This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Nervous? Technology? My notes? This is life. To love ourselves as much as we love others and more. To honor ourselves as much

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as we honor those who inspire us and more. For we are the reason we are here. Self-love is a challenge. Self-compassion is the test. Trusting that, like ourselves, each has their own devas to guide and see us through when we allow. makes more space to practice the above, which ultimately creates a more loving and compassionate life experience for all. This, I believe, and this is what drew me to the Dharma. Lately, I've been talking about moments. Please excuse me while I take my glasses on and off. I can't see the front, but not the back. so I'll be back and forth. About six weeks ago, somebody called me up and said, I'm dying, will you come?

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And it was something that I had never experienced before, being called by a dying person, being called to support a dying person. She asked me to be her chaplain and I took on the role of supporting her family and her friends and being a guardian of hers. Most strongly from the experience is the importance of us being present in each moment. For someone who was actually scared of death, like avoiding even looking at the scroll on the road, someone who lost parents earlier and couldn't look at them in their caskets, couldn't be near anything, sitting and holding this person moment by moment, really brought... And I had the honor of chanting with her every day.

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So we did a loving kindness chant every day and we took precepts every day. And I don't know if I've ever leaned more into the Dharma and or felt more held by the Dharma. Sorry, I'm a little emotional. She died just recently. And what I want to talk about this Pride Weekend is the importance of us being with us. being with ourselves, being in ourselves each and every moment. We have lots of different reasons for awakening and some of those reasons are so that some of the reasons that keep us from actually taking the path fully are the ideas that it's what the Buddha talked about, the loving kindness practice,

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It's so much about deeply accepting and loving ourselves as whole and who we are. Totally different from the conditions that many of us were raised in. So, whether it is that we're in our practice of literal meditation, whether it's in our practice of our work, whether it is in our engagement with others, whether it is playing out in the world. Our commitment to our practice and our commitment to the awakening can only be reached if our commitment to deeply loving and offering compassion to ourselves is equal. Does that make sense? is a particularly important weekend for many people under the LGBT umbrella and not in exclusions of anybody else.

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I don't believe in lack. Other people are having experiences at the same time. And this is such a weekend where so much harm happens. So much harm happens because of external pressures, external judgments, external... expectations. This inability to be able to be with and love ourselves because we were taught we were wrong, that we were bad, that we're not supposed to be here, that we take up too much space or we shouldn't have any space. So some of what I'm called to talk about, you know, again, and I keep saying that, but it's the self-compassion and self-care. Um... Knowing that I was coming here and I haven't talked at a Zen Center before, I quickly grabbed some Norman Fisher books as quickly as I could. And one of them, I wish I could name, somebody knows the name of it, but it's the one on maturing.

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And I've only gotten partway through it. Taking Our Places. So it's not just about taking our places, obviously, in the world. It's not only about taking our places on our path, right? This path that calls us to be here. But it's also about taking our places within ourselves. Following the deeper calling, the heart calling, the part that's hard and scary, the part that, the vulnerable part, the part that sort of reveals us. taking our places and our courage to actually be our full selves and our expression, which is where our power is. And we can't practice without power. We can't practice without our power. And I'm talking about the power, the light that's given to us when we were born. I think it was Norman or Sharon Salzberg or something else

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It might have been something else I saw that talked about the first part of us that is created in the womb is our hearts. I think it was a science thing I read. That's the first part. Our hearts. It's got to be a reason for that. It's got to be some intelligence there. And yet we shut it down. We close it off. We don't give ourselves the best of it. You ever met someone who's like so loving of themselves? You just want to be around them, their glow. And I'm not talking about the kind of loving where they, you know, are dressing well or they have lots of money, but this open and grace, which sometimes I have to say not to embarrass him, but I meet when I see David. This guy glows. And I think that... It's his practice of compassion, self-compassion, I'm assuming, self-love, self-forgiveness.

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I do a lot of my work on Facebook. It's amazing. I am... So I will do practice or I will do reading and then whatever comes up I put out on Facebook and it's made me quite popular. Because what I talk about is what's hurting me. I talk about when I'm not breathing. I talk about the importance of breath. I give breath meditation, breathing meditation on my post. And that also means that sometimes when I come to these things... I'm reading my post. Which I guess that's the way it's supposed to be. So why are you here if you're not here to really deepen your practice of self-love?

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Right? We understand, we come in, we learn the four noble truths, we know that there is suffering. And what is the calling to be free? Where does it come from? And what are the walls that you have to get around and go through in order to get to this place where when you're on the path, when you're on the path that you're fully present? How do we do it with a reminder, a constant? Because it has to be done so frequently. And sometimes step by step. I step. I talk. I have to forgive myself. I step. I talk. I have to be compassionate with myself, right? Because this thing over here. I touch. I'm touched. Compassion.

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The ability to be in each and every moment... I'm tempted to just say take a breath. Everybody take a breath. The ability to be in and with each moment and each breath is, again, a place of power, the place of beauty, and another way that we can... again, sort of step and press against the walls that keep us from our deepest loving selves. And right now I'm thinking about someone like Nelson Mandela who sat in his prison for 20-odd years and managed to come out loving. And you can't do that unless you're loving yourself, right? And he was loving his prisoners. And I call that out just because So many of us want to serve and honor and love and care and care for others.

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And this is where the power and the strength come from. How often do we wake up to a path we are walking, marching, crawling, or standing on, wondering how we arrived... forgetting that we were creating it all along. With that comes, there is compassion in releasing yourself from the everyday drama. So I haven't watched the news, I don't know, maybe since September. But pretty much I can tell you what's going on. There's some war. There's violence. There are monopolies being built and growing.

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People are dying. People are being born. But when I'm taking it in every day all the time, I'm not practicing self-love and self-kindness. I'm bringing this up because I know there are people everywhere who insist on this mindfulness practice. Choose what you want to focus on. What are you choosing to focus on? When Trump won the election, I hope you don't mind me saying his name out loud. I said, of course he won. Everybody who didn't like him gave him so much energy. He floated it. What do we want to focus on? If we want to have a loving and peaceful experience, then we want to focus more on what is loving and peaceful in our experience.

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We can't see the wonderful and amazing energy that are being made in saving and cleaning up our environment if we're only focused on the harm. We can't see what's happening with innovation in our schools and mindfulness in our schools and yogas in our schools if we're only focused on what's going wrong. We can't be, as the younger folks say, woke. Woke. This idea that We see what's happening and it's wrong. That's great. We see what's happening and it's wrong. So important. But we can't actually do anything with that without a practice, an active practice of awakening, which comes back to our self-love and self-care. And that requires having to sometimes put down, choosing what it is that you want to focus on, what you want to keep in your experience.

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These are like little vignette talks. Sharon Salzberg, I was reading a little bit about faith this week. So fear comes up. There's this fear that happens when... We have this experience of standing on the edge of a building and we might fall over. And there's this fear that happens when we don't have enough money in the bank. And then there's this fear that happens when we're losing someone and we don't know what our life is going to be afterwards. And there's this fear that happens right before we leap. And those are things that happen. What are the ways that we bring fear in and welcome it in?

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What is it that calls us to the violent games, the violent news, the violent TV? This is something to look at. If I have to get up every morning and the first thing I'm doing is listening to the news, which I did for a very long time, what am I feeding? What am I doing? How am I helping to change the world? Fear can be a place where we look back and cry. Where has the time gone? Why did I do that? Fear is a place where we look forward and cry out, how can I get it all done? What if I mess up? What if everything changes? And I ask the question, what is possible and what can we create?

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And what are we creating when we're choosing something else? Imagine if every day you woke up, after your meditation, of course, maybe a little yoga, a little yogurt for the gut, and you decided to list out your values, maybe precepts, if that's what we do, right? We do our chanting precepts. And after that, we actually listed out our values. Imagine if we got that list of values, might need help calling them out, and then we decided... As just as I do, almost every day I look at what's called the Eightfold Path, if you don't know what it is. And it's a guide for how I want to live. And maybe today I'm going to focus on mindfulness on my path.

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And maybe I'm really paying attention to my speech or effort. But imagine if every day you wrote out your values and you looked at them and you committed to living those values. Imagine you're doing that and these heart values. We've got these, we've got ego values. I'm not talking about those. I'm not talking about the heart values. To be kind, to be compassionate, to be loving, to be generous, to be aware, to be awake. To make plenty of money to support yourself and your community. That can be part of it. To make just enough money so that you have lots of time. To make lots of money so you have lots of time. Whatever it is, right? It's not a judgment. But imagine if you got up every day and practiced your values and you shared that idea with your neighbor and they got up every day and they practiced their values and this person got up every day and they practiced their values. What's the world that we could create? So many people do value peace.

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Sometimes they need to be reminded. Everybody values peace as far as I know, right? So in this, I'm offering you an option to choose where you want to focus in the morning, where you want to focus throughout your day. Let's see what else is in this head. Let's see what's in this heart. Let's see what's in this room. Some of the questions I get are... I'm going to get back to this because this is a big topic for me. Some of the questions are like, how can I be self-loving and be able to do the work that I do as an activist in the world? Or how do I be self-loving when I hate my job?

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How do I be self-loving? Once you make the commitment to be self-loving and self-compassionate, everything else around you shifts. I can't tell you it happens for me 100%, but I can tell you that it's happened for me. I was a person, by the time I was 30, I never thought I'd live to 30. I was so self-abusive. And then I got to 30 and I was like, oh, this is cool. And so what had been happening was that I was loving everybody, taking care of everybody, and just putting myself back. And then I got to 40 and I was like, wow, I'm still here. This is wild. And still pushing out, pushing out, not doing anything here. Very self-abusive. Still considering suicide every once in a while. It didn't take a lot. Oh, I can't pay my credit card. I got to go. Whatever it was. During these periods, there were moments of looking at Buddhism.

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I looked at lots of different religions. Buddhism, shamanism, Taoism, Judaism. Wicked and pagan. Just like looking, finding, seeking spirit. And it was in my late, late 40s that I walked into the East Bay Meditation Center and all these posts that I do on Facebook about love and self-forgiveness and self-compassion. Like, you would think I was making them up and then I started hearing them come from my teachers, come from the Buddha. And I'm thinking, Not only is this a great place to stay, but that it's already here. That I was seeking spirituality and I was speaking guidance and yes, we can get so much from the Dharma and the Dharma's right here. Starting here. I'm thinking I really want to say something smart, but...

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This moment. Where are you right now? What's in your heart right now? Can you be with it? That was my version of silence. I put everything on silent except that one button, sorry. I can be with it. Where in your body right now are you experiencing love? Do you know? Some of us feel like we don't have access. You want

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a gift. It's every time you inhale. Each and every inhale is life loving you. Each and every inhale is filled with love from somebody around you. Where you want to put it? This inhale Where do you need to put it? Where do you need to place it right now? I'm placing it on my heart, right? Because I'm nervous. Where's that place that needs healing with this next inhale? Where's the place that needs healing? Where's the place that needs compassion? Because maybe it wants to crack up. I think I see faces giggling. But I know my glasses on, so I'm making things up.

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Where's that place that needs forgiveness? With this inhale, where is the place that's longing to open? Can you offer it a breath? Can you even just get a little air around it? really know and understand that everybody around me is suffering, it helps me to want to, it's one of the things that helped me to want to heal myself. So we come here to practice, learn about Buddhism. And was there anyone in this lineage who loved themselves more than the Buddha himself?

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Could he have done what he had done if he had not been committed to his life? Could he have done and taught and experienced what he experienced if he was not totally committed to being in his body? And also outside of his body at times. The earth that held him and told him he was allowed to be here. Could he be here if he did not also know that he deserved that love? Could he have even touched it? Sometimes when we practice we stay on the surface and the intellectual part of it. And that's wonderful. There's so much to learn. And because that's how it gets in. I have done that too. But if we really want to be in this practice and we really want to make the world that we want to make and we really want to make the city and the community that we want to make, we learn to love ourselves.

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And sometimes that shows up as when I walk down the street, I love to say hi to people. And a lot of people say hi back and some of them don't. And I love myself and I know that we're suffering and I don't know who they are. And I can still send them love. I don't have to take things personally, right? I know that there are no requirements for me to be anyway. So I practice this freedom and choice. If we're not practicing in freedom and choice, we're not practicing. And we do have the freedom to choose to love ourselves. This might be one of the longest talks I've ever done. I hope that I've touched some of you somewhere. I just noticed I'm the only black guy in the room.

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Sorry, brother. See? I don't have my glasses on. And you're behind somebody. But what I wanted to say about that is look at me. I am like the epitome of resilience. You can't imagine what it's like to walk this path of an almost consistent expectation of not enough. I walk a path from not enough to you scare me. Walking into places, as I was describing yesterday, where people grab their...

[30:01]

purses when I walk in. Where people tell me how articulate I am because I'm not supposed to be able to talk well. Where women are frightened of me so sometimes I cross the street first because I'm that kind of guy. I couldn't be here if I didn't love myself. couldn't be here if I didn't get that each and every one of you are love. It's all we are. The heart came first. The heart came first. If I can do it, you can do it. If I can get up every day and love my neighbor no matter how they treat me, you can do it. I was once walking down the street.

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It was one of those mornings. I don't know what was happening. I'm a New Yorker. And my experience in New York is that people are generally friendly. That's my experience. So I walk out my house. And I'm in a mood. It's rare. I'm usually really happy. But I'm in a mood this morning. In my arrogant New Yorker mood. And I see this guy. I come out my building. He's walking this day. I say, good morning. He doesn't say anything. And I walk a couple of steps and I turn around and I say, good morning. He doesn't say anything. And I stand in front of him and stop. And I say, good morning. He smiles a little bit. And as I walk away, he says, what's that on the back of your shirt? And I tell him, and I don't know how, But it turns out that I was here in the Bronx and he was two miles away when we were growing up.

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And that story just talks about how... It talks about connection. It talks about the persistence of being seen. The persistence of letting my neighbor know he was seen. I mean, he loves me now. Right? He's this older Jewish guy. And that was partly what was important for me. I grew up in New York around a lot of Jewish people. And I'm like, you're my people. Talk to me. I need you to talk to me this morning. Hear that accent. Everybody's waiting to be loved. You know, this guy is like, he didn't want to say anything to me. But once I insisted, he was just waiting to be loved. Everybody's waiting to be loved. Try it. I mean, I wouldn't jump in front of somebody's face. I was having a bad morning. That's my bad morning, see? I'm going to love you whether you like it or not. Alright, let's see what we can close this out with.

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You've got it down today. So you're going to be practicing self-love. Followed by self-compassion. Should you fail? And of course, self-forgiveness so that you can begin again and again and again with this breath and this breath and this breath. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma Talks are offered free of charge, and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma.

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For more information, visit sfzc.org and click Giving.

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