Good morning. Can you hear me in the back? Loud enough? Good. Well, when I was walking in with Kristi just now, I glanced over into the neighbor's yard. I don't know if any of you have peeked over the fence. It's pretty wild in there. And I just said, well that's, that's like my life. It's, and like I hope a lot of ours, wild, fertile, full of blackberries and brambles and uh you know you sort of wish he would straighten it up because it's a little dangerous perhaps if you got in there you'd get lost but this is this is what we this is the way we live today we're having a uh one day sitting and so a number of people here are sitting and uh encountering

[01:19]

ourselves as we sit with all that we are. There's a quotation, I'll read you, something that Katagiri Roshi wrote, and it's in this book by Darlene Cohen. who passed away just this week. And I will talk about her teaching because I think her teaching is certainly something that I value and that a number of people here who knew her value, but it's something that's precious for all of us. So in this book of hers, which is called, well actually it was called Finding a Joyful Life in the Heart of Pain and fortunately they actually retitled it kind of a generic title but they retitled it Turning Suffering Inside Out which is a better title I think I'm going to just start with two things from this book

[02:42]

First, from Kategiri Roshi, As long as you are a human being, you are right in the middle of the situation of not understanding anything because life is vast, because it is the truth. Truth or vastness or emptiness is very rich, but you cannot name it. All you can do is to practice, receive and accept that full richness. There's no way to know this, but you are already there. So first accept this fact. The point you have to know is that you are right in the situation of not understanding anything. You're right in the middle of the situation, as long as you're a human being, you're right in the middle of the situation of not understanding anything.

[03:49]

So where is it that we stand up? The epigraph for this book is a poem by Ikkyu, who was himself a wild Zen type, who was given to poetry and drink and hanging out in brothels. And he writes, pain and bliss, love and hate are like a body and its shadow. Cold and warm, joy and anger, and your condition. Verse like that yard. There's plenty. It's like a big playground for them and a supermarket.

[04:54]

Delight in singing verse is a road to hell. But at hell's gate, peach blossoms, plum blossoms. You read that again. Pain and bliss, love and hate are like a body and its shadow. Cold and warm, joy and anger, you and your condition. Delight in singing verse is a road to hell, but at hell's gate, peach blossoms, plum blossoms. So if I'm remembering correctly, Last week we had a lecture by Dengkei, Raoul Monk Kyle, and I believe it was in the lecture he talked about going beyond. Is that correct? So going beyond is, I think it's at the heart of this, what I want to talk about today.

[06:06]

What does that mean? In the first place, there are all of these teachers and friends who have gone beyond recently. Gone beyond in the sense that we say they're beyond this life that we can call them up on the telephone. I'm not going to sing today, fortunately for you. But there's a song that I've been thinking about the last two days from Bernice Reagan, who was the founder of Sweet Honey and the Rock. It's an early song of hers called They Are Falling All Around Me. And the lyric, some lyrics are, they are falling all around me,

[07:08]

the strongest leaves on my tree. Every paper brings the news that the teachers of my life are moving on. But I'm not really going to leave you. I'm not really going to leave you. You're not really going to leave me. And then the final verse is, I've tried to sing my song right. Be sure to let me hear from you. So, gone beyond, during Rohatsu session, we talked about the passing of our Dharma sister, Rebecca Mayeno. A little bit after that, One of the long, very long time Zen practitioners who began practicing with Suzuki Roshi in 1962, Jerome Peterson, passed away.

[08:21]

He had been living at City Center. You could see him shambling about for years. Sometimes, somewhat, he was a very quirky guy, but brilliant. And if you could get through the gruffness with just this great warm heart and excitement, still excitement about practice, about books, about ideas. I remember I practiced with him at Tassajara and he was like, at meals, you know, you have these big sleeves. He would, if we had nuts, He would, you know, he would surreptitiously take the nuts and, like, dump them in his sleeve and take seconds. He also, he also, I like to joke, he was given to a very close, close inspection of texts during study, study period.

[09:29]

You'd be all studying the texts and he would be... body-to-body contact with the texts. And then, a week ago, Darlene Cohen passed away, and I'll come back to that. And then, two days ago, yesterday, I think it was the 20th, anyway. Doesn't matter, really. But Lou Hartman passed away. Lou was also a very long time practitioner. He was a priest. He and his wife Blanche were ordained in 1977. And he led a very diverse life as a as a poet, a radio commentator, a communist, a sailor, a father, and for a long time, for the last number of years, you just always find him washing the dishes in the kitchen, or sitting out at city center greeting people.

[10:55]

He never failed to say hello, There's much more one can say about him, but I thought I'd just read you one poem by Lou. By the way, he began, he and Blanche began sitting at Berkeley Zen Center in 1969. That was there. And I remember, I was trying to figure it out, Ross, I think it was It was sometime in like the fall of... spring or fall of 1988 when they lived here. Yeah, around that. Yeah. They... I think one time it's Sojin. Sojin was leading the practice period at Tassajara. And they, Blanche and Lou, came and lived in the apartment. downstairs where Alexander lives now for a number of months and it was, you'd see them at the Berkeley Bowl sort of chattering excitedly because it had been many years since they were responsible for providing and cooking their own food.

[12:11]

It was wonderful to live here with them, really wonderful. So here's a poem by Lou. It's called thoughts while putting on my robe in stone two at Tassajara. Stone two is a cabin. How smoothly, stone two is a cabin and the creek runs just behind it. How smoothly the creek's okesa folds across the shoulders of the rocks. how smoothly the creek's okesa falls across the shoulders of the rocks. So these are beings who, in conventional terms, are now gone beyond. I think in Zen terms, you could say they had gone beyond long ago.

[13:15]

And they are They were teachers for me, teachers for a number of us, and as the words in Muni Sri Rinpoche's song, they're never going to leave me, and actually the imprint of their practice is on all of us, whether we know this or not. I'll just read you briefly something that I wrote about Darlene. Then I'll talk about her and her practice, which is really so valuable to me. Good friend, teacher, dharma sister, Darlene Cohn, Shirei Kenpo, great spirit manifesting dharma, died at home at Guerneville at 115 on the 12th of January.

[14:23]

Her passing was graceful, surrounded by family and those who love her. Tony's husband, Tony Hatchell, says, one moment she was breathing and the next moment she wasn't. The family and sangha washed her body dressed in priest robes and raksu, and set the body on a red cloth on a bed at Russian River Zendo. Some of us went and sat with the body there. Although Darlene had been declining for weeks, she had cancer, there would clearly be no turning back. And there would clearly be no turning back. She was alive until the end, teaching. sometimes silently, sometimes with a smile, or with a bright word from day to day. Her dying unfolded as she lived and as she taught, body to body, with great joy even as things were falling away.

[15:30]

This is still fresh for me, and my thoughts are not fully formed, but I am very grateful to have had Darlene as a friend, have her as a friend. someone in my life. Her being, her way of being fully alive changes me in ways that I hope to understand in time, and I miss her. Darlene was, Darlene was really fun to be with. With her, even frivolity was a serious matter, though. It was the Dharma itself. So this is what she learned, and this is what she taught. Darlene came to Tencent in about 1970, and the story I remember, somebody who, Peter might have been there, I don't know, but she showed up with Tony, they had come

[16:38]

They've driven across the country because they wanted to find out about Zen. I think it was Tony's idea. And Darlene was along for the ride. And I think Red met them. Red Anderson met them at the door and said, oh, we're starting 16, 17, 16 tomorrow. You should come. And they said, oh, that sounds great. Let's do that. Be really fun. So. Sashin begins, you know, it's very somber down in the... Let's see, in 1970, was it Page Street? Yeah, basement of Page Street. Basement of Page Street. Sit one period, very painful. And they get up and walk in, and ah... And then the bell rings and... Wait, they're going to do this again? You know, her body is in some revolt. And she gets to the other period, next period, and then there's service, and then there's breakfast.

[17:44]

I said, oh, breakfast, good. And then everybody sits down, cross-legged again for breakfast. And it was like, what have I gotten into? and yet somehow getting through that whole Seshim. We generally don't... Nowadays we'd like people to sit at one day's Seshim before we cast them to seven, but actually, you may as well just dive in. This is actually... that's going beyond, you know, and not having an idea of kind of, oh, enter the waters, gradually, you know, just kind of, you know, but just literally plunge right in. That's a good way to do things. It's okay how we do it. It's fine. And it's helpful to a lot of people. But you can, if you, you can just dive in.

[18:46]

So, they practiced there together and Darlene practiced there for for a number of years. And then after about seven or eight years, she developed rheumatoid arthritis, which is, it was just incredibly painful. So I'll read you what she, what she wrote about this. I'll read you two things. One, seven years I'd sat on a black cushion pursuing enlightenment. Seven years, thousands of hours in zazen, as many as 30 sessions, long sitting periods over several days, all to no apparent avail. When I became crippled by rheumatoid arthritis, I'd become completely overcome by unremitting pain, terror, and despair.

[19:54]

Unable to walk or too weak to lift the phone, I would think back bitterly on all the time I wasted in Zazen pursuing everlasting peace of mind on occasions such as these. But I was wrong about the failure of practice. Within a couple of months, I knew that. Again, some of the impact of this illness to her Imagine the terror of losing it all, and not solely over time, like we all do as we age, but swiftly, mercilessly watching ability after ability fall away like so many loose hairs. It took four months for me to lose everything that meant anything to me. My strong, energetic body, my ability to achieve whatever I focused on and win the admiration of others for it, my pleasure in being a sexually attractive woman. my joy in bestowing the sweet attentions that mark a nurturing mother, my ability to do the required Zen training practices, which were the purpose of living in the community at Green Gulch, and perhaps most tellingly, my body-as-slave mentality, my assumption that my body was ready and able to perform whatever function I imposed upon it without resistance.

[21:17]

Furthermore, I was isolated by the pain that overwhelmed every moment. And the consuming effort I had to make to do any little task, like get up from a chair or pick up a cup of tea, even a breeze became a formidable antagonist. So this is really hard. Some of you have experienced these kinds of difficulties in your life with illness or with the mental conditions of our lives. And first, there is just nothing to do. As Katagiri Roshi said, you're right in the middle of not knowing anything. I remember experiencing this in the late 80s when I started having heart trouble.

[22:19]

and I had been practicing and I believed in practice but I also found that practice was not making my pain go away and practice was not making my fear go away and yet it was nothing to do but practice the alternatives to let that take over completely didn't make any sense but nor did resistance and I think this is part of Darlene's teaching and she's she was so brilliant at this and she could really communicate this like the essence of her practice was body to body which means first of all your body to your body How do you meet the condition of your body?

[23:22]

You do this by... Zazen is not... In a formal way, she wasn't saying Zazen is the answer. But the mind of Zazen is the answer. The mind that is willing to rest in not knowing. That's willing to actually see, even in the darkest places, one has some agency, one is able to turn the wheel, rather than to be turned on it. This is a constant metaphor, image, archetype in Buddhism, the wheel. that all things turn. But the challenge, and this is the challenge that Darlene faced and taught was, can I turn the wheel?

[24:31]

Or will I just allow myself to feel victimized by my own condition? By the condition of my body, the condition of my mind, by the condition of my circumstances in life. As we're sitting here today, everyone will have moments, probably, where we'll think, get me out of here. Or, what am I doing here? Especially, one day sasheen is really hard. One day sitting is really hard. For me, it's like I just, I really get to the point of resistance, but if it's a longer sitting, then you kind of, you move through it. But, that is actually what changes with practice.

[25:39]

when I was ill that first time in the late 80s and then again when I had an infection and was very ill and things were pretty iffy in 2001 there was nothing to do but practice and recognize that the circumstances of my life were going to change. Whatever moment I felt I was in, at that moment, I knew there was reality beyond that moment, and that inevitably it would come. This is what, once again, that Kharaguru Rsi says here. All you can do is practice, receive, and accept that full richness, there is no way to know this, but you were already there.

[26:54]

Now, often, I mean in the first stages of her illness, Darlene did not want to be there wherever it was. We don't You know, we're ready to turn the page without doing the work, but you don't get to do that. I don't know what the work is. But what Darlene talks about is turning towards your suffering. And this is actually practiced because you can't get your mind around it. She says, how do you learn to acknowledge your suffering? How do you turn towards your suffering? I think it lies in practicing respect for all your feelings.

[28:02]

You must treat your anxiety, pain, or hatred gently, respectfully, not resisting it, but living with it. You must develop your capacity to appreciate each thing as it is now, while inundated with suffering. These are harder things to do than to write about. She does give a practice here, which is interesting. It's not formal zazen, but it's actually paying attention to the full reality of each moment. She says, what I mean is that if at any given moment you are aware of ten different elements, for instance, the sound of my voice, this is for a moment when you're actually in pain.

[29:08]

And you actually, you can do this. If you are aware of ten different elements, for instance, the sound of my voice, your bottom on the chair, the sound of cars passing outside, the thought of the laundry you have to do, the hum of the air conditioner, the sliding of your glasses down your nose, an unpleasant stab of sharp back pain, cool air going into your nostrils, warm air going out, that's too much pain. One out of ten. So in those ten elements, you know, one of those elements is the pain. That's unbearable pain that will dominate your life. But if at this moment you are aware of a hundred elements, not only the ten things you noticed before, but more subtle things, like the animal presence of other people sitting quietly in the room, the shadow of the lamp against the wall, the brush of your hair against your ear, the pull of your clothes against your skin, for instance, and you have pain along with all those things you are noticing, then your pain is one of a hundred elements of your consciousness at that moment.

[30:17]

And that is pain you can live with. It is merely one out of the multitude of sensations in your life. So the pain is part of it. But I think, as in the EQ poem, at Hell's Gate, peach blossoms, plum blossoms. The thing that made me want to kind of hang out with Darlene was not the great wisdom she had encountered from working with her pain, from helping others work with pain, but actually just her joy. You know, when I first met her quite a number of years ago, I felt just immediately welcomed and like her attitude was, oh, you're going to be my friend.

[31:25]

And I sort of stepped back and I said, me? You don't know me. You don't know what awful things are going on in here. But this was her attitude and it was both personal and practice. I saw her do this again and again with people because she just had this fundamental joy that arose. And I think what I recognized in her is, and I got this more and more because we were teaching together at this priest training program spa for three years. And we shared a flat in the guest house at Grace Gerson's place. And so we would see each other a lot and talk a lot. She was a trickster. which is perhaps something I aspire to be.

[32:31]

It's part of my way of meeting life. But she was so much in her body. I had so much and have so much to learn from that. My tricks tend to be more in my mind. But it was all in her body. And that's what she taught us. and that's what she taught just by singing out with her and she had that joy when you when you meet there are certain people that you meet that just communicate that joy and of course you want to be with them you want to be around them it's a wonderful and not not rare Not rare, but not common human quality. But you have to notice it. Hoitsu Suzuki is like that.

[33:33]

And it's very interesting to see Sojin Roshi around Hoitsu. It's like all of a sudden, who's that guy? You know, it's like he's childlike in the presence of Hoitsu. And we don't actually get to see him so childlike too much. It's there, you can see the child. And Darlene brought out that quality in people. And you know, you see certain holy people who are like that. You see, I think the Tibetans really cultivate this very effectively. The Zen types, I know what we do. And this is why Darlene's practice was not archetypal Zen. She didn't. When she decided to ordain in Shintoni, it was because they were going to go out in the world and they were going to practice Wild West Zen, not monastic Zen.

[34:41]

They sat, they were well trained, they did all the kinds of practices that we know about. But she really felt that the truth of waking up is in encountering your actual life. Your life moment by moment. The notion of going beyond is not going to be encapsulated or crystallized by hours spent staring at the wall. Sooner or later, sooner usually, you have to get up. And you have to go out in your life. And this is why I was explaining this to someone, the practice that I love here. Most Zindos, most Zen practices, when you leave, you turn towards the altar and bow to the altar and

[35:45]

go through the door, it's like, oh, I'm leaving. Here, we don't do that. We actually, at the door, we give a very small bow at the threshold. The threshold is not such an important place. We're just stepping from one part of our world into another part of our world and acknowledging that there is some step taken, but It's not a different reality. It's not like I'm leaving the holy shit in here and going out to the mundane. It's like it's all holy. It's all precious. It's all beyond. The beyond is right here within each moment. And that is something really to celebrate. When you understand that, when you can feel it, joy can arise even in situations of suffering.

[36:52]

So, I think I'll stop there and just leave time for questions or reflections, memories, whatever. Peter, you knew Yeah. Darlene really well, right? When I first knew Darlene, I was baking in the kitchen in Tuscarora, and she was a guest cook. And there was a significant lack of harmony in the kitchen. And she used to take crates of fruits and vegetables and hide them in her cabin so that she would have them available for the kind of cooking she wanted. But the story about Darlene that I really treasure, which I don't, I'm not even sure if this is a part of it, but I really treasure this story. And it's about when she was ill, first ill, and she was alone in an apartment. She was not with her husband and their child in the neighborhood at Zen Center.

[37:55]

And she was prostrate in that space where she couldn't get out. to go to the bathroom. It was a very difficult period. And someone else I knew at the time wanted to go see her. I went to see her. And this particular person, she wanted to go and help, but it was the kind of person that I often felt when I was around her that it was a little bit crazy-making. And so I can't imagine what... And a little bit hard to say, no, I don't want your help. But this person went to see, Jeannie went to see Darlene. And Darlene found herself at her wit's end. And out of being unable to move, leaping from her bed, grabbing a pair of scissors, and chasing the person

[38:58]

makes me something I treasure just because it tells me something about the possibility of something completely other than what we think we're trapped in. Right. That's an interesting kind of transcendence. It's really important. I mean, as you were talking, I realized I you can get the idea I'm talking about Saint Darlene you know but exactly what I really loved about her was that she was like that yard next door completely wild she you know she liked being on the edge she was not afraid of her emotions and was not afraid of anybody else's emotions either you know wherever you went she was willing to engage you there.

[40:09]

And if you were a pain in the ass, she was going to be a pain in the ass back. This is actually, this is not the way we usually think about Avalokiteśvara who appears to each being in the very form in which they're manifesting so that they can be an identity. But like, that's a very interesting twist on sameness, right? Anyway. Yeah. And remember, really... Well, I think that it's important I see that in two ways at least by observing myself that there's some things that don't upset me that used to upset me and that I have also I think what we learn is how do I deal with myself when I am upset?

[42:04]

It's not like that monk I wouldn't say necessarily because I don't know the person that you know if nothing upsets a person, I would worry about that. You know, I mean, it's like, what realm are you inhabiting? But, if you know how... I mean, this is, I think, what Darlene was talking about. If you know how to relate to what's coming up in your body, and not let it take over, but to treat it with respect, then you don't have to dump it on somebody else. So we're working with those as manifestations, I would say. Sometimes we go beyond in the sense that, no, I'm not having an emotional reaction to this. But I think it's really important. We're also cultivating the tools for knowing what to do when reactivity arises.

[43:10]

We cultivate that in Zazen, we cultivate that in Seshin. Oh, my knees really hurt. What do I do? Oh, I stay here. And recognize that there's always a way to find yourself right in the middle of the reality that you're in. Yeah. Thanks for your talk. The example of Darlene's meditation instruction regarding noticing not 10 but 100 elements in your environment. How is that not Zazen, which as I understand is being open to your entire environment? I wouldn't say it's not Zazen. I think it is Zazen. It's just her own particular instruction. I mean, it's mindfulness, really. But it's like... So the first... step on the Eightfold Path is Right View, which means, it could mean looking into the nature of enlightenment or having a way-seeking mind, but it also means seeing what's right in front of you.

[44:24]

What she's talking about is a practice that opens up, that widens your view, so that what's right in front of you is a lot wider than You know, usually what happens with pain, and all of us know this, is like, your view gets, you get real tunnel vision. So it's like, expand it out, and see that as one element. Now, this is just, what I noticed in looking through her work is like, that practice, she brings this up a lot, so I think this is really a central practice for her. And, I think I have to try it. But you can try it. Tell me what you think. Yeah. I actually, the reason I'm here is because of Darlene. Oh. And I visited her up in the Russian Representative for a few times over the last year because of a friend of mine. Uh-huh. Being an ordained and then also getting married just recently.

[45:27]

Great. And I just really appreciate this and Darlene is like it. Well, thank you. I'm wondering in my practice when pain comes up or when I'm suffering or irritation with somebody or something like this, I turn to it completely and just really look at it. Sometimes that's very painful, but other times actually it helps a lot. there's the expansion practice, and then there's the really kind of like razor vision, not tunnel vision, but razor vision. Yeah. There's no, right, that's the thing, there's no instruction book, as I've given to Satan more and more. That is something it's important to do, to really look at it, and to look at it, I think what Darlene would say, and also, I'm learning this from May Lee Scott, is look at the physical manifestation

[46:34]

First, I look at the physical manifestation. I don't try to figure out what that pain is. I try to look at the physical manifestation of that pain. Like, where is it in my body? What texture does it have? What's it feeling? For me, also, mainly because I'm probably more a mind type than a body type, I also tell myself, okay, this feels really bad right now, how is it going to feel in an hour? I know it's going to feel different. How is it going to feel in the morning? And to look at then, to try to watch that process of transformation, of just natural transformation, but rather than being victim of it, to actually engage with it. So, one more. I was thinking about Darlene's quality of being incredibly authentic and completely who she was, which allowed her to accept other people completely for who they were without fear.

[47:44]

And I was thinking not only of having to come to terms with a body that had completely off-tracked her ideas of what her life was and who she was and really she had no choice but to meet that completely or give up in despair. And I was also thinking about two of the bodies of Zen teaching that she used a lot and how useful they were to that. One was the Xin Xin Ming, which is a poem that starts out with the way is not difficult for those who have no preferences. So she really had to learn how to have no preference. And in having no preference there's complete freedom to accept whatever is happening. And the other is that she was a great student of the Paramitas. The Paramitas being the six qualities that help us live our lives in an enlightened way. The perfections of the way Bodhisattva manifests.

[48:48]

And the two I think she particularly was drawn to was that of generosity, giving, and that of, it's sometimes translated as patience, but what it really, another translation is inclusiveness. So Darlene was completely inclusive and she was always giving herself completely away to whatever was needed. She made a point of saying that. I'm like a pig being suckled on. I'll give anything that's needed away to people. So it was that spirit of generosity and authenticness and she had great faith that she wasn't losing anything by doing that. She got absolutely everything she needed. She's really a great teacher, a great teacher. Yeah, she didn't see existence as a zero-sum game. And I will say, just my last thing to say, just when I went up there, I guess it was the afternoon after she had died, to sit with her body up in the zendo.

[49:57]

We had moved to the zendo. It was the most interesting half-smile on her face. It was very peaceful. He just expected her to wink her eye. Anyway, thank you very much and we'll continue our practice for today.

[50:27]

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