This podcast is offered by San Francisco's Zen Center on the web at sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good evening. Welcome. I'm Dan Gudgel. I'm a resident and a priest here at Beginner's Mind Temple. While we're here together tonight, please stay comfortable. feel free to adjust your position, change your cushions. Please take good care of yourselves. I am hoping to leave some time at the end of this talk for discussion. I'll also be out in the hallway after the talk. And after the talk, if you have any... general questions about the temple or what we do, feel free to ask anyone who has a robe or a rakasu on. They most likely can at least point you in the right direction.

[01:02]

So I'd like to start tonight first by having us all settle in and feel the presence of of this place where we are right here and right now. And I'm going to talk a little bit, describe some of the history of this place, and we'll just together, bit by bit, settle into being here in the full context of what here and now means. Those of you who are If you want to do the same thing in your own space, that would be a great way to follow along. And you may learn some things about the place where you are. So this building that we are in has housed the San Francisco Zen Center since 1969.

[02:12]

This room in particular has been mostly like this. since then. These are new tatamis, but the general layout of this room has been about like this. And so the first thing that I want us to feel is the six decades of Zen practice that have happened here. Formal ceremonies, Dharma talks by Shinryu Suzuki, Dharma talks by other favorite teachers, ordinations, funerals, Shinryu Suzuki's funeral in this room. Thousands, maybe tens of thousands of people have passed through this room and engaged in Buddhist practice here. So let's take a moment and feel that presence. Before San Francisco Zen Center purchased this building, this was the Emmanuel Residence Club.

[03:38]

This was a chaperoned communal living space for young Jewish women. This building was designed by Julia Morgan, built in 1922 and 23. And from 1923 until 1969, when San Francisco Zen Center bought it, This building housed young women, often immigrants and refugees, who could work and socialize and learn in a safe, community-supported environment. This room that we're in now was the main sitting and reception room for this building where residents would socialize and receive guests. So we'll take a moment to feel the presence of 45 years of residents and visitors of the Emanuel Residence Club, sharing stories of where they've come from, recovering from what they went through to get here, laughing and joking with each other, nervously waiting for a date to arrive, saying goodbye and moving out to the next phase of life.

[04:59]

Let's feel that vitality for a moment. Before this building was built. This plot of land was part of the parcel attached to the Victorian house that's still next door, the next one uphill. Before the streets and the buildings were here, this was a hillside, likely similar to one you might see across the bridge in the Marin headlands, or maybe I like to think similar to the northeast corner of Golden Gate Park, just at the end of Hayes Street.

[06:05]

This hillside would have been a mix of oak trees and rocks, trickling springs, and sandy spots. These are the unceded traditional lands of the Ramatush Ohlone people. Before the seizure of this land, there were 1,500 or 2,000 people living on this San Francisco peninsula. There was a Ramatush Ohlone village called Chuchui in the area between the current Dolores Mission Church and Dolores Park. It's possible that a Ramatush Ohlone family would have had established collecting rights whatever grew in this area. No one owned the land and it was held collectively. This bay and the land around it were unimaginably bountiful, ringed with marshes and sand dunes, filled with birds and animals.

[07:16]

The Ramatush Ohlone lived here very lightly on the land and lived here for perhaps 5,000 years before colonization. This is a southeast-facing hillside, so we can imagine poppies and dune grasses. You all would be facing uphill. I would be facing downhill, looking out across Mission Creek and the large lake that filled the middle of what is now the Mission District. In that direction, I would be looking across marshes and sand dunes and rocky hilltops. And over there, a green island in the bay, and on the other side of the bay, on the hills across, redwoods so large that individual trees could be seen by ships outside the Golden Gate.

[08:21]

The people felt themselves to be an extension of the land, just like the trees, just like the deer. And this land was peaceful. So let's take a moment to feel the bones of this place, the land that is still under this building, the land that peaks up through this courtyard, and feel that presence that underlies this place. Every place in this world is this layered, this complicated, and this touched by change.

[09:45]

When we connect deeply with the place we're in, we feel time itself showing up. Even places that have not been so overbuilt by humans have drifted on their continents all around the globe. to be a tropical forest in one eon, to be a frozen mountaintop in another, in the future maybe to be the floor of a new ocean. In all of the universe, life is the rarest thing. Comparatively, gold and diamonds are everywhere. Life and the complex products of living systems are the rarest thing that we know of. In all the visible universe, we've found life so far just on this one small planet. And it's incredibly rare that the conditions here have remained more or less hospitable to life for four billion consecutive years.

[10:55]

It is cosmically unlikely to be alive at all. We should treasure this life. We should treasure all life. Life on this planet is not a series of separate, discrete individual beings as we commonly think of it. It's not humans here living on their own, trees over there living on their own, whales out there living on their own. all life is completely interwoven with all other life. When we cut down one forest grove, the effect of that change ripples out, from the animals who live there, to the cloud patterns that form or no longer form above that forest, to where and how rain falls on the other side of the globe. I think we would do much better to think of this one great Earth as a single living thing with its circulatory and respiratory processes that we participate in and can interrupt intentionally or not.

[12:15]

Just 250 years ago, This piece of land that we're on now was the birthright and the treasure of the Ramatush Ohlone. They didn't give it up. They didn't leave it. This land was taken, and nearly all Ramatush Ohlone died in the first few generations after Spanish arrival. Human greed kills living things. And I see in myself how I resist still actually deeply accepting the Buddhist truths of interdependence and impermanence. I resist truly allowing myself to feel the sadness, to feel the shame of being part, even centuries later, of the process that exterminated nearly all of the original inhabitants of this land.

[13:27]

ended 5,000 years of gentle history. I want to stay and focus on the joyous later chapters, on the beautiful important things that I think San Francisco Zen Center has done and can do. It is also true that many wonderful things have happened here. And ignoring the terrible genocidal history, ignoring the true texture of reality, leaves a gap. A gap for rationalization, a gap for dodging my shared responsibility in this world. Ignoring the true history leaves a gap for what we call delusion. As I experienced the truth of interdependence, the beauty and the wondrousness, the beauty and the wondrousness of living, they arise hand in hand with hearing the cries of the world.

[14:40]

The joy comes at the same time as feeling the pain of interconnection. And neither the suffering nor the joy can really be ignored when we're deeply rooted in the true nature of reality. We did not create the world that we find ourselves in, but we are responsible for what we do from this moment forward. And I wish I could just stay with this joy of being alive. I think this recognition of the rarity of this opportunity is one of the things that really animates my practice. I wish I could just talk about that for the rest of this talk. But I don't feel like I can, because for the past six weeks, the United States of America has been bombing.

[15:51]

one of these wondrous places, one of these real, complicated, layered parts of the world. In this case, the place being bombed is the place longest affected by the depletion economy of extractive capitalism, the place where we sometimes say, history began, meaning we can identify distinct individuals by name and activity. The land of the Assyrians and the Akkadians and the Babylonians and the Persians. This is not the only war we are engaged in, but it is the most recent war we have started. And some Americans are celebrating and glorifying this war. I say, may there be peace. May all beings be well, safe, and at ease.

[16:56]

And I think, now that we have a Department of War, we should balance that with a Department of Peace. I want a Department of Peace that takes up its mission with as much zeal as the Department of War has. If we truly want peace, we have to actually prioritize peace. We have to use the existence or absence of peace as our criteria for success. When we prioritize money over life, over individual lives, or over collective life, then we will end up inevitably killing for money. Reasons for war all too often can be reduced to, we don't want to pay more and we don't want to do without the things that we like. Almost every reason I have heard for this particular war is a variation on that.

[18:05]

But I think if we can save even one living thing, we should be willing to pay $40 for a gallon of gas, or find an alternative to gasoline entirely? Why do our wars begin with bombs? Why don't we start by dropping food and supplies and tools? Why don't we make lives better to the point where war is unnecessary? Why don't we want to become the world's most famous peacemakers? Is it only because there's so much money to be made in building bombs? Some time ago, Ursula K. Le Guin did her own translation of the Tao Te Ching.

[19:14]

And I'd like to read chapter 31 of this translation. Even the best weapon is an unhappy tool, hateful to living things. So the follower of the way stays away from it. Weapons are unhappy tools not chosen by thoughtful people, to be used only when there is no choice, and with a calm, still mind, without enjoyment. To enjoy using weapons is to enjoy killing people, and to enjoy killing people is to lose your share in the common good. It is right that the murder of many people be mourned and lamented.

[20:18]

It is right that a victor in war be received with funeral ceremonies. What's happening now in the Middle East is a preview and a warning of what will eventually inevitably happen here if we continue on this path of greed, hate, and delusion. We are fighting over the last scraps of green in order to consume them now before someone else does. We have not learned the lessons of our ancestors.

[21:22]

If we want peace for our descendants a thousand years from now, our Department of Peace should study, with its vast research budget, the fastest ways to achieve peace and the best ways to promote and ensure peace. We should be taking the needs and the rights of the next 1,000 generations into consideration when we decide how to live our lives and conduct our society. To kill should be done only when every other option has been exhausted. And it should be done regretfully. We began tonight by deeply grounding ourselves in the embodied, lived experience of this place. I wanted to do that because I think it's much too easy for us to ignore the real human experience of war.

[22:35]

When this nation is dropping bombs, we are dropping them on real human beings. who are living individual lives as complex and rich as ours. We are bombing specific places on this one great body of the earth, places just as complex and layered in history as this place. Those who we are bombing are so much like us. The places we are bombing are so much like this place. It is a terrible tragedy that this nation is once again at war. This Dharma talk is also one of the

[23:44]

Zen ceremonies that happens in this space. This talk began just like so many of our ceremonies began. One of the signs that we're in the middle of the ceremony, my bowing cloth is still down on the ground, saying, we're not quite done yet. We're coming back to the ceremonial elements. In our ceremonies, we often start with bells and bowing, and then there's a central activity, the daily service, a Dharma talk like this one, sometimes a meal or an ordination, whatever it might be. And after that activity, there is a dedication of the merit of that activity, handing over any benefit that may have accrued from our actions, handing over that benefit out into the world.

[24:51]

We are actually conducting this ceremony together right now, and this ceremony just happens to have this talk in the middle of it. So I want to add another ceremonial element as we draw to the end of this talk. I've printed out copies of that verse of the Tao Te Ching. And those of you who have them, you can hand those out. You're welcome to keep these, give them away, leave them on the table as you leave. I'd like us to chant this poem together in the hope of peace. And then at the end of this talk, Before we do our final bows, I'll offer a dedication of merit. And whatever merit we accrue through our hope for peace and through our activities here, we will give that merit over to the world.

[26:00]

Just give it a moment for papers to make their way around. Everyone who wants one has one, looks like it. So we'll chant this or recite this together. I'll say the title first so we all know when to start. Dao De Ching, Chapter 31. Even the best weapon is an unhappy tool, hateful to living things, so the follower of the way stays away from it. Weapons are unhappy tools, not chosen by thoughtful people, to be used only when there is no choice, and with a calm, still mind, without enjoyment.

[27:18]

To enjoy using weapons is to enjoy killing people. And to enjoy killing people is to lose your share in the common good. It is right that the murder of many people be mourned and lamented. It is right that a victor in war be received with funeral ceremonies. Thank you all for coming tonight, for allowing yourselves to feel what it's like to be in this complicated world. There is joy here and there is pain. And the more we can deeply see and feel both, the more I think we'll be able to find

[28:20]

a kinder and gentler path forward. So we've got a few minutes for discussion and comment. So if anyone would like to say anything, raise a hand. The Eno will bring you a microphone. Thanks, Dan. So today is tax day. And I paid my taxes this year. I don't make very much money, but I did pay some taxes. So I'm actually paying for those weapons. How do you work with that right there? The place I have to start is how much it hurts how painful it is to know that in some way I am contributing to that system.

[29:29]

I think this is one of the reasons I felt moved to give this talk, recognizing that I am not standing on the outside of this system commenting on it. I am... implicated, involved. And so I think it is, I feel morally impelled to comment on it. So I think speaking up is a great place to start. I am a little encouraged, honestly, by also being someone who makes very little money, has found a way to live very cheaply, and doesn't participate as much in the extractive, consumptive economy as I used to. Some people don't pay their taxes.

[30:37]

Some people take a legal stand and do not pay their taxes. Some people suffer greatly for that, and some people get away with it. It may be worth looking into, And it seems like a frightening option as well in some ways to expose myself to some sort of legal jeopardy. And it is enormously safer to not pay my taxes than it is to be in a place that's being bombed. So I'm... really wrestling with this myself and I don't feel like I have a I haven't found an answer yet that satisfies me so I'm trying to approach it from a bunch of individual small actions at once and maybe someday I'll go to jail for not paying my taxes I don't know I think about it sometimes it might be worth it thank you

[31:43]

I'll let the email keep track of who has raised their hand first. Thank you. Thank you, Dan, for this talk. It really resonated what you were speaking about in terms of holding the sense of place and the people before and the violence and incorporating that into your view of the world. And... I think something I've struggled with is a common theme is the more I know, the more isolated I feel and disconnected from others, you know. I mean, and it trickles down in really small and kind of silly ways of, like, even just learning more about racism and misogyny throughout my life and seeing that in movies and not connecting with them in the ways that others do. having kind of these small, constant reminders of that disconnection. And I'm wondering what you think about that, how you might approach that.

[32:55]

It is really... deeply painful to actually see how terrible human beings can be to each other. I think feeling, recognizing and feeling the distress at the many harms that have happened in this world is a an appropriate response. And I think as more people become aware of how the world around them is actually functioning and what their place in it is, we see things that we did not see before.

[34:15]

And I think the only direction we can go is forward in time. So we can't change what has happened. But I think by talking about what we see and what we experience, bringing others into our experience, we share the burden a little bit. And I think there's, not I think, I clearly see there is a lot of tension in this country and a backlash of sorts against people who are speaking out, pointing out historical racism, misogyny, pointing out all of the harms that have been done. And that backlash is not your responsibility to deal with. it's perfectly appropriate to withdraw from a situation like that and seek out the community that does support you.

[35:26]

If feeling isolated, I think we can take some hope and encouragement from the fact that there are communities of good conscience in this world. We can connect with them. And in those, you know, I've had these moments where I'm trying to point out historical harm and I feel resistance from, from people who I'm, I'm talking to. And if I, if I can ground myself enough, sometimes I can find some point of connection, some way for me to understand them and them to understand me. I do think on some level, deep down, almost all human beings think they are doing their best and think they are doing right.

[36:40]

Some are just more aware of their effect in the world than others. And I think that process I just described, that piece of work, doesn't need to be done all the time by everyone. I think each of our own individual lives and experiences is such a treasure, is such a joy, that if we are stressed out or worried or harmed by an experience, we should get away. We should leave that experience. And to point out a harm and say, I see that this harm is happening and I cannot deal with this myself, community, please, can someone come address this?

[37:42]

Yeah. Yeah, I don't have a good single clear answer, but somewhere in those things are my best current suggestions. Thank you so much. We have an online question from Parsa. Great. Parsa, go ahead. Let's see. We'll make sure Parsa can get unmuted. The channel for the computer on the mixer needs to be unmuted as well. Parsa, give it a try. We might be able to hear you. Can you hear me now? Yes, we can hear you. Go ahead. Awesome. Thank you. You know, I was reflecting on the conversations I've had with people who very genuinely think there are justifications for what we do or this war in particular, whether it's from a place of delusion about the conditions

[39:08]

or disagreement on what is reality. And also, like, sometimes from a place of despair or, you know, not knowing what else. But there are all these ways in which, like, people find justifications that, like, when I talk to people, it seems genuine, you know, like, it's coming from a place that they really think this is necessary or warranted. So what I'm wondering is when you see people in what is perceived from your side that it is a delusion or that it's not right, I wonder how do you, in that interpersonal connection, how do you hold them as part of that tapestry of life, including, you know, what they are espousing and how do you genuinely engage with that while trying to also address what you think is a confusion or misunderstanding by that person, by the other side?

[40:32]

Yeah. Great question. Great question. For me, in my own experience, one of the major ways that I work with this is to ask myself the question, what would I have to have experienced in my life to be seeing the world the way this person is seeing the world? Because I do think... I do think we should believe people about what they say, what they think, what they experience. I think most of the time people really do believe what they believe, what they say they believe, and think they are experiencing what they say they're experiencing. So I think if we... If we can hold on to a little bit of curiosity and say...

[41:37]

This is another human being who, in 99.9% of the ways I could measure it, is very much like me. What might they have experienced in order to see the world so differently from how I'm seeing it? To me, that's been a really fruitful place to start. And then I also have found it helpful sometimes to drop the sort of, what is it, the mechanics or the specifics of whatever might be being discussed about should we do this, should we do that, and really try to get to what are the deep values and beliefs. Because sometimes I'm surprised when someone who I disagree with greatly, I ask them, you know, what are the values or the beliefs that underpin this for you?

[42:44]

And they say back to me something that is very much like what I think I believe. Then from that place, we can discuss how do we get to such different conclusions about what specifically should be happening in the world. So, yeah, those are two methods, two pieces that have been helpful for me. Gosh, I hope there are hundreds more ways to deal with this question. Thank you. And I see we are at our time. So I think we will draw to a close there. I will... I'll put my hands back up. We're going to chant together this little closing verse. And then I'll get up. I'll come up here to this bowing mat.

[43:45]

And unlike the usual form, I'm sorry, Tim, I'm going to break the forms just a little bit. Unlike the usual form, I am going to return to the altar and do another fragrance offering, keeping in mind this hope and wish for peace. And then when I get to the back of the mat, then I will say just a very brief dedication, handing over the merit of our time together for peace and healing. And then we'll do all our three bows together. And just follow along as best you can. Thank you again, everyone, for coming with your... hearts and minds and bodies to this place and exploring this thorny, ancient question. Thank you. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center.

[44:50]

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. For more information, please visit sfcc.org and click Giving. May we all fully enjoy the Dharma.

[45:10]

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