This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations by people like you. Good morning. Thank you for inviting me. It's been a while, and I don't get to the city center here very much, and it's wonderful to be here with all of you. Thank you. A week or two ago, I went to see my chiropractor, and we got to talking about this and that. It turns out she sees a lot of people from Green College, a lot of the Zen people from Green College. And I had given her a copy of Not Always So, the book of Suzuki Roshi Lectures.

[01:10]

She said, oh, I appreciate the book you gave me and been reading it. And then one thing led to another and she said, oh, you know, one of my favorite teachers is Stephen Levine. Stephen Levine... I used to do workshops, and I said, oh yeah, I like Stephen Levine, too. I used to go to his workshops. And she said, me too. And so we were probably at some of the same workshops, you know, 15 or 18 years ago without knowing it. And then she said, I have, you know, my favorite saying, one of my favorite sayings of Stephen Levine, she said, is, you know, if we told each other our deepest darkest secrets, we would laugh uproariously at our lack of originality. So, my talk today may not be very original.

[02:19]

So sometimes if you go to the chiropractor, people say, well, what's with that anyway? Aren't you a Zen teacher? Isn't Zazen take care of everything? You need a chiropractor too? What, you get pushed out of shape during meditation? And so... That's reminded me this morning of another, the second one of Nancy's Stephen Levine sayings, which is, if somebody says they have their shit together, they're probably standing in it. So, here I am, you know. like the rest of you. Either I'm standing in it, or I haven't gotten it together yet.

[03:34]

And a while back, well, many of you know I was in a movie, so one of the things about the movie is you get to see how temperamental I am. One reviewer said that I was a pleasure to watch in a movie, period. next paragraph, you know, most of the time. And, you know, this is an interesting kind of issue, you know, temperamental. And it's related to, of course, emotions. And emotions, you know, and I spent 20 years trying not to have them, you know, as this resident at the Zen Center. They're not a good thing to have, you know, and you don't get social approval around the Zen Center for being emotional or moody or temperamental. And finally I left Zen Center and I've spent now the last 20 years, you know, not being a resident at Zen Center, but being a Zen student and teacher, I spent 20 years, you know, being emotional.

[04:48]

Now's my chance. I got out of that cult. So this is an interesting study. For one thing, a while back I read a wonderful book by Jonathan Haidt, who's a professor of psychology and ethics, something like this, at the University of Virginia. And his book is called The Happiness Hypothesis, and it's a kind of combination of ancient, you know, the perennial wisdom, Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and modern scientific research. And, you know, what they found for people who have injuries so that they, you know, they've had head injuries so they don't experience their emotions anymore. They can't make decisions. So it's pretty clear that actually in order to do anything in your life, you have to have emotions. to make decisions.

[05:51]

And then we rationalize the decision. We think up why we're doing it. We need a good reason for it, but basically we've already decided based on our feeling. What we feel. We feel like it or we don't feel like it. And we're either emotionally saying yes or we're emotionally saying no. And then we talk ourselves. And then, of course, sometimes we don't go along with our emotion and we talk ourselves out of it. That's a little separation, you know, between thinking and feeling. You know, the thinking is not in accord with the feeling. So anyway, this is all pretty interesting. Anyway, although it may not look like it at times, I've actually studied a lot about emotion. I say it may not look like it at times because when you see the movie, you see somebody who's at times, you know, quite temperamental and intense. And, you know, as soon as you're, when you're temperamental, then mostly as soon as they can, people will head the other direction.

[06:59]

So you don't necessarily, I mean, so it's a little challenging then to have friends that you can count on. But, you know, I have a lot of friends here in San Francisco because I live in Marin County. So, but I do, you know, I did, you know, I do sometimes, you know, it's reassuring to me to know that my daughter anyway loves me. She's known me for 34 years. She's seen it all. And she actually just moved in with me. And she and her boyfriend moved into my house in Fairfax. And we're doing great together. But sometimes, of course, if you're concerned about it, I'm pretty sure my daughter loves me, but there is the B.B. King line in the blues song where he says, nobody loves me but my mother, my mama, and she could be jiving too.

[08:09]

Okay. So I have a number of things anyway to talk with you about today. And it's kind of around this area that I've brought up. Emotions and then related to this is judgments and also perception. So this is, you know, to me it's quite interesting. As I say, you know, and we're all making various choices in our life, and we kind of go back and forth, similar to the way I did, perhaps, spending, you know, 20 years at the Zen Center and trying not to have any emotions, and then spending 20 years, perhaps, having a few too many. And maybe now I'm going to swing back.

[09:12]

So emotional maturity is where you actually know what you're feeling. You can acknowledge it to yourself and you're able to share it with others at the time in a way that the other people don't run away. So this is a big project. And for some of us, it's a lifelong project. It's not something we're going to get right today once and for all or because we have some great understanding. Once and for all. And sometimes, of course, we can structure our lives so that things are pretty simple and we don't get emotional. Unless we happen to be asked to cook. But even if our lives are simple, sometimes things get very important to us. That was one of the things Jerry Brown used to visit Zen Center and he had been a Jesuit.

[10:15]

at a Jesuit monastery for four years, and he said, the things that people out in the world stress about, like do they have the corner office or not, you know, you can stress about, you know, very much, much smaller things to the same degree when you're, you know, at a monastery. Who's getting served the food, when, and how much do they get, and how much do you get, and, you know, little things. So one thing, you know, I want to remind you about, you know, I've ended up having so many mixed, anyway, don't worry. Dogen, you know, Dogen in his instructions for meditation says, set aside, you know, assessing good and bad, stop administering right and wrong. You know, do not, you know, so set aside your capacity for judging good, bad, right, wrong.

[11:20]

I guess this is for when you're going to be meditating, because if you're just giving an essay or giving instructions to your monks, you also want to tell them things like, priests who let their hair grow are lower than dogs. And I guess dogs are pretty far down there. Which I don't quite understand, what's the problem with dogs? Because some people, of course, say that dogs, if you are an anthropologist from Mars, you see all these people walking around picking up the dog shit and putting it in little plastic bags. And those must be the true gods on the planet Earth. I guess they weren't concerned about this in Dogen's day and the practice of change. Over the centuries, dogs are, you know.

[12:25]

And of course, you know, this is a little bit like the business about emotions, you know, that we shouldn't, it's not good to be, you know, caught or afflicted with one's emotions. I mean, it's painful. So we're endeavoring, you know, what do I do? These emotions are painful and they don't seem to be serving me. They seem to be a problem for me and afflicting me. So one of the things you can do is to judge them wrong or bad. And then this is where, so there's the emotion, there's judgment, and then there's perception. So if you've judged them wrong, are you still going to be willing to perceive them or would you rather not? So once we become involved with judgment, one of the dangers is that we're going to start narrowing down our perception.

[13:29]

Our perception will get narrower and narrower, and we'll do our best not to notice the things that we're not supposed to have, because they're bad. Because I said so, or somebody said so, or that's what I've always thought. So our perception gets very narrow. as we get involved in judgment. And so one of the things we're endeavoring to do in meditation is let go of judgment, widen your perception, perceive more. And those of you who have been sitting, we all have this experience of perceiving more. Things that we ordinarily wouldn't sit still for. Whether it's our thinking, our feelings, our memories, pain, discomfort, various kinds of things that are fairly challenging to stay with and go on perceiving. So we're studying how to perceive moment after moment widely to reopen the perceptual net and let life in.

[14:40]

And it doesn't mean we're not going to have judgments, because from time to time the bell might ring, and they're like, oh yeah, that means to get up, whatever it is. We'll have them whether we decide to or not. One of the things that's been interesting to me about the movie, I've now seen my movie about 30 times, somewhere around there. kind of tired of watching it. But one of the things about this is to watch it with people is to see, like, is to notice I get interested in, like, what's the feeling in the room? So when I watched the movie with other people who were in the movie from Tassajara, there was an incredibly warm feeling in the room. a feeling of happiness and joy and ease and lightheartedness, pleasure.

[15:49]

When I watched the movie at the Mill Valley Film Festival, the Sequoia Theater in Mill Valley, the room was so attentive, just extremely attentive and warm, receptive. And you could tell they were very touched. When I watch the movie with, you know, Zen people, it feels like there's a lot of judgment going on. It's very hard to watch that movie with Zen people. It feels like the room is like... I mean, I don't know. I'm just talking about my feeling, you know, my perception, my experience. I've been in a lot of rooms with a lot of different people watching this movie, and that's what it feels like when I watch it with Zen students, like, uh-oh, there's some judgment going on here.

[17:00]

These people may not like this. They're not necessarily approving, and they're not necessarily open and receptive. And they know how you're supposed to be. And they're checking it out to see if I'm that way or not. They know what a Zen person looks like. Uh-oh. And, you know, partly this is, you know, goes right back to the first noble truth in Buddhism. I'm going to reflect Phrase it for you. We think we can control our own experience and what others say and do and the world by judging it. Good and bad, right and wrong. And if we tell ourselves enough, what you're doing is bad, we will stop doing it.

[18:04]

And if we tell others what they're doing is bad, they will stop doing it. And how well has it worked? You know? You see, it doesn't. But implicitly, we go on believing this. You know, that our judgments are going to affect our behavior, our experience, and also others. And especially if they love us, they will do their best to... make us happy and please us so that we don't judge them badly, poorly. Do you understand? If I'm judging you, I'm thinking that if you like me, if you love me, you will actually try to change your behavior in order that I will not judge you so severely and that I will judge you better. You will try to get better judgments. It all goes back to, you know, like early childhood, right?

[19:06]

But that psychology, you know, that's not Zen and Buddhism, right? So maybe we shouldn't talk about it. But just a sentence or two, excuse me. You know, many of you have read Tom Lewis's book, General Theory of Love. So, you know, we've met two other local psychotherapists here, San Francisco and Marin. And it's very fascinating because, as he points out, when you're little, everything you experience is love. Because up to a certain point, you have no discrimination between self and other. You just feel what's in the room. That's what I do when I go to the movies. Some of us... in some ways didn't grow up. Sorry. So you just feel what's in the room.

[20:09]

And then, you know, somewhere between the age of three and four, you get clear about that good mother is the same and bad mother are the same mother, the same person. And at some point, you are able to make some distinction between self and other. My wonderful, my classic example about this is the next door neighbor. You know, I used to go over to my neighbors And when their son was about two, he would say, he would put his arms up to his mom and say, pick you up, pick you up. Because they would refer to him as you from time to time. So it reminds you like how, you know, this takes a while to figure out self and other, me, you, you know, which is which. And to be able to distinguish and, you know, like who's feeling what. Rather than just feeling everything in the room. And then up until a certain point, that's just love. So we can confuse love with people being angry and confuse love with people being sad and depressed. So this ends up affecting us the rest of our lives if we're not working on it in some way.

[21:11]

And of course Zen practice helps us clarify this to some extent. So one of the things that happens of course is that you can't then, and we understand this as little people, you can't gain or earn love. What you can gain or earn is approval. So go for good and right and see if you can avoid bad and wrong. And it's very important for us when we're that age to actually undertake this because then as children we feel Many people have recognized we feel powerful. We have some power or capacity to affect. If my behavior affects how they are, and if I change my behavior, it will change how they are. They'll be nicer to me. They won't be so sad. They won't be so depressed. They won't be so angry. They won't get divorced. They won't die. They won't get sick.

[22:12]

My behavior will do all of that, and they will thank me for it. So then we can adopt, you know, over time, of course, then we adopt the good, bad, right and wrong. So we're aiming to gain this good and, you know, the recognition of good, avoid bad, and we've used this all of our lives then, you know, to regulate our perception and our experience and get better at earning our own approval and the approval of others, of good and right, and seeing if we can avoid bad and wrong. And Dogen says, let go of this. At least while you're meditating. See if you can let go of it. So you'll start to perceive more. You start to perceive things, as I said, that you usually wouldn't sit still for or stay with.

[23:14]

you know, show up for it, you'd be like the people who, as soon as like when I get temperamental, they're heading in the other direction as soon as they can. Some people, you can see them, the people in the movie, they're just looking kind of a little like embarrassed for me. Of course, occasionally somebody, my friend Sharon from Boston, who's a nurse for the homeless, or was for many years, eight or ten years, she used to see people out on the street who refused to come into shelter and who had life-threatening illnesses. And I first met Sharon at Tasahara, she was at my cooking workshop, and I said, at the beginning of the workshop, I'm really anxious about this workshop. I gave and I told them various things about why I was anxious and scared and a little apprehensive. And she was sitting right to my right and she said, oh, are you anxious?

[24:18]

Me too. And then she grabbed my hand and pulled it right up between her breasts. I thought, oh my God, I've got my hand right between her breasts. What's it doing there? And then I actually noticed her heart is going thump, [...] thump. I said, you are anxious, aren't you? Your heart is just thumping away. Wow. So we've been friends. I was anxious. You know, the people in another class, you know, I said I was anxious and apprehensive about the class. And the woman said, how come you've been meditating for more than 30 years? What's your problem? So I haven't seen her since. So that's the difference between judgment and letting go of judgment. How do you get to be friends? You're going to have to let go of your judgment. And then acknowledge like, oh, me too.

[25:23]

Me too. So, you know, we end up over the years having, you know, different kinds of intention. And our intention, you know, can shift and develop over the years. And, you know, I spent a lot of years wanting, you know, I tried in Zen practice to get it right. You know, be the kind of person you're supposed to be a Zen person. Zen person is classically the person, like you see the Japanese Zen masters. They're impassive.

[26:27]

And you wouldn't really, if you felt anything well, you wouldn't express it. Now is that Zen or is that just Japanese culture? Ooh. Thich Nhat Hanh came here in 1984. maybe first in 1983, and he said, why don't you practice smiling? Excuse me? This is a Zen center. We're practicing Zen. And so, you know, the Zen students, we would say to him, suppose, you know, people said to Thich Nhat Hanh. Suppose I don't feel like smiling. And you'd say, well, you know, you could have a slight smile for somebody who doesn't feel like smiling.

[27:29]

And, you know, we're not talking about the kind of smile that just covers over everything and hides everything behind the smile. We're talking about having a smile which is also acknowledging everything. So there's a difference between the smile that covers over things and the smile that acknowledges everything. And I, you know, I thought it was, I thought, you know, at the time I thought, well, you know, I'm a sense student and I should be sincere. Shouldn't I be sincere and true, you know, and authentic and real? And so if I'm feeling crummy, shouldn't I just feel crummy? I'm feeling depressed, shouldn't I just be depressed? Why am I going to go smiling? So this is very interesting. What do you do? How are you going to be with things? First of all, there's the possibility that I won't even notice that I'm depressed because I'd be depressed if I noticed it.

[28:38]

And it's better just to follow the schedule and get on with my life and not notice that I'm depressed and just go through the motions anyway. I mean, anyway, we make various choices. And then there's actually experiencing and feeling things. And then there's, well, what does it mean? What do you do with it? One of the basic tendencies will be, well, I'm going to see if this is a painful feeling, what can I do to make it go away? And what can I do so that it will never come here again? Basically, how can I judge it severely enough that I will do what I want it to? Because I'm sure that my feelings love me, don't they? And that they will respond to my judgments.

[29:44]

So, of course, if you do feel some painful feeling, depression, sadness, disappointment, grief, sorrow, anger, frustration, irritation, annoyance, disgust, distaste, abhorrence, I've had a lot of experience with this. And I did Vipassana for a while, so I started naming things. And then for a while in Vipassana, we were given, you know, when I went to the three-month course, we would write down, at the end of the period, you write down all the things that you've named. So I might still have them someplace. But anyway, it's very easy to go into judgment. But we need emotion. We have to, you know, an emotional maturity is going to come when We actually know what we're feeling. We acknowledge it and know what we're feeling and we're able to articulate it and express it at the time.

[30:46]

This is emotional maturity. So this is different then. This is not the same as, you know, I don't know what I'm feeling and I'm not going to acknowledge what I'm feeling because it's not good to have these feelings because that wouldn't be Zen or whatever reason you have. It's too painful. over-expressing things so that people go in the other direction. But usually, to get to emotional maturity, we're going to have to go through the swings of under-expression, under-acknowledgment, over-expression, over-acknowledgment. Do you understand? That's what we go through. Otherwise, we never get to emotional maturity. So as I was saying, you know, our intention, we have, you know, one of the things we're working on then is clarifying our intention.

[32:09]

This is the, you know, second of the Eightfold Path. The first is view. You know, so what's a good view? And of course, it's a kind of correction to your, you know, usually our initial view. Our initial view is that The better and more severely I'm able to judge things, good and bad, right and wrong, the more they're going to be in accord with the way I'm judging them. Wrong. So what's an appropriate view here? The first noble truth is that that doesn't work. It doesn't work. Judging things does not bring about compliance. And, you know, I mean, it's just classic that Even if you're getting 95% compliance, you'll go right on judging. So unless you're consciously making a choice or a decision to give it a rest, you probably won't. You'll just judge more severely.

[33:10]

I visited a friend in Ojai, and his wife is very fussy about the house. She doesn't realize there's a 95% compliance program in effect. She wouldn't, you know, she could relax and enjoy herself and be happy. But no, she's aiming for that 100% compliance with my idea of how I want it to be. So a good, a correct view, so to speak, you know, this judging, Good and bad, right and wrong doesn't work, so what's an appropriate intention then? And the intention then is to experience things closely and intimately with some kindness and compassion, perhaps even a slight smile.

[34:21]

And if you're not going to smile, you can do the... Anyway, let your face soften. Soften. And I don't want to go on talking for so long, but I'll say a little bit more. I want to mention one other little thing here in this context. And experiencing things more closely means you don't spend your whole life trying to avoid certain feelings by your judgments and by limiting what you do and don't do according to how you're going to feel or not feel. So you're not going to necessarily offer or share the gifts of who you are to others because they might judge you badly. You might get anxious or scared about doing that.

[35:26]

What about just offering and sharing who you are, regardless of how you get judged? So this is a kind of challenge, you know, for us. To go ahead and, you know, to go forward in our lives and to offer and share our gifts and our resources with others and with the world, you know, to be a to benefit beings by sharing ourself and who we are. And one of the things that's happening as we do this and this kind of work is we're shifting our sense about what trust is. And I'm going to use the child's definition of trust and then the adult definition of trust.

[36:32]

Okay? So see if this sounds familiar to you, the child's idea of trust. I trust you not to hurt me. And if you do, you're meant to. And it's my fault. So... And then sometimes, of course, you can argue with this and say, no, it's your fault. But, you know, as a child, you know, even children of parents who were extremely abusive, often as adults they will say, you know, my father was very mean to me and very hard on me, but, you know, I was a difficult child and I think I deserved that. You know, it's just not true. That's a child's idea. That's not an adult idea. Adult, you know, as an adult, you know that no child deserves that.

[37:33]

It's not your behavior that's causing that. But as a child, you have to believe that because then it's up to you to change your behavior and then you're in control and you don't go into helplessness and despair. If you can't do anything about it, you go into helplessness and despair. So you have to, as children, we believe I can do something about this. It is my fault. It's up to me to change my behavior so they all behave better. I deserve it. If you hurt me, I trust you not to hurt me. And if you do, you meant to. You meant to hurt me. And I deserve it. So this is a child's idea of trust. And you can see this coming up in our adult lives as well. And then how we stop trusting people because we feel hurt at some point. And we believe that the other person meant to hurt us. It's just not true. You know, a simple sort of example, you know, my daughter and I, at one point she said, Dad,

[38:53]

Very rarely did you ever let me cook with you. I thought you didn't like me and you didn't want me around you. And I was like, I want to cook something for you. I want to give you food. I want to feed you. It's never my idea. I don't want you around. So she feels hurt that I didn't ask her more to cook with me. Was I trying to hurt her? No, I was trying to benefit her and cook and offer her food and benefit her by giving her food. So all the time we get confused about these things. What's going on? What's happening? So we can be hurt even though somebody doesn't intend it.

[39:58]

Okay, so then what about the adult idea of trust? So what we're learning to do is to trust our own observations and perceptions enough to be able to act on them. To trust your own observations and perceptions. And to know, you know, what you know. To experience what you experience closely enough that you know for yourself what's what. And that you can trust your own, you know, awareness, your own mind, your consciousness. You know, as the saying is in Soto Zen, mind itself is Buddha. And you realize it. You can trust it. you perceive closely and carefully what's what. And then you can stop, you know, for instance, like, last summer, one of my oldest friends, I couldn't believe it, you know, somebody I've known for more than 40 years, even more than the people at Centenary, who are like,

[41:27]

40 years now. I came to Cincinnati in 1965. But even before this, you know, my friend from high school, and he said to me, I'm coming to see you. You know, he lives in Portland. I've gotten in my car. I'm on my way. He said, but I don't have time to see you. I'm going to Tassajara in two days, and I've got a lot to do to get ready. And I've got to take care of all my affairs here so I can be gone for three weeks and I've got to get all this stuff together. I'm doing three workshops there. I'm coming to see you. I'm in my car. I'm sorry, I don't have time. Well, I've got some books for you. Okay. Well, I'm going to bring them by. I don't think this is gonna work, I don't think I have time. And so I'm starting to feel like, how do I accommodate this person and prevent him from having any painful feelings?

[42:40]

How am I going to do this? How am I gonna control his feelings? Should I go into judgment about it and tell him he shouldn't feel badly that I can't see him? Don't be so attached to seeing me, okay? Let me explain this to you about how to work with this. What do I tell him? Is it possible for me to control his feelings? At some point, if I'm going to trust my observation and my perceptionist, My observation and my perception is that this person is not ready to hear what I have to tell him. This is what I experience. He's not in a position to hear anything from me. I don't need to explain anything to him. I don't need to control him. I can let him be disappointed that he can't see me. I can let him be...

[43:43]

upset maybe that he can't see me. And of course, right away, do you know what happens when you're not going to control somebody else's feelings for them, like you always have? You start to worry. You're going to get punished. This is very common. If I'm not going to control their feelings for them, they're going to want to hurt me. This is my friend for more than 40 years. And then I started thinking, like, I'm not, I don't, you know, I'm telling him, like, no, I really don't have time. Let's make another plan. I'm going to test her. I'm not going to be able to see you. And then, you know, after I hung up the phone, I started thinking, he's going to come by my house and burn it down. He's going to want to get back at me in some way for the fact that I'm not

[44:44]

doing what he wants me to do, and I'm not fixing things so that he doesn't have to feel disappointed or hurt. Anyway, all of this is very interesting to me. You can tell I spend a lot of time, probably more than is useful, studying all this, but, you know, what are we going to do with our lives? And we all have some kind of life lesson we're working on, as it were, life lesson or investigation study. This is one of mine. I'm also studying how to be of service rather than going into servitude. In case you haven't noticed, there's a difference. When you do what you're doing, when you do your service joyfully and willingly, it's called service. When you do it begrudgingly, it's called servitude.

[45:47]

You know who you are. So that's another nexus. How do you do it? How do you do service as opposed to servitude? How do you share yourself and benefit others and not go into servitude around it? where you start resenting and people are asking too much and more than you want to give and you've already given so much and they're still asking for more. And then there's, are you going to actually commit to something in your life or are you going to stay on the sidelines? We all have some issue we're working on in our lives. And if you could figure it out today or tomorrow or in a couple of years of Zen practice, it wouldn't be your life lesson. It's got to be something that's really challenging for you that takes a lot of years.

[46:50]

And that you keep at it and you keep working on it and you go back and forth and you under-commit, you over-commit, you under-commit, you over-commit. You're too emotional, you're not emotional enough. You're stuffing all your feelings, you're expressing too much. And you're going to have some study in your life. And in some instances it will be a wonderful thing for you to be practicing meditation and chanting and walking and sitting and joyful service, working in the kitchen or sweeping the hallway. Okay, I'm going to stop, but I'll share just a little bit of a Rumi poem. You didn't think you'd get away from me without a little bit of a Rumi poem, right? This is just the beginning of the poem, okay?

[47:56]

You're a common rhyme word now, but real life will come, true life will come. As when a baby stops nursing and begins eating solid food, as when a seed breaks open in the ground and begins to act differently. There is a hidden love center inside human beings that you are discovering and savoring and nourishing yourself with that will be your food. There is a hidden love center inside human beings. that you are discovering and savoring and nourishing yourself with, that will be your food. Thank you, lessons. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our programs are made possible by the donations we receive. Please help us to continue to realize and actualize the practice of giving by offering your financial support.

[49:05]

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

[49:13]

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