This is a poem by Jane Hirshfield. It's called The World Loved by Moonlight. You should try, the voice said, to become colder. I understood it once. It's like the bodies of gods cast in bronze, buttressed in stone. Only something heartless could bear the full weight. You should try, the voice said, to become colder. I understood it once. It's like the bodies of gods cast in bronze, buttressed in stone. Only something heartless could bear the full weight. I thought of this poem yesterday when Mel was lecturing about equanimity and talking about unconditioned love.

[01:19]

This is the world loved by moonlight. Jane Hirshfield is a longtime Zen student, trained at the San Francisco Zen Center, and a wonderful poet, and has a face that looks like, I think she looks like an angel, or Jizo Bodhisattva. And this poem, I'm going to talk about it as a koan, because it certainly is a koan for me. I imagine she meant it as a koan, but I don't know. But it's ours now, so we can make of it what we will. I think it is a koan of the heart.

[02:28]

The World Loved by Moonlight. It's in a collection of poems called, the book is called, Lives of the Heart. So when I say koan, I think I want to define the word a little bit. We usually say that a koan is translated as a public case, kind of like a precedent, a waking up precedent, or something that points the way to liberation. As a precedent, something that went before points the way. But in Shouhaku Okamura's commentary on the Genjo Koan,

[03:31]

And I think he's in the process of translating a commentary by Uchiyama Roshi. So they, I don't know if it was both of them. At any rate, they discuss the word koan. I think it's actually from Dogen's perspective. The word ko is usually translated as public. It was translated to me recently as sharing, but it means public in the sense of equal. You know, Mel often talks about there's a horizontal aspect, the equality aspect, and the vertical aspect, the unique aspect. So the ko is this public aspect, this horizontal aspect. We speak of the public good, that's supposed to be the general good, that's something that serves all of us and not just some of us.

[04:33]

So that's ko. And the an is the uniqueness, the particular. So a koan is the meeting, the intersection of the horizontal and the vertical. The koan is now. Years ago at Tassajara, somebody asked Mel about what's beyond form and emptiness? And he said, now. So, right now. You should try, the voice said, to become colder. I understood at once. It's like the bodies of gods, cast in bronze, buttressed in stone. Only something heartless could bear the full weight.

[05:39]

It's a very powerful poem, and it's ambiguous. Which is what a good koan is, right? It's why we sometimes get upset when we hear a koan, because it doesn't, it doesn't It's not a brain event, it doesn't appeal to our linear minds. And sometimes it gets right through to our hearts, or it gets right through to our egos, and our ego gets upset because it feels threatened, because the khan is saying, no, no, no, you're not so important. You're not right in the middle, and the ego gets upset and then the response is irritation with the koan.

[06:57]

So I don't know if you feel irritation when you hear this poem. Some people do. So another way to think about koans is how, you know, Michael Wenger has done a, from San Francisco Zen Center, has done a, there's a really, there's a little thin book called 33 Fingers, and it's 33 modern day koans. Some of them are actually Zen student stories, and I think there's one that's, at least one, he's a baseball fan. Good man. He's, one of them is Yogi Berra's, I forget which Yogi Berra is, Yogi Berra is famous for, they're not really malapropisms, but they're just amazing sayings, pithy sayings. At any rate, Michael Wenger says that Koan is a Zen Rorschach test.

[08:07]

We project onto it and then we can see ourselves, So what could we take from this poem? How could it be useful to us? And what does it have to do with love? What does it have to do with unconditioned love? One way to read it is as a protest against coldness. And it's one of the many ambiguities is it's unclear, is this is Jane talking to herself? That this is an internal voice saying, maybe you should cool down. Maybe you should not be so pulled around by your emotions. Maybe you should not get tangled up so quickly. Or is this maybe Richard Baker?

[09:12]

who was probably her teacher, Richard Baker saying, you should cool down. Is this from someone else? And then the rest of the poem is a response. Or is it both of the above? Or something completely different? I don't know. But one way of reading it is as a protest against that voice saying, you should cool down, you should not get so entangled, you should not be pulled around by your emotions. Something that I have heard from a man that often sits over there. This is certainly a koan for me in my life. How to experience emotions, how to be fully human and at the same time not be pulled around, not get caught by my emotions, not wallow or obsess in my feelings.

[10:18]

That's a koan for me. It has been at any rate. So it might be a protest against this suggestion of coldness. It might be an assertion of humanity. I don't want to be like those gods. I don't want to be stone. I don't want to be cast in bronze. I don't want to be heartless. That's not it. So what kind of an image? It's not an attractive image. The bodies of gods cast in bronze, buttressed in stone. Is that how we see our Buddhas? Are they cast in bronze? We do do that.

[11:22]

We make a thing of that guy. That's a guy. It's just a guy. It's just a person like us. We're Buddha. It's not a thing. Buddha is not a thing cast in bronze. Things are cast in bronze, right? We do that in our lives, in our experience. We have to separate from our experience, right? Our ultimate experience is unity. We have to separate from that, and I think Karen touched on this, that we have to name it. in order to simply function in the relative world, in this world that we find ourselves in. This is not solid, right? But I have to also experience it as solid so I don't bump into it. Do you understand the distinction I'm making?

[12:23]

Is this clear? Okay. But we create problems for ourselves when we forget that that altar is not solid when we make an object of it and forget the connection and only remember the separation. So she's protesting against this idea of separation, of making objects.

[13:25]

It's one way to read it, right? And another part of that, a way to understand it in this sense of protesting against coldness, kind of cry of her heart, She says, only something heartless could bear the full weight. Who wants to be heartless? We don't want to be heartless. So what is she saying? I don't want to be heartless. Dongshan, Tozan, the To in Soto Zen, when he first heard the Heart Sutra, no eyes, no ears, no nose, and so on, he was a young, he was like 13 or something, he said, but I have eyes and I have a nose. And his teacher knew that this was somebody that had a deep understanding already and should

[14:34]

be encouraged to study and sent him off to some Zen master to study. Because you see, it got to him. It wasn't just words to him. It got through to his ego. His ego, his heart was available for the Heart Sutra. So there's a way in which it's natural to protest when you're heartless. I don't want to be heartless. I have a heart. And that has to be the dharma too. My emotions have to be the dharma too. If everything is the dharma, then this has to be the dharma too. It's one of Leslie James, down at Tassajara, it's one of her mantras, and I find it very useful.

[15:38]

When something's difficult or distasteful, to remind myself, this has to be the Dharma too. Mara, the evil one, is the Dharma too. George Bush is the Dharma too. Those students in Iran who apparently are immolating themselves, they're the Dharma too. And Jane Hirshfield's heart is the Dharma too, in ours. This is the world loved by moonlight, and it's about the heart, and it's by a Zen student. So where's the emptiness in it? Where's another way of understanding it? Only something heartless could bear the full weight.

[16:42]

Another thing that came up for me is that she can be understood as saying the world the pain of the world, the cries of the world, it's too much for one person. Because we do have hearts. So we can understand it that we can only do this together. That this is about Sangha practice. That we practice together and we help each other bear the full weight. We help each other learn how to have an empty heart, which I think is ultimately what the poem is about, or it is what it's about for me these days. By practicing together, we help one another see ourselves, we help one another see our stuff, and

[17:55]

we help one another, we make a practice container together. So we kind of give each other permission to be ourselves. But in the Sangha, you get to be yourself and you have some leeway, some permission to explore what it means. You know, Suzuki Roshi says, when you are you, Zen is Zen. But that's kind of a scary prospect sometimes, to actually be willing to be yourself. So we give each other permission here to work on that, and to screw up, and to show ourselves. And in this container, to be willing to look at each of us at our bucket of yuck, to fall apart during Sashin, so we can see it. So we do that together, and then we can take it out in the world and do it.

[19:04]

So the emptiness way, the moonlight, you know in Zen, the moon is an image of Enlightenment. You might contrast it in this poem with what she doesn't mention, which is the sun, which we often think of as the sun as the heart. Thich Nhat Hanh talks about the sun as the heart, and the sun is hot. And the moonlight is kind of cool. And that's the contrast, you know. I don't want to give up passion. but I do want to give up attachment. At least, I don't want to give up love. I don't want to give up caring, and I do want to give up attachment. I've been crying some, this Sashin, and saying,

[20:20]

What comes up, it's not something that I'm thinking, but what comes up is, I want to set it down. Please help me set it down. Without more definition. It's clear enough. So what would it be like loving the world by moonlight? with unconditioned love, without a certain kind of heat, maybe with great warmth, but not the heat of attachment, what would it be like? Would it be heartless? I don't think so. There are other ways of thinking about the heart. You know, it's not the love of romantic love, which is nothing but tangles, but unconditioned love, the heart that's nothing but heart.

[21:33]

So we could say no eyes, no ears, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind, no heart. It doesn't mean you don't have a heart, it means that it's a heart without knowing it's a heart. It's not a self-conscious heart. It's permeated by heart. The whole body is heart. So there's not some little heart in the middle that you have to protect. There's just heart, hearting. So it's not about being a god cast in bronze. But maybe it is about being heartless in this sense, about not having something to protect, so you don't have to have the bronze, you don't have to have the stone, if you're completely heart.

[22:38]

There's a koan about Avalokiteshvara, the Bodhisattva that hears and sees the suffering of the world. And it involves those same two guys, Yunyan and Daowu, that Lori was talking about. Yunyan is kind of the younger brother monk, and Daowu is the older monk. Yunyan was the sweeper, you may recall. And in this one, Yun Yan asks Dao Wu about Avalokiteshvara with a thousand, sometimes Avalokiteshvara is pictured with a thousand hands and eyes. And Yun Yan says, what about that? And Dao Wu says, well, how do you understand it? And Yun Yan says, all over the body, hands and eyes.

[23:42]

And Dao Wu says, pretty good. Pretty good, you got 80%. And Yun Yan says, yeah, yeah, well, how do you understand it? And Dao Wu said, throughout the body, hands and eyes. Throughout the body. So nothing, nothing but hands and eyes. Nothing but response, seeing and responding. And you notice it, Avalokiteshvara is the Bodhisattva of compassion. There's nothing there about heart. Simply responding. Uncovering the response. No separation, no thought, no idea, no attachment, no view, no ego, just heart.

[24:44]

And I think this uncovering, uncovering the appropriate response, uncovering the heart, this is the koan of our lives. Uncovering our humanity. That's the koan of our lives. setting down all the extra that we add on to it and allowing this lightness, this heartlessness to arise. So you should try, the voice said, to become colder. I understood at once. It is like the bodies of gods Cast in bronze, buttressed in stone, only something heartless could bear the full weight.

[26:01]

So do you have some thoughts? Do you have another facet or whatever? Meryl and then Jake. Thanks a lot. That was a really rich poem. My projection on today's workshop test is lost. And as Blanche was saying, often we sit in sadness. I think there is a lot of that in our practice. The Japanese love the season of autumn, and they go to cherry blossoms for all their paintings of autumn. When your perception deepens and your focus becomes more intense, there's a point at which it becomes almost too acute to bear. If you can think of the movie The Hours and Virginia Woolf's experience, actually almost oversensitized.

[27:16]

to find support. So I don't find those stone and bronze statues to be crushing, but rather to be supporting in the face of what is essentially our human story, which is loss. And separation, yeah. I bring to this my work, a fifth grade teacher, so all these things come up, just got out of school, and of course teach astronomy. And I was thinking that, you know, moonlight is sunlight. There's no moonlight, there's sunlight. And there's earthlight, too. And the sun hits the earth, it's reflected to the moon, we see the sun then, too, in the crescent stage. So it's all the peace. that coolness is also warmth.

[28:37]

Yeah. Well, I know when Meryl was speaking, I was thinking about that notion of that it's reflected. And, you know, there's a way in which, you know, we speak of the hazy moon of enlightenment that we never really see clearly. You know, we see our ideas of what happens. We don't see actuality. We can be actuality, but we can't see it or we can't know that we know it. We can kind of do it. Maybe in an enlightenment experience, you have a time of knowing it more directly, but you don't live there. And I think one of the things that Dogen is about is telling us to get over it. You know, and maybe that's the kind of, Meryl, that's one of the things that came up, this notion that part of the sadness, I think, is this, that we have to let go of or come to terms with this longing for ultimate connection.

[29:41]

Because our experience is separation. So... Doug? That poem had a strong effect on me. In fact, I had to bite my tongue to keep from crying. Why didn't you cry? No, I'm serious. I cried inside. And it did bring up feelings of loss. But what it brought up also is that it's true coldness can help you to carry the weight coldness can also detach you from the pain.

[30:49]

So the suffering, I don't think we should run away from suffering. So we don't and we don't have to be strong, we can still grow. Thank you. Let's see, Greg and Linda, did you have your hand up? No? Yeah, I'm sorry, I don't know your name, but okay, so Greg and Alexandra and Rondi and Sue, and if you guys could remember that, I'd appreciate it. Well, I heard the poem not much differently than Doug and Meryl. It seemed a bare statement of fact. We're not heartless, and we're not made of stone. And that is the fact of our lives and the fact of our suffering, but I think it's a better time to say, too, the fact of everything wonderful, too.

[32:02]

And so the loss was there in the poem and the suffering, but also I felt or not wanting it any other way. Maybe I'll segue by saying I felt she didn't want it any other way also, and I was pleased maybe for egotistical reasons they chose a poem, a summer poem too, and maybe this is a little bit literary, but I think it, there's your poems and Zen, Somebody has said that all good poems are ironic, and I felt she wasn't protesting. And there's that word, it's, or it's like. What is that? What's like? And zazen is when you're sitting and you are trying to get rid of self-cleaning. And you do do something with the pain.

[33:07]

say, there's pain, or there's a fly, or there's this, and I'm not supposed to attach to it. And does that make me more heartless? And I think what she's doing as an ironic poet is saying, you might seem heartless, but that's just seeing. And to look like that is the way to love, like moon. You shine in the White House, you shine in the sun. Non-passionate, but I don't know if you all know that passion means suffering, and compassion means good suffering. Actually, I'm not sure how that was stoned. It's just a cold kind of compassion. Like a cold pack. You know, I was realizing that, you know, Mel was talking, and he often talks about, you know, luminous mirror wisdom, which is a reflection.

[34:11]

Ronnie? Yes, thank you for your talk, Mary. What I wanted to say was, sort of, perhaps this sort of follows the thread that Greg and Alexandra were pursuing, and that is, in a practice discussion with you recently, I brought a family situation to you, and I don't know if you recall this, and your counsel was, stay close and do nothing. Do you recall this? I often say that. Oh, I do. Yes, I do. It's not a test. I think, to me, that's another way of offering this kind of advice, to stay close and do nothing.

[35:13]

And sort of interestingly, as a result of that discussion, a Buddhist book was sent through the mail, And a telephone message was received, and my sister said that she had taken out her meditation cushions. I don't know how many times she's used them, and was sitting. Thank you. Yes. Thank you very much. I am crying too, and I'm not exactly sure why. of nostalgia. 29 years ago, when my mother died, this is the image that came to me from this poem.

[36:20]

I was sitting on the deck of our house that evening, and the moon was full. And I was washed in the moonlight. And it was very comforting. The coolness allows like a cool hand on a fevered brow. It's comforting. The coolness is comforting. And when I'm banging myself against the bronze, and they don't care, somehow, at some point, in the moonlight, it's okay. It's just the way it is. Yeah. I had immediate, very strong reaction.

[37:22]

Which is hard to put into words. The more I sit, the more I understand now, my experience, that what's being asked of me is to continually give up myself. And when I give up myself, my attachments, and I think of the heart as being the seat of that place, the fire of passion and ideas of who I am always are here. And as I sit those down and understand What Mel was saying about the impersonal and the personal, love can come forth. It's like that statue that has the equanimity to hold everything without my personal reaction. And in that is the ability to meet all suffering. Are you familiar with the song of the Jewel Mirror Samadhi?

[38:36]

You know, you remind me of that, when the stone woman gets up to dance, the wooden man begins to sing. Maybe that's it, maybe that's it. Okay, this should be the last one. loved it and I needed it today in a way that so it reached something open and it reminds me of a discovery I made I think after my son started doing drugs you know life became too much debate in the ordinary way and there was a day when I was awash with love and compassion and helplessness and all of those things. And I was driving down the street and I felt in myself for the first time a steel rod.

[39:38]

And I just want to hear it for the fronds. And that steel rod is an essential part of my Buddha nature that I once again recently, you know, these three days of session, Asking to lay down something that feels too much to bear and I had lost this deer rod and when I hurt the coin I had it back and it's a very essential part of being there for ourselves and others. Is being heartless in that particular kind of way. As calm and dense and solid as stone. And I just thank you. That's really helpful, thank you. I was understanding what I was saying as setting my ego aside, basically. But it's, as usual, more complex than that.

[40:41]

Duh. Beings are numberless.

[41:05]

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