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. The ingredients for waking up are present in every moment and in every situation. all together to bear in an awakening way is not guaranteed again, but they're there. And waking up means ultimately waking up to the unity of all of life, to waking up to understanding and realizing that There is only one universe.

[01:03]

I mean, the one we're living in, there are many universes, but also those. It's just one thing, and we're all one. You know, lately, when I look over the last few months of my life, it's been filled with incredible joys and with equally incredible sorrows. Illnesses, death, people that took their lives because they couldn't imagine continuing living, and big joys, births and celebrations of life and And there was no gap. There was not, oh, now we're doing this and then we're moving over there.

[02:06]

They were just totally interwoven, interflowing. They wouldn't say, now we're only celebrating, so don't think about the sorrows. And they would come at their own time. So we would like to kind of maybe compartmentalize. Somebody said, I would like to have a break now. You know, there have been so many sorrows happening. Can I please have a break? Sometimes we get a break, but we can't say, now I want a break. Some people do take breaks by throwing in some pills that numb them. But that's just kind of, it's not really a break or a restful break. It just... postpones the having to deal with it. And so, waking up is actually a lifelong path.

[03:16]

It doesn't end, it doesn't, you know, we say it doesn't have a beginning, it doesn't have an end. It doesn't, because Waking up is, since everything is in continuous movement and change, it changes us when we meet it. So when we meet the friend and we have a meeting in which we both feel met, we're both actually changed after that meeting. We're not the same people. So we influence each other all along. How do we wake up to the unity of all life? And once we understand that, understand that all life, regardless of how we see it at a given moment, what interpretation we put on it at a given moment, what concepts we think and attribute to it,

[04:29]

worthy of equal respect and compassion always, in any given moment. So I don't know if anybody of you, and I wonder if any of you have had the chance. I fell on it by accident because usually I'm asleep at that time. I watched Charlie Rose's interview with Bryan Stevenson a couple of days ago. If you haven't, I was tempted to just make a copy and do this instead of a Dharma talk. I don't think he would identify as a Buddhist, but how he is talking about race and inequality is absolutely in terms of understanding the unity of all life, the oneness of all life.

[05:30]

And one of the things he said, so I recommend to listen to it, to the whole thing. It's so inspiring and encouraging and supportive and non-judgmental. It's just an absolute treat. He says, and he's the founder and executive director of Equal Justice Initiative, an institute. And he's working with people on death penalty, and he has helped a lot of people. And so he says, so one of his quotes is, every human being is more than the worst thing they ever did in their life. A murderer is not only a murderer. A nation that enslaved is not just an enslaving nation.

[06:30]

A nation that did genocide is not simply and just only a nation that did genocide. A human being is much more than the worst thing they ever did in their life. And that's the premise, he's looking at everything, which is a big opening because it leaves, it actually is much more to the reality of things. You know, Thich Nhat Hanh has a poem that's called Call Me By My True Names, which he wrote after, I think, a 12-year-old girl got raped by pirates and then threw herself overboard. And he identifies, he says, I'm the pirate who did rape the girl, I'm the conditions that shaped that, I'm the girl, I'm everything. He didn't say, well, this is the bad person and I'm something different.

[07:35]

So that's another way of understanding that, understanding or getting closer to understand the oneness of all life. And in the Rudolf Steiner book, the anthroposophic tradition, which includes Waldorf School, and they have a medicine, and they have a way of, you know, the biodynamic plants. Agriculture is based on their philosophy. They have a similar view of human beings, that they say, whatever your handicaps or your difficulties are, They call it soul, we would maybe call it Buddha nature, is not tainted by that. That's still there as a potential. And they address people like that. They don't address people via their handicap or their difficulty, but they address them at the place where they're whole and...

[08:46]

complete and compassionate and capable, which creates a whole other way and support in dealing with difficulties. So unity or oneness of all life, equal respect and compassion for every living being without exception. So... So then it's like all beings are seen and related to in the beauty and dignity of their original perfection. If you take a moment and think about just listening to those words. You, I, am seeing or I am being seen.

[09:49]

and related to in the beauty and dignity of my or yours original perfection. When I say those words or when I let them in, I can feel something opening up in my heart and something relaxing in my body. And I don't know if you feel that. If you imagine that every moment you are seen and related to in the beauty and dignity of your original perfection, which is not something, which is actually the capacity to respond in appropriate and kind and compassionate ways. ways to whatever is coming up and ask for a response, needs to be responded to.

[10:55]

And that's a very different stance than seeing, like in some Christian tradition, seeing everything through the eye of original sin. We're a sinner, we're always faulty, we're always lacking, that's a totally different energetic field in which to live. So practicing the path of awakening, which you can do in many different traditions. Buddhism has not the monopoly on awakening. It can happen in innumerable ways. It's not bound to one particular path or format or philosophy or understanding, is very pragmatic, is down to earth, and pre-eminently of the spirit.

[11:59]

It's a lifelong way of study and practice. It's a path of waking up to the... waking up to being awake to the motivation and to the consequences of our actions. So, we all, everybody, there's no exception, each one of us is conditioned just by being human, by being born into a family with these particular parents, siblings, circumstances, into a cultural situation, into an economic situation, gender or sexual orientation, everything that shapes

[13:08]

and conditions us and the ideas we build around those things within the circumstances we grow up in, condition us and they shape how we perceive. They shape what we see, how we respond, and that is what we need to wake up to because that's not conscious. That's just the way it is. We think. And we have all these good reasons why we see it so like that, because we tend to pick out, just by our conditioning, what fits our expectation, what fits our fears, what fits our assumptions. But we often are not conscious of them, and we don't ever examine them. if we're not making an effort.

[14:10]

And we tend to group ourselves with people who share the assumptions, so then we have more standing power, more ballast to hold on to it, to get supported in our fixed ideas. They're all fixed ideas and they trap us. They imprison us as much as they imprison whatever we we cover with those perceptions. We say, you're like this. I have proof. This is the proof. And we forget that maybe that's a part, maybe not even, but that's not the whole story. So Buddhism says we create the world we live in, and we have a capacity to actually step out of that world, kind of open that world up and live much more in the world how it is, rather than the one we keep recreating.

[15:19]

And we all, I mean, I think, I don't know, is there anybody in here who could say, I don't have repeating experiences, kind of, why is this happening to me again? Here it happens again. Or here I'm doing again the same thing. I don't want to do it, but I'm doing it again. Or it's happening to me and I don't want it to happen to me. This is the functioning of how our conditioned perception and our conditioned responses, which are habits of the mind and of our sense organs, recreate the same world over and over, even if we move. I mean, I can watch myself recreating some of my life here in the U.S.

[16:20]

that I had in Switzerland. Or even if I move in the U.S. around, after a while, at the beginning I'm more free, and then I recreate my own world if I don't pay attention, which has a feels safe because it's familiar, but it also has kind of a not very alive quality to it. So to start studying what our motivations are, what our actions are and what the consequences of our actions are in us and around us is part of the Buddhist practice. And it's uncomfortable because we will have to start seeing things that we just assume are like this, that we have been

[17:25]

you know, kind of insidiously conditioned to see that way, and we don't even know exactly necessarily where it's coming from. It's just affecting us. And our cultures are built around assumptions like that. Our families are built around assumptions like that. Our individual psychological psyche is built around assumptions like that. And it's very humbling and very opening and liberating to start seeing those and owning them, admitting to them, because then we start having choices. And that choice we have all the time. How do we meet something? And we can You know, we couldn't do reruns. We met it the wrong way.

[18:27]

We can go back and do it over in a better way because we see, oh, that doesn't feel good to me or, wow, look at the consequence. And you can go say, I'm sorry. So my partner and I do that sometimes. We say, oh, that didn't go the way we intended. You know, she comes in and says something and I respond and suddenly we're going down a road where we're having, you know, a standoff and And then we go, wow, that didn't go really well. Can we start over? And one person leaves the room and comes back in, and we start over, and we come from our intention, not from a habitual kind of, why are you telling me this, or you did that, so that, you know, because you did that, it doesn't matter that I did this, or something like that, you know, all these little things that can end up in really big fights. So we do it over, and it's very liberating because you start also to see that actually we don't have... things are movable.

[19:33]

You can correct things. You know, they do recalls on cars because they did wrong things, and we fix them up, and we can do recalls. You know, and if both are willing, it helps, it does something. So Charlotte Selver used to say always, you know, she was teaching a lot of Zen students, and she was teaching at Green Gulch, and she was very related to Zen Center. She was this amazing kind of being with... from light to black. She kind of covered the whole spectrum of... being very awake and being very asleep, which was very encouraging, because we all have that. Where there's light, there's shadow, and are we willing to keep turning so that we can see the shadow?

[20:38]

But it's always there. There's no light without shadow. So she used to say, Zen students are always asked the question, who am I? one of the big questions, who I am, am I, and then they spend a lot of time thinking about who they are and who they're not, or deconstruct who they are. But that often engages, it's kind of a mind thing. I'm more interested, she said, I want you to look, how are you? How am I? How am I treating this? How am I treating my computer when it's not working? I would sometimes want to put it on the floor and stamp on it. That's how I would like to treat it. Do I do it? No, because it's too expensive. But maybe if it would not be so expensive, I might be tempted just to express my righteous frustration with this thing that's not doing what it's supposed to do.

[21:48]

and makes me feel stupid. I don't like that. So how am I? How do I treat myself, the people around me, my coworkers, the people on the street that get in my way, everything, the things, the food. Suzuki Roshi used to go over when there was the store with the vegetables across the street and pick out the limp, sad vegetables because he said nobody else is gonna pick them up and it's not their fault. He will buy those and cook with them. Do we do that or do we pick through to get the nicest ones and get mad if the person in front of us got the nicer one? Possibly, that's human, but how do we hold that, how do we respond to that is where we have choices.

[22:49]

No, I actually don't... I don't have so much choice about whether something triggers frustration or sadness or anger or joy. They have just come up. But how I relate to them and how I am with them and how they do inform my actions, these are my choices and your choices. So do we engage with inquiry, with really understanding that whatever we see is partial, it's not the whole story, and that Also understand that our mind to seemingly create a manageable world and a manageable life, which truly we can just forget.

[23:51]

It's not an option. But we keep fooling ourselves that it is. We create fixed views. You're nice. I like you. And you have been really not nice to me. Three times in a row, so that's it. You're this guy. and that are fixed positions, and we keep doing this. I'm not gonna talk about this to this person, or I only talk to my friend who affirms my views, and I will definitely not talk to who thinks is my friend who challenges my views. That is how we tend to seemingly create a safe world, but it's a very imprisoned world, where we never get the chance to see our own beauty, to live, not necessarily to see, but to live our own beauty and dignity and possibility of being awake beings.

[24:53]

Somebody who just went through an absolutely inconceivable loss wrote something along the lines dealing with with this loss and this pain, our pain and the pain of the person who died on the way to dying is changing us in ways to some degree we can see. It's opening our hearts, makes us more available, more compassionate, and in ways we maybe see much later. But they can feel that meeting the excruciating pain, the suffering, the loss, the sadness, the gratitude of having had that person in their lives. All that mix, the aliveness and the loss together is changing them in big ways.

[25:59]

And this is always the case when we are willing to keep stepping back. In Buddhism, there's this say step, Dogen says, step back and turn your light inward. That means we live very often out there. We respond and [...] we often don't take a break and then look back in and look at, are really interested, how did I respond? And where is that coming from? What are the... views I'm having about the situation that inform my response. So to take responsibility is an ability to respond also to your conditioning and to wake up to your conditioning. Because if we get stuck in our conditioning, we're trapped and everybody, because all life is one,

[27:03]

everybody is trapped with us. Dogen says, your actions affect the entire sky and the entire earth. Not noticed by you, it is so. So when all our efforts to wake up affect the whole universe, and that's also said in Indra's net, which appears in Mahayana Sutra, that is the Avatamsaka Sutra, and that says, I looked up the definition. I mean, I know the thing, but it's a metaphor. So the image is, there is a universe, the whole universe is a net, of a web, and at each crossing point is a jewel that reflects all the other jewels.

[28:11]

So it's a metaphor used to illustrate the concept of shunyata, which is emptiness, so nothing has independent existence. Everything that exists is actually existing in interconnection with things that make it appear. So we wouldn't exist if our parents hadn't slept together and we wouldn't have been conceived. That's one way of saying there's no independent existence. I didn't just appear out of nowhere with nothing happening beforehand to make me appear. And dependent origination, which is just what I talked about, and interpenetration. So we all... exist because innumerable conditions support us to breathe, the food supports us to eat and keep living, the heartbeat supports us to keep living, and so on.

[29:23]

And Indra's net has a multifaceted jewel at each vertex, and each jewel is reflected in all of the other jewels. In the Avatamsaka Sutra, the image of Indra's net is used to describe the interconnectedness of the universe. So when we are stuck in a fixed view, regardless of how much evidence we have for that view, if it's fixed, we're stuck, and we don't reflect everything. So then everything else is stuck too, because it doesn't flow through. We all get stuck. And it's a challenge. It's a lifelong path. It doesn't stop. And it's very liberating. And that's what was so wonderful about Bryan Stevenson's conversation with Charlie Rose was that

[30:33]

His whole way of speaking comes from that understanding, from that deep realization, and it is so inspiring. And he says, we have to look at things, and we have to not look away because they were not good. We have to look at them, we have to study them, we have to admit them, and there's a liberating... in that because then it allows us to look together at what the solution can be. The solutions can start to appear because we create the togetherness with owning up to what we may be totally unintentionally, totally unconsciously created or participated in. It's not, well, I didn't mean it, and then it doesn't count. All the blind spots we have in our personal lives, in our cultural lives, we're co-responsible for, and Carl Jung put that very well.

[31:52]

Can you get that, Carl Jung? Yes. He said, we have to project. You have to make projections. And he also said, and we are not allowed to project. And what he meant was, we have to pay attention, and the moment we see what we project, we become conscious of what we're projecting, we are not allowed to keep doing that. If we do that, we actually harm not only whatever we project on, but we harm our own development to become fully human beings. It's a cop-out. It's easier, but it's a cop-out, and it harms our development as fully growing into truly human beings.

[32:58]

And this is a continuous dance. You know, in the Heart Sutra, we say bodhisattva, an awakening being, a being that awakes, continues to wake up, and wake up others with it, has no abode, has no place to stand on that is unmoving. And T.S. Elias says it in some beautiful way in the four quartets, in the one Bernd Norton, and the second one, and this is just a few lines out of that second one. At the still point of the turning world, neither flesh nor fleshless, neither from nor towards.

[34:14]

At the still point, there the dance is. But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards neither ascend nor decline, except for the point, the still point. There will be no dance, and there is only the dance. And being willing to deeply look and question question in a kind, non-judgmental way. That's very important. Our motivations, our assumptions is like being in a still point.

[35:31]

Because when we question our assumption, we are not moving with them. We're not being moved by them. It's like we're laying them out on the table in front of us. And what has been moving us or driving us or making us resist, which is also a movement, is kind of stilled because we're just looking at it. We're willing to examine it with an open heart and an open mind and that's the still point and there the dance begins and ends and begins and ends and is continuous. So also when we start doing that and when we start seeing the being more connected to the reality that we are all completely interconnected.

[36:38]

Our feelings of lack, of insufficiency, of incompleteness, and being inadequate kind of start stealing because we are by ourselves singled out, isolated. We are all of that. We are not complete, we are inadequate, because we are a part of the whole. It's when we are in connection with everything that's happening, the sense of purpose of fulfillment arises. After this talk, there will be an introduction to a program that is called, you know, an informational meeting to a program that is called Awakening Through Service, which is how to be of service to people that in need, homeless people, people in prison, other kinds of services.

[38:00]

And it's one way of kind of learning about the wholeness and oneness of all life and not segregating, you know, the homeless out from my life, the other people from my life, to create those divisions. And so I... You can meet with the facilitators after this meeting, and whoever is interested in that or in that field, avail yourself of the opportunity to ask questions and hear how the facilitators are thinking about that. It's on the website too, but I just wanted to mention it because it really fits into that talk, because we often live, you know, Private comes actually from the word privare, which means to take away from.

[39:02]

So my private property is property I've taken away from, and I have deprived others of it. And that's my private life. So how do we unprivatize our minds, our things, in a helpful way? And that is a really challenging question. There's no path to answer, but are we being interested in that? So this is one program that talks about that. That is one entry gate possibly to work with that. So I'm gonna close here. I have no idea what time it is. Let's see. Yes, time to stop. with reading the poem by T.S.

[40:03]

Eliot one more time with that little excerpt out of it. Actually, I want to read another poem by Hafez, is kind of talking about how we are a prisoner of our own conditioning until we open this up, we're willing to open this up. He says, we have not come to take prisoners. And I would say, we have not come to be prisoners. We have not come here to take prisoners, but to surrender ever more deeply to freedom and joy. We have not come into this exquisite world to hold ourselves hostage from love.

[41:06]

Run, my dear, from anything that may not strengthen your precious budding wings. Run like hell, my dear, from anyone likely to put a sharp knife into the sacred, tender vision of your beautiful heart. we have a duty to befriend those aspects of obedience that stand outside our house and shout to our reason, oh please, oh please, come out and play. For we have not come here to take prisoners or to confine our wondrous spirits. but to experience ever and ever more deeply our divine courage, freedom, and light. So this may seem like it's talking to what's out there, but it's equally talking what's in here.

[42:20]

Because how we are with things outside has exactly the same effect on us inside because we're one. There's no separation even though we see so much separation. It's not real. That's why we so often turn our eyes away because we think then we don't feel how it affects us. Because it would. So I thank you for being here. I thank you for your lives and all the efforts you're making of being awake in your lives, in your ways. And I wish you a wonderful and joyful Sunday. 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.

[43:26]

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.

[43:40]

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