This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Just as I was approaching the door, I could only see this half of the Zendo. I had forgotten. I knew you were all going to be on this half. In that moment, I had no memory of that. And I just saw this startlingly empty Zendo. It's kind of great. Actually, it reminded me that last night I had a dream. There's a grocery store in San Francisco that I frequent. And in the dream, there was nothing in the store.

[01:00]

Rainbow Grocery. And then I went to the checkout desk and the cashier was taking a bath. If you know what that all means, tell me later. As some of you know, and probably some of you don't know, At this time, I was scheduled to do a poetry workshop with Naomi Shihak Nye. So, I'd like to read part of a poem from a book that she gave me several years ago. The book is called Happiness, the Delight Tree. It's an interesting book. It's the whole way around the world, on all continents.

[02:03]

In addition to doing the workshop, Naomi and I and her husband, Michael, we're going to do a service for her mother who died a couple of months ago. About 10 years ago, Naomi started to bring her mother, Marian, to Tassahara. She shared with me several years ago that her mother said to her, going to Tassahara for the poetry workshop is the highlight of my year. I shared with someone at lunch today that once I find myself walking in front of the student area, the student eating area, and then suddenly the thought came into my head, which was, I'm in paradise, why am I complaining?

[03:22]

Of course, paradise and hell are siblings. Anyway, here's the poll. A small basket of happiness. Let's see, I think it's on the top. Is that too bright? Yeah, it will be for that. never call your name but would be waiting somewhere close perhaps under a crust leaf that's turned from pale green to gold with no fat fur so much accompaniment inside a single breeze all whom we loved in their quiet passing lived the happiness they had given and would still give

[04:40]

if only if only you would slow down a minute if only you would pause maybe that's what zazen is that slowing down that pause It helps us make sense of this being alive. It's often occurred to me how tasahara is laid out on the compass points, north, south, zendo, kitchen. east west the valley the creek the sun rising and setting it's somehow we're the recipient of the energy of this place

[06:10]

of the topography of it, of the heritage of it. It was a sacred place before we turned it into as a temple. And let's hope it will be a sacred place after we're all gone. I wanted to mark the moment of Naomi's contribution. Over the years of teaching together, Naomi and I became friends, and it ended up Well, it didn't end, but at one point she decided she would come to Northern Ireland, to Belfast, where I grew up.

[07:23]

I think in no small part it was because I knew Van Morrison, and she was a big fan of Van Morrison. And so I said, well, come and you can have lunch with him. And she did. One of the things that really struck her was in the neighborhood where I grew up. Many people fly the Palestinian flag and Naomi is half Palestinian. And she was stunned when she first saw it. And I said to her, Well, we've been underdogs so long in Northern Ireland that we champion the underdogs of the world. And it reminded me

[08:39]

Recently, I talked to someone, I was talking to someone who I knew from about 20 years ago. And it reminded me of someone, something they had said to me. Their mother was a devout Muslim. And she said, my Muslim, my mother was saying her prayers. You know, their mother had five children. When her mother was saying the prayers, we did not interrupt, as one of the children, we did not interrupt her for anything, you know. And what made me remember it was the way she said it. It struck me like she was saying, my mother lived by the vow of practice. And you knew not to try to deflect it from that.

[09:50]

And I also knew this person grew up in an environment that was very challenging. I don't know if they would say hostile. Lots of negative discrimination and oppression. As did I. And my mother would not only say her prayers, she would insist that we had to join her. She had seven children, so we grew up Catholic. We would say the rosary. And we all have to kneel down on the hard floor. And when you're six years old, the rosary takes forever to say. It's like it goes on forever.

[11:00]

And somewhere in the middle, you kind of stop being you and just give over to something, you know. Naomi had once shared something very similar about her Palestinian grandmother. A resolve, a dedication, a staying close to what's the essence of this life. What's the essence of this practice? and I think of us here in this valley being challenged to discover what that is and to stay true to it to discover what is it to stay true to it and as I was musing on this I was thinking oh

[12:32]

Well, this person's mother and my mother practiced very different religions. They practiced in different countries under different circumstances. Both difficult circumstances. And yet, It occurs to me that they had this same spirit. Each of them in their own way was staying true to their vow. And how do we do that? You know, in the mandala of the monastery, each place is its own energy center in the mandala.

[13:53]

The zinda, the kitchen, the bathhouse, the shop. We energize them and they energize us. And then we take that and we make manifest. And construct a centerpiece. once practiced with a Rinzai teacher who wouldn't have a Buddhist statue in his temple. Once someone brought one and gave it to a beautiful large statue of Buddha, Siddhi, Siddhi.

[14:57]

And this Rinzai teacher said, put it outside in the parking lot. So students took it and they put it in the parking lot close to the center. And he said, no, put it on the other end of the parking lot. In many Zen temples, there may be a polygraphy, an Enzo, a penitent drawing of a stork. Anything and everything would be slowed down, would be paused,

[16:03]

has the capacity of reminding us, of teaching us, and reminding us of the vow of practice, of putting us in touch with our own sacredness. What is it that brought us all here? How do we invoke that when we sit on our cushion? So most of you have been through a month of turmoil. And it saddens me to think of that. that you've had to go through that and I have a hope I have hope that in remembering to stay true to the vow of practice and remembering that it's

[17:35]

it has a certain potency and capacity to help us in those times of turmoil I think it's not a coincidence that my friend's mother and my own mother had this kind of resolve in the midst of challenging circumstances so now we're in the midst of our challenging circumstances just in case you're wondering I'm not suggesting we say the Rosary.

[18:38]

But maybe I am suggesting that we do Zazen. I think in the Zen school there's two kinds of Zazen and of course There's only one kind of sarshi, which is meeting the moment and what's happening in the moment and who's together with you in the moment, meeting them as fully as you can. As honestly as we can. And as compassionately. I don't know if you've ever been close to someone who was traumatized.

[19:49]

But it's like they're suffering totally to pieces and now it's hard for them to put the pieces back together. And they have a vulnerability. And maybe all of us in our own way are susceptible and have been torn into pieces. There's an old Jewish from the Cabal story and it says there was a beautiful vessel and it was broken into pieces and the work of human life the work of practice is to put it back together can we hold each other that tenderly

[21:17]

listen that deeply to each other that we get what's going on for them that in our deep listening we can help them find their true voice that we can help them reconnect to their vows And it's not that it has to look the same as our vow. I must say, it is my experience that when we open our heart, it's all the same vow. Suffering does something to us.

[22:27]

And collectively attending to it does something to us. It touches us in a deep work. It has the capacity to make some experience accessible. The experience of belonging. I hope you will end up feeling like you belong here. Tassara belongs to you. And you belong to it. And you realize the whole world is Tassara.

[23:40]

That in connecting with each other, cultivate an individual and assured trust. We stay separate because of the need to protect ourselves in an untrustable environment. A rind others that we can't trust. How do we cultivate that? When I first went back to Northern Ireland in 1998,

[24:54]

One of the things I was trying to help, and maybe I succeeded in some way, or maybe I didn't, but I was trying to help. We just signed the peace treaty ending 30 years of violence, social violence. The unforgivable difference between us was that some of us were Protestant, And some of us were Catholic. And of course, since that was unforgivable, things became utterly violent. So, I had heard of Mayal Mishinaab Nye. I'd never met her. But I knew very well one of her poems, which is called Kindness. And it says, before you can know kindness as the deep inside, deepest thing inside, you must know suffering as the other deepest thing inside.

[26:09]

I think it's not by utter coincidence that Shakyamuni Buddha after his awakening when he pondered well how can i present this teaching how can i present this teaching of waking up to something you already are how can i present this teaching that's based on a vow that's already commonplace throughout the world and so he started with the teaching of dukkha suffering unsatisfactoriness lack of harmony i think of this expressed in our bodhisattva vows you know in particular in our bodhisattva vow the second bodhisattva vow that says delusions are inexhaustible i avoid the anthem and you know that light which is a little weird because um

[27:59]

The word delusion, you know, if you walk up to someone and say, you're deluded. I don't think they're going to feel like, well, thank you very much. It's very nice of you to say so. But if we acknowledge for ourselves that we are the product of all sorts of conditioning, we invariably revert to a subjective perspective of what's happening that's our human nature that's the way it's put together and it just continues to happen It just keeps manifesting itself for each one of us.

[29:09]

And sometimes it manifests collectively. Then we can declare war on somebody else. Or we can have the comfort of knowing us who are wonderful, and them who are terrible. And yet, at the heart of it, this unending subjectivity, this unending conditional existence, And yet within that conditioned existence, we seem to be capable of wonderful things too.

[30:15]

We can be unselfish. We can be empathetic. We can be patient. We can be generous and kind. Naomi wrote her poem, Kindness, when she and her husband were on their honeymoon in South America, and some bandits got on the bus they were on, they were riding the local bus, and robbed everybody. And from them, they took everything they had, except the clothes they were wearing. At the end of us, arrived in a little village. And the villagers were so incredibly kind to them. They took care of them.

[31:19]

They gave them something to eat. They gave them a place to stay. They find out how to contact the American embassy. And that night Naomi was sitting in the plaza, in the middle of the little town. And this poem came to her. Before you can know kindness as the deepest thing inside, you must know suffering as the other deepest thing inside. But suffering is not fun. we don't want to suffer we make our efforts not to and yet and yet we can listen to how each of us suffers

[32:37]

I don't know if you know, there's a parable in early Buddhism where this woman has a baby which she adores and loves and the baby dies. And she's utterly grief-stricken. Her life is torn into pieces. And she walks around asking someone if they know how to make her baby better. And they send her to the Buddha. And the Buddha says, she said to the Buddha, can you make my baby better? And the Buddha says, If you can bring me some mustard seeds from a house, from a family that hasn't experienced loss, then I can make your baby better.

[34:01]

So she goes around. She knocks on every door and asks them, have you not experienced loss? And there is no one. who hasn't experienced loss and suffering and in the process she discovers we're all in this together before we can know kindness as the deepest thing inside we must know suffering It's not that we have to go looking for trouble. It's woven into our neurology.

[35:05]

It's woven into the impulse towards pleasure and the aversion towards pain. second Bodhisattva vow says this conditioned existence is perpetuating itself I vow to end it I vow not to contribute to the suffering I vow To see it and to see through it. To see the constructs it creates. The tenacity of us and them. The destruction that

[36:20]

set in motion the suffering and each one of us when we sit on our cushion and watch the arising of our yearnings of our versions of our unfinished uh experiences of our life of the ways in which we feel somehow out of place that here is not enough that maybe there and then or better options.

[37:23]

Any way you size it is ferocious. Be here, be now, and give yourself to it completely. There's a way in which that's the most audacious thing you can ask a human being to do. Be here, be now, and give to it completely and each day we keep coming back and pick up that challenge and like mothers throughout the world saying the prayers, no matter what, we discover, we become resilient.

[38:37]

Not because that's our goal, just it's a natural outgrowth of living by vow. Let's end with the final poem by Sri Chimnath. I think it was an inspiration for this book. Here's this poem. Always what we need is good company. Always what we need is the bird in our heart.

[39:42]

Always what we need is a divine wave flowing through our body. Always what we need is beauty's varied expressions. Always what we need is an undivided mind. Always what we need is the channel of hope. May we give each other cause for hope. May we give each other cause to come back to the cushion. May we give each other the inspiration, the encouragement, the opportunity to come back to themselves, their vow, the nobility of their being.

[40:47]

Thank you. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma talks are offered free of charge and and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, visit SSCC.org and click Giving.

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