This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good evening and welcome. It's good to see you all again. Paul, I always want to thank you for your help and kindness in supporting me. Choosing a topic for tonight was not difficult because when I became still, the idea of awareness came up. At first, I was a little reluctant to talk about that, but I thought, you know, I never have.

[01:05]

So I've never shared my perspective. And I thought maybe my viewpoint would bring something new. I want to talk tonight about awareness itself. Most of us are in classes right now. And we're learning different awareness practices. So I'd like to focus on what awareness means for us in our daily lives. Awareness practice is very personal for me. It's the same as having a lover. The reason for that is

[02:07]

The first time I experienced it, no one taught me about it. The first time I experienced awareness, I was alone in a park in Santa Barbara. It was during the day and I was walking in the park. It was a beautiful early summer day. And there were huge clouds in the sky and the sun was shining down through them. It was really awesome. All my senses were taking in the surroundings. in an absolute newness.

[03:10]

And I felt like all that beauty forced me open. I stopped, and I just stayed there with that awareness. And over time, I felt like it became the perfect moment. I didn't waste it. I stayed there for maybe two hours. Walking, sitting, lying down. That experience was not like the kind of bouncy kind of experience I often display here at the Zen Center. It was like a super awareness of all the senses and my mind as well.

[04:16]

All of that included in that stillness. The best description I can come up with for that is the mind is like the Navajo spiritual phrase. The phrase says, walking in beauty. And I started to wonder, is this what God is? And what was happening? This was before I was a Zen student. So the label of awareness practice... was not something I had but the awareness itself was there the clouds were amazing and as I walked my steps released the smell of the grass and my mind had a serious connection to the awareness and my inner questions became simply from the heart what is God and the answer was

[05:37]

I asked the question, what is God? And the answer that came to me is, what isn't God? That was a forehead-smacking moment for me. There is a lot to this experience. We don't really have enough time tonight to discuss the whole thing. But as I was preparing tonight's lecture, a poem came up. And I feel like the poem condenses the idea of that heartfelt experience of awareness. And it's called Awareness Found Me. I'm not quite sure how it happened. It must have been purely by accident.

[06:42]

It must have been purely accidental. I certainly never would have left it ajar on purpose. Would I? It's as though she stood by my heart all my life and waited for me to leave it open one day. My heart, that is. Awareness found me She was there walking towards me. I saw her just as I completed an in-breath. And I breathed in a little more. Her beauty was in the way she walked. She walked with clarity and purpose. And that's the way she revealed to me. Her bare feet owned the earth or the earth owned her feet.

[07:50]

It was hard to know. Her hands touched the sky and spoke with simple clarity. Her body was shaped to walk alongside mine. Her clothes were like nature that surrounded her. She took on the scents and colors of summer. Our steps gently freeing the smell of the grass. Our fingers and eyes bringing forth existence.

[08:53]

We danced in the park all afternoon. I gently removed the latch from my heart. The door tends to be open now, allowing the gentle breeze of awareness. Not gone. Now, she is my lover. Looking down, I notice my shoes are gone. That's the end. When I was a young man, and I didn't have a lot of wisdom, I tried to recreate that experience again and again through different religions, martial arts, and many adventure sports.

[10:01]

I tried for many years. I was obsessed about it. because, as I said, it was like I had found a soulmate. Many of the religions and martial arts and adventure sports that I took up had some kind of awareness practice involved in them. Prayer was awareness. of something bigger than ourselves. Aikido has some esoteric practices that focus on awareness of the body and surroundings. And religion, the ones that have awareness practice, they kept my attention.

[11:07]

they kept my attention the longest. I also tried standing on the bottom of the ocean and hang gliding at 14,000 feet up. or jumping out of a perfectly good airplane to get the experience of awareness. But as you know, the Alaskan people have 50 words for snow. We have different words for awareness. Some awareness... is right on the surface, and some is much deeper.

[12:17]

All of my feeble attempts did not really go very deep. Except for one, I went to Native American sweat lodge. I chose an authentic one, done by the Lakota tribe. They built the lodge over several days. And I listened to stories and we prepared ourselves. There was an experience of connectedness and knowing the self, but it relied on the practice of stressing the body with hot steam, darkness, and incense, causing visions and feelings from the body-mind.

[13:21]

I think it was a good awareness practice, but the experience was not in the same category as the experience I had had in the park years before. I didn't die. I lived through all that. And then I got involved with Zen practice. And awareness practice began to get labels, structure, and methodology. And it was like a starting over experience for me because Zen is from the East. And I wondered if Christianity... I could not claim any participation in my past awareness experience. I wondered if Zen would be different.

[14:24]

Long ago, I saw that this was a special experience. I wasn't really aware what I was doing. when I took up Christianity or any other practice, I compared it with that experience I had in the park. And I didn't want to paint over it and make the labels fit into my current viewpoint. I never tried to make Zen into an experience. But that didn't matter because Zen thought says that it is what it is. It's okay to just let it be there as unique.

[15:28]

So it's collected other similar experiences that it shares with space but it remains the big capital, what it is. So moving on, the next intimate experience I had with awareness would happen here at the Zen Center. Most of you know that when I arrived here, I was hard of hearing. And Zen practice was not really affected by that because it's very quiet here and people speak slowly. And we spend a lot of time in silence anyway. So by 2008, what happened was that my hearing really declined, and I became severely deaf.

[17:01]

So I had to unpack my hearing aids again, and I had them reprogrammed for my new... level of hearing loss. I think many of you remember the fun we had with all the misunderstood words. That really made fun and spontaneity happen in classes and Dharma talks. Soon I found other deaf people in a club and I made some good connections. and I started to get lightly involved with the deaf community. And I started taking some ASL classes. But I also felt like I was beginning to lose my connection with the hearing people I knew. And it wasn't easy to see that happening right away.

[18:08]

And then in 2011, everything changed very fast because I became completely deaf. And this would bring out an awareness practice opportunity of the same intensity that I had from... when I was in the park. But it was a more adult experience. It was more fun like the park experience I had had. It took about a month for one ear to go. And then two weeks later, the other ear completely lost its hearing. And during that six weeks, I was running around to see different doctors. I went to the Deaf Counseling Center and I arranged new classes to take.

[19:16]

And I was transitioning to being a deaf person. So I was running around a lot. It was very dramatic. And awareness showed me that it was possible to do things with necessary haste without accepting the need for drama. But while I was learning this, I was not seeing another area of need, and that was my need to grieve. So now, to grieve the loss that I had. So now with awareness practice, I have a new direction, practicing as a deaf person. It's been a long story about my path to becoming deaf.

[20:22]

Maybe someday I can share that story. It's too long to share right now. So instead I thought I'd share a few situations. about different attitudes and concepts that have been influenced by my awareness practice. When I began to participate in deaf events, I noticed frankness and bluntness about the communication. It seemed honest almost to being rude. I thought that I was, it was a raised deaf kind of thing, like deaf culture, but it's not. Over the months and years, I noticed that I too tend to just throw things out there and be pretty blunt.

[21:26]

So it's been a good lesson for me to learn from my oversensitive personality. And I think some people mistake my frankness as a request. You all here are my close friends. And often when I share something, it doesn't have the English idiom or nuance that says, this is just sharing. It's not a request. I noticed that in deaf culture, we tend to share that way. And if you have a request, you need to be clear that you're making a request. So please, as I share some of these practice challenges, understand that they are not a request.

[22:39]

I'm not making a request for a change. I just want to share my frustrations and my joy with all of you. And I will tell you if I truly have a request to make. Another change that happened with deafness was I started to hear using my eyes. I notice movement, and I tend to scan the room a lot. I also prefer the room to be bright as much as I can. Here at the Zen Center, we tend to keep it dark a lot in order... to invite the attitude of contemplation and solitude in an otherwise crowded building.

[23:46]

The combination of darkness and silence means two senses are stopped, but zazen is pretty sweet, with no more vehicle for sound or other noises. that interrupt. But when zazen is over, I might not know if I'm sleepy or just in deep samadhi. People don't know until the waiting... People don't know what to do and I'm just still sitting there. Often no one does anything and the waiting just becomes silly.

[24:50]

So if I need to be alerted, please go ahead, tap my shoulder. The proper way to get the attention of a deaf person is through touch. to either tap a shoulder, or if you think that might be too startling, gently place two fingers very gently on the shoulder and gradually increase the pressure. Living here at the Zen Center, I see a wonderful... caring attitude, effort to include me and make things accessible for me. We are now struggling together and investigating what we can do to connect both myself and other deaf people with the Zen Center.

[26:01]

Together, Many good ideas have come up. Excuse me, checking the time. Wow, it's going fast. We are using CART and interpreters for the first time here this practice period. And it's also... helpful to remember that this is a place that's for it's a hearing temple for hearing people so that's the reality and awareness but this temple now is offering and creating accessibility so that's the reason that i am still successful here Someday, maybe we will see a deaf temple with all the Dharma talks and sign language and interpreters for the hearing people.

[27:26]

Ha ha. Now you see the final lesson tonight. How do I integrate deaf identity into a practice that seems to encourage us to drop away the body and the mind? Maybe I can talk more about that as it grows, but for now it's just a bud. I think this is a good place to finish my talk. This transition has been painful for me at times. But I also know great, great joy. And I wish all of you joy and peace and practice for the future. And peace. Wow, I finished early.

[28:33]

same as before. Seems like last time I finished early too. So maybe we have time for a few questions. Does anybody have any questions? No questions? Okay. Go ahead. You can just keep going. I'm wondering if before being deaf and after being deaf, if there was a quality of that internal dialogue of words or content that changed. So I'm going to ask you a clarifying question so I can ask him more clearly.

[29:45]

So do you mean his internal dialogue changed from here, from before he became deaf? Do you understand? So before you were hearing, you know what the quality of what kind of words or the dialogue should be used inside? You mean like the words that I thought about deafness or Zen practice or what's more specifically? He's asking you. You mean like the quality of practice?

[31:04]

Is that what you're asking about? Oh, okay, now I think I understand. So you mean about myself, like before and after? Okay. My senses, you know, we have six senses. The mind is one, taste, touch, hearing, all that, vision. When I became deaf, I had five senses. At first I thought I had lost something. I thought I had lost like 30 or 40% of my senses because I was deaf.

[32:13]

And it was a big deal. And getting involved in the deaf community and deaf culture, I started to find a way to go on. I started to accept that I was deaf. And now I have... five senses, and they're all complete and whole. So I feel whole with the five senses. And I've been able to put that together with my Zen practice. That's been kind of challenging because, as I told you before, living here in a hearing temple. I'm the only deaf person and it's been two years now that I've become completely deaf.

[33:18]

So it's been a slow process. I hope... the transition to being deaf. Maybe there'll be skills to teach sign and to teach also Buddhism to hearing and deaf people. how I feel inside is, hmm, that's tough because now that I've changed, I...

[34:21]

I haven't integrated being deaf now because it's been over two years. It's been a process of over two years. So I'm still very hearing in my head, and the way I think about things is from a hearing perspective. So it's hard to answer that question. Thank you. I want to go far, far deeper into the deaf community and deaf culture. I need to do that for myself. So I, you know, I depend on sign language and I don't talk. And part of the reason for that is because I can't hear myself talk. So... I don't know... Oh, I don't know how I sound anymore.

[35:42]

Thank you. That's great. Thank you. So that's a long journey, and I'm now collecting ideas to talk about, and I'm trying to put them together. for the future. So did I answer your question? And maybe we have time. That's the answer to your question. Maybe we have time for a few more questions. You can just talk. Okay.

[37:40]

I try to approach that idea slowly. I understand that the temple here is all in English and everybody here speaks English. And I read and write in English. Actually, I wrote this in gloss, which means I put English words to sign language. So that's how deaf children learn English. I don't hear English all day anymore. So we were just, I was getting some help from some of our deaf participants here. So slowly, I think my mind is transitioning and my culture is changing, but it's a slow, painful process.

[38:52]

I encourage, who encourages me? Yeah, who encourages me? You encouraged. But who encouraged you? You encouraged yourself. Okay, so I'm trying to get the verb and noun here. So I encouraged, you encouraged yourself. Okay. I encourage myself and people, and people here. Encourage them to do what? I encourage myself to start thinking in deaf concepts.

[39:57]

So I found that I am not... thinking English anymore. I dream in sign language now. I talk to myself in sign language. Like when I become angry, I do this. And I think people look at me and they're scared. And I understand, you know, if I become frustrated, I do this. And I think people will get scared of that too because they don't understand. It's fun. They're all laughing. I can see you're laughing. I don't want to become boring. I hope that you understand. I hope you understand my answer to your question. And I appreciate your help answering the questions. You're welcome. thinking about December 7th.

[41:10]

I think that's it. It's 8.30 now, so I think we're done for the night. Thank you. Thank you all so much, and good night. I'm tired. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[42:00]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_95.21