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. Hello. Hi, Gaia. My name is Susan. I know some of you, but not all. I've had the... great pleasure of spending several days with 24 watercolor experts and beginners like me. So thank you, Danto-san, for inviting me to talk tonight. And I was with a friend the other day who's a teacher, and she said, what are you going to talk about? And I said, well, I'm working on some things and I'm exploring something.

[01:03]

She said, I only talk about something that I know the answer to. I said, well, not me. No, no, I like to talk about how the Dharma actually works in my life and the mistakes I make. The encouragement that I receive from all of the teachings. So this talk is about the practice of equanimity. Things have been a little bit difficult for me. Recently I spent some time with members of my family. And often when I have the opportunity to do that, I get... kind of giddy and happy and grateful for the small moments with them.

[02:04]

And I'm on my best behavior because I want to be some kind of an idealized version of myself so that I don't jeopardize the privilege of getting to spend time with them. So I'm already starting out with a kind of a forced balance, not a genuine equanimity. So this time, however, it was different because I had the opportunity of spending individual time with each person instead of group events, which sometimes happens. And each one of them shared a little bit of their life with me. Two teenage granddaughters with college acceptance challenges and physical issues, living with their other grandparents, one of whom has a fairly advanced form of Alzheimer's.

[03:10]

I spent time with my brother, whose life is managed by his addictions, and I'll talk more about that later. So I was sitting close to them, to each of them, And I was aware of the intimacy and of the pain that I imagined that they were feeling. I felt with them. I believe that's called empathy. And the more I leaned into the relationships, the more I wanted to take their pain away. Does that sound familiar? Wouldn't it be great if we could just magic wand? Well, I actually know that we can't. I know this. And I would like to say that remembering what I know, I automatically dropped into a balanced, calm stance and offered my loving presence.

[04:23]

But I didn't. I watched myself use various strategies to avoid the pain, both what I thought was their pain and my pain. I vacillated between going hot and being outraged at the unfairness of it all to going neutral and cold to protect my heart from feeling their pain, my pain. Now for me, I don't tend to go towards the hot place. So in this situation, I was finding myself stuck on the cold side, which I told myself at the time was a form of equanimity. So I'm running in neutral.

[05:28]

It was best I could do at the time. When I got home from this trip, I had a little doubt, skeptical doubt, you call it, that the stance that I was maintaining was actually the best way to meet these situations. So I thought, I'll ask the central abbess. I'll ask Linda Ruth Cutts. So I grabbed some time with her. I didn't have a meeting, but I saw her in the hallway, and I said, okay, here's what I'm doing. I'm in the midst of the painful situations that all of my family seem to be in, and I'm neutral. Is that equanimity? And, of course, she said no, which is why I asked her. Equanimity. arises in the midst of suffering, not in the absence of it.

[06:37]

This is what she said to me, and I knew she was right. There's a subtle difference between neutrality and equanimity, between being cool and still and protected. and warm and available and not knowing what's going to happen next. So this situation with my family and my confusion made me want to study this thing, this thing called equanimity. What is it? What supports it? What develops it? What hinders it? How do we practice it? So these are some of the thoughts I'll share with you as I continue to explore this.

[07:40]

What is it? Dictionary. Dictionary says, mental calmness, composure, and evenness of temper, especially in a difficult situation. Even Wikipedia knows that equanimity is not away from the pain. The synonyms are poise, imperturbability, which is really fun to say, imperturbability, and equilibrium. So balanced composure, poised presence. Not so simple. We have the human habit when we're in pain, emotional pain. or physical, whether it's sharp or just a ripple in our consciousness, to try to escape or to change the situation in some way.

[08:43]

We can be balanced, but at the same time, removed. And yet our practice is to stay stable in the middle of suffering so that we can help people. So I look for more definitions. And there's a wonderful short article online by Gil Fronsdale, who's a wonderful teacher who has both a Zen lineage background and a Vipassana lineage background. It was written in 2004. And he says the English word equanimity actually translated into two separate Pali words. One of them is upeka, which we sometimes use, and it means to look over. And it refers to the equanimity that arises from the power of observation, the ability to see without being caught by what we see. It means to see with patience or with understanding.

[09:50]

And this form of equanimity is sometimes compared to grandmotherly mind, which I was not exhibiting when I was with my granddaughters. It was a good reminder. So the second word in Pali that also is a translation of the English word equanimity is a long word. It's tatra majhatata, also fun to say. And it's a compound to mean to stand in the middle of all this, remaining centered in the middle of whatever is happening. So from a Buddhist perspective, equanimity is being wise enough to know how to not get caught by what we see and to remain centered with the loving heart-mind of a grandmother. That's seeing without being caught by what we see.

[10:57]

It also means to stand in the middle of the pain, which I say encourages us to have an open heart because if we don't, we cannot stand in the middle of the pain. So how do we see without being caught? Well, looking back, in the situation I was in, it's easy to trace a root cause for me in that situation of losing my equanimity. And it's called self-concern. If I am truly wishing to be helpful to beings, I must investigate and recognize my self-concern, and appropriately give it up.

[12:04]

And I'll say more about that word appropriately later. But clearly, the self-concern is what causes me to pull back from the pain. Now, there are a lot of practices and teachings that help us work with the mechanics of self-concern. The one that I like, because it fits in with my tendency to want to control things, is seeing deeply into the nature of the way things are, and there are different characteristics which we can notice about the way things are, but one of the primary ones is that they're impermanent. When I allow the reminder of the truth of impermanence, which I've checked out and seems to be true, I can see that things change way too quickly for me to hold on to.

[13:21]

And when I see that enough, clearly enough, the mind stops trying so hard to hold on, to losing game, to losing battle, to try to hold on. And when we don't, there's a reward. It's called the light of the unconditioned, uncontrolled reality of the way things are, which just infuses the equanimity and supports it. Let go of trying to control things and then the way things are help us be upright. We don't mess around with it. I do want to control how much pain you are in and therefore how much pain I am in. And this fallacy of control as a basic tool for self-perception

[14:30]

self-protection is very well honed. But remembering the teachings that everything changes allows me to, for instance, realize that my granddaughter, who was so upset about not getting into the college that she really wanted to get into, was actually then going to be more interested in the performance she had that night of her school play than this long-off, you know, way-off-in-September college thing. She already had moved off of it. She was very skillful, actually. And if I had magically been able to take that away from her, that moment when she looked at the email and she went, like that, she wouldn't have then been able to practice with that pain. She wouldn't then been able to navigate, which she did beautifully, the disappointment.

[15:33]

Also, even in the situation in that house where I was, where the other grandparent has Alzheimer's, she was walking around the house making animal-like loud noises. This is the world in which that part of my family lives to support her. She's at home. They support her. And if I can step back and be aware of the cry that arises and be aware that then it dissipates and then she takes a breath and then a new cry comes that's very different from the one before. This allows me, you, us, to stay balanced, to stay out of that anticipation game that it's going to continue and I better do something about it. So letting go of control makes space for equanimity.

[16:42]

And the greater the letting go, the greater the equanimity. I've got more notes here that I wrote. by the baths, which I can't read. It made sense at the time. I was worried my talk was going to be too short, but I'm talking slowly, so I don't think so, okay? All right, so the second part of the definition of equanimity from a Buddhist point of view is standing in the middle of pain. How do we do that? How do we truly enter? My teacher, Tension, Reb Anderson, has a chapter in this book he wrote called Being Upright, and it's the chapter on renunciation.

[17:46]

And he says, sit in your place with your suffering and with your pain, and feel the pain of all other beings around you, sit in the downtown of suffering. Tenderize your mind and heart, which is what happens, and develop the willingness to let go. Suffering comes from holding on to what doesn't need to be gripped. And then there we are in the downtown of suffering. And if we're doing zazen there, there's nothing to do. Doing zazen, nothing to do. There's a paradox. So if zazen is happening, what is happening is that we are doing nothing.

[18:54]

Radically doing nothing. not easy. But it works. For many years, I sat, Seiza, I sat on my heels. I could never sit cross-legged. And so I would sit on my heels and when we do Orioke, I would have to kind of roll over my knee. which had been sitting very tight for a really long period of time. And that rolling over the knee has a... I know, it really, really, really hurts. You can actually feel nauseous from the rolling over of the knee. But I didn't have a rest position, and I was pretty stubborn. And so I decided, or it came to me, to work with the pain very directly.

[20:06]

And I came to appreciate the concentration exercise that pain is. So when I say that when one sits in the middle of pain, one is taught to be soft. One is taught to be soft because if you're not soft, it hurts more. It really does hurt more, and it hurts less. if you just don't move. And that doesn't mean just the body, it means the mind. No anticipation, no resistance, nothing but nothing. So I had this privilege of working that way with that for many years and And then I had to have knee surgery, and then I couldn't sit that way anymore, and then I had to sit in a chair.

[21:10]

And it was horrible to sit in a chair, because there was no pain. I know that's ironic, but my mind was like cotton candy. It was like, poof, [...] poof. Thoughts and just no, no place to... or hide or it was really unpleasant for a long time and then one day because of something a teacher said when I was sitting there it occurred to me that when the when a thought arises right before it arises or right after the last one stops there's a little bit of anxiety there just a little bit of anxiety and I thought pain I found a new pain. It was a more subtle pain and it wasn't as easy to work with, but there it was and it really helped me. So I'm not a masochist.

[22:14]

We all have pain. The opportunity to learn how to work with it was a great gift to me. And I'm going to read you a little koan now about this and then a commentary by Suzuki Roshi on the koan. It's called Dungshan's No Heat, No Cold. And it's from the Blue Cliff Record, Case 43. A monk asked Dungshan, when cold and heat come, how can we avoid them? Now, it's been cold here, hasn't it? It's been colder than usual for the guest season. Maybe this monk, had just come through a winter practice period. So he had a question. When cold and heat come, how can we avoid them?

[23:16]

Bells going off. That word avoid is not such a good entree to talking to a teacher, but he did it anyway. And then Dung Shan said, well... Why don't you go to that place where there is no cold and heat? Now, he wasn't saying leave the monastery, right? But maybe he was a little irritated. You don't want colder heat? You go find a place where there's no colder heat. He could have meant that. Or it could have been an encouraging comment where he felt very tenderly towards his student and saw the earnestness of the question. You decide. It's your story now. So the monk hung in there. And he said, well, teacher, what is the place where there is no cold or heat?

[24:19]

And I respect him for not leaving, hanging in there. and being bold enough to ask a teacher a direct question, because you hardly ever get a direct answer. But he stayed with his intention and his question. And then Dung San said, when it's cold, die with the cold. When it's hot, die with the heat. self-concern disintegrates. In the commentary, it says, beautiful sentence, when you have extinguished the mind, fire itself is cool. So here's what Suzuki Roshi said.

[25:25]

He said, Whenever I had some pain in my legs, I used to think about this koan and try not to move, even though my legs were painful. And as I read this, maybe you could think, heart. My heart was painful. When I entered Tongario, it was summertime. Tongario is the period when a monk sits outside the monastery to show earnestness and sits and sits and sits days and days and days until their earnestness is recognized and they're invited in. So it was summer, Suzuki Roshi said, so it was very hard for me to sit, although I had practiced zazen before going to a Heiji monastery. But still, it was pretty hard to sit. This is the third time he said how hard it was to sit. All day long in cross-legged position. It was very painful and it was very hot, you know.

[26:32]

But when that pain, when it was painful and when I felt very hot, you know, the big chrytomeria tree started to swing. And he laughs when he was giving this talk. That is, it's not the big tree that started to swing. My mind started to swing this way and that way. All the big trees started to move this way. And I found out at that time I wasn't allowed to look at my watch. But I thought, I guessed, that every 10 minutes, you know, the peak of the pain came, you know, like this. And that then the critomeria trees started to move like this. But when the pain comes to the peak of the peak, you know, it starts to calm down. Every maybe 10 minutes, you know, like a wave comes and goes.

[27:35]

But the pain in your legs doesn't hurt you. So it's all right. You know, even though you feel pain. To kill the pain or pain or cold or hot means to become one with the pain. You should become one with pain, not your body's pain. Pain. And I say, not pain flavored with self-identity, just plain vanilla pain. And then it's not you who feels the pain, because you're one with the pain. Nothing exists but the pain. There's no you to hurt. Last weekend, a man named Graham Petchy had a funeral at Green Gulch Farm.

[28:54]

He was the first person that Suzuki Roshi in the West ordained as a priest. It was early days and it was before we had Tassahara and he sent him to Japan where he studied. It was very hard for him. Very, very hard. This little paragraph was part of what someone read at Graham's funeral last week. Five years of arduous life in Zen temples facing the wall hour after hour. It wasn't so bad when it was painful, cross-legged sitting. But when the pain ceased, I had to face the real problem. I think most people are like this. They marry, have children, struggle with their jobs, and are endlessly occupied. The real problem is only faced when the noise stops and it becomes an issue

[29:57]

between oneself and the universe. Only then can one perceive and begin to understand the sound of the great void. I will mention just briefly that there are a couple of forms of of resistance to developing equanimity. And one is holding back because we're afraid and we're trying to get things under control, which is what I was talking about, just what I was doing. The other hindrance is overdoing it, where we let go of too much, our safety, our common sense, our health, our resources. So that's just a caveat when I say appropriately let go of self-concern.

[31:03]

And I say it because it was where I ended up. I needed that caveat because in this time with my family, I mentioned that I spent time with one of my brothers who has a life. that is led by his addictions. And something in me turned when I was with him this time, after many, many, many times. And I decided that I couldn't help him anymore. So I I brought a friend with me to him in the hospital, so I had a witness, and I did my best to tell him what I felt I needed to say, what I felt was most helpful, not from a cold place where I had been, this neutral place where I had a scowl on my face and I wouldn't smile at him, and I was just holding on.

[32:22]

And then I went home and wrote down what I had said to him just because it was very difficult and there was a lot of attacking coming back towards me. So this is the last paragraph of what I said to my brother, which comes from studying. Dear Mike, This is incredibly difficult for me. As I said, my heart is broken. I vacillate between feeling hot and angry and wanting to scream at you to feeling cold and detached. So I have decided to express my love for you by standing aside, since I am sure that neither screaming nor being cold are helpful. I will remain here, just outside the grasp of your addiction, feeling both the loss of you and the love of you.

[33:34]

The loss of you and the love of you. I think that's another way to describe equanimity. Thank you very much.

[34:18]

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