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 evening, bodhisattvas. Good evening. Thank you for coming. And... I guess first, since you may not have met them, I'd like to introduce the two new figures on the altar. This is Bodhidharma, who founded Zen in China. So he went from India to China and is our first ancestor in China. And this tall plaque over here is Daigenshuri, great practice protector bodhisattva. And they are here as part of a Dharma transmission ceremony in which every morning the person receiving Dharma transmission walks around to all of the altars and circumambulates the temple for respect and for blessing.

[01:16]

And that blesses the whole temple and everyone in it and is a wonderful reminder of what we're doing here. So I wanted to let you know that that's why there's more figures on the altar than usual. So greetings. And how many people here are in the practice period? Thank you. And how many people here are not in the practice period? Thank you. Good. So I'll explain. where I'm coming from with this talk. So today I wanted to speak about something that has been spoken about a couple of times in the practice period, which is an intensive period of meditation when people share a schedule. So there are special classes and lectures during the practice period.

[02:22]

And I guess it was a couple weeks ago, maybe, that senior Dharma teacher, Christina Lanehair, who's leading the practice period, said that love is not a feeling, but a posture. And that stuck with a couple of the people who have been teaching in the practice period. So last night, Mary Stairs, who's a former head of practice in this temple, now living in town, she was giving a class and she spoke about what is the posture of love. And so I was thinking about it because her talk was inspiring at the beginning and also because some of the examples that were given were really inspiring and helpful. Now, I forgot to introduce myself. If we haven't met, I should let you know that my name is Shosan Victoria Austin.

[03:27]

I'm a priest here, and I started practicing in the 1970s, and a lot of my friends from many years are sitting in this room. And so if I don't know you already, maybe I will get to meet you sometime soon. I'm glad you're here. Even if we haven't practiced together for 50 years, we've practiced together for at least 50 seconds. And I really appreciate it. So this is a difficult week. The headlines are quite difficult. Our country's at war. And a lot of people think that sitting is about passivity or about doing nothing, and those words are sometimes used, but the meaning is not that we do nothing or that we're passive. The meaning is that we don't add anything onto who we already are.

[04:29]

We can act authentically without adding stuff onto who we already are. So in a situation like this, in which tensions are high around the country, and we have these wonderful places that are refuges where we don't kind of manifest political stances, try to get people to agree with us. These places are a refuge. So I want to talk about a deeper aspect of peace or the body of love. This practice is all about making an appropriate response, whatever our situation is that we find ourselves in. But it's people are different and people might disagree in everyday life, in the institutions we work and live in, and in our country and our systems as to what an appropriate response might be.

[05:35]

So one example of this is I write an email to a group of students. I try to do that once a week. And a couple of weeks ago I was remembering in my email about being a protester in the 1970s for various causes, and how a venerable Thich Nhat Hanh noticed that young people, many young people, were protesting and trying to advocate for various causes and getting really very deeply burned out. So he sent us a Xerox. It might even have been a ditto. Does anyone here remember dittos or mimeographs? It might have been something like that, because it was really grainy, or it could just have been a Xerox that was Xeroxed many times over. But he sent it and addressed it to young people, young protesters. And the cover letter said something like, I notice that many people are becoming burned out.

[06:41]

Please, please. receive these offerings that I am sending to you so that you won't burn out. And what he sent was the Mahasatipatthana Sutta and the Anapanasati Sutta. So he sent the sutra on the four foundations of mindful awareness and the sutra on full awareness of breathing to us. And so I memorized the Mahasati Patana Sutta and was writing it out and giving it away, writing it out in nice notebooks and giving it away to people. And pretty recently, one of those came back to me, and I gave it to someone as a gift. It was really interesting to see that after such a long time. And so Thich Nhat Hanh advised us against... being pushed around by righteous anger, particularly when the cause was important to us.

[07:48]

People on all sides of the various issues in our country right now and in the world have righteous anger. There are so many ways to be right or to feel that you're right and that other people are wrong. It's hard. And So I wrote about this in my email and I received several thank yous and I also received a very hurt email saying, look, I'm a member of a group who is being marginalized every day. My daughter and I are at risk of being kicked out of this country. We're good citizens and we risk this. Righteous anger has a place. Righteous anger is what is sustaining me during this time.

[08:51]

And you can't understand because you're not in this position. And I didn't know what to do with that feedback because what this person was saying is absolutely true. This person has an absolutely true point. This person is at risk every moment. And I should know that. And I should know that any time I say something that appears that I could be saying that my way is right and other people's way is wrong, that it's going to hurt someone. And that any time I give a teaching, that's one of the risks, actually. Because the teaching has the force not only of the words of the teaching, not only of the memorized sutras and teachings I've received from other people, but it also has the full force of the robe, the stick, the seat, whatever archetypes or projections people have.

[10:08]

And for many people, it has the full force of priests or religious leaders when you were growing up or teachers or parents. And we should know that. So I said it was about appropriate response, this practice. And what does that mean? What does it mean that love is an internal posture and not a feeling? That peace is an internal posture and not a feeling? One of the things Mary said last night is that love as an internal posture can bring us through the activities of a lifetime and has the potential, she implied that it has the potential to grow as long as we're responding appropriately from a posture of love. Whereas the feeling that we usually identify as love comes and goes. And So I think it's really important to understand what is a posture of love.

[11:13]

Speaking of which, there is constructive pain and there is damaging pain. If you're experiencing damaging pain, rest and switch, okay? Find a sense of balance in your posture because your listening is also my ability to speak. And your listening and hearing depends on stability and ease in your posture. Again, not the physical definition of comfort that we usually have in this culture, which is lying around. You can even have a posture of stability and ease if you're lying down and you're mindful and balanced, even if you're sitting. even if you're standing, even if you're walking, even if you're working. And that's true of all of us, not just you.

[12:16]

It's true of me and everyone. So how might we practice love as a posture? Through the body, through the breath, in our emotions and in our thoughts. Okay, so... Are you willing to do a little bit of work in this lecture event? Yeah, thank you. So this'll be about a situation in which you feel yourself in danger of anger or reactivity. And I would suggest if you're new to this, new to this practice of finding anger, finding something that you'll react to with anger light, not like they took my house, okay?

[13:17]

More like they didn't clean up after their dog, okay? If you have medium experience, they didn't clean up after their dog, and this is the 10th time, okay? If you have a lot of experience, something that is really deeply bothering you or deeply disturbing to you. Do you know what that is, what you're going to be working with? Do you need some time? You can make yourself comfortable and stable and allow something to come up. And if it's too triggering for you, stop, okay? that's too triggering for you. The magnolias and ronodendrons are blooming in Golden Gate Park. Visualize something like that.

[14:17]

So this is part one. This exercise we're about to do is based on a traditional understanding of the preliminaries of stable contemplation. in which we establish a safe external and internal environment to study ourselves. So we might think that that situation is outside of ourselves, and it is. But our reaction starts here. So that's the part we're studying. So take the situation as kind of a framework within which to study this, not that. You can study that at 8.30, okay? If you want to, but maybe 8.30 tomorrow morning. So first, I'm going to ask that we develop an awareness of the extent of the problem we face by looking at what's come to live in here in relation to it.

[15:29]

So... I'm going to be quiet for a moment, and in that moment, I'll ask that you, from your balanced, comfortable posture, just ask yourself, particularly about reactions such as revenge, retaliation, or hiding, because those are all normal reactions to a bad thing. And I'll just be quiet for a moment. So that I can ask once again, to what extent have you built an inner house or an inner posture that's a kind of haven for these primary forms of angry reactivity? And I'm not talking necessarily about

[16:36]

screaming reactivity. It could be any kind of reactivity that actually comes up. So here are some specific questions. How many times a day with what intensity might thoughts or fantasies of revenge or retaliation arise based on either facts or assumptions that are accompanied by a feeling of anger, frustration, or rage. You can look at this dispassionately as if you were seeing it from a very safe place. How many times a day, with what intensity, And how many times in general do you express these feelings to yourself privately or to another person for kind of responses of support or non-support?

[17:55]

What kinds of responses do you receive? I'm thinking of mine too. not just you. What arguments do you make or have you made in favor of revenge, retaliation, or a personal bent to justice that's pushed by those? To whom? About whom? To what extent have you identified opponents, repetitively thought about what they stand for, or equipped yourself to put any of these arguments into verbal or physical action?

[18:59]

I'm still with you, okay? This is not all grim. The last part, to what extent? Yeah, to what extent have you identified opponents? To what extent have you repetitively thought about what they stand for? To what extent have you equipped yourself to put any of these arguments in favor of revenge or retaliation into verbal or physical action? Remember that looking at these dispassionately and holding them safely is a posture of love for yourself and for everyone around us. So reacting with anger, besides these overt instances of it, it also has structural supports for that posture.

[20:09]

and it kind of develops and grows on them. So some of this work I've done in conversations with Dave Rico, who wrote How to Be an Adult in Relationships. We've been working on this for a while, Love and Power. And I've been trying to understand the practice side of love and the practice side of power for a long time. So I want to just ask you about the structural supports on which anger grows. How do you keep score in this situation? This is his wording. How do you keep score? Whom do you dislike or hate in this situation, whether it's a person or more than one person or a group? How much do you dislike or hate them? What do you dislike or hate about them?

[21:12]

And what icons in your mind stand for these awful features of them? So now you've dispassionately surveyed the house of reactivity that's been built in here. Now, Know that you've done that work. It is an act of love towards yourself to know about this dispassionately and not be pushed around by it. So now for a moment, soften your eyes and visualize, if you would, a sorrowless, radiant light that spreads all pervasively. And let that light penetrate the structure that you found in here to support you to face and accept the pain of that.

[22:37]

Light pervades the situation and your reactions. Let that light sink in as a form of compassion to all of that. We've spent a few seconds or minutes acknowledging the pain behind the reactivity. And we're sitting with that light. We've begun the process of surveying the territory of suffering in this situation. This is the ground. on which we can build a home for compassion and effective, appropriate response, knowing this about ourselves.

[23:53]

When I started to practice, I had a near-death experience. That was the occasion, and as I was flying through the air, time stopped, and the universe turned itself around and looked at itself through me. And I don't know if you've ever seen a Roadrunner cartoon in which Wile E. Coyote is tricked into sticking his finger in an electric socket. And so he lights up and all the hairs stand on end all over him. And you can see his skeleton. Have you ever seen that? Or is that too far in the past? Okay, so... That's what happened to me in this near-death situation, except what I saw was the personality structure that I had built up to cope with living, and particularly the wartime refugee nature of my family. And I could see how puny that skeletal structure is in relation to what it needed to be

[25:05]

to be a wise, compassionate, adult human being. And I was profoundly embarrassed to my very roots. But at that same moment, it was as if the universe cracked a smile, a forgiving, loving, bright, all-inclusive smile. And so... there was a kind of a choice where I could either jump into the situation or turn away from it. So because of that smile, I was able to jump in. And then the next moment, I realized that I was alive. Make a long story short. And, oh, no, now I have to follow through. I didn't use that nice language. I used worse language that included four-letter words and so on. And I was to fail miserably at practice for many, many, many, many, many years.

[26:09]

And until I realized that practice is a process of failing and learning, failing and learning. Finding these embarrassing, painful things and seeing the human side of them. It's the small structure that we've built up that... we see through in that light. I have like 90 million pages of lecture to give, and I think we've covered about a half a page. But I want to say that when we know what torments us in a situation, we'll know to what we are attached to. And that gives us a sense of what we need to be delivered from or what we need to change. Whether it's the war out there or the war in here, we can develop a posture of love that starts from the ground of acknowledging our habits, the structure of inevitable failure that we have built.

[27:25]

Because, you know, as Buddha said, He beat me, he abused me, he defeated me, he robbed me. A person who thinks this way will not be free from hate. She beat me, she abused me, she defeated me, she robbed me. A person who does not think this way will be free from hate. Excuse me for the 90s expression, but duh. Right? Hate is not defeated by hate. Hate is defeated by love. This is an eternal law. Yesterday, Mary talked about Manjushri, having a sword of wisdom. A sword could be used for war, or a sword could be used for discernment. And Manjushri is a, next time you're in the zendo, you'll see that there's a Manjushri statue in the middle, usually in a Japanese monastery. I think it would be a shouho Manjushri in the form of a monk.

[28:28]

Is that so? Yeah. But ours is more of a Southeast Asian Manjushri who has a sword, an upright sword in the right hand, and a scroll and a lotus coming out of the left hand. And that lotus stands for perfect wisdom. The scroll is perfect wisdom. The sword cuts through delusions. It cuts through the fictions by which we live our life, the ignorance. that we allow to run us and gives us a way to work through that suffering, through everything from how we make a living to our ethical ground to how we act, how we work. You know, those are the everyday pieces of the Eightfold Path.

[29:33]

But then all of those things, when we work with them in ways that actually feed the parts of us that wants to avoid attachment and ignorance and do good and be good and be loving, we create a loving posture from within, a posture of love from within. That structure is a posture of love. Yesterday, Mary talked about mirror wisdom, great mirror wisdom, the wisdom that reflects everything equally. It doesn't mean that everything is the same. It means that we can look at everything without adding, oh, I love that, or I hate that. It's not that we never love or hate something. It's that Beneath that love or beneath that hatred, there's a through line, a continuous line of awareness of what it really is and who we really are and who we really want to be.

[30:41]

And honoring that, respecting that, allowing us to be protected by practitioners through the ages and practice protectors, practice protections. that we can build. That is a posture of love externally and we can build it internally. In another, so I'm going to shut up now so that you can ask some questions. I would actually at some point speak about the physical posture of love and inclusion in the body and how we can work with our neuroendocrine messaging system, both as a preparation for meditation and in everyday life. But that will have to be for another time.

[31:42]

I want to save the 10 minutes for you. And thank you for being patient with this potentially depressing topic of meditation. that I brought up to look dispassionately at places that are not in us, the posture of love, as the ground for building something new. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma talks are offered at no cost, and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[32:31]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_98.12