Full Transcript

So good morning dear Sangha. And welcome back to being together. It feels like a long time. I've been traveling again to Boston and then the Midwest for family and friends, and it was wonderful to see life unfolding. I saw my first fireflies. Everybody in the Midwest went, "What? You've never seen a firefly?" I said, "I'm from California." So it was really kind of spectacular in some ways. And a fun fact, fireflies only live two months.

Birth and death have been on my mind a lot, as is our practice. On the drive here today on Foothill Boulevard - I live up in Los Olivos - all of the jacarandas are in bloom. And it's spectacular. I had this incredible impulse to pull over, get out of my car and just lie underneath them and let the petals take me, like just be buried in them. But it's not my time to be buried by petals. And someday it will be. So remember that. I really like jacaranda petals.

I'm going to start with an old Zen story because I just love these stories. I don't know if anybody has heard this one before because it comes from a collection, not the Shobogenzo, but a different collection attributed to Dogen of 300 Koans. I'll tell you about that in a minute.

So a long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, this koan was collected by Dogen Zenji, the 13th century founder of Soto Zen. And this koan is number seven from the Shinji or sometimes called the Shinji Shobogenzo, but it's not the Shobogenzo to which most people refer when they speak of Dogen. And here is the story. It's a short one.

Master Beiko of Keicho City told a monk, a student, to go to Master Kyozan Ijaku and ask this question. So one teacher telling his student to go to another teacher, ask this question: "Does a man, woman, who lives in the moment of this present, does a man who lives in the moment of this present need enlightenment or not?" So the student goes to Master Kyozan. Master Kyozan answers, "It's not true if I say there's no enlightenment, but I cannot avoid falling into a dual consciousness." So the monk returns to the first teacher and tells him what the second teacher said and Master Beiko, the first teacher, strongly affirms Master Kyozan's words. So we'll come back to this.

Thank you, Nioshi-san, for playing Temuke-gyo for my Dharma brother and my friend, Taisan Gendo, Mark Adams, whose life ended with medically assisted death just a little bit over a week ago. Taisan was a friend to Santa Barbara Zen Center. He gave a talk here during the early months of the pandemic when we were just figuring out how to operate Zoom. And I was part of his teaching on Go in advance of his Shuso, also online. So he was a Dharma brother to me and a great friend, and he loved the shakuhachi. He took a video, he snuck a video of me at Jikoji one time playing at Kobun's memorial site and he put it on his website because someone told me, "forest monk playing shakuhachi." It's very sweet.

It was only two days before, three days before his life was going to end that I heard that he was ill. He had been diagnosed one year before and I had spoken to him 14 months before. It was the last time we had spoken. A friend told me that Taisan was going to give his last Dharma talk online and would I be there? Of course. And it was profound to be there, actually. He looked really well. And to be present with saying goodbye, to be present with his receipt of the sangha's love and appreciation was a great gift in kind of all directions.

Taisan faced goodbye the same way he faced life, with this kind of gentle humor and a gentle touch. He was not afraid to look at life and death in the eye. One of my memories of Taisan that I mentioned actually at both in front of him and also at his memorial a few days later was that he would always begin guided meditations with this piece of wisdom from Thich Nhat Hanh. He would say, "For those of you who are advanced meditators, please put a smile on your face to welcome everything that comes during meditation." I just found this hilarious. The idea of being an advanced meditator just I thought was hilarious. And whenever he said this, I would automatically put a smile on my face, even though it wasn't maybe what he had in mind. So he faced everything that way, with a smile on his face, even the hard stuff, like the end of his life.

Like many of you, I've come to this threshold of life where I'm saying, waving goodbye to friends and to family and to my loved ones. I personally have now more than a decade of experience with ambiguous loss, a kind of grief process that occurs when there is no imminent likelihood of closure around a death because it's going on and on. In my case, my father had Alzheimer's and now my husband has had Alzheimer's. So more than a decade of this long goodbye.

So for the last 10 years, as long as I've known most of you, not quite, I think I've been learning to say goodbye and what it means to say goodbye. Not only goodbyes to our loved ones, but also to this one, a part of whom leaves with each loss and what remains after goodbye. I've been learning about what remains after goodbye. It's also a part of my experience and I find it's kind of a hello, what remains.

So in our tradition, we hear a lot about hello and goodbye in the contemplation of birth and death. On the Han, at many monasteries, not on our monastery, although maybe we should get someone to put the calligraphy on there. On the Han, which is this big thing that Bil-San is hitting in the morning to call us to temple, in most monasteries, it says this. I'm going to give you three versions because they're alarming each one.

Great is the matter of birth and death. All is impermanent, quickly passing, be awake each moment. Don't waste this life.

Or sometimes it's written like this, a little bit more alarming:

Birth and death are the great matter. Impermanence is swift. Time doesn't wait for anyone. Do not ignore this chance.

And perhaps even more stunning:

Great is the matter of birth and death. Life is fleeting, gone, gone. Awake, awake each one. Do not waste this life.

And also the last line of the Metta Sutta, which is chanted every day in monasteries all over the world says, "Not holding to fixed views, endowed with insight, freed from sense appetites, one who achieves the way will be freed from the duality of birth and death."

And I don't know if you know this, but the Buddha specifically instructed his followers to contemplate death every single day. This is a practice called Mara Nassati, mindfulness of death. And it's considered a primary practice for mindfulness and awakening, to be awake. The Buddha is said to have declared, "Of all the footprints in the jungle, that of the elephant is the greatest, it's supreme. And of all the mindfulness practices, mindfulness of death is supreme."

Thich Nhat Hanh's approach to teaching us how to contemplate death, I think we've talked about this before, is through the five remembrances. The five remembrances are:

1. I am of the nature to grow old, I cannot escape old age.

2. I am of the nature to grow ill, I cannot escape sickness.

3. I am of the nature to die, I cannot escape death.

4. I cannot accept death. Don't go there. I cannot escape death.

5. I will be separated from everything and everyone I hold dear.

My only possession is my action.

So that's how Thich Nhat Hanh teaches it. The Buddha wants us to think about death every day, but I assure you not in a morbid way, although there are a lot of meditations over corpses. But that's not the goal. The goal is not to be morbid. It's quite the opposite. Contemplating this great matter of birth and death is a way to remember we're alive. We're alive right now. It's an amazing thing. Sitting there with your breath this morning, every breath, you're alive.

This is the message on the Han. The great matter, the connection between birth and death teaches us that the whole Dharma is here right now, expressing itself in the mystery of our aliveness, our aliveness, the aliveness who is saying these words right now to you and the aliveness who is hearing these words, all of you. That aliveness is made sacred by the fact that our lives will end. In this form, they will end. Our lives are precious because we die. So as the Han admonishes us, let's not waste our lives.

Following in the Buddhist step, Dogen Zenji said, "The most important issue for all Buddhists is the thorough clarification of the meaning of birth and death." And then in various fascicles of the Shobogenzo, Dogen teaches us that this life, its causes, its effects, its time, are not objective structures of reality. Instead, he teaches us that our experience of life and death is movement, a form without any inherent fixed status like us.

In Shoji, which is one of his fascicles, Shoji means birth and death, he writes this: "Just understand that birth and death is itself nirvana. There is nothing such as birth and death to be avoided. There is nothing such as nirvana to be sought. Only when you realize this are you free from birth and death." So he's saying now, this here is nirvana.

And another fascicle, Dogen famously uses this simile of firewood becomes ash and does not become firewood again. Yet do not suppose that the ash is after and the firewood before. Understand that firewood abides in its condition as firewood, which fully includes before and after, while it is independent of before and after. Ash abides in its condition as ash, which fully includes before and after. Just as firewood does not become firewood again after it is ash, you do not return to birth after death.

Dogen is telling us that our conventional way of looking at everything is not the whole picture. This is firewood, this is ash, together. He shows us that at the level of emptiness, which is the deepest reality because it recognizes interconnection of seed and tree and firewood and ash and us and all of our cycles, there is no before and after. There is no birth and death except in the conditioned way that we look at life and we experience life regularly. The deepest reality of firewood is beyond birth and death. The deepest reality of Taisan is beyond birth and death.

Dogen says life is a stage of time and death is a stage of time like winter and spring. We tend to experience the seasons as inevitable and ordinary, right? Even though the fireflies were new to me. They're ordinary to everybody over in the Midwest. All of these things are just inevitable. We know they're coming. When I was on the East Coast, I was in the middle of the East Coast, and I was in the Midwest, people knew that I was from California. Of course they asked about fires and earthquakes because that's all they think about. We're falling into the sea and the earth is rupturing and there's a fire every 20 minutes and now floods. So being a native Californian, I consider all that ordinary. It's nothing interesting even really except for the catastrophes. It's inevitable. The way the people in the Midwest and the East consider flooding is inevitable. It's normal. And they are much less impressed by fireflies than I was.

So Dogen's point is that death is inevitable and it's ordinary. And if we follow the Buddha's advice, we recognize this truth in our daily contemplation of death slash life. We return to the truth at this stage of time ever moving is where the truth of our lives is and it's not just the truth of the world. Ever moving is where the truth of our lives lives. This constant flow of birth, birthing, deathing. I don't even want to say birth and death. Birthing, deathing is life. And this is where we can be fully awake. In this birthing, deathing, birthing, deathing, birthing, deathing. This is just all beyond time.

As in the koan, we can live in this moment of the present. And the way that Taisan lived his life was an example of fully embracing the season that was where he was. Like me coming over Foothill Boulevard and wanting to lie underneath the jacaranda and say, take me. Well, the pointer on the wheel of life is not pointing there yet for me.

The Buddha and Dogen want us to remember that life is in this present. In this moment. And we get to show up for each birth, death. Like that. Inseparable. Because they are. When we show up for what's here, what's really in your lap, there is heartbreak, there is joy. And everything in between and well beyond that, nothing is missing. It's all here. Like Taisan, like Firewood, like Ash, we live each moment in birth and death. And then we continue in other forms. There's nowhere to go to another form.

So this invitation to see beyond birth and death is kind of the miracle of meditation practice, in my view. Through sitting and allowing what is here when we sit, just what arrives moment to moment to moment with our breath, with our steps, we can see beyond birth and death. We see beyond them as separate events. We can experience this deeply. And we can be liberated from a fear of things ending.

Beyond birth and death is an embodied experience of what we're taught of as the three marks of existence. Impermanence, dukkha, which is suffering or I don't like to think the term suffering so much, but dissatisfaction. So impermanence is the three marks of existence. When we continue to practice meditation, the practice works on us. Over time we see beyond the fence of ourselves. Maybe you experienced that today. You become aware of your breath and then you become aware of your seat and then you become aware of your body. And then you become aware of your mind. And where is your body? And then your body feels like it's not just right here. It's aware of the people around you. It's aware of the walls. It's aware of the breeze. Today I experienced hot cold at the same moment. I've got a lot more layers on than you do. Hot. I was hot. This is a lot. And I was cold too.

So we experience impermanence. We acknowledge our dissatisfaction with the way things are and that it is not ours alone. And we stand in the realm of our deep and endless interconnection with everything. And when we experience this in meditation, the Sanskrit term for this by the way is nirvikalpa jnana. The vikalpa means discrimination. So when we experience non-discriminative awareness, it's nirvikalpa jnana. The vikalpa means discrimination. Nirvikalpa means non-discrimination. And jnana means wisdom. So the embodied experience of being awake in this moment, changing as it is, is the wisdom of non-discrimination. And that practice, that experience is innate in you. You don't have to go anywhere. We're not doing anything here, remind you. We're just sitting down. You can't go and get it. But it's here. Wherever you want to be in practice. It is you.

When we practice, we are moved by this non-discriminative awareness. And if we cultivate it, it will light us up like a firefly. In our Koan of the Day, Master Kyozan said, "It's not true if I say there is no enlightenment. But I cannot avoid falling into a dual consciousness." According to Gudo Nishijima, falling into a dual consciousness means to enter the state where our consciousness is divided. In my view, this is where we spend a lot of time. Where our consciousness is divided. Where I'm the subject, you're the object. Or I'm the subject and the world is the object. And almost as if we think there's an "I" who is watching life. This is the subject-object mode of our being. And of course, it's limited because it's looking through our eyes. We're only seeing through these eyes.

And remember that Master Kyozan could not do that. He honestly acknowledged that he can't stay there. He can't stay there. He cannot stay in an undivided state. He falls into, like we fall into, a divided state of consciousness. Just as we have a moment of enlightenment, we will sometimes experience our consciousness as divided.

So, right after Taizan's life was over, this version of it, I don't know where this came from. Sometimes I think God has an incredible sense of humor. God, whatever you want to call God as. But I started hearing an old Beatles song in my head. This is a song I didn't even like when I was a kid. I thought it was commercial fodder. And I think it was Taizan. I know it's magical thinking, but I think it was Taizan still teaching me to put a smile on, to welcome whatever arrives, even this worm in my ear.

So, I've been gently tormented by this song for a week and a half. And the song is called, Hello Goodbye. And I brought it for you because I want you to sing it with me. As soon as you started, I thought of that song. Are you serious? I'm serious. Well, I was thinking of Obelight Dior. So, I don't know, Michelle and John, if you know this song. I hope so. We're only going to do a couple of verses. And we're not going to do the screaming, yelling part in the middle. So, please sing along.

Ready? You say yes. I say no. You say stop. I say go, go, go. Oh no. You say goodbye. And I say hello. Hello, hello. I don't know why you say goodbye. I say hello. Hello, hello. I don't know why you say goodbye. I say hello. I say hi. You say hello. You say why. I say I don't know. Oh no. You say goodbye. And I say hello. Hello, hello. I don't know why you say goodbye. I say hello. Hello, hello. I don't know why you say goodbye. I say hello.

Thank you for singing along. You say who are you? And I say. I don't know. That was my favorite line. You say why. And I go, I don't know. If you have a high, there must be a low. If you have a yes, there must be a no. If you have black, there must be. If you have death, there must be. If you have compassion, you also have recognized suffering.

This song is a Dharma teaching. Even though I rejected it for 60-some years, none of these things can exist without the other. They're together. And therefore nothing exists separately. And that's us, too, by the way. So this is a song about Nirvikapalachanda, non-discriminating awareness. I'm not sure Paul McCartney knew this, but I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt.

When we experience this non-discriminating awareness, we are embodied by non-self. So we talk a lot about anatta, non-self. And I've been noticing lately that non-self is very accessible, not only on the seat, but in life, when you are not self-conscious. So think about that. When you have a moment of just being fully you, just completely you, and not self-conscious about it, okay with whoever you are in this moment, that's non-self. Not pushing yourself and impressing anybody or anything like that, just being naturally you. That's one way to look at it. And I think that's kind of a happy byproduct of our practice, that you can stop worrying about who you are and what other people think you are. It's moving anyway, so don't worry.

So when the Buddha advises us to contemplate death every day, we're given the opportunity to experience non-duality. That there is no white and black, there is no high and low, there is only birthing and depping together all the time. A continuum, a continuum of realities moving. And then we begin to experience our lives, no longer as this line with the beginning and an end and then you're gone, but kind of as a wheel, a turning wheel.

Now the pointer on the wheel is pointing at firewood, now the pointer is pointing at ash, now the pointer is pointing to birth and then it's pointing to death. And it's the complete picture, the whole wheel. And everything is like that in its own instance, instance of time. So when the pointer turns to joy, you can fully surrender to joy. When it turns to sadness and loss, grief, you can fully surrender to that. Everything is temporary anyway, no one gets out alive. So just go with it while it's arriving.

When the pointer says it's time to say goodbye to our friends, to our loved ones, to the people who we were with them, we find they can't go anywhere because they're in us. They're in everything they ever touched. They literally still exist with us. You know that feeling where somebody comes to mind and you go, oh my gosh, hi. I thought I turned my phone on, sorry folks. So that's in that moment we're saying hello, aren't we? There's someone long gone, hello, there he is. And then the problem of life and death is no problem. Hello, hello. I don't know why you say goodbye. I say hello.

The awareness of no birth and no death is not something we can grab and grasp and keep, just like the teachers in that koan said, I fall into dual consciousness. The master of our koan knows this because this awareness is not something that a self, conscious of a self can do. A self cannot negate a self. One has to practice meditation. One has to experience, not think about it, experience, embody impermanence and interconnection and the letting go of our concepts of thinking and feeling and acting and reacting. And importantly, very importantly, for those of us who like to achieve things, letting go of the idea of gaining anything from this.

You have to let shikantaza, sitting, practice, do its thing to you. You're not going to get anything from it as long as you want something. When we let go of everything but this moment, we also let go of the self, the things that can be born and can die. So when the pointer points on the big wheel, it's time to die, we know that nothing dies. I mean, I'm not saying you're going to come back as firewood or like this, but where could you go? At that moment, I hope, like Taizen, we can remember to say hello, hello, while everyone about us is saying goodbye.

So I'm going to end today with a quotation of Kobun, Kobun Chino Otago Roshi, who is the founder of Phoenix Cloud, my lineage. He spoke these words at a memorial for Alan Watts, and I want to offer them to you and to Taizen wherever he is. With formless form you have come, with formless form you are going. This is how you are with us. We are with you, showing what is the nature of awakening. We are very grateful. Thank you for your attention.