So good morning and welcome everyone. I hope you can hear me just fine. Let me know if not. Welcome to the Serity Dharma Talk, Zooming to you from Beginner's Mind Temple here in San Francisco. So we'll begin with a brief opening chant, the words for which you'll find in the chat field at the bottom of your screen. I invite you to join along with me at home. An unsurpassed, penetrating, and perfect dharma is rarely met with, even in a hundred thousand million kalpas, having it to see and listen to, to remember and accept. I vow to taste the truth of the Tathakara's words. So I greatly appreciate the opportunity to be with all of you today to share in the Dharma during these particular challenging times by gathering together to see, to listen to, to remember

[01:51]

and accept the Dharma, we support each other to enter more fully into our lives and onto a path of liberation that the Buddha, the Tathakadha, shared with us, one which was born out of his own inquiry into the great matter of birth and death. This morning, In the online Zendo, we celebrated Shakyamuni Buddha's birthday. And the official date for Hanamatsu, as it's known in the Japanese Buddhist traditions, is April 8th. And our annual celebration at Beginner's Mind Temple usually entails offering a Dharma talk in the Buddha hall, which I'm offering now, but in my home. And it's related to Shakyamuni's birth. And then it's followed by a festive procession to Koshlin Park across the street, where we hold a brief ceremony. And during the ceremony, while circumambulating and reciting the Heart Sutra, everyone is invited to bathe the baby Buddha by using a ladle to pour sweet tea over a small statue of the Buddha that's housed in a flower of a golden.

[03:02]

And I have here the one that we used this morning for our ceremony and the online Zendo. So while this year's celebration was a much more humble affair conducted over Zoom, we were still able to chant the Heart Sutra together. And I bathed the baby Buddha on behalf of all of us. And fortunately, there was also birthday cake. So it's a good day when you have birthday cake. Scholars in general are in agreement that there was a historical person called Chakyamuni Buddha who was born approximately 2,580 years ago. And he was born in a garden in Lumbini, which is a town near the Indian-Nepalese border. prominent family of the Katama clan in the Republic of Shakya. His given name was Siddhartha, which in Sanskrit means he who achieves his aim or his goal. And the name Shakya Muni was given to Siddhartha Katama later, after his enlightenment, and means sage of the Shakyas.

[04:08]

And the word Buddha, Buddha, is comprised of two syllables, bud, to awaken, and da, to awaken. One who. So Buddha means the awakened one or a person who is awake. And what a Buddha is awake to is the true nature of reality. So many of you are familiar with the basic narrative surrounding Shakyamuni's birth. Legend has it that the Buddha's parents, King Sadudana and Queen Maya, wanted very much to have children. And one night, Queen Maya dreamed that a white elephant with six tusks entered her right side. And this was interpreted to mean that she had conceived a child who would become either a world ruler or a wise sage. And after 10 lunar months, feeling that the time of birth was near, Queen Mara wanted to return to her family home to give birth.

[05:14]

as was the custom of her time. And she set out with her attendants, but on the way there, she went into labor. And so they stopped at the Lumbini Grove. And there, it said, while standing and supported by the branch of a blossoming celery, Queen Maya gave birth to her son, who apparently painlessly emerged out of her right side. Now, It's already a bit miraculous to think that Queen Maya's pregnancy was the result of a dream of a six-tusk elephant, and that baby Gautama Siddhartha was peacefully born out at his mother's side. But then an even more curious thing happened. Shortly after his birth, Gautama stood up and took seven steps, and from each footprint there grew a lotus flower. And with the seventh step, the newborn stopped, pointing it to heaven and earth, and said, above the heavens, below the earth, I alone and the world honored one.

[06:30]

And that's a peculiar phrase to utter, regardless of whether or not it's coming from the mouth of an instantly ambulatory newborn. And, alas, as is the case for all human life, suffering and sorrow arrived in due time. Queen Maya died seven days after Sadasa's birth, leaving him to be raised by his aunt Pajapati, who became a foster mother to the baby, and eventually a disciple of the Buddha and the first female ancestor, who we know now as Maha Pajapati. So aside from the initial trauma of losing his mother, Siddhartha grew up with a relatively sheltered life until the age of 29, when he began to feel disillusioned with the palace life and wanted to see the outside world. Maybe that's how we're feeling right now, a little bit disillusioned with being at home all the time and wanting again to go outside into the world.

[07:34]

In any case, The story goes that he made four stealth trips outside his father's palace with his attendant and saw four things that changed his life. These are traditionally spoken of as the four divine messengers. As he rode through the city, he encountered sickness, old age, and death. Deeply troubled, he asked himself, How can I enjoy a life of pleasure when there is so much suffering in the world? Finally he saw a wandering monk who had given up everything he owned to seek an end to suffering. I shall be like him, Siddhartha thought. Consequently, he undertook six arduous years of study, meditation, and other aesthetic practices. but he still hadn't found the ultimate liberation he sought.

[08:39]

So he decided to return to his roots and sit as he had done as a child under a tree, simply relaxing the mind and becoming as open and present as possible. And after sitting all night and upon seeing the morning star, he awoke to his true nature as well as to the nature of all reality. Shortly afterwards, the Buddha decided to share with others what he had discovered, and he ended up teaching the Dharma for 24, 45 years, until he died in Kushnagara. Now, one way to understand Buddha's birth is in a historical context. I'll be telling of the details of the life of a particular human being at a particular time, and the impact on his actions that his actions had on others and the world.

[09:43]

But for Buddhists, while the historical context can be interesting information, our primary concern is how to live this very life. This entails making a concerted effort to discover who we truly are, to understand the nature of our experience. And to take up the question of how to live in relationship with each other from a place of wisdom and compassion. So our practice, realization, and path are all focused on the cultivation and development of wisdom, which means to understand how things are and then to live in peace and accord with how things are. So when viewed in this way, the story of Buddha's birth is a teaching story, an inner story, an archetypal story.

[10:51]

And it may resonate for us in different ways at various points in our life. In his book, Alone with Others, Stephen Batchelor, says that the archetypal trajectory of our spiritual life is the story of Shakyamuni's life and refers to the deep currents of our own inner spirit and life. Now, as the emphasis this morning is on the birth of the Buddha, we might start with the question, why do Buddhas come into the world? And what is the nature of the world that a Buddha is born into? Now, despite some of the more fantastical aspects of the narratives surrounding Buddha's birth, what I think is essential to remember is that Shakyamuni Buddha was born like any other human being, with a body, a mind, and a heart.

[12:02]

He wasn't a god or a deity. He was born a human taking his first breath, lived as a human breath by breath, and died as a human with his final breath. And just like ourselves, he was born with various senses and the faculty of consciousness. But Katalmas Siddhartha was also born a human with great potential. And that potential was to cultivate, realize, and manifest his fundamental endowment of wisdom and compassion. Now, he could either squander this potential by giving into the impulses towards greed, hate, and delusion, and thus call suffering for himself and for others, or he could find a way to transform and overcome his harmful tendencies. in order to know himself better and to help others.

[13:06]

The Buddha's awakening was about awakening fully to this human life and its full potential. It wasn't about transcending being human, but about how to be thoroughly human. And to be thoroughly human means to find ourselves living free with and within the reality of samsara. Every child, every one of us, is born with the same potential. What's required is that we use the body, mind, and heart we are born with to inquire and practice diligently to realize awakening. In his first teaching, as it's presented in the sutra on setting in motion the wheel of the Dharma, the Buddha spoke to an essential truth of our human life.

[14:17]

We all suffer. We all experience dukkha. We all experience varied degrees of distress, disease, dissatisfaction, anguish, anxiety, and pain in this life. Suffering is at once utterly intimate. and utterly shared. The word pandemic comes from the Greek. It's made up of two words, pan, which means common, public, or universal, and rimos, which means people. So pandemic means common to the people. Suffering, therefore, is pandemic. It's a common universal truth, a shared experience among all peoples even if its forms and impacts are particular and manifold to each of us. It could also be said that dukkha, or suffering, actually begins in the womb before we are even born.

[15:23]

Father David Stendler asked, in a talk that he once gave at Zen Center, mentioned that the words anxiety, anxious, and anguish all come from a similar Latin root. from the Latin angustia, which means distress. And angustia itself comes from the Latin compound angustus. Angust, the first part of that, means a tight place or narrow. And the suffix ia means to anger. Furthermore, according to Brother David, this narrowness originally referred to the narrowness of the birth canal. Now, as we're all born in this way, unless we're born through sincere birth, we have all gone through this original narrowness in our process of becoming and being human.

[16:25]

It's therefore a natural experience. It's a natural condition. It's natural to feel this dis-ease and discomfort. It's part and parcel, you could say, to being alive. And yet the thing is, this being born in this way, through this narrowness, is life-giving, as long as we go with it. This discomfort leads us into life, into lightness. If we don't go with it, if we resist, then we die in some way. And this is the root of fear. that our life will end. Fear is going against the flow of life, against the way things are, against the grain of reality, which is marked by transiency and contingency. When we go against the grain of reality, we suffer.

[17:31]

Resistance is suffering. Clinging is suffering. Fear is suffering. I think it's that during this time of the coronavirus pandemic, I think it's safe to say that most of us are having the experience of being in a narrow, in-between place right now. We are in the midst of a mass birthing or a collective accouchement. induced by COVID-19. And as we traverse this pandemic birth canal, we find ourselves understandably prone to various degrees of fear, anxiety, distress, and disease. From a Buddhist perspective, the fundamental constriction or narrowness we need to pass through and be born out of

[18:37]

is the limitations created by the mistaken belief in, or illusory sense of, existing as a separate self. If we are to be born into liberation, we need to give up clinging to and tightening around this illusory self. The separate small self is itself made entirely of constriction, of resistance, of grasping. And when grasping and resistance are renounced, then the false self dissolves. And we discover that joy, happiness, and contentment are fundamental to us. Our birth as human beings comes when we are willing and able to let go of all our notions about ourselves and the world. You could say to be naked and vulnerable. and allow the natural flow and the foldering of life to take its course.

[19:42]

There's something about sheltering at home right now that also has for me a certain womb-like aspect. It's true that there are certain aspects of constriction, limitation, and uncertainty right now. But the womb is also, of course, an inward place of gestation, and protection. It's generally a safe place and a time for the development of fundamental capacities that will serve us at a future time. Being in the womb is an opportunity to allow ourselves to be deeply nourished and nurtured until we're ready to enter, you could say re-enter, and engage with the wider world. I think that we can wisely and creatively use this unique time right now of gestation to reflect on the life we might want to give birth to beyond this current pandemic narrowness.

[20:52]

We can either relate to this time with resentment and despair, or we can see ourselves as being readied for a new life. and realm of possibility. It takes courage, patience, and fortitude to stay in this liminal place. But as Pema Chodron reminds us, when we are brave enough to stay in the in-between state, that is in the realm of not knowing, compassion arises spontaneously. And consequently, we begin to access our inner strength. The Indian author and activist Arundhati Roy writes that, historically, pandemics have forced humans to break from the past and imagine their world anew.

[21:55]

This one is no different. It's a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcass of prejudice and hatred, our avarices, our databanks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly with little luggage, ready to imagine another world and ready to fight for it. So... With COVID-19, we've been given a gift, the opportunity to ask ourselves, what kind of life and society do we want to fight for, to create, not just for ourselves, but for all beings and for Mother Earth as well? What do we want to carry forth from this difficult birth and give life to once on the other side?

[23:03]

how wonderful it would be to bring into the world a renewed vision of society. One that embraces love, goodwill, peace, justice, gender, racial, economic equality, respect for differences, respect for the environment, and respect for ourselves. past month, my mind has been exploring ways to relate to and make sense of the pandemic. And one of these is to engage it as a koan. The tradition of Zen koans or paradoxical stories works in part by putting the habitual mind into a place of stuckness. You could say a sort of fruitful darkness which we may inadvertently step back into that fertile

[24:12]

and pregnant place of not knowing, what Suzuki Roshi called beginner's mind. The resolution of the Quran requires a certain trust of mystery, a faith that there is an answer or resolution which will come in time and emerging only once we have fully digested, become undone by, and transformed in the process. certainly suffering and illness of koans. And life itself, you could say, is a koan. The following is a 17th century Chinese koan titled, Xi Yan Gives Birth. It's included in The Hidden Lamp. It's a collection of Buddhist stories and commentary about women and by women. And it's edited by Susan Moon and Florence Kaplow.

[25:13]

Master Shijir asked his student, the nun, Chiyan, Buddha nature is not illusory. What was it like when you were nourishing the spiritual embryo? Chiyan replied, I felt congealed, deep, and solitary. Shijir said, when you gave birth to the embryo, what was it like? And Chiyan replied, it was like being completely stripped bare. Chijir said, when you met with the Buddha, what was it like? And Chiyan said, I took advantage of the opportunity to meet him face to face. Chijir said, good, good. You will be a model for those in the future. In this exchange, Ji An's teacher, Master Shijir, is testing her degree of insight into her own Buddha nature.

[26:24]

This is something that we often see unfolding in Zen koans. He states that Buddha nature is not illusory. This is always directly evident if we have the true Dharma eye. And then he asks Ji An, what was it like when you were nourishing the spiritual embryo? The phrase nourishing the spiritual embryo is adopted from Taoist teachings, and it's long been used in Zen to refer to deepening and maturing practice. And Chiyan replies, it felt congealed, deep, and solitary. Regardless of whether or not you're practicing in Sangha, the nurturing and quickening of one's spiritual embryo is something that is deeply personal and solitary. And Ji-yeon then adds that giving birth to the embryo was like being completely stripped bare.

[27:31]

And both giving birth and being birthed spiritually were ultimately left naked, vulnerable. dependent on the grace of the universe. And when you met with the Buddha, Shijir asks, what was it like? What was it like to meet and embrace your newborn Buddha self? We met face to face, Jigan answers. Meeting and seeing Buddha, she met herself and saw her own true original face. Chiyan gave birth to Buddha, and Buddha gave birth to Chiyan. In this unfathomable intimacy, the whole universe comes forth. Master Shriji approves of her understanding, saying she will be able to be a guide for others in the future through their own spiritual rebirth and insight into Buddha nature.

[28:42]

It's interesting to me that the Chinese character for nature shows the mind giving birth. And if you've ever watched your mind closely, you see that this is what's happening all the time. The mind is like a giant womb continuing giving birth to our experience in the form of sense impressions, perceptions, thoughts, feelings. And Buddhist psychology teaches that our mind is the source of all phenomena, all experience. But we're talking about big mind here, the vast, boundless, luminous Buddha mind, not the narrow, egoic mind. The small, contracted mind only gives birth to suffering, although that suffering is still arising within the vast womb of Buddha mind. In Mahayana Buddhism, the Sanskrit term for Buddha in nature is Tathagadha Garbha.

[29:57]

And the first part of the compound, Tathagadha, means the one thus gone or thus come. And this refers to Buddha. Buddha is the one thus gone from samsara, suffering, into nirvana, liberation. And thus come from nirvana into samsara to work for the salvation. of all beings. And the word Garbha means womb, embryo, center, and essence. So Tathakaragarbha could be understood as the Tathakaras or the Buddha's womb. That is the womb of reality. And one way to understand this is that each living human being is a womb containing the embryo of the Buddha. So from the moment we first engage in the Dharma, we encounter the truth that not just the Buddha, but all human beings are born with awakened nature or Buddha nature.

[31:08]

There is only one whole, complete awakening universe in this moment. And I am that. This is the meaning of the statement that the baby Buddha made shortly after his birth, when he took seven steps and pointed to the heaven and to the earth and said, above the heavens, below the earth, I alone am the world honored one. And it's not a statement that's made out of ignorance, but one of deep insight, truth, and humility in recognition of his profound interdependency. Being the world, all beings are world-honored. It's said that all the Buddhas come into the world solely out of compassion for suffering beings in order to support them to be free.

[32:14]

And there are also other types of compassionate awake beings who While they could themselves choose to go beyond the cycle of birth and death, as Buddha himself is said to have done, they have elected instead to stay and serve as midwives for those of us who are still trapped in the narrow womb of small self. And the name often used to refer to this type of midwife is Bodhisattva. purpose of Dharma practice is to give birth to Buddhas, to loving, compassionate ones who see the nature of reality and suffering and are willingly born into samsara in order to support all beings to know themselves and be free. And this is what we are celebrating when we celebrate Buddha's birthday.

[33:17]

We are celebrating the miraculous birth of our own life, our own awakened, compassionate heart-mind, as well as the innate capacity to realize and fully express this awake heart-mind in all of our activities and endeavors. This is our common destiny, discovered by Shakyamuni Buddha, and which has been handed down to us, or rather we have been reminded of, over the millennia, through the teachings of the Buddha Dharma, in our own wholehearted practice and meditation. I'd like to close with some words by the Chilean poet and diplomat, Pablo Neruda. And this is from his Nobel Prize for Literature acceptance speech. And although in this speech he was particularly talking to the creative process,

[34:21]

I think his words are equally applicable to these times. There is no insurmountable solitude. All paths lead to the same goal, to convey to others what we are. And we must pass through solitude and difficulty, isolation and silence, in order to reach forth to the enchanted place where we can dance our clumsy dance and sing our sorrowful song. But in this dance and in this song, there are fulfilled the most ancient rites of our conscience in the awareness of being human and of believing in a common destiny. And I would add that from a Mahayana Buddhist perspective, That common destiny is for each of us to realize liberation within this human life.

[35:27]

This is truly something to be celebrated. So thank you all very much. I wish you good health during this time. Please take good care of yourselves and each other during this tender, pregnant time. I'm going to conclude by chanting the four bodhisattva vows. You're welcome to join me. You'll find the verse in the chat box below. Beings are numberless. I vow to save them. Illusions are exhaustible. I vow to end them. Dharma gates are boundless. I vow to enter them. Buddha's way is unsurpassable.

[36:31]

I vow to become it. So... Now we have time for you to either ask questions or to bring something forward from your own practice, particularly your practice regarding the pandemic pregnancy that we are finding ourselves in at this time. And Kodo is going to assist you. He's put some instructions in the box about how it is that you might be able to raise your hand in the chat field and be able to ask a question. Check below if you'd like to share anything. And I look forward to engaging with you in this way. And I'm going to rely on Kodo to help me see who actually is raising their hand. So Kodo, let me know.

[37:32]

I see a hand from Tim Wicks. David, thank you very much. Can you hear me? I can, Tim. Great to see you. Wonderful talk. Thank you. Beautiful ceremony this morning. Thanks for throwing flower petals around the Buddha Hall. It was fun. Yes, it looked like it was. It was fun to watch. It really was. I wish all of you would have been with me. Of course. There it is. You were with me. We were. We were. A little bit, you know, distant. I just... The only thing that sort of stuck out to me was I'm a bit concerned about, to invent a phrase, a patronormative association of anxiety with the birth canal.

[38:34]

Everything else that you spoke about was about coming together, and that was just the one part that really... I respect Brother Stendhal Ross and loved his teachings. but it did feel a little bit Catholic right there. Yeah. A little bit of fear that is very normal in our male-dominated culture. And I don't feel, I have not, I'm hardly a scholar on Tathagata Garba, but this notion of this womb... that we're born in, in the reading that I've done around it, there's nothing negative like that around it. It all really is about opening up to a new phase.

[39:37]

So you don't have to address that if you don't want to, but it was something that just stuck out to me. Thank you once again for the talk and everything else that you do to keep things going at Zen Center during the simple time. Thank you. Yeah, I appreciate that point. I was also, you know, that's why I was trying to make the connection to the way that that constriction, that narrowness is really only in our minds. You know, so how we can be born out of our limited mind. And yet we have to kind of be in that tight place to see how it is that we're bound and confined in some way. And actually that kind of birthing out of process as we've been talking about, is life-giving. So there is something, I'm not one to prescribe to the Christian idea of sin, but there's this idea of we are confined and bound in some way in our own minds.

[40:41]

How is it that we come out of that mind in order to know that our true mind is this larger womb of existence itself? So Use the metaphors and the analogies in whatever way benefits you. This is just one connection that I saw when I heard that, and I thought it was very fruitful. And I'm also concerned that, you know, I think particularly for women, this idea that the womb somehow, you know, this kind of sense of limitation to it rather than life-giving. I think we have to be careful about in our patriarchal culture. So I think we need to take back, you know, that, you know, affirmative aspect of the womb, which ultimately is what, you know, Buddha nature and Tatakura Garbha is all about. Thank you. So let's see here, two more hands.

[41:44]

And again, I'm going to need your help, Kodo, to actually Name names, because sometimes things pass by. David, I think I'm being unmuted. Hello, Susan. Hi. A mother herself? A mother herself, yes. I am so moved by the energy you just gave all of us. I couldn't take my eyes off of you. You know, and... I'm just, I'm teary about receiving life force from you in this talk. It is so hard to engage electronically, right? And I don't know where that came from in you, but to me, I'm missing that, you know, in this isolated place.

[42:48]

space, that sense of, you know, the aliveness of each other. So I just want to thank you for the way in which you said what you said, let alone what you said. It was very helpful to me and opened my heart. So thank you very much. Thank you, Susan. One thing that I found helpful in these Zoom engagements is actually to focus on my horror. and feel my connection to all of you from that place. Because I find it so easy to be in the head and just kind of see head to head rather than an embodied resonance. And I miss that limbic resonance that we have when we're together. And I'm trying to find ways in this format to reconnect to it and to have this sense of an embodiment that Face-to-face is actually body-to-body, being-to-being in some way.

[43:51]

So it helps to continue meeting in this way to make through and to get through this particular format. I have this theory that after we have passed the pandemic, people are going to so not be participating in Zoom for some time. So thank you, Susan. Aida! Good morning, David. Good morning, Ida. I want to thank you for your preparation and creating such an organized offering. And I always enjoy the ways that you weave together the stories of our lineage and also the... the present moment. And I'm really appreciating those that are bringing forth stories from the hidden lamp as of recent. It's really been nice to see those or hear them.

[44:52]

And I really am grateful to Zen Center again for all these offerings. So just great, much gratitude. And I would like to get your thoughts on how to discern between grasping, clinging, and attachment. And if there's just a hair's breadth deviation between those or larger spaces, and if you could use some examples from your experience, I would appreciate that. I think they're all the same, you know, expressions of the same flavor. you know, which is basically suffering. So different ways of expressing that. So we can see, you know, there's attachment that's holding on to, you know, and clinging and then also pushing away aversion or resisting.

[45:54]

It's the same kind of turning away from what is, turning away from reality, you know, or trying to hold on to reality. So it's some way where they're not letting life flow. We're not letting reality flow. And one of the things I really try to study in my own body and mind is to notice any, even a really subtle way in that there's some sense of constriction or tightening or closing in or shutting down or grasping, meaning that there's kind of a, again, it's this pulling in, you know, as if there wasn't enough. And I study that in my body and notice where in my body in particular, Does that habit pattern of grasping and clinging make itself most known? And also in the mind. Sometimes we notice it maybe more in the body before we notice in the mind. And other times we might notice just the thought, and the thought arises, you know, like, I don't like this, I don't want this.

[46:56]

Suddenly we notice how that thought has kind of somehow gotten wired into the body, and the body itself follows into some kind of contraction. So when I notice that, I kind of pause and I stop and I just kind of observe that. I look at that. I look at that process and that constriction. And then I ask myself, can I breathe into this? Can I soften with this? Can I allow myself to be big enough to hold this in such a way that even not liking can be included? You know, it doesn't mean I have to not not like. But it means that can I be widened spaces enough to also allow that to be present in some way? And when I can include all of it, then there's this deeper sense of release and relaxing and a sense of freedom, a sense of liberation. And I really find that has come so much more to the forefront for me in the last several weeks.

[48:00]

because I'm becoming even more aware of the tension in my body-mind, you know, given these particular times. And I'm finding this type of the pandemic practice is just very fruitful in bringing forefront certain habit patterns of mind and body that maybe would kind of be in the background otherwise. Thank you, Aida. And... Another is Meg. Thank you, David. I just can't describe. I just feel like this couple of days, I just have way too much brain download from any period of my lifetime. Really, really deeply appreciate. Actually, regarding this lockdown, Personally, I'm actually a bit grateful.

[49:01]

Why? Because, you know, living in Silicon Valley, you know, my mind never stops. You know, it's so hard, so hard to stop. And suddenly, you know, it stopped. For some reason, I'm like, thank God, you know, that's one. And the second one is, this is a little bit curious about, when you talk about this confinement, and suffering. Actually, in the normal days, everybody suffers, but we just forget we're suffering, right? But now we have to take such an extreme form, almost like compelled to look at, this is the pain, you know, and we have sort of like have to be slapped on our face and then realize, oh my God, I forgot all of it. So, I, you know, I... I don't know. I mean, things will, I have to trust that this pandemic will pass, just like anything else. And now I wonder, maybe I shouldn't have this minor future, but how we can, you know, why human beings keep forgetting?

[50:09]

You know, once we get to the normal, you know, we go back to our, you know, habit. You know, this old habit will kick in again, and then we're constantly in this loop, you know, and beware. And then, so this forgetfulness, is it also something that, you know, we carry through in the very first beginning? I'm curious. Yeah. Yeah, I think it's, again, part and parcel for what it is to be human. You know, and... I think the mind often gets into a rut. You know, these old habit patterns, these old pathways of conditioned, you know, conditioning and ancient twisted karma are so grooved into a way of being that it's so easy, you know, like, you know, a ball, like a bowling ball just kind of goes into the gutter, you know, so often it goes just down a certain pathway.

[51:14]

And we have to again and again, pull it out. you know, and redirect it to where we want our mind to be, where we want our deepest intention to be in order to hit that goal, you know. And so it's just, I think, you know, who knows how we're wired. I think a lot of it has to do with that, just as human beings, as a survival mechanism. And I appreciate that, you know, sati the word sati would sometimes use for mindfulness, points to remember, to recall, to remember our original nature, to remember this present moment in reality just as it is, to step out of our habitual habit patterns of mind and body and come back to right here, right now. So it's a tremendous force that we're kind of working against, you know, going against the stream, if you will. But there is a pathway out.

[52:15]

Well, in that sense, we might be grateful for this virus. It's such a much bigger fault than our own force. I think every challenge is an opportunity if we turn it into that. Everything is practice. Everything is practice. And this practice sushin, this practice period, is a gift. It was dropped in on us, you know? And we might feel like this is too much. Sometimes when we're in an actual machine, we're like, I just want to get out of here. Because we're forced to really turn to ourselves and see our own heart and mind. But how else and when else are we going to do that? So I really just find much more gratitude coming up for me for being given the opportunity to practice at a much deeper level than I may normally do in my day-to-day life.

[53:17]

Thank you, Mei. Thank you. And... Zhiyan. [...] Thank you. So, David, I want to say hi to you because this is our first official meet. I have email communications with you a year ago. I work in Canada. I live and work in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in Canada. So it's thousands of miles away from San Francisco. Last year, I'm a professor teaching business management in Mount St. Vincent University in Canada. So a year ago, I began my research project. I wanted to visit San Francisco Zen Center, if you remember me. Yeah. So I didn't get this opportunity to visit you. But so today, the karma brings us together.

[54:25]

So you'll never escape. We get to meet. Yay. I want you to know that. Thank you. I'm so grateful. I'm enjoying this amazing positive part of this pandemic. which brings everyone together so much closer, so much more closer than ever. I have joined several Zen group meetings via Zoom, whether located in, whether hosted by San Francisco Zen Center or by New York, some Zen centers in New York. Also, I joined the meeting with my local Canadian Zen groups. All these Zoom meetings, it's wonderful. And another amazing thing I found is we are all celebrating this oneness. We are all the world honored one.

[55:28]

And yeah, so two days ago, I joined another Buddha's birthday celebration. event held by a New York Zen group. And Shinga Roshi, she led that celebration. She gave a Dharma talk. And both you and she gave us this story, this narrative of the Buddha's birth. And you all pointed to the World Honored One. Who is the World Honored One? We are all. We are all of that. We are all part of the oneness. And because of that, we don't need to worry about or to be anxious or have this anxiety because it's our shared fate. No one can escape. Right? Yeah. So although I'm now a privileged one, I'm not negatively influenced by the pandemic yet, but I know that every suffering, everyone who experiences suffering,

[56:31]

I am experiencing that. I'm part of that. And what I can do now is to stay healthy and protect myself well. And that will also bring happiness to others. And yeah, and I pray for everyone. And yeah, we are all living this life. We will live together. We will die together. Yeah, so... This is our awareness. I saw amazing feeling. Thank you. [...] I hope so too. Great to connect. Please be well. Take good care. Thank you. And I see Leslie has her hand up. Hi, thank you. That was an amazing talk. Kind of following up from the past two people, I'm experiencing such joy, which is, I don't know if it's confusing, but it's also fear and loss.

[57:44]

We may go broke or, you know, but I guess I don't know how to... It feels almost disrespectful to express the joy of having the walls close in a bit when there is such suffering. And I'm struggling with that because I don't know if it's somehow not recognizing the suffering in the face of oddly feeling this opportunity. I hope that makes sense. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, we feel almost like it's kind of guilty for feeling a certain joy and happiness in this time when other people are suffering. And I think if we're able to kind of open our aperture of inclusion wide enough so that it can include both joy and suffering, then all of it is equally held and regarded.

[58:48]

So just because there is difficulty and pain and challenge, doesn't mean there isn't also the space for joy and happiness. And just because there's joy and happiness doesn't mean there's not also the space for difficulty and pain. So I think we practice to make our hearts big enough to hold all of that. All of it needs to be included because all of it's true, all of it's reality, all of it's happening right now. So what can we do, each of us, to be able to include what we might think of initially as paradoxes. You know, we have this idea of thinking kind of in a binary way. It has to be black or white, one or the other. But in most cases, it's, if you will, gray, or it's so wide and broad, the Buddha mind, so boundless that everything can be welcomed in this moment. So when experiencing joy, experience and fully appreciate joy.

[59:52]

And when experiencing sorrow, fully experience and appreciate sorrow. Because sorrow is actually telling you that you have loved, that you love, that there is a possibility for joy and connection. So it kind of leads us back to that wanting to reconnect to that place where no one and nothing is left out of our experience in some way. So how big can our heart be? Thank you. Thank you, Leslie. Thanks. And I'm going to rely on Kodo to tell me again who might be next. Is it Annette? Annette, yes it is.

[60:54]

There you are. I'll do the video. Ah, there you are. Good to see you again. Well, first of all, David, I really want to say thank you for the thoughtful complexity and depth of your talk and your love and your care for all of us and to all of Zen Center and the Hosanga for being part of this. And I appreciate what you were just talking about, about the feel joy and this as an opportunity to deepen our consciousness and our practice. And that's very much what I feel I live. But I'm also aware that I have the advantages of living in a nice, comfortable house and being able to afford groceries and have a job that's still paying me. And then to have a whole life of privilege, you know, a lot of that came from being white and being not super poor, you know, or having an education.

[62:04]

So I just want to call out that something that I am concerned is that we also hold that there's such disparity and inequity with who is dying from this. crisis with African Americans being, for example, in Chicago, 70% of all the people that are dying from that. And I think that hasn't been part of our national conversation, although the mayor of Chicago and some people are bringing it to our attention. But I think that at one level, this is a privilege for those of us who can, our consciousness, because we have enough security to feel that and that I'm hoping for myself and for us at the Zen Center and our Sangha that we also talk as time goes on how we can really dedicate ourselves.

[63:07]

I know there's a lot of people in the Zen Center involved, especially Tova and all the people working with her and how we can address these inequities so that some parts of our family aren't unduly suffering and unduly suffering because of their ethnic group to have less opportunity over time. So I just want to bring that into the conversation because that is part of our suffering that unequal society where some will suffer more and don't have the opportunity to grow in their consciousness because they're suffering so much that it causes their death. And so I just want to bring that up, that it's part of our pain that I hope we address with our love and compassion. And I think that is consistent with what the Zen Center does. So I'm not challenging the Zen Center, applauding our work, but I just wanted to bring that into the conversation.

[64:11]

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for everything you do and that the Zen Center does. And Zen Center can do more. I really feel there's more that we need to do to acknowledge the inequities and be able to find a way to connect and serve all beings, regardless of race, gender, class. So there's a lot of karmic conditioning that we as an institution need to work with and work through. And we continue to make the effort to do that, and we have a lot more work to do. So I think it is a privilege in many ways to actually be able to shelter in place, because there are people who have no place to shelter, number one, right? And number two, they can't, otherwise they won't be able to feed themselves. So they deliberately have to put themselves into harm's way in order to feed themselves and their family.

[65:11]

So I'm aware of that. Each morning when I wake up, like, wow, you know, I am unblessed. And how am I going to turn this over to serve others? What can I do? You know, how can I do it? So thank you so much for bringing that forward because it's very, very important. And it's a conversation that we need to have at all times, you know, pandemic or no pandemic, ongoing conversation. So all beings feel equally seen and equally met and equally regarded. Thank you, Annette. And I see a message. Let's see. I can't quite read the name. Shulizakya. Is that correct? Yes. My name is Shulizakya. Hi. Hi there. I want to say, first of all, hello to Tova Green.

[66:15]

I met her just before the thing started. I met her. She came to San Antonio Zen Center. Oh, great. So I was able to join that. And since then, given the time permits, I still work online. Given the time permits, I try to learn. I started learning. So online Zen Center is one. And Mountain Cloud in Santa Fe, New Mexico is another one time-wise I can join. So every morning I'm joining. So as soon as possible, I would like to be with you guys. Come, come. Yeah. And I really wanted to say silver green hello. I've been looking forward to join for many, many years now. But then I met her and online giving a lot of opportunities now. And I'm very inspired to spend time and say hello to everyone and listen to everybody.

[67:21]

Thank you so much. Thank you. Good to meet you. And I'm really appreciating. I just feel our sense of Sangha has expanded tremendously, you know, in such a short time. you know, virtually in this way, that people from all over the world are participating in this way. And it's just kind of like, you know, this felt sense of, you know, the whole world has the opportunity to engage in practice in this way. So I feel that warm connection with so many people. So there are apparently, what, 202 people on the Dharma Talk this morning. So from all over the world. So I want to thank you all. We need to wrap up and just appreciate your practice. Acknowledge what it is that you are yourselves engaging with in the womb of this particular time. And I hope you find it and make of it a very fruitful period so that when we are on the so-called other side,

[68:29]

But you can take whatever wisdom and compassion that you've cultivated during this time into the world to transform our society, to create a better world for everybody. And actually, we don't need to wait until the pandemic's over. We can start doing it now. So ask yourself, how can I now begin to serve others? How can I now begin to turn around this? this opportunity to practice in a way that it actually supports others in some way. So thank you for your Bodhisattva practice. And I look forward to connecting with all of you again. Please do well. Goodbye. Bye. Thank you. Thank you. Bye-bye. Take care. Bye. Goodbye. Thank you.

[69:34]

Hi. Thank you. Good to see you. It's Catherine and Lisa. And Brendan. Elena. Bye. JP. Be well, everyone. Thanks, Annette, for your comment. Well. Thanks for everything you do, Tova. And everyone, everyone. It is so nice to see everybody. And Della. I feel like I'm in Romper Room, and I see you. It's so fun. For those of us old enough to remember Romper Room. Thank you, David. Thank you. And there's Nancy. Nancy Shelby. Hello, Nancy.

[70:26]

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