#117 The Mythic Dharma: John Tarrant
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Michael Reiley: Welcome back to the show. This is Michael Riley. Before we begin today's episode. I want to take a moment to say that if you would like to support this podcast and the mission of Science and Nonduality. Please consider becoming a sand member. In addition to supporting this podcast and the production of films, like "The Wisdom of Trauma" and "Where Olive Trees Weep" and our monthly community gatherings you'll gain access to our SAND member library with hundreds of videos from SAND's 15 year history of conferences, webinars and courses. Visit science and nonduality dot com slash join. Or find a link in the show notes.
And today I'm in conversation with John Tarrant. John tarrant is a Western Zen teacher and director of the Pacific Zen Institute which has centers in California, Arizona, and Canada. He teaches and writes about the transformation of consciousness through the use of Zen koan. And train Zen koan meditation teachers. And today we discuss John's new book. "The Story of the Buddha", which is an illustrated retelling of the story of the awakening of the Buddha. And other myths around the dhamma, death and dying, the mystery of communion, dream states in waking and sleeping consciousness and why this parable of the Buddha's awakening still resonates today.
All today. on the Sounds of SAND podcast presented by Science and Nonduality.
I'm here with John Tarrant. Thanks so much for being on the Sounds of SAND podcast.
John Tarrant: I'm delighted to be here. It's nothing better than a good conversation when people are interested in the same thing. So,
Michael Reiley: Yeah, I feel the same way. So you have this beautiful new book, which was a delight to read "The Story of the Buddha". And we'll get into that and maybe some of your own path will, will emerge and other books you've written about. But I did want to start with, The book and actually the very beginning of the book, which was so evocative and really pulled me in like a vortex into this story.
You talk about the world of silence and non-time. And I wanted to start with that poetic beginning as you frame the story of the Buddha. Why did you choose to start the book that way?
John Tarrant: Shall I just read a passage from that? "In the beginning, there was silence and non time. The universe had not yet begun, but even silence is a step. It repeats. It's the beginning of a journey.
At the time of our story, the universe had acquired many features and forms of life, but there were still gaps in the sequence of time, gaps that were left over from the beginning. In those gaps, strange things happened. Spirits and beings from other realms worked openly together to shape the fate of humans.
A dream of a white elephant made a woman pregnant. Horses wept. The lord of the demons was lonely. It wasn't hard to recall previous lives. And a black snake dragon king could remember what happened in a previous universe." So, it's the notion of the mythic universe. Also, you know, there's images work on us, I think.
And I, this whole book is about, well, what if we went into the beauty of the images and how they really, they don't talk so much about things to our heads, but they talk to the heart and to the depths, you know, and just the way art does or music for that matter. And and so. There's a certain severe and literal quality about the way the story of the Buddha has been told.
And I, I sort of, I don't know, I didn't find that interesting. So I decided to tell it in a different way. And and it was a certain amount of delight and you're in the realm of great beings and dragons and things. So it's like, I thought, I like that, you know?
Michael Reiley: Yeah. Yeah. Just hearing you read that, it was like, this is one of the best fairy tales ever.
John Tarrant: Right?
Michael Reiley: It's a great, it's a great bed, bedtime story. It's that. And speaking of bedtime, one, one really beautiful way that you weave the poetry of this book and also the artwork, which we'll, we should discuss at some point, but there's a very dreamlike quality to the way you lay out the story.
And. Obviously there's the visual parts of the dreams that you talk about the white elephant and the black snake, dragon, et cetera. But there's something also that really profound things happen in the story of the Buddha. Like he just decides to leave his newborn. family or he decides to not eat, which is very dreamlike to me because my experience of dreams is that really strange and wonderful things happen without much discussion or decision.
They just happen. So was that was that part of the weaving of the story to the dreamlike quality of this narrative? Yeah.
John Tarrant: put. Yeah. Yeah. That, and actually that's true of our lives, you know, ultimately everybody in any of the great Asian traditions knows that they're dreams, you know, we are in the dream as we speak about the dream, you know, I kind of, I've always loved that, you know, and the part of the the book I mentioned at the beginning that I was very struck by, it was an Italian author actually, Roberto Colasso said that if you want to story myths and fairy tales about consciousness, you have to go to India or Japan or like that, you and because because that's, um, the, The Western stories about are about consciousness really.
You think, oh, you know, you escaped the witch by being kind or whatever it was, but the Eastern stories talk about the quest for consciousness in some way. So, so I thought it was nice to retell them in a way that made them into fairy tales and bedtime stories and things like that. So because people tend to be rather severe about them and think it means I'm just going to be very, you know, have you'd anything or.
There's a lot of renunciation and so on and I felt like the core of the story is about the mystery of consciousness and how we wake up and that's about enjoying the loving the universe and loving the people in it and stuff like that. So the story was written with that in mind, you
Michael Reiley: Yeah. Yeah. Also a lot of the pivotal moments in the story come around dreams. So even the
John Tarrant: Absolutely.
Michael Reiley: of Siddhartha is prophesized in a dream.
John Tarrant: Absolutely, the and so that's where you get the great images from, but the, his mother, whose name was great, Mahamaya, which means great dream. And she, she dreamed of the mid, it's significant because she she gave gifts to the hermits and to the poor, and then she fell asleep in the midsummer. and had this dream and she was taken up to the Himalayas and then a white elephant appeared and with six tusks, but he'd entered her body and she realized she was pregnant and this was a new being coming in and an image for the new being and that and and so and that was a moment of great joy and And you know, the spirit sang and things like that.
So, so so that, and then the white elephant just appears everywhere, you know, and I found that the Japanese did something interesting with the white elephant. It became the, the Chinese too, it became the vehicle for the bodhisattva of great action and kindness, who is Samantabhadra is the Sanskrit name and Samantabhadra.
You know, rodent elephant. And then the Japanese sort of did this funny tantric thing with it where they would show cortisone on a white elephant and then they'd show, and I put a couple of those illustrations in the book, A Monk sort of, you know, paying homage to the cortisone on the white elephant, which was, you know, pretty tantric I thought, for Japanese
So, so things like that.
Michael Reiley: Yeah.
John Tarrant: the illustrations the head of Shambhala Publications, Nico Odysseus, hadn't been there that long, I think, when, I don't know how long he's been there, but had a lot of interesting new ideas, and one of them was, well, let's make it a picture book, and let's, and but, and so and my partner, Alison Atwell, is a, a painter and she paints Cohen images, actually, images of the Buddhist stories and things like that.
So, and so, so we went and she dug through all these images to find ones we could snatch for the book and get permission for and things like that, which is kind of fun, like things like the Met in, in New York will just give you images.
You'll pay 100 quid, but that's all right. So it's sort of fun even finding that, and it's much harder to make our way through the the Japanese images, the Japanese museums, but we did.
And also we, we decided to, we thought there was a slightly different sensibility in that, in the Chinese and Japanese images. And I didn't want to emphasize the starving nature of the Buddha. So, so we chose that's why the courtesans and things, but and and I found a really beautiful image in an Indian image Of the home leaving, which is when the incident you referred to when the Buddha just leaves home.
You just got to go off and get enlightened and find peace, you know. And and so there's incredibly tender, a couple of really tender images, which we put in the book. And we thought, well, that's kind of interesting. And it turns out there were some Japanese guys who found this temple, you know, I don't know, maybe about, I don't know.
80 years ago I found this temple in India that was falling down, but had these beautiful illustrations. They went and repainted them. And so it was actually a Japanese image of an Indian image, which is like how how the Dharma really works. The transformation really works. They're all, you know, layering leaves, piled on leaves, and
Michael Reiley: Exactly.
John Tarrant: yeah.
Michael Reiley: And you mentioned that, In the retelling of this story, because Buddhism is a, it's a living, the dharma these practices are alive and they live in the telling of them. They're not static, reveals something new. And I've found many new things in reading this story that I've heard countless times.
So what are some things do you still like when you're, as you're doing these interviews and re and reading the book, do you constantly discover new things, even spending so much time with the story, writing this book?
John Tarrant: Yeah, I think that's true. Yeah, I think that's beautifully put. The what I decided, the evolution of the book was kind of, you know, funky and handmade, but I kind of liked that because what happened is I thought, well, let's tell this. I have no idea what this story is really about at a mythic level.
And it's obviously not true at a literal level because, you know, there weren't Kings in India at that time and all that sort of thing. But that seems like rather kind of sort of stingy to say that or something. So I thought, well, let's, let's, let me dream my way into it. So I just started telling I'd announce a retreat.
And so there'll be a one day on the Buddha's life, and people would come and I'd tell the story and find out what I said, which was kind of great. So the Buddha has to take care of some of that, dictate that to me, so I'd do that, and and it was kind of great. And so, and then gradually I'd learn things I didn't know, and I'd learn bits of the story that made no sense to me, and bits that did, and then it just got deeper and deeper, and I think that's what gave it the fairytale quality.
I've told it over like 20 years, you know, and And then it's got that saturated quality then to, I think, I hope, you know, and and so then I, I, I found out, wow, I, I started telling this story cause I didn't like it very much. And, and I thought I better be fair to it and get to know it and things.
So I did. Now, now it's, it's a wonderful fairy tale, as you say.
Michael Reiley: What didn't you like about it?
John Tarrant: Well, the whole thing about, you know, the starvation, the emphasis on the ascetic and the leaving, leaving leaving the kindness and the blessing of the world and stuff
And. And things like that, and then I, I, I work with the images of that a bit in the book when I say I talk about, you know, Buddha, but the myth is so great too, the Buddha sneaks out at night with his closest friend on their two horses and the gods, the earth gods, hold up their hands and the horses step on their hands so they leave silently, there's great details, you know.
Michael Reiley: Yeah.
John Tarrant: And it's so mythic and wonderful. And and then he just had this one sight of his child, you know,
And that night and and he leaves. And I thought that was so magical that I had to, you know, you can't say, well, he didn't do that or something like that. He stayed home and became a good dad, you know, but you can't say that, but I could think, well, how was that for me?
And when I start first had to teach, I decided that I had to, and I had a young daughter. And so I had to, Do something about including her in the Dharma, you know, and and so I would take her with me when I flew around to teach, you know, I remember the long haul across the Pacific to Australia
When she was like 10 or something, she, she had some terrible colic or something. She just wailed. And I thought the Buddhist snips snuck out silently with a hawk. It was muffled and I flew across the Pacific with a child screaming in my arms and it seemed like, yeah, well, that's, that's it too, you know, and that's the Dharma too.
Michael Reiley: Yeah.
John Tarrant: And like kindness and love of the Dharma as well as renunciation. And so that was sort of fun to put that in the book as a kind of, but the journey is still happening, but it happens in its own, happens in its own way, you know?
.
John Tarrant: Well, I think the telling it as a fairy tale allowed me, allowed it to deepen and sort of went inside me and I digested it and then I found out.
What I thought about and felt about it because I didn't have some shallow want some shallow opinion and went well this is a great mythic story that millions and millions and millions of people over a couple of millennia have told and lived by and things like that and you can't be you can't think Well, I should have done it this way.
You know, you, you've gotta be , you've gotta be kind about, you've gotta also trust and respect that, you know, the great images. So, and I, you know, I, I grew up in a different tradition, but I became a Buddhist because it seemed to help, you know, and it seemed to be kind and helpful tradition. So
Learned, you know, the Japanese, I learned the first, the Tibetan and then the Japanese style of that.
And and so it's been a. A great journey. And so I want to respect how many people, you know, go to the East for their awakening and that. So, so yeah. So, so that.
Michael Reiley: Yeah. One thing that's always resonated for me with the story of the Buddha's awakening is this idea that he lived as a prince. That was completely cut off of all seeing suffering and old age and the, dukkha basically the unpleasantness of the world. And I think about it in terms of.
This may be not always the best thing to do, but to say, okay, what can this story teach us about modern life? How can we apply the kind of parable as essence of this. And so I think about when people are on the spiritual path, how do we step beyond, the walls of our own comfort and privilege and to use our spiritual growth to actively support you mentioned Bodhisattva to fulfill that Bodhisattva vow of relieving the compassion and suffering of others and not to stay in these kinds of spiritual bubbles.
I don't know if this is making sense, but that,
John Tarrant: Oh, yes. It's the, it's the prime thing, you know.
Michael Reiley: So yeah, that, that kind of that choice that was made. A choice, but also something that kind of came to the Buddha through the circumstances of his discovery of suffering and impermanence and things that things like that of wanting to witness and experience these things and how can we apply that to our own spiritual growth.
John Tarrant: Yeah, yeah, so it's got to be that everything we experience has got to be part of the path, we can't make our lives wrong, you know, and we can't make and we can't decide, we can't be too exclusionary about it, so otherwise women suffer and, you know. Stuff like, you know, children suffer and things like that.
So, but we know that already. So I, I think the idea is that we have to, there's an old Zen works for these little stories, you know, the koans and things. The one comes to mind where someone says, I've just entered the temple, I've just arrived at the temple. How should I enter the way? And the teacher says, do you hear the sound of the, mountain stream?
Yes, I do. Enter there. And so does that, do you hear the sound of the wailing, baby? Enter there. There's a thing about, Oh, maybe this is, I don't have to reject the things that seem painful or wearing so much, or, you know, the terrible fires in California happening right now and things like that. But they've happened a lot, you know, and and, you know, everybody we know is going to die, and that's part of the understanding of one of the marvelous things about Buddhism, it doesn't pretend otherwise, and it says we've got to be free within that knowledge, you know, so and and then somehow life is much more joyful, and, you know, we're not frightened of things, you know, so, I think the lack of fear, the fearlessness is that, the fearlessness, we're not frightened, it's not so much we're Not frightened of goblins, but we're not frightened of what we might feel and think, you know, it's like that,
Michael Reiley: You wonder if the Buddha had kind of nightmares of the horrors of the world before he actually experienced them on this journey where he saw old age, sickness and death and actually in the experiencing of them.
John Tarrant: And he went and meditated in you know, as you know, in India, you know, people still burn bodies and, you know, in the open, you know, And he went and meditated in the grounds where, you know, the bodies were left and things like that, which became, so it became the first noble truth became a freeing thing because people thought, well, I have to take into account suffering.
And so then the And so he meditated with death. And then the idea of meditating with death or not, or sitting with people while they're dying, the whole hospice movement, you know, became kind of pure thing, and most of us have noticed, you know at some stage, if we've slept with someone who's dying or even as recently died, and then.
I noticed that actually people can be really interesting when they're dying. They kind of get, some people just get free, which is kind of lovely. And some don't, some just like suffer and tormented by their minds and things.
.
Even my father had no pretensions to the Dharma and interest in the Dharma, in fact, the Dharma.
But then at the end of his life, when he was dying, he said, well, I wish I'd gotten to know you more. Some of those things you're interested in are kind of interesting. So it was kind of funny, but he became quite free and fun. And when he was dying, he was just amusing and he knew he was dying and he wasn't hanging onto like the right attitude and how to think about things.
So.
Michael Reiley: Yeah. Yeah. It's a, it's a circle. Maybe it's in the dying process. Some people revert to that sort of more infantile, free, way that we were as babies. I
John Tarrant: Yeah. And this, go ahead.
Michael Reiley: I used to play music for people in hospice music therapy. And yeah, it was a privilege. It was so beautiful to be with people there and to just often they were in silence, but sometimes people would clap along or sing along.
I was playing a handpan, this little percussive melodic instrument and yeah, just to be part of that ceremony and that beautiful journey of death and just holding that space of listening with them. It was profound.
John Tarrant: That's wonderful. Yeah, that's, that's it. And also people can be, the Tibetans notice this, and you know, study with them for a little bit, and then you can just notice this. Some people, when they die, just they're gone, boom, you know. And but other people linger, I had a friend who died, and we were in a hospital room, and, you know, His partner came and then I was, I came, I didn't, I came just after he died and we sat around and I was chanting, you know, chanting the Bodhisattva chants and, and I was feeling pretty happy actually.
And you could tell he was too, you could feel him in the room. And then after a while you couldn't, you know, but after a couple of days or something. And so it's true that, you know, just the way we can, Feel somebody when they're alive, we can feel somebody's, you know, is this a good conversation? Are we happy to be having it?
That kind of thing. And we can just feel that in our hearts, you know, I have to work it out. I agree with this person or something. We just know that already. You know, it's kind of nice, actually. We don't,
Michael Reiley: Yeah.
John Tarrant: we don't have to work it out. And so it's the same way that when somebody's dying and some people, you know, they linger and you can tell them anything.
We forgot to tell them while they're alive or whatever. You trust this in some dimension, they're hearing it, you know? And so. There's a, you know, there's a permeability between life and death, you know, they're not as separated as we thought, things like that.
Michael Reiley: Yeah. Then this the subject of death. Maybe we'll stay with it for another question that, I grew up Catholic, in the Catholic church and I recognizing now that much of the framing of death is really bypassing the death process and it's all about. afterlife. It's about going to heaven or going to hell or purgatory.
And it's interesting and beautiful in Buddhism, how much of the practice of Buddhism is actually about the dying process, like you said, meditating in the charnel grounds, meditating on our own death as a, as one of the five remembrances to recognize that I'm of a nature to die. Get sick and grow old and die.
And the Buddha in this story comes face to face with that, with his own near death experience of this almost starving himself to death.
John Tarrant: Yeah, yeah, he has to push it pretty far to get it in a way. So, but we do, you know, and that's a nice thing about, you know, the, the, not just, death became instructive, I think, because people are we avoid it so naturally, you know, I, I was raised Catholic too. And the nice thing about having been raised Catholic is that you're interested in the great matter, as Zen people call it, the great matter, you know, and some, some of the conclusions Transcribed by https: otter.
ai I feel a bit loony to me, but but you're, you're interested in how do we help each other and what is the spiritual life beyond, you know, breakfast or, and and so there's a lot of Catholics in Buddhism, as you, as you know, and a lot of Jews, Jews and Catholics.
Michael Reiley: I know. It's interesting.
John Tarrant: So it's sort of a fun and there are other people too, but, but there's a natural sort of tendency towards the mystical and it doesn't happen so much now that when I first was teaching and I do seven day retreats and started to be full of Catholic clergy, like Jesuit priests and nuns and people that are sort of touching and they felt like, well, this is a prayer tradition.
that we've lost. And so we come and join your meditation because in a way we used to have that and and it's not taught as much in our tradition now or not in a sophisticated way. And then they're reading and people like Meister Eckhart, people like, and and there's still a Catholic, you know, David Stilwell, there was still Catholic or, or Christian people like that.
But, so, I feel like we have to, you know, I feel like everything in our lives prepared us to be free, to be awakened, you
Michael Reiley: Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. I went to Catholic school for 12 years. So I was very immersed in it through high school and I don't practice it anymore. And I, even towards the end of my schooling, I was rejecting much of Catholicism, but I do re I do honor the fact that at a very young age, it taught me to believe in magic,
John Tarrant: Yeah, yeah, that's it. That's good. Yeah, yeah.
Michael Reiley: that there is this
John Tarrant: yeah, that's it.
Michael Reiley: He had five loaves of bread and he turned into a thousand loaves of bread. And I'm like, all right, if you say so, teacher,
John Tarrant: Yeah.
Michael Reiley: And just to have that, and you're talking about Meister Eckhart. And I'm just remembering one of my, one of my favorite parts of the Catholic mass when I was a child, it was, there's the sacrament where you take the bread and they say it's the body of Christ.
Christ and you sit with it. And they're usually playing this meditative organ music and you sit and you just go back and kneel. And there's no instruction. It's like one, it's like the Vipassana part of the Catholic mass. You just sit there with what is and what's in your heart. And this communion with.
With Christ and with the God consciousness. And I even just remember that really loving, that was almost my favorite part of mass. 'cause it was like also, 'cause it's towards the end, and maybe as a child I was like, oh, it's almost over
John Tarrant: No, I think the idea of the communion because you're communing with something greater than yourself, you know, and, and that's a very, that's a very dharma idea that's Hindu and Buddhist and Tibetan and Zen and things, you know, and and so And so I think there's some way in which that seems natural to kids.
And so, and, you know, kids don't, they're not that thrilled about the rules and the having to sit still and things, but you know, that's life. And, but the, and sometimes the music used to be great. We have, I have, we had an old 19th century Gothic church with a great, a good organ might play this great Italian music, you know in the, And it was good.
It was awesome. And and and you're right, you know, I don't know, there's a lot of, there was a lot of life denying narrowness and, you know, sex and things like that were bad. But the good parts were good, and, and and I think that they, you know, everything, as I said, everything from our childhood gave us something, you know, so,
Michael Reiley: Yeah.
John Tarrant: and just an attitude that the impossible might be the way to go, you know, with, and it's the unknown, you might receive help that you're unex, not expecting, unexpected help is one of the great features of spiritual life, and I thought the Catholics understood that a bit, you know,
Michael Reiley: Before we pressed record, I was saying to you that The Light Inside the Dark was a really important book for me, the book you published 25 years ago. And so I'm curious how, about this book if you don't mind talking about
John Tarrant: Yeah, yeah,
Michael Reiley: a bit,
John Tarrant: absolutely.
Michael Reiley: was this idea of the dark night of the soul, was this kind of the spark of this book or how did this book come about?
John Tarrant: Yeah, well, it, it, it definitely, it definitely, well, it's, it's a kind of Zen, Buddhist idea, really, Zen idea that inside the darkness, there's light, you know, so And I've told my book agent, he said, well, why don't we call light inside of the dark? I said, Oh, okay.
And but yeah. And so that, but instead of finding the darkness that we stopped being afraid of it. And and it can be nourishing because we all know that with say a teenager who's fallen in love and then the girl ran away or the boy ran away and the heart It gets broken, and how terrible it is, and I'll never recover.
We all know that that's good for them, you know, so because it's part of the deepening of the soul, you know, and and so understanding that that might be even, you know, the cancer diagnosis, or the loss of someone we love might be a spiritual event, you know, there's, I think, an American saying, inside the last tear, joy was hiding, you know. And so, and so a life is full of very difficult, hard things, and even a very simple life, or even if you're a child of a wealthy family, as there's a sutra about, you know, he's wandering in the slums, wandering among the poor, but somebody sewed jewels in his coat before he left, and he doesn't know about them.
And so that's a metaphor for the Dharma, that we're wandering among the suffering, but we don't know we have these jewels. We're rich. And, and so the whole book was about. Well, you can't really dodge the, you can't say, Oh, it's not hard, you know, but it feels hard and, and we feel that way and we suffer, you know, can't tell people just lost their house in, in Palisades that, you know,
Yeah, well, you know, it was just materialism.
You know, it's hard and there's a, there's a devastation in their eyes and, you know, they're moving around in little, little packs and all that sort of thing. And it's, the suffering is real in life and, you know, not only that, but then people are sneaking in and looting their houses if their houses didn't burn, but mainly the houses burned. Not much to worry about looting, really. But, you know, and so it's, it's, Being human, you can avoid having people you love die and losing things that were precious to you. And and so we have to find, oh, what's if we go into there, if we enter into that, we find, oh, it's beautiful. But we can't enter into that thinking, well, if I meditate right, it'll, I'll stop suffering and things like that.
You have to just enter in and find out what's there. You have to have an open heart about it. You know, because that's the deep Buddhist thing is, well, what's there will reveal itself that I have to trust my life and trust that I will get unexpected help along the way. But I can't think, oh, well, I'll manipulate my mind so that I don't suffer.
And that's a recipe for more suffering because that's, there's too much greed in that. You know, and I have that in the book actually, where the Buddhist thought, well, I was meditating really well, but there was a lot of greed and greed for freedom and greed for all sorts of things in there. And, and in a way, that's a big Zen thing that when you're at a certain stage, everybody wants to get in line, but a certain stage when you're in a really deep place. You're just looking at what is, and you want what is, you know, and you don't want anything else. You want this, nothing else, you know. And then suddenly, oh, freedom comes. It doesn't matter whether you've got whatever it is, you're a kid with acne or whatever, you know. Start with like, it's a beautiful thing.
Oh, what is this? So magnificent. There's a funny Zen story, Zen is full of, Zen likes quirky stories. And so there's a funny story about this. Guy comes in a stranger comes in from the north, who's probably, you know, you know, one of the minority tribes out in the north, like Mongol or one of the horse people, something like that.
And he comes into the Zen master in China and somebody shows him and the Zen master's looking, sitting down, looks up and the guy's seven foot tall and he says, magnificent, outstanding. Where do you come from? He said, magnificent and outstanding. I come from the north. You can tell he's. And happy being who he is
And what did you come for? Says the teacher. And the magnificent, outstanding person says, Not for anything else. I came for this right here. What's here? Not for anything else. And so the guy said, you can stay. So then he became a great teacher in turn. But he, he needed to also train with a great teacher because he understood things already, but you need to, that's the thing is too, we need to deepen and we need, it helps to have companions and friends who are, who are part of the, out of it, you know,
Michael Reiley: Yeah.
John Tarrant: and that's a really nice thing.
Yeah, the yeah, and so there's a lot of, anyway, but mainly in the Zen thing is that, you know, it's the same, but, but just pay attention to this.
Michael Reiley: Yes. Just this.
John Tarrant: It's like, here we are, sitting in a studio, and at some part of my mind I'm aware that you're in Italy and I'm in California, but actually I feel like I've got a friend and we're in a room together, you know, and that's this too, that is also this,
Michael Reiley: Yes. Yeah.
John Tarrant: Talk about, to have friends and talk about the deepest matters, it's a wonderful thing.
Michael Reiley: Yeah. The noble friends and noble conversation, and when you're locked in, like I feel like we are in conversation, everything else just drops away. There's no phone notifications. There's no planning what's going to be next or what it was I doing earlier? And often it's our craving is creating the suffering and.
the satisfaction that comes from eating a piece of pie. A lot of the satisfaction is that we've let go of the craving for the piece of pie. And so
John Tarrant: That's funny.
Michael Reiley: if we can just shortcut that and just be happy with the contentment of this moment,
John Tarrant: Yeah. Absolutely. That's absolutely true. And then we can enjoy the pie if we want, but then we don't eat pie when we don't want it.
Suffering is eating the pie because you think you want the pie when you don't want the pie.
Michael Reiley: right, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Beautiful. Yeah. We had a SAND solstice gathering with Francis Weller and Pat McCabe, who's an indigenous teacher and activist and a lot of these concepts about collective grief and individual grief, but also this kind of field of collective grief, this darkness and using the metaphor of the solstice of the darkest night of the year as the light inside of the dark.
That, that came up a lot. It was a beautiful, it was an episode we released a few weeks ago on the podcast. So I think that this concept is really in the zeitgeist with a lot of the, Polycrisis, like you mentioned the fires in California, but just environmental collapse in general and global uncertainty, wealth inequality, wars and genocide and all the things that are happening collectively.
That there is the, there's a lot of light in these dark darkness, but it's we have to get quiet and still for that light to emerge.
John Tarrant: Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. . There's a funny thing. You can still sometimes you can have After the difficulty, you, you sort of give up and get peace. Is that we have a lot of, we have music and, um, poetry a lot, you know, Zendo. And people vary on that, but we are definitely on the arts side.
And and that comes from, there was a, in, it's a Japanese story. The, the, the. Genghis Khan's people invaded Japan with ships from China, but they didn't actually make it, and there was a big battle, and there was a big storm, actually, which helped the Japanese, but the there was a big battle, and, you know, one of the samurai, one of the lords of the Japanese warrior generals was lying on the beach, resting after the battle, somewhat wounded, but just lying there resting, and he heard There was a monk playing a flute, playing a shakuhachi flute and he heard the music and he had this great enlightenment experience of how beautiful the world was and so on and you know the ships sinking and bodies on the beach and everything like that but and he had oh this is life life is here anyway and then he became a a monk himself, he left, stopped being a general and, and became a flute player.
And so you've got this flute lineage of priests, the colonel was actually passing down enlightenment through teaching the flute, which I also, it was a nice idea. And I don't think many people left doing that now, but in homage to them, we'll have people play music sometimes outside the Zendo and deepen meditation, things like that.
Michael Reiley: That's beautiful. No, I know. Thich Nhat Hanh, Plum Village, they're all about sound and music.
There's one, moment in the book in the story of the Buddha I wanted to ask about that's so beautiful. The, if you don't mind, can I just read this paragraph? This is after the Buddha, has made the proclamation that today I will awaken. And then you have the, meanwhile, in a nearby town on the night of the full moon, a woman named Sujata had a dream.
The dream gave her a set of instructions. She didn't hesitate. She followed the instructions. She went out to her family's herd and milked a thousand cows. She fed the milk to 500 cows. Then taking that milk, she fed it to 250 cows. And so on down to the last eight cows. Then she took the condensed milk, rich milk from those last eight cows and mixed it with rice, she poured the rice milk into a golden bowl and walked out into the forest as the dream had told her to do.
That's as much as she knew. And this of course is the milk, rice milk that sustains the Buddha. One, what really really resonated me and really gave me goosebumps was the concept of, First, the interdependence of all of these creatures giving their milk and that milk going through all the cows and the grass they're eating.
And again, it's Thich Nhat Hanh, he talks about this interdependence a lot. But just the The idea that if this woman never had this dream, would the Buddha have awakened? Would we have Buddhism? Would you and I be here now talking about this? So just that effect, that the ephemeralness of a dream and how powerful that one dream can be for this woman to do this thing that was the dream told her to do and how it changed the course of, reality on earth,
John Tarrant: right. And she trusted her, she trusted her life. She trusted her and started her dream. And she does all this stuff. And then she walks into the forest and, you know, and then she finds this person and he was so thin and he was sort of luminous. And she thought, Oh, it's the spirit of the tree. And then she, and then she realized he was a human being and she gave him the milk and she was just thrilled and dancing with joy.
And, and the Buddha's just barely on his last legs, you know, and that people have. there's a someone who sits with us who's a songwriter actually and and is and i said how did you get to us you know because i sometimes and she said well i had some years ago i read a book called bring me the rhinoceros
It was about coen's and she said well i just kept having this she was in a young and dream group and for artists and she was having a, she was and, and in a single analysis with someone, and she lived sort of in my county.
And anyway, she said, so I had this dream, I kept dreaming about a rhinoceros. And, and I kept thinking, well, what, what, what are my associations to rhinoceros? What does a rhinoceros mean? And things like that. Looking at rhinoceroses, she had no idea. And then she was passing through LA and the airport and she saw the book, a book called Bring Me the Rhinoceros.
And she said, Oh. And it startled her and she grabbed it and took it and then she read it. She thought, wow, this must be what the rhinoceros was about. And she said, I wonder where this guy lives. And I, you know, I live like, you know, 30 minutes from her. And so she turns up in the Zender. So people have the, the dreams are very significant and people will, you know, I think they're from a deep, place, you know, that we can't, don't have, we don't have to work out our lives, they reveal themselves.
So it's like that, you know, that we don't have to reduce our lives to, Oh, this dream means that, but it's more like it's which is sort of somehow makes it small and meager, you know, but. The images and the vastness, that's what I kind of like that about the Tibetans. There are all those images everywhere.
And, but silence is like that. Silence goes off into the vastness too. So there are different ways to approach it.
Michael Reiley: Yeah. Yeah. Do you know andrew holacek?
John Tarrant: No, no, I've heard of him.
Michael Reiley: Yeah. He's written some books on dream yoga and sleep yoga. We did an episode late last year and talked a lot about this idea that we are. You mentioned this earlier in our conversation that we're dreaming all the time. This is a dream, and things happen. I said in the beginning, fantastical things happen to Siddhartha in this story that are very dreamlike, but fantastical things are happening to us all the time.
We just ignore them because they're happening in waking life, not happening in a dream. So we don't, notice that, Oh, there's a ladybug here on the coffee cup. Why is there a ladybug here? What is that? We just brush it away. Whereas if that was a dream where you would, Oh, let me analyze the ladybug and let me look up what Freud said about ladybugs and all this stuff.
But so just to develop that, that 24 hour lucid dreaming awareness, which is the kind of the. Dream yoga invites us to do and to see the dreamlike qualities of each moment.
John Tarrant: And animals have that too. Sometimes, you know, you'll go I did a lot of my early meditation in a forest in Australia, actually. And I was just trying to find, work it out, you know. And um, I wasn't particularly skillful, but I thought if I go out and shut up and listen to the forest, maybe it'll be wiser than I am.
Proved to be true. So that like that, and then you'll notice that if you meditate and you're in a forest or you're in animals will treat you really differently. Animals will come up and sit with you or things like that, wild animals. I mean, you know, and so but even, even cats and dogs notice that. Cats kind of like meditation and even dogs, you know, often used to meditate at night.
I had a, I had a collie dog at that stage and she'd come out and she'd sit beside me and lean against me and just meditate. It's Yeah, that's great. And it's an intimate thing to meditate together and we can, and animals can feel intimacy, I think,
Michael Reiley: no, definitely. Yeah. Yeah. It's I don't know, your colleague was probably like, finally,
John Tarrant: Right,
Michael Reiley: He's on my wavelength,
John Tarrant: right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It
Michael Reiley: like that
John Tarrant: look like that.
Michael Reiley: that cartoon of, it's like a man and a dog sitting, watching a sunset and they show the man's thought bubble. And it's Oh, I've got to do this meeting tomorrow.
And Oh what was live for breakfast and all this list of stuff. And they show the dog's thought bubble and it's of the sunset they're both
John Tarrant: Right? Isn't that great?
Michael Reiley: Yeah,
John Tarrant: it. Just this. That's what they meant by it. Just this.
Michael Reiley: exactly. Yeah.
John Tarrant: this. Yeah. Yeah. Not for anything else. Nothing but this. Yeah.
Michael Reiley: Yeah.
John Tarrant: Also, animals, if you meditate, they'll be more into that. Dog used to. There's a funny little thing that dog did. It took me a while to notice, but it would, you know, she'd, she'd think, Oh, I've done my meditation for the day. And she'd go and she'd knock with her paw on the glass door to go into the bedroom, you know, from the deck into the bedroom.
And I thought, that's fine. Then I realized, hang on, it's a lever door. I've seen her open that door. She can open that door. How about closing it again? But she can open that door. And also there was a dog door around the front of the house. She could walk around there, but she actually wanted the interaction with me.
So she asked me and then I opened the door for her. She walked through and I closed it. And that was part of the intimacy. So animals, things like that too.
Michael Reiley: Yeah. And rituals too. Dogs love rituals. They love the ritual feeding time and going for a walk and, Oh, he took the leash off the hook. Now I wag my tail and then he does this, then I do that. Then we go out, and it's a beautiful thing. And all animals have rituals, elephants have grieving rituals and so
John Tarrant: Yeah, elephants are very moving people, you know, very, very deep in some elephant dream. They are in, yeah. And also whales, you know, whales like, yeah, yeah.
Michael Reiley: Yeah.
John Tarrant: Yeah. So, so one of the, one of the discoveries I think in, when you meditate is not only do you people say, well, I get calm and things. That's true and that's really nice and you're probably less dangerous to the world when you come but you're not doing all those plans, you're just watching the sunset.
But there's this deeper thing where we start to realize I'm part of all that, you know, I'm not, I'm not this little bubble trying to keep himself. you know, karma or anything, we're part of that vastness and we're part of the, people will often come in in a deep meditation and say, well, I realized I wasn't different from the tree or, you know and things, and not even necessarily pleasant things.
It's really interesting. person who became a teacher eventually went off and built her own ways, but she there was a bathroom at the retreat center, which no matter how much we cleaned it always smelled of pea. And, and she said, and then she said one, one day she realized it was fragrant and it was life and everything started to, and she looked at the tree, the redwood trees, and she sort of realized, well, I'm I'm part redwood tree and things like that.
So, so people get into, they get into their they realize I am part of the vastness. I came from it and when I die, I'll go into it. And in fact, I'm already out, you know, that I am I am there's a famous story, a Zen story about these two guys who caught in a snowstorm, meditating in a hut. And one of them's a sort of really smart, like mouthy kind of guy, but he just spends all his time sleeping and waiting out the snowstorm.
And the other guy, Spends all his time meditating. He says, well, why are you meditating? What's wrong with your life that you're meditating? I think, well, my heart is not at rest. And so, and so that's a beautiful, that's, that's why we meditate. If my heart is not at rest, I want to be, I want to sit, think, be at peace with the world and with my human, fellow humans and all that, you know. Love, really. To love the universe, to love this life, to love each other. And the other guy does the same thing and yells, you know, a deafening yell. And suddenly the guy jumps up and they're on a place called Tortoise Mountain, and he says, Today, Tortoise Mountain became enlightened, and they danced, you know.
And so it's not just I became enlightened, it's, you know, Italy became enlightened, you know. The Sonoma County became enlightened, it all, the whole earth became enlightened. And we feel the way the universe talks to us all the time. So, so I think that there's part of that, our permeability to the world. And that's why the dream like quality is, is relevant too, because, you know, we do, I don't know, we dream we realize this, I don't know, this seems like, It's all it's all drifty and dreamy, and the images appear, and they have more meaning than we think, you know.
Why did I go into this, you know? Why did I do this instead of that when I was a kid, you know? Why did you, how did I end up in, in Buddhism, you know? And, and you can tell there, as I look back, you can see the path, that when you're taking the steps, you're stepping in the dark, you know.
Michael Reiley: I think that's, again, why the, there's this dreamlike quality to this book is because things just happen. There's not a scene where the Buddha explains. So much. Why does he leave his family? There's not a scene where he explains why he's going to not eat anymore. It's just things just happen. He just, one day says today I will awaken.
He
John Tarrant: Yeah, yeah.
Michael Reiley: create a monologue of this is why I will awaken. This is what I'm going to do once I become awakened. It's just things unfold. And it's just like you said, to be a part of that unfolding and to realize you're unfolding with the unfolding. It's not, you're not an objective still, you're not, the objective narrator to life.
You're one of the characters. In this unfolding.
John Tarrant: Yeah, yeah, that's beautiful. And see, if you let go, you realize you're a little life itself that is doing or unfolding, you know. That's what meditation does, which is why it's a lot easier to be happy, you know. Even if you're dying, you can be happy.
Michael Reiley: Yeah.
John Tarrant: Even if something really sad is happening in your life, you lost everything, something you can still be happy because you're part of that vastness.
And it's you too. It's in, in everything. It's in your hands. It's in your, it was somebody would ask the seven digit question. You just hold up a hand, you know, whatever it was, some profound. philosophical question you don't hold up a hand. And so it's in your hands, it's in your question, it's in, in your confusion. And so the idea of the uncertainty itself might even be on your side, you know, but not knowing it, not knowing means you haven't reduced something to some explanation that's wrong.
Michael Reiley: Yeah. Yeah.
John Tarrant: Not knowing is in the vastness. Not knowing is intimate, one of the old Zen sayings, you know.
Michael Reiley: Is intimate?
John Tarrant: Yeah. Yeah. Somebody said yeah, it's interesting.
It's an old, one of those old Zen stories. And like this, this young guy is sort of meditating and he has this teacher is really interesting teacher. I mean, he comes to his teacher and he tells him, this is, this teacher is kind of weird and strange. And, you know, I'll have a conversation with him. So he has a conversation with him.
And the teacher just says, Why don't you stay overnight and meditate with us a bit? And in the morning the guy says, Well, I'm off now. And he said, Well, where are you going? He said, Well, I'm wandering about on pilgrimage. And the guy says, And he says, Well, why are you doing that? The teacher says, And the kid says, Well, I don't know.
Which is nice because it's a noble answer. It's about what is, you know? And And the teacher says, Not knowing is most intimate. That's it. Well, they're not knowing it's most intimate and the kid has this huge awakening and realizes, oh, and and then he says, okay, I'm enlightened now. I'm going to go off.
And the teacher says, not so fast. It stays with the teacher another 10 years or something becomes a great master himself. Pretty funny.
Michael Reiley: I love that. Not knowing is intimate.
John Tarrant: Yeah, not knowing is the most intimate. It's like certainty is easy, but not knowing. If you can stay with your uncertainty and doubts. Keats said that in the great English poet.
That's what you need to do as an artist. You need to stay with the mystery, uncertainty, and doubts.
Michael Reiley: Yeah. Yeah. That's really when you're really in the now and on the edge of the unfolding, you have to be in not knowing because as soon as you create any kind of naming or certainty, you've stepped back from the edge of it because you've said, okay this is how I can name this. This is how I can contextualize this experience.
But when you're really in that flow state, whether it's in a conversation or surfing or painting or whatever, when you're in that flow, that's the not knowing. And that's really that intimacy. Yeah.
John Tarrant: the universe and you're not separate from the other people you're doing with it or you're playing music with or meditating with or, you know, people, people will come in with each other's dreams in a minute, and they'll tell me that you and somebody else, I don't know, it clearly belongs to some other person.
That sort of, it's kind of funny. I have the same dream and funny. Yeah. And I'm sure you've had lots of experiences like that. Yeah.
Michael Reiley: Yeah, I have. My, I was thinking my ex partner, she used to have dreams of our pets. Like the cat would sleep in the bed and she would have cat dreams. She's I think I was dreaming the dream of the cat. Cause it was very strange and very like at the cat's eye view and just frantic running through the grass, chasing something.
John Tarrant: That's pretty funny. That's kind of sweet, you know, so how we're all in connection. So, you know, there's a sort of respect for life in that, you know, everything is worthy of respect and respect for people in that, you know. So you know, it's a sort of beauty about how marvelous and strange it is to have awareness and, and You know, be able to do what we're doing now and do what we did for, have breakfast and all those things, you know, so
Michael Reiley: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's what I love about Zen is that holding of the relative, the absolute in one breath.
John Tarrant: Yeah, yeah, that's it.
Michael Reiley: It's all there. Yeah, it's beautiful. Yeah,
John Tarrant: that says most people want to leave the eternal changes, but after bending and fitting your lives, in the end you return to sit by the charcoal fire and you're sitting in peace with each other. A conversation or whatever it is.
Michael Reiley: there's a beautiful Ram Dass talking about that. It's a really long and beautiful thing that actually some people put to music. It's a beautiful music that's yeah. Dying is just returning to sit around the fire. It's just
John Tarrant: Yeah. Yeah.
Michael Reiley: you know that, that Ram Dass
John Tarrant: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that's, that's a very nice way to put it.
Michael Reiley: Cause it's, that's every, everyone who's had the privilege to go camping or to have a fireplace knows. Not only does it warm your body, but it warms your soul because it's so familiar to just sit around the fire with your family and loved ones and friends, and just to feel that connection of being around the fire.
John Tarrant: Yeah. Yeah. You're being held and the universe holds us because it is us really. Yeah. We're the same as the universe.
Michael Reiley: Nice. Yeah. This book, the story of the Buddha, I think gives us a lot of reminders of that. And. Something I was going to say just a few minutes ago was that I love the fact that your book ends where the story begins, the story of the Dhamma, the story of the teaching, it just ends because that's the end of that chapter, this and again, I feel like this is a call to action for us, but this idea that the Buddha didn't become enlightened and do as many sadhus do, just sit in a cave and sit in that oneness and bliss.
He said, I'm going to go out and try to explain. What my experience has been to other people and to take that on of the sharing of the Dhamma and the story it shows us that, and I think it's a beautiful thing that you've taken this classic tale and retold it in the way that you have and woven it with your own Dharma, your own life.
And thank you for this book and thank you for other books and teachings that you've given the world over these decades.
John Tarrant: Well, thank you. It's really fun talking with you. So, super. As I said, one of the great things there's one of the, koans goes, so somebody says, what am I doing here? And the teacher says, well, you know, in previous universe, we were sitting together talking about the deepest matters, hanging around the fire.
And, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, And it has that feeling, isn't it, that we're guided to the conversations we have, we're guided to, to the path we're on, so, very good. Yeah.
