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 by people like you. So I was saying welcome to Green Gulch and Green Dragon Temple. Today we have the air conditioning on. So you're not disappointed. I wanted to talk a little bit about finding composure. Pretty difficult world actually that we live in. And To some of us it may seem increasingly so, as time brings us more stresses, say.

[01:11]

As everyone here probably realizes, population on the planet has zoomed up in the last few decades. there's a war going on and even though it doesn't have the impact on everyone in the same way the war in Vietnam did when everyone was concerned about being drafted or knowing someone who was being drafted it I think carries an undercurrent, at least an undercurrent of disease throughout the day, even though you may not feel the impact. In fact, we're being taught in a way to ignore it. So composure, how to find composure, it may be actually mistaken for kind of numbing.

[02:32]

I've been rereading some of the talks from Suzuki Shinryo, founder of San Francisco Zen Center. Usually we refer to him as Suzuki Roshi. And... I think he chose the word composure very carefully. When he said that our practice is to find composure in the face of the fact that everything changes. That a fundamental teaching of Buddhism is the teaching of impermanence. Anika. that everything changes is this fundamental experience that we have. Jane Hershfield wrote a little poem called Nothing Lasts.

[03:46]

Nothing Lasts. In her poem, I don't remember it exactly, but it says, there's a bitterness. Nothing lasts. A bitterness of grief. On the other side, nothing lasts. A hope. Hope of some consolation. These twin daughters, she says, are like the skipping rope. And different qualities but nothing less is this basic teaching of impermanence. Or as Suzuki Roshi would say, transiency, like the word transiency. Pretty hard to actually establish your composure

[04:52]

things are changing, but that's actually the challenge that each of us has moment by moment. And we, in our Dharma teaching, have many suggestions, many techniques, many ways of assisting you in finding composure, real composure. But any technique may also be interpreted in a way that's a kind of pretend composure. A kind of false stability. And supported by our desire to look like we have composure. There's a Zen story of the monk who... challenged his own practice of finding composure by sitting zazen up in a tree.

[05:57]

We tolerate some, over the centuries, some various practices over time, different experiments. So this experiment of sitting in a tree, he was sometimes referred to as bird nest, bird nest Roshi. So bird nest Roshi sitting in a tree and then he had a friend who was a local magistrate, like say someone from the board of supervisors, who was also a Buddhist practitioner. And he would come and one time he came and he said, you look pretty insecure up there. And bird nest Roshi looked down at him standing on his two feet saying, you look pretty insecure down there and the feeling that you may carry as you walk around do you feel secure?

[07:05]

do you feel that you actually have stability? and what is it based on? so then in this case the A visiting, I say, supervisor, said, so what is the fundamental teaching of Buddhism? What is the fundamental teaching? And the bird nest roshi said, avoid doing evil. Practice that which is good. Keep the mind pure. and the visitors said, well, any five-year-old knows that. And Bird Nestero, she said, yes, but a 65-year-old can't do it. So, in Zen, we're particularly interested in your actual life.

[08:11]

Not some theory about it, but your actual life. So, the person sitting in the tree was actually demonstrating the truth of composure now that verse that he quoted avoid doing evil and practice that which is good and keep the mind pure was traditional classic teaching that everyone would have learned as a child at that time just as you learn your ABC's But then the last line, keep the mind pure, actually evolved from keep the mind pure to the Mahayana understanding, save the many beings, or awaken with the many beings. Which is an understanding of purity, that purity is actually boundless, that purity includes everything.

[09:16]

Purity is not set apart from that which is impure. In Mahayana, great vehicle Buddhism. Boundless mind includes everything. So avoid doing evil. Practice that which is good and awaken with all beings. I wanted to back up just a little bit and say where I've been the past few weeks. Somebody asked me, well, I showed up here at Green Gulch and they said, where have you been? And I realized it's actually helpful to say a little bit about a month ago. About a month ago, I spent a week at Tassajara.

[10:19]

And we did a five-day retreat together. Zen and internal family systems therapy. Internal family systems therapy has two basic assumptions. One is that inside of each of us, say in our inner world, is a system, a collection of different parts that interact. So just as you can look at externally, say in your family or your group or your your Sangha, your place of work where there are different people representing different perspectives and interacting dynamically that something similar happens inside each of us. And the other basic assumption is that in internal family systems approaches that composure is possible actually. And that each system

[11:24]

has a kind of a capacity to have a locus of calmness a sense of being connected and say the arising of consciousness where is the source in which consciousness arises and in that place which is experienced in each moment and can be experienced outside of the moment really although maybe partially can be that is something that's there say at birth or before birth not something that's fabricated so very similar to our notion of Buddha mind Buddha nature what is What is it?

[12:27]

What is it that is not fabricated? That is not actually just a temporary collection or aggregate of pieces that come together. So we have these twin notions which are also like what Dogen is saying when he says the myriad things Dogen Zen master from the 13th century very important in our Soto Zen school he noticed that as he said when the self advances when the self advances and experiences things or confirms things, then that is delusion. When the myriad things come forth, when the myriad things advance and confirm the self, that is realization or enlightenment.

[13:41]

And basically he says the Buddha way, the way, the Tao is leaping clear of the one and many. So, actually, in this case, it may look like he's talking about one as self and many as myriad things, but actually he's talking about the whole dualistic notion of self and myriad things as many. And the one is clear what includes all of that. So how to actually in your life find the composure that leaves clear of that dualism. So in this workshop of internal family systems and Zen, we were looking at Zen teachings and this particular approach.

[14:46]

In one case we did a We took the internal world of one person and had all the different parts of it being represented by different people in the group and created a kind of sculpture. And one of the first things that came up was fear. And it was actually wonderful to have fear represented by someone standing quietly in a relationship with everything else. In relationship with judgment. In relationship with a happy child. Usually we don't give that aspect of ourselves enough, say, recognition. It's actually...

[15:51]

particularly challenging to find composure with that fear. To actually just let fear be fear without trying to cover it up, put something else in front of it. So the next week I was in Colorado and we were doing with my siblings. I have two younger brothers and a sister. And we were doing a river rafting trip. And one of my sisters in law was particularly worried. about this river trip and also worried about her my nephew who's 10 years old how it would be for him to be riding this raft in the white water and so pretty early on in the going down the river so we put them right in the middle my sister-in-law and my nephew and then I was kind of in the back

[17:18]

we had a guide, a wonderful woman named Gooch, who spends half her year actually studying massage therapy somewhere here in California. So if you encounter someone named Gooch, she's a great river guide in Colorado. So she was in the back and then we came down this one place and there was this raft from another another company, another rafting company. And they were trying to pass us in this one place. And we were coming around a rock. And we crashed into them. And the boat went up. And at that point, I realized, oh, I'm losing my balance. And I fell out. And it's a great... Right thing to realize, you know. So how to find composure when you're falling in the river.

[18:26]

And my brother was helping a lot. My brother grabbed my foot. So I'm, my head's on. But, you know, you have a life raft. Those of you who have done this, you have a protective, what's it called? A personal flotation device. PFD. You have your PFD on, right? So I had my PFD, and so that was kind of keeping me up. But I couldn't reach back because my brother has my foot up there. So Gooch was very helpful. She said, well, you have to She told my brother, you have to let go of his foot.

[19:29]

So then I was completely in the water. And finally completely in the water, then I could get reoriented and get my head up towards the intent. So we're moving along and people could pull me back in. It actually, it was a, And so then my sister-in-law sitting inside, are you okay? Are you okay? Yes, actually I felt refreshed. That's good. And then she, I think, felt much better. The thing that she was afraid of for herself, I had managed to you know, without even trying, I'd managed to demonstrate that you can fall in and come out and actually feel okay. So we do that for each other, you know, we help each other. And I've talked before about how the raft is a great image for finding composure in a dynamic fluid situation, right?

[20:42]

The river keeps moving and turning and it's carrying you. So you're being carried by things. You're being carried by the myriad things. So taking Dogen's verse, the myriad things are advancing and producing the self. for advancing and producing this whole movement and producing me being in the water of course helped by not just the river but the rocks the raft from the neighboring the other rafting company and later Gooch said that was poor river etiquette on their part to try to pass us at that point where it was very narrow and there really wasn't room for both of us.

[21:45]

But you know, no one has complete control. If you were gonna have control, you wouldn't even put the raft in the river, right? And even then it would be a kind of an illusion of control. But it's very dramatic and clear that when you're going down the river that sometimes it's best to go forward Sometimes it's best to go sideways. Sometimes it's even best to go backwards, maneuvering. If you have some particular idea of what it looks like, you know, what composure looks like, you're going down the river nice and straight. If you have that idea, then you are not going to be happy at all. If you have that idea in your life, oh, this is what life should look like. going down nice and straight, then you're not gonna have such happy life. So one of the other things that happened was a visit to Walmart.

[23:03]

We had a need to screen our window in the car because the sun was beating down. And we knew about these little screens that you can mount in the window, like a little shade. Some of them have suction cups or some of them have... They're made of a material that adheres to the window. You can peel it on and off. And we knew about these things. And we stopped at I think at Cragen or some kind of Napa Auto Parts. We thought an auto parts place ought to have that. No, they didn't have it. This is outside of Salt Lake City, maybe around Provo, Utah. And we asked around and stopped again at a We had a gas station. And no, they didn't have what they said. There's a Walmart.

[24:12]

I've never been to Walmart before. And this is huge. I don't know how many of these Zendos could fit in a Walmart. But many of them. I don't know, maybe 20, 30, 50. exaggeration the place is huge I mean you walk from here to the back wall before you even get to the counter you know and so so there I was you know lost in Walmart and we needed we just came in we needed these little things so we thought we needed these and And I placed my hands, I placed my life in the hands of this Bodhisattva guide who was maybe, I don't know, 20 years old, it seemed like.

[25:16]

And he didn't know if they had these things. So Lane, but Lane, my wife was explaining to him what it was. And so I felt just like, okay, I'm like a little puppy dog just following along. I don't know. It's a huge place. And our guide was very good. He went down this aisle and went that aisle and went that aisle. Just kept walking and walking. It was actually pretty good exercise. And then we got to a place where there were all kinds of things related to automobiles. went down this aisle and that aisle, and his instincts were pretty good. And sure enough, we found these things. And then we bought a couple of them, and the label said, Made in China. So I was thinking, so here we are at Green Gulch today, and I was thinking about Farmer's Market and Walmart.

[26:29]

our effort in our practice would our practice produce a Walmart I don't think so actually I don't think our practice would produce a Walmart but what does produce Walmart I think it is a very kind of extreme of individualism of thinking that of many many people just thinking that the most important thing is to take care of what I want as cheaply as possible for me as cheaply as possible for me not as cheaply as possible for the planet not in a way that's, say, beneficial to everyone or harmonious, but just for me.

[27:44]

So we entered into the Walmart mindset, going into the place. And we went in and we got, and then, of course, I think we got a couple other things. is nodding. Yes, okay, we got a couple of other things. And that's also the danger. It's very hard to go in and get just the thing you went in for and come out. Now, I don't know the statistics, but I have read that wherever there's a Walmart, many other, smaller businesses go out of business. Pharmacies, the local drug store where you know the druggist, the local hardware where you know the person and they actually can find what you need and they know how to put it together.

[28:48]

I'm not sure what all they have. Clothing stores So those things tend to go out of business because they cannot compete with this whole individual satisfaction of what many people need and want as cheaply as possible. And so then I was contrasting that with the way we have our business here at Green Galtz. We have a farmer's market. We have a farm and garden and we go to farmer's market so we load up the truck two or three times a week and we go to different places. So someone was telling me about the experience of the farmer's market down by the ferry building Saturday morning in San Francisco. And what happens at the farmer's market is communication actually.

[29:53]

Communication. there is a sense of connection it's like when we sit zazen actually we are actually connected to the earth and we realize we're connected to the earth part of sitting is just to cultivate that sense of bodily composure and realize that as you sit you're actually finding stability on the earth And as we take care of this land, this Green Gulch Valley, and we notice, remember that third line from the bird nest Roshi saying, save the many beings or awaken with the many beings. If we remind ourselves of that, we actually are cultivating a sense of respect for each thing. each of the myriad things.

[30:57]

So soil and the little leaf of the little lettuce. We go down here on Wednesday mornings, we have communal work and everyone goes down for an hour and does something in the farm or garden. working together and we pay attention to a little leaf sometimes the tractor has gone by on Wednesday morning I was down there and I was hoeing around lettuces and broccoli and the tractor has gone by and it covers sometimes the plant has just been planted and it only has two leaves and they're about as big as say a nickel, each leaf, about that size. And so if you're hoeing and you notice there should be a plant there, but I can't see it. A few times you discover it, if you reach down and just brush the soil a little bit, you'll discover that, oh, it's just been covered up, those two leaves.

[32:16]

And then you can release them. and they can emerge and continue growing. So it takes that kind of care, that kind of feeling of connection, that kind of attention. And then the plants grow and at a certain point we harvest them and load them in a truck, take them into a farmer's market. We also have flowers growing in the garden and we have cut flowers and people make bouquets and people can buy bouquets. Someone is telling me that Dahlias don't last so long in a bouquet. We have these magnificent dahlias. Lotus, they look like our version of the lotus, right? Lotus dahlias. And dahlias don't last so long in a bouquet. So if you make a bouquet with a centerpiece of dahlias, after three days they begin to kind of lose their petals and the whole bouquet

[33:19]

is ruined. But because someone was selling the bouquets they realized this at farmers market by talking to people discovered that dahlias could be sold separately and could be sold as individual stems and flowers or you can buy half a dozen or whatever and And they're so great. And it's okay that they only last three days. Or two days. Or five days. Because what happens is you get the actual experience of the petals falling. And you can have that flower in your vase and the petals fall and actually they make a free form display of petals around the vase.

[34:22]

So this kind of communication then happens at farmer's market. People actually know a little bit about where their flowers are coming from, where their potatoes are coming from, where their lettuce and broccoli is coming from. And thereby have some connection with the earth. and go beyond the sense of just getting what I individually want as cheaply as possible. So this is actually going beyond the self. Going beyond just having composure for yourself. Going beyond the whole notion that composure is possible by satisfying your individual desires.

[35:32]

Recognizing that we do live in a completely dynamic, interactive world. A few months ago I told a story here about elephants and rhinos in South Africa. And I wasn't, at that time I didn't have as much information as I have now. And I wanted to correct a part of that story. And many of you have probably heard and some of you have heard me even tell about the rhinos that were being killed in this park in South Africa. The management of the park was discovering these dead rhinos and trying, what could have happened?

[36:43]

First, they assumed, well, they would be killed by poachers. But then they realized that in this case, the rhino's horns were still there. And the poachers would take the rhino's horns so they know these were not poachers. And then looking around the body of the dead rhino, it was unmistakable that there were elephant tracks. this hadn't happened before in anyone's memory that rhinos were being killed by elephants what could have happened what could have happened so in looking at the history of this and actually that it's actually happened in a couple of parks one in South Africa and one in I'm not sure, I think Zimbabwe. But the Joyce Poole, who was an elephant expert and writer, has written on elephants, was called in.

[37:56]

And she asked about the history of this park and these elephants. And they discovered that what had happened is that And this is part I didn't have so clear before. What had happened was that this park had been created and when they created it, there were no elephants there. I mean, the history of elephants had all been obliterated from this area. Although before, decades before, there had been elephants there. But at this time, when they actually set the boundaries of this park, there were no elephants. So they wanted to bring elephants back in, reintroduce elephants. And in reintroducing elephants, they had the problem, well, how do you go round up some big elephants? Well, the easiest thing is to bring in baby elephants. So they went to another park and they rounded up baby elephants. The baby elephants. A baby is between the ages of just infants and, say, five, six...

[39:05]

years old they thought okay this is you know a reasonable way to do it we said it's so difficult to get to actually physically capture wild mature elephants so we'll bring in the little ones so they brought these young elephants in And that had been about 12, 13, 14 years before the rhinos started being killed. And they also set up some video cameras in some places. And they actually got a little bit of footage of some elephants approaching rhinos. And at first approaching in a kind of friendly... friendly fashion. They also noticed that young male elephants at the age of say 17, 18 years old were coming into must.

[40:21]

And must is a big hormonal change in male elephants when they become sexually active. So it turned out that these were teenage male elephants that were sexually frustrated and didn't have any cultural education. There were no mature elephants around. And they were approaching rhinos, possibly partly as to mate with them. And finding that very frustrating turning to violence and actually killing rhinos. So this happened I think something like over 50 rhinos were killed in this park.

[41:26]

And the solution then was to this experiment was to bring in some mature elephants so they actually brought in by now one of the park keepers said well now we have the equipment to actually capture mature elephants and haul them in and so they did they brought in three or four mature male elephants from another park within a few days the killings of the rhinos stopped. And the young male elephant stopped going into must. So the presence of the mature elephants communicated by just the presence of

[42:34]

And who knows what else? We don't know that much about how elephants communicate. But the presence of the mature elephants was absolutely essential for the younger teenagers to settle. To actually have a chance to mature in a healthy way themselves. So this is being studied now as post-traumatic stress disorder in elephants. Today I opened the Chronicle just before I came here. The front page of the Chronicle talked about PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder among children who witness violence in their family. There are examples in the paper today if you go back and take a look of children have seen their parents or their older brother killed.

[43:40]

And then we don't really understand quite, you know, what that does. But we know that it does, that it has this very significant effect. So that if you then look at your own inner world, how do you find composure when there's this part of you that's traumatized, actually. Dharma teaching is 2,500 years old. There's a quality of maturity, actually, in Dharma teaching that has been So how to actually live, how to actually be a human being, how to find composure in this difficult world in which things are constantly changing, has been addressed again and again in very profound ways.

[44:47]

And we as humans need this, actually. Just as children need some mature... Just as young elephants need some mature elephants, we adults need a mature teaching. Even just the presence of, say, a space like this, the presence of a zendo, the presence of bodhisattva images, conveys something to us about the Way to find composure in the midst of very profound and scary changes. I expect that in the coming decades that we will, as human beings on this planet, face more and more stressful, difficult times.

[45:58]

And so this will require great flexibility. Also require great maturity. It will require us to have, say, have cultivated ways in which we ourselves can find composure and change. Composure, the root. It's together. The calm part from the Latin means together. Calm. Together. C-O-M. Like with. Being with. Being connected. And the posure. Pose part comes from the Greek root. Which means pause or stop. So just for a moment even. To be able to pause together. To stop. together to awaken in this pause with the many beings the myriad things so I suggest that we need places in which we can cultivate this and we do this here at Green Galt's Green Dragon Temple and at all of our Zen places

[47:25]

we have this opportunity then to take it out to farmer's market to take it to schools just the presence of someone I remember my mother at one point was working with a preschool and she said this old man who had actually been a minister he was a very great you know he had a a gray beard, he would just come and sit. And the little kids would just climb over him. And that presence made a huge difference in the daycare center. Just to have some old man there that the two-year-olds could climb on. don't doubt the value of your own presence.

[48:32]

Don't doubt the value of the contribution that you make just by being willing to find composure even having that thought. How can I find composure in this challenging situation? And help each other to do this. This is maturity of mind. This is actually the manifestation of what we call the vow of a bodhisattva to help mature beings, to help beings be fully present in themselves. And this is a wisdom actually that we all have, that each of us carries. I'm a little long here.

[49:36]

Thank you for listening. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our programs are made possible by the donations we receive. Please help us to continue the practice of giving by offering your financial help. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click Giving. May all beings be happy.

[49:58]

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