Thank you. muting me, but I'm the host, so I don't know how that kept happening.

[09:33]

Welcome to the Wednesday Night Talk at San Francisco Zen Center. Tonight, our speaker is Zensheen Florence Kaplow. Florence is a longtime San Francisco Zen Center student and lived at our monastery, Tassajara, and she's a teacher in this lineage currently receiving Dharma transmission from Bruce Fortin. in the process, and Dharma Transmission is the certification to offer the precepts and ordain people into this tradition. She co-authored the book, The Hidden Lamp, Tales of Buddhist Women with Susan Moon, and has also trained with Darlene Cohen, and who's one of our beloved late teachers. And if there's one thing I can say about Darlene's spiritual lineage, which I think Florence is a shining example. It would be delightful persistence and persistent delight in the face of everything life can throw at you.

[10:42]

So it's a wonderful treat to have you here tonight. And I will offer the opening verse. And after that, Zenshin, you may unmute and begin. None surpassed, penetrating and perfect, our mom is rarely met with, even in a hundred thousand million kalpas, having it to see and listen to, to remember and accept. I vow to taste the truth of the Tathagata's words. Good evening.

[11:49]

I didn't scroll through all the little boxes, but I see old friends from Zen Center. I see old friends from far-flung places. And I know that some of you are listening right there in the City Center Building, where I spent many happy hours practicing. And Brian, I want to thank you for that introduction. Little do you know how much Darlene is going to feature in this talk. And I'm really honored to be asked to speak. I feel like Zen Center is one of the centers of the universe. And it is truly a great gift and honor to be part of the great mandala of San Francisco Zen Center. I'm speaking to you tonight from Urbana, Illinois, from the monastery of my little home.

[13:02]

And I thank all the many causes and conditions that make it possible for us to be together tonight, for me to be with you, even though I'm not in San Francisco. and for you to join with me tonight. So what I want to talk about tonight is the spiritual, territory, landscape, journey of illness, sickness, and pain. I know some of you are probably thinking, oh, goody, that just sounds like the cheeriest sort of talk ever. But, you know, for some of you, this subject may be highly relevant.

[14:06]

And for others, I am so happy that this is not your current territory and landscape. But believe me, It will be relevant. Maybe it already has been in your life, and it will be again because it is intrinsic to our humanity. Sickness, old age, and death are seen in our Buddhist tradition as great teachers, as great messengers. Last couple of weeks, as I've been thinking about this talk, I realized that they make a very satisfying acronym, sickness, old age and death, which is SOD. And so tonight we're going to be talking about the first part of SOD. We'll leave old age and death for other talks.

[15:10]

And it is important to remember that they are messengers. They are teachers. And I want to be clear that this talk is not theoretical. This talk is not an intellectual exploration of sickness and pain. I'll be speaking from my own lived experience. as someone whose life unexpectedly for the last 20 years or so has involved a dance with physical difficulty. And I'll say more about that later, but I just want you to know, actually, even as I speak tonight, I'm still recovering from which hit me really hard earlier this summer.

[16:18]

And so if I'm a little confused, please forgive me. Know that I'm bringing my heart to you, whatever may be useful to you tonight. I want to begin with a famous quote from the Vimalakirti Sutra, which is one of our truly beloved Mahayana sutras. And just to give you a little background, although this sutra, we think, was composed sometime hundreds of years after the time of the Buddha, but it takes place at the time of the Buddha. And its hero or main character is a layperson, not a monk or nun, but a layperson whose name is Vimalakirti. Vimalakirti is a highly unusual and unique character in our Buddhist literature.

[17:24]

Really pretty wild. But in this sutra, it begins with the news that Vimalakirti has fallen ill. And the Buddha is with his assembly of monks and nuns and bodhisattvas. And he wants someone to go visit, make a kind of visit the way you would to someone who is ill to see how he's doing to his beloved disciple, Vimalakirti. But no one will go because as they explain to the Buddha, as he asks one person and then the other person, they've all had humiliating experiences with Vimalakirti in the past where his unconventional wisdom has left them nonplussed and embarrassed. And so no one will go. Until finally, Manjushri, the bodhisattva of wisdom, whose statue is on the altar at Green Gulch, says, okay, even though I've had similar experiences with Vimalakirti, I'll go.

[18:39]

I'll go to offer my good wishes and have a conversation with him. So Manjushri goes to visit Vimalakirti at his house, and Vimalakirti is in a tiny room with just a bed in it. But magically, not only Manjushri, but the entire assembly, who've all come along to see what happens, fit in this tiny, tiny room. And as an aside, To this day in Zen monasteries, the abbot's room is known as Vimalakirti's room. Because just like Vimalakirti, it may be a small room, but vast goings-on can occur within it. Great moments of meeting and awakening. So Manjushri gets there.

[19:45]

along with all of the Buddha's assembly in Vimalakirti's small room, and inquires about his health. And Vimalakirti says, and I'm going to read this twice, Manjushri, my sickness will last as long as do the sicknesses of all living beings. Were all living beings to be free from sickness, I also would not be sick. Why? Manjushri, for the Bodhisattva, the world consists only of living beings and sickness is inherent in living in the world. I'll read it again. Manjushri, my sickness will last as long as do the sicknesses of all living beings. Were all living beings to be free from sickness, I also would not be sick. Why? Manjushri, For the bodhisattva, the world consists only of living beings and sickness is inherent in living in this world.

[20:54]

In other words, Vimalakirti is sick because the world is sick. Because we as living beings are sick. And he is also a bodhisattva. His whole life as... highly unconventional as it is, is to be a benefit to others. In fact, it turns out later on that really he's feigned sickness in order to help others wake up. A bodhisattva does not float somewhere in nirvana above the world, but is, paraphrasing here in the words of Dogen, covered in mud and dripping wet. And yet, do we really live with this understanding of this shared sickness?

[21:57]

I think for most of us, and I'm speaking for myself here as well, sickness seems like an aberration, something that's gone wrong in an otherwise non-sick situation. life, something to be cured by the right medication, the right diet, maybe the right way of thinking about things. Many years ago, I did a retreat with the wonderful Buddhist teacher of death and dying, Stephen Levine. And I remember one of the things he said is, if that was true, if you thought the right way, that would mean you could be free from sickness. then all of us have failed in the end because we all die in the end. So he wasn't highly convinced by that idea. And for some of us, whatever our age, there is really no ducking this reality.

[22:58]

I want to just give you a little sense of what I'm speaking about here from my own life. So back in 1998, after having practiced at Green Gulch and probably a little bit even at City Center. At that point, I had an opportunity to go to Tassajara and do a practice period there. And it was a life-changing experience. But about a year later, I, for some reason, hadn't caught mononucleosis when I was younger, and I caught it, and I was in my mid-30s, and it made me really sick. And then that brought in a kind of cascade of autoimmune problems that became a real powerful force in my life over the next 11 years or so. A lot of pain would come and go, so I would never know what I could trust about my body. I couldn't actually do Zen practice in the way that I loved because of the unreliability of my body.

[24:08]

I had a wonderful job, and I eventually had to leave it because I was getting sicker. And so it became a really primary practice for me, how to live with this situation. And then it went into remission for about ten years, nine years. And Then out of the blue, I was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, another kind of autoimmune illness. And once again, illness has, you know how they say puppies help you get rid of things that you thought you wanted or needed? Illness does the same thing. And so although I had gone to seminary, I had become a Unitarian Universalist ministry, I had a wonderful job, I needed to leave that position in order to try to take care of my health a little less than about nine months ago.

[25:18]

So I've been working with this, the koan of illness and pain, for a long time. But luckily, I haven't been alone in that. There are guides going all the way back to Zimila Kirti, but others as well. And actually, I want to dedicate this talk to Darlene Cohen, the late Darlene Cohen, who was a Zen Center-trained priest and teacher, and who would probably be laughing at me right now if I... If she could hear this, I'm going to say that she is the closest thing to Vimalakirti that I've ever encountered. And I was lucky enough. I really can't say that I was one of her students. She has wonderful students and Dharma heirs who are continuing her work. But her writings and my contact with her have really informed my own life and practice.

[26:22]

And so I'm deeply grateful to her. There have been many unique and powerful teachers to come from Zen Center, but I think most people would agree that Darlene was one of a kind. She developed rheumatoid arthritis in her early 30s with a very young child. She was practicing at City Center at the time. And I think I might just share her own words from her book, Turning Suffering Inside Out. about what her experience was at that time, this young woman. When the disease first struck me, I was forced to stay in bed. I lost 40 pounds. I couldn't dress myself, hold the phone receiver, or get up from the toilet unassisted. I was completely overcome by unremitting pain, fatigue, and despair. In four months of deterioration, I lost everything that meant anything to me.

[27:22]

reliance on a strong young body, my achievements and the sense of self-worth they brought me, my pleasure in being a sexually attractive woman, my identity as a mother, and my ability to do the required practices and sustain myself in the community in which I lived as a student of Zen meditation. I became isolated from everyone I knew by my pain and fear. And ultimately, even by the consuming effort I had to make to do any little thing, like get up from a chair, pick up a cup of tea. So that's where her journey started. But it's not where it ended. Because she learned ways of being with her pain, radical ways. continued to practice, she continued to develop, and ultimately she was able to use her own suffering and her own powerful honesty to really help others.

[28:33]

And she continues to do so through her writings and, again, her Dharma heirs who carry on her work. So I know that there are many people listening today who never had a chance to meet Darlene. I'm going to try to give you a sort of sketch of her so you can have a sense of her in your own eye, in your own mind's eye. I want you to imagine a sort of impish person, a mischievous person with brilliant eyes and a little top knot on top of her head, which she had towards the end of her life, which made her look like a Tibetan bikini, which she acted like at times. Her hands and much of her body gnarled and rippled by arthritis. Someone completely unafraid of talking about anything, whether that was sex or rage or despair or fear, the whole nine yards of being human.

[29:39]

She called the work that she did with others suffering and delight. And she lived a life of suffering and delight. Another little quote from her book. I think many people have a skewed idea of what accepting pain is. If you have the idea that coping well should resemble serenity or equanimity, something like the proverbial grace under fire, then you think you should resign yourself with a big cosmic grin, no matter what horrors are being visited upon you. Actually, accepting fails to convey the tremendous energy and courage it takes to accept physical pain as part of your life. Truly accepting pain is not at all like passive resignation. Rather, it is active engagement with life in its most intimate sense.

[30:46]

There are a lot of ways of talking about sickness and pain. It's a huge country. But tonight, I want to explore three archetypes, three different frames that one could inhabit, that one does inhabit when this is part of your life. So for tonight, here we go. These are the three. The sufferer, the warrior, and the bodhisattva. And I do not want to talk about these as some kind of hierarchy or with judgment that somehow one is better than another. They each have their gifts. They each have something to teach us.

[31:51]

And there are shadow signs as well. So let's explore. The sufferer. My, this one is so familiar to me. I wrote an essay for Inquiring Mind years ago on what I called dancing in the dark fields or what it meant to live with illness. And this is a little paragraph from that. I've cried a lot of tears of self-pity in the last few years. And I wonder why self-pity is such a pejorative term. To feel pity for the person in pain, me, has been the first step towards really understanding that this is the human condition. I'm getting a taste of it a little sooner than most, a little later than some. I know a sweet little girl who developed a rare autoimmune illness just before her sixth birthday, and I watched her parents suffer as she struggled for breath.

[32:58]

My friend Michael, this is the late Michael Sawyer, another wonderful center character, lies in his bed with Parkinson's, not able to speak, his eyes locked on mine. Our tears mingle together. a big invisible river circling around the world, and through my tears of self-pity, I join everyone who cries. This summer, I have felt a little bit Job-like. So I take some really miraculous medications that were not so available to Darlene, actually, but have really helped my rheumatoid arthritis, but they basically mean that I'm immune suppressed. And so I got COVID despite every possible precaution. And then I took Paxlovid, and I got the Paxlovid rebound, which meant I got COVID again, or continued to have COVID.

[34:00]

And then I got through that, and then I got pneumonia. And then I got through that with the help of antibiotics. And then... That triggered a whole bunch of other lung inflammation problems and having to use steroids. And I am still recovering. And it felt terribly unfair. So I was thinking about Job. And a friend told me, I hadn't known this despite having studied, that Job is actually a wisdom figure that even predates the Hebrew Bible. And there's an incredible lament. in the middle of the book of Job, and I just thought I'd share some of it with you, because maybe you have felt this way in your life. After this, Job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth. He said, May the day of my birth perish, and the night that said, A boy is conceived. Why did I not perish at birth and die as I came from the womb?

[35:03]

Why were there knees to receive me and breast that I might be nursed? For now I would be lying down in peace. I would be asleep and at rest with kings and rulers of the earth who built for themselves places now lying in ruins with princes who had gold who filled their houses with silver. Or why was I not hidden away in the ground like a stillborn child, like an infant who never saw the light of day? There the wicked cease from turmoil and there the weary are at rest. For sighing has become my daily food, my groans pour out like water. What I feared has come upon me, what I dreaded has happened to me. I have no peace, no quietness. I have no rest, but only turmoil. One of my very first sermons as a seminary student before becoming a Unitarian Universalist minister was about the big waves of life. And those waves that hit you, how we can ride the waves.

[36:08]

But then sometimes waves are bigger than we are. And they tumble us in the sand. They smash us down. And what do we do then? Humility. Humility. And another quote from Darlene. People sometimes ask me where my own healing energy comes from. How in the midst of this pain, this implacable, slow crippling, can I encourage myself and other people? My answer is that my healing comes from my bitterness itself, my despair, my terror. It comes from the shadow. I dip down into that muck again and again and then am flooded with its healing energy. So those are the gifts of the sufferer. But if you have been the sufferer in whatever form it's taken, you may have noticed that if you spend too much time in that place, that like Job, everything grows dark.

[37:14]

And since some of you are people drawn towards Zen, maybe all of you, you might be drawn to another archetype, which is the archetype of the warrior. And the warrior archetype is our favorite societal archetype. to talk about illness and pain. Just read the obituaries. You'll see things like, she fought the cancer bravely, or his struggle with pain took great courage. We love stories of bravery in the face of adversity. And then our DNA is full of this warrior energy. As my teacher, Norman Fisher says, Zen was invented for arrogant young men who needed a little school of hard knocks. But it does take courage and strength to sit upright in the middle of the fire. There is real courage and strength that develops through Zen practice.

[38:20]

And there is power in the warrior. The warrior is what can get us up in the morning. The warrior can keep us looking for what... Maybe even all the doctors say they don't know that you're going to find the way through. You're going to find the way through your life. But it has a shadow side as well. One of our warrior practices is Tangario. And anybody who's been to Tassajara for a practice period knows about Tangario. It comes from the tradition of sitting outside the gates of the monastery as an aspiring monk until the gatekeeper will let you in. And for us, tangario happens inside the gates of the monastery in the sendo, but it's five days of just sitting. Nothing else happens. No walking meditation, no talks, no nothing. Very powerful practice. Also, very possible to hurt yourself in this practice.

[39:24]

In my tangario, there was someone who actually did permanent damage to his sciatic nerve because... Although you don't walk, you can stand at your seat. And he sat like a warrior. And that was the last time he sat on a soft room. He had to sit on a chair from then on because he had hurt himself. So that's the shadow of the warrior, not paying attention to the body, not listening to the body. Here's something I wrote from, again, in Dancing in the Dark Fields. It's easy to fight and resist. but I've learned the hard way how resistance increases the suffering. Instead, there has to be a kind of surrender. The body is firmly in the lead, and my job is to follow it. That's what this dancing partner has taught me. Finally, I think there is a third way. And again, there are a thousand ways, but in the way I'm thinking about it tonight, there is a third way.

[40:27]

that includes, does not exclude either the sufferer or the warrior, and is bigger than both of them, deeper than both of them. Remember what Vimalakirti, the Bodhisattva, said, Manjushri, my sickness will last as long as do the sicknesses of all living beings. Were all living beings to be free from sickness, I also would not be sick. Why? Manjushri, for the Bodhisattva, the world consists only of living beings, and sickness is inherent in living in the world. In this way, there is spaciousness. There is room, just like Vimalakirti's little room. It's big enough for the Buddha's entire assembly. And for goddesses and all kinds of other things, if you ever read the sutra.

[41:28]

But within the bodhisattva way, there is room for everything. For self-pity. For being overwhelmed. For being caught up in fighting your circumstances, even though you know it's probably not going to help. For your courage and for your care of others. And for remembering that sickness and pain are inherent. in living in the world. We are bigger than all of it. Our awareness can hold all of that and more. We can even dedicate our own suffering to the well-being of others. This is a Vajrayana practice to, when suffering, to offer it as an offering for the well-being of others, as a prayer for the well-being of others who are suffering in the same way. The bodhisattva knows two things, never forgets two things.

[42:31]

This is a teaching in the Perfection of Wisdom teachings, where it says the bodhisattva is like a bird with two wings. Of course, a bird can't fly with just one wing. And the wings of the bodhisattva on one hand are wisdom, and on the other hand are compassion. So the wisdom is this spacious mind. And the compassion is knowing that even though we are all interconnected, even though we know that birth and death are stories, still we suffer and others suffer. And the only possible response is to Let your heart break open to your own suffering and to the suffering of others. And the most incredible thing is that we can use our sickness to help others.

[43:36]

There's an old story about this from the Book of Serenity, great selection of koans. When Dongshan was unwell, a monk asked, you are ill, teacher, but is there anyone who does not get ill? Dongshan said, there is, even though Vimalakirti said, it's everyone. The monk said, does the one who is not ill look after you? You know, the idea that there's like, there are the well people and the sick people and the well people look after the sick people. But Dongshan said, I have the opportunity to look after him. So when we're sick and in pain, often we feel useless. We feel isolated. Darlene described, we feel separate from others and from the world. But we really can't show up to benefit others through our sickness, through our pain. One last quote from Darlene. The world that opened to me through engaging the physical suffering and mental anguish caused by my disease has turned out to be inexpressibly rich.

[44:48]

Because if we can engage with our suffering, connect with it, dance with it, tease it, coax it, curse it, as well as trying to change it. Just consider it our lives. Experience it as our lives, the only lives we have. It changes the quality of that suffering. It's not just our suffering. It's everything. When we look at it that way, we can't make the usual divisions. We feel connected with everything. It's strangely comforting, paradoxically comforting. In the moment that we can embrace our own suffering, the barrier between ourselves and others is gone. So part of the reason that I was invited to give this talk is that I'm going to facilitate a class, a four-part class in September and early October on dancing in the dark fields, working with illness and pain.

[45:57]

And I formally invite you to consider joining if you feel like it would benefit your life in some way. And I say facilitate rather than teach because I think anyone, any human who has been in the territory of illness and pain, has wisdom already to offer each other as well. So I'd love to see you there if you feel so inclined. And I want to close with maybe the most famous Bodhisattva prayer of all time, which is the prayer of Shantideva. He wrote the Bodhisattva's way of life a long, long time ago in Northern India. And if you want, you can put your hands in Gusho. I am going to as I read it. And I dedicate this talk not only to the spirit of Darlene Cohen and how her work goes on in the world, but to all who are suffering and ill.

[47:08]

May I become at all times, both now and forever, a protector for those without protection, a guide for those who have lost their way, a ship for those with oceans to cross, a sanctuary for those in danger, a lamp for those in the dark, and a servant to all those in need. As long as living beings exist and suffering afflicts them, may I too abide to dispel the misery of the world. May I be a guard for those who need protection, a guide for those on the path. a boat, a raft, a bridge for those who wish to cross the flood. May I be a lamp in the darkness, a resting place for the weary, a healing medicine for all who are sick, a vase of plenty, a tree of miracles. And for the boundless multitudes of living beings, may I bring sustenance and awakening, enduring like the earth and sky until all beings are freed from sorrow and all are awakened.

[48:16]

And I think we have a little bit of time for questions, although I can't see everyone. So I might just have Brian help. And if there is someone, I think you could raise either your virtual hand or your actual hand and maybe he can unmute you. Yes, you are welcome to raise your virtual hand. I will put, let's see, some links in the chat. There's the book. I see a hand up and I can actually see. Terry, please. I think you can unmute yourself. Hopefully Brian set this so you can unmute. Yes, there you go. Could you talk more about how from the bitterness you get some kind of release? I'm not quite sure. Could you talk more about that?

[49:25]

Because I didn't find that at all. I mean, I was more sort of resilient and, you know, chugging on. And I didn't go, when I went into the bitterness, I was just like, no, I'm legal. I'm going back to being resilient. So could you talk a bit more about that? Sure. You know, I can't, those were Darlene's words, so I can't speak for her, but for myself, that to go into the dark, to really be willing to taste the full range of our responses and our experience just wakes up the heart. It just does. And the more we resist it, you know, it's like we build these walls in the heart that are not only walls to our own experience, but actually walls that separate us from others.

[50:30]

So that would be my response. But it takes courage, right? The warrior. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe I just don't have that. Or you just take it in little tiny pieces, you know, as one teacher said, just. Just glance at it. Just look at it, you know, for a moment. We don't have to we don't have to, you know, throw our whole bodies in. Thank you for the question. Thank you for your talk. I really got a lot out of it. Thanks. And now I can't see anyone else, so I don't know. Is there anybody else who's known? Doesn't look like anyone has their hand up unless you can see someone on the screen, Brian. I'm waiting for a virtual hand and I can also see anyone with their video on if you want to wave. We can just sit here quietly.

[51:43]

Maybe something will bubble up for someone. Still have a couple of minutes. You know, since no one's speaking, maybe I'll just add a little coda here. I kind of made Darlene sound like a saint. Anybody who knew that she was not, she was very human. And I think that's really important to remember, that even our heroes are human, just as we are, and imperfect.

[52:48]

But it's actually that imperfection that made her such a in some ways, a powerful teacher, just as her sickness made her a powerful teacher because her heart was so set on helping others. And really, any of us can do that from whatever position you're in in our lives. You don't need to be a Zen teacher. You don't need to have rheumatoid arthritis. From wherever you are and whatever your circumstances are, you can turn that and be of benefit to others. So please remember that in our shared imperfection. Thank you. Thank you very much. I will now chant the closing verse and Bodhisattva vows.

[53:54]

and equally extend to every being and place with the true merit of Buddha's way. Beings are numberless. I vow to save them. Delusions are inexhaustible. I vow to end them. Dharma gates are boundless. I vow to enter them. Buddha's way is unsurpassable. I vow to become it. As is customary when we are all on Zoom together, And you may unmute and say good night.

[54:55]

Thank you so much, Florence. Good to see you again. Thank you. Take good care. Thank you, everyone. Thank you, Florence. Thank you very much. Thanks for getting a lecture till 1030 at night. Thank you, Florence. Thank you, Florence. Good night. Thank you. Blessings from the Olympic Peninsula. We miss you and we love you. We're so proud of you. See you in person sometime. I hope. I really hope. Me too. Love you all. Are you going to come?

[55:34]

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