Good morning, friends. You still hear me okay? No? Higher. How about now? So, welcome. Anybody here for the first time today, if you are, can you raise your hand for us? Yay! Hello, MDZ friends. Friends from Mount Diablo Zen are here today. Thank you again, Linda, for offering me this opportunity. Here we are, the end of the fourth week of practice period. I'm not quite sure how we got here, but here we are. And welcome back to Chiyono, season one, episode two.

[01:00]

So two weeks ago from this seat, I told the story of Chiyono, and I'll just tell it briefly again. She was a servant in a 13th century Japanese Zen convent with a deep desire to practice, to practice the way. And drawing water from the well one evening, full moon evening, just like tonight, the bottom falls out of her old... many times patched bucket. So when the bottom falls out, there goes the water, there goes the reflection of this beautiful full moon in the water. And Chiono awakens. So what does Chiono awaken to? She awakens to impermanence, to including the impermanence of our idea of ourselves, having a sort of fixed, stable, immutable personhood. And to all things in the universe, sort of cooperating and mutually supporting each other and unfolding together in time, in interpenetrating ways that we actually can't see.

[02:12]

So I can imagine various scenarios in which Chiono's awakening might not have been so smooth or not necessarily so. And I spoke about some of them last time, but spilled water isn't such a big deal. But what if... the bucket carried rare and vital medicine? What if the bucket carried her year's wages? What if the bucket carried her dead mother's letters or every poem she'd ever written in her life? I can imagine that that loss would be harder, you know, to shift into awakening, to be with, to welcome. But maybe not. What if the bucket is full of loss? I think about how I've been present for death. I haven't been present for that many of them, but I was there for my father's in 2020. And that was definitely a bottom-of-the-bucket falling-out moment, a pretty singular, unrepeatable experience of loss, full of lots of complicated emotions and lots of big feelings.

[03:26]

And yet, it was also absolutely beautiful. to witness this ultimate letting go, this stubborn, opinionated, sometimes moody man just completely going with what was happening. And to be present and supportive of that, both what my father was going through, which of course we can't know, and then what my mother and I and my aunt and the hospice... nurse and the hospice aide were going through. There were five of us with our hands on him. It was a pretty good way to go if you got to go. It was a collective moment of just radical kind of togetherness and compassion. But, you know, part of death's mystery is where do they go? They're there, and then they're just gone. No way to argue with that. They're gone.

[04:27]

And And what happens after, we don't know. And what happens after with Chiyono, we don't know. As I thought about this story more and more, I'm like, well, it ends with this moment of awakening. Like, now what? You know, episode two. And I think knowing Chiyono as I feel I now do, she probably got back to work. She probably borrowed a bucket and went and did her work. I think she was that kind of person. But we know, or we're going to find out if we don't already know, that awakening doesn't go on forever. So if this is news to you, I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news. If you came and thought, I'm going to get awakening and go away and one and done. But there's really another way of looking at the fact that awakening is not impermanent. We get to keep doing it. again and again and again.

[05:29]

We get to open and close and open and close and open to our lives and to each other. And we flow in and out of realization, but realization is, it's there. It's always there. Just like that moon up in the sky that we don't always see, but it's always there. It's not like it goes somewhere and then comes out at night for us. So this morning we did a full moon ceremony. I say we, but I was next door in the abbot's office kind of preparing, but I heard everyone and went along with you. It's a monthly ritual of repentance of our karma, of our deluded ways, and a reaffirmation or a renewal of our vow, our bodhisattva vows, because we need to renew vows. And it's also taking refuge again in Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. It's a really beautiful ceremony. The full moon is technically at, I think, 1 a.m.

[06:32]

tomorrow morning. And it's a blue moon this month, which is kind of cool. It means we had two full moons in the month of May. We had one at the very beginning of the practice period, and we're having one now at the end of this fourth week. And as I mentioned when I first talked about Chiyono a couple weeks ago, the moon is, we all know, it's this kind of classic image of awakening, of realization, of reality itself. And Dogen, who we're reading, who's Ganjo Koan we are studying in class, he has a fascicle dedicated to the moon called Suki, which is every bit as poetic and beautiful and mind-bending as any Dogen that you're going to read. I'll say more, not so much about Suki, but about Ganjo Koan in a moment. But there's another writing of Dogen's that I really just have always loved called the Ehe Kosu Hotsuganmon. Great ancestor Ehe's words for arousing the vow, or Dogen's vow, simply.

[07:36]

And I'm going to read the first, the way that it starts, and a few of you in here I know have it memorized, and if you want to join me, you can join me. We vow with all beings, from this life on, throughout countless lives, to hear the true Dharma, that upon hearing it, no doubt will arise in us, nor will we lack in faith, that upon meeting it, we shall renounce worldly affairs and maintain the Buddha Dharma, and that in doing so, the great earth and all living beings together will attain the Buddha way. Wow. I mean, you don't get more inclusive than that. All beings, all space and time. We vow with all beings from this life on throughout countless lives to hear the true Dharma. And Dogen goes on in this Dogen's vow to call upon the compassion of the ancestors, you know, to help us see our karma, see our hindrances, and be able to practice and wake up.

[08:39]

So, you know, what we've embarked on here together, it's not about getting somewhere and staying there. You know, some pristine, perfect, unadulterated awakened state. Like, I mean, frozen like a statue, you know. Dogen understood that being human, being Buddhas, our faith falters and our vow brings us back upright. So we fall out of vow, we step back into vow. We fall out of vow, we step back into vow. And we have these ceremonies that help us do that. Like the one we just did this morning, help us to renew our vows together, and our intention to awaken with all beings. And then we also have some smaller rituals that we do regularly. Another one we did this morning is oryoki. So I know that we have some newer people in here, and we also have people who've really been familiar with oryoki, but I want to describe what it is for those who may not have any idea what I'm talking about.

[09:47]

It's a formal way of eating together in the zendo. We each have our own set of three bowls and utensils that we use, and it's wrapped in cloths that all have a particular function. And we come in with our bowls, and we all unwrap them together and set them out in a very particular way in front of us here on the Tan. So we're eating in here in the Zendo. All of this happens in a kind of ceremonial silence and very choreographed. And then there's some servers. who are going back and forth from the kitchen, who bring in the food, who portion out the food into everyone's three bowls. Everything is eaten. And then hot water is brought in, poured into the largest of the bowls, which is called the Buddha bowl. And each person at their place uses that portion of hot water to wash all three bowls of theirs and their utensils. And a little bit of water gets drunk along the way by each person from their bowls, generally speaking.

[10:49]

And you end up with a little bit of water in your smallest bowl, which then gets offered to a communal collection bowl that the servers come around with. And then that gets offered to the garden. So at the end, we wrap our bowls back up. and everything looks exactly as if nothing had happened, only our bellies are full. And sometimes you can, I love, I can feel the warmth of the bowls when I pick my bowls up again. So, like, about that washing water, I got to thinking about it, and, you know, our water comes from the McCollumee River watershed east of the Sierras, which I just read is in good shape, you know, after our weird winter and March heat wave. It comes from there, You know, travels by aqueduct and all these, like, you know, engineered ways for it to come here. Thank you, engineers. Goes through the city pipes, comes through Berkeley's pipes, comes out the tap, the head cook puts it in kettles, puts it on the stove, heats it.

[11:58]

Servers bring it in here to us, goes in everyone's bowl, then goes in people's bodies, then goes back into a bowl, then goes out into the garden. And today, actually, this morning, Greg was sitting next to me, and we both sipped at the same moment, and I thought, ah, we're sipping the Mokolemi River watershed together, you know, because I knew I was going to point this out. But, I mean, when you think about it, it's completely dazzling, that. It's just a miracle, actually. And it's also just a wonderful illustration of what I think, you know, Dogen is trying to point out for us in the Genjo Koan, which is, you know, we're always connected. to everything else, even when we don't see it, you know. Distinct but inseparable. So, you know, McCallumee River Watershed, me drinking my little bowl of water, two very different things. But without one, you don't have the other. So I'm going to read one of the more straightforward but very, very often quoted passages from Genjo Koan.

[13:06]

Enlightenment is like the moon reflected on the water. The moon does not get wet, nor is the water broken. Although its light is wide and great, the moon is reflected even in a puddle an inch wide. The whole moon and the entire sky are reflected in dew drops on the grass or even in one drop of water. So most of you know by now that I'm a poet. So as a poet, I really love Dogen. I've always... resonated with him, but I can be bewildered by his words just like you. He writes against our traditional ways of conceptualizing things, and you just have to kind of surrender and go along for the ride in the way that you might in a Dharma talk, in the way that you might when you're hearing a poem. But it can really be helpful to... get guidance from those people who have really steeped themselves in Dogen or who've spent time translating him.

[14:10]

And one of my favorite people doing that work is Shohaku Okamura, who I just feel really does a great job of putting it in these terms I can grasp. And I'm a big fan of this one, the Realizing Genjo Koan. So I've been reading it along with the book by Shinshu Roberts, which is also, I think, a great approach to Genjo Koan. And he says, Okamura says, we should not cling to any logical or philosophical concept when we study Dogen. His teachings are meant to reveal to us the reality of life immediately within our ordinary day-to-day lives. So, you know, while deeply poetic, Dogen is also very practical. I was very touched by a passage in here where Okamura recalls that as a young practitioner, he was really inspired by that image I just read you of this, you know, moonlight reflected in the tiniest drop of water. And I'm going to read you a fairly sizable quote from that.

[15:11]

He says, even though I had only a small, fragile, impermanent body and a deluded, self-centered mind to practice with... I could continue to practice since the Buddha's boundless compassion is reflected in that practice. Without this illuminating moonlight of the Buddha's vow and compassion, to this day I do not think I could continue to practice. We are as tiny and transitory as a dew drop, yet the vast, boundless, eternal moonlight reflects on each and every drop of life. Okamura goes on to talk about how for Dogen, expression was really like an essential corollary or component of experience. No, not lesser, not a poor substitute. I recommend Okamura's blog, the Dogen Institute blog. It's just like so many resources there of both...

[16:13]

his own kind of explications of things, and then poems of Dogen's. You know, I could spend hours on this blog. And Okamura suggests there that, you know, we have language because we need to share reality. It is one of the ways we share reality. I mean, we share it in silence too. But he writes, to distinguish between reality and the verbal expression of reality creates two separate things and makes... reality itself more important than its expression using words. This is one of the most important points of Dogen's teaching. Dogen says if we really experience something, we need to say something. We need to speak about that reality. So what we experience in silence, alone, in order to share it, we need language, and Dogen felt that was essential. I mean, and he put his money where his mouth was, right?

[17:14]

We have so many writings, you know, of Dogen trying to share this practice that moved him so. So for me, you know, as a writer, obviously I love this idea. Oh, yes. Yes. In order for experience to be fully experienced, we need to tell about it. We need to use language, whether we're writing or speaking. And I think it's true, you know, it's not just true of writers or of somebody speaking in front of people. I think we are drawn, many of us, to Zen practice because we love silence. We love that embracing peacefulness of silence where it's maybe easier or more accessible to kind of drop a lot of our discriminating mind and our judgments and the chatter. And we can even get attached to that silence. So... We need to speak about and share our experience. We need to come in and out of silence and speaking and sharing the same way that we come in and out of awakening.

[18:17]

It's a part of the process. It's why I'm sitting here talking to you, and it's why you're sitting here listening to me. So I want to pivot for a bit back to the moon, the literal moon, not the metaphorical moon. Every single one of us in this room has a relationship. It influences our oceans. It influences our bodies, especially the bodies of women. And we can relate to Chiyono's story, I think, in part because it's this symbol that we all have access to. We all see in its changing shape. And notably, we say moonlight, but I think this came up the last time I talked as well. The moon doesn't make its own light. The moon is lit to us by the sun. and I guess a little bit of other light sources, but mostly the sun, and we're seeing the reflection of the sun's light. That's what we're seeing. That also I find to be kind of a helpful image to dwell on because it reminds me of how we don't, we as humans, we depend on each other for our light.

[19:28]

I don't know about my own light if I'm not in relationship to others. I need that reflection. And I've always felt, I don't know how to describe it even, sort of like a very primary connection to the moon because I actually was in the womb in July of 1969 for the first moonwalk. So being a poet, I've always felt like, oh, there I am in the little space of the womb, and they're up there walking on it. And I tried for a long time to write poems about it. I think I finally did get it into one of the poems that's coming out in the book in July, and I'm happy about that. But I found myself really, really riveted by Artemis II, the recent mission to the far side of the moon and back. It's actually pretty unusual for me to care about or pay attention to space travel. I'm not like a space travel junkie in the slightest, but I was completely riveted. I couldn't look away.

[20:30]

And the more I watched, the more riveted I was. I think it was, I know it's what my heart needed, and I think it was what a lot of hearts needed because we are living in this time where I think so many of us are feeling like things are spinning out of control and falling apart at a pace that we can barely grasp, barely understand or keep up with. So who here actually watched or is... Wow, okay, I get to tell some people about it. I'm actually going to pass around a photo and say some things about it. You'll all be able to see this when I pass it around. This is the moon. This is us. This little teeny tiny crescent of Earth. And it's a crescent because the dark side is experiencing night. And there are so many pictures if you go to NASA. So I'm going to hand this to my Benji Jeff, and then just do your best to kind of catch everybody, and we'll have it out at tea, anybody who wants to see it.

[21:37]

But these pictures, they're mind-blowing. I mean, it's bonkers to think about where the little tiny crescent and the moon is that big from that perspective. And there's a really great one of one of the astronauts. There was one woman on this mission, and her braids are like... you know, like Pippi Longstocking, you know, and she's looking out the window and you see out the view. So just for a moment, you know, as the picture makes its way around, I just want us to just, like, imagine. I mean, they were in this, you know, collectively imagined together. They're in this very small aircraft. They could barely do anything. It's like, you know... I don't know, if we had 10 people in the BCC kitchen at the same time trying to do something. They were intimate with each other. They could barely move without touching each other. And yet, they're going to the far side of the moon where no one had ever gone before. And when they came back, they drifted back, pulled by Earth's gravity.

[22:40]

They just drifted. I mean, of course, NASA, ground control, knew where they were at all times. But I just... just to imagine the courage, the leap of faith that that would take to say goodbye to their families. They all had families. Some of them had kids. And trust that, like, they were going to come back from this mission, even knowing that sometimes people didn't even make it, you know, very far off the ground, right? We all saw the challenger. So astronauts, you know, they know this freedom of this feeling of, like, being a teeny tiny thing in the vastness. I mean, it's like... the job description. And I, I feel like I've tasted it and I've tasted it a lot of different times on time that I want to tell you about is being at the bottom of one of my favorite places on earth, the Grand Canyon. So I have a really vivid memory of the first time I did that. I mean, it's funny because when I was a kid, my family went there on one of those like family road trips in the, in the minivan.

[23:43]

We drove all the way out West and went to a And the story that my mom loves to tell, and that's funny now, is apparently I was really riveted by a book. Just staying in the car. Nope, nope, don't want to go look at that vista. You know, that's the family story. Whether it's myth or true, I'm not really sure. But I do know that I was like, I had a, like, boyfriend back home, and I was like, what am I doing on this trip with my family? And I did want to read. So it's likely maybe I did that. But I went back as a young, like a, actually I was more like... mid to late 20s. And I went on a hike that was kind of guided. I mean, not in a professional way, but somebody who loves the Grand Canyon puts this hike together a year. We went down from the South Rim to Phantom Ranch and then back up to the South Rim. And it was hot. It was July. And I lived in New Orleans for a while. I know hot. You know, I know hot. This was hot. And... When I came down finally to the bottom and reached Bright Angel Creek and I just instinctively like took off my bandana and put it in the creek and took off my hiking boots and put my feet in the creek, it felt like, you know, life-saving.

[24:53]

Like literally life-saving. And it is literally life-saving. Every year in the Grand Canyon, every year people die of heat exposure or hyponatremia because they drink too much water or not enough. So it was this... really profound experience of being just 100% like in my body, in the moment, fully immersed in this environment. And actually, probably at that spot where I was, I don't think I really had a great view of like the vastness, but I had seen the vastness coming down the whole way. And then I was at the bottom of the vastness. And my mind had been doing what minds do and, you know... It's too hot. It's too uncomfortable. I'm hungry. I'm irritable. My feet are killing me, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But there I was. And that creek greeted me. And after just putting one foot in front of the other, comfort arrived and everything changed. So that's not a metaphorical moment of relief.

[25:59]

That is what actually happened and truly my body feeling like, ah, I'm not going to die here. And, you know, really realizing I was part of this vastness and that it included, you know, suffering and relief, you know, pain and blessings, safety and danger. That was all bundled in it. And the canyon, it was quite clear. It is quite clear. It doesn't care if I live or die, you know, not in the slightest. And that was okay. That was completely okay. That was actually part of the feeling I was having of being in the vastness. So I had carried a grief down there that I mentioned when I gave my way Seeking Mind talk that was maybe about seven years old at that time of losing my best childhood friend to a violent crime. She was killed by a man she was trying to leave, which is not uncommon at all for women.

[26:59]

She was 23. And I carried that down with me. I carried all my ideas about who I was in the world, and I carried the people I loved, the places I had loved. But what the canyon gave me was a glimpse, or rather maybe just a long soak, of all of that dropping. I just remember standing, later standing in the creek at Phantom Ranch and looking around at the canyon walls behind me. The only way I can describe it is it just felt like that all just went whoosh. I was completely alive, a small being held by the vastness like a baby in the womb or like those astronauts out there in space. And later, the leader of that trip told me that I had helped another woman get down, and I was like, what are you talking about?

[28:01]

I didn't help anybody. But we had walked together, and she was having a slightly harder time than me, and we just talked the whole way down. And that is how I helped. That is how we helped each other get down, was simply by being together, sometimes talking, sometimes not, and staying in contact, staying connected. So the Grand Canyon really did play a part in my healing. I have never forgotten that moment. It felt like the canyon was just like embracing me. And I want to share with you that, well, I'll just also say Zen, my writing practice, all of the loving relationships in my life have also helped me heal this grief over my friend. And I actually had a phone call with her sister last week, 30... something almost 40 years since I've talked to this woman. And the conversation was actually like kind of easy and joyful and laughing a lot.

[29:02]

But it also included, you know, we eventually got to some of the hurt and the pain and tears were refreshed. So this loss is now, it's like 34 years old. and it can come back in a flash, and I never know when. Like right now, I'm okay talking to you about it. I'm not weeping, but I might weep the next time. I never quite know. You know, healing is not forgetting. It is not overcoming. It doesn't even necessarily, this came up in one of the teas, have to be forgiving. It might just be releasing and coming to peace with being unable to forgive. I can't say I forgive her murderer. I don't spend a lot of time actually thinking about him, and I don't wish him ill, but he's not the point for me. So in my experience, what happens is sort of space gathers around it.

[30:04]

Space gathers around the loss, and you can breathe with it. You can be with it. It's something you can abide. And when I think about that moment at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, and I've written about it too, I feel like there's not really a word I can give it. There's no bucket that contains what I felt in that moment. We have language, and I said earlier how Dogen felt it was very important for us to put words to our experience, so I'm trying. But we may need a lot of words. But one word that strikes me as... yeah, I can live with that one, is sort of just wholeness. I feel that not even just my pain over losing Tracy and what happened to her, her losing her life at 23, all of my pain, that pain and all the others, and then all of my joy was actually there in that moment.

[31:04]

In the same way that I sort of experienced when my dad died too, I can't say there was not joy. I cannot say that to you. There was this feeling of wholeness, of embracing everything that was present. So I feel like my bucket of loss kind of broke down there at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. And it's happened multiple times since then. I was able to go on this trip a few more times. I've also hiked from the North Rim down to the bottom and back up to the South. I've gone rafting with Mary. It's my... that place holds a lot for me. And how I felt there also is expressed very, I feel well, by this verse that years ago Sojin put on my rakasu of Hongzhi, which I'm going to read to you. Surprise, surprise, it refers to the moon. And just to say Hongzhi, he's an 11th century Chinese ancestor, and when we chant our ancestors' Japanese names, he's Tendo Shogaku.

[32:09]

I actually didn't know that until fairly recently that he's included in our ancestor chant. So here's the verse. Empty with enduring spirit, pure with enduring illumination. Clear and white, reed flowers and bright moonlight are mixed together. Oars pulled in, the solitary boat drifts past without difficulty. So I watched this Artemis II mission obsessively, as I told you. They did these live interviews from space. I mean, that was not only touching, but funny because like the mic is like, you know, floating around. And also there was a delay. So they would be like talking to each other and kind of chattering while you were hearing sound. And then there'd be this long delay where they're all staring. And then they would start talking.

[33:09]

Just so fun. And then there's the splashdown near San Diego and the long, very meticulous effort to get them out of this aircraft and then get them to the aircraft carrier where they then were medically cleared. I mean, these people are Buddhas. These astronauts are Buddhas. And at one of the Shusotis, a Sangha member noted how they like to find the Dharma, outside formal Dharma places. And I really resonate with that. I have... always felt that that is the way it should be, actually, that Buddhas don't necessarily know they are Buddhas, and they go on actualizing Buddhas. So I think of it as sort of like the open-air, you know, temple of our daily lives. And so there were four astronauts, one woman and three men, and... And in their first public appearance, I remember I was actually at my mom's visiting my mom, and she ultimately got tired and went to bed, and I still was watching, waiting for this post-mission statement that they were going to make.

[34:18]

I think that was the next night, actually, because, yeah, they needed to get medically cleared. But they all were on stage, and much of what they said, it just feels like Buddha Dharma. It feels like the expressions of the jewel of the Sangha. It feels like it's in line with Dogen. So I really want to share their words with you. I'm going to share something each of them said. First was the captain, Commander Reed Weissman. And he said, It's a special thing to be a human, and it's a special thing to be on planet Earth. Then pilot Victor Glover... who I'll just know is African-American and who has a smile that like if you're feeling down in the dumps, just look at his smile and he'll lift you up. He said, the gratitude of seeing what we saw, doing what we did, and being with who I was with, it's too big to just be in one body.

[35:22]

And I love you. Thank you. They just keep getting better. I'm going to go slightly out of order because Christina Koch is my favorite, and I'm going to put her last. She actually came next and then mission specialist Canadian Jeremy Hansen, but I'm going to read him next and her last. And he said first, like, oh, my gosh, the amount of learning is huge, but that's not what I'm going to talk about. He said, it's the human experience that is extraordinary for us, and it sounds like maybe for you too. You saw a lot of joy up there. There was a lot of joy. We're not always on the joy train, this crew. There are many times we're not on the joy train. But we are committed to getting back on the joy train as soon as we can. And that is a useful life skill for any team trying to get something done. And then he makes his three crewmates come up and stand next to him and they have all their arms around each other.

[36:29]

And he says, what you saw was a group of people who loved contributing, having meaningful contribution and extracting joy out of that. And what we've been hearing is that that was something special for you to witness. And the reason I had them form up here with me is because I would suggest to you that when you look up here, you're not looking at us. We are a mirror reflecting you. And if you like what you see, then just look a little deeper. This is you. I mean, come on. I know. They're like, yeah. I mean, and just before I read Christina, just remember these people. And I remember the commander said this at the beginning. He's like, you know, we were just like, you know, almost 300,000 miles away from... earth and we were traveling at whatever, mock whatever, and now we're here in this room, you know, so trying to hold those two things together.

[37:37]

So they're definitely, you know, they're on some other, they're in an alternate state, I'm sure, when they're saying these things. So Christina Koch, she's a mission specialist, whatever that means, and Michigan native, go Michigan. She says, a crew is a group that is in it all the time. no matter what, that is stroking together every minute with the same purpose, that is willing to sacrifice silently for each other, that gives grace, that holds accountable. A crew has the same cares and the same needs, and a crew is inescapably, beautifully, dutifully linked. She describes then like how what struck her the most up there was how really it's the darkness. It's this immense darkness. And Earth was, she says, this like a lifeboat hanging undisturbingly in the universe.

[38:41]

And then she kind of pauses and she goes, uh-oh. And I don't know if the uh-oh was like, I'm about to get emotional, or I don't remember what I was going to say, because she was the one who said, I actually prepared, you know, I thought about this because I couldn't sleep last night. So I did prepare some thoughts. And she wasn't reading, so I don't know if it was like, or maybe both. I'm having some feelings here, or I don't remember what I was going to say. But she recovers, and she says, I haven't learned everything that this journey has yet to teach me. But there's one new thing I know, and that is, planet Earth, you are a crew. So you can watch this YouTube video of them doing this. It was recorded, of course. These deep space Zen masters is how I'm thinking of them. And I recommend it and would be happy to send out the link.

[39:45]

I mean, be prepared to, I think, weep. you know, happy tears. And in the meantime, I just want to leave you with, you know, these words here on earth in this place and time together held undisturbingly by all that we cannot know or see. Life is a joy train and we are a crew. You, me, Chiyono, Dogen, Hongshir, four astronauts, all Buddhas, all beings. Buckets of loss, reflected moonlight. Let's keep walking the dusty trail and cool our feet in the creek together. And I love you. Thank you. And I think we should have time.

[40:50]

Yes, we have 15 minutes for questions. Judy. And if the moon thing didn't make it all the way around, please keep it going. Picture. Oh, one last thing. Sorry, Judy. Moons. Moons. Sewed by my Benji. Okay. Judy, please. Well, thank you so much, Shuso, Colleen. From one who had an aspiration in my 20s to be an astronaut and was doing stuff, including flying on an airborne observatory, astrophysics, rocket science, all that stuff. Wow. And... you know, have a lot of scientist friends. And one of the things that I'm very intimate with right now is that, you know, including both sides, like the dark side and the light side, is there are a lot of current and former NASA scientists, scientists all over this country who are deeply lamenting

[42:16]

what the current government is doing and how that particular mission was used for publicity and distraction from a lot that's actually happening to science and other things. And so I heard in your talk a lot about joy and sorrow. And so I'm wondering how do you include How do you experience both sides without losing or sacrificing either one, the wholeness? I mean, in some ways, my first thought is how do you not experience both sides? Do you feel that you don't? When you're listening to the astronauts, you're full of wonder.

[43:21]

I mean, full. When you're at the bottom of the canyon. And if it's okay to go there, my own intimacy with violence and loss. As we did in this very Sangha when Nancy was killed just across the way. And what to do with a young man who was 18, I think, at the time. How do you hold... Well, we can call that person a murderer, but how do you hold the wholeness? Yeah. I think you just keep asking yourself that question. I think that's the only way to answer it, actually, is to ask yourself, how can I hold both sides?

[44:23]

And maybe you can't always. I mean, maybe you can't sometimes. You're only with the joy or you're only with the loss, and I think that's okay too. That's as it is. But the question itself is an invitation to yourself to hold it. I'm glad we can hold that question together. Thank you. Benji. I, too, have a Grand Canyon awakening story. I had been living on my bicycle for about three months by the time I made it to the Grand Canyon. And had been coming generally north to south, east to west.

[45:29]

And had a car drive my bike around and hike from the north room to the south room. And when I got to Phantom Ranch, I was a solo diner. And they put me at a table with... Twelve Mennonites. And I'm sorry, eleven Mennonites. And there was twelve, six siblings, all with their partners, but one of them was widowed. And so I was the twelfth in their dining party. And just getting to experience that connection of going from being, you know, very alone and intimate with all, with the just this, to then having this very social but religious experience was truly beautiful. I'll bet. Sounds like it. They welcomed you. Oh, yeah. Very much so. Did they have the steak? I don't recall.

[46:31]

It's pretty much steak at Phantom Ranch. There must be a vegetarian option. Yeah, I did not eat steak. It's a lot of steak. I did not eat steak. And then after another, I don't know, six weeks of biking, I then flew back to New York on a cloudless day and was looking out the window and traversed very clearly. I could see many, many landmarks that I had just biked through that took me about two months to bike through and then flew through in about an hour and a half. And so there was just this huge collapse of space and time in that moment. Want to share that? That is beautiful. Thank you. I can attest to the wonder of seeing things at the speed of being on a bicycle going through them. But how lovely to also then get that other vantage point. I don't see anybody online yet.

[47:33]

Please speak up if you do get a questioner online because I can kind of not see that well. Any other comments? Jenny. She's behind Liz. So this is... Is it on? Can you hear me? Yeah. I'm intrigued by how you talked about Dogen's saying it's so important to put words to experiences. And I'm sort of feeling that now. But I'm finding it hard. And I'm also kind of... And I sort of understand why it's important. But then again, I'm saying, well, I kind of would be interested to hear you explain why it's important, if it can be explained with words.

[48:40]

Maybe it can't. And maybe any advice that you might have to someone who's just starting... to do that. Yeah. Well, I think I've said in another talk that I gave where I talked a lot about my writing path and my Zen path that like for me to write things down first, it's so I can actually understand what is going on inside, both in my heart and in my mind and in my body all like it's become a kind of a way, you know, for me to even bring out what's happening inside. So there's writing for you. It's just like sharing you with you, which is important. And then there's the kind of sharing which Dogen, I think, was talking more about, which was trying to articulate this, what it is we're doing here so that we can meet somewhere. But it's hard. I mean, language is amazing and language is limited. I mean, like if I say the word...

[49:43]

Let me think of one, you know. Cushion. I have all my associations with cushion of my whole life that go into that word and come with that word, and they're going to be different than yours. So, you know, you make your effort, and this is why we have to often go back and forth. I mean, it's kind of amazing to me. both in the writing realm and in the spoken realm, how often we misunderstand each other. It's like constant. It is constant. But yet you say, Dogen says we need to put words to our experiences in order to meet. So I guess we meet and then we further refine and it just further helps us to understand each other and ourselves. Yeah. Yeah. And there may be things you can't put words to, and that's okay too. Like I was trying to say, like that moment at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, I've been trying to describe that for a very long time.

[50:48]

And it's hard. And I end up having to use kind of a lot of words because it's kind of a wordless experience, but completely vivid and clear. Yeah. I see Mary and I see Linda. Maybe Mary, she's close. Oh, and then Vika. Thank you for your beautiful talk. This is just a comment that I don't think it's an accident that desert cultures have developed a ritual of full immersion in water as a symbol of rebirth. Because in a desert environment, when you go into water, you come out different. It is completely changing. Linda next, I think, and then we'll go to Baika. Hi, Linda.

[51:58]

That was a lovely experience listening to you this morning. And talking about words, thank you for bringing that up, has kind of... made me want to say something too. Maybe, so I wanted to say that maybe Dogen meant that it's necessary to connect, to communicate. Words are so powerful for us, you know, like it's the human superpower, complicated, and so words, yeah, are important, but it made me think of this But a lot of the Zen stories have the connection made in gesture or some other way. It made me think of a Zen story that always sticks in my mind, which is the parents are worried about their son. He's going bad, he's going wrong. They call a Zen master and they say, please come and stay with us for a little while and try to help our son get on a right path.

[53:03]

He says, okay. He comes, he stays three days. And he doesn't say a word to the son. And the parents are like, what kind of a master is this? And he just lives with them. And then as he's about to leave, it's sort of a courtesy to get down and lace up the straw sandals or something, which the son does this. And at that moment, the Zen guy... looks in the son's eyes, and a tear comes out of his eye and falls on the son's shoulder. The son changes. Anyway, I think that words mean all kinds of ways of connecting, coming out of isolation. Yeah, thank you so much for that. That's such a beautiful thought. There's wordless words, I think, right? Yeah. Wait for the mic, if you could.

[54:08]

Is there one online? Okay, after, yeah, I see we have a hand online. I had my own desert experience. Havasu Canyon, switchbacks all the way out. No creek. But somebody emptying their ice test. Oh. That was good because that was probably the first time I thought, wow, I could die. I could die from this. Anyway, it was beautiful but a little scary there at the end. So back to Chionil. So what I heard you say was the bottom of the bucket fell out and she had this awakening. and you know i think she went back to work and i'm thinking girlfriend like get on a plane go to new york join the chorus line something like that but i think it it's just a reflection of what's going on with me right so one could go back to being a servant in the convent but um if you're tired of being a servant care caretaking

[55:31]

I'll put it. You know, you're going to want something else, I think. In awareness, you might come to some other... Yeah. Some other, you know, path. Yeah. Yeah. I'm mentioning it because I was sort of surprising myself, like, God, Micah, what's going on? That you wouldn't want to go back to work? No. I would be getting on a plane and, I don't know, go to Paris. I want the joy, you know, right now. Yeah. It's all good. I mean, no matter what she did, right? And I think I actually skipped. I was thinking, like, you know, did she tell someone about it? Like, you know, maybe she went and told someone about it, you know, and shared it. I don't know. We don't know. But... And then they said, get back to work. I know, right. You have a job to do. We haven't heard from you back there, but we have to go online first, I think, right, Blake?

[56:37]

Is there a questioner? Let's go online because we're running out of time. We hardly have time, so Ed, be wonderful and brief. Hi. Hi. I thank you for your talk, and especially talking about the moon. Moon's a very precious planet for me as a cancer, but also I get to look at it every night when I take my dog for a walk. And I get bathed in feelings of insignificant. My life is... totally insignificant and yet precious because the moon has been around for billions of years and we're here for a very, very short time. And yet it's a great lesson in impermanence.

[57:41]

I just wanted to say that. Thank you. Thank you for taking it back to the moon there at the end. I think we're out of time. We have to end, but we'll have tea. We can talk more.

[57:53]

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