This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good morning. And welcome those of you who are returning for the one thousandth time and for the first time. This is Beginner's Mind Temple. And welcome to those of you who are online. We're having a sunny day here in San Francisco. As I think almost everyone here knows, yesterday was Valentine's Day.

[01:02]

So I thought to talk about... Maybe it's too fancy a title, but I'll use it anyway. A Buddhist approach to love. Actually, what I'm really going to talk about is love and renunciation. And I don't know if you've ever come across... If you've ever come across Buddhist practices on terms of renunciation, they're not very Valentine Day in their methodology. But I think that the holidays that we have in our society and how they become impassioned.

[02:11]

It's a wonderful teaching for us. Oh, this is the world I'm living in. And maybe you embrace it in a wonderful way. Like if you think of the Christmas season, as the embodiment of generosity, then wonderful. What could be more wonderful than generosity? And I think likewise of Valentine's Day, if we think of love as something to uphold, something to value, something to promote, How lovely. The way I was thinking of approaching it was this, that I would describe in Greek thought there's four aspects of love.

[03:23]

Could I just ask how many of you knew that already? Some. So unfortunately, you will get my adulterated version of the four. But here's what I was thinking of doing, and I will do it if you agree, that I would describe the four versions and then what's the accompanying... Renunciation. You can take Christmas celebration of rebirth and birth and how it evokes the sacred and a generous spirit.

[04:26]

And likewise, you can think of Valentine's Day as... evoking love and calling forth its wholesomeness. And, you know, in many ways, in Buddhism and Zen in particular, it attempts to hold up the wholesome, not to dismiss the way we can corrupt it. You know, if we think of eroticism, we can easily conjure up the excesses that that can bring about. But if we think of a passionate approach to life,

[05:34]

You know, a way in which you are, each of us, is accepting and embracing who we are and what inspires us and what encourages us and how that can come forth. And then eroticism as erotic as pornography. If we let that be the whole story, there's a way in which we do ourselves an incredible disservice. Because there is something in our passionate appreciation for being human It's really worth valuing.

[06:36]

So I'll go through the four, as best I can, I'll go through the four categories of love in Greek thought. And then I will ask you, what's a wholesome renunciation? that facilitates that. And then I will give my version, rather than the other way around. Because I would say to you, especially in Zen practice, to ask yourself, okay, and what's the teaching in this, in that process? it kindles something in you. Which reminds me of a poem.

[07:47]

This is a poem, I'm just going to quote the last part of it, by Pablo de Ruda, The Sea. It seems a small thing like a person. to have come here to live their own fire. Nevertheless, the pulse that arises and falls, the crackling of the blue cold, the gradual wearing away of a star, the soft unfolding of the waves squandering snow in its foam, this quiet power that's here, sure to the stone shrine in its depths, replaces our world in a growing, where growing stubborn sorrow, gathering oblivion, changes suddenly, and I become part of pure movement.

[08:52]

He's talking about the sea in how he relates to it. but we can talk about and think about our lives and how we relate to it. So I'll name the four categories of love, and then you can think, hmm, what way of relating to that allows for affirmation? What do I need to let go of to let that become vibrant, influential in my being. So the first one is, and I apologize in advance for my pronunciation of the Greek, agape. Agape, all-inclusive embracing of all beings. May they flourish.

[10:01]

May they be happy. May they call forth and be upheld by their virtuous being. A kind of almost like a celebration of the capacity of our humanness and beyond to be virtuous, to be courageously embracing the vitality of life. So I would ask you, and be reckless in your willingness to respond, and also trust your own being. So... What would you let go of that would make more available the abundance of agape in your life, in your being, in your attitude, in your behavior?

[11:18]

Any or all of those. Envy. Sorry? Envy. Envy. Okay. Thank you. Judgmental mind. Self-centeredness. Thank you. What was the first word? Separation. Separation. A sense of separation. A sense of ownership. A sense of ownership. Myself. Future. So as you hear those responses, does one stand out for you?

[12:26]

Does one feel like... Oh, that's a precious teaching. As soon as this talk's over, I'm going to write that down. Or is there some way that those words stirred something within you? And maybe you can't even find words for it. myself, sense of separation, self-centeredness. My answer came up close to that. Renounce self-interest. When the most important thing is, how does this affect me?

[13:27]

And then getting mesmerized by that. And just simply forgetting others. So that would be my thought. And then the second one is philia. Kind of bonding through friendship. Maybe that's the reason sports fans go to watch their team play. A couple of months ago, I was in the UK.

[14:36]

And someone told me, well, I follow this soccer team. But they're not very good. And they win. They seldom win. But they're our team, you know. And they're very loyal. And they've been, our family members have supported, have promoted and been loyal to them for a long time. And we have fundraisers to keep them going. It's like the person was relishing in their loyalty. Not because they were the best, but because they were who they were. And they gave them some kind of kinship, some kind of connection.

[15:37]

So what needs to be let go of to promote the virtuous, deep friendship? What was that one? Judgment. Pride. Pride. individual ownership of experience? My soul. Competitiveness. Competitiveness. Being right. Being right. Expectation. Expectation.

[16:46]

I wrote time. Renounce us and them. You know, the division. There's us and there's them. And we are in competition. We are a... We're different and we're better than them. Sometimes as we think of what to let go of and then we contrast it to the virtuous principle, it can give us a fuller feeling of what's implied. by that disposition. There's a translation that we have in one of the texts that we chant, and it says filial piety.

[18:04]

Sometimes it's called the age when there was only man in the world and brotherly love but fortunately now we we have we have us regardless of gender and that deep friendship that loyalty and how it can set us apart, how it can be a cause to start a war, you know? How it can be an excuse to singularly promote the well-being of us and neglect the well-being of others. okay the next one and this one I've never heard pronounced in Greek so if any of you can speak Greek please correct me still gay s-t-o-g-e and this is familial love you know the kinship literally of kin

[19:41]

This way, you know, we can say things like, blood is thicker than water. This way that as humans, we seem to create a significance around, well, you're in my bloodline. This way, when Our family of origin doesn't fit our life. Often we're inclined to create another family. In the Zen world, there are texts that describe Zen practice as the family way. that there's a kind of collective intimacy.

[20:52]

There's a collective sensibility about how we take up this life. It tends to shape our behaviors. It tends to shape our thinking and our preferences. And then, of course, it shifts. country to country, or maybe just time to, over time it shifts to think, how do you relate to the notion of kinship? How do you relate to the notion of family? I remember once going to a wedding of my niece. And it was a big wedding, probably about 150 people.

[21:57]

And having the thought, oh, I am related through blood to over 100 people in this room. It was a kind of encouraging feeling. So how does it go wrong? What's the renunciation that's asking for in the ways that we can get too tight around identity with family, whether it's of origin Or whether it's one that's grown up in your life within the circumstances of your life. Possessiveness.

[23:01]

Possessiveness. Acceptance and loyalty. Acceptance and loyalty. If you want, you can just... Stand or come back. Thanks for coming. Any other comments? Intolerance. Intolerance. Fear of failure. My response, my renunciation was more like an affirmation.

[24:07]

It was affirming the interconnectedness of all forms of life. That's just how it is. And more and more we're discovering it as we become more populated on the planet. And using its resources. And the wonderful thing of Thanksgiving, going back to your roots and breaking bread, eating together. the interbeing of all forms of life. And then eros. In choosing adjectives, I tried to stay away from, you know, eros, erotic, you know, something nasty, you know.

[25:24]

I put in passionate, you know, That way love stimulates us. That way it stimulates our sense of being. It stimulates our sense of intimacy and potential for intimacy. It stimulates a certain vitality for life. Eros has a certain aspect of sensuality. Maybe it also has the aspect of romantic.

[26:28]

Or maybe they all have a sense of the romantic. Any words? Any words of renunciation? Romance. Boundaries. Sorry? Boundaries. Boundaries? Entitlement. What was that one? Entitlement. Entitlement. Excess. Where was that? Excess. Yeah. Suggestiveness? Possessiveness. Thank you. Yeah.

[27:31]

So, hopefully, going through that, And sometimes that process of reflecting on something and noticing how it stirs up an attraction and then also how it can easily become excessive. Not as a reason to... diminish ourselves or rebuke ourselves or criticize ourselves, but more to acknowledge the forces within our humanness. You know, that's what I thought Pablo Neruda was doing in his poem. He was acknowledging the forces of our humanness. Like earlier in that poem,

[28:32]

He says, I go to the sea and the sea teaches me and I don't know if I learn awareness or music. And then with return to talk some more about renunciation. For a while I was a Thuravadan monk in Thailand. And one of the things we did almost daily was contemplate death. And then sometimes we'd have slideshows about decaying corpses. Sometimes we would walk around and remind ourselves, this too, this person will perish.

[29:36]

this tree will perish. Recently I was reading a piece by Suzuki Roshi, where he described renunciation as remembering that everything changes. But yes, there is that aspect of renunciation. But there's also the aspect of renunciation as letting go of what blocks the vitality. And when I was thinking about that, it made me think about Marie Kondo. I don't know if you know who that is, but I'm sure some of you do. Marie Kondo came up with this process for winnowing, literally winnowing your possessions.

[30:45]

And she came up with this wonderful notion. So take it in your hands and ask yourself, does this bring me energy? Does this vitalize my life or is it just a burden? You know, several times in my life, I've tried to pick up that spirit of Marie Kondo and go through my clothes. And I've failed miserably, you know. I have a drawer full of sweaters, some of which I haven't worn for a long time. But somehow my mind can say, Oh yeah, but someday it'll be really cold and you'll want that one. But even so, and then sometimes I've been grudgingly able to give something away.

[31:56]

But this notion of renunciation as a facilitation of what energizes, what opens, It helps you drop away how you're clinging. And if you're like me, where you are somehow reluctant to let go of what really is blatantly not serving you anymore. Maybe to learn something from that. Here's a way in which I struggle with the teaching of all things are impermanent. Because it's such a multifaceted teaching that it's hard to give over to all the ways it can appear in our life.

[33:08]

Like in some ways we could say, well, all these categories of love, if we just tell them with this deep renunciation, this deep willingness to have them now and be totally open to them changing in the next minute, in the next year, whatever. looked up Marie Kondo and on the internet and and she has a kind of formula you know go through the particulars let go of what you can what no longer serves you and then reorganize in the space that that gives you reorganize

[34:13]

And she's talking about material objects. But we can also take an inventory of our attitudes, our behaviors. What old wound do I keep resurrecting and reinvigorating? as a reason to not feel open to someone. So renunciation as a process of opening, of enlivening. And then for good measure, I started to reflect on

[35:21]

the different terms in Buddhism. Metta, loving kindness. Anukampa, caring deeply for others. Karuna, compassion. Mudita, sympathetic joy. The different facets. of renunciation, the positive facets of it, as it can call forth a harmonious way of relating. And then there's a particular list which goes metta, karuna, mudita, and then equanimity. So it's proposing that when we open to life, when we accept life on its terms, when we manage to not just get distracted and stuck in what we want it to be instead of what it is, it opens up a certain kind of equanimity.

[36:52]

And so I'd like to read parts of Pablo Neruda's poem, where he's using the sea as a kind of a complex energy of a human life. In his life, he was from Chile, which has a long coast, and he really enjoyed going to the coast and he wrote many, many poems about it. I need this sea because it teaches me. I don't know if I learn music or awareness, if it's a single wave or it's a vast existence, or only the harsh voice or its shining suggestion of fishes and ships. The fact that is that until I fall asleep in some magnetic way, I move in the university of the waves.

[38:07]

It seems a small thing for a person to have come here to live with their own fire. Nevertheless, the pulse that rose and fell into its abyss. The blue crackling of the cold, the gradual wearing away of a star, the soft unfolding of a wave, the squandering snow with its foam, the quiet power out there, sure as a stone shrine in the depths, replaced my world in which were a growing stubborn sorrow gathering oblivion, and my life changed suddenly as I became part of the pure movement of the scene. I would say to you, as you watch what this

[39:24]

this way of thinking stirs up for you not just in its particulars but certainly its particulars have relevance but the kind of energy it creates does it find you does it stir you in a way that your life seems to open with possibility? Does it stir you in a way where there's a growing compassion? Maybe we all have a drawer full of something that we struggle to let go of, even though our brain says, no, you're never going to wear that. You'd be better off without it. And then somehow you put it back in the drawer.

[40:24]

The curiosities of the human condition. Look at that. I don't know if I learned music or awareness from it. If it's asking... for a patient's acceptance of my own quirkiness, or whether it's showing me a door to pass through and discover something new. Okay. Thank you. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. 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.

[41:29]

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

[41:40]

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