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 morning. wonder what the Buddha did without his microphone. It's good to see everyone. Lovely, lovely to be here at City Center, my home. And before we get started, I wanted to see how many are new to City Center. Welcome, welcome. to Beginner Minds Temple, and you will model for us Beginner's Minds.

[01:04]

New people. You're welcome. So today's topic is living through strong emotions. Living through strong emotions. And so I think maybe a few of us have had some and look like we lived through it. End of talk. But I imagine you two have something to share about that process and your life experience around it, and we will have Q&A after this session, and I'd love to hear your journey with strong emotions. So when I picked this topic, it was like maybe a year ago, and I actually... I was asked, how did you come to this topic? And I said, well, really, I just thought it was a good idea. And now that I have to do it, I was a little bit afraid of it.

[02:08]

I said I was afraid of the topic. And there are so many things going on in my life and in the world right now in which I have strong emotions. I was afraid, oh, I'll just get up there and they'll all come out, all of my strong emotions. And so that's the fear. And I thought, aha, maybe that in itself is the crux, the crucial feeling around strong emotions is that we're afraid that it's going to take us over, take us out. So we're very afraid of them and maybe even not willing to say we even have them. And so it may be not... knowing if we have them or if they come up at all, you know, any strong emotions. So now what do I mean by strong emotions? I keep saying strong emotions. And everyone says, well, I have them. All my emotions are strong.

[03:08]

Or, you know, I have them and I'm not sure if they're strong or not. And so for this particular talk, strong emotions are mental states that cloud the mind and manifest in unwholesome acts. are mental states that cloud the mind and manifest in unwholesome acts. And you might have heard the word klesha, K-L-E-S-H-A-S, and that is a word sometimes used in some of the doctrines and sutras, is klesha. Strong emotions are pleasure. So they're a little bit different. They're kind of like that thing that you're having an emotion and you think you're going to lose your mind. You're going crazy. You can't stop thinking about it. Every time you wake up, every time you take a step, you're constantly thinking about this thing that's going on in your mind, going on in your life.

[04:10]

So you're constantly, actually the emotion has you rather than you having the emotion. It has you. It has a hold of you. And this is quite normal, so don't feel, if you're having them, that something's really wrong with you. I think if you're having them, you're probably quite alive and quite human. And in this practice, in the Dharma, you must feel all of your emotions. You must feel them all. You must be fully human. And you must be able to walk fully human. And in that, you're going to feel the emotions. Now, whether they're on the strong... 10 or 1 if that's something you make a decision about. It's your discernment. So there's no way I can tell you whether your emotions are strong or not in that way. So I kind of leave that open as well. Sometimes strong emotions also stop us from practicing, too. Just living our lives. You know, we just stop living. We go to bed.

[05:14]

You know, we get depressed or we go away, we withdraw. All kinds of things can happen to us. And so that's why it's important to stop and take some time to look at emotions, and especially the strong ones, the questions. Sometimes they're also called afflictions, sometimes. So in Indian philosophy, I've also heard the use of the word poison. that kleshas or strong emotions can be a poison, something going through your body and not helping you out at all. It's something that may harm you or harm others, not just yourself, but harm you. So when they spell it out, when they spell out strong emotions, they often talk about ignorance. that you're in a state of ignorance, not knowing something or not understanding the interrelationship of life.

[06:16]

Or there's some egoism. Oh, ego. Oh, no, not that word again. Ego. Oh, yeah, I know. Attachment. Oh, I know that one, too. Aversion. I know that one and could be having it now. Clinging to life. Clinging to life. And then you can go on and on with these. And so don't try to memorize this now. Ignorant, egoism, attachment, aversion, clinging to life. Or it could be old thoughts, habits, and patterns. Some very old emotions coming up through you from past experiences. So that's a lot, right? So... I tend not to dwell on these right now, but if you're a scholarly type like me, you can go and read about them, these different ignorance, egoism, attachment, aversion, clinging to life, old thoughts, habits, and patterns, and very old emotions.

[07:18]

And the reason why I say to read about them is so, because what I'd like you to do is kind of be present here with just having a strong emotion and just understanding what you understand of strong emotions. And I'd like to just maybe present one place in which strong emotions arise, rather than all of those, because it's a long list and, you know, we're into list and Dharma, so we're not going to do the list. We're going to do one thing, and one thing is view. I believe that strong emotions come from having one extreme view of something or someone. You're having one extreme view of something or someone. And so you can be imagining or holding on to a particular way in which something has happened, something has come to you, something that was said, some type of interaction between you and another, or you and another place, another person.

[08:31]

So I like the extreme view point of view, actually, to look at strong emotions. And I'm going to give you an example, as I usually like to do, to help you see, and I like to give you an example from my own life. And so one of my personal experiences I had, I definitely have many strong emotions and have had them over the stint of my life. practice, and I have noticed a change in how I approach them, but we'll talk about that a little bit later. The experience I'd like to share with you is about a teacher that I engaged with, a powerful teacher, and she's not in Zen Center or in my other Native American Sundance community. This is a teacher that I met outside of both those communities. And I felt very strongly that she was to teach me something about myself and something about divination, which is what she taught.

[09:44]

And so I went to her to learn about how one uses their senses and uses the elements of life to understand it. So it's going to be very complex and very esoteric, which is what I enjoy. So I was gung-ho, ready to sit with this teacher. And I did. I sat with her for many months and learned a lot. And then she invited me to help her do some retreats. together around her topic and the topics that I was learning around the elements of life, water, fire, earth, mineral, nature. And we did these retreats together. And as we were doing them, I noticed for myself, I was starting to develop a particular view of her and a particular view of the rituals and ceremonies that we were doing together. And then after the view became, I had an opinion about it too, about how it was done, when it was done, who should be doing it, when.

[10:56]

Now remember, I asked for the teacher, right? So I asked for this teacher and I really had an idea of how this should all go in order for me to make it through this training so that I could be her, or better than her maybe even, you know? So that I could serve in the world as I thought was my purpose in life. So watch out for that. You know, because when you have a purpose, you start to act through it. And so I was beginning to notice myself dwindle, begin to start to dislike this teacher for everything that she did and said. And I... quickly found myself in a place of suffering and some very, very strong emotions, the whole gamut, rage, anger, greed, you just name it, shame, embarrassment, all of it was just coming up all at once. And I began to blame her for all of my strong emotions because she had to be causing them because I didn't have them before I met her.

[12:01]

So we know that's not true. So anyway, we began to battle. I thought, wow, this is very interesting, battling with a teacher. You know, we were struggling with these, you know, debates. And finally, this whole experience ended. She called me in one day and said, I have to talk with you. And I knew it was the talk. Like, you are out of here, you know. So I could feel it because I had the intuition. And I went in. I'm still full of my ego, my attachment, my clinging to her and everything. And so she said, you're just not ready for this, you know. And I'm like, you're not ready. I said, but you're supposed to train me. And I really start talking back. I'm still debating, you know. You're supposed to train me. That's why I'm not ready, you know. Just talking back to her. And so like demonstrating it, right? You're not ready, you know, for this. And I remember wanting to cry.

[13:06]

You know, I remember shaking and it coming up and rising in my body, the strong emotion rising high up into my heart. And I said, I am not going to cry in front of her. You know, I remember saying that, you know, although the tears were coming, steadily coming. And because I didn't want to, I guess I was in a power struggle with her. And if she had made me cry, then she had won. If I had shown any of my strong emotions, then... then, in fact, I hadn't learned anything, or, you know, in fact, she was right. I'm not ready, you know. So this was a very, very interesting meeting, and I remember gathering myself together and walking out, and for weeks, I would say months, I would think of her, and I would dream of her, and I would hear the words, and it was this constant, constant, constant, like, nightmare. Nightmare. Nightmare. Now, was it poison? Maybe not.

[14:08]

I don't think so. Was it all that ignorance, egotism, attachment, aversion, clinging to life, having one view? Maybe all of that. But I know one thing I can tell you, one thing. It was the most powerful transformation I had in that moment to see myself as I am, as who I am, and not who I think I am. and that I really understood emotions to be not only poison, but a very powerful portal to transformation and healing, to understanding life and to understanding suffering. And so even in that one meeting, even though it clung to me as a not-so-good story, A story of aversion, of attachment and egoism. It was also a story of learning and joy.

[15:11]

And when I came to that place a year later, of joy, so I'm just telling you, not overnight. The place of joy. So how could I get happy? Suddenly I got happy or something? No. What happened is I began, the joy arose from just knowing some other aspect of who I was. or how I interact and how I respond to life and respond to people and every other thing living. I began to see my story of who I was was not a true story. And so it's very important, I think, that's why I brought this topic, I think, forward. is to look at strong emotions, because sometimes once we get into the Dharma, or we practice any spiritual practice, we often think the emotions must be left outside the door. We must sit very quietly, very sternly, very without emotion.

[16:12]

And this is a detriment to your practice. This is a danger to your practice. You must be seen, if only to yourself. You must be seen, if only to yourself. The teachers can see you, too, and that will help. I remember the first time crying in front of my teachers. I'm like, oh, God, they're throwing me out of here. I'm just a big baby. And that was okay. I just remained a big baby. I'm still a big baby. So anyway, I think it's very powerful to work with them, and that's why I bring them to you. So how do we work with them? That's in our, I'm sure. So I have the formula. When you're done, you'll never have any more problems. So one thing I am encouraging, even at this moment, if there's any strong emotions for you, that you just feel them to some degree and not suppress them.

[17:13]

Because a lot of times we suppress, the main one is anger, because we definitely don't want to be seen that way. We tend to do grief, okay, might cry. Sometimes we don't want to do that one either. So suppression is harmful. And then also saying we're a bad person because we have strong emotions. There's no such a thing. is a bad person because they have a strong emotion. So I'd like to go a little further. And this is from my experience of practicing with strong emotions. And there are five, five things here. Don't memorize them. So one is be aware of the emotion arising in the body. You know, and be aware for some time. But that doesn't mean... Like, oh, I'm angry. Oops, suppress it. Oh, I'm crying. Oops, let me, you know, let me fix it. You know, no. So for some time can be, it could be days. It could be hours, but it could be days.

[18:14]

It could be weeks. It could be years. It took a year for me to come to that joy with that teacher. And so in that process of sitting and waiting is opening of the heart. There's an opening of the heart. And there's the beginning of a practice of tenderness, a practice of being that way, just tender. And as your old thoughts and habits and ego and attachment arise, you still are feeling in the body, you know, that this is something that is shaking your core, your life. something that's waking you up, waking you up. The second is let the feelings be seen without the words. So not putting words to it, like a story. So in other words, you're still in your vulnerability, you're still in your trembling, as I was with the teacher.

[19:16]

You're still in that trembling place. You're still in that place of human, the human gateway. The heart is the human gateway. So you're still there. And then you decide later if the feelings need to be expressed and for what purpose. You know, so sometimes we want to get through the feelings so we can go fix it or go to the person who can help us fix it, even if it's the person we felt who made us have the strong emotion. We want to go to them right away and get this straightened out so we're not having the strong emotion any longer. So decide later if the feelings need to be expressed later, later, later. Later, later, later. to be expressed and for what purpose and to whose benefit? Are you trying to make yourself feel better or convince someone of something that you believe, your belief, your opinion? Or is it to honor the relationship or whether it's with a person or just an environment, honor the relationship and the human frailty and the strength of that relationship?

[20:23]

Because what's happening is a powerful bonding. with whatever the relationship is, an idea, a teacher, a friend. There's a powerful bonding happening within you if you can decide later to express. Then the other is to express the feelings when the mind has no words. So that doesn't make sense, right? Wait a minute, I need to express it when I don't have any words. That doesn't make any sense, right? So I say that because it's better when you don't have it all figured out what you're going to say, basically. So you might start out as, I'm speechless. I have no words, if you're going to express it. I really don't have the words for what I'm feeling. And this beginning kind of brings forth the tenderness that you'll need to cope and be with this strong emotion. And so you are actually finding a way within your own self and your own realm of love to bring forth your feelings.

[21:32]

So you're finding that place no matter what the emotion is, whatever the strong emotion is. And then if possible, this is not always possible, but create a space for forgiveness and reconciliation, which I did have with that teacher years later, two or three years later, when that was the time. And it wasn't like a big thing. We didn't set up and say, we're going to have a reconciliation session or intervention. It kind of happened organically and naturally. We were just talking. She came to town. We met. I had a lovely garden at that time, and we sat and had tea. And that was enough. That was enough. That was the reconciliation. And from that point on, things have been fine. Just good. So I have been speaking today a lot about an interpersonal level of dealing with your strong emotions, but maybe your strong emotions about something in the world.

[22:33]

You know, maybe it's something that requires collective action. But I still feel that how we deal with it is still quite similar, how you would deal with your own personal emotion. So I wanted to talk about a teacher named Ilana Van Zant. And she's a spiritual teacher and healer and African-American descent. And she took it upon herself to go to Ferguson, Missouri, where the young teen, Michael Brown, was shot by the police and killed. And she took it upon herself to move from a spiritual teacher... spiritual teacher, healer, to activist, to go and see what she could do. And I was quite interested in what she might do, being a spiritual teacher. So what she did is sort of what I've just said. She walked right up to Ferguson to the crowd of people, and the first thing she did was opening of the heart.

[23:36]

And this is what she said. I come here with an open heart to interrupt the pattern. Isn't that very... Dharma right there. She wanted to interrupt the pattern of old thoughts and habits and conditions that were caused by conditions within that community. And so she says, you know, I come here with an open heart to interrupt the pattern. I'm not coming because I know. I don't know. So not having the words. But together, I think we can all find out, she said. I promise you, this need not be this, the violence that was happening. Need not be. So that was opening of the heart in a collective process. Forgiveness. She went on with her own vulnerability. I'm here because I failed you. How many spiritual teachers would walk into a place and say that when they're there to help? I failed you when I got busy and stopped teaching in my kitchen in my basement.

[24:38]

when I stopped making my rounds to junior high schools and high schools, when I failed to keep my responsibility as an elder to usher the younger ones up, she said. So I'm here to ask for your forgiveness. I'm here to support you in learning how to use your power wisely. I'm here because I don't want another one of you to be shot. I don't want another one of you to be demoralized and handcuffed and dragged off to prison. I don't want that. These are her words. The next thing she did was gather the peacemakers from the community in which there was strong emotions to begin the reconciliation. She didn't bring in a bunch of peacemakers. She pointed to the ones who were standing right there in the streets doing the violence to become the peacemakers, to be part of the reconciliation, to help them see that even within that violence, there was also peace available. There was peace available.

[25:39]

And within them, there was peace. And so she picked the peacemakers, 13 of them, within that community and sent them out with a charge to do the work in the community immediately. Not today, not tomorrow. They didn't do a plan. They just had to do it immediately. They had to go out and access that peace within themselves. Access the peace within themselves in order to... help with the strong emotions in Ferguson, Missouri. Very powerful. So, I wanted to share with you, I don't know, where is Jean? Time-wise, I'm not sure. I wanted to share with you that when I was sitting with this talk on strong emotions, I've It was very difficult for me to find an incident. And I thought that was interesting because I felt I have had strong emotions, but they pass more quickly now.

[26:47]

And I don't know what the formula of that is, but I do know that once I started practicing, I did allow my strong emotions to arise. And some people say, oh, it's meditation. Go out and meditate. And so I... I hesitate to say that, you know, but that's the only answer and that you go out and you say, I can meditate this away. That's the fear. I'm going to meditate this strong emotional way. I'm really mad. You know, I hesitate. I hesitate because it would be a misuse of such a powerful action. And so meditation is good, but to To use it for a goal to end that would be a misuse and probably a disappointment because your expectations will be not met. I also hesitated to say kindness and compassion, you know, to be kind and compassionate because then we kind of think there's a way of being.

[27:50]

There's a way of speaking kind, acting kind. and being compassionate. And I want to steer away from that right now in terms of strong emotions because I think we kind of jump to what we think kind is and what we think compassion is. And therefore, we don't think we have a strong emotion or when we have them, we're good with it because it's over. I'm done. One minute, I'm done. So I believe that what it takes, the practice is to just be with who you are. Be with who you are. And find in who you are, even with the strong emotions, is a place of joy. In this body, I say breathe in and feel joy in having even a body to feel with. If you could just gather that joy, breathing in and feeling the joy in having a body to feel with. And then breathing out, knowing that all is changing,

[28:53]

and that chaos is part of the change. It's that difficult breathing out and know that all is changing, but that the chaos is part of the change. I was very disappointed when I realized my life wasn't going to go into bliss. With my Dharma practice. I wanted that bliss. And I, you know, was waiting for it. I'm having a lot of problems. I'm suffering. Teacher nod, mm-hmm. Yes, yes. You are suffering. You are alive. Congratulations. Didn't like that response. So we breathe in and concentrate our hearts on love, whatever that is, whatever... Not love in the movies, but the love of being alive, the love of just having the opportunity, the chance to be in relationship with all living beings, with all living beings.

[30:04]

The metta we talk about in the metta sutra. To be able to maybe even love another as a mother would love her only child. Maybe that deeply as we continue to practice. I continue to see myself in that teacher. And I really see her now as I try to share my life with other people. And I understand her so fully. I understand her so fully. And so it's time. It takes time. So I'm growing. She's maybe growing. You know, we all grow together. You know, and that's the love. It was maybe an act of love that she told me, you're not ready. Act of love. So to me it was... a strong emotion of, oh, she hates me. So this is the practice. This is the practice. Ourselves and our minds, our bodies, and how we take action with our mind and body and what we bring into our life because of that.

[31:07]

Because of what we say and what we do. And this is the practice. And we keep on going. We learn and we keep on going. We live through the strong emotions, even if they last a year. I don't know what time it is, so I could take a question or two if there's any. That's good to hear. Thank you. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma talks are offered at no cost and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma.

[32:11]

For more information, visit sfcc.org and click giving. May we fully enjoy the Dormer.

[32:21]

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