I vow to taste the truth of the tautologist's words. Good morning. Good morning. Looks like everyone's awake. Have you noticed the plum tree outside the zendo this morning, or this week? You'll have a chance when you go out. I'm not usually such a good observer of these things. Somehow I wasn't raised up to pay good attention to what's going on in nature around me, but year in, year out, It gets a little hard around here to miss the plum tree's life cycle, particularly certain phases of it, the blossom phase and then the fruit phase that follows several months later.

[01:17]

But it's pretty amazing because here in the middle of the winter, year in, year out, These plum blossoms are just bursting with life. I noticed today there's also a very healthy fungus growing on the tree, a bracket fungus. It's found a very solid home for itself. And there are countless little branches growing out, particularly growing out from the places where we did a rather drastic pruning about a year or so ago, one that kind of wondered what could come back from this. But actually, there are dozens and dozens of shoots and each one of them laden with plum blossoms. And it happens, as I said, it happens here in the middle of the winter, just when spring

[02:25]

is barely a thought. So we have these white plum blossoms over here, and then I notice over in the neighbor's yard there's just an incredible profusion of very bright pink blossoms. And these kinds of events were that we can notice were also noticed by the Buddhas and ancestors. Dogen Zenji, one of the founders of our lineage, wrote about this, has a whole essay called Plum Blossoms, and the words that he used, he says that the plum blossoms open spring, or form spring, that they're coming forth sort of creates it. So I'll read you a passage from Dogen. He says, This old plum tree is boundless.

[03:29]

All at once it blossoms open, and of itself the fruit is born. It forms spring. It forms winter. It arouses wind and wild rain. We've experienced that lately. It is the head of a patchwork monk. It is the eyeball of an ancient Buddha. It becomes grass and tree. It becomes pure fragrance. Its whirling, miraculous transformation has no limit. Furthermore, the tree-ness of the great earth high sky, bright sun, and clear moon, derived from the tree-ness of the old plum tree. They have always been entangled. Vine was vine." So that's the kind of language that Dogen is often using, and it challenges us pretty strongly.

[04:33]

It's a provocative language, never quite uses words or images or ideas the way we expect. And this idea of it opening spring, forming winter, that the plum blossoms themselves arouse wind and wild rain. There's some fundamental truth there that's beyond just our logical minds. And then there's What he says about the plum blossoms being the eyeball of an ancient Buddha, that sort of caught me. You don't often think of your eyeballs as blossoms or your blossoms as eyeballs. the two images don't quite go together for me.

[05:39]

So he's pushing. And then at the end of this fascicle, he uses this image a couple times, and at the end of this fascicle, in the postscript, he makes sure that you think about this again. If it got by you, if you said, well, This is just, you know, poetic language or something and I don't want to think about it too much. He says, if any doubt arises and you think that plum blossoms are not the Buddha's eyeballs, consider whether anything other than plum blossoms may be seen as eyeballs. Realize right now plum blossoms as eyeballs. Stop seeking any further. So I kind of had to stop and think about that, because he told me to. Not that I do everything that he tells me to, but he was pretty emphatic about that.

[06:46]

And the plum blossoms were so striking. So the question for me is, what are these blossoms? What are eyeballs? In what way are they the same? To me, they reflect this notion of, sort of fundamental to this notion of everything working together. that the blossoms come forth from the plum tree as they perceive that their time is here, as they take it in.

[07:54]

And as they blossom forth, they also perceive the next stage of being for the plum tree. And they do this just the way one's eyeballs do it, with wisdom and compassion and with action. That your eyeballs are Your eyes are receptive. They're fundamentally receptive. They're non-judging. They're kind to everything that comes to them. And they also provide the information for how we move in life. Of course, not just eyes.

[08:58]

All of our senses do this, and our mind does this. And in that sense they are working, they are just receiving, but they exist in a relationship with the rest of the world. And this is how we live every day, every minute. And this is how we live in our zazen. That just receiving, just being an organ of reception, is pointless. if there was not the rest of the world to take in, if there was not the rest of the world to be with and act with. So, our eyes help us do that. They work just between the things that we consider outside ourselves and the things that we consider inside ourselves.

[10:05]

So actually, when we sit Zazen, we're always in this state of receiving, of not judging, of being in a kind frame of mind, even though we actually don't always feel so kind. But it is a kind-framed mind because we're just sitting there and we're willing to accept it, whatever comes, even accept this frame of mind that we have that doesn't like it, that doesn't like sitting there, that doesn't like being here, that may not like the noise that the person next to us is making, that may not like the food that was in the second bowl at breakfast or lunch, but we're sitting there being kind to it just by staying there with it, by receiving it,

[11:19]

by perceiving it and by allowing ourselves and everyone else just to proceed into the next moment. So even if we don't feel like we're blossoming, and sometimes that's kind of a stretch to think of ourselves as blossoming, we are actually blossoming in Zazen. and we're bringing forth our own our own fragrance and our own color and our own action the action part of the plum blossom as well I don't want to dwell completely on this matter of eyeballs but we also look at the line that says, plum blossoms arouse wind and wild rain.

[12:26]

And wind and wild rain are sometimes nurturing, sometimes as we've seen lately in the news, destructive. But that is the active side. and we don't have so much control over it. The plum tree doesn't have so much control over this active side, over the wild rain and wind that it arouses, over the seasons that it calls forth. That's just the natural working of causes and conditions together. But the predicament as sentient beings that the predicament that we're in is actually we have some control or we work to have some control.

[13:35]

We practice that kind of control even though sometimes it's vain. because there are causes and conditions that are working on us that we don't always have some control over. And yet, what we're practicing in Zazen is developing this kind of kind mind, or what's called elsewhere, parental mind, and exercising control over ourself for the sake of all beings. And this is also a very basic thread that runs through almost all the traditions of Buddhism that I know of. On Monday mornings here, we chant the Metta Sutta, which is a very early Pali Sutta, and in that we chant

[14:46]

Even as a mother, at the risk of her own life, watches over and protects her only child, so with a boundless mind should one cherish all living things, suffusing love over the entire world, above, below, and all around, without limit. So let one cultivate an infinite goodwill towards the whole world. maybe a thousand years later in the Tibetan tradition, a similar thought is expressed by Shantideva, one of the teachers in that tradition. One must educate one's mind that one might feel in each case the same affection for creatures that naturally centers in one's child or in oneself. one must thoroughly consider the matter in this way.

[15:47]

And he says, think of it this way, he comes from one place and I from another. All creatures are my children and I their child. In this life, no one is really a stranger to anyone. And then a bit closer in our own Zen tradition, again from Dogen, He says, this kind mind is the attitude, is the mind or the attitude of a parent. In the same way that a parent cares for an only child, keep the three treasures in your mind. A parent, irrespective of poverty or difficult circumstances, loves and raises a child with care. How deep is love like this? only a parent can understand it. Actually, I would disagree. I don't think only a parent can understand it.

[16:50]

It doesn't hurt to be a parent, but it's not necessary. And I think that if Dogen could say this, it means that he has some understanding and Of course, we don't know the ins and outs of his entire life, but at least we figure that he wasn't a parent, being a monk at the time. Maybe he was, we don't know. But I don't think it's necessarily true that only a parent can understand it. But a parent protects the children from the cold and shades them from the hot sun with no concern for his or her own personal welfare. Only a person in whom this mind has arisen can understand it, and only one in whom this attitude has become second nature can fully realize it." So this raises a number of interesting questions for me.

[17:58]

The root of the word parent, and this is, of course, the translation. I don't know. The word that Dogen uses in Japanese is roshin. And I didn't have a way of checking out what the ro part means. It's probably something quite simple. Shin means mind. But in our language, parent, the root just means giving birth It's kind of stripped down from all of the cultural layers that we've put on the notion of parenting. So, if we think of the plum blossoms, what gives birth to them? Is it the plum tree? Is it wind and rain?

[19:01]

Is it the soil? It's all these things working together. So all these things are parent to the plum blossom. And then the plum blossom itself acts as parent to the fruit. and the fruit acts as parent to another generation of trees. It also provides nutrient to the insects and to the birds, and I can't tell you how many buckets of plums. It provides for us that we don't know what to do with, but if we don't know what to do with, we compost them. We do compost them, don't we? So that provides parenting to our vegetables and our flowers. So these things are always constantly working together.

[20:07]

And that's, again, how our Zazen is. In Zazen, we are constantly giving birth. Our thoughts arise. our ideas, and from period of Zazen to period of Zazen, or even within a period of Zazen, this constant birth of impermanent selves. And I think that these selves are very much like the plum blossoms, in that all of the countless changing selves that we have They all have kind of the same shape, kind of the same color, kind of the same feeling about them, but each one, from moment to moment, is just a little bit different. Because of its own conditions, because of the conditions, even as we sit here right now, each blossom is just a little bit different.

[21:17]

Our tendency is to look at them all as the same, as plum blossoms, or as me. But in fact, each blossom, just like each snowflake, is really individual. And each moment of your life is individual. It's fresh each time we sit down. It's fresh each time we do anything. It's fresh each time we talk to someone. Every action, every thought, every moment of our life, there's a freshness that's just a little different from the moment before. So, With all of these blossoms and with all of these lives, how do we practice this parental mind, this kind mind towards the things that we give birth to?

[22:38]

Lately, this is kind of the main practice that I've been working with. because we were talking, Lori and I were talking about it yesterday, our schedule, our Zendo schedule seems to be sort of seriously curtailed with two young children. And yet we try to keep it sort of steady. But our practice with them is unbroken. It just doesn't ever stop, which is exhausting and joyful. And there's no break. There's no way to get away from it. You know, we have this sort of joke here during Sesshin that kinhin is not a break. Well, there's no kinhin. You know, it just goes on.

[23:44]

This is my break now. I'm here. I know that they're up there. So, this is the interesting practice because even though Dogen says, and he says, a parent protects the children from the cold and cheats them from the hot sun with no concern for his or her own personal welfare. Well, this is the part of him that maybe has not been a parent and that idealizes the notion of parenting. And it's hard. And this is where the element of practice comes in, in parental mind, and in taking care. Because, in fact, our problem, we're not so selfless as plum blossoms.

[24:51]

We don't just arise and then fall. you know, just fall off the tree and give rise to the fruit and provide pollen for the insects. Instead, we kind of want to wrangle around, fight for our position, we want to find a comfortable place. I'm not sure that plum blossoms worry about finding a comfortable place, I think they're just being where they are. But being human beings, we want to be comfortable. We want to find some place that's easy. And so we're always looking around for this. And really, one of the painful things to me about being a parent is that even as a parent,

[25:57]

there's still, I'm still looking around for some comfortable place. And this is part, again, part of the predicament of being human. And I'm sure that you experience it. This is something you don't need to be a parent to. You experience it in every period of Zazen, that there's a place where you're looking to, for some reason that you don't understand, to turn away from the very intention that brought you here. You sit here, you come sit, face the wall, follow your breath and posture, and just find a place to be kind to yourself and to all beings. And then yet, as soon as we sit down, We find a lot of ways to evade that, a lot of ways to turn away from that, a lot of small tricks or deals that we might cut.

[27:18]

saying, well, I'll just think about this for five minutes or for ten breaths or something, and then I'll go back to sitting and following my breath. There are a lot of ways to slip around this, and this is exactly the same thing as what one can do with one's children and with oneself. Now, I'm not speaking about this in the abstract, I'm speaking about it from my experience. There's the constant arising of wanting to create some place, some comfortable place, some place to escape from whatever we think is troubling us. And in that moment, we turn away from the thing that's right in front of us.

[28:25]

I can't tell you why, if I'm with my kids, something wants to pull me away. I mean, I could go into, I could tell you about my my own parenting that I had, and that certainly is a factor. I can tell you about our culture, I can tell you about all these things that kind of work together to make me act in this way, act in a way that I'm not proud, I'm not happy about, and that makes no sense. And yet I don't think my situation is all that different from many other people. And I also know that in certain circumstances, what Dogon is saying about protecting one's child, protecting all beings, I have some faith that that's also

[29:38]

fundamentally the root of my life. That in an instant, in an emergency, in a time when there's no space for choosing, I would turn in that direction just as an instinct. And I think we need to look for that instinct in each moment of Zazen. And just allow it to take us over, allow it to arise. And it's not something that we have much control over. You don't really have a lot of control over giving birth. When it's time for it to happen, it happens. And it could happen well, it could happen painfully, it could happen easily, it could happen with complications, it could be a disaster, but it's going to happen at its own time.

[30:47]

And the same thing is true of your zazen. You can do all the wriggling around and escaping that you want, but if you keep returning to this condition of just sitting here, You can't ultimately turn away from yourself and from the questions that you have to face. They're going to come up and you will find the deepest instincts that you have. To me, that's really encouraging. It's not easy, but it's encouraging because it will come up. And the other part of this notion of parental mind is that if you are actually the parent to all sentient beings, then that also means you're the child of all sentient beings.

[32:02]

And that's also, to me, a very comforting notion, that we're carried along. Our lives come together just like the blossoms depend on all these causes and conditions and give birth to the fruit or the next stage of the tree. Our lives are conditioned by the people that are around us, the things that we're doing, the things that are happening in the world. A lot of these things are painful, but a lot of these things, even the painful things, are taking care of us in some way. And how this happens is also the subject matter of our zazen. not that you want to think about it consciously, but that you want your understanding, you want to leave room for that to arise, the way in which you are the child, in a healthy way.

[33:05]

Because without the cooperation of the entire world, none of us would have the opportunity to come here today, or any other day. And even though things look often pretty grim, this is a wonderful opportunity that we've been given. And we don't know why we've been given, so that's a really good question. Why is it? How is it that these things work together that allow us even though it may not be easy, allow us to come and practice and also allow us to live the rest of our lives, to live every other moment of our life with whatever awareness, whatever kindness we can bring forth. And I think, well,

[34:09]

It's a whole other subject, but this notion of parents and children, how are we the parent and how are we the child? In our society, in many of our backgrounds, particularly at least in mine, My notion of parents refers to my own parents and to those that I saw around me where parenting wasn't just giving birth. It wasn't just giving birth and creating a sense of space, of nurturance, of safety. It also contained elements of power. I was at a class last week where we did an exercise as part of a diversity training.

[35:12]

And for those people who didn't feel themselves diverse enough, the model that was given was, remember how you were as a child. And it was pretty universally, people all of us as children felt that we were oppressed in some way. But I don't think that's the kind of mind that Dogen is talking about here. It's not the kind of mind, it's not the kind of child that I'm talking about. I'm talking about a child who is cared for and given the space to flourish. And the tricky part is that that also involves some firmness and some toughness. And we have to, as both parents and children to ourselves and all beings, we have to be the recipient of that kind of toughness, the recipient of the tough mind that says, well, I've come here to sit and

[36:25]

to Zazen. And there's a toughness to that. It's not easy. And yet, there's also a blossoming that takes place from that action. So, in this way, we're both parent and child to ourselves. And I think that that is This is another fruitful way to examine your practice. How could you be both parent and child to yourself? How could you be both parent and child to all of life? And also, how is it

[37:29]

that one can walk around oblivious of these realities. How could I walk around for years not seeing the plum blossoms? Just missing it entirely because I was so busy with the internal confusion and business of kind of bolstering up this kind of fragile, jerry-rigged self that I couldn't even pay attention to what was right in front of me. And I don't think I'm completely alone in that state. And I think that Zazen, Zazen is a tool that we can use to build that kind of awareness, to help us look at the world in this thoroughly, kindly way.

[38:48]

So, I just want to end, I'll read you one more quotation from Dogen and then I think we have a few minutes for discussion. This is also from the same fascicle, plum blossoms. The old plum tree is within the human world and the heavenly world. The old plum tree manifests both human and heavenly worlds in its tree-ness. Therefore, hundreds and thousands of blossoms are called both human and heavenly blossoms. Myriads and billions of blossoms are Buddha ancestor blossoms. In such a moment, all the Buddhas have appeared in the world is shouted." I really like that. In such a moment, all the Buddhas have appeared in the world is shouted. So, that was a few minutes.

[39:50]

Do you have any comments or questions? I realized the point that it brought up for me as far as I was at an end, you know, being a parent, was the, from being raised in a situation of very emotional parents, food fights in the kitchen dramatically or just dealing with a lot of control issues as far as the word toughness or being firm goes.

[40:53]

And that was the point for me Because it, and as far as with my son also, but fortunately I've stuck in there enough to see that there is a positive side to that. But that side of it almost prevented me from sitting or sticking in there and being a very Yeah, it's a problem. And often I think that, well, from time to time, I don't so much get the feeling here, but I'm sure that there are people who come or do, that the practice can look too tough, too grim, not warm.

[41:57]

that people aren't able to experience directly the nurturing side which has to be there. There is no point to toughness as toughness. It's just, it's not relevant. But toughness as an expression of compassion is, and I don't mean toughness, I mean just being firm, being solid about what you're doing. I think that it's a necessary side of compassion, particularly in our human state where we're being pulled in all directions. So how do we just sit there? If we really want to experience ourselves, we have to sit there and be quiet.

[43:01]

And it's just not easy. How we do that with our children, that's... I don't even know if it's more challenging. It's as challenging. Because, in a different way, because they have their own lives. And they have to settle their own lives. But the guidelines that you create is to help. I think that's partly right.

[44:23]

But I think that there is also the relationship between Buddha's eyeball and the plum blossom. That's the part that's right. But I think the part that's also included in this is that a blossom is itself receptive and active. that it's also transmitting, it's receiving all of the life of the world and then transmitting it to the tree and to us. So in that way it becomes, it's not just the object, but it's also kind of the organ, the place where this is acted on. I don't want to get too abstract, but I think that that's an important part of it, that the blossoms themselves are able to encompass everything and act on it.

[45:42]

I think Buddha-I is a specific Buddhist term. It's related to the eye treasure, the genuine Dharma eye treasure. And I think the plum blossom also is a very strong connotation in the sense for Chinese and Japanese. I think that's true. It's hard to get quite the take on it in California. Because it doesn't seem like it has to endure so much to emerge. But that is just the way all of the poems and texts that Dogen is talking about express it.

[46:51]

So, you know, I felt a little funny saying, the middle of the winter, because this doesn't seem like winter to me, although last week kind of did, but not, I grew up where there was snow. And so your reading is, that's exactly right. And the eyeball of the Buddha is the Dharma, the treasure of the Dharma eye. And that is again the kind of inexpressible reality that encompasses everything and that works all together. The I is a very interesting, it's a really interesting thing to consider because the The senses, what we feel is dependent upon receiving sense information, and dependent upon receiving information from outside.

[48:01]

It's mediated perhaps through the eye, it comes into the brain, but all these things, none of them is able to stand on its own without its interaction with each other part. That's part of what's implied by that treasure. I think this is a matter for deeper study. Actually, I'm so grateful to hear about the word of endurance about plum blossoms because I actually experience a great shock when I see plum blossoms because I do feel, whatever the climate, it does feel like I'm in a dormant external state, anyway. And I never know how to adjust to it. I keep being pulled by the outside saying, well, this California, this is what happens. Tolerate it or take it.

[49:04]

But there was just such a ripple inside me when I realized, when I pictured this little fragile looking thing, sticking out of snow. And for me, it does feel like snow, this non-snow. And it does. I mean, I've lived here long enough for it. And it also made me think of my child coming home from nursery school when he was very small. And I was struggling to write. And his sudden appearance on the outside, it wasn't a challenge, right? but the feeling of shock is the word that keeps coming to me.

[50:12]

It's physically like a shock, and emotionally like a shock, but that was the practice, that there was subtle differentiation, and the subtle differentiation was what needed to be attended to, not the glaring bop on the head, or the accident, or the snowfall. Right. Well, what the plum blossom does, just, what the plum tree does, by strength of natural character is also our natural character, but it's layered out. There's so many things that we have in the way that it's hard for us to see it. So we turn away and then we suffer. But this notion of endurance, yeah, it's really important. I think it's time to end. Thank you very much.

[51:03]

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