Good morning, everyone, especially a welcome to any newcomers who were at yesterday's workshop. Today is Sunday, September 14, 2025 you. The autumnal equinox is approaching. It'll happen in about a week from now, and we're well into bird migration season.
There's something special about the presence of birds in our day to day lives.
It's such a gift, really. And I'm not talking about any special kind of bird, the rare or elusive ones, but birds of all kinds, even the most ordinary Sparrow, we can learn a lot from them, and birds have a Great deal in common, it turns out, with humans, perhaps more than you realize. For one, just like humans, birds come in many different varieties.
Some have fancy plumage. Some don't some are as large as a ostrich and as small as a tiny hummingbird.
Some are nocturnal. Some dive in the water. Some spend much of their life out at sea,
and some don't even fly, but they're all birds, none the same.
And they're also ever present, even in winter, there are hardy ones that stick around and yet And yet, they can so easily go unnoticed. We go about our business, our mind preoccupied with this or that, and as a consequence, we're not aware of the incredible sensory world that we we are immersed in at all times,
the great Zen Master Dogen described The natural world as a kind of living Sutra.
Mountains and rivers expound the Dharma, so do pebbles and trees and grasses. Wind. And rain, turtles, frogs, squirrels,
even those little pesky fruit flies. I They all expound the Dharma when it comes to birds, even though we don't always notice them, more often than not, they are around. They are close by, and. Are flying, roosting, calling out to one another. There's this tendency to think of them as part of the scenery, just part of the background noise,
like the hum of traffic, but actually to hear one, just like to hear that squirrel right now you
it's a teaching. It's the teaching of being present, of noticing
what's right here. I a it's a teaching of things as they are,
and really it's it's as valid a teaching as anything I have to say, or any Zen teacher has to Say, actually, it's more valid. It's
pure, it's direct,
and it's not just the beings and things of the natural world that invite us to be present wherever we happen to be in time and space, whatever we're doing, driving our car, watering our plant, brushing our teeth and
picking up dog poop, feeling that familiar ache in your Knee or your back,
the itch on your nose. It's all an invitation to be present, and in that it's a teaching
the French philosopher Simone ve who's regarded as a mystic of sorts. One said this, attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity. Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity. So she saw this simple act of giving one's full attention
to another person, an object, or whatever you're experiencing in any given moment.
I it as totally transformative. And it's it's a gift. It is. It's the greatest gift that we could give to ourselves and to others. And
and it is actually accessible to us at all times. The only reason it's rare is because we've grown accustomed to not being present, to dwelling in thoughts,
clinging to Our likes and dislikes. And relatedly, there's this other habit that we've developed, and that is directing our point of focus on the past or the future,
such that we're. Not aware of what we are experiencing with our very body, moment by moment, directly.
So then when we hear a bird sing its song, instead of purely experiencing it, we filter it through our storehouse of knowledge. We make that bird into a concept, a thing that is out there, out in the wild, separate from us, and actually, the fact that we even call it a bird
or call it by a name like blue jay or Sparrow,
that's a tell tale sign that we've separated ourself from it,
to hear purely directly is altogether different. It's to experience hearing
just hearing, and this includes not just hearing sounds, but also silence
without the labels, without the mental processing of what is heard or not heard,
and without a hearer. When we hear purely, we can't even say that anyone is hearing
in the Mumonkan, which is a collection of koans, there's this beautiful line in the commentary for case 16. The case is titled The sound of the bell, and this line in the commentary is about hearing directly. If you listen with your ear, it is hard to hear truly. If you hear with your eye, then you are intimate at last. If you hear with your eye, then you are intimate at last.
Now you may say that makes no sense. How can I hear with my eye
or my nose or tongue? I Han, how can I? How can I hear with anything but my ear?
A short while ago, when we were reciting master Hakuin chant in praise of zazen,
we said,
and when we turn inward and prove our true nature that true self is no self, our own self is no self,
no hearer, no subject or object. Intimacy at last,
attention is intimacy. That's what it is. It's not an intellectual exercise. There's no thinking involved. There's no special technique or skill that you have to learn. All you need is a practice which you have,
and you need to trust that practice and commit to it, have the determination to stick with it
without trying to get results out of it, that's the part that's easier said than done, isn't it?
When we're paying attention, there shouldn't be any strain or tension in how we practice.
It's funny to even say that we're working on a practice or working on improving our attention. It's kind of strange. What is it? Or work on? Everything we need is here, right now. You
relax
if we tense up, maybe furrow our eyebrows, clasp, our hands,
get tension in our spine, then we're working too hard
the body does need to be upright and aligned, and that does require some effort, just as there's effort, effort involved in directing your attention, but It doesn't need to be forced in any way, it's not rigid.
When I was a child growing up in the 1970s going to public school, there was a certain teacher who had a very strict, regimented approach to classroom management. Actually, it was abusive by today's standards. Her name was Mrs. Franco, and she was a force. You did not want to do anything to upset her. She would actually pinch your arm or dig her long polished nails into your skin. So, and she did this routinely to everybody. So then, when she commanded the class to sit still, pay attention. All of us, kids myself included, would just Stephen up and sit ramrod straight in our seats.
It was counterproductive, though, because it actually is difficult to pay attention when you're holding onto tension. In this case, it was the fear of being punished or shamed by Mrs. Franco. The brain can, though, can even go into a kind of flight or fight mode when we're tense. This is not the kind of a 10. Tension we're trying to cultivate in doing zazen
again relaxed and settled. We're not trying to accomplish anything.
We're not in a hurry to get anywhere. I We don't have to prove anything to an authority figure or anyone else for that matter. It's just the basic attention, the basic awareness of being rooted right here, being in this body right now, I
want to read An excerpt from Roshi Robert Aiken's book. Encouraging words. It's about attention, and he's talking about it in the context of working on the koan mu but what he says applies to any concentrative practice, so any koan or any breath practice, I
he says,
attention is the essence of our practice, the teaching of all our ancestors, incomplete attention is diffused. From there you wander into your your old cycles of preoccupation
come back to your sharp attention. This is the way of intimacy
without attention. There can be no intimacy. So there, there's that word again, intimacy, if we scatter our attention and allow our mind to drift off.
We're lost. We've cut ourselves off from this moment, scattered, diffused. Attention is half hearted.
It's like when you're kind of paying attention, kind of tending to the breath or the koan, but at the same time tracking a thought.
We can spend years doing this in our practice, not fully committing,
maybe thinking about what's going to happen next at the end of the round, or after kini, or making plans for The rest of the day, playing over a conversation, rehearsing a melodrama.
So she said this, and then I said that, coming up with some plot, I uh, and sometimes this sort of half hearted attention happens when we're in conversation with other people, even someone starts to tell you a story, and you're only partially listening, listening because you're thinking, I need to go to the post office, or you start looking out the window. It can goes on. It is very easy and natural to maintain the way when you are thinking something, only a tiny shift of attention will bring you back to mu or to your breath counting tiny as it is, don't neglect it when you notice that you are straying mu, you. Attention is more than a matter of focusing. It is completion where you are not attentive. Everything is a blur. When you are attentive, each thing stands out like a bell sounding in the silence, each mu, each breath, each act. So whether you are opening a door or doing mu seated on your cushion, let your ACT stand forth. Let each inhalation be all together itself, each exhalation, all together itself, each moon, all together itself. You
let it be complete, like a bell sounding out in the silence,
and also like a bird. Bird singing its song. Bird song is never, never half hearted.
There's no hesitation, no indifference. They don't hold back in any way.
They're also not mapping out their flight plan when they're singing.
So then when chanting, have you ever noticed that you're chanting half heartedly, kind of mouthing the words softly, not really fully participating, not because you're new to practice and still learning the ropes, but you're just not committed. Maybe at that moment, you're feeling tired or uninspired or self conscious, worried, worried about you're not going to do it right. Chanting is a way to engage our whole being and
it's
active zazen, just like King heen is. So see what happens when you just throw yourself into it. Cast aside any thoughts of self concern and commit now, I'm not suggesting you should belt it out louder than anyone else. That's another, another kind of problem. But do notice? Do notice if it's half hearted? Because if it's half hearted, you are separating yourself from the chanting.
And as soon as you notice it, that's an invitation,
an invitation to throw yourself into it. And when it is wholehearted,
that's when you can experience chanting in a whole new way,
no Self, many voices becoming one, the words don't matter. The
you might suddenly experience some new energy and freedom that you didn't know was there waiting to be tapped into you. All along, just had to give it attention.
There's another aspect of intimacy that also relates to birds, and that's the way that they call and answer to each other. They vocalize calls and responses to communicate information,
such as the presence of danger. Maybe there's a predator nearby,
the discovery of a food source, like a bush with a lot of berries on it, and we know that baby birds make a plea to their parents to bring them food to the nest. It's another kind of calling out, and there are other kinds as well, making it known that they're available to mate, or just simply bonding with the with the rest of the family or flak and Birds actually have to learn these vocalizations just as humans have to learn a language, they listen and they memorize the songs that their parents sing, there can even be regional dialects within the same species, because of this, by the way, Birds can also solve complex problems. Crows, especially, are known to use twigs to extract food from a hole or a crevice. And it's also been shown that crows have some kind of long term memory, which is pretty remarkable, they can actually remember the face of a Human, a particular human that caused them harm.
And they use that memory to stay safe moving forward. It's a survival trait, and not to glorify birds either. They can be real jerks, to put it mildly, they steal prey. They take over other birds, boxes and nests. The cow bird is probably the most well known asshole in the bird community. It's a parasitic bird that actually lays its eggs in the nest of other bird species leaves the eggs there for them to be cared for and for the nestlings to be cared for by the Other species, basically freeing them of all parental responsibility. I
And yet, despite all of these signs of intelligence, really in birds, even the ability to strategize,
they don't cling they don't cling to thoughts the way we do.
They're spontaneous. There's no gap between a. A when one calls and another answers,
that's actually a skill that we learn in practice. Something you can really hone if you volunteer at the center or spend time in our training program, living and working in a communal setting, you learn how to be responsive to one another, you learn how to do whatever is needed in the Moment. Again, dropping any concern for self.
Can also practice that in the workplace and at home with your family. There's this other saying about birds that you've probably heard before, popular, popularized by Maya Angelou, a bird doesn't sing because it has an answer. It sings because it has a song. It doesn't sing because it has an answer. It sings
because it can, because it has a song, and that speaks to our
true Nature, our intrinsic nature, to respond to be of service,
to speak and act, Not out of self interest, but out of unity and
that is our intrinsic path.
I know I've been rambling about birds this morning, and some of you may know that I have a thing for them, but what got me on this topic in the First Place was noticing the seasonal shift that's underway.
Shorter days, increasing darkness, the air growing cooler, especially at night,
and birds on the move when their food store sources start to decrease, that's when they migrate towards areas where there is more supply.
And amazingly, they can fly 1000s of miles, and they have this internal compass that guides them, guides them on the same flight path year after year, without deviation, but it's a perilous journey. They face all sorts of challenging conditions, hazards, bad weather, predators, obstacles like tall buildings and cities. Tall glass buildings especially
are a challenge.
There's an increasing loss of habitat due to human expansion into once wild places, and this all adds up to fewer places to make a stopover, to re energize and refuel a lot.
On their path, and yet, they go, they persist,
they follow their calling. They do it the best that they can,
despite the conditions. They They Don't lament about their circumstances,
and they don't see themselves as lacking anything.
They just go and
it was about a week ago at Chapin mill when I spotted a Canada goose that had an injured wing. Was really obvious. It was holding its wing up on the right side. Mida, have collided with a power line or a tree. So instead of flying, it walked, and it walked as if it knew exactly where it was going in a straight line from behind the barn, behind the houses, up the hill, right past Roshi kapleau's grave, Then down the hill and right into the creek.
It walked
to know that the Creek's current would help it and take it to the next pond. How did it know where to go without a flock?
It's as if it just had faith in itself and in its journey,
faith in, in this case, in just the walking to where didn't Know.
And it's the same with us with practice.
We don't we don't know where it's going to take us. Each one of us has an aspiration, though we are all striving for completion.
That completion is available to us right now, just by this simple
act of giving our attention, making that commitment, completing this one breath,
