Welcome to Green Gulch. I... was sick this last week for a few days and whenever I'm sick and not following the meditation schedule and getting up and I find in returning to the schedule how vigorous it is. So at this age, it doesn't take long to feel like you're beginning to lose out of your... So I'm very happy to talk with you today on this Memorial Day weekend.

[01:18]

Memorial Day is a holiday, and it's a holiday... to remember the men and women who have died in this nation's wars, the Americans who have died, I think, in our armed services. And it's a holiday now. You know, we get off work. There's no, at Greenwich, we don't have a wake-up bell tomorrow. We sleep in. There's picnicking and so forth. But the holiday is to commemorate the deaths of so many people, so many young and old people. It was established after the Civil War in the 1800s, and it was called at that time Decoration Day and I think people would go to the cemeteries and place wreaths and flower decorations to remember.

[02:36]

And eventually it was changed into Memorial Day and the date was changed to make it three day weekend and so forth. So, you know, to remember those who have died, immediately what arises with that, how is it that they died in this way? And what comes up with that thought of the people who have died is violence and war and aggression and the ignorance and confusion and greed and hate and delusion. that are conditions for these things to come to be. They don't come to be just by themselves. So this is a codependent arising of these deaths along with violence and aggression and

[03:53]

as well as very noble sentiments as well. Protection, freedom, compassion. This is quite a complex mix, and you can't pull one out from the other. It's a tangle. It's all entangled. One of my favorite movies, maybe some of you have seen it, is called Departures. It's a Japanese film. And it's the story of a young man who finds his vocation, which is preparing bodies after they've died for burial in a beautiful, careful, loving place. I highly recommend this movie.

[04:57]

And in the New York Times this morning, there was an article, the name of which was Last Inspection, Precise Ritual of Dressing Our Nations War Dead. And it was very much like this movie Departures. It's the story of those who... an article about people who work in our nations, the place where the bodies come from wars, and they are carefully, ritually, precisely dressed in their dress uniforms. And this person chooses the... stripes that are to be sewn on, and the metals, and he measures that the metals are exactly even and three inches from the sleeve, and white gloves, and ironing the pants so they're creased perfectly.

[06:02]

And he was talking about the privilege and the great honor to take care of these people in this way in the last, you know, before they're seen by their relatives and before they're buried. So this loving, tender way of handling this sad and horrific tragedy. So along with this suffering of old age, sickness, and death, there's the suffering of being separated from those we love.

[07:03]

Separated from those we love is one of the most excruciating sufferings that humans and animals share, being separated from those we love through life. death through long distance, through inability to contact someone because they're closed off or mentally incapable. This is extremely hard. And I wanted to mention, last week I had a day and a half writing kind of retreat for myself that took place at a sheep ranch where my daughter is staying. And on the sheep ranch, they also have pasturing for cattle and dairy cattle. And right, I think the day before, they had separated the cows, the mother cows from their calves and taken the mother somewhere else.

[08:05]

And the calves were crying out, bellowing, really bellowing nonstop the entire time I was there, nonstop, moment, minute after minute, hour after hour in this, crying out for their mothers and having been separated. And this is, you know, there's a story I read where a mother cow and her calf were separated on two different farms, about seven miles apart, and the mother cow leaped over the fence and walked the seven miles to the other farm to be with her baby, and the farmer's wife said, that's it, we're gonna buy her, they can stay together, I'm not gonna separate them again. So this enormous instinct, this enormous pain, and the intelligence of cows feeling this.

[09:12]

So this being separated from those we love in so many different ways is, for all of us, might be the reason that we begin to take up a practice. The inability to be consoled, the inability to settle with the loss of a parent, a child, a good friend, a relative. This is something that connects us all in a bond of our capacity to feel this much suffering. So the

[10:15]

along with these difficult subjects that I'm bringing up on Memorial Day weekend, comes, as I said, in the face of this kind of suffering, it may arise in us a deep desire to alleviate the suffering in ourselves or alleviate suffering for another person. And this is also human capacity, I would say, We're built to feel enormous compassion for one another and also for ourselves, although sometimes we forget about the compassion for ourselves and how important is the compassion for ourselves. So in Buddhism, there's a being who's... awakened in themselves the heart of compassion and wanting to alleviate suffering of beings and, in fact, vows to do that.

[11:26]

This being is called a bodhisattva, an awakening being. And it may occur to you or it's occurred to many people almost without forethought or without trying that Something will arise in our hearts to awaken our hearts to want to alleviate suffering for ourselves and for others. And this may be overwhelmingly strong. And we may not even know how to engage with that. And our lives may be turned around because this is so strong. There's enormous amount of research being done today on meditation, in terms of mindfulness meditation and meditation on compassion.

[12:33]

And some of you may have read the literature. There's just scores of articles that have been written about the... actual changes in the human body, in the brain, when practicing, after practicing, not even that long, these practices of mindfulness and compassion, loving kindness, these kinds of practices. So I've been invited to be on an international institute, on the board of directors of an international institute that's started in Rome, called Consciousness, Compassion, and Mindfulness. Or Consciousness, Mindfulness, and Compassion, those three things. And on the board sits scientists, Tibetan monks, Theravon monk, Zen practitioners, neuroscientists, psychology professors, and so forth.

[13:41]

And there's going to be... conferences offered and so forth. But part of this institute comes out of this really overwhelming kind of scientific research on the brain and the changes in the brain when practicing compassion and mindfulness. So I just wanted to say a few words about that. On the one hand, I'm not that interested in connecting myself up with electrodes and these kinds of studies. I've actually found it not so interesting until the last year or so. And now, I think maybe partially because it's

[14:42]

The practical uses in the secular realm of these practices has become so widespread, and the effects have been so strong. The use of mindfulness, body-mind, education in high schools and colleges, and also with younger children, and then the studies about what happens to the brain. So I'll just... Some of you probably know far more about this than I do, but some of the things that happen is the part of the brain that is able to empathize with other people is developed and that part of the brain is enlarged and able to actually feel and understand with emotional intelligence the feelings of another person. be able to empathize, the part of the brain called the insula. So, you know, thinking about, well, if we're able to feel another person's feelings or intuit more accurately what somebody else is feeling and also feel our own suffering and our own feelings, how might this...

[16:07]

result in and be the conditions for less violence, less aggression, more understanding, more loving kindness amongst the people of the earth, amongst our children, amongst all of us. Now, I'm a wonderful kind of guinea pig you might say when i first began to practice i was in the late 60s i was very very depressed very had lots of self-hate and self-loathing you might say and very separate from other people didn't care very much about others very cut off distanced kind of avoided certain things. And, you know, I took up, and also very, and suffering from the loss and separation from those that I loved, a deep, excruciating separation where I couldn't bellow like a cow or calf upon being separated.

[17:26]

It wasn't, you know, it wasn't socially acceptable, but that's how I felt I could just have been bellowing like that unceasingly for years you know just moment after moment but instead it was I was pretty quiet and after being introduced after being exposed to meditation practice and trying it and taking it up having no thought in my mind that this is going to relieve my depression and self, you know, hate, or help me love others, or make it possible to have, you know, loving feelings. It was just like, I don't know what else to do with my life. I have to do, I've gotta try, I'm just gonna sit down. I'm just gonna just stop running around and just sit quietly like a mountain and find some stillness as best I can.

[18:31]

absolutely no thought that this was even going to do any good. You know, very... And there was no scientific research to back up anything, so I wouldn't have come across any of that. Just being with people that I felt were open and empathetic and compassionate and kind and feeling, responding to that. That was enough. So after sitting, I remember, I don't remember for how many months, but while I visited home, which was St. Paul, Minnesota, and I had a dentist appointment, and I went to see this dentist who was a family dentist, and when I saw this person, I thought, something horrible is happening to him, or some terrible suffering. It's like I, it was just regular guy. that I had known for many, many years, but suddenly I felt like I saw the unhidden anguish and suffering of this person.

[19:44]

Actually, dentists have a lot of depression and difficulty because for various reasons, as you might understand. Anyway, I saw it. It was like just as clear as day, like a sun shining, just unhidden, And I didn't think, oh, my insula has grown and I have more capacity to see suffering or to feel this person's feelings. I was just amazed that I'd never noticed it before. I did notice that, that I'd known this person pretty much my whole life and never really felt I'd really seen them. And that particular... kind of situation happened more and more where I felt like like the veils had come off and I could see I could see sadness you know I could see depression anxiety just as clear as clear could be and

[21:00]

And I also could feel this growing sense of wanting to respond, you know. So there's three kind of traditional ways to... This doesn't come from the mindfulness trainings or compassionate, you know, meditative, compassionate technique or anything. This is... kind of ancient texts that talk about how to develop compassion, the awakened heart of compassion. And the first, there's three, and there's other teachings too of seven and so forth, but the one with the three is you first get in contact with love and empathy. How much... we love beings, how much we love our family and friends and this earth and our pets and all of wildlife and the sun and the stars and the starlight and our human life, that there's enormous love that we feel.

[22:24]

And especially for people people, animals, but people, animals, and plants, to feel this enormous love that we have, to get in contact with that. And once we get in contact with that, there's almost, that comes along with that is wanting kind of feeling how unbearable it is when those people that we love or animals that we love or landscapes that we love or this earth that we love, when it's suffering and in pain and in distress, feeling this kind of an insight into this suffering that those we love and places we love and all that we love, all the objects of

[23:26]

of our senses, the complete suffering that so many people feel and dis-ease. And there's different kinds of suffering. There's the suffering that I mentioned of being separated from those we love. There's the suffering that comes in actually getting things that we want right in the middle of things that we want. We know that it will end. that they will leave, or that it will be over, or that it wasn't really as good as we thought it was, the kind of disappointment, even, you know, in getting that which we hankered after, it's never, you know, it's like, is this what I was putting so much energy into? It's like, so there's a kind of suffering even in having the things that we want. And the suffering of old age sickness and death and the suffering of our ignorance of believing that we're separate from others and not interconnected.

[24:33]

These are all traditional dis-ease and anxiety and stresses that we feel. So having this enormous feeling of love that we can get in touch with and empathy with others for feeling this suffering and... and a kind of exploration of suffering for others, what others feel and what we feel. Then the third point for developing is this thought arises, I, in this unbearable feeling about the suffering people and animals in our earth feel, not wanting them to experience this and feeling like I want to relieve them of their suffering. And along with that, this is compassion. I'm suffering too. I suffer just seeing you suffer. And this is also in these experiments around the brain and lots of experiments about people who have been meditating, shown photographs of beings who are, or even being told that someone, even though they don't see it,

[25:52]

is something has happened or they're going to be in an experiment, shocked if they may have a wrong answer or something. There's these parts of the brain that light up in response to the thought of another person's suffering that they call the compassionate response. Suffering along with, in a horizontal, not, oh, the poor thing, which is a kind of pity or looking down on people from a different vantage point or a different power differential of mercy, you know, having mercy for someone. But compassion is even. We suffer with. And these tests, you know, show this enormous greater capacity for people to be able to feel compassion for others.

[26:52]

even when they don't know them, you know, strangers, just the thought or an image being flashed in front of them. So this, and measured, you know, you can look up these kinds of experiments. So having love and empathy, and then along with that, with this love, some insight into the suffering that those we love, that which we love, and then wanting to relieve people of suffering, wanting to relieve beings of all kinds of suffering. And then along with that comes a kind of waking of the heart that says, I will take it upon myself to help release suffering. And this all kind of becomes one arising, you might say. And this is the seed or the beginnings of the conditions that are necessary for our own awakening, our own waking up to the reality of our existence and the interconnectedness of our life and our shared life together.

[28:11]

So depending on those that we love, This isn't something we can kind of do. I'm going to do it all by myself. Don't bother me. I'm practicing. Just leave me alone. I need to do this. We actually depend very deeply, completely. It's a codependent arising. We completely depend on all those that we love and compassion for others for our own awakening, which is our wisdom. So wisdom and compassion are joined as two wings. Now, along with this compassion for others, must come also self-compassion. And there's a wonderful quote by Suzuki Roshi, who...

[29:13]

during a period of zazen, which happens sometimes while you're sitting, the teacher might speak. And in the zendo was a visiting teacher from Japan named Tatsugami Roshi who spoke in Japanese only. And Tatsugami Roshi spoke first in Japanese. And Suzuki Roshi said, I wish you could have understood what he just said. And then Suzuki Roshi goes on to say, unless we have the actual feeling of practice, some warm, big satisfaction in your practice, then that is not practice. Unless you have some big, warm, feeling in your practice, loving feeling in your practice.

[30:16]

You can't really call it practice. It's a kind of grim endeavor to kind of sit there in pain doing your practice, whatever it is, trying to develop compassion or something. It doesn't sound very... It sounds like it's counterproductive, actually. And then it goes on. Even if you sit... right posture and try to have the right posture, following your breathing, following all the instructions which were given, still it's empty zazen. And I think in this case he means kind of a meaningless zazen. Basically following all the instructions, sitting upright. Why it's empty zazen is you're just following instructions and following the form. And you're not... kind enough with yourself. You should be very kind with yourself, not just counting your breathing to avoid your thinking mind.

[31:23]

So one of Suzuki Roshi's practices that he offered was breath counting. But people can take a practice like following the breath, staying with the breath, counting the breath, and turn it into a kind of rigid, got to get this done, out of my way, don't bother me. I'm doing my practice and forceful, kind of forcing ourselves to do the practice because it's going to be good for me and I'm going to develop my, especially now, it's almost like I'm sorry I told you about all this brain stuff, you know. It's like the risk, you know, it's like ooh, you know, can you forget that when you walk in the door? or begin sitting, forget, because this will contribute, might contribute to a gaining idea or wanting something for the self, wanting to develop. Actually, when we practice, forget all of that and just sit with a warm, kind, loving feeling.

[32:30]

And later Suzuki Hiroshi said, if you're counting your breath as a way of avoiding pain, or avoiding your thinking mind, that's not the best way to take care of your breathing. It doesn't really make sense. It's just very tedious. Having this warm and kind feeling with each inhale, each exhale, each step, practicing that way has a big, warm, satisfying feeling, refreshing. This description of warm, kind, satisfying and refreshing is our practice. And not just on the cushion, but meeting each situation in your daily life with warmth, kindness,

[33:39]

And satisfied meaning this is enough. I don't need more. You know, I don't need some special state. I don't need to be, I don't need fame and gain. Just, this is enough. This is absolutely enough. Just staying with this moment right here. So this is the meditation practice that, you know, was offered when I came to Zen Center and it's still offered. It's still offered and I think it differs from these other wonderful practices that have been taken into hospitals and schools and hospices and prisons and His Holiness the Dalai Lama has been a consultant in many of these situations, many of these institutes and And he was speaking with a group of Theravadan monks recently, actually, and saying, you know, Theravadan is Southeast Asia monks and also there's different lineages in the West and England and the United States and other places of Theravadan practice or Vipassana practitioners.

[35:03]

And he was, His Holiness was speaking with them and saying how wonderful that the practices of morality and vipassana concentration, analytic practice, bring great understanding and peace and how wonderful. And, His Holiness said, these should also be taken into more secular realms, be let go of the religious side and be brought into other situations to help the world. because these are of great help and great benefit. So I see the distinction between these different kinds of practices, the way that they can mutually support and inform, and also to know the distinction, and to know the pitfalls, I would say, of both. It's a warm, refreshing, loving kindness.

[36:12]

This is the hallmark. This is the hallmark of a person, I feel, who's thoroughly practicing. Part of this brain thing, it shows not only is there more compassion, there's also lowering of stress, able to withstand the vicissitudes of life you know big changes and without setting off the cascade of peptides and chemicals that are stress producing or come along with stress those systems are more stabilized and calmer and so you can handle situations where there's violence where there's where there's bullying at school, where there's conflict in a family, to be able to be the person who speaks kindly, stays calm, has an intuition of how to handle a situation isn't thrown off and destabilized.

[37:32]

So... You know, I want to say something that's, I don't feel it's political. I feel like it comes from my practice and our practice and from the precepts and practice of loving kindness and compassion. You know, after these incidents of Newtown and Aurora and the... Sikh temple in Oak Crest, I think, and more, you can name others. These situations, I think President Obama said at the Newtown vigil, we can't go on like this. I don't think that's the exact quote, but these tragedies, we have to change. We have to do something.

[38:37]

And these secular uses of ancient practices is happening. There's an institute that's working with this compassion and mindfulness meditation institute that's working on video games for children that develop the brain in terms of cooperation, loving kindness, compassion, empathy. You know, these kinds of, these are trainable. That's the other thing. With the plasticity of the brain and so much that we now know about the brain, this is like, they liken it to learning how to play a musical instrument. This is, you can practice and actually develop these capacities. And you can do it in a very kind of... you know, set way, knowing that this is what you're trying to do, or you can know that taking up a practice will develop you in this way, in the dark, in the night, in the not knowing in an inconceivable way how this all works together.

[40:02]

So, so, What can we do? President Obama says we need to change. His Holiness says we need to change. How can we help each other change and work for policies of nonviolence and work for gun protection and gun control with interfaith groups These are all areas, if this is something that calls to you, that you can act on, you can live out what is important to you. So all these different ways of responding to the cries of the world, responding to the suffering that we all experience, this is the Bodhisattva of infinite compassion

[41:05]

who has many names. One name is Guan Yin. She's called the one who hears the cries of the world and responds in whatever way works, whatever language, whatever form, whatever game, whatever will help or alleviate suffering. there you will have Avalokiteshvara, or Guanyin, the Bodhisattva of Infinite Compassion, that's also called the mother and father of the Buddhas. So this compassion that's linked with wisdom brings forth, gives birth to awakened beings who, coming out of... love and compassion and wanting to alleviate suffering, make vows to wake up.

[42:06]

These are Buddha's wakened ones. So I want to close with a Zen story about Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva. And this is a story about one of our Zen teachers, Bai Zhang, a Chinese teacher who was known for working really hard and loving work and working his entire life. And I think human beings do love work. They love, we love, not they, we love meaningful work. And I remember my grandmother when she was older, you know, thinking about it, she may not have been that much older than I am right now, but anyway. She was an old lady and she would come to visit our house And she would say to my mother, give me something to do, something. Don't you have mending or ironing?

[43:06]

She just longed to do something, you know, bake or just can't. And my mother would say, no, just sit and just, I want to do something. Well, I think human beings love work, and Bai Zhang loved work, and when he got old, was sort of like my mother, that his monks hid his tools, you know, just rest, you're old now, you've worked enough. And he's famous for saying, for refusing to eat. He went on a hunger strike, actually, when they hid his tools, because he said, a day of no work is a day of no eating, which is a famous Zen saying, because our Zen practice and work practice is really just one practice. So they finally relented and gave him back his tools, which he was happy about. So this is a story earlier in his life. And Baizhang and the community was out hoeing in the fields. They were out in the fields in China.

[44:08]

The monasteries had rice paddies and other kinds of vegetable patches to provide for the monks. Sometimes hundreds of monks lived there. So they... grew their own food, and they were out hoeing. And at Green Gulch, we have community work. Wednesday mornings, we all go out to the fields and do various jobs. Hoeing is a big job, sometimes planting. Anyway, the community was out in the fields. And so this is the story. One day, all the monks were out in the field working, and all of a sudden, They were working very hard, and they heard the drum, the kind of meal drum that sounded. You could hear it. And that meant it was time to come in for breakfast or lunch, whatever it was. And one of the monks who was working had a hold of his hoe, and he threw his hoe up in the air and started laughing and just went striding off for breakfast.

[45:19]

And Master Bajang remarked, what fine work this is. It is the way whereby the bodhisattva of infinite compassion enters reality. I'll tell the story again. Bunch of Zen students, bunch of monks out there hoeing the fields, working hard, and the drum sounds. And in the monastery, there's a whole soundscape of bells and drums, just like you heard this morning. That's calling people to a lecture, that big bell, or a ceremony sometimes. And then there's smaller bells that mean boughs are happening, and there'll be more clunks that mean let's start chanting. So there's a soundscape that's in silence telling people this is the next thing. So they're all out there working. They hear the drum. And one of the monks throws his hole up in the air and bursts into laughter and goes striding off.

[46:23]

And Bai Zhang says, what fine work this is. It is the way by which the Bodhisattva of infinite compassion enters reality. Now, as all Zen stories are, you may be thinking, what? Huh? I don't get it. Is there a punchline there? Did I miss something? So I've been turning this story for years. And this morning, as often happens when I bring up a story myself, again for myself, I thought, oh, oh, you know. So I'll give you my oh. So Bajan, when he says, what fine work this is. And this is how I understand it this morning. Or not understand it, but my take this morning. You know, this is how the bodhisattva of infinite compassion, the one who hears the cries of the world and responds, completely responds, without delay.

[47:32]

That's one of the things. The bodhisattva practices suchness without delay. Whatever is needed there without delay, they respond. And so this fellow... or gal, who threw her hoe up in the air and laughed, just was totally letting go of the work. Sometimes people say, oh, I want to finish my row, I didn't quite finish, I'm not quite done. But the practice is you hear the drum, you hear the bell, you stop, you drop, you let go of that moment and grow into the next. which is Suzuki Roshi's definition of enlightenment. Let go of this moment and grow into the next. And that's what this monk did. He let go of this moment with exuberance. He let go of it so much that he threw his hole in the air with a big guffaw and headed off to breakfast, which was the next moment.

[48:36]

And what fine work this is. This is entering reality. What is reality? There's nothing... nothing you can have, nothing you can hold on to. Each moment is ever-changing, flows and opens into the next. And what fine work to align with reality, practicing suchness without delay. This is infinite compassion, too. This isn't just a good practicing monk. This is infinite. compassion that aligns with the present moment and responds accordingly with laughter with warmth with loving kindness not you know sour sour grim I don't wanna so that's my understanding this morning of Bai Zhang's Bai Zhang's comment

[49:44]

So please enjoy the weekend, whatever your plans are. And I can't resist from saying drive safely, take good care of each other and yourself. And thank you very much. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our programs are made possible by the donations we receive. Please help us to continue to realize and actualize the practice of giving by offering your financial support. For more information, visit sfzc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[50:32]

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