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. First, I want to thank Nancy for... Nancy Patron, Head of Practice, for inviting me to give this talk. Thank you, Nancy. So... So encouraging always in your invitations. And I also deeply want to thank my teacher, Paul Haller, for everything, for everything, Paul. But Paul and Christina as well, who are leading this practice period that we are in, that some of us are in. Not everybody on my screen is in, but lots of us are. taking part in this practice period, which is called taking and creating refuge.

[01:06]

So, like Brian said, this is the last talk before Sashin, so it feels quite a privilege to be giving this talk, and I feel... honored that people felt I was going to be able to do this. It's kind of tempting to just do a greatest hits of all the wonderful things I heard during the practice period. But there was a part of it that really stood out for me, and I want to kind of concentrate on that. So as Brian said, again, I and some of my Dharma sisters and brothers have been participating remotely in the practice period from 6,000 miles away in Belfast and also eight hours away, which is, you know, it's a challenge because our 5 p.m.

[02:17]

is your 9 a.m. So we bookend the usual working day. And we've managed to negotiate this. We've figured out these distances in time and space and really felt so close, so much a part of the practice period. This amazing, rewarding, heart-opening, experience that I'm going to speak for all of us when I say that this is what it was like. It was just an incredible experience guided by these two amazing teachers, Paul and Christina. So over the past seven weeks, we've

[03:23]

been thinking about it and talking about it. Just noticing Keith in the chat box. Hi, Keith. Because you can't hear, I'm going to bow to my dear friend and Dharma brother Keith. So, yeah, we've been... This word, this phrase, taking refuge and creating refuge, taking refuge has been very much the focus of what we've been doing. Where we find refuge for ourselves and how we can become a refuge for others. This word refuge shows up a lot in discussions about Buddhist practice.

[04:32]

Traditionally, we take refuge in Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha, the three treasures. The chant every morning, I had to write this down, even though I know it so well. I take refuge in Buddha. before all beings, immersing body and mind deeply in the way, awakening true mind. I take refuge in dharma, before all beings, entering deeply in the merciful ocean of Buddha's way. I take refuge in sangha, before all beings. bringing harmony to everyone, breathe from hindrance. So I've always really appreciated the poetry of this chant, the language of it, the immersion of body and mind deeply in the way, entering the merciful ocean

[05:48]

And all this liquidity, all this all-embracing, forgiving mother. And then the sangha, the harmony where everybody comes together in this liquid space. And this chant is also part of our... full moon bodhisattva ceremony every month. So if you're not familiar with this, I encourage you to try to experience a full moon ceremony. Sorry, my blood sugar is making demands on me. It's like every diabetic's worst nightmare. your blood testing machine starts bleeping in the middle of the dormitory.

[06:51]

I know you will forgive me and encourage me and support me as I practice with my own challenges. Yeah, so the full moon ceremony that cook you, the person who leads the chanting, it's like the high point of it is, where you take refuge, and I'm not going to do it because my voice isn't up to it, but the person who is leading the chanting sustains a note on the last syllable of Buddha. They take refuge in Buddha. I'm not going to do it. Dharma and Sangha. And that goes on for a really, really long time. And there's a break. in the middle of it, and then they pick it up again and it continues. And it's so dramatic.

[07:52]

Everybody's standing there listening to this beautiful sound that's filling the zendo. And it really kind of highlights the centrality of the taking refuge in Buddha. that are its operatic performance. I know there's a recording on the San Francisco Zone Centre website if you want to try and track that down. It's worth a listen, but try and be present sometime if you can. So, and taking refuge is also an important part of our ordination ceremony, our lay ordination and priest ordination, in which we first wear Buddha's robe, which we make for ourselves, and we take refuge with each stitch, namu kiei butsu.

[09:01]

So all the tens of thousands of stitches in these robes that we wear, each one. We have taken refuge in Buddha, taken refuge in Dharma, and taken refuge in Sangha. We take refuge in Buddha as the perfect teacher, take refuge in Dharma as the perfect teaching, and take refuge in Sangha as the perfect life. And we chant the refuges in Pali, last thing at night. This clintive and really beautiful melody that it brings a lump to my throat sometimes when I hear it. Again, my voice isn't beautiful enough to do it.

[10:05]

But there's nothing like a zendo full of students. preceded by three silent prostrations. Students silently dropping to their knees three times and then standing together and the voices lifting in harmony. And this is one of the things I'm really missing while practicing on Zoom. I mean, practicing on Zoom has many... positive elements, but one of the things that just doesn't work is that we cannot figure out how to harmonise. The lag effect means that if there's more than one voice, they clash and something of a cacophony ensues. So I'm looking forward to being able to chant the Refugees in Pali in person again, hopefully.

[11:09]

hopefully later this year. But that last thing before bed, the last thing we say before we enter noble silence overnight, that lullaby of the refugees, that's unforgettable. So this fundamental teaching that's older than Zen. This teaching of the refuges, this bedrock of Buddhism. How does that work? What do you actually do to take refuge? Is it just a thought? Is it a ceremony? Is it a song? Is there a feeling in my body when I'm taking refuge, when I'm doing this thing?

[12:19]

When I first came to practice about 30 years ago now, which is amazing to me, the people I was sitting with, the language they used, they talked about going for refuge as if they were going on vacation or going to the supermarket. They'd say, I'm going for refuge at the end of the month. And I heard this and thought, oh, how interesting. Is it a place? He went for refuge, they say, like he went to the store and brought it back with him like a pint of milk. And it took a while. It didn't take that long. It took maybe a few weeks to figure out this new way of organizing things, this new language, to realize that they were, I mean, they were going for refuge to Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha, and that in this lineage that I was sitting with, going for refuge was ordination.

[13:28]

They went for refuge when they publicly announced that they were a Buddhist. They publicly avowed that they were taking refuge in Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. And I have to confess that in the early days, it wasn't 100% sure, but I knew what a Buddha was. That's in culture. And I actually had heard the word Dharma in Jack Kerouac novels. So I had some idea of what the Dharma was, but I had never before encountered the word Sangha. So this was, you know, it was hungry for words. As Brian mentioned, I was a journalist. Words were a big part of my life. And here was this whole new word. And it was a really important part of practice. So Sangha really struck me. Refuge in Sangha.

[14:32]

So I looked it up and I asked questions and I found it was the assembly. It was the community of fellow practitioners. It was the other people on the path. And this seemed like an amazing and new idea for me that I could take refuge in others. that it wasn't all up to me, that this wasn't a question of just sitting, you know, sternly, gazing at a wall and reading all the right books and getting this thing. This all feels like a long time ago and partly why I'm talking about it is I do feel that, you know, we casually draw words into conversation like taking refuge, you know, the bodhisattva vows.

[15:39]

And I think for stone beginners, and actually I had intended to do that, you know, every time you give a Dharma talk in the Buddha hall, the first thing you would do is say, is there anyone here for the first time? Please raise your hands. Sophia is saying she's here for the first time, but that is obviously a very clever joke about having no abiding self, because I know Sophia will. So, yeah. I want to, you know, I think my job here is to explain this as clearly as I can. in as simple language as I can. There's a thing on the internet that goes, explain like I'm taught, E-L-I-5. And I've heard Paul and I think Christina say this as well. If a child doesn't understand it, then it's probably because you don't understand it yourself.

[16:44]

So I want to explain this in as simple language as I can. Explain like I'm taught. And yeah, I'm really conscious. And this has come up again and again during this practice period. But of course, since, I mean, I'm sure since the practice period title was decided on, you know, I feel like I'm living in this really privileged world where taking refuge means a teacher, the teaching, the community of practitioners. But right now, right this moment, there are people for whom taking refuge, going for refuge means shivering in a bomb shelter or risking their lives on a leaky dinghy.

[17:54]

A new student came to our practice center in Belfast a few years ago for a one-day sitting, and I said, now we will chant the refuges at the end of the day, and we chanted, and afterwards he said shyly that he thought we were chanting for the refugees. And I thought about that and said, you know, we are. We are chanting for the refugees. We are chanting for the refugees all over the world and for the refugees that we have all become in flight from the discomfort of our lives. We're seeking refuge in a world that is unforgiving and unwelcoming.

[18:58]

But we are also the people who've been bombed out of their homes in Ukraine and in Syria and Yemen and Afghanistan and Somalia and Palestine and Venezuela and Congo, South Africa, Nigeria. Ukraine has highlighted a situation that has been going on for many years. People fleeing violence, fleeing famine, people yearning for safety and sanctuary. I've noticed Ireland is taking refugees. It's welcoming in the refugees from Ukraine with... open hands. And it's really lovely to see welcoming Ukrainian people with toys and clothes. They show up at the airport with little signs.

[20:01]

In Ukrainian, the Ukrainian refugees get instant social security numbers. You know what a big deal that is. And housing and hotels and just warmth. And It's really nice to see. And it also, a lot of us are feeling kind of uncomfortable. It's like, why have we not been doing this for every other refugee, every other asylum seeker? Instead, we put them in this terrible form of house arrest called direct provision. And they languished for years, like 11 years. I read a case recently. someone spent in direct provision in a repurposed hotel living in one room with her child and eating pre-packed foods and not allowed to work, not allowed to cook her own food, and becoming depressed and institutionalized.

[21:04]

Why don't we welcome people from the Middle East, people from Africa in that way? What stops us responding in this way to every refugee? And, you know, it's so clear what it is. It's racism. It's, you know, some people are okay. Some people are acceptable. Some people are others, not like us. So how can we do better? And I speak for Ireland, you know, but the US has its own problems with walls and borders and immigration stories about who is coming to our country. How do we practice with our judgments about who people are?

[22:10]

Our judgments that some people are worthy of sanctuary and some So for me, this is a really fundamental part of practice, part of taking refuge. When we settle down on the cushion, when our mind stops racing and the body can become still, our own refuge, our own quiet place? Can we find the space there to explore our own heart, to study the self that creates these borders, that creates barriers, these defended nation-states?

[23:14]

Can we see how it's fear that drives our anger, our resistance, our rejection of the other? In the practice period, Paul and Christina added the creating part of refuge. One of the people in our small group said that she went to another group and they were like, huh, they obviously don't understand taking refuge. You can't create refuge. But that's in that language of to take refuge is to be loved in. But I think brilliantly, Paul and Christina, you unpacked the idea of refuge and said, where do you find refuge? People had wonderful contributions like swimming, painting, making a cup of tea, writing.

[24:27]

Christina's classic of doing the ironing as her refuge practice. And we enjoyed hearing about each other's ways of... stabilizing ourselves, settling down, straightening back, softening, feeling safe. This seemed like a really important part of it. When we found that refuge in the simple everyday actions of our lives, we became more present, more selfless, more willing to meet, more willing to open the door to the other.

[25:33]

As a little digression I want to talk about, Some of the strategies as a species that we have developed to avoid our existential discomfort, like drink or other drugs or gambling or dysfunctional relationships or driving too fast, these are anesthetics that we use and that in themselves create more discomfort. find ourselves, some of us have found ourselves in the vicious circle of addiction where you can't stop because the problems that show up when you stop are so horrifying. You just go straight back into it. And the way through, the way out, the only way

[26:39]

that really seems to have worked on a sustained basis is connection. Talking to another human being about what's going on for us. Talking honestly about own truths in the expectation that we'll be heard and seen by a friend. So there are studies that show that the practices, the strategies of dealing with discomfort all promote isolation. They are all self

[27:41]

absorbed, very limiting, very closed down ways of being in the world. They're all very lonely ways to be. And it feels like the yearning that we all have is to connect, connect with each other. I mentioned this before, I think there's a TED Talk somewhere that says the opposite of addiction isn't abstinence. The opposite of addiction is connection. We can't do this on our own. But not just that, we're not doing it on our own, no matter how much we think otherwise. We're all in this together.

[28:41]

Yeah. We used the guidelines of the six parameters in this practice period, the six perfections, to help us structure the practice of taking refuge and creating refuge. We were invited as part of our weekly small group meetings to choose one of the parameters, if you can choose one. But I think many of us found that the one that we found most helpful, most attractive was patience. The first three, the foundational parameters are generosity, discipline, and patience.

[29:46]

And each of them is involved in the other two. That's a different drama talk. But a lot of people chose patience. Thich Nhat Hanh, in one of the texts we were reading, called it time. Tolerance, which is an interesting idea. Gives it an extra little gloss, I think, on the word patience. Tolerance. Tolerance for pain. Tolerance for suffering and discomfort. Being wet. Kim talked about this on Wednesday in her wonderful talk, being with the suffering, tolerating the suffering, not pushing it away, not distracting it, distracting ourselves with various kinds of anaesthetic.

[30:51]

The first noble truth is the existence of suffering. So the practice of patience is this really simple instruction on how to practice with suffering. One of my first introductions to maybe how Buddhists speak, how skillful teachers speak, was there was a... There was a person in one of the retreats that I was doing who seemed very angry and moved fast and broke things and just a very energetic human being. And one of the teachers said, ah, they're impatient.

[31:56]

Oh, okay. That's interesting. I mean, I could see in a way that it was, you know, it was quite a diplomatic way of presenting. He's a rage-filled, he's full of anger. It doesn't help diplomatically. Like Biden calling Putin a war criminal didn't really help. So calling an angry person impatient, But I thought about that for a long time. He was impatient. And that was anger. Patience counterbalances anger. Slowing down, being tolerant, accepting what's in front of me. That was quite a teaching.

[33:01]

So, yeah, how to handle borders, others' fear and intolerance, how to practice patience with everything that arises. We train in the presence of others. The Sangha of the three refugees, the Sangha has been my greatest teacher. community of fellow practitioners has taught me, has taught me and trained me and given me an opportunity to be part of this amazing practice.

[34:23]

Thich Nhat Hanh, and again, I think this was mentioned before, but it bears repeating. In a talk he gave in the 90s, I think somebody here was at, he quoted the Buddha's teaching that Maitreya, the Buddha of future birth, the next Buddha will be the Buddha of love. And he expanded on this and said, His belief is that the next Buddha, Maitreya, will be the community, will be the Sangha. Rather than just one enlightened being, which has been the tradition in the past, that we are the next Buddha. We are the Buddha to come by connecting.

[35:29]

by making a community together, by practicing tolerance, practicing patience, practicing deep listening. Perhaps this capacity to connect across thousands of miles through the internet. This is sangha through... The digital airwaves. This is us connecting. This is bigger than just a computer screen and an internet cable. We sit together for an hour every day online at Black Mountain. We've done one-day sittings. classes with Paul and study groups and sushines and practice discussions and sangha meetings online.

[36:36]

We're doing everything online. We connect across the thousands of miles. 7 a.m. in Belfast is 11 p.m. the night before in California. So some of our friends sometimes show up for very late evenings. This is interesting as well because it shines a light on those who are excluded from the online experience, who gets overlooked. One of our friends, a woman who was joining from another country in Europe, she said she has a friend who is not online, who's sitting far away from her, and they phone first thing in the morning. They talk on their phone. They already check in. And then they sit together. They hang up their phones and they sit together.

[37:38]

They know that the other one is sitting miles away. And then they phone again when they're done. And I was just really moved by this. I thought, this is sitting in harmony. This is sitting together in community, knowing that somebody is doing the same thing. I mean, knowing that a friend is sitting at the same time, it really struck me. I thought it was a really powerful expression of community. I get distracted by little pictures, at least I do. But actually, this is sitting together at the same time. I've just noticed the time, speaking of time, sorry about that. I'm going to... Well, yeah. In Odessa, there's a Zen priest. I think he's still there. Someone sent me the link on Facebook.

[38:40]

And he's chanting the Heart Sutra in Ukrainian and Russian or Sino-Japanese and practicing. And people are sitting with him from all over the world. So that too. So, yeah, last night, last night, I woke up at about 2 a.m. I'm a lightsaber. I woke up because there were three or four bars of really bright light slanting across my pillow, shining through the blinds. And Before I was fully awake, I was noticing, I was scanning the possibilities about this bright light outside my window. At 2 a.m., I thought, what's going on?

[39:44]

Is it the police? Is there a helicopter? Helicopters arrive in Belfast when anything happens. We have... alarm lights outside our house that we never turn on. But there were some burglaries in the area over the last week, and I thought maybe we were being burgled. Maybe it's nuclear Armageddon. I didn't actually think that, but that was one of the end possibility of this. But I was just like, ah, I could catch my body going, what? What is this super bright light? still and totally silent so I risked getting out of bed and looking through the blinds and there she was in all her glory a really bright full moon and a cloudless night sky coming through the trees shining so brightly it was bright enough to wake me up

[40:56]

So bright that it seemed like an artificial light. I thought of Dogen and all those moon metaphors. And thought how powerful this teaching of the stories we create around the moon. So then I turned the blinds. So they were slanting in the other direction. And I went back to bed and let the moon shine brightly outside my hands. 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.

[42:02]

For more information, visit sfcc.org and click giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[42:10]

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