This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good evening. Good afternoon. Good morning. Aloha from Hawaii. Can everyone hear me okay? How's the sound? Good. Great. I'm so delighted to be here. I see so many beautiful faces that I recognize and hold dear in my heart. Aloha in Hawaiian is a greeting and a parting, a way of acknowledging the breath of life that we all share. Aloha to everyone. I also want to acknowledge that I'm on the big island of Hawaii, some of the newest Earth on the planet. only one and a half million years old, the traditional lands of the Kanaka Maoli, honoring their presence here, their caretaking of the land.

[01:09]

Most of us are living on traditional indigenous land. I'm really moved to be able to speak to you now after living in the Chai Temple Zen Center community for some of the most transformative years of my life, a dozen years of transformation. And now to be able to speak to you from outside the container is really deeply moving. I want to just offer gratitude, start with gratitude, practice always to all the Dharma flag teachers of traditions of Buddha Dharma, spanning the globe, the many, many, many fold wisdom and compassion teachings uniquely expressed from the beginning of time and diverse cultures everywhere. And then the ocean of, uh, Good-hearted practitioners like yourselves who lay and ordained and clearly in between have been really the lifeblood of this Buddha awakening wave throughout the last 2,500 years, sustaining the tradition.

[02:13]

So gratitude, gratitude, gratitude. I think I want to start with the Bodhisattva vow. I want to speak today on the themes of rousing bodhicitta. Three themes, rousing bodhicitta, this practice of not othering, which feels very alive at this moment in our history. And the third is kind of an open-ended koan that I hope you'll join me in considering its discussion. I'm really interested in how this lands for you, this topic of taking action. So rousing bodhicitta, not othering, the practice of really a bodhisattva being porous to the world. So we're all being challenged at this time on Earth like never before. And my aspiration for this talk is, as all Dharma talks, just to encourage you wholeheartedly on your sacred journey, the uniqueness of your journey.

[03:13]

Your precious life is a way that the cosmos is allowed to see itself. So it's already a perfect life. It is profound and beautiful. And still, we come together in these traditions, in the Buddha Dharma, in Sangha, Jewel, gatherings like this to remember our basic goodness and the profound beauty and blessings of the natural world. So we come together in that spirit. We've all been sitting with this beautiful bell kind of calling us to attention. Please, I invite you to be comfortable in your seats, adopt a practice of pure awareness, a position where you can really just feel any tension in your body, Do a brief body scan from the top to the bottom. Allow, invite any tension to flow downward into the earth. And really, I invite you to be relaxed in this talk for the next half hour or so. And following the breath to the end of our exhalation, attending to the breath in the spirit of generosity, paramita, of giving all of our life energy away.

[04:24]

And then at the end of that exhalation, just dropping... into the wide field of awareness, letting go at the end. The inhalation comes naturally on its own. And then again, just the cycling of letting go all the way with a very light, curious awareness to the end of our breath and then releasing, letting go and occupying that, that spacious gap. So, uh, Speaking, I want to acknowledge what's most alive for me in this moment. I kind of want to talk about so many things because I feel so enlivened in Dharma situations, in Dharma community. And I just feel so full of grief these days. I think that I want to acknowledge what's most alive for me, the enormity of the world situation.

[05:25]

this summer of widespread droughts and floods and storms and aridity and rising sea levels and lowering sea ice and polluted aquifers and just the ongoing kind of wave of revelation represented by the IPCC report that came out a few days ago, the International Panel on Climate Change, which... It feels very serious, you know, because the gravity of our world situation right now is very much alive for me. And this question of what are we going to do to change our ways? You know, we are in the first world. We're in the United States. We're the richest country in history. We have driven most of this climate change science in the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels. So what are we going to do? And I just offer it up. to the wisdom of the Sangha. I feel then it's uniquely suited to handle impossible, overwhelming questions.

[06:31]

And so, yeah, I really feel like it's incumbent upon us to really hold this question near and dear and not to get lost in the overwhelm, but to bring it home and to run it through our practice. run it through our practice, and then how do we take action? How do we not other the world? How do we not make it about the problem is over there and be authentic and identifying problems and coming up with creative, dynamic, compassionate, wisdom-based solutions? The universe is calling out for deeply ethical, non-dual culture. So I really, I feel so inspired in my life by this Mahayana Buddhist vision of an enlightened society. So how do we do this is the question. So rousing bodhicitta, I feel like bodhicitta for me has been the lodestar of my practice.

[07:40]

It was the first thing that I encountered in Buddhist teachings. And I absolutely melted when I encountered this notion of the thought of awakening. Bodhicitta is a Sanskrit term for those who don't know, bodhicitta meaning awakened or enlightened. And citta is a Sanskrit word for mind and mind and body are kind of hybridized sameness in traditional Buddhist thought. So bodhicitta is this awakened or awakening thought that a bodhisattva, a person who aspires to be of great benefit, which inspires to empathy and compassion in their own evolution, in their own sacred journey of awakening. Bodhicitta is sort of understood as rousing bodhicitta is sort of one of the images we are familiar with is donning the armor of bodhicitta. You know, it's almost like we wake up and metaphorically we orient our compass.

[08:45]

We turn toward the sun of the awakened horizon and remind ourselves, like, yes, I am deeply committed. I wish to awaken empathy and compassion for the well-being of all. So I wanted to share a song that, for me, is a way of rousing bodhicitta. This is a sung version of The Four Great Bows. It goes... I vow to wake the beings of the world. I vow to set endless heartaches to rest. I vow to walk through every wisdom gate. I vow to live the great Buddha way. This is a verse that arouses my bodhicitta.

[09:48]

I feel my face sort of well up with this compassionate wish to set endless heartache to rest, to allow beings, myself included, to come onto the ground of Mother Earth, to come into the cosmic womb and know themselves and know their basic goodness and to not feel the confusion and paranoia of of isolation. So I want to put that flag in the ground for rousing bodhicitta in our lives. Maybe this is the only practice that we need to do to orient ourselves toward the good and to allow our tender hearts to sort of melt in that awareness. And the melting is a dynamic of empathy that I think gets at the heart of Buddha's insights into how we suffer, which is the suffering of believing ourselves to be separate and isolated beings in a material universe and...

[11:11]

and needing to find our own way alone. So there's a sort of, I can imagine that there is a civic culture that I'm familiar with from Zen Center, the culture of bodhicitta, the culture of the bodhisattva community. And it also points to the way our interpersonal, it attenuates our interpersonal behaviors, our interpersonal expression of enlightenment. So may we arouse bodhicitta mind as part of our everyday practice. May that become habituated in our lives and understood as a maybe necessary gate into Mahayana Buddha's practice. One feeling of aroused bodhicitta from the culture, I recently saw the film The Summer of Soul.

[12:13]

I don't know if anyone got to see that during these COVID times, but it's a filmed music festival from Harlem in 1969. And it is just heart-rending, you know, capturing the spectrum, the bittersweet spectrum from grief to joy of the Black American experience on the heels of the riots in Harlem in 1968. To see... just families and incredible musicians making music. I wept through the whole thing and I felt that, I felt my heart enlivened in a way that I'm so grateful for. Another quality that I feel like I'm late to the table on and probably everyone listening is familiar with, but this... This notion of discursive meditation. I feel like I really focus a lot in my practice on Sazen.

[13:17]

And just the last bit of time, this idea of, of course, we're meditating with our thoughts, you know, off of the cushion. So I also want to encourage us to, you know, meditate with our thinking, particularly in this time, on these matters that are overwhelming. Like, how do we bring our... contemplative practice and that wide beginner's mind, and then also hold some of these really complicated dynamics. How do we hold the reality of climate change? How do we come to terms with our own racial conditioning, our privileges? How do we look at our bias? How do we understand our... I suppose anything can be a discursive meditation, but it also feels helpful in doing this rousing bodhicitta. Sometimes in the traditional literature, bodhicitta kind of appears as this thing that magically inspires or encourages.

[14:22]

Parallel to that, I think, is this tradition of discursive meditation with contemplating things with our thinking mind and working them out, you know, coming at it using the tools of our conceptual thinking. And some of these meditations, I'm sure we all do in our way, but just hearing the news of, I heard a report on Cox's Bazaar, the largest immigrant refugee camp of the Rohingya, and it was flooded. And to meditate on the experience of a being in that sort of dire strait I think can is useful, not in an abstract theoretical way, but to do the work of really opening up our hearts, opening up our compassion and allowing that, you know, conditioning ourselves to really feel all those feelings.

[15:27]

The great sage Joanna Macy really encourages us during this great turning of the earth. caused by our activities as a species to like the depth of our feeling is in direct relationship with the depth of our commitment to other beings and other life forms and the beauty and integrity of this planet so i think all of any practices that allow us to really open that up and and you know let let the tears come closer and closer uh so then i um So there's bodhicitta. And one of the obstacles to bodhicitta and one of the obstacles, I think, to I think we're seeing it in a lot of the divisiveness in all aspects of our world today is this is this reflexive othering, which also is one of the primary insights of of Shakyamuni Buddha is our our conditioned

[16:44]

reflexive defensiveness and moving beings away from us and considering ourselves as, as a bubble or Chögyam Trungpa calls it a cocoon. You know, he says we're comfortable in this cocoon that we've made of ourselves. And, uh, and then we moved through the world, you know, trying to protect this cocoon from any intrusion, any penetration, any discomfort. Um, And I think it's important that we feel that in our walking around life. I was humbled in considering this topic to remember that when living at Bend Center, in all the intimacy and the profound safety and beauty of the form in the community, I still would walk around and consider others in this really clunky, obstructed way. a lot of the time.

[17:44]

And how restrictive that is and how prohibitive of an awakened heart it is. It really restricts the free flow of energy. So I feel like this is an important practice at this time as well, is to really negotiate, like recognize and practice with this othering. And I think it... we're probably doing it with another set of language around it already. But for some reason, this othering has felt helpful of like, even the world and objects in the world, I can feel there's a quantitative, qualitative difference when I am in connection with my body in an alive and present way. And my presence is widened out toward the horizon and my heart is softened and there's a willingness to be vulnerable.

[18:46]

It's the verse from Dogen about it's delusion to think that you're carrying yourself into the world. Awakening is when, you know, co-arising all the things, the beauty of the world is coming and it's not running through a bubbly, cocoon-like filter toward yourself and you're sifting out the things that you don't There's just this wild arising and disappearing and arising and disappearing. So I think, I think at this time, the practice of noticing the habit of othering and actively, you know, again, with this Bodhisattva energy, actively, I remember Linda Ruth teaching about, you know, we were going through Shanti David's Bodhicaryapatara, the way of the Bodhisattva, and it was the... the teaching of like the bodhisattva's courage to be the first to speak, the bodhisattva's courage and willingness to be vulnerable is the inspiration, the bodhisattva's willingness to, you know, it's the same as the pivot of the Good Samaritan story.

[19:54]

It's like the willingness to slow down and stop, to see, to notice the wide field, to project one's empathy into a situation that is one's own. profound and transformative. And I think for me, it's also something I can do. It's something that I can actually do and recognize myself doing and feel it as a not on the cushion, but all the time practice. Oh, I'm othering the dishes in the sink and kind of like plunking them around or I'm othering the cat who's not doing what I want it to do. Or I'm even othering the weather, like it's been raining for weeks here. It's kind of getting, I'm over it. I'm done with the rain and the wet in my little house. So I'm othering the weather, like, man, I'm afraid this changed. So I wanted to share again, I thought it would be fun to just share some things that are parallel to Zen Center expressions.

[21:05]

And that I found juicy because they resonate off of the Zen forms and Zen sutras that we study. And then they kind of have, then they leap off of those into sometimes new places. This is an aspiration prayer by Reginald Ray, whose works on somatic meditation I've really been inspired by for the last few years. It's an aspiration prayer. And I also try to say this every day. May I develop complete acceptance and openness to all situations and emotions and to all people. May I develop complete acceptance and openness to all situations and the emotions and to all people. May I experience everything nakedly, completely without mental reservations or blockages. May I experience everything nakedly. as they are, completely without mental reservations or blockages.

[22:07]

May I never withdraw from life or centralize unto myself. May I never withdraw from life or centralize unto myself. May my heart be laid bare and open to the fire of all that is. May my heart be laid bare and open to the fire of all that is. What a profound aspiration I find to be. I knew I prepared way too much material. I could talk to you for hours. The last thing I wanted to bring up, and then I really look forward to having a Dharma discussion, is this question of taking action. what is appropriate action?

[23:09]

How do we take action? I can feel myself want to dwell in the poetry of our tradition. I want to dwell in the mystical experiences. I want to dwell in sort of my own evolution, my personal and kind of concentrated immediate surround and my relationships. And I think that's appropriate. I think that's appropriate. So I'm not saying not attending to oneself and one's practice. And the transcendent is not of utmost importance. But how do we talk about the burning planet? How do we talk about it? And how do we live? So this is a non, you know, it's not as if one, you know, transcendence is on one side.

[24:10]

It's not, I don't want to say that, but I am challenged to say how do we talk about the burning planet? And how do I talk about it? And how do I act in such a way that I know that the planet is burning and that many, many, many, many beings are suffering? So I suspect it's true for everyone on this call. We're all seeking more creative means and meaningful ways to take action in this time of profound human inequality. And spiritual friendship is probably the primary response always, you know, that intimacy and... Friendship and cultivating qualities of patience and ethical discipline, wisdom are clearly the way.

[25:17]

And there's a desire to rabble around a little bit. I want to stir us up. I want to stir myself toward the good trouble that John Lewis was talking about and that he's being remembered for. the efficacy and beauty of the diverse practices of Buddhism that have flourished, have flourished because they hold out this vision of an enlightened society. And I think the model that we all actually hold up as our ideal of renunciation, home leaving, whether it's formal putting on the road and shaving our heads or just taking the vows of non-harming. Certainly renunciation is in the center of that. And so how do we... I don't want to be prescriptive, and then I do want to kind of tease around the edge of the prescription.

[26:28]

You know, like, can we buy less stuff? Can we buy less new stuff? Can we cut out meat and dairy from one of our meals every day? Can we travel less? This is super, super hard. Can we travel less? Can we reuse? Can we barter? Can we create alternate economies? Can we spend less time online? Can we participate in civil disobedience? Can we go to jail? Can we run for office? We need more Buddhist politicians. We need more practitioners who are civil professionals. We need more monks who are firefighters. And center seems like it's starting to have a corner on that market. We need more contemplative policymakers. We need more Zazen in the boardrooms and think tanks and decision-making institutions, right? So we need people who understand impermanence of judges and lawyers and prison wardens, border patrol agents. We need everyone to have beginner's mind, understanding of interdependence.

[27:30]

And we need to have a vital, vibrant practice as well. Excuse me for having some idea of how to live. I think it's a fine line. You know, we don't want to prophetize. And I feel like we don't want to. One story from my recent travels was I was at a family camp. gathering, my wife's family gathering, and I had a Black Lives Matter pin on my hat and I didn't think about it. I was a little aware that going to Montana with a BLM sort of flag on my hat was maybe going to be edgy for some people. And it was that line of like, is this something I believe in and want to stand out for? Am I willing to stand out for this? And then in a family gathering, it's kind of a different dynamic than just with strangers, right? being with folks who one person wound up being, my nephew-in-law wound up being a police officer.

[28:36]

And it was clear that I made him really uncomfortable and really really upset with my political statement. So I want to just acknowledge that this last bit of taking action is edgy. It's really edgy. And I don't think there's a clear way forward. But I do feel vital that we talk about it in our sanghas and that we're, yeah, that we're not afraid in that bodhisattva way to be the one to bring it up, bring up white privilege, to bring up radical inequality. And then, yeah, some of these outlandish things, like how about we have more Buddhists in public life, like more Buddhists, and it doesn't need to be Buddhists. more folks who have that wide horizon, you know, moving through mountains and waters toward maybe the never to be achieved, but toward the ideal of a society that is founded on basic goodness.

[29:37]

It's founded on loving kindness, compassion practice. One thought I had, I don't know if anyone... leading study groups these days, and probably you all have already read this, but I've been really moved by Stephen Hines' book on the six perfections. His take is really a modern, practical, turning over the six paramitas. And there's many books out there now that are also, Norman's new book also, you know, I could just see this, a dynamic, you know, activism group around how to bring the six perfections into and sort of talk more explicitly, openly about an enlightened society to really draw us forward with that kind of vision. All right, I look at the time. I thank you so much for your patience and allowing me to speak.

[30:41]

Forgive me for speaking from part to finish. I am so grateful for center in my life and all the many of you known and unknown who have touched me and continue to inspire me and help me in my own journey. So as we go after we do the chant, if we get a chance to dialogue, I'm curious how this lands for you and yeah, what practices have animated your life and helped you in this really challenging pandemic and global moment. Thank you so 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.

[31:50]

zc.org and click giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[31:58]

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