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. Thank you, Koto, for the introduction. And I want to thank... Nancy and Miles and others for this invitation to have the privilege, really the privilege to share the Dharma with you. I'm absolutely delighted to be with you, a visitor, a guest at the San Francisco Zen Center Virtual. And Yeah, as I check in, there's a sense of delight of being together with my siblings in the Dharma.

[01:06]

And yeah, as Kodo and I were briefly talking at the beginning when I came in a few minutes early to check in, it feels like, yes, we're siblings in the Dharma. We speak... both the same language and yet I'm kind of visiting your land from a similar land of Theravada. So it's an exciting and lovely feeling for me. And as Kodo mentioned, having been an immigrant in the U.S., I was born and raised in Iran. There is this sense of the... cultural similarities and differences and embracing and being a guest. And in my culture, in the Persian culture, being a guest is both a responsibility and a duty. And I can talk a lot about being a guest in the Persian tradition.

[02:10]

Guests are... It's kind of the other way around. Guests are... and also there is a part of, of course, I feel a duty of honoring my hosts who have graciously invited me to share this precious moment of human life in this moment together, especially today. I feel it's an auspicious day, January 20th, to... for me to be visiting you and to be taking the Dharma seat and sharing from my experience and allowing the Dharma to move through me and share in the Sangha together. So, and also just to say that as I'm a guest, I also feel the responsibility to also welcome you from the teaching seat.

[03:13]

to welcome all of you, to welcome from my sociolocation, where I'm located, as I mentioned, the Thuravada tradition, teacher born in Iran, ex-scientist, etc., from this sociolocation, cisgendered, identifying as she and her, I would like to welcome... all of you, all my dear hosts, I would like to welcome you in this space that we are co-creating together in this moment, this evening. And this space co-created however you are showing up, however this body, this mind, this heart that is showing up, to welcome all all of you and all parts of you. So, with deep appreciation.

[04:16]

So, reflecting on this day as I received the invitation to come on the 20th and realizing that, oh, today was going to be the inauguration. I have to say, I have to admit to you, that I couldn't prepare a talk. I did not prepare a talk until this afternoon. I didn't know what was going to be happening in our world, in our communal world, whether this was going to be an evening of holding our hearts in grief and mourning, or would be a celebration. So, which really is a testament to, we actually, we really don't know what, the next day is going to bring. We really have no idea. We have this illusion. We have an illusion that, oh yes, I'm going to wake up tomorrow and I'm going to do this and that and I'll call this person and do this appointment.

[05:24]

But we really have no idea what's going to happen, both for us individually and also communally, what's going to happen. And sometimes, you know, there's small events and some events perhaps larger events that happen in life, that there's this sense of permanence, that we have this illusion of permanence, cannot be held on to. And as I say this, I'll share with you that when I was 10 years old, the Islamic revolution in Iran happened. And everything that I knew as a child, all the institutions that I trusted as a child. I remember as a kindergartner, as a grade schooler going to school, and there were the photographs of the royal family and all the songs, etc.

[06:28]

And in about a year, all of that was gone. Everything, every institution that as a child I knew, it went through an upheaval and it wasn't there anymore. So the sense of permanence, having lived through that experience, I think as a child, the sense of holding on to permanence has been shattered for me. And... So coming back to, and just to say, by the way, partly I have a lot of notes about what I want to say. I did prepare a talk, and yet there's a part of my heart that wants to flow with what arises, what really arises in the moment with my presence with you as I look at the screen and as I see your faces in the co-creation, in the co-creation of this moment. To see what arises as I see you smile, as I see you nod, as I see you frown, as I see you getting bored.

[07:33]

Whatever it might be, it's going to be a co-creation, this talk. We are co-creating it together in this moment. It's not just me, blah, blah, blah. I have you on gallery view just to say so that I don't see myself all big and I get to see you. Dharma talk is always a co-creation. It's always a co-creation. So coming back to what I was saying earlier about not really having prepared something long ahead of time, but what really happened for me today was I was really touched. I was really touched by the inauguration. And I have to say, having been naturalized and having lived in the U.S. now for over 30 years, I have never watched. an inauguration live. And I was compelled this morning to actually watch live. And I was so touched.

[08:35]

And I also want to say, I truly, dearly respect all the diversity in the community, in this community. Diversity of opinions, diversity in every way, as well as diversity of opinions, political opinions. In no way do I assume that we all feel and believe in The same thing. Even if we were in the same party, we would have disagreements. And it's healthy to have disagreements. So the words that I'm about to share is with deep respect and honoring all our diversities of opinions and the ways that we show up in this moment. So what I was really touched by... was the message of unity, of coming together, of diversity and inclusivity, which in some ways, in terms of diversity and inclusivity, again, me being a visitor from Theravada and coming and visiting Zen Sangha seems to be a part of honoring that today, part of that diversity of different trainings and inclusivity.

[09:52]

And what actually brought me to tears, almost, today was the moment when there was a song shared. The lyrics of a song were shared. And I was so moved by the lyrics that were shared in the moment. And I've been mulling them over. The ideas, the Dharma ideas I like to share, some of them are inspired by the lyrics. So the lyrics of the song that were shared by our new president were as follows. The work and prayers of centuries have brought us to this day. What shall be our legacy?

[10:55]

What will our children say? Let them say of me, I was one who believed in sharing the blessings I received. Let me know in my heart when my days are through. America, America. Of course, you can put in anything. Dharma, Dharma. Beauty, beauty. Humanity, humanity, I gave my best to you. I gave my best to you. So, a few thoughts. The first is, the work and prayers of centuries have brought us to this day. I was mulling this over in the context of the Dharma. The work... The prayers, the practice, 2,700 years have brought us to this day, to this having a digital Zendo.

[12:05]

Here we are on Zoom, 2,700 years of work and prayers, of practice, of teachings, of human beings practicing, supporting, passing on. passing on this goodness, passing on this goodness. So here it is. Here's this legacy that has come. So the next part of the poem, what shall be our legacy? What shall be my legacy? What am I leaving? How am I leaving this world? What shall be our legacy? What will our children say? So both in terms of individual, what is my legacy? What will the future say? I so appreciate in this song, in these lyrics, in this poem, this aspect of what in Latin has been called respice, auspice, prospice.

[13:06]

Respice, looking back, looking back at the legacy, at the lineage, at all the goodness, at all the causes and conditions that have been passed down. Here I am, this being. this being that shows up in this way. And you, whoever is showing up on your seat, you have been passed down by centuries, by centuries of human beings, their love and their toil and their prayers and their work. And here we are. And what shall our legacy be? What shall my legacy be? Respise, looking back. Aspise, looking at this moment. Aspise, beholding this moment. And prospise, looking forward. Prospise, into the future. You know, in Buddhism, we talk a lot about present moment, present moment. And of course, present moment is not king. It's just the doorway into samadhi, into...

[14:08]

into settling into the mind, settling and into insight. But of course, it's valuable to have respise, looking back, and prospise into where we are going. What is the North Star? And the last part of the, the next part of the poem, which actually this he skipped, let them say of me, I was one who believed in sharing the blessings I received. Later when I found this, this really touched me too. Sharing the blessings I received. Again, this sense of looking back and all these blessings that we have received, knowing the Dharma, having the good fortune of being taught the Dharma. I have to say for me, again, with my background, and each...

[15:09]

Each heritage, each lineage, of course, has its own beauty. And I'll share with you, when I was a kid in Iran, I used to read the poetry of Rumi and Hafez and would think about them, contemplate. I couldn't quite understand them as a child. They seemed so deep, yet they talked about something I kind of felt into, that I was important, that I wanted to penetrate this life, this reality, which I couldn't quite... And it was years later, through my intensive practice in Theravada and months and months of silent retreat practice with my Buddhist master teacher, Pag Sayada, that things just opened up. And then later, when I went back and read various poetry and different books that before, I would just scratch my head and didn't quite understand what they meant. Then, oh yes, that's what they mean. Oh yeah, that's what that means, of course. So all these blessings, all these teachings, all this work, the blessings I have received to share the blessings, to be one who's shared the blessing.

[16:22]

Let them say of me, I was one who believed in sharing the blessings I received, passing it on. And that also brought another aspect of my own practice. And... what's really lit up for me, which is this concept of generosity of spirit. So generosity, of course, generosity is one of the paramis, the paramittas, the ten perfections being the very first one. And as you well know, the Buddha taught generosity, dhana giving, to the lay people, that if you couldn't practice, if you couldn't meditate, generosity was a way of practicing letting go, practicing letting go, [...] would be a way to purify, to purify our heart, to purify our heart every time we let go.

[17:30]

So the concept of Generosity of spirit, for me, as of late, actually, has been one that I've been trying to practice. And when I was writing, actually, my 2021 intentions, what do I want to cultivate? Generosity of spirit, which subsumes generosity, because generosity is an act of giving of things, giving of oneself. But generosity of spirit, it also has loving kindness as part of it. Kindness, loving kindness, metta, maitri as a part of it. Giving others the benefit of the doubt is an act of generosity. Humility, humility is also subsumed by generosity of spirit. When your spirit is so generous that, ah, there's a sense of

[18:32]

You don't have to show off. There's no need. Just the heart is full. The mind is full. There's a generosity of spirit. You can lift others. So this aspect of humility can be part of generosity of spirit. Forgiveness. Forgiveness can be subsumed by generosity of spirit. There's enough generosity in the heart that one can... for there to be forgiveness. And, of course, wise view or right view can actually be an aspect of generosity of spirit in the way that when we actually see our own beauty, our own goodness, our heart is filled with with our own abundance and seeing others' abundance.

[19:38]

Life begets life. Generosity begets generosity. We act. We show up from a place of abundance, from a perspective of common humanity, of seeing the grace, the beauty, the extraordinariness in the ordinary, the mystery. So, in so many ways, this aspect, this perspective of generosity, of spirit, for me is subsuming so much of the practice. So, this part of the poem really tapped into that for me, to share the blessings I received, so many blessings, to recognize, actually, there are so many blessings. And... through the practice of gratitude, which also is subsumed in generosity of spirit, when we know our own goodness, when we really see the abundance of our own heart.

[20:43]

The sense of shining out, the sense of shining out, of sharing, sharing the blessings we've received instead of choosing. You know, our heart, our heart has... Our mind has so many rooms, has so many rooms. It has some dungeons, it has some palatial rooms. So why should we choose? Why do we ever choose to take residence in the little dungeon, in the little basement that doesn't have any light, feeling small, feeling needy, feeling, whereas there are palatial rooms in our heart, in our mind that we can inhabit. and invite others to inhabit them with us. Moving on to the third part of this, the lyrics. Let me know in my heart when my days are through. I'll pause here.

[21:51]

Let me know in my heart when my days are through. What I love and appreciate about this invocation, is invoking not just prospice, but also invoking a looking back from the perspective of our deathbed, when we have died from our deathbed. And Maranasati, mindfulness of death, contemplation of death, I have to say is one of my favorite topics to teach. I teach a lot about that. And looking at our life from the perspective of our deathbed. In order to measure, in order to have a wiser perspective as to what is happening here and now.

[22:51]

So here in this poem, let me know in my heart when my days are through. Ah, looking back. And the poem goes, America, America. And I like to insert whatever you are serving, whatever you're serving in your wholeheartedness, maybe Dharma, Dharma, maybe humanity, humanity, beauty, grace, love, whatever it is, when my days are through, beauty, beauty, I gave my best to you. Dharma, Dharma, I gave my best to you. Humanity, humanity, I gave my best to you. Whatever you're choosing to serve, whatever values are meaningful to you, honesty, honesty, I gave my best to you. Service, service, I gave my best to you. Humility, humility, I gave my best to you. So giving our best, giving our best.

[24:03]

And that, really, I would have to say that that is the line that perhaps touched me the most, the point of tears. I gave my best to you, to give our best, to give our best. So what does it mean to give our best? It could mean different things for a different one of us, depending what it is, what value is most important to us. We're serving generosity of spirit. Generosity of spirit. I gave my best to you. Maybe it's that. What is actually interesting is that giving our best to something, it doesn't happen by some... perhaps bold, you know, we wake up one day and we're bold and we do something extravagant. Yes, it could happen.

[25:04]

If we're lucky, we will have the opportunity to show up that way too. But our best is really giving our best shows up in the most ordinary ways of showing up moment after Ordinary moment after boring moment after ordinary moment. It's all so ordinary how we give our best. It's so ordinary and yet it's extraordinary. It's absolutely extraordinary, this ordinariness that sometimes, often, is taken for granted. So it's the extraordinariness of the ordinariness of how we show up. day by day by day by day, giving our best or trying to give our best. And in the Dhammapada, the Buddha says, whatever you frequently think and ponder upon, that becomes the inclination of your mind.

[26:07]

Whatever you frequently think and ponder upon, that will become the inclination of your mind. So whatever ordinary thing in our lives? Is it worries? Is it whatever? Insert to your favorite inclination of your mind. What you frequently ponder upon becomes the inclination of your mind and the way that we show up over and over, over, giving our best or maybe not our best. And Lao Tzu, along the same line, says, watch your thoughts, they become your words. Watch your words, they become your actions. Watch your actions, they become your habits. Watch your habits, they become your character. Watch your character, it becomes your destiny.

[27:09]

It's quite profound. Starting with our thoughts. Of course, we know this. We know this. This is not news. I'm not saying anything you don't know. Thoughts become words. Words become actions. Actions become habits. Habits become our character and become our destiny. Speaking of habits, actually, it's rather interesting what science... What researchers are finding more and more is that there is this idea, there's a fallacy about willpower, that yes, with willpower we can get things done. And actually how we accomplish and how we get things done isn't so much through willpower. That's really hard. We can feel exhausted mentally, emotionally. There can be a lot of stress with a lot of willpower bringing it up.

[28:15]

by choice engineering, by setting, by making choices in our lives to make it so simple so that habits follow each other easily. So a poor example, well, actually many designers of choice know this. So for example, if you watch Netflix, Netflix, or Amazon Prime, at the end of any movie or any episode that ends, have you noticed that the next one will, if you don't do anything in the next, whatever, five seconds, the next one will start? Right? To make it easy, if you don't do anything, an action happens. So guess what? We can use that. Well, we can disable that so that it doesn't, after five seconds, the next episode doesn't start. So we actually have to take an action to see the next episode. But also in our lives, to make it easy. To make it easy. If ice cream is a problem, not have it in the fridge.

[29:16]

But if... Sitting in the morning is difficult. How can we make it easy? How can we make the habits, string the habits easily? This researcher, this podcast was talking about how she made it easy for herself to go jogging in the morning by wearing her jogging clothes to bed so that she could just get up in the morning and there wasn't this problem. Oh, it's cold. I don't want to take my clothes off and put... How can we simplify? How can we make our habits choice engineering, choice engineering, choice engineering for our habits? So speaking of that, speaking of choice engineering, and also as I mentioned to you, as I shared with you, that teaching and practicing mindfulness of death is one of my favorite practices. By the way, I'm teaching a day long at the end of the month if anyone is intrigued or scared.

[30:19]

So there is an app. There is an app called WeCroak. W-E-C-R-O-A-K is WeCroak. And it's an app. Many of you may know it already. And it's a mindfulness of death app. So five times a day, this app gives me a reminder. Don't forget, you're going to die. And together with this reminder that I'm going to die, it also shares a quote with me, a quote about life, death. And I'd like to share this quote with you that stopped me in my tracks towards the end of last year and again became part of my reflection for this new year. And the quote was, What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness.

[31:23]

By George Saunders. What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness. Whew. So... Giving our best. If my goal, and my goal is to cultivate as much kindness, as much kindness and generosity of spirit and wisdom as I possibly can in the little, the blip of life that I have on this planet. And practicing, the last thing I want to say before wrapping up is the practice of cultivating loving kindness. the cultivation of metta. That is part of the primary part of my practice and even more so actually ever since the beginning of the pandemic because something that I used to teach

[32:25]

at Inside Meditation Center in Redwood City once a week. Now we're offering it every day online. We call it happy hour, and it's the cultivation of metta, loving kindness, compassion, forgiveness, vicarious joy, all the practices of the heart. So it's even become more of a practice for me. And there's so much... more to say about that. Maybe this is the last thing I will say. And this is from Henry Whitesworth Longfellow. If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility. So coming full circle to the beginning of the talk, mentioning unity, coming together, diversity, inclusivity, seeing the common humanity of all beings everywhere.

[33:30]

Thank you for your kind attention. 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. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[33:59]

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