāt find the land of demons even if youāre looking. [bell]
Okay. There we go. The land of the flesh-eating demons. A bit of a high wire act for the zen teacher allowing his patron to get in, who could certainly harm him a lot. His patron could get enraged in order to teach him koans. This is what it feels like, as opposed to explaining it.
The other thing I wanted to refer to is friendship. It came to mind to read you another story. This is a great man called Primo Levi, whom Iām sure you must know. He wrote a book called, If This Is A Man, which was translated as Survival in Auschwitz in the US. He was Italian and was in the Resistance, and he was betrayed and picked up and he also was Jewish, which was another significant problem at the time during the war. He ended up in Auschwitz but he actually survived, through luck. Also he was a remarkable, luminous person. He has this passage I want to read you where heās got a friend whoās got this very minor official position like getting soup from the kitchen and bringing it back for the laborers in the camp, and who then gets him to help. So they have all the usual hazards of a concentration camp. [reads]
āHalt, attention. Take off your beret. Filthy brutes.ā
That sort of thing going on from the wandering German soldiers. But his friend has arranged it so that theyāll walk with the buckets of soup to the kitchen, but theyāll walk the long way around where theyāll look really busy. But theyāll have a long stroll and theyāll be able to have a conversation which is an incredible luxury. So they can be friends for the time it takes them to walk there. And then a spy comes by and his friend says he would like to learn Italian. He doesnāt know Italian and he is very fluent in French and German and languages are easy but he doesnāt know Italian and he would like to know. Itās a way for them to be friends where Primo Levi can teach him Italian. Then the spy comes by and his friend repeats, just says aloud some words in Italian, just this gobbledygook to put the spy off. To indicate theyāre not actually talking about anything.
“We quicken our pace, the spy passes, we quicken our pace. One never knows, he does evil for evilās sake. But Iām thinking, how to teach my friend. Iām thinking of the Canto of Ulysses. Who knows how or why it comes to my mind, but we have no time to change. This hour is already less than an hour. If Gene is intelligent, heāll understand, heāll understand today I feel capable of so much.āĀ
Who is Dante? So heās going to teach him Italian by teaching this mythical text, the Divine Comedy, most of which is in his mind. But not all of it.
āWhat is comedy? That curious sensation of novelty which one feels if one tries to explain briefly what is the Divine Comedy. How the inferno, the hell section, is divided up. What are itās punishments? Virgil is Reason, Beatrice is Theology. Gene pays great attention and I begin slowly and accurately. Then of that age-old fire the loftier horns of fire (the people in hell were flames) began to mutter and move as a wavering flame. Wrestles against the wind and is overworn.āĀ
And then I stop and I try to translate, disastrous poor Dante and poor French. All the same, the experience seems to promise well. Admires the poor simile of the tongue of flame and suggests the appropriate word to translate āage-oldā. And after, when I came, nothing. A hole in my memory, before Aeneas ever named it so, another hole. A fragment floats into my mind not relevant, even correct. So, on the open sea I set forth. āOh, Piccolo, I can point out why I set forthā, is to be translated a certain way. Itās very strong and audacious, itās a chain which has been broken, it is throwing oneself on the other side of the barrier. We know the impulse well, the open seas. Piccolo has traveled by sea and knows what it means. It is when the horizon closes in on itselfāfree straight ahead and simple. There is nothing but the smell of the sea.ā
And then, ah, the open sea, I know that well. And then he says, āI donāt want to tell it in prose, I must remember the verse.ā And then he remembers the section where Ulysses is in hell and gets interviewed and he gathers his men, he says,
āAt the end of his life he gathered his men and set out beyond the Pillars of Hercules, out of the Mediterranean, to find out what was there. And his ship sank and he ended up in hell.ā
Meanwhile, heās got this great spirit of adventure and he says to his sailors,
āThink of your origins, think of your begettingsā, (simensor is the Italian word), āthink of your origin, you were not made to live like brutes but to follow after knowledge and excellence.ā
And itās one of those things like, Oh, even though heās in hell, heās saying something marvelous and it lifts the spirits in Auschwitz, you know.
āPiccolo begs me to repeat it. How good Piccolo is. He is aware it is doing me good. Also, perhaps it is more. Perhaps, despite the bad translation, despite the pedestrian, rushed commentary, he has received the message. He feels that it has to do with him, it has to do with all who toil with us in particular, and it has to do with us too, who dare to reason of these things with the poles with soup on our shoulders.āĀ
So, thatās another example of friendship, I think. That in the worst circumstances, you think of the great things and you share them together. You think of the great matters and you share what is deeply in your heart. So the other kind of friendship thing, from popular culture that is in my mind today is that, I readāIām sure other people saw thisāLeBron James, the great player, he put on Twitter this great tweet, āWhy Doesnāt America Love Us!?ā with question marks and exclamation marks and sorrowing emojiās and prayers and strength and fists and things. It was very touching, and his hashtags were āWeāre all we got.ā Yes. āHead high and stay strong,ā was the other hashtag. And, āWhy doesnāt America love us?ā seems a good question. A wonderful question, and I feel in my heart a love for him and love for everyone whoās suffering.Ā
But particularlyāI could make a cheap joke about that and say Iām a Warriors fan, how to love LeBronābut thatās not it, actually. I feel such love for him that heās doing something and that heās starting a voting-rights organization, and how marvelous that he too wants to be loved like we all do. And we can do that. The thing that comes, to hold people in our hearts with love is such a different thing from holding people coldly. Or not holding them. And to hold anybody in our heart with love. Somehow again it opens that spaciousness, a vastness thatās in every moment.Ā Ā
I have lots more to say and then we have another mediation to do. But before we do that, I thought Iād just bring on a couple of comments or questions or stuff from some of the teachers here. Tess [PZI Sensei Tess Beasley], would you like to say something?Ā
Tess: Sure, a couple things, maybe. Your thing about friendship…for some reason what flashed in my mind was when I was a little girl, I used to love to go to haunted houses. Like, half the experience was huddling up with your friends and seeing if you could get through this thing. Feeling the bodies close around you and feeling the terror and the suspense and all the things together. And even if the danger wasnāt nearly as real as sailing off to the flesh-eating demons, it sort of felt that way. And, I donāt know…what you said about friendship is really touching. I can feel that right now, in my life, and in the friends of the actual people that Iām close to, but also the friendship of the flowers or the birds or the proximity or intimacy of what feels like this scary thing thatās happening.Ā
And the second thing, I guess, is [that] the beautiful poems you were reading reminded me of something I was thinking about this morningāa Native American fiction book. Thereās a line in there about the way that the songs carry the things that are too difficult or too heartbreaking to carry. The songs carry them for us. And the way that one of the things that feels sometimes hard right now is so much is focused on the problems. I love the piece on Bob Dylan because itās like there are these pieces of art or culture kind of woven through whatās happening that are also carrying what is hard to carry for ourselves right now. So, maybe just that. Meditation is carrying things we canāt carry for ourselves right now.
John: Yes, and also sometimes you know, not carrying is carrying. I know I said this before but Nanao Sakaki, whose life was actually saved by the Hiroshima-Nagasaki bombs, but who spent his life as an activist against war as a result. Somebody asked him, āHow do we survive?ā Humans survive, you know, nuclear holocaust, whatever it is weāre doing to ourselves lately. And he said, āNo need survive.ā [sic] Itās like, the galaxy survives for us. And sometimes, if we canāt bear it, thereās no need to bear it. Thereās something bigger than even bearing it. Sarah [PZI Roshi Sarah Bender], do you have anything to say?Ā
Sarah: Iāve been thinking of the story of a little girl who had no friends, whatsoever, and had no parents, whose parents died in a cholera epidemic in India. She set off to the moors of England friendless, and not friendly. What really opens her heart is the friendship of a robin,Ā discovering that the robin likes her. There are wonderful little descriptions about discovering that the robin likes her and just how miraculous that is. The power of that and what it opens up.Ā
John: Thatās beautiful thank you. Jon Joseph, do you have anything that you want to say?
Jon: Yeah, you know the background of the constant companion of death, and Bob Dylan and this covid time. So about a month ago, I had a video exam with my doctor and he said, āWell, you know youāve got a history of melanoma and skin cancer is in your family, so be careful for that.ā So, within a couple weeks I felt this bump on my head and I asked my wife to take a picture of it. She took a picture of it and it was pretty gnarly looking. And I sent it to him and my self-diagnosis was pretty much ā99% advanced stage melanoma.ā And I lived with that for like three days and with āWhat is this,ā you know. I started up a conversation with my mother who had passed away about ten years ago. At any rate, he said, āDo you have any other pictures because what you sent me was completely ugly but benign.ā I became a little angry because he was messing with my karma. My dialogue with my mother reminded me of a prison guard in the Bataan Death March, where in 1942 all these American prisoners and Australian prisoners hiked across the Philippines, and most of them died. The guard said, āItās interesting because the Americans ask for the same things when theyāre dying that we Japanese ask for when weāre dying. Thereās so much death around on both sides. They ask for their mothers.ā So that was a very sweet thing to remember, for me.Ā
John: Thank you. Allison Atwill ?
Allison: This spring Iāve been watching the birds, and because Iāve been sequestered here, Iām not moving. For months and months Iām just not moving. And the birdsāso I see the migration of these flocks of birds and different species of birds and coming to know them and coming to know them in a way I never have. And I was thinking about something you said about the large forces carrying us, forces larger than myself. How incredibly moving it is to me to think of these small birds, something in them being able to find their way. Being carried by some forces hundreds or thousands of miles and somehow knowing how to find their way. We still donāt understand migration. We still donāt know how they do it. And we donāt know how we do it.Ā
I was thinking about how in the eighteenth century, before they knew anything about migration, they didnāt even know where birds went when they disappeared in different seasons. They had all these theories about it, like oneāthey didnāt even call themselves scientists, they called themselves natural philosophers. They thought that they would go into the mud, kind of like bury themselves into the mud kind of like amphibians do, and then reemerge in the spring.Ā
But one of the things they began to notice is when they had some birds that were in cages. At a certain time of the year, at night, they would throw themselves against one place in the cage, always the same direction. And no matter where the birds were they would always be moving in that direction trying to get there. So that made me think of something in us knows the direction. Weāre moved, the forces are moving through us in that same kind of mysterious way. I can see it in myself and I see it in other people, this movement towards our place in the mandala.
John: Thank you. What Iām going to do now is do another meditation, see how we do. This is like the other side of going to the Land of the Flesh-Eating Demons so letās try that, see how we do. [bell]
The sound of the bell, you know, the ancient sound. From before time. From before thought. There was a student who asked a teacher, the teacher was Dalongālong means dragon, dragon teacher.
The student said, āThis physical body perishes, decays. What is the imperishable, what is the hard and fast body of reality? What is the body that doesnāt decay? This physical body decays, what is the everlasting body of the real?ā
And the teacher said, āMountain flowers bloom like brocade. The valley streams run deepest indigo.āĀ
Mountain flowers bloom like brocade. Valley streams run deepest indigo.
And just let any part of the koan, just let it into your heart and whenever you notice your mind is somewhere, just let the koan appear.Ā
The mountain flowers bloom like brocade. The mountain streams run deepest indigo.
And if youāre grasping for a state of mind just have the grasping. If youāre criticizing yourself, donāt criticize that. We notice even in the criticism, thereās some movement toward the light. Mountain flowers bloom like brocade. The valley stream runs deepest indigo. Be very patient with yourselves, you know. Impatience is a way of finding fault with being here, with this. And perhaps you are already perfect, youāre already not wrong.
PZI Cantor Amaryllis Fletcher: [plays violin]
John: The mountain flowers bloom like brocade. The valley stream runs deepest indigo. The stars appear like brocade, the thoughts in our hearts are the brocade. We appear and go back into the brocade. The mountain flowers, the valley streams run deepest indigo. And in this moment … everything is here. The peace and the vastness and the light. Here in this moment, light! [bell]
Feeling the mountain flowers and the valley streams. And feeling the peace of being here with all the turmoil going on in the world. And feeling empathy and love for people in Atlanta and people in Oakland, and people right here, right now. Mountain flowers bloom like brocade. The valley stream runs deepest indigo.Ā
Hereās Du Fu againāheās the one who wrote the letter remembering his friend, and he saw his friend in a dream and thought perhaps he was a spirit now, which I think might have been true. Li Baiāsomehow Li Bai came back and the emperor had changed and he came back into favor. And the emperor sent out a note asking for him to come and bring his brilliance back to the court but nobody knew where he was. And hereās Du Fu, himself faraway and somewhat in exile. [reads]
River blue, the birds seem whiter, mountains green,
flowers about to flame.
Spring, I see, has passed again.
What year will it be when I go home?
Ā And hereās Li Bai saying farewell again to a friend. Li Bai sort of loved so strongly and part of it was always having to say goodbye to people. It seems to come with the deal of being human, being born. And loving. Having to set endless heartache to rest.
At Yellow Crane Tower Seeing Off Meng Haojan on His Way to Kuangling
[Kuangling is an old name for the city of Yanghzhou in ChinaāEd.]
My old friend bids farewell to me in the west at Yellow Crane Tower,
in Aprilās mist and flowers he goes down to Yangzhou.
The distant image of his lonely sail disappears in blue emptiness,
and all I see is the long river flowing to the edge of the sky.
So, it goes out into eternity, you know. Once again, to read Miloszās poem:
Love means learning to look at yourself the way one looks at distant things
for you are only one thing among many.
Whoever sees that way heals their heart,
knowing it from various ills.
A bird and a tree say to them āfriendā
and then such a person wants to use themselves and things
so that they stand in the glow of ripeness.
It doesnāt matter if they know what they serve.
Who serves best doesnāt always understand.
A couple of people have written to me recently about their animals dying. A friend, her cat died. And someone elseās beloved dog. The cat I know, actually. And how that kind of love, the love of an animal is love for the universe, really. Itās love for the particular buddha nature in all things, you know. I think, every night, a little fox, a little thin fox comes to the deck and we feed her. And thatās a tender thing somehow. We two, the fox and us, we two are in the same community. I was told one of the early Japanese zen teachers, Senzaki Nyogen, used to say āin the same nose-hole society.ā We too have nostrils. And the same buddha nature right there. Little grey fox is always worried that the hawks are going to get her young or that the dogs will get them and then the bobcat comes through and she spends the whole night up barking trying to keep it off. And, you knowāsheās just like us. I vow to wake the beings of the world. I vow to set endless heartache to rest.Ā
Amaryllis, and Ryan, we have a new āfour vows,ā right? You can both unmute yourselves. Iāll unmute you, Ryan. Very good, go for it. Do you want me to do the bells?Ā
Amaryllis: [sings] The Four Boundless Vows
Ryan: [plays guitar,sings] I vow to wake all the beings of the world…
John: Thank you, Ryan. So, every night weāre still holding zazen if thatās to your fancy. Come along to the temple, come along to pacificzen.org if youād like to support us, weāre for that. So send us money, send us anything. Send us messages, send us love, send love to the world. Thank you so much everyone for coming. We have a retreat coming up, too. If you look on pacificzen.org, weāre doing a kind of three-ring circus with a whole bunch of wonderful teachers and ones youāre familiar with. Weāll be doing private interviews and talks and sitting in zendos together and just going through all that passionate release out of delusion into the beauty of life that happens during sesshin. So, being held by, as we say, forces greater than ourselves.Ā
So come along and try it. Okay!Ā
āJohn Tarrant Roshi
The Everlasting Body Runs Deepest Indigo: Meditation for Troubled Times
The Green Glade of Meditation Sunday Meditation & Dharma Talk, June 14 2020