So my name is Colleen Bush, and I'm talking to you today as the Shuso for our spring practice period, which means head student. I'm finding out what that means. And I want to thank Abbott Linda for that amazing invitation to step into this space. And I want to welcome everybody who may be here for the first time today. I do see a couple of faces. I don't I want to welcome you if you've been away and you've come back. And I want to welcome everybody on Zoom today. I'm going to jump right in with my koan that I've been given for this practice period and read it to you because that is my focus today. And it's from this collection of women's awakenings called The Hidden Lamp, which I'll say a bit more about. And this is called Chiyono's No Water, No Moon.

[01:05]

It dates from the 13th century in Japan. Chiyono was a servant in a Zen convent who wanted to practice Sazen. One day she approached an elderly nun and asked, I'm of humble birth, I can't read or write, and I must work all the time. Is there any possibility that I could attain the way of Buddha? even though I have no skills. The nun answered her, this is wonderful, my dear. In Buddhism, there are no distinctions between people. There is only this. Each person must hold fast to the desire to awaken and cultivate a heart of great compassion. People are complete as they are. If you don't fall into delusive thoughts, there is no Buddha, and no sentient being. There is only one complete nature. If you want to know your true nature, you need to turn toward the source of your delusive thoughts.

[02:11]

This is called zazen. Chiyono said, with happiness, with this practice as my companion, I have only to go about my daily life practicing day and night. After months of wholehearted practice, she went out on a full moon night to draw some water from the well. The bottom of her old bucket, held together by bamboo strips, suddenly gave away, and the reflection of the moon vanished with the water. When she saw this, she attained great realization. Her enlightenment poem was this. With this and that, I tried to keep the bucket together. and then the bottom fell out. Where water does not collect, the moon does not dwell. So this wonderful book is called The Hidden Lamp, and it is, as I mentioned, the subtitle is Stories from 25 Centuries of Awakened Women.

[03:17]

And it was compiled by our Dharma sister, Sue Moon, who I see back there, thank you, Sue, and Florence Kaplow. And the commentaries in it are by, there's a few women in this sangha, Karen Sundheim, Laurie Sanaki, Mary Mosin, those are the ones I'm remembering, and others that are sort of more, you know, more extended family. The classic koan collections that some of us have spent some time with, you know, the Book of Serenity, The Blue Cliff Record, The Gateless Barrier, they don't really feature a whole lot of women's stories or women in them. And this collection very explicitly seeks to remedy that. The foreword to the book was written by Norman Fisher, and I'm going to read you something that he says in that foreword. He says that the hidden lamp completes something that has been incomplete. in bringing forward the voices of women, the balance that Buddhism and all religion has always promised but so far not delivered is now possible.

[04:23]

So I want to say that both Norman and then the editors of this collection emphasize that while the stories feature women and are commented on by women, the hidden lamp is not just for women. It's deliberately diverse in the commentators what traditions they come from. And the editors write that the stories wake us up to the truth that we are all connected, all of us, across space and time. Interestingly, I looked up Chiono's name, and what I could find is that it actually means, one meaning is thousand generations, kind of signifying continuity across humankind and across time. As far as I know, this is the first time that Ashuso, has been given a koan from the hidden lamp. And Linda, I know, chose it in part because it comes from the same 13th century era in Japan when Dogen was living, writing the Genjo koan, which we are studying in class.

[05:28]

It's also fitting because if you've been around, you know that this was the first time we've installed a woman abbot at Berkeley Zen Center a couple of months ago. So I'm happy to say that Dogen... recognize that women have equally authentic practice and understanding of the Dharma as men. So it's traditional for a head student to be given a koan, like I was, and I received this koan with gratitude and maybe some relief because there's no shouting and slapping, there's no cut-off limbs. Norman, in his foreword, talks about, you know, it's maybe the granting style versus the grasping style, that the hidden lamp is more of a granting style. And I really like that. Chiono's story and many of the others in this book are about a woman awakening not with a stick or a shout, but with discernment, with tenderness, you know, in trust.

[06:38]

So, A little bit about Chiyono, she's often thought to be the same woman as Mugai-nyodai, whose name we chant among our women ancestors, and who lived from 1223 to 1298, actually a nice long life for that era. And she, Mugai-nyodai, was the first Japanese woman to receive Dharma transmission, and she founded the first Zen convent in Japan. But when I poked around and found some recent scholarship, there's some scholars that are doubting this connection. I found out that there's a fictional character dating a little bit later called Chiyono in something called, it was a medieval tale called Chiyono Monagatari. And this scholarship asserts that that tale got mixed in with the real Mugainyo-dai and also another Kyoto religious noblewoman. So three women, perhaps, folded into one. Is that a problem?

[07:43]

Not for me. As a writer, as someone who writes poetry, fiction and nonfiction, I don't put the historical above the fictional or the imagined, the documentary above the imagined. I think fictions are tales that are untethered from the facts in order to tell bigger truths. So especially now, I also want to qualify that by saying the truth matters. It exists, and it matters. I am not saying there's no such thing. But it needn't be a barrier to us engaging with this story and having access to its gifts. If I were a scholar, I might need to have a real strong opinion about whether Mugai, Nyodai, and Chiono are the same, one and the same. But I'm not a scholar. And what matters to me is that Chiono's story can... can nourish me to awaken, can nourish you to awaken, and us together today as we think about this story.

[08:48]

I can really relate to Chiyono. I actually have this very warm affection for her right now, which is interesting. I've never been a servant in a medieval Japanese convent. I learned to write from a very young age and read from a young age. I'm a writer in my life. So, you know... It's not exactly like we share a lot of basis in our life. But I hope that you too can relate to Chiyono, whether you're in a female body or a male body, or whether those distinctions frustrate you and don't matter to you. This is not ultimately a story about gender. The elements of the tale are pretty simple. A humble desire for awakening. a kind and supportive mentor, you know, a bucket, well water, and the moon. And we don't know why Chiyono was fetching water, but, you know, I can guess for mopping, for cleaning, maybe for drinking water.

[09:53]

She needed it for some sort of practical purpose. You know, she was a servant in a Zen convent. And then I found myself wondering, well, why does a convent have servants? Wait a minute. Don't we wash our own bowls? So... I came to learn that, in fact, it wasn't that uncommon. You know, temples would have patrons, and they also would have paid, or, you know, maybe paid in kind, servants who were cooking and cleaning and gardening. And it was possible for a woman who entered the monastery in the same way that Chiono did as a servant to eventually maybe take vows, become a nun, and maybe even have an awakening such as Chiono did. I also want to point to the 13th century in Japan was a politically unstable time, shifting from sort of the power being with the imperial court to the samurai class. And interestingly, over that period that the warrior class was running things, women's rights actually kind of degraded and became more restricted.

[10:58]

Sound a little bit like maybe the moment we're living in. To me, it feels resonant, politically unstable. rights being chopped up and reduced. So Chiono has a lot of work to do. She's a servant. She spends hours doing repetitive, physical, necessary labors for the daily operation of the zendo. She doesn't have time to the luxury, the privilege of sitting zazen. But she has this desire to awaken, which we call bodhicitta, which each of us has the seed of. No one gave that to her. It's within all of us at any time and can sprout with or without our will, actually, or not sprout given conditions that might prevent it. So this desire that Chiono has prompts her to talk to one of the nuns in the monastery about whether the Buddha way is available to her.

[12:01]

And rather than telling Chiono unrealistically, you know, just quit working and sit all the time, or falsely telling her, you know, no, the Buddha way is not available for you, this nun says that if Chiono just stays close to her desire to awaken and studies her own delusive thoughts, which she says is zazen, then she's already on the path. So, you know, Chiono takes that in and realizes with delight... With this practice as my companion, I have only to go about my daily life practicing day and night. So easy. No special tools or rituals needed or not easy. No moment of not practicing. Practicing day and night. No separation whatsoever between her work, her life outside of her work, if it existed, and practice.

[13:03]

And, you know, I really, it's, I don't like to think about what would have happened if this nun had not been so encouraging. Maybe we wouldn't have had Chiono's story, and then we wouldn't have had the stories after Chiono of the other women awakened by Chiono's story or moved by Chiono's story in this kind of chain of awakening. these links, this transmission of this practice that happens. And in some versions, Chiono actually does get a little more resistance before she gets the yes. There's a book called Zen Sourcebook, which has a version of Chiono's No Water, No Moon, and Chiono is sort of dismissed at first. Your work is, do your work. Your work is not zazen. But she does eventually get to this kindly elder nun, who tells her in this version, she describes Zazen as, quote, to seek the Buddha in your own heart. I really love that.

[14:08]

To seek the Buddha in your own heart. And Chiono and this nun go on to have sort of a long discussion about delusion and thinking and Buddha nature. And the nun sounds a lot like Dogen when she says, if you don't fall into delusive patterns of thinking, there is no Buddha. and also no sentient being. There is only one essential nature. So in this version, which does say that Chiono, associates Chiono with Mugai-nyo-dai, she becomes so absorbed in her practice that she sort of forgets to eat, forgets to fetch water, eventually is recognized for her awakening and has dharma transmission. But in... In all the versions that I've encountered of this story, I would say Chiono creates the conditions for her awakening. She does not wait for special conditions. Her inquiry actually isn't even about the awakening.

[15:09]

It's like, can I even be on this path? Every time I think that, I sort of have this in my heart. Can I even be on this path? And then how can I do it, given the circumstances of my life? So she does her work and she goes on living, seeking the Buddha in her own heart. And after months of wholehearted practice, she goes out on a full moon night to draw water from the well. And the bottom of her old bucket, held together by bamboo strips, falls. The reflection of the moon goes with the water. And when she saw this, she attained great realization. So... It's in this moment of really just being herself, doing her life, and going about her ordinary work that this moment of great awakening happens. On a relative level, a broken bucket is a problem for someone with work to do.

[16:10]

She has to patch her bucket again. She may get in trouble for not doing her work in a timely way. And I can kind of imagine her having a different reaction than the one that she had. angry, maybe a few choice words hurled at the sky. You know, damn that bucket. You know, can you relate? I can. I can kind of amaze myself with the big emotions that can arise when things don't behave the way they're clearly supposed to for me, right? I'm monkeying around with my phone and there it goes, down between the seat. and the center console, which is the tiniest little gap that my hand won't go down in. And it's very quick that I can get into the mindset of the universe is arrayed against me. Gravity, I'm taking gravity personally in that moment.

[17:13]

And I know it's not helping me to react. And sometimes I can actually... stop that and shift and sometimes I just can't and then I have to give myself compassion for being a bumbling human being. So one reading of Chiyono's Breaking the Bucket is it's a disaster or at the very least it's a bummer because she's going to have to fix this thing again or deal with the consequences of not having a bucket. But another reading is, what invitation is there for us for awakening to our true nature when the things that we've been holding together fall apart? So the moment of the water flowing out of the bucket looks very different if you look at it from some other point of view. Maybe that water really enjoyed being spread out along the ground.

[18:19]

Maybe the wood bent into the bucket shape enjoyed not being bound anymore into that shape. Maybe my phone really enjoys not being in my hand and needs to be underneath the seat for a while. So the broken bucket looks really different if we look at it from a perspective other than the fixed self, the owner of the bucket, the user of the bucket. Maybe no bucket. What is a bucket? So the version of Chiono's awakening poem in Zen Flesh, Zen Bones has, to me, a slightly different flavor, and I'm not going to dwell on it, but I just want to share it. It ends with, no more water in the pale, no more moon in the water, which seems to me to sort of emphasize the impermanence of all things, you know, the kind of constant appearing and disappearing flowing of things. The story that I want to focus more on is actually another story in The Hidden Lamp a few chapters later.

[19:26]

A nun named Nyozen actually wrote an awakening poem of her own in response to Chiyono's poem. And Nyozen was a nun at Tokeji Monastery in Kamakura, where John and Mary and I have been when we went on the Zen in Japan trip back in 2006 with Grace and Peter Shearson. It dates to 1285, and it was basically a place where abused wives could go. And if they stayed for three years, they could actually divorce their abusive husbands. Here is, and that was Nyo Zen's situation. My understanding is that was her situation. So here is her awakening poem. The bottom fell out of the bucket, and that woman of humble birth, of that woman of humble birth, the pale moon of dawn is caught. in the rain puddles. If I were Nyo Zen's editor, I might say, huh, I don't know about caught. You know, caught feels a little snaggy.

[20:29]

Rather, maybe it shines in all the puddles, but it's in all the puddles. So instead of no moon, it's moon everywhere. Moon everywhere. And in Zen, you know well that the moon is a very auspicious thing. The moon is a symbol of our awakening. And I'll just read a few lines from actually Okamura's translation of the Genjo Koan. When a person attains realization, it is like the moon's reflection in water. The moon never becomes wet. The water is never disturbed. Although the moon is a vast and great light, it is reflected in a drop of water. The whole moon and even the whole sky are reflected in a drop of dew on a blade of grass. I really want to talk about the moon, but I'm going to resist and save that for these other talks I need to give because I want to focus on the woman who commented on this koan in this book and whose signature I actually got when I went to the book launch event for this.

[21:34]

There weren't a ton of them, but I did get hers. She's no longer with us. She actually died in 2022. Her name is Meryl Cotto Boyd. And she was born in 1944. She was the... Here's another first. The first fully transmitted African-American Zen priest in the U.S. Not exactly in our tradition. It was in the Maizumi Roshi Bernie Glassman lineage. But according to her obituary, which ran in lion's roar at the time, she liked to say, you can't fall out of your life. So the... The commenters in The Hidden Lamp were really encouraged to take on these stories and run them through their lives, really share an understanding that had been metabolized in the ground of their life. Obviously, Meryl Cotevoid, being a black woman in America, this is the lens that she was mostly looking through. She was among the generation of southern black children that was raised to enter integrated schools.

[22:41]

And she writes about how in that situation, it seemed really important to keep it together, to be contained, and how actually that composure training was useful when she later decided to enter her first Zen center, really not knowing deeply inside if she was going to be welcome and having a fear of that, but feeling the need to present a contained selfhood. together person now I'm just going to read some passages from her commentary she says I was keenly aware of the constant tension of keeping the bucket together I understood that the intent of practice was to relax my grip on the old bucket but conditioning runs deep and the sense of personal identity is strong I felt the exhaustion of years of vigilance all aimed at protecting my idea of myself I felt the exhaustion of being my own obstacle.

[23:43]

And then skipping ahead a little bit later in the commentary, she writes, as Zen students, we live between Chiyono's first two lines and her second two lines, between keeping things from falling apart and letting them fall apart. Knowing how to keep things together is a valuable skill. It was knowing how to care for things that led Chiyono to continually patch the bucket. When it fell apart, she made excellent use of that circumstance as well. Our liberation deepens with the refinement of our capacity for flexibility and discernment. The liberation I was raised to seek is one aspect of the liberation we speak of in the Buddha Dharma. In the community of my childhood, our efforts were directed primarily toward gaining entrance into schools, access to employment, to housing, to services that made life more comfortable. But awareness of our essential and undeniable freedom, undeniable freedom, comes with awareness that we and all things are without self.

[24:55]

The one who is liberated must be allowed to disappear like the water and the moon. I'm still quoting her here. There's a few more sentences. Moving between patched bucket and bottomless bucket, I can exercise my freedom to keep things together or let things come apart, according to the circumstances. I have come to trust the true freedom of living where the moon does not dwell. So I interpret her to be saying, and I feel it to be true, that we are always both a particular finite self within you know, a one-of-a-kind, 100% unique biography, biology, temperament, psychology, you name it. And we are completely beyond those categories. So what is the freedom we seek? As Reverend Boyd said, it's both knowing these particularities and not sticking to them.

[25:59]

We cannot fall out of our lives. In the other book that we've been using for the class, in Shinshu Roberts' Meeting the Myriad Things, she quotes Dogen. Well, she shouldn't quote Dogen. She explains something about Dogen's attitude. She says, Dogen does not deny that we have a particular self when he admonishes us to forget the self or drop body-mind. He is indicating that the self's attachment to itself... as having a fixed nature separate from all beings is incorrect and problematic. I'm going to take a drink of water. And the bottom is there. For now, Jeff says. So, last week, my friend Mary back there talked...

[27:03]

so eloquently about keeping parts of herself hidden and about sort of the assumptions that we make about each other or that we worry that people will make about us. We present our perfect bucket to the world and we put other people into buckets. when in reality we are not containable. And Mary actually talked about leaving out an entire decade of her life when talking with people she didn't know that well. And she didn't actually say exactly why, and I don't want to put words in your mouth, Mary, but it seemed like somehow it wasn't safe, either to her or in that environment, or there was too much complexity there or something. She skipped over this period of her life and later realized that she'd been doing that. And in my Way Seeking Mind talk that I gave a couple weeks ago, I shared something that most of you did not know, that I had tried for a good number of years to become a mother.

[28:14]

And most people in this room did not know about that while it was happening and was really a major focus. And... nor did they know about it after that because I haven't talked about it very publicly. And this hidden piece of my life is on my mind because, you know, it was Mother's Day last Sunday. I'm talking about a period of time in my life that was quite a while ago now, so it's not that difficult for me to talk about it with you, to you. But Mother's Day is still hard. hard for those who did not get to mother, hard for those who did not have mothers that did such a great job mothering, hard for those who've lost children. So I still, every time it comes around, I have that kind of process I have to go through. So I'm thinking about it for that reason. And I'm also thinking about it because I'm thinking a lot about hiddenness and secrets.

[29:21]

And I shared in that talk as well a teaching that Hozan had given me about, you know, secrets have a they have a weight. When we carry something around alone, there's a weight there. Not that that's bad, just know that it's there. Know that it has a weight to it. Of course, with pregnancy, this is tradition for it to be kind of a closed topic, and it makes a lot of sense because there's so much fragility there. I'm not saying it's inappropriate in that context. I often wonder, even with my women friends that I haven't talked about this with, what was their path there? And I wondered about the men, too. I don't want to overly genderize this. I think everybody relates to this decision about having another being be your focus and your responsibility to parent. But I never ask.

[30:22]

And I don't ask others because I know what it felt like to be on the receiving end of that question, kind of casually flung out. When are you and John going to have kids? Or you want to be a mom? Or, you know, it's fraught. So my curiosity just stays my curiosity until someone wants to share with me about that. And I'm choosing to tell you all because, first of all, On a practical level, I have a poetry book coming out in July, and I really metabolized this whole part of my path in that book. There's poems in there about this, and so, you know, it cannot stay hidden. So there's that. Simultaneously, and maybe it has some connection with why I'm sitting here talking to you from this seat today, is I'm just not interested anymore. I am not interested in not completely showing up. with every part of me and coming forward and I'm getting a lovely thumbs up from Craig Fane.

[31:26]

It's not interesting. I don't want to do it. So I don't want to patch the bucket. And I know how moved I am when others allow me into their pain and their vulnerability and their grief. And I want to read a poem of mine, a short one, to you that I think speaks to this. It's called A Million Easy Days. The truth is I wouldn't trade a million easy days for the privilege of laying body to body, tears rivering between, having received the news, a blight inside you, bright, in us for what you let me see in your eyes. So this poem is about the searing intimacy of sitting, lying beside a loved one in unmediated, wordless connection, nothing withheld or hidden, no separation, no containment.

[32:48]

precisely, it's about the moment when, or shortly after, John and I learned that he had a blood cancer we'd never even heard of before called myeloma, 20 years ago. But 20 years ago, 20 years was not forecast for him. And what I believe is that intimacy is a form of generosity. It's a generousness with ourselves and it's a generousness with others when appropriate, you know, when appropriate. I don't want to imply that there's never a time when it's appropriate to be contained, to take care of something inside the field of one's own being. So I'm not saying that. But I am saying that intimacy honors our interconnection.

[33:52]

It bridges the particular and the universal. It includes dropping the self, the bucket, so the myriad things can come forth. And I would say that in Zen, we are practitioners of intimacy with reality, with all of reality. You know, for me, this, at least now, this image of the bucket falling out is a really refreshing moment of no self. Or maybe actually sort of no self meets self meets no self. Both. When everything is present and included. And I'm going to read Giono's last poem, lines again. With this and that, I tried to keep the bucket together and then the bottom fell out. Where water does not dwell, the moon... Where water does not collect, the moon does not dwell.

[35:02]

The moon doesn't dwell in the spilled water or in any place. But the moon is always there, whether or not we see it. I mean, it's there right now. Just like our Buddha nature. And a bucket is a very useful implement. It's necessary. But when the bottom of the bucket falls out, our practice is to ask, what was the bucket holding? What was the bucket keeping out? Has the bucket served its purpose? Is it needing and is it time for more repair? Or is it time to just let the bucket go and be in all of the pieces?

[36:05]

So we have some time to have some conversation. I just want to... First, thank you. I feel your attention, and it's so heartwarming. It's such a rare thing we give each other. And I'm very grateful for your presence this morning. So I want to say that first, and then I want to welcome comments, questions. Thank you. Rich? Thanks, Colleen. It's great to see you up there. Great to hear you. I really appreciate what you did. It sort of seems on. Is it on? Yeah. That's better. I appreciate what you did in sort of elaborating on the story of that moment of the bottom dropping out of the bucket and this sort of like enlightenment, but also like, oh, damn, this task that I am engaged in is now...

[37:15]

And for me, it really resonated with what we're studying in the Genji Akon and that line of inattachment, blossoms fall, and an inversion, weeds grow. It's all happening. Enlightenment is happening. And the real buckets breaking is happening. I appreciate that elaboration. My question is this disinterest that you've arrived at in sort of not hiding things. Can you attribute that to something? I find that sometimes I'm, I don't know if it's me getting older or just practicing or what it is, I'm just not interested in things that, ideas about myself that I used to be. So I'd be curious to hear you talk about that. Well, I mean, I sort of think you answered your own question. I think the more you steep yourself in practice, it's like the more you actually start to start to embody this idea of, Oh yeah, that's right.

[38:19]

I'm not a fixed self. I actually am not my idea of myself. I'm more than that. So maybe it's kind of like the, that whole thing about mastery and the, whatever it was, 10,000 hours you have to spend, you know, you just put the time in and if you're sincere and wholehearted in your practice, I think, you know, it's going to work on you. And I, I think some of it is just maybe aging and getting tired of the same old story. You're like, okay, can we have a new storyline here, please? But I do think practice works on you. Thanks. Mira? I don't see any online yet, so let's go to Mira and then let's go back to Mary. I'm keeping my eye online. Thank you, Colleen. Is this working? Thank you, Colleen, for your talk.

[39:21]

I want to go back to the koan itself because I feel confused about it. To me, when the bottom fell out of the bucket, that was her letting go of her small self, breaking through that, breaking through that. And that was her enlightenment. So... the moon represents Buddha nature, right? Enlightenment. So why does the moon not shine anymore? I would think the moon would shine then. So that's the confusion. Yeah. My take on that is that even enlightenment, nothing is permanent. So, of course, the moon... isn't going to stay there in the bucket. The bottom has dropped out and everything is, nothing is contained in the enlightenment moments of awakening.

[40:23]

They aren't permanent. Right? Yes. It seems like at that moment the moon should have been shining more clearly than ever. The moon didn't get the memo. Yeah, no, I see your question. Yeah, that's my question. I want the moon to shine on her. Well, it is shining on her. It is. It's just not her focus at that moment. And maybe it kind of has to do with that, you know, when Buddhas are, they don't always know they are Buddhas. I mean, it's a selfless moment for her. And so, yeah, the moon's there, but she's not necessarily grabbing it. Well, whatever. Mira, you need to write. Please write me a poem.

[41:24]

Thank you very much. I think Mary had her hand up, yeah, and then I see you, Sue, and I still see no hands on mine. Thank you, Colleen. I feel very moved by your not hiddenness and your beginning wrestling with this koan. And about this last interchange you had, it came to me that the bottom will fall out of any metaphor we try to use. I know that well. But I was interested, I mean, interested in your disinterest, from a personal standpoint, I find that independent of my disinterest, my early training in my family comes up in the holding it together category of things.

[42:36]

And the two horsemen of that are fear and shame. And I'm wondering how you wrestle with those two. I mean, do I have fear and shame? If you don't, I'm interested in that too. Those aren't the primary things that come up, but I do have, I got that training too. I don't come from a family of uncontained people. Right, John? The Mortons are contained. So I think I'm always working with that training. And yeah, maybe what that's about is, you know, I like to be competent. I like to know what I'm doing.

[43:38]

Maybe I like to look like I know what I'm doing, even if I don't know what I'm doing. And so there is a fear there of failing, I guess, yeah, and being messy. So I'm sure that had something to do with how I've handled myself around things in my life that didn't go the way I wanted them to be going. Yeah. and my own emotions about that. I think that never goes away. Maybe we just get more practice at recognizing when that's happening. I know from listening to you, you have quite a good awareness about that. Yeah. Sue? Oh, now there's some hands online, so...

[44:41]

But let's go to Sue first. Thank you so much for this really moving talk, Colleen. And I especially appreciate your courage in talking about not having children. And I know other friends who share that. And it's so taboo to talk about because there's just such an assumption. Well, of course... Everybody who wants children has children or something. Anyway, and the recognition that things go wrong in lives, maybe other kinds of things, too, that we don't choose, and we sometimes think, well, what's wrong with me that my life story isn't working out the way it's supposed to or something? But I also wanted to say about this bucket, I really love that language. And I had the same question that Mira brought up for a while.

[45:42]

Well, the last sentence sounds so negative. Where there is no water, the moon does not dwell. But I think the idea is that maybe Chiona or maybe all of us think, well, if you carry your bucket around and mend it enough, then you'll have the moon in the bucket. But actually, that isn't where the moon lives. It doesn't live in a bucket. And the moon was still in the sky shining on her head even after the water came out of the bucket. So that's sort of a way I think about it. And also, with this and that, she held the bucket together. That's so familiar to me in a literal way. I just spent several hours mending a laundry basket at home, weaving the... string in and out of the rounds of straw and I was so proud of myself and it was all ended because the bottom was starting to fall out. And so, you know, sometimes you can keep it together for a little while and that's okay, but then sometimes you just can't keep on keeping it together and you have to stop trying.

[46:49]

Yeah, and I guess, you know, Reverend Boyd was pointing to that discernment there, recognizing, you know, which... decide to fall on, you know, keeping it together or letting it go. Thank you so much. Thanks too. I see Ken Knapp's hand. Hello, Colleen. Hi, Ken. Wonderful talk. I could not prevent myself from... remembering this French song, which I sang at one of our skit nights many years ago. And the English translation of it is, it's called the sun and the moon. And in French, the sun is masculine and the moon is feminine.

[47:51]

So the sun has a date with the moon. So the sun shows up. But the moon isn't there, and so the sun waits. The moon actually is there. The moon is there, the moon is there, but the sun does not see her. In order to see her, it has to be night. It has to be night. But the sun doesn't know this and keeps on shining. The sun has a date with the moon, but the moon isn't there and the sun just waits. Thank you. That's great, Ken. I really, you know, I wish you'd sing it, but, you know.

[48:53]

Ah, merci beaucoup. Très bien. As you can see, in the original, it's kind of a tongue twister, among other things. Yeah, yes. Thank you again. I see you, Maddie, but I feel like we should take one more online. Are you there, Bica? Et voilà. N'écoute pas. I still can't hear you.

[49:54]

Yeah, you're muted. Okay. Yeah, so hearing Ken sing and seeing Ken, and after so many years, I almost forgot what I was going to say. Anyway, here we are in Canada in our Airbnb, and we made time for your wonderful talk, so thank you for that. And I just wanted to say about... sharing our stories, I guess I would call it. I just remembered or was reminded of Sojin Roshi saying once something like, you know, I really relate to, mostly I relate to people's Buddha nature. So he was kind of setting, it sounded to me like he was setting our stories, personal stories aside, maybe, but maybe that was included. in what he was saying. And I was just wondering if you wanted to say something about that.

[50:57]

Well, yeah, I think it's not one, not two. I mean, I think you kind of have to hold both. Because if you don't hold the particular self, then there's kind of like a not seeing happening there. But the trick, it seems like to me, is to hold also just knowing that we are all much more than just all of those particulars. So I feel, I don't know what Sojin's practice was there, but for me, I want to hold both, if I can. Okay, I do too. It's great to be with you, and now we're off on a hike. Okay, enjoy. Thank you. I don't know, do we have time, Gary, for one more? Okay, Maddie, you had your hand up. The mic is over here. It struck me when you brought up the follow-up awakening koan of the moon being caught in the puddles.

[52:13]

Because when you view the moon at night, you're viewing rays of light originating from a distant source, which is the sun, which is obscured from you, which are then scattered off the moon, and then either hit your eye directly, like a big pizza pie, or... you know, reflect off of the light and off of the surface of the water in the bucket or the surface of the water on the ground. So when the water falls out of the bucket, right, you know, perhaps the moment there is realizing, oh, the reason I can do anything right now is because the entirety of the world around me is illuminated by this scattered light from the moon. And it is therefore scattering again off of everything around me instead of being fixated on the contents. or of the moon being contained in the bucket, right? But then you mentioned not liking the word caught in the translation as the moon being caught then in the puddles, right?

[53:15]

But it strikes me that it's the same geometry of reflection of the moonlight then, and so then you're fixated on the puddles, right? So I... Just curious as to your take on, you know, you lose the moon out of the bucket, but then it's caught in the puddles, but you're not carrying the puddles, right? Yeah, that's kind of what came to my mind as people were talking about, you know, maybe you don't want to lose the moon, but the point is that when the moon falls through the bucket, you look around you and you see everything is illuminated by the moon. Right, which is actually illuminated by the sun, which like you pointed out, the moon doesn't make its own light. Yeah. I actually just learned that. I will confess. I didn't necessarily know that. But yeah, I mean, I don't know. Did you want me to, did you have a question there? I mean, it's a very interesting observation. I feel like I could just leave it there.

[54:17]

I'm curious to what your take on, you know, the moon not illuminating itself is, right? Like you're viewing this radiant light from the fusion of the sun. Yeah, well, I mean, where I go with that right now is, you know, I'm sitting here and you all are sitting there, but you could all be sitting right here and I could be sitting right there. I mean, I don't, I'm not doing this by myself in this moment at all. So it's all of us. And I know that's not necessarily about moonlight, but, you know, that's where my mind goes with that. Buddha-nature scattered off of all of us. Yeah. In all of us and bouncing off of all of us and exchanged between all of us. Yeah. Yeah. I think the Doan is showing me the magic stick.

[55:21]

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