Thank you. An unsurpassed, penetrating and perfect dharma is rarely met with, even in a hundred thousand million kalpas, having it to see and listen to, to remember and accept.

[02:32]

to taste the truth of the Tathagata's words. An unsurpassed, penetrating, and perfect dharma is rarely met with even a hundred thousand million kalpas. To see and listen to, to remember and accept to taste the truth of the Thessalonica's words, and unsurpassed, penetrating, and perfect our wealth. Israel, you met with even a hundred thousand million followers, having it to see and listen to, to remember and accept.

[03:37]

I love to taste the truth of the typogatous words. Good morning. Good morning. My name is Gyokuden Steph Blanc, and I'm a resident priest and mother here at Green Dragon Temple. Welcome to everybody, those of you sitting here together in this friendly old barn, and those of you logged into the online Zendo.

[04:46]

I am already touched by the kindness of the good things that have happened here today. I feel that. The space was prepared with tenderness, it feels to me. And I noticed that somebody thought to bring a cup of water for the speaker. There are some really good things happening. in this world. I have a feeling I'm looking at some fathers before me. So when I was offered a handful of days to give this talk, I looked at the calendar and noticed that this day June 15th is Father's Day, and that's why I chose it.

[05:53]

You see, my father died on March 2nd of this year, so I won't be calling him on Alexa like I've been doing in recent past years. So I'm available for something new. But... I really wanted to respond to Father's Day, so here we are together. So today I am calling him and I am calling you from this one and only place in time. from this once-in-a-lifetime moment. I say to him, and I say to you, Happy Father's Day.

[07:04]

Thank you for your support and your effort. for being so funny. I love you very deeply. And thank you for the adventure. I wish to acknowledge and celebrate the very best attributes of all of our fathers and father figures. I asked my children what they especially love about their dad. And their dad is sitting in the back corner of the room. He's the tanto, head of practice. And they said, he's funny.

[08:10]

And I have to agree, he is funny. especially with them. One of my favorite things about my dad was also his playful sense of humor. And then I reflected, yes, humor. This is often an attribute which many fathers shine at. They can be so silly and funny with their children. So to all you playful dads out there and people who bestow fatherly gifts to others, also known as Dharma dads, we have a lineage chock full of them. Thank you for lighting up our hearts and expanding our world with joy.

[09:16]

My dad was baptized and raised Catholic. He never formally heard me give a Zen Dharma talk, though I was kind of his chaplain in the last five years when he had manifesting dementia and Alzheimer's. Somehow that worked out for us even though our beliefs and practices were different, and I really cherish that. Maybe it was his complicated karma that caused him to be stuck with a Buddhist chaplain. One of the beloved fathers in our family of Zen practice is Ehei Dogen, a Japanese Buddhist monk, poet, writer, philosopher, and the founder of the Soto School of Zen in Japan. He lived until he was 53 years old, and he was seven when his mother died And so he realized the truth of impermanence at a very young age.

[10:26]

On the subject of birth and death, I share with you this last part of a fascicle that he wrote called Shoji, which means birth and death. I hope you find it straightforward and encouraging to our living. There is a simple way to become a Buddha, When you refrain from unwholesome actions, are not attached to birth and death, and are compassionate toward all sentient beings, respectful to seniors and kind to juniors, not excluding or desiring anything, with no designing thoughts or worries, you will be called a Buddha. Do not seek anything else. is it to become a Buddha?

[11:31]

And does anybody think that would be a good idea? Today I say that becoming a Buddha is to awaken to the mighty adventure of being. What an adventure being. In our case, being a person, being human. Great assembly. Great assembly. How is it going? The adventure of being. Okay, so I bought a Father's Day card last week.

[12:41]

It says, Dad. And it is embroidered. The D.A.D. is embroidered, and it has pictures of fish and tent and campfire and mountains. And maybe it was because it was beautifully embroidered that I picked it up. And inside it says, Adventures with you will always be my favorite. Thank you for the amazing memories. Okay, and yes, I got the arrow through the heart. It happens. And then I'm asking myself, are you going to buy that card? $10 card, papyrus. Are you going to buy that card? You're not going to mail that card. But I paid tribute to the arrow through the heart. and bought the card, and I'm sending it to you and to my dad.

[13:46]

Adventures with you will always be my favorite. Thank you for the amazing memories. Do you understand how that was for you? Or do you think I bought that card for my dad? There's only one life happening for us all together. I'm sure I'm not alone in this, but I actually had many challenges with my dad, especially related to his alcohol addiction.

[15:01]

But I loved him anyway, despite difficulties. I was lucky to receive that clarity and grace. I wasn't afraid to be close to him, and thus there were many, many adventures together. Here's a side note. I suffered a lot before I discovered practice. But now I retroactively assign the difficulties, all the difficulties of the past, to the cultivation of clarity and compassion. Can I have a hallelujah? I suffered a lot before I discovered practice. but now I retroactively assign all the difficulties of the past to the cultivation of clarity and compassion. Hallelujah! A recent adventure that I had with my dad is that I held his hand while he was dying.

[16:08]

As a little girl, I loved holding that enormous hand. especially when we were walking in the pasture, checking the cows and looking for newborn calves. Those times were a magical adventure. It was my early experience with the miracle of nature and birth. I witnessed many calves being born, spilling onto the earth and immediately making their first wobbly effort to stand. I see some smiles out there. my dad shepherded these wonderful experiences. So there I was with him a few months ago, having an intimate experience with the miracle of death. As I sat with my dad and witnessed his hard breathing, I sometimes experienced grief arising like rolling waves. The word unbearable comes to mind to describe it, but it's weird because it's not accurate.

[17:15]

Not everything that comes to mind is accurate. I was sitting in a chair alongside his bed, holding his hand, which was limp and sweating. It was quite unusual. He always had a very strong grip and enjoyed squeezing my hand hard. I sat with him quietly. And I sang to him a lot. May the rain fall soft upon your fields, and until we meet again, may God I would be singing to him, and then a wave of grief would roll upward inside of me and break.

[18:36]

But I was committed to being there with him. I knew that, and I told him so. When he could no longer communicate by looking at me, by speaking or moving, I could still sense him responding. I could still read the little twitches in his face, like when we sang to him a beloved song from his childhood. Or when my children hugged his body, he loved them so much. He couldn't hug back, but his eyes were wide open, and I looked into them and witnessed his response. Did he know they were hugging him goodbye? I'm so curious about his experience. This was brand new territory for me with my dad, being committed to standing by as he let go,

[19:49]

as life let go of him. It's a very unique experience, grief mixed with gratitude. But many of you know that, and I bow to all of you who have lost loved ones, and I guess that's pretty much everybody. So we are in this adventure together, and it behooves us to recognize that. We can be very good at compartmentalizing our feelings and experiences in order to filter them and select for the ones that we prefer, the ones that support our idea of who we are. Who wants grief, right? Let's just put that aside and store it in an airtight little box. But here's the thing.

[20:50]

When you have a moment, and do have a moment, go ahead and take out the little box of grief or the enormous box of grief. Go ahead and look inside. Go ahead and feel the waves arising. The waves arising are just the thing to be felt. Go ahead and cry. When crying arises, it's powerful and not to be missed. If you're lucky enough to be visited by sobbing, go ahead and sob. If you're there for it, it's a spiritual experience. It restores capacity.

[21:51]

For what? For clarity, for appropriate action. It's time that we begin to laugh and cry and cry and laugh about it all again. Do you know that one? Leonard Cohen? So long, Marianne. I've got to start a little higher, though. He had a beautiful baritone, but I do not. It's time that we began to laugh and cry and cry. And laugh about it all again.

[22:54]

Today I'm grieving a story from yesterday's news. Minnesota State Representative Melissa Hortman, a top Democrat and former Speaker of the Minnesota House, and her husband were assassinated yesterday in their home in a politically motivated attack. I'm from Minnesota, so we respond to what's intimate to us, right? What was Melissa Hortman known for? Clean energy, care for our environment, education, and being a mom in bright light. Welcome chaos. To be able to welcome what is arising is empowering. It is sane.

[24:03]

It gives you the chance to discover yourself. Quite possibly, it involves grief. I acknowledge that there are many distressing things happening in our human world that we are feeling upset about. that we are grieving. I named one. We could name many. Some of the distress we feel seems shared, and some of the distress seems embattled. The good thing about the shared variety of distress is that we have the opportunity to realize empathy and the truth of our togetherness. And then there's the distress of oppositional views, and worse, political chaos, and violence. In the case of the latter, it is easy to recoil from our togetherness, but our togetherness isn't convenient. It's not optional. It's just the fact.

[25:05]

Although it's possible to act out turning your back on our togetherness or to act out a narrative of being alone, if you believe it, That is delusion. A definition of delusion. A false belief or judgment about external reality held despite incontrovertible evidence to the contrary. What's the incontrovertible evidence to any of us being separate? Well, let's take a look around. please feel free to turn your head or your eyes and look and notice that we are creating something together and are totally dependent on everything else. I delete the word else.

[26:11]

Isn't that both wonderful and sobering? So if you thought you were alone or you have been feeling lonely, here at Green Gulch, we witness you, we respect you, we empathize with you. We might say, how wonderful that you expressed your feeling of loneliness. Because we are optimistic that you might discover how powerful it can be to express your feeling and then discover that you are free. You're not alone. You never were alone. You are the universe. The uni-verse. The one-verse. Wisdom is awareness of our togetherness. Denying our togetherness is delusion.

[27:19]

Meanwhile, we are free to perform whatever a situation calls for. We can act out anything, our joy, our grief, our gratitude. The important thing is to not lose sight of the performance. It's possible to become disciplined in our practice and in our commitment to practice so that we can withstand the gales blowing in our face a little bit. I had the advantage of growing up in Minnesota where I frequently felt the gales blowing in my face during the wintertime. That was good pre-training or Zen practice. And with the assistance of many enlightened beings, I've gained some confidence in meeting the gales. told you that I'm grieving the loss of a Minnesota woman who was interested in making our shared life better.

[28:23]

Also for her children who lost their mother and father overnight in another senseless act of hate. And for what? So you see, I am also describing and studying my righteous anger. This is not okay. I'm keeping an eye on my anger because I know where there is righteous anger, selfish anger can easily take over. Anger which stands up for what is right is often transformational. But anger which lashes out or wishes ill will, that type of anger is like poison. Righteous anger requires discipline. Think of Rosa Parks. I'm touched by how quickly you were nodding when I said Rosa Parks.

[29:26]

One of my favorite heroes in all of history. She didn't shout expletives, but she had the courage and presence of body and mind and the audacity to stay in her rightful seat. Her seat became the Dharma seat. And her appropriate response was reverberates throughout space and time. Yes? Yes. I pray that my fellow humans will refrain from killing. Enough is enough, in my opinion. Meanwhile, let's refrain from wishing ill will upon perpetrators of violence. That's my edge. Do you know what I'm getting at? When I hear about people doing terrible things to others, the impulse to cast an evil spell on the perpetrators is right there.

[30:33]

But that impulse is just a secretion, like a runny nose. I am actually not into casting evil spells. I vow to refrain from casting evil spells. Because let's face it, any spells that get cast are going to land right back here. There's no other place for them to go. Universe. One verse. So let's stand up for what is right, but in a disciplined way. Think of Gandhi walking steadily, calmly, uprightly into the fray. So what about clever mocking bumper stickers? You know the ones. Are they acceptable?

[31:36]

Personally, I think it's a good time to step back from mockery. And by saying that, I'm taking a step forward myself because I've enjoyed the bumper stickers. I confess... And I think it's a good time to step back from mockery. I think it's a good time to cultivate discipline. Practice stillness. Speak up loudly and clearly when the opportunity arises. Or sit peacefully and cast a spell for peace onto the world. Spells for peace are very big around here. At the temple. Every time that bell is struck, that is a spell for peace in the world. They're also called dedications or blessings. As it says in the Upanishads, may peace and peace and peace be everywhere.

[32:43]

I return to Dogen. There is a simple way to become a Buddha. When you refrain, just refrain from unwholesome actions, are not attached to birth and death, you're willing to hold your hand, your dad's hand, while he's dying, and are compassionate toward all sentient beings. Universe. Respectful to seniors and kind to juniors, not excluding or desiring anything. With no designing thoughts or worries, you will be called a Buddha. Do not seek anything else. My dad was in hospice care for his last three months of life. It was my first encounter with hospice, and I was very touched and inspired by the women who showed up to care for him.

[33:56]

They were all pretty young. Two of them had been CNAs, nursing assistants, previously, and one was a birth doula as well. Attendance to birth and death. Many women have a great capacity. Many women have a great capacity to accompany these important transitions. I see and respect that, and I honor them. They are my teachers. And what motivates that? That's tough work. What motivates that? It's kind of astounding. The hospice aides trained my sister and I to watch my dad's face for any wincing and told us to ask the nursing staff to give an additional dose of morphine if his face was wincing.

[35:00]

Their intention was to help him to be comfortable and calm while his body was chaotically revving up before it began shutting down. He had a fever, but his feet were getting cool and his skin was mottling, becoming purple. The breath was slow, heavy, rhythmic, pant. They correctly predicted that he would pass within 15 hours. A few hours before he died, it was discovered that the care facility made an impactful mistake. When my sister asked for an additional dose of morphine for our dad, it was discovered that his morphine was in a locked box that was inaccessible to the nighttime staff. His dying process was well underway, and they could not give him his prescribed medication. My sister was very upset. And then she turned to me for my response. A monk asked Yun Men, What are the teachings of a whole lifetime?

[36:12]

Yun Men said, an appropriate response. What are the teachings of a whole lifetime? An appropriate response. It's in your hands. In that moment, I saw the field of practice wide open before me. What I mean is, I saw my freedom. I saw that I was free to perform any number of responses. I could perform irate daughter. I could perform adaptable daughter. I could be kind to the not-at-fault young CNAs that were working the night shift. probably for minimum wage, trying to take care of my dad while he was dying.

[37:16]

Or I could even huff and puff and blow the house down. I did feel the impact of the care facility's mistake. I did feel concern for my dad. It was bad timing, and yet. I felt my physical exhaustion and the naturalness under the circumstances of letting go. My dad was in the process of letting go. Could I not follow his example? I was there because I wanted to be there, no matter how difficult or chaotic the scene became. I was there to hold my dad's hand and be his companion. I was there for our relationship. What did I expect? That everybody else should get it right all the time. And wasn't it possible that my dad wouldn't choose the morphine if he were able to communicate and that everything was working out?

[38:25]

I saw the field of practice wide open before me, and I did my best to perform myself. My dad also performed himself. His dying didn't stop because his morphine wasn't available. He didn't sit up at the last minute and shout expletives, even though he frequently did stuff like that while he was still able to talk. He went on breathing until suddenly, unexpectedly, there was just one simple in-breath. His eyes opened fully as though beholding the world, and then the lids closed completely. That moment was quite simple and elegant and subtle. even though my father was not simple and elegant and subtle. It caused me to utter a word out loud. Beautiful.

[39:28]

I was touched to witness him doing something I had never seen him do before. The miracle of dying. To be thorough, I pushed on his feet and implored him to go completely. Go, Dad. You're okay. We're okay, and we will follow you one day. But I think he was already gone. I think he didn't need any more encouragement. Grief, gratitude, miracle. I have a rustic Father's Day poem. I say rustic because it doesn't feel finished, doesn't feel quite right. It's a work in progress. 78 years, two months and two days, plowing fields and throwing bales, thawing the drinking cups again and again and again so that the cattle could drink.

[40:33]

How many five-gallon pails did you carry in your lifetime? Mechanic, father, pheasant lover, Watcher of wild turkeys, whose hand I loved to hold. Every vegetable was eaten from earth to mouth like an apple, except for beets, which tasted too much like earth. You worked hard and loved the country always, made us laugh. Hands always smelled of oil and mechanics' pink soap, but also held babies and innumerable hands of crazy eights. The old man feigned tears when the grandkids beat him And now they do the same. Can you see him, 12-year-old boy, zooming down the dirt road on his motorbike, ice cream pail full of tools in tow? No doubt you were just the dad for me.

[41:35]

That would be that blend of grief and gratitude. And finally, can we feel gratitude for the life that we have now, just as it is? What would that be? Friendly old barn, Dharma companions, candlelight, soft place to sit, and prayer is rising up from this valley. reverberating through time and space. We call on Manjushri and Avalokiteshvara both. In fact, I'd like to change my posture to an Avalokiteshvara posture. Avalokiteshvara does not become confused by the cries of the world, and Manjushri does not wield his sword selfishly. They're like wise parents, and they are gender fluid.

[43:04]

I vow not to turn my back on our togetherness, and yet I do not find it beneficial to study all the details in photographs and videos and headlines of all the tragic news that is constantly popping up on my phone. Remember the phones of the 1980s, anybody? Which were connected by a cord to the wall? How things have changed. I'm alert to the way the media is designed to catch my attention and draw me in and finally get me to subscribe. But I want to be careful about what I subscribe to. I subscribe to clarity and compassion. And you can have a free trial anytime. it's lovely to sit together for a while as a human. Thank you for being here.

[44:14]

Even when we feel alone or separate, the feeling of separateness is happening in the flow of togetherness. And that's important. It's something to keep in mind. And it's not abstract just because we can't see and understand at all. So let's carry on, shall we? I invite your questions or expressions or songs or voice. You're dancing, you're laughing, you're tears. Hello.

[45:20]

Thank you so much, Steph. That was beautiful. My dad also does not like eating beets. My father is 75 years old and very active and adventurous still. But something I've been having a hard time practicing with is when he... does things that are very dangerous, like climbing on cliffs. And I find that when I try to encourage him not to do things like this, he just wants to do them more. And then he fell off a 13-foot rock cliff back in February. And I just want to know if you have any advice or things that could help with practicing. for that type of a situation. I do. I do.

[46:20]

I know that guy. A lot of dads don't like to be told what to do, do they? Nor do most of us. You know, expressing yourself, you know, go ahead and do that. I am expressing to my kids, you know, climbing on the cliffside, no. You know, I express myself. And... And with your dad, you're expressing yourself and then there's really being kind to yourself. You need to be a companion to yourself when he makes a different choice or when he misses something about you. He misses something, perhaps. And then you need to be a companion to yourself and just to see there's some, that's painful for me. I don't feel heard, or I don't feel seen, or he doesn't understand how this hurts. You are fully capable of being your own companion.

[47:25]

That's what we're learning. So express yourself to your dad, but take really good care of yourself. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you so much, Steph. That was really powerful. And I'm really grateful for that talk. It really resonated with me. I think you shared a couple of things that, like, touched me, which were, like, the grief and the experience of, like, witnessing dying and, like, the beauty of that. And also you brought up this feeling of, like, righteous anger. and the need to cultivate discipline. And those are all things that I've really been sitting with a lot recently.

[48:28]

And I was wondering if you might help me connect that really intimate experience of grief and dying with this other idea around righteous anger and discipline and appropriate action. They feel like they're connected to me but somehow i i'm having trouble like bringing them together the connecting righteous anger and the need for discipline to the moment of like like the dying and the letting go the releasing is that what you're asking yes that is what i'm asking oh that's quite a task Well, I'll tell you, when I was with my dad and he was dying, I mean, there was some anger arising about the mistake that happened at the care facility, right? I did have some anger, some righteous anger, and some selfish anger all wrapped up going on at the same time.

[49:29]

But I was lucky in that I did really notice what I really wanted to do was be my dad's companion. So this isn't really the time, even though I have cause to be angry, this isn't really the time to go into that. So I don't know if there's anything that connects for me when you asked me to bring those two things together. It's knowing when righteous anger is the thing or when actually letting go is the thing. Because sometimes you're attending to the righteous anger because there's some transformation potential and there's some standing up that needs to be done. And other times there's the need to let go. I'm not actually... no matter how bad the care is at this place, I'm actually here for something else. And I'm committed to being here for that. So that's what I see as the connecting point, is knowing, you know, part of the discipline will be understanding when, you know, when is it time to stand up?

[50:37]

When is it time to let go? And I was trying to address that by saying... by talking about these two different kinds of anger. There's the righteous anger, which is maybe the wisdom of the universe rising through you and saying, stop, stop it. But then there's the selfish anger, which is like, and I hope he's cursed and his family is cursed and... Am I the only one that has that sometimes? Okay, maybe so. But it's like that. I'm happy that I get to see it, so kind of in its obnoxious manifestation. I really don't believe in putting curses on the world, but it's right there sometimes. But if you just pay close attention and you're like, you know, you just, look, one kind of anger is poison. The cursing kind is poison.

[51:39]

But another kind of anger is wisdom. Stop already. Enough. but don't add the expletives to that and the bumper stickers. Maybe not because we've gotten quite carried away. Things are pretty chaotic. That would be a good time to be grounding ourselves again. Discipline. How's that? That helps, thanks. Thank you. In the front row, we have somebody. Thank you. You're welcome. This is the second time I've got to hear you speak, and I really love it. I love how you bring your maternal storytelling with such ferocity.

[52:43]

It really speaks to a depth in me and in my own motherhood, which I struggle with, so... Thank you. You're welcome. My favorite part of what you shared today, it's not the Japanese or the Zen word. I studied the Vipassana for longer, so forgive me, but the Maranasati, the contemplation of dying and your really articulate, unflinching description of his physical form as he was dying. And sort of with the last comment, like for me, and I don't know if it's my... autism or what but like something about that proximity to death does have that innate grounding process for me or effect where like because it's so grounded that discernment of right action you know becomes so much more intuitive and that discernment of whether to let go

[53:48]

or whether to courageously speak up instead of a void becomes so much, the word I want to use is meaty, like embodied and not so lost in thought. So just those two things between the two of you made me want to say that back. And I just wanted to say thank you for your unflinching shared experience in the face of your father's death and its connection to wisdom. You're welcome, and thank you for giving us the gift of your voice and for coming back a second time and coming back again and again to study our life together. Nice to see you again. I'm a psychologist, and years ago I was introduced to one of the senior monks, and he said to me, oh, psychology, it's a little stream that runs in my garden.

[55:17]

And I immediately thought that that was true. But... I had kind of a defensive reaction to it down deep, and that was, well, Buddhism, if it had to be critiqued, would be that it's lacking in strong expressed emotion. I second that. I see. Well, I was going to say that today of that, that assertion was kind of debunked by you. And I didn't expect any hallelujahs ever in a Dharma talk. This was a new one on me. Okay, well, you're going to love this then. This robe that I'm wearing, when I sewed it in 2010, I brought it home to Minnesota and asked my parents to put some stitches in it.

[56:20]

My dad was a mechanic and farmer, and he wasn't a Buddhist. But there he was with the needle that I handed him and this garment. And I was explaining, in Zen, we say namukie butsu every time we make a stitch. It means I take refuge in Buddha. But you don't have to say that. You could say hallelujah. So my father, imagine this guy holding a needle, enormous hands. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. And this is the robe that clothes me today. So my last comment is my daughter, when she got out of college, she went to Europe and worked on farms and she was gone. And people asked me that it must be terrible missing her.

[57:24]

And I said, well, somehow there's like a fist of her in my chest, and she's with me. And so I don't miss her. I envy her adventures, but I don't miss her, per se. And I was thinking that that might be the case for you. You're right. I don't miss my dad. No. He was a jokester. He had quite the sense of humor. And so he would speak of other friends of his that had died, and he'd be like, you know where she's living now? She's living behind the church. Or he'd say, but Clary isn't here anymore. And I would say, Clary's always with you now, Dad. So this was part of our dialogue, was funny ways talking about it.

[58:28]

You know, when I see the right card at the right moment, and then I read the sentiments, thank you for the adventures, sometimes the arrow comes. And then there's other times where, you know, you're very curiously not missing anybody. But my life is so infused that, well, what can I say? It's like my dad illuminates the room. It's like you're meeting him. And that's how it is with our humanity. Let's learn that intimacy with the hardest ones. That's our time for questions, and I just advise maybe you'll be outside to discuss things.

[59:55]

Thank you. There'll be time enough for counting when the dealing's done. Equally extend to everything in place with the few minutes of tea. Well, I swear to you, I'm sorry, [...] I'm sorry.

[61:16]

... [...] A little bit, which I think this is all, but I'm not going to be just as strong.

[62:24]

I'm not going to be able to change my life. I'm not going to be able to change my life. I'm going to be able to change my life.

[62:31]

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