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. Hi, everyone. I'm really not hearing this as... No? Yes? No? It's very zen, all this inaudibility. Oh, yeah, there it is. I can hear myself hissing. So thank you, David. Thank you, David, for inviting me to give this talk. At kind of short notice, I'm delighted to be up here again. It's an honor and a little nerve-wracking. And...

[01:01]

Can I just check? Are there any complete newcomers in the room? Anyone here for the first time? Today, great. You are very welcome. You're more welcome than anyone else. We're really, really glad to welcome newcomers. And as you may have already heard, but I'll repeat it, this temple is called Beginner's Mind Temple. And we're all trying to have the same kind of mind... as the people who just walked in the door. So, you are what we aspire to. Yeah. Okay, so, a koan, case one in the Book of Serenity. It's called, The World Honored One Ascends the Platform, as in this. The world honored one, the Buddha, ascends the platform. One day, the world-honored one ascended the platform.

[02:07]

It's lacking narrative tension, I can see already. One day, the world-honored one did this. He probably didn't have to fuss with the microphone, but he did this. Manjushri, the bodhisattva of wisdom, like the most senior bodhisattva in the room, struck the gavel. and said, clearly observe the Dharma of the Dharma king. The Dharma of the Dharma king is thus. And then the world honored one, the Buddha, stood up and got down from the platform. End of koan. So, I think this is a comedy routine. I think it's helpful to see it in this way. It's like, here's these two guys who are trying to teach something, a whole new thing to the world, and it's without words.

[03:15]

The Buddha gets up with all the pomp and ceremony. He probably did some prostrations and adjusted his robes and fiddled with... And... his attendant or an attendant struck the gavel. It's theater. And said, listen to what the Dharma king has to say. And the Dharma king got up and left. Ba-dum-tsh. I love it. So there's a poet called Kay Ryan who was once the poet laureate in the US and Kay is a phenomenal poet, I think. In fact, I could just sit here and read you Kay Ryan poetry for the rest of this time and you would get far more out of it than anything that I'm gonna say.

[04:26]

but I'll read you one of her poems and see how that goes. And I apologize for speaking. Really, after that first koan, I should have just got up and left. Not that I'm a world honored one. I'm less world honored, so I have to say more. But Kay Ryan, poet laureate Kay, former poet laureate Kay Ryan, has some things to say. about this too. And it's a really short poem. It's this long. So maybe close your eyes and pay attention. It's really short and really simple words and really dense. So I'll read it quite slowly. It's called Backward Miracle. Every once in a while we need a backward miracle that will strip language, make it hold for a minute, just the vessel with the wine in it, a sacramental refusal to multiply, reclaiming the single loaf and the single fish thereby.

[05:52]

That's it. Would you like to hear that again? Backward miracle. Every once in a while, we need a backward miracle that will strip language, make it hold for a minute. Just the vessel with the wine in it. a sacramental refusal to multiply, reclaiming the single loaf and the single fish thereby. So this is Blanche's copy of Kay Ryan's book, and it is inscribed for Blanche, always an honor, Kay Ryan. And I have it because I borrowed it.

[06:56]

And now I still have it. And Blanche is gone. So I have to figure out what to do with this cherished book. She mentions it, Blanche mentions this book in her, one of the talks in her Seeds for a Boundless Life and how her, I think her hair stood on end what hair she had. Her hair stood on end when she heard one of the talks and it's very powerful. This is important. I saw Kay in Ireland last year. I mean, she's from Marin. She's from Fairfax. And I went to Ireland a year ago and there she was reading in Galway in the West of Ireland. So I went over there and heard her speak in Ireland and she was a big hit in Ireland. That's a very Irish kind of take on the world, the simple, low-key, very concrete statements that pack a punch.

[08:05]

The thing that I'm edging towards talking about is talking, talking about talking. It's a koan in itself. There's an instruction in our Eightfold Path about right speech. There's a list of eight ways of being in the world that promote happiness of ourselves and the people around us, or of the people around us and as a consequence of ourselves. And one of these is right speech. Right speech, It's a really powerful practice place for me. And I think for many of us. I've certainly had the experience of sitting Sashin for seven days in complete silence and I love everyone and it's clear that everybody loves me and we're all working together and moving in harmony in this choreographed

[09:22]

beautiful way that we have together. And then it ends. And we all have dinner and there's people cracking wise and talking about their car and their vacation. And, you know, I'm prime among these. I mean, so many times after Sachin, I had the list of things that weren't right speech. And I was basically doing most of them, if not all of them. Right speech. Abstinence from false speech, abstinence from malicious speech, abstinence from harsh speech, and abstinence from idle chatter. Idle chatter. The Buddha had a rule about idle chatter. So I find that really helpful, particularly the idle chatter bit. The positive version of sometimes the injunctions, the rules of our ways of being together seem kind of stern and forbidding and hostile.

[10:31]

So the positive version of this is say what is true. Say only what is true. Speak in ways that promote harmony, that encourage people to turn towards each other. rather than away from each other, that encourage people not to build walls between each other. Use a tone of voice that is pleasing, kind, and gentle. And try and avoid bad language unless it's absolutely necessary. And speak mindfully in order that our speech is useful. So that's the idle chatter thing right there. Useful speech. And there's that other list, the three things to consider before you say anything is does it need to be said, does it need to be said right now, and does it need to be said by me?

[11:32]

Often a good way to examine what you're about to say. I think Craig Ferguson, Scottish stand-up comedian, wrote a book about this. Does it need to be said? Does it need to be said right now? Does it need to be said by me? This practice, the encouragement then is to step back quite often and not say anything. To be silent. To not step in and help. and offer advice and feedback and explain things to people and generally take care, hovering like a helicopter mother, to step back, allowing people to come to their own understanding in their own way. So I really do apologize for giving a talk.

[12:35]

Sometimes silence is the only way to be. So I remember a story, there was a story about Jack Cornfield, the other school teacher. Jack Cornfield, great teacher. And he made a vow to never speak about other people when he was speaking, to never speak about another person, either good or bad. So... This was quite a challenge because I think in our Buddhist communities, we kind of feel like it's okay to talk about other people as long as it's good, as long as we're being nice about them. To never talk about other people, either good or bad, that kind of doesn't leave many options because almost all we do is talk about other people. Seriously. If you look at it, even if it's, you know, politicians or... things that are happening that are not in our immediate lives, we're still talking about other people.

[13:45]

Baseball players, we're still talking about other people. Don't talk about other people either positively or negatively. So I heard that Jack Cornfield just didn't say much. He'd coach parties and has... Soon as the conversation turned to other people. But not speaking positively, how could that be a problem? How could it be a problem to be kind about people? So life in community is really helpful as a field of exploration for many of these issues. And I see... how speaking positively about people can have a shadow site. Everybody lives in community. We live in families.

[14:47]

We work in offices. We have teams and groups of friends. We have a community. We have our relationships. We have a community. If I'm speaking positively to someone I'm close to about someone else, I'm giving the message that this is good, and I'm not praising you, so maybe you're not doing this, or maybe I'm putting a certain amount of pressure on you to be more like this thing that I approve of. It can get quite passive-aggressive. I mean, some of us had parents who would go, and your brother's a very good boy, but you... Your brother is doing very well right now. You, however, we're not even gonna discuss. The energy of praise has a potential for some hurt, some edge of a wounding in there.

[16:01]

sibling rivalry. The Dhammapada is this great collection of the Buddha's sayings. I don't know if people are familiar with it. And there's a great translation by Gil Fronstel. It's one of my favorite translations. Better than a thousand meaningless statements is one meaningful word which having been heard brings peace. One meaningful word? Is that all I get? One word? And yet, there are ways that I'm speaking just by being here, like the Buddha. And not that I'm comparing myself, but like the Buddha. That thing of just sitting down in robes is a meaningful statement. This is a meaningful thing to do.

[17:05]

And we're all doing it. You're all doing it. Everybody who's here is sitting upright in this place, making a statement, making a statement about their lives and about their intention. That one meaningful word that brings peace. So life in the temple is... An amazing opportunity to work with speech and silence. There's lots of opportunities for feedback when we're unskillful, when we inadvertently or sometimes deliberately hurt each other, when we ignore each other, shy away from someone with a look a raised eyebrow. We know how to do that. I didn't say anything.

[18:06]

We know how that works. In the thought is the word. Having hostile or negative thoughts about people manifests itself in our demeanor. We communicate so much beneath the words. We signal in all kinds of ways our judgments of other people. Blanche, the same Blanche Hartman, had a little comment on this in her Seeds for a Boundless Life book, in which she mentions Kay Ryan, which all fits together. Taming judgment. We can be disparaging with just a look. We don't have to say a word and people will feel it and they will be hurt by it. We must be careful how we treat one another. Remember each of you? Not only are you Buddha, so is your neighbor.

[19:14]

So are the people you live and work with. It's a pretty dramatic idea. Everybody's Buddha. Not just you, but everybody. So, have I gone away again? I'm audible. Yeah. It's an interesting challenge to meet everyone as if they were Buddha. to speak to everybody as if they were a Buddha, to make our every interaction how it would be if it were with a Buddha. It's a powerful and terrifying invitation.

[20:17]

So the truthful part of speech is very interesting because we all have our version of what's true. My version of what's true isn't necessarily exactly the same as your version of what's true. Many, many years ago, 30 years ago when I was a small child, many years ago, I worked in advertising where in advertising you get paid a lot of money to say things or write things that aren't 100% maybe true. I'm not proud of this, but it was fun at the time. It was the 80s. Advertising was, you know, it was a little like Madman. It was the good old days. The more I sat,

[21:26]

the less comfortable I got with working in advertising. Zazen ruined my career. It's true for many of us. So, you know, it became clear I couldn't be this person in this world. So I moved after... some years of wrestling with this koan, I moved to journalism, because I thought, journalism, you tell true stories. Yeah. So, I was writing a diary column, like a gossip column, and Reb Anderson said something in a Dharma talk about about gossip and slander.

[22:31]

And I thought, oh dear, oops. And I went to him and I said, is this a precept that I'm breaking, writing a gossip column? And he was like, I don't think, you know, Madonna, it was the good old days. I don't think Madonna cares that much about what you're saying about her. I don't think you're gonna hurt her. He said, I think what you need to look at is the intoxication precept. And that was a really interesting perspective to view speech or writing through intoxication. It was like generating stories and triggering people's giddy fantasies. It was very much in the realm of idle chatter. It certainly wasn't promoting harmony between people. It was borderline true, but you know... That is not a defense. We have a tendency to say, well, it was true when I told him that he was, you know, like, yeah, there's a time.

[23:37]

It's not what you say, it's how you say it and when you say it. So after a while, I thought, I can't do journalism anymore either. Because it's not so much about truth. It's about selling newspapers. There's a great writer, not a Buddhist writer, but a great writer called Janet Malcolm, and I quoted this to someone the other day, who said she stopped writing journalism and turned to fiction because she wanted to be able to tell the truth. So I feel like the next step in this, in fact, is poetry. Like the purest of truths.

[24:41]

That way of meeting the world. One of the interesting things graphs of this way I have proceeded in my life, in my relationship with words, is from well-paid advertising, not medium well-paid journalism, to completely unpaid writing. Nobody cares. Nobody is interested. There are about four people on the planet who are making millions out of writing and everybody else is struggling and has a day job. teaching creative writing in a university or doing some kind of manual labor. And there's an increasing amount of writing out there.

[25:48]

I remember once hearing that the last person who had read all the books on the planet was just before the Renaissance. It was Bacon, the other Bacon, the guy who invented freezing and got a flu while freezing, died of freezing. There were few enough printed books that he had read all of them. He had read everything. So that's pretty impressive. He knew everything there was to know. the exponential increase in the availability of information since then is kind of overwhelming. The Wikipedia of information, much of it true, the huge, dense, information-rich environment that our poor little brains are wrestling with is so overwhelming

[26:57]

much like a tsunami, that it's really hard to know how to negotiate it. We haven't evolved ways to do this. We haven't evolved ways to curate our newsfeed. Part of what we're doing is reducing everything to just yes or no. just like or dislike, just thumbs up or back away. We're having to reduce our engagement with the world because there's so much world. We're not understanding how to hear anymore. We don't understand how to listen. There are too many painful stories. for us to be able to take them all in.

[28:01]

And yet, right listening is the perfect counterpart of right speech. Thich Nhat Hanh has a book called The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching. And he says, deep listening is the foundation of right speech. If we cannot listen mindfully, we cannot practice right speech. No matter what we say, it cannot be mindful because we'll be speaking only our own ideas and not in response to the other person. So we see this happen all the time in our own lives. You see it on TV, you see... X makes a statement, Tim makes a statement, and goes, it's cloudy today. And I go, no, no, you should see Ireland, hey.

[29:11]

I'm waiting for him just to get to the end of his sentence, if even. before I can say my thing, before I can make my contribution to this important subject. And he kind of feels unheard a little. He feels like, well, I just wanted you to go, oh yeah, it's cloudy, huh? How's that for you? You like it? No, okay, yeah. There's a phenomenon called mansplaining, are people familiar with that? I can't believe I'm talking about mansplaining from the dorm seat. But anyway, it's not fair to call it mansplaining because not only men do mansplaining. Mansplaining is where you interrupt a woman who's speaking about something, if you're a man, to explain it to her. People are laughing. People have had this phenomenon happen.

[30:20]

However, we all do it. We all do it. do our version of that. There's a tendency to do some priest-splaining. I'm up here going, I'm going to tell you, you who all have such wisdom and insight and understanding of how to be in the world, and I'm going to dare talk to you about how to practice right speech. I know you could all teach me so much about speech. and silence and interactions. So how do we create the space for right speech? How can we invite people to speak their truths in a way where they don't feel threatened or judged, where they don't feel like they're being tolerated?

[31:23]

until I can say my thing? How can we understand each other at all, given how different the words we use mean to each of us, given our different meanings for the same words? What I mean by mother is not what you mean by mother. what I mean by kind, what I mean by my country. It has a different resonance for every one of us based on our history, based on our karma. So thinking about words and language and

[32:27]

Trying to be as clear as possible, as simple as possible, as un-energetic, if that makes sense. To not have things surrounded by energy. How to be upright with speech. turning the light back on myself when I'm in a reactive mode when I'm triggered by something that's been said and I want to react immediately it's usually a very good reminder to not respond at all count to ten like my grandmother would have said breathe maybe work with it in that wonderful non-violent speech way of noticing what's happening for me and sharing it with the other person when I calm down.

[33:48]

So, I have one more Kay Ryan poem, which is kind of about silence. It's about silence. Yeah. I really recommend this book. It's called Shark's Teeth. Everything contains some silence. Noise gets its zest from the small shark... tooth-shaped fragments of rest angled in it. An hour of city holds maybe a minute of these remnants of a time when silence reigned, compact and dangerous as a shark. Sometimes a bit of a tail or a fin can still be sensed in parks.

[34:54]

My first delight with that poem is that she rhymed parks and sharks, which just made me so happy. But also that it's about the danger of silence. How could silence be scary? Silence can be scary because we don't know what's there. We can't name it. We can't spin a web around it made of words in order to mute its power, in order to silence the silence. I'll read this one more time, if I may. Shark's teeth. Everything contains some silence. Noise. gets its zest from the small shark's tooth-shaped fragments of rest angled in it.

[36:04]

An hour of city holds maybe a minute of these remnants of a time when silence reigned, compact and dangerous as a shark. Sometimes a bit of a tale or a fin can still be sensed in parks. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma talks are offered at no cost, and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[37:04]

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