Can I change this to the other ear? Like this? This good? Can everybody hear me? Thank you. Won't stay put on this here. Two different ears. So maybe first I would like to ask who is here for the first, very first time. Anybody is here for the very, can you raise your hands really high? Thank you. Welcome. I hope you

[01:00]

You have made an effort to come here like everybody else, and I hope you get something out of being here. And your presence like everybody else's presence actually is participating in how this talk will go, what's gonna come out of my mouth, because I can't make a talk by myself. I try, it never works. I have notes and stuff, and what comes out is always a surprise and has something to do with each of your presence. So thank you for coming and helping me give this talk today. I was asked to introduce myself. My name is Kristina Lehnherr. My dharma name is kiku ho etzu, which means loom of emptiness, the weaving loom.

[02:11]

Dharma joy or dharma rapture or dharma ecstasy. And that's without taking any pills. That's something that this practice actually tells us that we are profoundly able to see and feel joy in any given moment, regardless of what the circumstances are, which is kind of mind-boggling because that's not how we usually experience things. So that's my Dharma name. And loom of emptiness, excuse me, means that, you know, we're just, our bodies in some ways are just the loom through which life weaves its pattern and in each one of us in a different and completely unique way.

[03:22]

So that underneath everything is no fixed substance, no fixed essence, no fixed anything. That how we come into being is dependent on so many, inconceivably many circumstances and conditions which keep operating in our lives all along. So that's part of how I understand it today, my name, Dharma name. I have lived at Zen Center as a residence a little more than 18 years, at Green Gulch Farm, at Tassajara for winters, never a summer, unfortunately, and here at the city center. And now I'm living in Mill Valley with my spouse, and I continue to support

[04:27]

individual people on their practice path and in their life. And if you have more questions about me after the talk, there will be question and answer, and you're welcome to ask me whatever you would like to know, and I'll see what I'm ready to answer. So I wanted today to talk about how profoundly, profoundly challenging life as a human being is. And we have just started a new year, so we just ended a year that has been full of disasters. Natural disasters, human-made disasters, personal disasters, Disasters for many people have lost everything.

[05:29]

Material, some people have lost their lives. In the fires, in the waters, by illness. We have a new government which is highly challenging for all of us. Some are very happy about it and some are profoundly distressed about it. So just the fact that so many things have become so visible and so tangible about the nature of life challenge us profoundly. And they As human beings and as animals, what they bring up for a lot of us is fear and self-protection and defensiveness, which actually add to the unhappiness and to the distress, even though they are almost natural reactions.

[06:43]

So Buddhism talks about what we can do to mitigate those is one way that gives us guidelines how to meet those challenges, what they are and how we can respond to them in a liberating, peace-promoting, connection-promoting, kind, compassionate, and generous way It's a challenge to do that. So I did spend new years with friends, which we have been doing for 14 years now, up in Wallala. And they have a lot of land, like 10 acres of land.

[07:47]

And a big thing fire pit, and a lot of wood to burn because of clearing underbrush and keeping the place in good shape. And on the 31st, it's been raining a little bit, and then it cleared up. And while we were sitting outside a fire which was, you know, influenced by the fires that we've had, the wildfires... The year before, we had a monumental fire because it's been raining and raining and raining and everything was just dripping wet. So we had a monumental fire that burned from four in the afternoon till four the next morning. Watched over by us. And this year we made a different fire. It's much smaller. It was not an up-going fire. It was a wide fire. but giving a lot of heat and us paying a lot of attention.

[08:55]

And the sky was speckled with little clouds which were illuminated by an almost full moon. It was just the most beautiful sky you could imagine. So we saw that in the evening, and I went to bed way before midnight, and I woke up at 6.30 and looked out the window, and there was the full moon, almost full moon again, shining onto the ocean, which I could see from afar, and a cloudless sky. And it felt to me so... Kind of auspicious that that sky image, the moon in the sky, kind of transitioned from illuminating the clouds to illuminating a completely open, uncovered sky.

[10:02]

And the day was also absolutely brilliant. With not a cloud in the sky. And we walked along the bluff at the... Anchor Bay, which is now a historic monument. Point Arena, sorry. Point Arena, the bluff. And saw parts of Wales traveling south and spouting. It just felt it's really a new beginning and a fresh beginning. And to me personally, I can't explain it, but it felt like some of the weight of last year just was set down, was kind of coming to rest. So we'll all discover if that's true. And we'll all participate in making it true, because it depends on each one of us how this year is going to unfold.

[11:04]

So in Buddhist teachings, they always talk about the preciousness. I mean, the basis is that a human life and life itself, all life, is precious, can't be measured, can't be compared, can't be judged. Just in itself, it's absolutely precious. And we have been given the gift of life. We didn't ask. Maybe we did ask for it, but here we are. We have it. And so how do we take care of this? How do we live this in its fullest human potential? So it's imperative not to waste time. You know, when I did my boughs, there was a little baby. Is he still here? He left. was here making baby sounds.

[12:16]

And you all probably either have children, have had children, or have been around children, or seen children, or seen puppies, or seen your garden, or seen the sky, or see the ocean. How... how quickly it is changing and how continuously it's changing, how it's not standing still for the least amount of time, sometimes imperceptibly and sometimes very perceptibly. So that's part of also how precious this is and why we are so encouraged to be awake, to be present, to be appreciative. even for when it's challenging, to not be caught up by our likes and dislikes.

[13:17]

Because things can be gone in a second. We don't know. We can be gone in a second. and it happens to people, or our loved one, or our friends, or our neighbor, or the whole town. So if we are busy with being caught up in the past, or in the future, or in likes or dislikes, we are not able to appreciate what is here right now. So that's why on our... that call us to the Zendo, it says, the great matter of life and death, life is fleeting, don't waste time. It says it over and over, don't waste time. It also says, you cannot wait and hope to be able to have the wherewithal to meet something appropriately if you haven't trained yourself.

[14:36]

So the moment something befalls us, we break a leg, our hands suddenly don't allow us to prune the rose bushes anymore without then afterwards being basically incapacitated for a couple of weeks to do your daily thing because they hurt so much. That comes maybe from one day to the other. Can we let go of that? We can't do certain things anymore, which before our bodies just allowed us to do, and we thought that's how it is. We don't think it's going to leave us way, way, way later, not now, but here it is. So how can we then allow it to... to leave us and allow ourselves to find another way to adapt to limitations, to adapt to loss, to adapt to ideas that suddenly there's not enough life force anymore to make them manifest.

[15:54]

But you always thought, one day I'm going to do this. And suddenly you realize that one day it's most likely not going to happen anymore. So don't waste time. And we live in a time which is actually not so easy, it's not supporting us in that. It's how the world is moving, what is promoted is, in some ways, making it harder for us to do. It's moving at such a speed. It's the globalness of it can be so overwhelming that it's not so easy to take, to remember what lies in our power and not feel just overwhelmed.

[16:57]

So the Dalai Lama, for example, said about our time, the paradox of our age, he says, We have bigger houses but smaller families. More conveniences but less time. We have more degrees but less sense. More knowledge but less judgment. More experts but more problems. More medicines but less healthiness. We've been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet the new neighbor. We build more computers to hold more information, to produce more copies than ever, but have less communication.

[18:01]

We have become long on quantity but short on quality. These are times of fast foods, but slow digestion. Tall men, but short character. Steep profits, but shallow relationships. It's a time where there's much in the window, but nothing in the room. So one thing that Buddhism talks about is in order to have inner peace, have the capacity for contentment, which is not the same as being... What is the word?

[19:07]

Complacent. but content, has something to do with seeing and being aware of the passing of each moment of impermanence, and that we are not in control of that, that we have basically very little control over the fact of that everything is and keeps changing. But we have the power to have a disciplined mind, have the capacity to shift our focus when we get trapped by feeling angry or feeling slighted or feeling not treated according to how we think we should be or being criticized to not dwell on a reactivity of that, wanting to retaliate or

[20:13]

brooding about it but to refocus and look at it as a challenge so one way that they say is we have to let go of the eight worldly if I can find them eight worldly attachments or concerns which is we want to we want being pleased with when we receive gifts, when things are going well according to our view, when we hear what we like to hear, when we're being praised. That are four worldly concerns we have. And then the opposite of that is we are displeased when we don't receive a gift. We don't like when things go badly. We... don't like to hear what is not agreeable to us.

[21:15]

So we're either going to only watch Fox News or never watch Fox News or only watch Rachel Maddow or never watch her according to however what is agreeable to us. As a tendency, we talk to the friends that share our opinions and we are not really interested often in where people are coming from that look at the world completely differently. And we don't like being criticized. Or if we are criticized, we would rather like to be criticized in private than in public. So these are the worldly concerns we should let go of. And how do we let go of them? By first noticing when we get caught by them. Because it's so easy to just feel justified.

[22:18]

So I could say in some ways a wonderful indicator of being caught in an unhelpful position is when we feel justified. When we feel just so righteous or so... right about how we see it. And when I'm saying it, I can already feel, you know, my body is kind of, you know, it reacts immediately. There's a tightening up, narrowing down, and now I'm being right. And also our vision actually becomes a tunnel vision. So when we feel that, we can just, can we notice it and just go, oops, thank you very much. And just relax. And just in your body relax if you can. Feel the ground under you. Feel your breathing. Feel your shoulders maybe coming down.

[23:19]

Feel your face softening. For me it's very much around the eyes when I get righteous. I can feel them, you know, kind of becoming a little more pointy somehow. A tightness around the eyes. I can purse my lips. So you have your own and you can discover those. My partner often says, oh, you're pursing your lips. And I go, really? And then it's true. I don't even notice it. It's so habituated. And then we can look again. And then we can make an effort to actually try. to see the other point of view or be interested in the other point of view. And ask questions that help us understand more rather than just argue our point and try to convince the other person.

[24:25]

So letting go of those means appreciating, you know, the practice of appreciation has to do with appreciating everything. Appreciating our reaction, which doesn't mean it's the only thing that we pay attention to and it's the truth. And appreciating that we notice the reactivity and then appreciating that we actually can step back and that we can look at it from a different angle or make the effort to do that. So I'm going back to little children because there it's so obvious. In many places it's so obvious how unstoppable and you can't slow it down life is. they just keep growing and changing, as we do.

[25:35]

It's just we are so set in our self-image that we miss the moment till our hands don't do anymore what we want to do, and then we go, oh my God, how did that happen? Or we see a friend and say, oh my God, this person has aged, and then like five minutes later we think, oh, I must have aged too, you know? because they mirror to us that we're also five years older. So to appreciate that is part of letting go, of letting go of fixed ideas. And the other practice that is recommended to us, which I think particularly in these times is very important, that is the practice of generosity. It's the first paramita, first practice of perfection.

[26:41]

And it says, Shantideva says, through giving, all sorrow is transcended. Through giving, all sorrow is transcended. And I will reach the sorrowless state. As all must be given up at one time, giving it to living beings is best. As all must be, or everything must be given up at one time, giving it to living beings is best. So this is a wonderful saying because this opportunity is always there every moment. It never goes away. It never is exhausted.

[27:45]

It's always a possibility to give. To give yourself to the moment. To give time or an ear to a friend. To give to give financially to give your clothes away now it was really wonderful to see how much helping spirit and generosity arose around the fires and the disasters and it's also quite amazing to see how soon we are about to forget that they still need it not over because the fires are extinguished. And it's a year, it's a many year long recovery where they need help. And it's hard to keep remembering that unless you're right there engaged in it.

[28:46]

You know, it's like, so, but it is. And if we practice the spirit of giving and are curious about how we can give where we are and what we can give in our own environment, it will help us to actually see those long times where giving is and support is necessary. Because when we die, we can't take anything with us. And that's what he means. At some point, everything has to be let go of. Either it's taken away from us suddenly by we have a heart attack, so we don't even have to decide are we giving something going to be taken from us, or we age and die slowly and can maybe start, or even before we are so old, we can start giving away because we can't keep it anyway. So what is really necessary for living?

[29:49]

And what is extra for supporting life? So ultimately, when death comes, we must let go of everything. We should dedicate what we have to living beings. So we should dedicate our life and what supports our life to the well-being of living beings. We all want happiness, and the best way to achieve it is through generosity. Generosity or giving is often said is one of the most transformative actions. And to, for example, to receive the generosity of somebody is giving them a gift to be generous. So that's the other side. If generosity and giving is so...

[30:52]

profoundly transformative and important, and goodwill generating, and happiness generating, and support generating, it's as important to be helpable, to be able to receive generosity, which is not so easy. We like to give, because it makes us feel good, but when we're in need We are sometimes resistant to receive help because we have this mistaken idea or identification with when I'm giving, the other one needs help. So somehow the self thinks I'm better. I'm better off. When I'm receiving, I'm weak. I'm weak. I need help. I'm not good enough.

[31:54]

I didn't do it well enough. So to be capable to receive is very, very important. So to look at that and to work with that and to see that actually to be able to receive is giving the other person the opportunity to be generous is a gift you're giving. So in our culture here we have the saying giver, receiver and gift are one. That means The giver gives a gift, but by receiving the gift by the receiver, he gives a gift back to the giver. So it goes round and round and round. So while I'm looking at my papers, maybe you take a moment to just see how you feel, what questions are here, what your body's doing.

[32:54]

what you're maybe reacting to, what you're being nodding in agreement to, what you're having no no's to, whatever. Just see what's going on with you as you're sitting here. So letting go of worldly concerns and practicing appreciation and generosity, if we take those and reflect on them in our days, maybe in the evening or in the morning, they will help us be respected

[33:59]

be response-able, able to respond to what comes our way, wanted or unwanted, invited and uninvited in a more intentional and more life-affirming way. Gives us the opportunity to do that. I want to stop today with a poem by Wendell Berry. which is called the wish, which he called the wish to be generous. All that I serve will die. All my delights, the flesh kindled from my flesh, garden and field, the silent lilies standing in the woods, the woods the hill, the whole earth, all will burn in man's evil or dwindle on its own age.

[35:10]

Let the world bring on me the sleep of darkness without stars, so I may know my little light taken from me into the seed of the beginning and the end. So I may bow to mystery and take my stand on the earth like a tree in a field, passing without haste or regret toward what will be my life, a patient, willing descent into the grass. All that I serve will die. all my delights, the flesh kindled from my flesh, garden and field, the silent lilies standing in the woods, the woods, the hill, the whole earth, all will burn in man's evil or dwindle in its own age.

[36:27]

Let the world bring on me the sleep of darkness without stars, so I may know my little light taken from me into the seed of the beginning and the end. So I may bow to mystery and take my stand on the earth like a tree in a field, passing without haste or regret toward what will be. My life, a patient, willing descent into the grass. 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.

[37:30]

and click giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[37:34]

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