I vow to taste the truth of God's divine words. Good morning. Good morning. This is certainly a lovely morning. I don't know why so many of us are inside. I'm going to talk this morning about images. And I'm going to talk about some visual images that have been important to me. Mostly Buddhist images, but some from sources that are not necessarily labeled Buddhist, but to me fit into our practice. And some verbal images. And Ross, I would like to stop and give a little more time than usual to discussion because I would like, if people have images that are important to them, I'd like to leave a little time for them to share theirs with us.

[01:10]

Unfortunately, one of the images that always sticks in my mind whenever I have to give a talk, and over the years I've come to think of it as sort of a hideous, sexist image, is one that a person who pretends to speak or teach the Dharma without understanding it is like a beautiful woman who has black sesame seeds stuck in her teeth that show when she smiles. So I always floss my teeth before breakfast and after breakfast whenever I have to give a Dharma talk. But it always seems a little much after the introductory chant to pretend to teach the Dharma I think a lot of the pieces of what I'm going to say you may have heard from me either over coffee or in classes or different talks I've given but imagery and images have been a very important part of my Buddhist practice but I'm a little

[02:27]

afraid to talk about them without having them here or the slides or the pictures. So I haven't put them together in this way. But then I remembered an experience that I had and an experience that I also read about in one of Jung's writings where he talks about going with, I can't remember whom, but it was a woman to see some site, maybe in Egypt, of these beautiful frescoes, murals. And when they came back, when they met again, they would talk about them and share this experience and how much it meant to them. But then when he went back to see them again, he found that what they were talking about wasn't there. That somehow they had transformed the images in their head to fulfill their interior spirituality and it had become a more important thing to them than the images themselves that they had seen.

[03:49]

So I'm hoping that we can use our own mind in a way, our own experiences without having these things in front of us today. The first time I found that I had done this was giving a talk when I was Shuso here and I talked about how much a painting that I had seen rather recently by Picasso had meant to me in terms of this practice and it was called A Woman with a Spanish Shawl. And in it, the way I remember it, it was a rather loose drawing, beautiful pen drawing perhaps, or maybe loose oil paint in black on white, with a very detailed picture of just a little bit of the Spanish shawl in beautiful, bright colors, just very carefully painted, so that when you saw it, your own mind sort of fulfilled the whole shawl, the whole picture, it came to life in your mind.

[05:03]

Well, that was fine, and that seemed to me like a way that our practice works when we concentrate on one bit, on our breath, on one second. It brings in the whole universe to us. at times, anyway. But then Alan Snocki asked me, oh, I'd love to see a picture of this. And I went through every Picasso book that I have or know of, including the catalog of the show. And what I found was only a painting that was very, very dull. just somehow I completely changed this thing. I also remember as a child how much illustrations of books really got to me because the picture of the characters I had drawn in my mind was so exciting and you know, the artist hadn't even read these books.

[06:07]

I couldn't see how they had the nerve. Anyway, And when I came to the Zendo first, I had a lot of resistance to images and to altars, because in the tradition that I grew up, which was a Jewish traditional family, not orthodox, but tradition, images were considered just, Idols. I mean, I was even taught by my grandmother that I wanted a Christmas tree desperately. And I was taught by my grandmother that a Christmas tree was an idol, that it, you know, it was triangular and that it represented Trinity and, you know, you'd better not mess with that stuff. So, there was quite a bit of resistance at first to two images on altars.

[07:11]

I guess part of what I want to talk about is not so much specific images, but the way they have been used in Buddhist practice, or are used in Buddhist practice. Not necessarily in a Zen practice, but some Zen practitioners use them. The three things that in most traditions are usually on an altar are a stupa, a copy of the Prajnaparamita Heart Sutra, and an image of Shakyamuni Buddha. Sometimes the image of The stupa is only three stones piled on top of each other, and that represents the stupa. And one practice that many people have is copying a sutra over and over again.

[08:21]

This is a very old and traditional practice, but I know people who do have spent their time or a year every day writing out the Heart Sutra and find it a very, very rich practice. And at the beginning, usually what happens is when they start writing out, they write it out, you know, after breakfast as fast as they can before they go to work with their ballpoint pen on whatever they have handy. And then as time goes on, they find themselves looking for more and more beautiful paper and taking more and more care and they can see and feel something develop. And I've never done that, but it's something that I feel, you know, someday, when I get, when my knees won't work anymore and I can't find my way to the Zendo, I'm gonna sit down and start doing that. Another practice, which is a very traditional practice,

[09:25]

is in repeating an image over and over again. And there are some beautiful, there was once in the Berkeley Public Library, art room downtown, but it has disappeared, and I've never been able to find another copy of it, a whole volume of pictures of paper that was made by printing images over and over and over again very lightly, usually in woodblock prints. And then this paper is used to write sutras on. But the practice of doing it is part of the practice and an offering. And there are people in places that still do that, including in this country. And there is one woman whose name I don't know, But she makes, she draws on sheets of paper the image of Jizo over and over and over again, hundreds on each page.

[10:36]

There's probably 108 or some, one of those magical Buddhist numbers that I don't know. But they're quite lovely and they're quite free. And when you look at them, every Jizo is different. I guess Jizo, you know, is the Bodhisattva, is the special Bodhisattva that is the Bodhisattva of early childhood deaths, of miscarriages, of abortions. people who have to suffer with that, who have had those kinds of losses. And the practice of making GSO images, and the importance of them has grown, especially in Japan, where in many cases abortion is one of the prime methods of birth control.

[11:53]

This happens in a lot of countries where, I'm trying to think of a polite way to say this, that are male-dominated, especially in sexual practices, and the woman traditionally would not ever be able to refuse, for any reason, intercourse or demand the use of contraceptives. And there are many temples where there are hundreds and hundreds of these images and people come to make offerings to them. And also I've read just recently that among other people who come are the practitioners, the doctors, the nurses, the clinical workers who perform abortions because In our country, almost for political reasons and legal reasons, we deny the life of a fetus.

[13:06]

But the effect that it has on people often who have to continually work with this practice is difficult and they have to have some way of spiritually dealing with it. They come and have ceremonies as groups of people from hospitals at these shrines. The first time I heard about Jizo was through Yoshimura sensei, who was one of Suzuki Roshi's helpers. And he came from the north of Japan, where famine had been great. and where the actual practice of infanticide was necessary, you had to make the choice between your living children and your unborn child or your young child that's just been born.

[14:14]

And there often the three stones, which also represent the stupa, were seen piled in fields with maybe a rattle or an offering of food or a little bib. We have a Jizo image here that's often used for these ceremonies. And one of the practices that's really been wonderful for me has been able to work with Yvonne Rand upon occasion with people who have lost children or young children or have had abortions to practice with them making images not necessarily a Jizo image but some of them are not Buddhist practitioners so they may have their own important images of compassion that they'll make and then out of clay, usually.

[15:18]

And then in the afternoon, usually, we make the little bibs that are the little ruckuses, but usually out of red for the images. Anyway, it's always been a very, very deep and moving practice for me to be able to take part in that. I think one of the wonderful things about the Jizo though, is that in Japan they have Jizo festivals that are sort of like, almost like a Halloween in a way. Because it's sort of like, it's not really like Halloween, but kids will come and sit on the ground and it's sort of the grandparent holiday. They'll come with their grandchildren and There'll be presents for the kids and art supplies and the kids will sit in front of these local Jizo images that might be in a store or a local temple or in somebody's home on practically every corner in the city and draw and people will tell stories and

[16:31]

then there'll be all these prizes for children and lots of things to eat and an opportunity for children to make offerings and offer incense at the altars. And we've been trying to work on family practice more and more in this country in our practice places. And I hope someday we get around to doing a Jizo festival and everybody bringing the children of this community One of the things that I really enjoy doing here is about twice a year giving a class where people come and make their own images out of clay, and we see some slides. But one of the things that's greatly enriched it for me recently is that people have been bringing their children. And it is just wonderful to have this mixture of the generations of grandparent, my grandson came the last time, and parents and their children making these images.

[17:46]

If you go for Dokusan, in the Dokusan hut, there's a wonderful image made by Austin, whose mother is here, sitting on Mill's altar there, and I hope you take a look at it. It's just amazing to me how in one day people can produce these incredible images, each one different and each one really beautiful. There are a few sitting in the community room on the shelf that are there from a past image-making thing. And when, after the last groups are fired, I will put them in the community room and I hope people get a chance to see them. The first, one of the stories or one of the things, first time I read about it, I was reading about in this huge book on Japanese

[19:08]

temples and I actually ended up rolling on the floor reading it to figure out that here we are sitting with this practice and it's the story and it's well documented. There are all of these papers and things about it of how Buddhism came to Japan. and how it spread and its travails. And what happened was there were a lot of wars going on in Korea. And the Koreans needed warriors. And the Japanese were quite good warriors. And what they did was trade warriors to Japan for scribe because there was no written language at that point. I think this was 532.

[20:08]

And there was no formal written language. And they traded scribes, copies of sutras, and a beautiful image of Shakyamuni, a gilt image, for warriors to go to Korea to fight. I never know how to pronounce that word, but I'll try it. P-A-I-K-C-H-E. Anyway, they were, the Japanese were working with the empire, the Korean empire, that was called Pech, against the other factions in Korea. And what happened, the image came, and one of the families made a little temple for it, and they put the image in and then terrible drought and famine came to the land and the other groups said, oh no, no, no, it's bringing in this foreign religion that's really, you know, causing this thing.

[21:16]

So the images and the sutras were taken and thrown into the ocean. But then what happened was the temple of the opposite, group got struck by lightning and burned down. So the trade with Korea continued and more images came. And I literally rolled on the floor because I had this big book and I was reading it. And it just, you know, here I am sitting here and if it hadn't been for that stroke of lightning, where would I be now? Anyway, the power of images. One of the things about the Jizo images that are important to me, some of them are very formal and there are pictures of temples where they're obviously made in great numbers by trained artisans in the traditional way.

[22:27]

But the fact that any place can have a Jizo image, that three stones piled together is a Jizo image, that little stores will have these altars that are on corners in the town and they'll be opened for only on special occasions with a little door in them, or that they're like, I mean, if you've traveled in some of the Latin American countries or in Italy, where there are all these wayside shrines. They'll be all over the place in farm sheds and things. And made very, very simply. And one of the people who really... I'm going to try not to get into the history of our election. I won't. The people who interest me are these itinerant priests of the Edo area, Edo period, when if you were a farmer, and most people were, you were tied to the land.

[23:36]

You could not move around. You had to stay there. And the few people who really could move through the country were priests. And there were these, there were the temple priests who belonged to the great temples of the great families and the great dynasties. But there were these itinerant priests, sometimes who might even be self-ordained, who moved around the country. And probably the most famous of them in terms of image-making is Enku. And he... It's not clear when he was born, but he died in 1695, and sometime in his youth, after he was ordained, and it's not clear exactly how he was ordained, he vowed to make 120,000 Buddhist images. And some of them are quite, quite developed, and some of them are very roughly hewn, but the ones

[24:41]

that the photograph of them that I've seen that is the most moving is basically of the axe chips. These were hewn with axes and he would move from place to place and he would make images for people but then the remaining chips with a few cuts were made into little Buddha images. And there I took the privilege of putting several books out in the community room, which is also our library, and this is the commercial. If you're not a member, you should join, if only so you can take books out of the library. And at the back of the library, there are a lot of fine art books, and I put out some there so that if you have a chance during the tea period you might look at them and see some of these but especially some of the images that I'm talking about but especially this pile of what are basically ax chips just hundreds of them just this photograph with little tiny cuts and each of them is clearly an image of Buddha

[26:03]

I don't know what to say about it, but it moves me deeply somehow, this practice of somebody who went from place to place and in little towns and little villages, made images so that people could have their own altars. How are we doing on time? It's 19 minutes till the end. then I'm going to try to just share. One of the images, the verbal images that has been important for me through my practice has been one that I got from Kadagiri Roshi during a lecture in San Francisco and Sesshin many years ago.

[27:21]

And he talked about mudra, And, you know, we're always told these things about mudra, how your fingers should be just so it's a piece of rice paper, right, that you're supposed to hold. And he always talked about the strength in mudra also, of having the strength in gentleness. And I, you know, there are all these things that Mel will tell us that, well, you know, if you're falling asleep, it'll go like this. If you're tense, it'll go like this. If you watch it, it's a very good indication and you can catch things in your posture, in your mudra before it happens. I have a lot of trouble with mudras, none of those things. Mine tends to go like this. It tends to separate in the back. Don't ask me why. But I keep coming back to this image that Kadagiri had And he said, the mudra is very strong and very delicate at the same time.

[28:25]

I'm sure this isn't the way, but it's as if you're holding something very precious in you, like a baby bird that is injured and very scared and might fly away. So you need strength and delicacy at the same time. And over the different years during Sesshin, especially when that's come back to me, there have been different things in my hand suddenly appeared without me asking for it in many stilts. During the great boycott, I had taken my children to the co-op The first grapes after the boycott were lifted and there were these green grapes, these beautiful green grapes, and they said, what are they?

[29:29]

And I said, grapes. And they said, those are grapes? And one day while I was sitting and trying to keep my mudra strong and yet delicate, I suddenly realized there were these grapes in my hand, these green grapes. And in each one, there was a whole little green ocean floating. They have to be held very, very carefully with delicacy, but strength. That's been an important image for me. I'd like to leave time if people have something they would like to say about some image that's been important to them. Is that a hand raise or a stretch? You might have seen it.

[30:58]

Cells only. Images. Altar stuff. Incense. Just mainly Buddhist. Anyway, the man who runs the store said, oh, you left mine here. He gave me this stack of pictures. And I cut them up and covered the windows with them. And I wasn't home at the time, but it seems that there was someone who was a housekeeper was a devotee, Kuan Yin, and she was chanting her mantra to herself for praying. She came around the corner, and there were all these pictures of Kuan Yin. My wife let her come inside and showed her. Also on the wall, I have a color print of Kuan Yin, really like, that came from that same store, where she's standing up very serene. She's standing on the back of this Anyway, in all these images of Kuan Yin, there's 75 of them.

[32:22]

She's holding a vase and a willow spray, and I don't know what those are meant to represent. I know they symbolize something. Anybody help me out? I tend to make up answers if I don't know them. If I convince them, right? Robin? I, too, love poignants. And I keep looking for different images of it. Thank you for mentioning that store. I never mentioned that one. But I think the vase is supposed to represent the pouring out to humanity benevolence. And the willow spray, a lot of times you see the peach blossom and you see the willow spray and different plant forms. And I've heard that it's supposed to represent, what's the word? I'm getting a name blank.

[33:26]

It has to do with proliferation, you know, being abundant and being a pecan. And that kind of thing. Because there's this spring image of Kuan Yin. Kuan Yin in the spring. They have her doing all kinds of things. But one of the things that I... It's weird to talk about images because I think that they are like this concrete representation of something that you really cannot articulate. But it just speaks to you. And the Kuan Yin is like a link between heaven and earth. And it's the mother of the universe kind of deal. I love Kuan Yin. And I also am very heavy into the Nataraj, which is Shiva. I have a lot of images of Shiva. And I like the two-dimensional images and the three-dimensional images. And Kuan Yin also manifests with lots of arms. I like the images where Kuan Yin has 1,000 arms. And I look for different ones of those, too, because they really excite me.

[34:28]

And so the image of Nataraj is like Shiva is dancing on the world, and he's representing the different manifestations of reality. And he's got several arms, and he's holding different things, too. So all those little things, like the conch and the... I've got one that's got something like 50 arms, and each arm, each hand has something in it. You know, and you can just make up whatever you want to about what's in the hands. Everybody doesn't relate to the image, you know. And I think it's very personal. We have a Kuan Yin altar recently given to us by Jack Van Allen. And I knew when I gave this talk, I made notes and then I never opened them. And I knew I was going to forget the thing that, to me, been a really important part of my practice recently.

[35:31]

And I've been more and more interested in female images. And I've been making a series of images of Prajnaparamita, the mother of all Buddhas. And I just recently... On this side we have Kuan Yin, and there of course is Shakyamuni, and in the middle is Prajnaparamita. and on that side is Manjusri with his sword but also I didn't realize that one of the traditional things until very recently is that he has the sword for cutting through delusion but he has the lotus blossom which then develops into Prajnaparamita or the wisdom beyond wisdom and In the Prajnaparamita, which you can't see on this statue, the traditional symbol is of the Prajnaparamita with the lotus in three forms of the bud, the seed and the full-blown lotus.

[36:51]

And this represents the Buddha of the past, present and future. but also the transiency and the impermanence of life and at the same time of each individual life but at the same time the eternal continuance of life and in the traditional Tibetan figures you'll see that wrapped around and this one it's just engraved in the back of the lotus throne you can't see it from the front Anyway, I sort of like that image of the feminine coming out of the sword, the balance of the sword, and I've always appreciated the fact in our tradition, as an uncured feminist, that wisdom is represented by the female image and compassion

[37:53]

In this case, of course, through China with Kuan Yin by the female image, but also with Avalokiteshvara, compassion is the male image. And it seems to me a nice balance to have that. I'm sorry, I started giving another lecture. And there was a hand over here, and now I see. I just heard that the boss quite closely related. The one image that I miss in Buddhism is music, because you have that in several other religions, especially Christian religions. I mean, I personally have many musical images, and I wonder if there's some historical reason. Well, we have chanting, but it's not quite the same thing. received such wonderful inspiration and feedback, experiencing the types of things that Buddhism talks about when you have certain musical experiences?

[39:07]

And is it like a Jewish religion where early, very early on in the game, no idols? Did some, did Buddhists say no music? I'm curious. There, one of the people who who brings music into the Zendo is Reb. I know, but that's a very strange picture. Yes, it is. I mean, you can't get tired of singing when the Red, Red Robin goes bah, bah, bah. I don't know. But of course, the image thing was not just Jewish. It was, in the beginning, there were no images of Buddha. It was, you know, there was a whole period, but that was true in Persia and throughout a lot of the world then. It wasn't until many hundreds of years after his death that the Buddha image, that Buddha was represented as a person.

[40:09]

But I don't know the answer, and if anybody does, and I do miss it. And I always look forward to skitnock during practice period when we have music and the zendo usually is part of it. I see somebody smiling there. Yes? In Gon Gate Park in the Japanese gardens, there's a path. You know, which path? And it says, follow the path. As long as you brought up music, I keep this in my notebook. It's a notebook that I've had and has a picture of Pablo Casals at the very front. And this is from the writing of Pablo Casals when he was 93. And here he's playing the piano. Remember, he's a cellist.

[41:14]

Each day I am reborn. Each day I must begin again. For the past 80 years, I have started each day in the same manner. It is not a mechanical routine, but something essential to my daily life. I go to the piano and I play two preludes and fugues of Bach. I cannot think of doing otherwise. It is sort of a benediction on the house. But that is not its only meaning for me. It is the rediscovery of the world of which I have the joy of being a part. It fills me with the awareness of the wonder of life, with the feeling of the incredible marvel of being a human being. The music is never the same to me. Never. Each day it is something new, fantastic, and unbelievable. And to me, that's the best description of Mornings Awesome at its best for me.

[42:19]

I often think that when we chant without a whole lot of trouble, that could develop into some very nice music. And I'm often tempted, you know, kind of privately and wickedly, to just kind of take off and do some really quite medieval Palestrina-type chants. It wouldn't take a whole lot, really, to develop it into at least that medieval, early Renaissance kind of what was basically chanting, too. The place for you to visit is Mount Shasta Abbey, where this is very much part of their practice. And they do chant and the... I've just forgotten her name. Kenneth Roshi has a musical background and a big background in early music. And they chant musically. Well, it's plain chant.

[43:38]

It's Gregorian. And you don't have to go all the way to Mount Shasta. You can go over on the Manhattan River. In Albany, it's very nice. And Kenneth Roach, he's a superb musician. Cathedral quality. Just this penchant, it's very lovely, and it has this mode of communion, compassion, and, well, whatever. It's one of my favorite musical ways of expression anyway, and so it's really nice to hear it It's very nice. I wish we could do some of that here, and also some of the chanting in the Pali with the Indian, which is much more melodic in the Theravada tradition.

[44:54]

It would be great fun. At Tassajara, we always, often, chanted the refuges in Pali. We did it at Greenville, too. Greenville? Can you leave it? Namo Sanghagacchami Namo Sanghagacchami Sangham Sanghagacchami He's our compass.

[45:40]

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