My dad said I'm a fraud, and he'll ask me to leave, he knows the authorities. He wouldn't, would you? But I'm in the right school, you know, because, you know, in our lineage, you know, there are apparently people like me, like the Zen master Yue Hsiang who said, awkward in a hundred ways, clumsy in a thousand, still, I go on. So, I can feel at home from time to time. I'm not the only one who's had this problem. Well, I wanted to tell you a poem or two, you know. The first poem I want to tell you is a poem by William Stafford.

[01:06]

William Stafford was a friend of Robert Bly's. It's a poem called Yes. And I like the story that Robert Bly used to tell about Bill Stafford. That, you know, for a while in his life he had a practice of writing a poem each day. Some of us have a practice of having a period of meditation each day. His practice was to write a poem each day, and one day a woman came to interview him and she said, I hear that you have a practice of writing a poem each day. And he said, yes, I do. I get up early, you know, before the kids, before my wife, and so it would be quiet and peaceful, and I can work on my poem. And then I have a little shelf where I keep it during the day. And then, you know, I have to get the kids up and get them breakfast and get them off to school, and I have stuff to do, you know, during the day.

[02:07]

And sometimes I can work on my poem, and if I don't finish it any sooner, I take it out at night in the evening when everyone's gone to bed and finish the poem. And she said, that really amazes me. I am just really impressed with that. I mean, I don't see, how do you do that? I mean, every day, day in and day out, how could you be, write a poem every day, how could you be that inspired day after day to write a poem? And he said, I lower my standards. So, some of us in the business of practicing meditation every day, you know, we have similarly lowered our standards. It's not always the greatest meditation. There's some, you know, they vary. But, you know, we keep practicing anyway. So, oh, I almost forgot, but I was going to tell you a poem, wasn't I?

[03:11]

So the poem is called Yes, and it goes like this. It could happen anytime. Earthquake, tornado, Armageddon. It could happen. It could, you know. Or, sunshine, love, salvation. It could, you know. That's why we wake up and look out. There are no guarantees in this life. But there are some bonuses, like morning, like noon, like right now, like evening. I think of that as kind of a Buddhist poem, huh? So, no guarantees in this life.

[04:19]

And we don't know what will happen, and there can be some bonuses. But we sometimes forget, of course. Sometimes. Sometimes we go years forgetting about the bonuses. Because they're kind of, you know, hidden. They're not hidden because they're hidden. They're hidden because they're so obvious. And we can overlook what is so obvious. That we're here at all. So I also wanted to tell you a Zen poem. Okay? Since this is a Zen place and I don't want to be thought of as too much of a fraud.

[05:23]

I have a little Zen poem, too. This is a poem by the Zen Master Ru Jing, who was, of course, a Zen Master Dogen's teacher. And Dogen is the founder of our school in Japan and went to China and met Ru Jing. Ru Jing recognized him right away as being a person of understanding and awakened. And Dogen said, not so fast. And, you know, practiced in Ru Jing's monastery for a couple of years. And one night when Ru Jing was hitting the monk next to Dogen with his slipper. I don't know. I guess they didn't have, you know, sticks. He used to take off his slipper and whack the monks. They were like, wouldn't be sitting until, you know, whatever it was, two in the morning or something. Three, I don't know. Very late.

[06:25]

And the monks were dozed from time to time. So Ru Jing was hitting the monk next to Dogen and saying, Zen is dropping body and mind. And Dogen had an experience which is described as dropping body and mind. And Ru Jing again recognized him and said, your body and mind is dropped out. So anyway, this is a poem by Dogen's teacher Ru Jing. How do people think of these things? Anyway, and it goes like this. The great road has no gate. Great road has no gate. It begins in your own mind. The sky has no marked trails. Yet it finds its way to your nostrils and becomes your breath.

[07:28]

Somehow we meet like tricksters or bandits of Dharma. Ah, the great house comes tumbling down. The spring wind hums. Irises line the pathway. The great road has no gate. We must be on it already. Strange as that might seem. The great road has no gate. It begins in your own mind. The sky has no marked trails. Yet it finds its way to your nostrils and becomes your breath. Somehow we meet like tricksters or bandits of Dharma.

[08:33]

Ah, the great house comes tumbling down. The spring wind hums. Irises line the pathway. So this week I've been, we've had a cooking workshop, some of the guests. So we've been among other things talking about Dogen's instructions to the cook. And tonight I want to bring up the question of awakening the mind that seeks the way.

[09:36]

We refer to it as way-seeking mind, the mind that seeks the way. Years ago I was talking about way-seeking mind in the cooking workshop. And later a woman who was here at the workshop from Fresno wrote an article in the Fresno media. She sent it to me and the article referred to how Ed Brown talked about waste-seeking mind. So she thought that was really important. But it's way, W-A-Y. And it's not heavy. It's not really that way. So in thinking about this, you know, I was remembering when I was a student many years ago. And we had not just a Zipi Roshi and Kata Giri Roshi, but other Japanese teachers would come.

[10:42]

And oftentimes there's a kind of way in which Japanese teachers would refer to way-seeking mind. And they would say, arouse your way-seeking mind. And I said, okay, but what is that? So it was a little challenging. And then all I could hear was, okay, work up something. Sit with more fervor or something. So I thought I'd talk a little bit about way-seeking mind tonight. And, of course, the way in this case refers to, among other things, the path, like in Taoism, the way. What is the way? The way that accords with heaven and earth, etc. And I think this way-seeking mind is used rather in two ways.

[11:43]

One way is very practical. So Dogen, for instance, says that the cook should use the way-seeking mind to vary the menu for the monks from time to time, so as to give them comfort and ease. So you study how to use your awareness to develop menus and to vary the menu. And you study what's the way you're going to do something. And it's also rather like, what is the way to appreciate the bonuses, to realize the blessings? What is the way to realize the great road that has no gate? What is the way to have the great house come tumbling down, to notice the spring wind, the flowers blooming?

[12:51]

What is the way to have your life be a poem, an offering? Your daily life, your activities that seem so ordinary. And perhaps not as magnificent as they might be, or somehow lacking. And so what is the way to feel that one's life is... Another way would be, what is the way to use the gifts of who I am to benefit all beings? What is the way to use the gifts of who I am to benefit others? What is the way for me to live so as not to harm, and to benefit? And what do, you know, the great road that has no gate, begins in your own heart, mind, heart.

[13:57]

What's in your heart? So what is the way to bring out what is in your heart? And to share it, and to offer it, in that poem. And it's unique, of course, for each of us, what we have to offer and share. Because it's our heart. And no one can take your place. And no one will do it for you. So this is a kind of ongoing question, there's no way to answer. So we're encouraged to awaken the way-seeking mind, in some ongoing way. Okay. So because we're doing a cooking workshop, and we're also practicing meditation together,

[15:02]

of course, sometimes we might say, I trained my grip not to say these things. Early on, yes, a bit. They did really well. And then they, you know, after a while they start to tell it to me back. It's fun. But anyway, you know, it's easy to say from time to time, meditation is boring. I don't like meditation. This work I'm doing is a drag. It's kind of stateless. My job is really uninteresting and, you know, not very engaging for me. And this again becomes a question about the way. Because there's actually no such thing.

[16:04]

This is not a statement about reality when we say meditation is boring, or meditation is painful. It's because we leave out the key phrase. The key phrase is, the way I do meditation is boring. The way I do meditation is painful. It's my behavior. There's no such thing as meditation or cooking. It's only your behavior, your experience. It's only the way you do things. So we leave out that part. My job, the way I do my job is not very engaging. So then, you know, when you add the little phrase, the way I do it, now you have a chance, you know, we have a chance to work on it and study what is the way. What is the way to do things a bit differently, so that my activity is a poem, is an offering,

[17:06]

is coming from my heart. Is beginning from coming from me. Or, you know, do I need to find some other place where I can do that. Some other place or activity. So, you know, largely, of course, we have the idea then that this is a pretty good place to do that, but there might be some other places for any one of us that are quite good, whether it's jobs or relationship, activities, friends, where we actually have an opportunity to study how I'm doing something. And then to engage differently or study what is the way to do this, so that I feel fulfilled, so that I have satisfaction, so that I'm nourished and I nourish others in my activity. What is the way to do that? Is there some way I could do that?

[18:11]

You know, when I was Tenzo here, a few summers ago, there was some, a student asked me, Ed, were you ever a guest cook? And it's like, well, I guess that was a number of years before you were born. It's kind of that. But I was the guest cook and the Tenzo and the baker. The place was smaller in those days. But, and then, you know, after a while, the people working in the kitchen went to the director and said, we don't want to work with him anymore. So we had a big meeting of the kitchen staff, and they said, they were all asked to explain to me why they didn't want to work with me anymore. And they said, you treat us just like you treat the bread.

[19:28]

And then she apologized and she said, well, actually, you treat the bread really well. You treat the bread dough really lovingly, but that's not the way you treat us. And then someone else said, you treat us just like we're another tool in your hand. And you don't realize, you're not realizing that we have discrimination, that we have taste, that we're capable of deciding things and knowing things and understanding things. And you just tell us what to do all the time and what not to do. So you need to give us more responsibility. And the director said, would you like to change the way you work, or would you like another job? I said, well, I don't know how to do anything differently. He said, well, would you like to study this and try it out?

[20:38]

Would you like to see if you can find out how to do this? And I said, well, I guess I could try. And... And then after the meeting, I went outside. I don't remember where we were meeting, but I found myself sitting on the steps right over here, where you come down the road and you just go right down the steps. I was sitting on the bottom step and Trudy Dixon came along. Trudy Dixon is one of the... you know... There's a stone with some of her ashes up at the ashes site, to the left of Suzuki Roshi there. I put the stone in. And Trudy was one of the editors, or the main editor, actually, of Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. And she had cancer and she was dying.

[21:39]

She was one of my idols. And I was sitting there and Trudy Dixon came walking along and she said, what's wrong? And I told her about the meeting. I said, I just don't know what... I don't know what to do. I don't know how to do this differently. I've been, you know, doing it the best I could. I, you know... That's what I've been doing. And of course, when we're doing something the best we could, that means if it doesn't work, you just do it more intensely, what's not working. So if they're not following your directions, you just get more bossy. Because the problem isn't your strategy or the way you're going about it, it's that you're just not doing it hard enough or seriously enough. So you get more and more committed to your unworkable way of doing things until it doesn't work. So I told Trudy Dixon, I said,

[22:44]

I don't know what I'm going to do. And I started crying. And Trudy said, I believe in you. And I said, how could you believe in me? And she said, I believe in you. She didn't try to explain it, you know, she just said, I believe in you. The great road has no gate. It begins in your own heart. And somehow, like tricksters or bandits in Dharma, we meet. There's no way to know that you can do it. It's a trick. Like my showing up here. And being a Zen teacher.

[23:44]

And people don't tell me to leave. It's a little piece of banditry. When we find our way, you know, we study something and we find a new way to do something. So I went back in the kitchen and I had to work with all these people who have told me what a terrible person I was. And of course, at that point, there's, at some point in all of that, you know, there's a tremendous amount of tenderness. Because everybody realizes how fragile and vulnerable we all are. Finding our way. Somehow the sky, yet the sky finds its way to your nostrils and becomes your breath.

[24:48]

And you go on and you continue, you know, the air keeps finding its way to your nostrils and you find a way to do something that you've never done before. So Doug and Zenji also says, do not see with ordinary eyes and do not think with ordinary mind. Do I have time to talk about it? Five minutes. Oh, well, let's skip that part then. Okay, well, let me see, you know, let me think about, you know, wrapping things up now, man.

[25:50]

You know, anyway, just to briefly tell you about that, but ordinary eyes and ordinary mind judges, it's worth it, it's not worth it, evaluates, this is stupid, I don't like this. But this isn't, you know, what I want to be doing. Ordinary mind comes up with various things, gets discouraged, has doubts. And the basic kind of instruction of Dogen's is, you know, don't arouse your disdain and don't arouse, you know, when working with difficult ingredients. Don't arouse your joy when working with fine quality ingredients. You know, meet each moment with the same spirit. You know, connecting with what you're meeting, finding out how to be with it, what to do with it, how to work with it.

[26:56]

You know, whether it's your thinking, your feelings, another person, your activity, study how to meet the moment, what to do, how to be, how to respond. So, in Dogen's instructions, he also says, let things come and abide in your mind, in your heart. Let things come and abide in your heart. Let your heart respond. Let your heart go out and abide in things. Let things come, and let things are, you know, all the things of our life. Let things come, don't try to, you know, keep things at some distance. You meet things, respond to things, let things into your life, into your heart, and let your heart respond. And this, of course, you know, is the secret of what we're doing.

[28:01]

It looks like we have forms and, you know, ways to do things and schedules and, you know, things to accomplish. But finally, it's about, you know, how do we meet things with our heart, and is it possible to trust our heart, your heart, where the great road begins. Is it possible to trust your heart, rather than, you know, telling yourself, do this, don't do that, you know, another head over your head. It keeps telling you, rather than, is there some way to meet, in the context of your daily life, whether it's in the temple or out in the world. Is it possible to meet things, let them come to your heart and touch you. Let your heart respond. So you're responding from your heart, and not from your thinking about what you should do or shouldn't do.

[29:07]

And we're studying how to trust that. So thank you for your effort and for having awakened your way-seeking mind. I wish you well in your life. Thank you. Amen.

[29:38]

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