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. Can you hear me well? I see that... Right now, there are 95 people in this space together. And that does not fit on one of my windows on my screen and probably also not on yours. So I would like for myself and for you to invite you to make yourself... Turn on your video for a while. Just the way you are.

[01:00]

Reb Anderson in last week's talk said part of our practice is the endeavor to express oneself completely, just the way we are. So whether you are in a pyjama or lying in bed, if you feel up for it, make yourself feel. visible for a while and so we have, I have the time to see who is here and you have the time to look around on your screen and give yourself the time and space to actually become aware of what sensations or feelings arise when you see a friend you maybe haven't seen for a long time, that leaves far away. When you see a person you might have a conflict with at the moment, to just really see what happens when you give yourself the time to actually see who all is sharing this space in time right now.

[02:15]

And I will do the same. I'm sorry we can't all have the unmuted to be able to say hi to each other, because I feel like wanting to say hi to Suki, to Cynthia, to David, to Marsha, to many, many people, and also hi to all the people I do not know, I've never seen before, which I'm happy to meet in this way. Allow yourself to feel how it feels, you know, to see someone. Oh, here is. I'm still scrolling through the pages here.

[03:43]

have been already more people joining us okay if you want to anytime during the talk you can go on Click out the video or you can stay whatever feels right to you at this moment. My name is Kiku Kristina Lehnhe. I have started Zen practice in 1976. And I have lived at Zen Center as a Zen practitioner and student for 18 plus years as a resident, at City Center, a little time at Tassajara, and a long time at Green Gulch Farm where I started out.

[04:59]

I had many functions while I was there, and now I live in Marin County with my spouse, Marcia Angus, who is also a Lane-trusted Zen teacher, and having her in my life with the background of our shared practice is what sustains me every day. So do also my teachers that I've met in the course of my life, to which I would like to express my profound, bottomless gratitude. And that is Charlotte Selver, sensory awareness teacher, who brought me actually to come to Green Gulch, to Zen Center. To Norman Soketsu Fisher, who was my first teacher and gave me the lay precepts.

[06:08]

Kenshin Reb Anderson, who is my ordination teacher and Dharma transmission teacher, to my family, my friends, and to each one of the Zen students who have been meeting with me in the course of many, many years. Because your life and your practice, and giving me the honor to witness it, keeps encouraging, supporting, and teaching me. You are all my teachers. That is really, truly everything else that is occurring every day. If I don't forget about it, which of course I often do, forget that this is teaching for me because I'm getting caught up in some kind of reaction or habituated pattern. So, in these times, we are all fundamentally challenged by the global and simultaneously immeasurable diverse impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.

[07:40]

we are deeply challenged to honestly and gently investigate our views, our place in systems that govern our views and actions. System is defined as a group of interacting or interrelated elements that act according to a set of rules to form a unified world. A system is surrounded and influenced by its environment, is described by its boundaries, structure and purpose, and expressed in its functioning. So we hear so much about systemic racism, systemic injustice, systemic inequality, inequity.

[08:54]

And so I looked up what actually the definition of system is. And I would like to also preface this talk as an invitation to you to my struggles and my investigation and my finding my way in today's world on how to respond appropriately, how to wake up to what I'm blind to, to how to open... the systems I'm subject to because all of us, so I'm not giving you the truth or a unified view, which I think is actually the short most of the, anyway, I go there later.

[09:59]

It's really my, where I'm today. And while I was preparing for this talk, it kept changing. And it will change while I'm talking and it will continue to change after I'm not talking to you any longer. So it's just my contribution to today, right now. All of us are subject to many systems. Personal systems, individual systems of habits and survival patterns. of family systems, of a family system we grew up in, of generational system, of a cultural system, or maybe of different cultural systems, if we lived in different cultures, caste system, governmental system, spiritual system.

[11:08]

Systems can be open or systems can be closed. Closed systems are where there are taboos, where you can't talk about feelings or sex or conflicts or anything that is an agreed-upon taboo, that is an enforced taboo, that this is not to be expressed, or talked about or even felt. Closed systems are exclusive and have inherently a rigidity. Open systems are open to curiosity, to questions, to change, to innovation.

[12:16]

Nancy Petrin, in her, the City Center Tonto, in her talk on the 10th of April, talked about the practice of erasure. And she said, and I think she quoted, but I couldn't find out who the who this quote was from, even though she mentioned it didn't come through clearly enough. Erasure. The practice of collective indifference that renders certain people and groups invisible. Dismiss inconvenience, inconvenient facts and people plotting them out. Any closed system will have elements of erasure, of making invisible or rendering us indifferent to certain aspects.

[13:30]

So we usually don't know unless we are interested and curious and investigate. where some of our fundamental habits of survival come from and how they actually govern our life. They govern our views, they govern how we react, they govern actually keep us in place and keep the world around us in place. So they create a unified world, the world of patterns and habits. But like blinders that we put on horses so they don't see everything, so they don't get freaked out, we walk often through our life or through parts of our life with specific blinders on in specific areas, which do not allow us to see.

[14:40]

It changes us to see. So, knowing that what supports us in discovering the excluded, the blind spots, the not seen, the not felt, in ourselves and outside of ourselves, around us, in others. It always goes both ways. We have blind spots about our own being, things we have started to not feel, not see, not express, not accept, not include. that we are excluded by different ways by making them judgmentally, saying they're bad, they're not me, I don't want them, I don't know what to do with them, so I shove them away, whatever, there are many, many ways we can eliminate or exclude.

[16:04]

And... Some of it is available to our awareness, and some of it actually we have to really want to find, to want to discover, to want to make the effort to see beyond what we habitually and usually see and feel. I'm sorry, my phone is calling in. I'm going to turn it off. Marsha, could you come over and turn it off so I don't have to move so much? Maybe she comes. We'll see. You're all participating in my life. And here comes Marsha. Okay.

[17:07]

Thank you, Marsha. So unless we have the curiosity and the willingness, and on some level you could say the fearlessness of really wanting to investigate beyond what's just habitually apparent to us. And I want to read you a poem by... Brian and Maria Rilke, that's called This Press of Time. We set the pace. But this press of time take it as a little thing. All this hurrying soon will be over. Only when we tarry.

[18:11]

or tarry, do we touch the holy. Only when we tarry do we touch the holy. Young ones, don't waste your courage racing so fast, flying so high. See how all things are at rest. Darkness, and morning light. Lawson and book. I had to look up Thari, and it means to stay, sojourn, stay in a place. So only when we stay, when we sojourn, when we remain, Still in a place do we touch the holy and can see how all things are at rest, darkness and morning light, blossom and book.

[19:37]

So I find personally this the effects of the pandemic, to me, making more tangible and more visible things I had known but I didn't really see or feel to the extent I do now, is quite overwhelming. And when I think of the global aspect of it, it paralyzes me. So what helps me is to kind of come back to the teaching of practicing, one practice is practicing completely, to the understanding that

[20:42]

The only place I can influence everything is actually in my everyday life, moment by moment. I cannot take one breath for another being. Many of us, all of us maybe, would have loved to give some breath to George Floyd. We couldn't. We can't. We'd have love to give breath to the people who died from lack of breath from COVID-19. We couldn't. We can't. So what can we do? We can cultivate what we want to see in the world, what we feel in our heart would help the world in our everyday moment-by-moment life. how we respond to whatever is in front of us, be it a person, be it a thing, be it an object, be it the weather.

[22:01]

It's how do we bring ourselves to the experience we're having that presents itself. And it is... in cultivating that capacity. And for that, we need, I think we do need a daily practice, something we intentionally do for a certain amount of time every day, so that it's a cultivation. It's not just, oh, today I feel like it, oh, today I don't feel like it. commitment and that dedication to a daily practice. And the only way we can do that, in my experience, is if we actually take some time to find out what it is that we can daily do.

[23:09]

That is small enough so that it's actually sustainable through the ups and downs and demands of daily life. Not, oh, I want to do so much and today I can do so much, but tomorrow I can't because the kids are having a hard day or one is sick or my workload has suddenly increased or I have a deadline, then I can't do it. So what is the smallest amount I can always do? It can be five minutes in the morning and five minutes in the evening. If you do that consistently, it changes your whole life and it changes the whole world. Now, Dogen says, your practice affects the entire sky and the whole earth. Not noticed by you, it is so.

[24:11]

transcends boundaries, transcends the universe. Because we are so completely inextricably interconnected, what we think, do, say, sends energy waves through the whole universe that are not stopped anywhere. And we are supported by how people practice and how people live according to their intentions. So cultivating what Rilke says, hurrying, cultivating, being with, staying with, being still.

[25:22]

Fundamentally still is how we can kind of, the blinders start dropping away. We can see them, we can begin to see them, because as long as we keep moving, We keep using them. If we stand still, we start noticing them and we start having a choice of seeing beyond them. We can turn our head or they fall away. We can suddenly notice, oh, there's always a wall on the right. Is there really a wall or is there something else I don't want to see or I have been taught not to see? It's a cultivation that is systematic. It's in the system. So it trains us not to see. It's not even we decided necessarily, I'm not going to see that.

[26:24]

Survival patterns weren't the decision, oh, I have all these choices, I do this. Survival patterns was... At that point, at that age, that was the only possibility, and many of them start before there's even a thought of I, or I have choices, or I'm deciding on this or that. And then there are others where we have more we have decided, or we keep deciding. When we're overwhelmed, we turn our head away. When we see all the homeless people, what do I do? Do I say good morning with a smile or good afternoon or good evening, or do I behave like they're not seen? Do I blot them out? Because I'm so uncomfortable, I feel so guilty, I can't handle it, so I blot them out. That is something I know when I'm doing it.

[27:27]

So we have all these grades in between where that's, to a degree where we know what we're erasing or we don't know what we're erasing, but we are erasing or it's not visible to us. So, our practice, the Soto Zen practice, is meditation. It's a practice of stillness. which can have many, many ways. So it's not the only way to sit still. You can sit still in your room. You can be still out in nature. You can be still while you're swimming. There's a student in Cape Cod that swims in the winter in the cold water, and her experiences of how to learn to be in the water, And become one with the water is just an absolutely inspiring story to witness.

[28:33]

And liberating and heartwarming in the freezing water. And so anything can be a gate, a Dharma gate to stillness. But you have to find yours. Nobody can find it for you. But when you find it, can you commit to it? Five minutes, twice a day. I recommend early morning and late evening because that frames your day and it frames your night. There's something about two times a short period of something. It can be clean up a corner in your kitchen and leave it with no trace there or on your desk. Not the whole desk, maybe. Just what is really so small. that you know you can do it even in the most troubled and most chaotic day?

[29:38]

Usually we brush our teeth even when we had a terrible day. So is it something like that? Can we make a habit of doing something that doesn't take extra time effort, but takes effort to maintain, to keep doing, but not effort of overextending yourself, because that is not sustainable and it will fault. So I have this wonderful, wonderful little book, which are Thoughts, Stories and Prayers by Mother Teresa, and it's called In the Heart of the World. And in it, she has this wonderful practice, which I think we, you know, she mentions God in there because we could replace this with Buddha nature or awakeness. But she puts silence.

[30:45]

So her order is an order of contemplation, of stillness, and of activity in the world, in the world of the poor, the disenfranchised, the invisible, the erased. So it's deep contemplation, deep silence, stillness, and activity in the world of suffering. It's not either or. So she says, to make possible true inner silence, practice. Silence of the eyes. by seeking always the beauty and goodness of God everywhere, or Buddha nature everywhere. Tenshin Reb Anderson, in his lecture last week at Green Gulch, last Sunday, mentioned we are all on the path of becoming Buddhas.

[31:51]

Can we see each other on this path, regardless of what they look like? where they are, in what circumstances. Every being is on the path to waking up. So she says, by seeking always the beauty and goodness of God everywhere. You can leave God out and just see goodness everywhere by seeking what is good and closing them to the faults of others and to all. that is sinful and disturbing to the soul. So that's like when we say in our precepts, do not, oh God, I can't even say, terrible. No, not to talk about faults of the others. Not to engage in unkind speech.

[32:57]

praise yourself at the expense of others, etc. Then, so what I also like by her practices is they include actually our senses. So silence of the eyes by seeking always the beauty and goodness everywhere and closing them to the faults of others and to all that is sinful and disturbing to the soul that agitates us. Then, Silence of the ears by listening always to the cry of the poor and the needy and closing them to all other voices that come from fallen human nature, such as gossip, talebearing and uncharitable work. Silence of the tongue. by speaking life-giving words that are true, that enlighten and inspire, bring peace, hope, and joy, and by refraining from self-defense and every word that causes darkness, turmoil, pain, and death.

[34:26]

You know, we say, all my ancient twisted karma, born through body, speech, and mind. So this comes from a deeply contemplative Christian tradition, and it meets completely the teachings of the Buddha, as I see it. Silence of the Tongue. By speaking... The truth, what enlightens and inspires, brings peace, hope, and joy, and by refraining from self-defense and every word that causes darkness, turmoil, pain, and death. Silence of the mind. By opening it to the truth,

[35:30]

In prayer and contemplation. And by closing it to all untruth, distractions, destructive thoughts, rash judgment, false suspicions of others, vengeful thoughts and desires. Silence of the heart. by loving one another as God loves, and avoiding all selfishness, hatred, envy, jealousy, and greed. Then she says, I shall keep the silence of my heart with greater care, so that in the silence of my heart...

[36:33]

She says, I hear his words of comfort and from the fullness of my heart, I comfort Jesus in the distressing disguise of the poor. For in the silence and purity of the heart, God speaks. We can really replace here God with Buddha nature. Our intrinsic capacity to be fully awake, fully human. And there's a third one, which I can't remember right now. And it's like in New York, there is, I think it's the St. John's Church, where there is a, on the bench outside is a sculpture. And it's, A person wrapped in a blanket.

[37:37]

You don't see anything but one foot, I think, is sticking out. And that foot is pierced. It's a homeless person. It's Jesus in the disguise of a homeless person. So how do we each find what supports stillness? Because in the silence and stillness, in the quiet, in the not moving, we discover, we discover own inner universe, our own inner system.

[38:45]

And Pema Churkin has a beautiful quote where she says, the most fundamental aggression to ourselves, the most fundamental harm we can do to ourselves is to remain ignorant by not having the courage to and the respect to look at ourselves honestly and gently. Only in an open, non-judgmental space can we acknowledge what we are feeling. Only in an open space where we are not all caught up in our own version of reality can we see and hear and feel who others really are, which allows us to be with them and communicate with them properly.

[39:52]

So whichever way works for you to actually be, that supports you, to be with your experience as it is arising in that moment. And be with it cultivating a non-judgmental space. That means when judgment rises up, oh, I don't like this, or I don't like to feel like this, or this is bad. We look at that in a non-judgmental way. Oh, here is judgment arising. These are the movements it is promoting. And what happens if I just let it be? Remain still, to hurry. Don't go away. Don't push away. Don't turn away. Don't grab it. And then she says something really interesting that resonates with, well, rep.

[41:06]

mentioned in his talk last Sunday at Green Gulch, that he is promoting, his endeavor is to be in harmony within conflicting or opposing views and beliefs, not harmony that eliminates different views. And that's in the text we read often, you know, in our service, harmony of difference and unity or equality. That there is a harmony that is not based on only hearing one sound or all of us hearing the same sound. It's actually... Also, if you look at the music piece and people that are musicians can say that much more, you know, differentiated than me, but there's no real music if there's no disharmony somewhere in the piece of music that actually encourage it to move to a next place.

[42:23]

That it's a play between what may sound like harmonious and not harmonious. And then if we listen to music from different culture, some of us, to our ears, because we're so accustomed and kind of systematically trained to think of harmony or hear harmony a particular way, sounds not very harmonious to us. Do we take the time to actually let it... influence us so that we can hear it for what it is rather than looking from our place at it, defining it from our viewpoint. So, then Pema Chodron in When Things Fall Apart, Hard Advice for Difficult Times, she also says, as human beings, not only do we seek resolution,

[43:27]

but we also feel that we deserve resolution. However, not only do we not deserve resolution, we suffer from resolution. We don't deserve resolution. We deserve something better than that. We deserve our birthright, which is the middle way an open state of mind that can relax with paradox and ambiguity. And I think that is exactly what we need in these times where the paradoxes and the ambiguities are so tangible and visible, through this medium, for example, we're on right now, that we can not only hear, but we can see things we could never see before, unless we were there in person.

[44:39]

And that tendency that we bring to so many things that we don't have answers to, to look for a resolution, for a solution. By doing that, we have to find a solution. We have to eliminate, again, things. So can we relax and see what is the appropriate response now within a paradox or an ambiguity inside ourselves or a so-called outside of ourselves with somebody else or with a situation? And for that, is stillness, silence, quiet is the place where we, our view starts and our heart starts to open up and become more tolerant of seeing things as they are and not judgment, but let them be.

[45:55]

Let them be as they present themselves. And then we might get to the place where we can see that all things are at rest. That darkness and light are not fighting with each other. They're at rest. It's the yin-yang. sign that he says, darkness and morning light, blossom and book. So as humans, we do need to get out of being just the subject of being subjected to systems, internal and external systems, we need to practice, we need to create space in time for ourselves that we regularly visit and cultivate.

[47:19]

And that will... tell us in our individual lives how to respond appropriately to what is arising. And our bodies will tell us if it's an appropriate response or not. If they tighten up, if we can't breathe, if we can't swallow, then we're not... We're not relaxed. If it's an appropriate response, there is a relaxation. There's an ease in the middle of that. And that will help us. And not to judge it, but to go, oh, no, that's... We can feel it's on the way there, but we haven't gotten there or we're not there. And that is teaching us. If we do not have the idea that we sit down and we... Figure it out once and for all with a solution that addresses everything.

[48:37]

So I want to thank you for your presence, which has moved this talk through the notes I made. made its own path through those notes. Thank you for living your lives where you live them, far away, close by. And I want to read the poem by Rilke one more time and close morning talk with this. called this press of time. We set the pace, but this press of time take it as a little thing next to what endures.

[49:38]

We set the pace, but this press of time take it as a little thing next to what endures. All this hurrying soon will be over. Only when we hurry do we touch the holy. Young ones, don't waste your courage racing so fast, flying so high. See how all things are at rest. darkness and morning light, blossom and book. May you all be safe. May you all be well. May you all feel support together with all beings. Thank you. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center.

[50:46]

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.

[51:06]

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