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 morning. I'm so glad to see you, residents and non-residents. How many of you were here for the first time? Great. Well, I'm so grateful also for the fact that it's been a jury work who happens to be with his son Frank. I worked at Greenville for about 30 years, and now I'm with the Redwoods and the physician, a practitioner, among all of you, COVID survivor. A few weeks ago, we had the three-year mark, and we were at Berkeley. It probably shut down.

[01:01]

And I thought, why can't we learn? I love fruitism. I love the text and the stresses that co-create now and the stresses that not exist in the fundamental uncertainty of the system. It also saves my life. And I'd love to remember the interaction with people using everything that we can provide help in the field to not follow them. Today I'm going to talk about the COVID epidemic, Buddhism, and what they may have taught each other. I'm going to focus primarily on the Eightfold Path, the first step of which is right view. While Buddhism knows absolutely nothing about it, about virology and medical science, has a lot to say about stress, better known as suffering, and how we can and should take care of each other.

[02:08]

And Buddhism may have learned from COVID that the digital aid is here, and perhaps we can use it to be incubators for group intimacy and coherence. Thus... ameliorating the seeming loss of community that was so highlighted by masking and shutdown. And Buddhism must acknowledge the fact that mindfulness has swept the world and can put people in a calm state, much like nirvana. We need to adjust our thinking as to what constitutes the practice of Buddhism. as opposed to the religion of Buddhism, we practicing Buddhists and institutions need to effectively or more effectively use the tools of the digital age to help us meet the desire for inclusion and learning, which is everywhere.

[03:15]

So let's review a few facts and figures on COVID. At this point, well over 100 million Americans have had COVID at least once. And over a million Americans have died from the disease. That's all since January 2020, three years ago. That's more Americans have died from COVID and died from all the wars and died of AIDS so far. And the American lifespan has has lost three years off the mean average. We have all suffered. We have all experienced stress. School-age kids have been deprived of real-time learning, socialization, and now lack most support for academic growth.

[04:17]

We all have felt the loss of touch. of family connections, of an old way of life that seemed much more balanced. However, as a culture, I feel we're far more aware of the interdependency of all human beings than we've ever been before, particularly before the rollout of vaccine. We were totally dependent on our communities. What I was saying was we were all very dependent on the behavior of our community and loved ones.

[05:22]

And we would remember watching TV in those early nights of the pandemic when all of the health care workers would walk out of their shift. We would see how interrelated we really were. We could see that we were all simultaneously touched by this very small organism. that probably exists in another country, got here somehow. Doesn't matter how. But nonetheless, we were all affected and we were unequally affected. You all know that. The old and oldest and poorest were most affected, both in terms of death and people of color, Hispanics in particular, very affected in terms of income loss. They often had jobs without remote access. And they were simultaneously, women were simultaneously working from home, both and having to supervise kids.

[06:28]

And women tend to suffer more from long COVID. And so they're doubly jeopardized. There is nothing new in this economic ratio. and sexual bias of the impact of disaster. I, like you, hope you're seeing the peak. I don't yet know that that's the case. We used to be so afraid we were going to get it. Now, however, greatest health risks seem to approve those who had it. Estimates at how many Americans have actually... had COVID range from 85% to 98%. Those who get COVID have a 2% increase in mortality in the first year after their infection, and they've got a 2.7 times greater risk having a stroke on and on. That is irrespective of whether or not they had heart disease or anything before that, or whether they had a severe mild case of

[07:39]

Finally, COVID has taken three years of our average life expectancy. And roughly 10 to 20% of everybody who gets COVID has a chance of getting long COVID. And the population that's most at risk for that is 36 to 50-year-olds, not the oldest and the youngest. As a great, wonderful doctor said, they're brilliant. sent the virus, gets a vote, both in the past and in the future. We had fantastic success in reaching our goal in vaccine development, which was to protect the public health system from collapse by decreasing the number of hospitalizations and the utilization of ICU. The vaccine that was initially rolled out did exactly that, perfectly matched the the existing strain of COVID, which was circulating at that time.

[08:43]

With each successive mutation, however, the vaccine is becoming less effective. The bivalent booster, which many of you have had, is only about 30% effective against the crack and streak of Omicron, which makes up 99% what we now see in the United States and 100% what we see in Marin. And the booster lasts only three months. We don't know yet how immunity works. Many of us got our boosters more than six months ago and do not know. Well, actually, we do know as of today. CDC has said they will not authorize another booster before fall. So in the middle of such uncertainty, some health care facility actually done away with masking. The federal government has done it. done away with the COVID safety net, which is really bad.

[09:49]

And for example, Larry told me that he heard that the cost of Moderna vaccine has gone up 600% right now because we're going to have to pay for it. With each successive infection, we have about 10% greater risk. long COVID. And mice and rat studies have showed that rats die after 10 infections with COVID. Doesn't matter when. Are we like mice and rats? That is yet to be seen. So taken together, what we've learned from COVID is that medicine and research can organize quickly to develop vaccines of all the resources are given to them. We are all interdependent. We have learned that all actions have consequences. Our planet Earth is really one big being.

[10:53]

Viruses, human beings, raccoon dogs, you name it, trees. And in some ways, it's not so simple to figure out where we are and what we should do in terms of the virus. When we looked at data to see if Zen Center should open up, data available, So it was based in the past tense, meaning it was looking at the Delta and that full health appearance of COVID, not the XBB15, which we have at this time. And what does open up in any way? On that note, I would especially like to welcome both the online participant and those of you who are coming back for the first time. The first of many times, I hope. Now let's all breathe together for a while. If you're sitting in a chair, try to bring your back forward so that you've got an S-curve in the base of your spine.

[11:57]

This allows you to breathe more deeply, bringing more oxygen in. Focus on each inhalation and exhalation. Feel your feet on the ground. Because we're here, try to put your hands in the cosmic mudra, which Fu is nicely demonstrating now. That's because that's our form. We are living bodies. We are embodied. When we practice tazen, the mind should always follow our body. And what we call I, according to Suzuki Rosh, is just a swinging door that moves when we inhale. As he says, When your mind is pure and calm enough to follow this movement, there is nothing. No I, no world, no mind, nobody. Just a swinging door. Now take three breaths. And please notice how you feel.

[13:08]

Buddha, in his first sermon after achieving enlightenment, said that the appropriate path was the middle way, said avoiding both these extremes, indulgence in sense pleasures, or asceticism. The Tathagata, which is another name for the Buddha, has realized the middle way. It gives vision, gives knowledge, that leads to calm, the insight. and to nirvana. And what is the middle way? What is that path? It is simply the eightfold path, namely right view, right thought, right speech, right action, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration. Someone tells a story, I can't remember where. about the Buddha walking down the street, and he was glowing.

[14:19]

And people asked him, he said, where are you? Who are you? And he answered, I am awake. The path and practice are our means of waking up. And what do we wake up to? The whole damn thing. Birth, death, their meanings. How to live better. How to be a kinder person. And the meaning of that in our lives. And what is this path? It's not a mental path as much as it is a path of practice. The first step on that path is right view. And right view in turn is said to come out of a complete understanding of the Four Noble Truths. In the Maga, the Bina Sutra, Buddha talks about What constitutes the first step on that right view?

[15:20]

And he says, and what, monks, is right view? Knowledge with regard to or in terms of stress. Knowledge with regard to the origin of stress. Knowledge with regard to the stopping of stress. Knowledge with regard to the way to practice leading to the stopping of stress. This, monks, is called right view. In this translation, I can't remember the guy's name. Anyway, this translation, usual word suffering is replaced by word stress. And I feel that makes much more sense. Thich Nhat Hanh does a beautiful job of taking issue with our use of the word suffering. He notes that teachings of Buddha are all said to have three marks, impermanence, non-self, and suffering.

[16:23]

He points out, however, that in various texts, Buddha taught nirvana as one of the three seals, along with impermanence and no-self. Nirvana is the state in which there is no obstacle produced by concepts. This is much more in keeping with right view, which tells us to see things as they are and not our story about them tell us they are. So right view rests on the embodied middle way between hedonistic involved in the world of sense pleasures and the mortification of flesh comes from asceticism. And it involves a deep understanding. of the way things really are and how things are. They are impermanent. They come and go. They are not self-generated. They are co-created by everybody and everything.

[17:24]

The Four Noble Truths can be reframed to read there is nirvana. The achievement of nirvana is caused by awakening. Awakening, in turn, results from one's practice. particularly in letting go of the need and desire to create a permanent world, a permanent sense of self, a fixed idea of how things really are, and a desire to hold on to that vision. The Eightfold Pass is the mean to an end, a means of achieving nirvana. That is not to say there won't be any suffering. There is pain. The loved one dies, of course. but it differs from the suffering caused by the statement, Why me? Why? We give up through practice our concepts of permanent and myself by getting a glimpse of the truer perception of reality. It is the goal of the Eightfold Path to believe suffering by removing obstacles to nirvana.

[18:32]

Nirvana occurs from the destruction of desire, greed, and hate. which results in turn from wisdom. The knowledge of the Eightfold Path, and the Eightfold Path itself, is the fourth noble truth, the path of the achievement of nirvana, or cessation of nirvana, or cessation of suffering. In another sutra called the Samdhita Sutra, Discourse on the Right View, Shakyamuni discusses other aspects of right view. A disciple can be said to be one of right view when they realize or she recognizes what is unwholesome, namely unethical conduct, such as stealing, you all know this, lying and sexual conduct, misconduct, and what is wholesome, namely ethical conduct. Ethical conduct is another part. They have full path, but right view is what makes ethical conduct

[19:37]

That is, being able to tell the difference between actions with negative consequences and those with positive consequences. The Buddha goes on. One of right few also has correct insight into what tends to fuel greed, hate, and delusion and into the four noble truths and into the causal processes that keeps things trapped. in a world of suffering, namely each step in the 12-fold chain of dependent arising. Elsewhere in the Pali Canon, the Buddha is also recorded as saying, the right view is the forerunner of all other aspects of the Eightfold Path. In another sutra, which I can't pronounce, Shaky Muni explains that it is only with right view you can concern right results from wrong resolve, etc.

[20:40]

If you don't have the ability to discern your actions, which exacerbate greed, hatred, and delusion, and self-concern versus those that lead to letting go of wisdom and decrease in harmful behavior, where are you? This reflects a general Buddhist view that our understanding and state of mind are absolutely pivotal. in spiritual practice. It is because of ignorance and delusion that beings engage in grasping and aversion and thereby set in motion the whole negative wheel of causation. On the other hand, when we clearly see that grasping and aversion lead to suffering, we're naturally inspired to seek another way. I said at the beginning that I would talk about interrelationship between the pandemic and Buddhism and what we've learned.

[21:44]

Clearly, two strong messages from the pandemic is, number one, nothing is permanent. Number two, everything dependently arises. The pandemic didn't just happen by the virus alone. It took us, the virus, wet, vacune dogs, etc. And the Buddha told us that everything changes. The form of the virus has changed since the last vaccine booster was developed. The virus has and will continue to change. And we'll see what happens in Marin County. We're watching wastewater. And I noticed today, don't look at tests. We don't look at how many people are in the hospital and what wastewater says. about the prevalence of COVID in the area. And today we have a medium level of COVID in Marin County. We've got 13 people in the hospital on the basis of COVID.

[22:50]

That's about normal. And luckily in the United States, we have a decrease death rate. We have about 250 people dying each day still from COVID. And that's just because we're in a blip. Our understanding of the science between things, theoretically scientific, has also changed. Initially, we thought this disease was spread by drop. People would stay six feet away from each other to remember washing everything with Clorox. Those days have passed. Now we know that it's aerosolized. And initially, CDC defined close contact to six feet. more. Now, however, most of us think that it's probably 15 to 30 feet to try to stop aerosolization of the virus. Now we know that it can linger in the air for hours.

[23:51]

So masking, ventilation, air cleaning become key strategies as well as avoiding high-risk encounters. Initially, most of us were terribly afraid of getting it ourselves, but now because most of us are Thanks. The estimates of how many of us have had it, again, range from 85% to 98%. Initially, most people trusted the government and what they had to say. Now, however, the general population is skeptical of doctors, of scientists, of politicians. Do we really need to go back? Do we really need to go in lockdown mode so thoroughly and for such a long period of time? I know many people get their information on when it's safe to eat outside at a restaurant in San Francisco.

[24:53]

From Bob Wachter, who's the chief of medicine at UCSF, he announces on Twitter every day what the relative risk is. centralized data health collection system. Although in California, at the beginning of the disease, we were using a very centralized system that was very effective. Perhaps the cruelest misinformation we shared early on was that COVID was particularly, i.e., only dangerous for the elderly and compromised. What is becoming clear The previously healthy 36 to 50-year-olds had a mild case of COVID or at the greatest risk for COVID, for long COVID. And finally, we have no idea what causes COVID immunity. Is it antibodies? T-cells, B-cells don't yet know.

[25:56]

Where are we really? There's a Zen Cohen, which seems to sum it up perfectly for me. That is, not knowing is most intimate. In this case, a student is talking to his teacher about the fundamental nature of reality that theoretically is what we always do with our teachers. The case. Daizang asked Fayan, where are you going? Fayan said, around on pilgrimage. Dyson said, what is the purpose of pilgrimage? Fayan said, I don't know. And Dyson said, not knowing is most intimate. He said, not knowing is nearest. And I don't know or not knowing can be translated into not knowing as most intimate. As soon as we know something, it becomes separate from us.

[27:02]

It becomes a piece of knowledge or understanding that we can hold on to it. That doesn't mean that it's not useful. It just means it's not very intimate. We just do things without reflecting on them. In order to be free of our habitual patterns of behavior, we have to begin to seek them and cultivate awareness that transcends thought and knowledge. To expand the context of your life and our life, then we must enjoy and experience wrong, discomfort, misery, and joy. We do this when we sit zazen, sitting with what ails us and what makes us feel alive. We discover new possibilities in the midst of our problems and achieve. Small, small victories.

[28:05]

When we think we know all the answers, we feel safe. Life is not safe. Life is a journey. We're all going to die. Life is a journey into the unknown. And not knowing is most intimate because it is closest to the truth of our experience. What do we really know? When we practice zazen, as Suzuki Roshi says, all that exists or should exist is the movement of the breath. We are aware of that movement. When we practice zazen, a million thoughts keep coming to mind and we try to concentrate on our breath. As Suzuki Roshi said, just practice zazen in a certain posture and focus on your breath. Just remain on your cushion without expecting anything. Then, eventually, you will resume your own true nature.

[29:09]

That is, your own true nature resumes itself. I'd also like to speak briefly about what the pandemic has taught religious and cultural institutions about their way of helping to achieve a cultural transformation. Reformation, among other things, the virus and our desire to avoid it have led us all to be increasingly dependent on the internet as a means of work, play, connection, learning, communication. At the beginning of the epidemic, those of us who were working in some hospitals in the city were deployed to work remotely. from home for the city and county of San Francisco to try to mobilize there and manage the county's response. So our problem was to get people vaccinated, to provide consultation to local MDs who needed help.

[30:19]

And an elaborate platform was set up to let us do, among other things, interact with translators of hundreds of languages. so that we could actually communicate with people and find out what their hesitation was, for example, about getting vaccinated and what they needed from us in order to get vaccinated. I can remember spending 30 minutes on the phone trying to understand what a Russian-speaking 89-year-old was telling me about where the key to her apartment was located. You see, she was bed-bound. She was disabled. And she needed the worker to enter her apartment to be able to give her the first vaccine. When I finally realized that I figured out exactly where the key was, I remember shouting yes so loudly that my next door neighbor came in to see what the problem was. The virus has taught us how it spreads by our external connection to each other, our own internal connection.

[31:26]

Immunity and the contagion factor, better known as R-naught, the pathogen, or forget R-naught. My favorite institution of the last decade, besides Green Gulch, is ServiceBase, and it's located in Berkeley, and it's an all-volunteer large organization doing good through various internet platforms based on doing exactly the opposite. Through this pandemic, Number one, it's increased external connections. Number two, lowers our immunity to signals of our hearts. Number three, it inserts drops of joy and good news with high contagion factors for positive outlook into their network, which now numbers in the millions. And it's global. You all can look up service space. It's really a fantastic organization. About 12 years ago, they started through the goodwill of four Berkeley dropouts from Silicon Valley.

[32:35]

They had been born in India, in the same province as Gandhi. And they formed it as a volunteer effort that was set up to provide technical support for nonprofits trying to do websites. They had so much. They advertised for help. because they wanted to get volunteers, and they got so many volunteers that they ended up having to do a lot of things to create room for the volunteers. They operate through small acts of kindness, which by vast numbers of people involved creates something local, helpful, and new. It's all about a route through somebody's desire, through hearts, heads, and hands. They're bringing about external and internal change. Since the pandemic, they've hosted, for example, 144 different Ladder Ship pods.

[33:37]

Now, each Ladder Ship pod is about 200 people from about 35, 40 different countries who meet for 30 days online and come up with giftism. They come up with some volunteer project they want to do locally. So they produced 100,000 volunteer hours. And it's incredibly rich, nourishing, fulfilling, and growth-producing and intimate. As a group, they are so tech-savvy and so value-bound and so committed to being the change you want to see in the world that the pods really did foster emergence of. intimacy, real intimacy. I was on a research call with them, which included a discussion between a mystic and a neuroscientist and thousands of people around the world.

[34:42]

And I learned that research shows that the heart generates, I didn't know this, the strongest electromagnetic field in the body. The neurons in the heart are called the mini brain or the little brain. The energy field, they... Exude is about three feet out from our bodies, and it's bidirectional, meaning it can relate to other people's bodies or your own head, the neurons. There have been studies that show that a person's internal emotional state directly affects the coherence in the electric magnetic field, and coherence in this case. is just a fancy word to talk about, the coordination of respiration and heart rate. And an individual's ECG, for example, my ECG, my electrocardiogram, could be registered in FOOS right now and elsewhere on your body, on your hand.

[35:51]

Signals are also amplified by physical touch. And sincere feedback Feelings of appreciation, love, care, they all increase coherence in the field. When we are in love, the brain releases a variety of chemicals, including oxytocin, serotonin, which affect mood and behavior. These chemicals also have a physical effect on heart. They also increase coherence in the heart. Thich Nhat Hanh's experience in boats fleeing from Vietnam led him to say, if even one person in the boat stayed calm and steady, that was enough. That showed the way for everybody to survive. And if only one way, only one person in that boat is needed to transform the experience of everybody within,

[36:55]

Couldn't each of us become that one person in the book? Stephen Batchelor, a noted Buddhist English writer, has written a fascinating book called After Buddhism, in which he notes that through the form of mindfulness training, Buddhism has entered the mainstream, every seer of modern life. And he notes that in the House of Lords, 160 members got eight weeks of mindfulness training, and the NHS, the National Health Service, now prescribes it. The number of new people meditating in the U.S. has climbed astronomically. It was $20 million in 2020. It's $30 million this year. And U.S. universities like Stanford, it's offered prominently on their... open web page, you know, their home-based web page.

[37:57]

The benefits of mindfulness training have been fairly well documented and fit right in with the whole Buddhist tradition and ethics of the Eight Bold Path. And according to Bachelor, the early Pali canon opens with the phrase, mindfulness is the only way to nirvana. When you do mindfulness practice, you are in fact opening your intention to the possibility of dwelling in the world in another way. One not determined by habitual patterns, self-centered reactivity. Mindfulness is about cultivating and opening up a clear open space. Bye kitchen. I'm just about done. And that space is not to be experienced only in and of itself, but it's a way to make palpable change in your own life and how you lead that life.

[39:09]

The heart of mindfulness training is the Dharma. And the Dharma, a practice that can cover the way you live your life and I live my life. He quotes Leonard Cohen, who says in Anthem, There is a crack, a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in. COVID pandemic has been one of those cracks. And to look at it on the positive side, it's left some life in. We've had this pandemic, which now reaffirms the primary message of Buddhism. Everything is interrelated. Nothing is permanent. And our job is to take care of one another. And the end-filled path shows the way. The pandemic has raised questions about how we as Buddhists can let the light in, how we can stay afloat and even grow. What is is the permanence of change, the absence of self, necessity of practice as the vehicle for achieving nirvana.

[40:18]

We are a global, diverse community. Think what it would be like. If we could establish coherence and intimacy, such as we do in small venues. We're face-to-face transmission. How many of you are going to sit Sashin today? Thank you. You are sitting for all of us. You are like an incubator, flowering. the human heart. And perhaps eventually he can learn to use technology so it can better help more people flourish with open-hearted compassion so that our true natures return. I want to end with a poem from Dogen, which I will explain later how I got it. In the spring, hundreds of flowers,

[41:23]

In the autumn, a harvest moon. In the summer, a refreshing breeze. In the winter, snow will accompany you. If useless things do not hang in your mind, any season is a good season for you. 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. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[42:08]

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