I vow to taste the truth of the Tathagata's words. Good morning. I'd like to introduce Karen Sondheim. For those of you who don't know her or knew, Karen is the head student, or shuso, for our six-week practice period that we do every spring. Karen's been practicing since the 70s. She began over in Dwight Way before we moved to this property in 1979. In that time, she's sort of come and gone, and come and gone, and she's practiced Vipassana and Tibetan Buddhism as well. But always, her center of gravity comes back to the Berkeley Zen Center, and she'll be there for some time. Now, she's also the co-tenzo, or co-head cook, while Alexandra takes care of organizing all of our cooking projects. And as well, she's the director of the Castro Branch of the San Francisco Library System.

[01:03]

And it's always an interesting job. Interesting cast of characters. She lives with her partner, Nancy, in the open hills, commutes over to San Francisco five times a week. It's a more than full-time job, as well as organizing our cooking here. I have the big fortune to give her a ride over to San Francisco, because I also work here in San Francisco once a week. And so we spend the whole time talking like crazy, gossiping about the food that's in here, and analyzing all the personalities here. And having Dharma talks with each other. And as I say, the quality of my driving decreases proportionally to the interest of the conversation. Anyway, I really enjoy Karen's very direct and practical, earthy nature.

[02:06]

I'm really happy that she's here. Thank you, Ron. Good morning. Good morning. It's traditional for the teacher to give the head student a koan to study. So I'm going to talk about the koan that I received from Sojin Roshi. And this koan is about prajna, or wisdom. And that fits in well with the theme of our practice period, which is the Heart Sutra in everyday life. This koan is case number 90 in the Blue Cliff Record. And it's called Qimun and the Essence of Prajna, or it's also known as Qimun's Body of Wisdom. And for those of you who aren't familiar with the Blue Cliff Record, it's a collection of 100 koans compiled by Zen Master Setso in the 11th century. And Setso wrote a verse after each koan, which points to its meaning.

[03:10]

And about a century later, Zen Master Engo wrote an introduction, as well as commentaries on each case and on Setso's verse. So I'm going to read the introduction, and then the case, and then the verse. So here is Engo's introduction to the koan. As to what stands prior to the word, not one phrase has been handed down, even by the thousand holy ones. One thread maintains its continuity before your eyes through countless aeons. It is all pure and naked, with hair erect and ears pricked up. Tell me, what is this about? So here's the koan. A monk asked Qimun, what is the essence of prajna? And Qimun answered, the oyster swallows the full moon. Then the monk asked Qimun, what is the action of prajna?

[04:18]

And Qimun replied, the hair becomes pregnant under the full moon. So I think I'll repeat that. A monk asked Qimun, what is the essence of prajna? And Qimun answered, the oyster swallows the full moon. The monk asked Qimun then, what is the action of prajna? And Qimun replied, the hair becomes pregnant under the full moon. Is that hair H-A-R-E? As in rabbit. You people like it really complicated. Okay, so and here's the verse that Setso wrote.

[05:25]

A piece of emptiness transcends description. This has made heaven and earth remember kshunyata. The oyster conceives by the moon, amazing. Monks ever since have done dharma battle on it. So I'm going to get back to this later. Sure, a piece of emptiness transcends description. This has made heaven and earth remember kshunyata. Kshunyata is one of Buddha's disciples. The oyster conceives by the moon, amazing. Monks ever since have done battle on it. And this translation is from the book, Two Zen Classics, with a commentary by Katsuki Sakida. So for the past few weeks, we've been talking about some lines in the Heart Sutra. Form is emptiness and emptiness is form.

[06:30]

In Zazen, we experience more emptiness and in everyday life, we experience more forms. Of course, we see both form and emptiness in Zazen and form and emptiness in daily life, hopefully. I think that the hardest part is seeing emptiness in the forms we encounter in daily life. Whether these forms are people that we encounter or whether they're our own thoughts or feelings. Out in the world, what we encounter is so unpredictable or else sometimes we think it's too predictable or we think we know what we're seeing day after day and we get stuck in ideas. And in the high speed of daily life, it's harder to maintain strong mindfulness. So greed, hate and delusion spring up quickly before we're aware of it and we get attached to forms. When Qimun answers the monk's question,

[07:34]

what is the essence of prajna? He responds, the oyster swallows the full moon. The metaphor of the full moon is commonly used in koans to represent enlightenment. And the oyster and the rabbit becoming pregnant under the full moon come from Chinese folk tales. It was said that under the full moon, oysters rise to the surface of the water, open up and by receiving the moonlight, they conceive a pearl. It was also once believed that all rabbits were female and that they went out at night and they would open their mouths and swallow the moonlight and become pregnant. So my first question was, what does it mean to swallow the full moon or to swallow enlightenment? And I thought of the phrase moon in a dew drop and then I imagined all these oysters floating on the surface of the water,

[08:38]

open wide, reflecting the moonlight. And then I imagined the reflection of the moon on the water, on the ocean, on all the ripples and I could see glistening sparkles of moonlight like each thing in the universe practicing enlightenment. The koan says that the oyster gives birth to a pearl after swallowing the full moon. And as we know, pearls do come from oysters and pearls are created by an irritation by the sand and this irritation gives birth to the pearl. So in Zazen, we sit still and we practice with our irritations and our difficulties. As I said in an earlier talk, I've had a problem with thinking too much and this makes it challenging to sit Zazen

[09:38]

and it also makes it very challenging to work with a koan because when sitting Zazen or working with a koan, one has to drop the thinking mind. Sometimes I would call my thinking obsessive or relentless and it might not be obvious to everyone who doesn't suffer through this but thinking can be quite painful and if it's not the content of the thoughts, it's the sound of the thoughts. On a difficult day, it can be like a jackhammer or a lawn blower going on and on but on a lighter day, it might be like the humming of a refrigerator that just never stops, that never goes off and I found myself pleading for silence. Relentless thinking is a kind of anxiety and it arises out of fear and sometimes the matter is,

[10:39]

the subject matter can be emotionally charged like having an argument, repeating an argument, having it go on and on and rehearsing an argument and other times, it's something very tame like planning, calendar, grocery shopping, chatting about the weather but thoughts like this are like building blocks and they create a house or a prison that I call me. Buddha once said that all suffering is fear. It's the fear of losing something that we want to keep or the fear of gaining something that we don't want to have. The thinking mind is always in the past or in the future and it's like living in a dream. Since thoughts don't hurt physically in the same way that a throbbing leg might after many hours of zazen,

[11:41]

it's often difficult to awaken to the present moment and through my years of practice, I thought that those thoughts, my thinking mind, my anxious mind stood between me and enlightenment but somehow I've mistaken these thoughts or my mind that thinks them as being a solid thing or a bombardment and it was definitely irritating and there have been times when I have been able to not fight this thinking mind and that's when there's been some stillness. The word which drew me the most in this dialogue between qi mun and the monk is the word swallow. The oyster swallows the full moon and being the diligent librarian that I am, I consulted the Oxford English Dictionary

[12:42]

and looked up the word swallow and there was quite a long entry in there. So I found two phrases for the word swallow in the dictionary. One was to occupy wholly and the second was to accept without opposition or protest. So the way that I've been working with this koan is to try to fully feel this irritation, this relentless bombardment of unwanted thoughts and to refrain from protesting. Sagitta has a commentary on one of the lines in Setso's verse, the line, the oyster conceives by the full moon, amazing. This is what he says, the oyster swallows the moonlight and produces a pearl. The hare conceives its young by the full moon. These are mysterious happenings

[13:43]

but the same thing happens in absolute samadhi in which the pearl of the mind is produced before one is aware of it and also in positive samadhi in which one's consciousness is brilliantly illuminated as if by bright moonlight. So I'm struck by the mysteriousness of this process. How does it happen that one can bring forth this pearl out of our pain and suffering? We know that trying to achieve happiness or gain enlightenment or make our difficulties go away never brings us anything that we can count on or hold on to. It seems that only by swallowing our difficulties, by being with them wholly or being one with them as Sojin Roshi likes to say, can we see the enlightenment of the full moon within them.

[14:48]

And at that point we're no longer relating to ourselves and this world dualistically. At that moment we know the pearl that is our mind's true nature. The rabbit is moving under the light of the moon when she becomes pregnant. She opens her mouth and swallows the light. It is said that if there's moonlight, bright moonlight, there are many offspring. But if there's no moon, then there are few offspring. I had an experience about six months ago. I'd been attending herb school. I went to the California School of Herbal Studies in Forestville for a nine-month weekend program in herbal medicine. So on top of my 60-hour work week,

[15:50]

I spent one very full weekend every month in Forestville, which is near Sebastopol. And it was a 90-minute drive from my home in Oakland. In addition to the weekend commitment, there was a lot of homework. Not only reading textbooks, but doing hands-on herbal projects like making tinctures and salves and lotions, glycerides, all those kinds of things. So it was a lot of work. We also did gardening, drying of herbs. And I have a very hard time keeping my life together without any extras. So generally, adding this year of intensive herbal medicine study was a very big stretch for me. So one of the weekends, it was early on a Saturday morning, and I was getting ready to go. And I was trying to remember everything I had to bring, all my projects, all my supplies,

[16:53]

my food, my lunch, everything. School wasn't near any restaurants or anything like that. So I kept thinking also about all the things that I wasn't getting done, like the laundry, the grocery shopping, domestic responsibilities. And I got in the car and I was late. And I started driving. And the fact that I was late and somewhat unprepared, I didn't have enough time to get all my homework accomplished. I was in a hurry and I felt irresponsible and that I was spread too thin on every front. And I started to feel like a failure. And then I started to feel angry. And as the traffic got worse and worse, I started to get angrier.

[17:55]

And then I found myself angry about being angry. And unfortunately, I'm not proud of this, but my car with the windows rolled up has often been the venue for my release of rage. And so I have done a fair amount of yelling in the solitude of my car on the freeway. So I headed toward the San Rafael Bridge and the frustration kept mounting. And I cursed myself for taking on this herb school commitment. And I found myself, I knew I did not have a pleasant facial expression as I looked around at the other cars. So finally, I got to the toll booth and I managed to get my three dollars out. But the man who took the tolls

[18:58]

was waving like this. But I stopped there and he said, the car in front of you paid your toll. Just go on. And before I knew what was happening, my anger was nowhere to be found. I can't really describe what happened except that I was overcome with a feeling of goodwill and an unexplainable sense of release. And this arose mysteriously out of this kindness. Many years ago, it was around 1986, 1987, I was on a Vipassana meditation retreat at the Santa Sabina Monastery in San Rafael. This was before Spirit Rock came into being. And they like to talk about meta practice

[19:59]

or loving kindness practice. And people were asking how to practice loving kindness in our everyday lives. And it came down to doing small things. So they came up with this list of little things you could do, little meta things you could do. And one of them happened to be, you pay the bridge toll for the person behind you. And I remembered as I was halfway across the San Rafael bridge, I remembered this. But at that time when they made the suggestion, the bridge toll was only a dollar. And out of a Vipassana retreat, you see a lot of cars in the parking lot and they have a bumper sticker that says things like, practice random acts of kindness. And when I first saw that bumper sticker,

[21:02]

I was very moved by it. And then I would see that bumper sticker over and over again and over time, I was less moved. And I think it was just because of seeing the same thing over and over again, not that it had any less meaning, but things, I formed an idea in my mind and I actually started to dismiss it a little bit. So I think perhaps in our minds, we hear something so many times and then dismiss it. I want to go back to Setso's verse. The first two lines of the verse read, a piece of emptiness transcends description. This has made heaven and earth remember Shunyata. Another translation reads these lines slightly differently. It says, one piece of empty solidity

[22:08]

beyond saying and feeling. From this, humans and gods see Subhuti. So I'd like to end with a story about Shunyata. Subhuti or Shunyata was one of Buddha's disciples. And the story goes that he was sitting quietly on a cliff when all the gods showered him with flowers to praise him. Subhuti said, who is showering down these flowers in praise? And a god answered, I am Brahma. Subhuti said, why are you offering praise? The god said, I honor you for being good at expounding the transcendence of wisdom. Subhuti said, I have never spoken a single word about wisdom. Why offer praise? The god said, you didn't speak and I didn't hear.

[23:13]

No speaking and no hearing is true wisdom. Are there any comments or questions? Yes. What do you take to be the meaning of the last line of that story? wisdom comes from understanding no self

[24:35]

and no other. This column brings up something kind of interesting for me because I spent a long time working as a scientist and back in the time, those days people actually had misunderstanding about how things actually worked. So they thought that rabbits became pregnant by swallowing the moon instead of having sex with other rabbits. And they thought that oysters had pearls by swallowing the moon. And we sort of know that doesn't, it isn't true. So what's a better metaphor for the, we know that they're much more sort of earthy internal processes actually. And you know the same nirvana sort of based on this understanding of fire that isn't correct either.

[25:36]

Now from a scientific point of view. And I'm just wondering, given that we know that the belief behind the story is just a fairy tale, what is a better, is there another way? How do you hold that in terms of understanding enlightenment? Is enlightenment also a fairy tale? Well, first of all, even though it comes from an old belief, the idea is still the same. He asks about the essence of wisdom and the action of wisdom. And it's very similar. The oyster conceives by moonlight and the hare conceives by the moonlight. So, I actually like that metaphor. I don't know if I can come up with a better one.

[26:41]

I like it, but it's not how things actually happen. Yes. It's not that people believe that rabbits became friends with X-Y. Nobody believed that. It's a child's fairy tale. Like a stork putting daisies, and then you find daisies in a cabbage. Nobody believes that. But it's kind of a cute child's tale. But people believed that everybody knew that pregnant rabbits. Rabbits are a symbol of productivity. So, I could continue the discussion, but I'd like a few more minutes. Ross. Thank you. I really enjoyed your talk, and I just had a vision of you and Ron driving. I behave when I'm with Ron.

[27:44]

And Ron, you know, waving around at you guys, doing a Darwin dialogue, and you're screaming. And you're careful out there on the road. Um, on a more serious note, how do you not get habituated to bumper stickers, which actually evoke something that's really important to understanding this life? Like, you could refer back to that random act of kindness of getting this 12 paid for, and how you can just settle into it. Do you have any tricks or techniques or thoughts on how to keep it fresh and not just keep going back to the same old thing? You just keep having it appear stale, and it's like not relevant anymore. But you said it's still important, but doesn't quite hit the same fire. Well, I have to say that I will never look at that bumper sticker the same way again. That had such a big effect on me, that incident,

[28:46]

that I will always remember it when I see that bumper sticker, even though I went through years of having a somewhat of a dismissive tone when I saw it. I think in everyday life, it's easy to dismiss things that we see all the time out of habit, or to think of things in the same way. People, to have ideas about people and about situations. And that's one thing I love about the Heart Sutra, and why I'm so happy that we're studying it during this practice period, because it's a constant reminder that we have to drop these preconceived ideas, even if we've seen it 50 times a day, to look at it afresh. Helen. Could you read the first sentence of the introduction?

[29:49]

Yes. The first sentence is, As to what stands prior to the word, not one phrase has been handed down, even by the thousand holy ones. When Ross was asking his question, it occurred to me that that, and I'm not exactly sure how, but that that line speaks to that question. It's like we become habituated to the word, and it loses meaning, impact. I mean, you'll never forget that now, because what somebody did had nothing to do with words. They just acted. And I think some of the difficulty that we have in classes and in lectures is,

[30:52]

well, I act, so this form is emptiness. Does that become a proper statement? And to me, it's like the question that Ross said, how do we actually make these things live? And what I like, I guess, about that story is, is the story of words. There's no words, which is not to say we can't get away without them, either. But it just occurred to me that that, it may just be a problem we have to deal with, this problem situation. And that that's also wonderful, but it's an irritation that we need to throw. Thank you. I think every idea eventually wears out, if it's full on, there's no idea that we made a lot of time for the petition.

[32:01]

I was wondering, from what you said, that thoughts come and how something is bracketing them, you swallow it all, what happens then? Well, the thoughts, it's no longer between me and my thoughts. The thoughts are no longer these, look the same way as something solid that I'm either clinging to or trying to get rid of. But if you're asking what that's like, I don't think I could describe it. Greta.

[33:09]

I missed your time as Sashin director, but my very first Sashin here, I went to the Sashin director, I was so grateful. And I said, may you be completely enlightened. I thought that was a good thing to say. And she told me, we're already enlightened. And it was a great shock. But in your koan, what I'm seeing in your koan, is that something is produced, the pearl is produced. Mokugyo holds that pearl. So, I don't know what to ask, but it's in there, something is produced. I think you're responding a little bit to your question.

[34:17]

It's just something we, I couldn't find the words for that. But then we go back to this first line of Engo's introduction as to what stands prior to the word, not one phrase has been handed down. Nancy. Well, I was thinking about my own practice, and I was thinking, I can be an irritant, maybe we can all be irritants, sort of a big oyster here. I'm rather easy on myself, and I know I have a reputation for being myself, but we all know I'm also easy on myself. Particularly Gary Zazen, I sometimes think of myself as Oaktown, and ECC as Berkeley.

[35:28]

There's so many accomplished people here, who really respect their thoughts so much more than I do. To me, it's kind of like, okay, you know, my grocery list and stuff. And I do believe in form and emptiness, and that's that. I struggle with it some, but I like to believe, you know, I like the religious part, I believe in form and emptiness, and it rewards me, you know, at times. Oh, and I suffer a lot, too, if you all want to hear my story individually. But anyway, I never thought of myself as an irritant, and that's maybe not so bad. I'll try not to be late. Well, I knew this nun once, a Benedictine nun who was a real peace activist, and she always used that metaphor about the oyster and the irritant and the pearl.

[36:36]

And she always said, we all have to be irritants to make a better world. Do we have time? Okay, anyone else? Yes. I've been ambivalent about whether to say this, but since there are two nuns, I'll say it. About the bumper strips. I have a friend who really dislikes those bumper strips. And a lot of the reason was that in a work situation, there was a person who would do these random acts of kindness. But they were set up in a way where it was very much expected that you would then respond with some equally elaborate random act. And I'm sure my guess is that the person who began this really had in mind that there would be this whole workplace full of wonderful surprises.

[37:44]

But my friend experienced it as irritating and demanding. And as a matter of fact, I remember we were laughing one time because we saw somebody had modified the bumper strip. And the whole bumper strip says, practice random acts of kindness and senseless acts of beauty. And somebody had cut off the back, so it just said, practice random senseless acts. I think the instance that you recant is because someone really did it. There was no way for you to know who that person was and go reciprocate. They really did it. And I just, if I may just take another minute or so, it reminded me, I was talking recently with a friend whose mother died recently and we were talking about what happens when that happens.

[38:50]

And I was recounting when my mother died suddenly of a heart attack and I was visiting Professor Chico. And I rushed home for the funeral and I was very distraught and unhappy and crying and so forth. And when I went to the funeral home, the casket was there and where people can come and pay their respects, it was closed. But you know, the casket was there and there was a book that you could sign. There was a huge display of flowers. Beautiful, huge thing. And I didn't know where the flowers came from and there was a little card that said that they came from my colleagues at Chico. And I was so moved. I can't tell you. I mean, I just felt so supported and held by these people who were my, you know, I was visiting professor. And later I found out that the person who went around and collected all the money was the guy who was on the other side of a dispute that was going on within the department from me.

[39:56]

And yet he did this. And you know, one could say, oh, he did it out of guilt. I don't care. I mean, he did it. I don't think he did it out of guilt. I think he did it out of the fact that he realized I was in the wrong gang and my mother died. And you know, it makes me shaky even now to talk about it. It was so moving to me. It also brought home to me the idea that many people said, oh, flowers at funerals, that's what it was. Money, children, wonderful cherries. Well, yes and no, because I'll tell you those flowers got to me. And that was, you know, you just never know when these things are going to really have their impact. But they do. And that one was, the person just really did it. Thank you.

[40:43]

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