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. Good morning, everyone. I got a little mixed up there with the bows. Someone said to me once, I like you because you show that it's okay to make mistakes. I've been making them ever since. So many of us are feeling a little out of balance these days. Our country seems divided in a way that we fear may never be healed. But I think there is healing here amidst the three treasures, Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. There is healing sparkling here as we come together on this beautiful day. I'd like to share with you a bit about the Book of Joy. This just came out. The Book of Joy...

[01:01]

Lasting Happiness in a Changing World. And this book represents the coming together of His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama and Bishop Desmond Tutu. And they got together in Dharamsala, and with the help of a writer and editor named Douglas Abrams, they celebrated the Dalai Lama's 80th birthday. And... in the course of a week, put this book together. And it came together through interviews and conversations between these two remarkable men. They shared intimate stories about the suffering that they and their people have endured and also the resilience and joy that they've been able to find in the midst of that suffering. In the Dalai Lama's case, of course, that suffering includes... his exile from his own country and the terrible oppression of the Chinese towards the Tibetan people, the Chinese government.

[02:06]

And in Desmond Tutu's case, the bleak history of oppression and violence in South Africa. Together they ask the timeless question, how do we find joy in the face of life's inevitable suffering? Now, you might have noticed when I said the oppression of the Chinese towards the Tibetans that I corrected myself and said the Chinese government. I recently heard a story about something called the Seeds of Peace. And this is a camp in Maine where they bring together teenagers on different sides of a conflict. And I was listening to some Israeli and Palestinian teenagers talk with one another. And one of their realizations was that it's their governments in large part that have caused this suffering. And they realized that these teenagers, that they'd only heard their own narrative, the narrative from their own culture.

[03:09]

They hadn't heard the narrative from the so-called other side, you know. And they were asked the question, how has terrorism affected your life? And that was sort of a leveling thing because they've all been deeply affected by terrorism. And they realized that they're all individuals and that sometimes their governments are the ones that are causing the suffering. So they were able to see each other as individuals and sit on their bunk beds and play chess together and listen to rock and roll. It's very moving to hear this story. So how do we find joy in the face of life's suffering? Some of the emotions that undermine joy are things such as fear, stress, anger, jealousy, envy, self-pity, that's a good one. Fear and anger are natural stress responses and can carry important information for us. You know, we naturally feel fear when there's danger.

[04:12]

That's an important biological imperative. It encourages us to fight or flight or freeze or Faint, those are the four F's when we're in a state of fear. Anger can visit us when we witness social injustice. And when we feel sadness, it can be a sign that we need to change something in our lives. So our effort in practice isn't to ignore or submerge afflictive emotions. you know, we continue to feel strong emotions because we live in a human body. So we feel these emotions deeply but we also learn from them instead of being caught and you might say enslaved by these strong emotions. So habitually responding to the world with anger or suspicion or stress or fear can be exhausting and it perpetuates a negative response

[05:18]

to the world. We might not even notice that we're in that state. And these emotions literally narrow our view and make it harder for us to see the possibilities around us. You know, when we're in stress, our vision literally narrows to what's right in front of us. And the amygdala, you know, the more primitive part of our brain gets engaged. And it's hard for us to make good decisions when we're in that state. In this book, These two wonderful men, you know, they laughed a lot. They teased each other a lot. You can see that they're really enjoying one another's company. In this book, these men offer what they call the eight pillars of joy. And these are intentions that we can each cultivate. So I'm just going to go through these and let them sink in for a moment between each one. So these are the eight pillars of joy. Perspective. humility, humor, acceptance, forgiveness, gratitude, compassion, and generosity.

[06:39]

And they consider the first four, perspective, humility, humor, and acceptance as states of mind or qualities of the mind. And then the second four, forgiveness, gratitude, compassion, and generosity, are qualities that we can cultivate in the heart. And I think you can see in hearing these principles how, just as in the Noble Eightfold Path, these principles flow in and out of one another. So when we have a broader perspective, we're able to live in humility. You know, we recognize that we don't know everything and can approach life with what our founder, Suzuki Roshi, called beginner's mind. That's the essence of humility, to recognize that I don't know everything and to open my heart to learning from my experience and also from other people. With humility comes humor. You know, the ability to laugh at ourselves in our own foibles.

[07:45]

And... I don't know, I think we're probably the only animals that laugh. There are those hyenas, but I think that's a different kind of laugh. So humor helps us accept what can't be changed. And acceptance leads to forgiveness to ourselves and others. So when we cultivate these qualities, we notice that gratitude arises as we enact these principles in our everyday life. Gratitude opens us up to compassion and to generosity. Compassion and generosity widen our perspective. And so we go around again, all of these eight principles informing one another. But the first of the principles is perspective. And sometimes we forget that while there are many things in life that we can't change, one of the things we can change or have agency over is our own perspective on things.

[08:46]

Many of you know Robert Thurman as a wonderful Buddhist teacher. He was the first Westerner ordained in the Tibetan tradition. He was the Dalai Lama's translator for a time. And he teaches religion, religious studies at Columbia University. But more importantly, he's the father of Uma Thurman. So Robert has been a good friend to Zen Center. If you ever get a chance to to be around him, he's really wonderful. He came into the Zendo at Green Gulch and went around to all the statues and said, hi, hi Tara Buddha, how are you doing? So he said something in a lecture once that really struck me and has become a pillar of my own practice. He said, meditation isn't just about sitting on a cushion. Meditation gives us the radical dharmic freedom that when we're confronted with a choice, Rather than responding instinctually, we turn in the appropriate direction.

[09:51]

For me, this radical dharmic freedom is one of the fruits of our practice. You know, this pause that's given to us through our practice rather than just lashing out or withdrawing. To pause. And I think this pause has everything to do with cultivating a wholesome perspective, the flexibility to see things from many points of view and to recognize that I don't have the whole story. So I want to share with you a Yiddish story called It Could Always Be Worse. And there was at once a very unfortunate man who lived in a small hut, but he didn't live by himself. He lived there with his wife, his mother, and his six children. And it was chaos in this hut. The children were always fighting and running around. His mother was always nagging him. His wife was going crazy. Finally, he couldn't take it anymore, so he went to the village rabbi. And he said, holy rabbi, can you help me?

[10:56]

I just can't take it anymore. My wife, my mother, my children, they're driving me crazy. In the wintertime, it's even worse because we're all cooped up in our tiny hut. The rabbi stroked his beard and he said, I can help you, but only if you promise to do exactly as I say. Yes, yes, anything, said the man. The rabbi said, do you by any chance have any chickens? And the man said, yes, I have chickens and geese and ducks. The rabbi said, go home, bring them all into your hut. So the man scratched his head. He was puzzled by that. But he went home to his little hut, brought the chickens and the geese and the ducks inside. And now it was even worse with all the cawing and the... plucking and the cooing and the kids were bickering with each other. He put up with it as long as he could. Then he went back to the rabbi. Rabbi, I'm not sure about that advice you gave me. It's even worse than before. And the rabbi said, well, tell me something.

[11:56]

Do you have a goat? The man said, honestly, yes, I do have a goat. He knew what was coming next. The rabbi said, go back home, bring the goat into your hut. All right, if you say so. So the man went back home, he took the goat, put it inside his little hut. And of course, you can imagine, it just went from bad to worse. Because the goat was budding everybody, crashing into the furniture. The cooking couldn't happen. The fire got put out. It was terrible. Back to the rabbi. Rabbi, rabbi, you don't understand. It's even crazier than before in my tiny hut. And the rabbi said, what about a cow? Do you have a cow? And the man said, well, yeah, I have a cow. Don't tell me. I know what you want me to do. He went back home, brought the cow into his hut, and the cow was mooing, and the ducks were quacking, and the children were fighting, and there wasn't even room to breathe. So he went back to the rabbi and said, Rabbi, please, I'm at my wit's end.

[12:57]

It just couldn't be worse. And the rabbi said, I'll tell you what you do. Go back to your hut and bring all the animals back outside. I'll do it right away, said the man. So he went back home. He brought all the animals back outside. And such peace descended on his home. He was amazed. He went back to the rabbi and said, Rabbi, I can't tell you how peaceful and wonderful it is in my home. And the rabbi just smiled. In the Book of Joy, the Dalai Lama talks about mental immunity. And this is filling ourselves intentionally with positive thoughts and feelings. And in my reading about recent brain research, and we've learned more about the brain in the last 10 years than in all of human history, I often come across this phrase that the brain is like Teflon for positive experiences and like Velcro for negative experiences. I can see this rings a bell for many of you.

[14:00]

So someone can say something positive to me and it can just roll off my back and evaporate immediately. But someone says something negative to me if I'm criticized or I have an unpleasant conflict with someone, it can take up residence in my mind. And I think of it as putting down grooves in my mind, but that's exactly what happens, that those neural pathways of negativity are strengthened the more we focus on the negative. So the mind has this natural negative bias. And I was glad to read that because I thought it was just because I'm Irish that I was like that. But, you know, it takes a rigorous training of mind to change this negative pattern. We're not just stuck with it. We've learned that... They used to tell us that by the time you're three, that's it. That's who you're going to be for the rest of your life. And what we found out is that the brain is tremendously plastic in the sense of being elastic and able to change and grow throughout our life.

[15:04]

So it does just seem to be common sense that if we reframe a situation more positively, our perspective on life will shift. Just as that man in his little hut, his perspective on what chaos really is, his perspective shifted. So when our perspective is flexible and open, we grow in our capacity to experience gratitude and to choose to be kind and generous. Promoting, and these things, of course, promote greater ease and joy in our lives. In the Dhammapada, one of the best-known texts in the Pali Tipitaka, which is a collection of the teachings of the Buddha, we read, The thought manifests as the word. The word manifests as the deed. The deed develops into character. So watch the thought and its ways with care. and let it spring from love born out of concern for all beings.

[16:07]

The thought manifests as the word, the word manifests as the deed, the deed develops into character, so watch the thought and its ways with care, and let them spring from love born out of concern for all beings. So that's an ancient quote that's been validated by this research on the brain. The way we see the world, the things that we say and the things that we do are our experience of the world. And when we shift our perspective, we shift our experience. Viktor Frankl wrote a book that's been very precious to me called Man's Search for Meaning. You may know of him. He survived Auschwitz. And a lot of his later studies and thinking was based on his experience of people in concentration camps. And he found that there was tremendous courage and resilience to be seen there.

[17:16]

And he came to feel that the attitude that we choose to take in life in the face of suffering is our freedom from that suffering. The Dalai Lama discusses perspective as the action of stepping back and widening our view rather than seeing things entirely through the lens of our own limited awareness and our self-centered thinking. And he describes looking at any situation or problem in our life from many different points of view. And certainly if we're in conflict with another person, If we approach them with open-hearted curiosity about their feelings, with a genuine interest in finding their point of view, this really changes the nature of conflict. So when presented with a challenge or a conflict, we can have blinders on this, stress response can get kicked on, and we might react with fear or anger or stress.

[18:23]

These things that literally limit our vision, this is natural, But with our practice, we can become less fixated and attached to our own limited point of view and acknowledge a wider perspective and perhaps other solutions. Often what we think of as reality is really just our own opinion. It's only part of the picture. And in the Book of Joy, we see the statement, in the most limited circumstances, we see that we can have choice and freedom even if that freedom is the attitude that we choose to take. So this book offers what they call thought experiments. These are activities that you can do. Joy practices is what they call them. And one of the ones that I found really intriguing is to understand that even when something bad, bad happens, I'm putting bad in quotes, we can recognize some good that came out of it. So you might think for a moment about something

[19:26]

that you felt was really challenging or difficult in your life. And as you think about it, notice whether anything good came out of that difficulty. Losing a job. or ending a long-term relationship can feel like a devastating failure, of course. But later, when we look back, we might notice that losing that job helped guide us towards work that was more meaningful and appropriate for us. That we might have had to end a relationship in order to find more nurturing and fulfilling relationships later on. Another suggestion is that when we're going through a dark time, when we're in pain, we can think of others all over the world that are suffering in the same way that we are and open our hearts to others who share our pain.

[20:39]

I recently read a novel by Jonathan Safran Foer called Here I Am, and I came across this wonderful passage that reflects this What happens when we share our pain with another person? A character in that book said, there are no miracles. There is just the healing that comes when we believe another's pain and are present for it. So there are no miracles. There is only the healing that will come when we believe another's pain and are present with it. And I had a friend who was... injured in a terrible, he got burned over much of his body and was in the hospital and he was a member of Alcoholics Anonymous and the nurse came to him and said, you know, there's a young man here that really needs to speak to you. He's been in a motorcycle accident, it'd be very helpful for him to talk to you. So the young man came and the two men shouted and my friend said that when this happened,

[21:49]

His pain literally went away while he was talking with this young man, that he didn't notice his own pain while he was helping this other person. Later he ran into that young man, and the young man told my friend, you know, there was a nurse in that hospital, and she told me, there's an older gentleman here who really needs to talk to you. Would be very helpful if you went and spoke with him. So... This practice of recognizing that all beings suffer is the birth of compassion. The word compassion means to suffer with. And this is also a way to widen our perspective. In the Book of Joy, we find these words. The incredible thing the Dalai Lama and the Archbishop pointed out was that this suffering with others reminds us that we are not alone and actually lessens our pain. This recognition of our interdependence begins to soften our rigid sense of self, the boundaries that separate us from others.

[22:56]

The Dalai Lama had said earlier in the week, if on the other hand, I relate to others from the perspective of myself as someone different, a Tibetan, a Buddhist, and so on, I will then create walls that keep me apart from others. And we can see how this is at work right now in the world where people of different religions are at war with one another. People with different points of view refuse to speak to one another. And when they do, they do it with hatred and enmity. So I feel like this is a critical time in our history, especially in this country, where we can look more at the similarities we have with one another rather than our differences. Our perspective can change in an instant. And I think it was on, I love this show, radio show Radiolab. I think I was listening to that when I learned of this neurobiologist, Susan Berry.

[24:00]

B-E-R-R-Y, Susan Berry. She's written a book about her experiences. She had a vision impairment since she was a very young child that limited her vision to two dimensions. And recently she had surgery that allows her to see things now in three dimensions. So she was asked, is there anything thrilling you've been able to see since learning how to see in three dimensions? And here's what she said, and I really took this to heart. And actually hearing these words of hers, I went right outside and lay down under a tree. You'll see why in a second. She said, I guess I would have to say trees. Over and over again, something that I see every day as I walk to work, a canopy of trees over my head. The branches reaching out toward you, where the different branches enclose palpable pockets of space.

[25:02]

I sometimes find myself admiring these places in between the branches of a tree. actually walking and immersing myself in these pockets of space. I used to see a snowfall as a flat sheet at just a little distance in front of me. I didn't feel I was part of the snowfall. Now, when I watch the snow coming down from the sky, each snowflake in its own space, and there are volumes of space between each snowflake, And each snowflake produces its own three-dimensional dance. And I feel immersed in the snowfall and part of it." So she's describing such a joyful feeling. And this is a woman who doesn't take her sight for granted. And part of gratitude is to remind ourselves to be grateful for the simplest things.

[26:04]

Grateful that I can walk, grateful that I can see. She's a woman whose perception changed dramatically and there she found untold riches. So I'm going to give you all a homework assignment. I'm authorized to do this because I teach third grade. I'd like you today at some point to look at something you see every day or someone you see every day and just try to look at it with fresh eyes. Pull the veil off of our habitual way of seeing things and really look at something the way Susan Berry was able to see things suddenly in three dimensions. So I want to tell you one more story about perspective in a very literal sense. I live up the street a little ways and my back window looks down on Lily Alley. And one day I heard this big commotion out in the street. So I opened, I wondered if somebody needed help.

[27:08]

I opened my window, I looked out. And there was a red truck blocking Lily Alley, a pickup truck, and a woman in a car behind that truck yelling at the man whose truck it was. You know, why are you blocking the street? I need to get by. And he came over to her window and he said to her, you know, there really is plenty of room for you to go by on the side of my truck. It might not look like it, but I'm sure you can get by okay. I don't want to try that. I might wreck my car. You need to move your truck. This big fracas, you know. So the man sighed and he went and he moved his truck and the woman went on her way. By the way, I could see from up above that she had plenty of room to go around that truck. So the next day, I'm coming down Page Street and there's a detour on our street. So I had to go down Lily Alley. And there's this red truck blocking Lily Alley. And even though I knew intellectually that I could get around that truck because I'd seen from above, I understood how that woman in the car felt.

[28:10]

I could see why she thought there wasn't enough room. So I called the man over and I said, I just want to chat with him for a second. I said, you know, yesterday I heard this big commotion down here. Somebody was yelling at you about your truck. Why do you park your truck here? I'm just curious. You know what he told me? He said, my wife is disabled and I keep her wheelchair in the back of my truck. And I have to park in front of our house so that I can get the wheelchair out and get my wife into the wheelchair so we can go inside. So then I understood his perspective. I understood why he was parking his truck there. And I said, don't worry, I know I can get around your truck. So I drove around his truck. And for me, that was a very literal experience of a shift in perspective. And... I often feel that if we knew someone's whole story, we would find compassion for them. Even if they present themselves in a somewhat unpleasant way, if we really knew their story, if we really knew why their red truck was blocking the street, we might have more compassion.

[29:19]

We can constantly and consciously decide to change our perspective And one way to do that is to set our intention for the day. You know, we take this bodhisattva vow when we formally become Buddhist, part of that ceremony we say that we vow to live and be lived for the benefit of all beings. And in order to live and be lived for the benefit of all beings, we actually have to choose to do that over and over again. We have to make that intention conscious and a part of our everyday lives. And one time I was out at Green Gulch and I was visiting a friend and he had this quote taped to his bathroom mirror. And I love this quote from the Dalai Lama. It also appears in the Book of Joy. So the Dalai Lama suggests you wake up with your vow. And these are his words.

[30:23]

Every day think as you wake up. Today I am fortunate to have woken up. I am alive. I have a precious human life. I am not going to waste it. I'm going to use all my energies to develop myself, to expand my heart out to others, to achieve enlightenment for the benefit of all beings. I'm going to have kind thoughts towards others. I'm not going to get angry or think badly about others. I'm going to benefit others as much as I can. It is interesting to me though to know from reading about him that the Dalai Lama himself struggles with anger. You know, it's taken great intention and compassion for him to refuse to hate the Chinese government. And that's been one of his guiding principles to not

[31:27]

and something that he teaches us, to not allow hate to twist us and distort us. You know, something else that I have on my bullet board at home, Mary Watson studied tea with Mrs. Suzuki, Mitsu Suzuki, we called her Okasan. Mary went to visit Okasan in Japan when she was there, and she said to Okasan, what's your secret of long life? And Okasan said, walk every day, have good conversations, and don't hate. And she lived to a ripe old age. Ed, do you know how old she was when she died? I think it was about 101. 101, that sounds right, yeah. Don't hate anyone, walk every day, and have good conversations. That's another homework assignment.

[32:31]

So, thank you very much. 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 Dormen.

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