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. Thank you for being here. I hear there's a baseball game going on right now. And maybe at question and answer, there'll be some time. for an update on the score. And welcome everyone who is joining us online. I wanted to say something this evening about when I first came to practice and two things that really kind of struck me from the beginning and still strike me now. I feel, kind of goes straight to the heart of our practice.

[01:02]

The first one is the question. And when I first arrived at Green Gulch, I had a lot of questions. And, you know, why do we bow? Why so much bowing? What is this all about? And I feel like for the first time in my life, the question was really encouraged. And Neenan Cutchins was one of the first shoe sews that I had. And her thing, as far as I kind of remember, was the question. And she was calligraphing or doing all of these question marks, and she was giving them to everyone as bookmarks and really encouraging us to look at. What's coming up for us? What's our question? And this was very foreign.

[02:08]

I'd been raised Catholic. And not only were you given the answers, but you were also given questions. So, you know, it was very disorienting, this thing about the question. So when I started working with it, I realized, and it hasn't changed much, that the question that I would ask would be turned maybe a quarter degree and then handed back. And I saw that this arrow of the question coming back, and then encouraged to go deeper, especially when thinking that one knows what the answer is, then to question even more deeply.

[03:17]

So I think some of the questions then and now are something like, oh, so... So how is that for you? Or is that so? Or the one my friend Mary likes to ask me, do you believe that? So I think part of also with the harder, more difficult questions, actually keeping them close and understanding that this is our practice. It's not just a problem along the way, but it's actually practice.

[04:19]

So can we accept that this too is Buddha that what is coming up for us in our practice is this too Buddha we are told that but somehow for me it's hard to accept that it's hard to accept that the little petty annoying maybe relationship that I'm just kind of avoiding, you know, that that too, this is Buddha. Another part of the question that I find very interesting is, is that in holding these big questions, not to expect answers.

[05:24]

So why would we ask a question if we weren't expecting an answer? And I find that going deeper and holding these big questions actually guides me along my way. And I guess there's a certain amount of trust or faith in that. It's like, what's the point of having a question if you're not going for an answer? So I think there's something about this that can be very unsettling. And I think that there's also something that can be very wonderful. Because I think the more... we hold our questions, our deepest questions, the more we hold them close, the more we develop self-compassion.

[06:35]

And maybe the less we turn away, the less we turn away from our pain. I understand this, this unsettling, this continuing to open up through further questioning. I understand that as the teachings of the perfection of wisdom. These are sutras that permeate our practice. They are based in not knowing. And There's a not knowing that happens. There's a not knowing in this teaching that is a not knowing of great things, of very obvious objects.

[07:42]

And then there's a not knowing on a very subtle way. Not knowing, you know, after I hang up the phone with my sister, you know, what is that unsettled feeling, you know? So I think in bringing the question there to that sensation, to that phenomena, again, it's coming, it's not abandoning oneself. Again, I feel like that is our practice of self-compassion. in the place of no abiding in me not knowing who you are, there's freedom and possibility and wonder and delight.

[08:46]

I really think that every time we stop knowing and we open to this emptiness and possibility, I really feel like those are our moments of day-to-day enlightenment. The second thing that really was amazing to me, and still is, is our breath. I had been working at Green Gulch for a few months as a farm apprentice, and I injured my arm through repetitive motion, pulling pond weeds out of the pond. And so Emela, who was helping run the farm, it just made sense to her that if I couldn't work, that I should sit Rohatsu Sesshin, which was starting the next day.

[09:59]

A lot of my friends had been really worried about this for weeks, but, you know, I hadn't been. And then, you know, I think I had one afternoon to be kind of terrified. So I remember that first session. I kind of remember I just felt like I was kind of a mess, like I was just kind of, you know, maybe I didn't look like one, but that's how I was feeling. And I remember where I sat in the Zendo and next to whom I was sitting. And I remember there were a few periods where I just thought, I'm going to die. Like, I just don't know what to do with my body anymore or how to try. I couldn't count 1 to 10 on my breath anymore. I just couldn't. And the person practiced me next to me was a long time ago.

[10:59]

practitioner and very strong, very mountain-like. And I remember I just thought, okay, I'm just going to breathe with him. And so I started breathing with him. And at one point I felt like I was just being breathed. And at the end of the period, you know, I bowed to and away, to my cushion, away from my cushion and just thanked him silently for saving me. And it happened a few different times, but during that session, but it was, I was just, it was very encouraging for me because like our breath has been with us our whole life, you know, and it, was mind boggling to me.

[12:00]

Like, how had I never known this? And the power of the breath to just, to be able to carry me through, to carry us through. I think, you know, in my mind, it was around that time that Pema Chodron came to Green Gulch and she was on private retreat up at Hope Cottage. And, um, The whole community was kind of abuzz, and I didn't really know who she was. But she came down, and she met the community on a Wednesday night, and she shared with us her practice of Tonglen. And she described Tonglen as the practice of melting the barrier between self and other. melting the barriers between self and other.

[13:02]

And the instruction is on the in breath to breathe in the pain, whatever that is, suffering, loneliness, shame, embarrassment, rage. To breathe that in on the in breath And that's a little conceptual for me, but it's the texture of that is what you breathe in. So the heaviness, the dense, dark weight of that to breathe that in on the in-breath. And on the out-breath to breathe out joy, and ease, and light.

[14:03]

And it was difficult for me in the beginning. It felt a little too conceptual. I liked, you know, not doing anything in sazen, except coming back to my breath. But I did start working with this. A little bit then, and then more years later, I started working with this. She suggests anchoring yourself in Zazen first before doing this practice. And again, I just found that difficult to do in the Zendo. But there was something really important that she said that I do remember. And it is that when you breathe in whatever suffering you're feeling, that you recognize in that moment that this is something that is being shared by other human beings, by other beings in that exact moment, in that exact same moment, that exact same kind of pain.

[15:28]

So, this I feel for me personally is a very important way for me to stay with my own pain, for me to practice self-compassion rather than fleeing or closing down around the pain, to actually breathe it in and allow, allow, allow space, allow room for a question to be able to bring this in and know that others are feeling the exact same way.

[16:41]

So I didn't practice with this when I lived in community so much, but since I've left, this is what I do throughout the day. I guess it's like my street practice, my worldly practice. And I really see how over time this has trained a heart, mind, muscle, anchored in zazen, anchored in that commitment to return to the cushion. return to the cushion and be with myself. It's fortified that muscle.

[17:43]

It's just there on the breath. So I think that Not only is this important when we're kind of blindsided by something, you know, just big, big, powerful emotion, but also for the smallest things. I find that when I check in throughout the day, there is almost always, a feeling of being unsettled. And when I ask the question, you know, what is this? I don't expect an answer, but I often give one.

[18:46]

And this is being human. This is what it is to be human. Like this dis-ease, this pain. Is it that... that I'm connecting to global warming, I'm connecting to nature and the state that we are in. I don't know. But I think this is our bodhisattva vow, this not knowing and this returning to a willingness to be with Whatever. For a few years after I left residential practice, I worked as a birth doula.

[19:48]

And there's kind of nothing like childbirth labor to bring you into the moment. Single. focus. And I think it's the same with any kind of big pain that it becomes very obvious that if you try and get away from it at all that it's not going to work. This is what sesheen is like. The more you struggle with it, you just know that it's going to be really bad. I remember in the middle of Olivia's birth, I remember thinking, this is why we sit sesheen.

[20:52]

This is it. I also remember having the thought that at this very moment, I don't know how many humans are born every day. It's a crazy number, like a quarter million or something. I thought a quarter million women are doing exactly this. And there was such relief in... connection and actually what happened was I felt like I connected to all of those women but then I felt like I connected back in time to every woman who has ever birthed a child for every child that's ever been birthed so I do believe that our sitting practice I do believe that Seshin's are the best preparation that we have for the moments when we just cannot turn away.

[22:01]

When, When I was a birth doula, and I would be with women who were in labor, and I could just remember every birth, every time when a woman was at the peak of a contraction. I just remember, I knew what that felt like. And just looking in that woman's eyes as she's doing this and saying, you can breathe into this. You can create space around this. And, you know, that terrifying unknown that she's walking through, it's kind of the same as, like, it wasn't quite as terrifying when I told Ed, Ed, I can't do this. I can't be Shouseau. And he looked me in the eye and he said, yes, you can. I was like, oh.

[23:23]

It was just like that. Oh, okay. So this is how we are with each other. Last year, at this time, our abbot, Steve Stuckey, was in relationship with pancreatic cancer. And he called it that. He chose to be in relationship with the cancer, with his dying. And Steve told us through Mary that the pain was so great that All he could do was breathe with it.

[24:24]

And he was so grateful for this practice. He was so grateful for his practice. And when people would send him notes, or there was a few students who actually got to talk to him during that time, and they would say, what can we do for you? because everyone wanted to do something. And he pretty consistently said, take care of each other. Every time I thought about Steve during those months, I would go to my breath and breathe with him. And it felt like, wow, he's going through that kind of excruciating pain, like he's going through those childbirth kind of pains.

[25:39]

But his contractions didn't stop. And he just kept breathing his way into... the unknown. And he was so, he was so gracious and shared that with us so completely. And I would find myself waking up, I often wake up at night, but I would wake up at night and I was immediately kind of thinking of Steve, and I would just lay there in bed in the middle of the night and just breathe with him. And I knew he was probably awake. He was having a hard time sleeping. I knew he was probably just breathing. And I felt immediately connected with him. And not like I was doing something for him, but I was just with him.

[26:44]

And he was entering into that great unknown. just felt like he was, I was going there too, like he was taking us all there with him. And I just felt his practice so strongly. I, you know, we all did. And when I read Steve's death poem, I thought, oh my God, like he knew, like he wrote that line for me. And, you know, immediately thought, oh, well, everyone is thinking that, Nancy. But Linda Ruth said something about, I don't know if it was Linda, I think it was Linda Ruth who said that she felt like Steve was just melting into love. No barriers.

[27:45]

So I know many of you are familiar with Steve's death poem, but I wanted to read it tonight. This human body truly is the entire cosmos. Each breath of mine is equally one of yours, my darling. This tender abiding in my life is the fierce glowing fire of inner earth. linking with all pre-phenomena flashing to the distant horizon from right here now to just this. Now the horizon itself drops away. Bodhi Svaha. So I think, especially living in community, but also in workplaces, anywhere that we're working, living very closely together.

[28:59]

I think sometimes it's hard to continue this questioning, this opening with each other. I know it was for me, particularly when I lived in community. And Robert said, and I were talking about this last year, Norman Fisher had said to him something about how we get very good at closing our hearts to each other. And in a way it makes sense. It's like, you know, now you're the head of my crew. Now we're doing service together. Now we're in this meeting together. I think it's, really hard to live in so closely. I think it's hard when we're driving a car and things are so intense. But, you know, can we keep questioning?

[30:05]

Can we keep looking and maybe turning towards, maybe even if it's just a quarter of a turn towards each other? with a little bit of curiosity and not knowing. So I think my wish for us is for all of us to, as Steve said, take good care of each other and remember that emptiness of all for those of you online, there is celebratory horns passing by Zen Center in this moment. Is there space for a question? And may we, with all beings, become vast, breathing,

[31:18]

compassionate beings. It's wonderful. See, they heard. So thank you, everyone. Enjoy the celebration. Oh, there's probably time. Is there time? A few minutes for questions, Kogan. Oh, yes. I would love to. I don't know if he titled it death poem, but that is how it is. It says death poem. This human body... truly is the entire cosmos. Each breath of mine is equally one of yours, my darling.

[32:24]

This tender abiding in my life is the fierce glowing fire of inner earth, linking with all pre-phenomena, flashing to the distant horizon from right here now to just this. Now the horizon itself drops away. Bodhi Svaha. And Bodhi has an exclamation point, so it makes me want to kind of like, every time I read that Bodhi, you know. Bodhi Svaha. One question. Lately. What is this? What is this?

[33:27]

At the beginning of practice period, I thought that I would take this wonderful opportunity to look at how much I want to control my daughter's life. And when I say control her life, I mean create conditions so that she doesn't suffer. And I realized that I'm just like Gotami's parents. You know, I want to keep her in the palace. So what also came up pretty quickly was honoring her path. And I really want to honor her path. And I know my path. was full of suffering so how can I be with her and how can I be with her in this lifetime and allow her path to unfold so that's a big one that's been coming up what is this yeah

[34:37]

That's one more. Oh, one more question. Yeah. Do you have a sense that something has to be willing to die in order to allow oneself to surrender to your certainty? So what is that? What is that that has to die? So the question is, do we need to have a willingness to To die. To let something within us die. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I do. I do. I think it's hard for us to pick and choose. I think that then we're in there trying to control again. But I think that When we open ourselves to the big question, we have to kind of let it come back in a big way and not sort of a parsed out way.

[36:04]

But I don't think that that has to happen immediately. I think small questions and small opening and allowing is... is compassionate. Thank you, everyone. May we fully enjoy the Dormer.

[36:48]

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