This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. I'm not doing justice to myself. And I'm not doing justice to them. That's what I would say. So some people appear to be just doing whatever they want. And sometimes people say, well, she's just being herself. But I would say, maybe she is. I mean, of course she is. But at the same time, I don't think she really appreciates. I don't think she knows who she is. Like, I just thought of like, I don't know what to say.

[01:03]

Let's say a father is acting in a way where he forgets he's a father. He forgets that he has this relationship with children and responsibilities. And he gets distracted from the reality of his responsibilities and acts in a so-called irresponsible way where he's distracted or neglecting his relationships with children. I would say he's not doing justice to himself. He's not really being himself because he forgets that he's this person who has this tremendous responsibility but also power that these children look to him as their father. And to act in a way that doesn't take that into account, like, for example, to be harsh with them with all the power of the father being harsh, it's like you're not doing justice to yourself, you're not really being who you are.

[02:10]

Being who you are is something we have to learn how to do, I would say. If you're a teacher, you know, and you do certain things that are unskillful, it maybe have a much bigger negative impact than if you weren't a teacher. And if you're a teacher and you don't understand the responsibilities and power of your position, you're not doing justice to yourself and you're not fully being the person who has this power and is cautious about it because they realize that they have this position. So we have teachings which are about how to be ourself. not killing, not stealing, not lying, not misusing sexuality, not putting people down, not putting yourself above other people, not trying to control people, not hating people.

[03:16]

These are teachings to help us be ourself. And if we don't practice mindfulness of these teachings, in a sense we can do this kind of impossible thing called being not who we are. And people say, well, she's just doing whatever she wants, or he's just doing whatever he wants. He's just being himself. Well, I think he's not doing justice to himself. He's doing some part of himself, but not fully himself. So as a result, he doesn't understand reality. He doesn't understand that other people are included in him and so on. And so this leads to lots of harmful... consequences or lots of harm due to harmful actions the other side of the story if you're ready for it is how do you relate to somebody who seems to be full of himself and kind of like not being careful of what he says and not doing justice to the power of the influence that he has on people well then I would

[04:31]

justice to myself in relationship to them. If I thought, oh, this person seems to be slandering people, seems to be putting himself above people, if I thought, if I had that observation, then I would be responsible to do justice to those observations and check to see if I'm doing, you know, if I see someone who's putting himself above people or putting people down, am I putting myself above him? So some people see somebody slandering and then they say, well, he's slandering and I don't do that. And I'm better than him. And so actually, you know, he's a low-down slanderer. Well, then I'm not doing justice to myself. Doing justice to myself is I see injustice, I see slander, I see arrogance, I see those... And those are aspects of me.

[05:33]

And I am included in that person. They're included in me and I'm... That's doing justice to me. That makes me more who I really am. Which is a person that doesn't exist by himself to the exclusion of this arrogant, narcissistic appearance. In other words, doing justice to myself is to... do justice, is to be Buddha. Which includes that I might have a slanderous thought about that person who's slandering. But in that case, it might be easier for me to see, oh, he's slandering and he's an aspect of me because I think he's worthless. But then I might turn it again and say, but in my case, it's not really slander when I do it. When he talks... when he talks away a slanderer, but when I point out that he's a slanderer, I'm not slandering. So a big part of this making Buddhist thing is somehow to catch ourselves when we put ourselves above anybody.

[06:48]

Or below. Below in the sense that you can look up to somebody as being more skillful than you, but not put yourself down. But just say, they know more about this thing than I do. And I think that's great. That doesn't lower you necessarily. Matter of fact, it makes you into a person who's appreciating somebody else's skill. So praising others doesn't necessarily put me down. Matter of fact, one of the main ways to fully be myself is to praise everybody while I may be noticing some shortcomings. So that's the first part of my response to your question. And if you have more, this is a kind of big issue. If you have any other questions about this, I welcome them. Yes. Well, like if I'm sitting on my meditation cushion and I can look to see, am I willing to be here?

[07:56]

Am I willing to be with what it feels like to be here, with this body? Do I feel like the job of being mindful of this posture is a good job for me, and I'm willing to do it? That's part of being fully exerting myself, is to fully exert my physical posture. And... A friend of mine who's starting to deal with this thing called old age, he's a yoga teacher, and he's kind of a little bit irritated that now he's forced to be mindful. Of course, he always wanted to be mindful, and now he's forced to be mindful. Before, he could be mindful, which is great, or he could be not mindful, and he could get by with it. Now he can't get by with not being mindful. Now, finally, he's a success.

[08:57]

But it's because he's forced to. And I would say, OK, well, I wish I wasn't forced to, but I'm glad that I'm mindful of my posture. So we have a body which we can be mindful of and which we can take care of in a dignified manner. which is to give it a generous, careful, patient attention, and that's part of fully exerting a posture. And we can notice that there may be impulses to not take care of the body, to think we have better things to do than being mindful of our body. And then we can be kind to those impulses, and that would be to exert impulses of distraction. impulses to try to get away from the awesome task of taking care of a body.

[10:02]

So it's primarily the body, not the mind? Well, no, primarily the body and mind. Same with the mind. Then you have a mind, so the same thing with the mind, to be mindful of the mind, to be generous and careful with of what you're thinking. And then your speech. Be generous, careful, and patient with your speech. These are all ways to fully be the person you are. When you're silent, be mindful of your silence. When you speak, be mindful of your speech. When you listen, be mindful of what you hear. And when you hear something, again, to be right there, generously receiving what you hear, being careful of what you hear, be patient with what you hear, and that's your way to fully exert you as a hearer. I understood to allow what is coming.

[11:18]

Allowing, yes. Not judging it. There could be a moment where what's coming is not judging. That's possible. And then you would allow that. But you could also be a professional editor. You could spend several hours a day editing. And you could be, you could totally exert yourself as an editor. And I'm suggesting that if you do that, you're doing Buddha's work. If you're a writer, you may not feel like you're editing, maybe just like writing. And no editing. Kathy told me about a novel she read, a Norwegian author, where he writes and she feels like he's not editing what he writes. Did you say something like that? He said he writes as though he's not editing what he writes. Yeah, so he writes without a censor.

[12:20]

He edits. Okay, so sometimes we have uncensored speech. That would be possible. And you're just speaking uncensored. And then you could pay attention to your uncensored speech and fully exert your uncensored speech. This author, maybe when he's speaking that way or thinking that way or writing that way, maybe he's touching... the place of total exertion. And many people are reading him to see how he exerts his words as though there weren't a censor. But even if there is a censor, then you can exert the censor. And if there is an editor, you can exert the editor. I'm not in control of impulses to edit what I'm saying.

[13:25]

So sometimes I'm talking and I don't feel much editing going on. Other times I feel like, oh, I think maybe that wouldn't be good to say. So what I am is given to me and I have the opportunity to receive the gift wholeheartedly or to like not be really mindful of the gift that's coming to me. I'm talking about being mindful of the gift that's been given in the moment of you and your question me who's listening to it now me who's responding to take care of this person who's a thinker a speaker and a posture maker be mindful of this person as my way of living in crisis in such a way that Buddha's response is alive.

[14:32]

Anything else this morning? Yes? Yes. with ourselves if we're being ourselves. Yeah, that's right. And we need to train to do that. Again, I just think of somebody who's playing the piano, but they're not noticing everything that's going on with their fingers. Not noticing how they're moving as wholeheartedly as they could, and not noticing the pressure that they're making on the keys. And then maybe they have a teacher who helps them look more carefully at what they're doing. And they actually become more skillful and more mindful of what they're doing. But they usually have to train. And they usually need some conversation to help them look at different places where they don't seem to be paying attention.

[15:47]

Like, for example, they may be looking at their hands but not their posture. Or they may be looking too much at their hands and not listening enough. So our mindfulness can get maybe trained to be more total. And usually we need help to do that. Someone needs to point out to us areas where we're not being so mindful. Like we could be criticizing someone and not notice that what we're criticizing them about is what we're doing right now. And a friend might say, oh, I hear you. but do you want some feedback? And you might say, yes. And you might say, I think you just did what you were pointing out in them. And you might say, oh, yeah, right, thank you. Or you might see someone who doesn't want any feedback, and you point out that they don't want any feedback.

[16:50]

And then someone asks you if you want some, and you say, what do you mean? So, again, we need interaction to find out maybe that our mindfulness, our engagement with our life is not yet complete. And again, unless my engagement with my life is complete, I tend to be stuck in my egotistical view of my life. I come with the kind of egotistical view. And that's going to go on. But by drawing attention to my egotistical view, by me paying attention to it and other people pointing out to me where I'm not noticing it, I can become free of it. And without interactions with other people who are giving us feedback on our egotism, we tend to stay trapped in it, in a one-sided life.

[17:54]

Like, I'm me. but I'm not yet realizing that I'm you. So I need to have solitude where I see what it's like to be me in a one-sided way and have a conversation where I can get some new perspectives on the one-sidedness of me, realizing that my one-sidedness is not one-sidedness. And my not-one-sidedness is one-sidedness. Yes and yes and yes. Maybe boom, boom, boom. I recently, my neighbor recently totaled my car, which was a new, brand new car. Were they in a car when they? A drunken state. Were they in a car when they totaled your car? I was not in the car. No, were they in a car? They were not in the car. The car was parked. But he drove his truck into my car. Oh, so somebody drove his truck into your car.

[18:59]

Which was parked. And I was not in it. Otherwise, I would be dead. So he totaled the car. Then I had three other instances on the freeway of kamikaze drivers. And somebody else totaled or did some damage to my car. And I've been murdered 10 times. Wow. So I'm very angry about people who tailgate me. So coming over, don't mess up me in my car. Don't tailgate me. So on my way here today, there was this guy that came up behind me going very fast and was tailgating me. So I was angry and upset that he was tailgating me and I slowed down and then he got more angry and then he did road rage with me and was going to drive me off the side of the road. And then I started crying and then I came here. And I was going to go home and crawl into bed and say, I'm not driving anywhere.

[20:05]

So how could I be me in this situation? Are you asking for feedback? Huh? Are you asking for feedback? Yeah. You should get a chauffeur. Say it again. You should get a chauffeur. I can't afford it. Oh, that's too bad. You should go live in a Zen monastery. Take a cab. And then just live here for five or ten years. And then we'll test you to see if you're ready to drive. Because you've been traumatized, it looks like. And it's hard to learn in the middle of trauma. It's hard to learn. I mean, yeah, it's hard to learn new things when we feel traumatized.

[21:08]

Yeah, so... No. You need to find ways to be who you are more. And if you can't, like, work on being... generous and careful and so on while you're driving, then probably driving is not a good thing to do. And so maybe it would be good to get rides with somebody else so maybe when you're a passenger you can work on that. But I think, you know, some situations are too intense for us to, like, be ourselves completely. They're too advanced. and placed in situations where we have this history of shocks and so on. And it's hard for us to learn to be generous and careful and patient and diligent and calm with them.

[22:15]

So in other words, it's hard for us to be fully ourself. So we need, probably, to find situations where we can work on ourselves. So I'm glad you came today to be with us. So we can encourage you to, like, you know, actually maybe not drive for a while, but still come to Green Gulch. I like driving. Yeah. Well, if you feel like you can do it, and you don't feel too... Huh? What? I can. I was being smart. I can with rage. You know, somebody. With tension. With hyper-focus. You can with hyper-focus. Is that what you're saying? When I'm driving. Yeah, so maybe that... Not relaxed. Yeah, so then maybe... I'm not telling you to stop driving, I'm just saying that doesn't seem like a very good situation to be driving when you're not able to relax. Because then you're not able to be generous with these other people, like with people tailgating.

[23:16]

I have trouble being generous with tailgaters too. And then also there's people in front of you that are driving slowly. How to be generous with them. So if... If I get to a certain point where I feel like I'm super not generous with the slow people in front and the fast people behind, then I think maybe it's time for me to pull over and calm down. Yeah, that's good. I think it's a metaphor for life. It's a metaphor for life. We have walking meditation in this room. And we have sometimes tailgaters in this room. And we also have people in front that are driving too slowly. And the people are like, would you speed up? And then people are like, don't, get away from my... And then we have referees who come in and try to help the people give each other some space, but not too much and all that. And that's another metaphor. So I was trying to think, what can I write from it?

[24:18]

And I think it's really there's a bigger lesson, my reaction in the whole thing. Yeah, well... We need to be kind to ourselves to be the person who feels hassled by the person behind. And if we can't take care of this person, then we're going to have to take care of that person. In other words, pull over so they can pass, or maybe we don't feel comfortable speeding up. So maybe pull over as an act of generosity to this so-and-so who's behind us. who's creeping up on us and driving too fast anyway. It's hard for us to like, okay, I'll give you a gift, sweetheart. I'll pull over and I'll give you a gift, my dear grandson. But it's hard. You're driving and something, zoom! This truck's on your back. You get scared, he tense up.

[25:19]

I think it's time to disqualify myself as a driver. Not disqualify. Just pull over until I calm down. Then I get back in the road, another person's going to go. I said, now, okay, gift time. This time I'm pulling over as a gift. I did that previously with the texter who was behind me. A texter, yeah. It was texting. Stop and grow. And I was getting more and more and more angry at the guy. Yeah. And I thought, I'm just going to, like, do something really mean to him. Yeah. I'm going to get out of my car at the next stop line, kick in the store. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I was thinking. Yeah. And I thought, Judy, just pull over. Yeah. So I think being mindful. Take a meditation break. Just to take a break. If possible. But it's bad behavior. What do we do with other people's bad behavior? That's danger and danger in our lives. In this case. Yeah, anyway, it's pulling over as a gift. Pulling over.

[26:23]

Yeah, and then the people in front of us are going slowly. Give them the gift of letting them have a very leisurely drive while we're late for work. And that's also a hard gift to give. But that's what I would recommend for myself. And it's not easy sometimes when somebody's driving really slowly and it's a one-lane drive. road and it's and maybe even harder when somebody comes up and bears down on you and then you and maybe there's no place to pull over for a while so what are you going to do it's really tough you're welcome thank you for your question i think you speak for many people yes the way that we're talking this morning starting to feel like there's a sort of like an inner dialectic of shoulds getting set up, this whole framework of should.

[27:26]

Yeah. Should be this way. Yeah, shoulds are what you call it. They're very common in egoistic consciousness. Shoulds all around. Yeah, there's a lot of that. And in trying to practice these behaviors in this way of being, If the insight isn't there first, it's kind of like a fake it till you make it sort of thing. If I don't really know me all the time, the behaviors that I should be doing, I feel fully authentic because I don't have the insight that I am you and you are me. And so how do we promote... the insight so that those behaviors occur more naturally without the shifts. Does that make sense? It does, yeah.

[28:30]

I would say not so much fake it till you make it, but rather be kind to the situation where you haven't arrived, you do not yet really understand that the tailgater is included in you. and you in the tailgater. I don't understand that yet. So I'm not faking it, but I practice compassion with my incomplete realization of my relationship with this person. I do not really understand it. But I can be generous, maybe, and pull over. By being generous to him or her, and being generous... to my irritation and my lack of understanding of this real relationship, that compassion will help me be the person who doesn't yet understand. And then be careful of this person here who doesn't really... Maybe now I do, but I don't really always understand that I am you, especially if you're tailgating me.

[29:39]

I don't understand that. And I accept that. And part of being just to myself, part of doing justice to me and you is to be honest that I don't yet understand that the tailgater is my beloved friend who is doing something that's not very, that's dangerous. Good friends who are included in me in some way can do unskillful things. People who are being unskillful are included in me. I don't understand that yet, so I have to work on that. But I can tell the truth, I don't understand that really. I've heard the teaching, but I don't understand it. And I've got to be careful of myself because I'm somewhat dangerous as long as I don't understand reality. And to be patient with him and with my... lack of understanding of my relationship.

[30:43]

I think that it was important for me to hear you say the honesty piece because there's a way... He said the honesty piece. Because there's a way that we can be practicing those things inauthentically with a layer of sort of hidden ego and it's not actually practicing those things Because we're not admitting that that relationship exists in that way. Yeah. So part of totally being me is to be honest that there's an ego here. And then ego has shoulds around it. Like he should not be tailgating me. They should be going faster. There's a lot of shoulds. I should be more patient. Again, When I think I should be more patient, I can be patient with that thought.

[31:45]

And I can be honest. I think I should be more patient, and I can be careful of that. And in this way, I can become more and more the person who thinks he should be more patient at this moment. And then the dawn of insight is right there, that I realize, oh my God, these shoulds are me, and I'm these shoulds. these tailgaters and slow movers are me, and I am them, then the actual radiant realization is realized. Before the realization is there, we have more or less levels of stress, which you can be kind to, and kind to, and kind to, and kind to, until we're totally stressed. And in totally being stressed, you realize that you're not stressed. and that stressed and not stressed, are always living together in Buddha's activity.

[32:47]

I've been asked to... What time is it? 12.15. I've been asked to end a little earlier, but 12.15 wasn't the request. The request is 12.30. So we have a little bit more time. Pam, and then what's your name? Sarah? Pam and Sarah? Pam and Sarah sounds like samsara. So I've been thinking about what you're saying and how I might apply it in the specifics of the political situation. Yes. As I see it. And one of the things that occurs to me is that when I look at Donald Trump, is that to realize that he's a manifestation of everything that exists, everything that is not him, just like I am. And the particular point of view that he has, he has because of all the causes and conditions which have created him just exactly like they've created me.

[33:55]

And so in some sense, even though I may think that he doesn't have an accurate view of reality because he seeks to think of other people separate from themselves, and as dangerous and as threats, that he is a perfect manifestation of everything that he was conditioned by, just like I am. And that there's holding that seems to, it shifts, I'm trying to let that inform any action that I take or don't take, so that I'm not like reposting things, even if I am rewritten them on Facebook, Promote this idea of me versus them, us versus them. Yeah, yeah. So you don't want to promote the belief that we're separate and that we're existing separately from each other. You don't want to promote that. Yeah, and the good news is that we're not separate.

[34:56]

There are things that I could do like that. and other things I don't know yet, that can condition him perhaps in a different direction. Yeah. And there's many other people that this applies to, too. And after the election, we still have to live with all these people who have different views from us, and we don't make ourselves have our views, and they didn't make them have their... So we still have this work of cultivating peace with... people who really see things differently than us. So the work goes on, and I think your attitude is, again, we want to promote an understanding that each of us is the center of the universe. And that means each of us includes everybody, and we are included in everybody else's center. We want to promote that, because that's where peace will come from. In the meantime, In order to get there, we have to be kind to where we are, which is incomplete realization, and therefore we have all this obsessive hatred and obsessive desire.

[36:08]

So knowing to be compassionate to all that, that's our job. Anything else before lunch? Oh, excuse me, Sarah. Could you speak up, Sarah? I'm having trouble hearing you. I think your answer to these two people also would apply to the question of when I see the people on the street who appear to have all their mornings in a photo of blankets and don't smell very good and oftentimes even have

[37:13]

cover something out. So there are times when I feel completely honest about my response to them. And there are other times when I feel very confused about my response to them. So I think that your answer to these people is the same thing that you would answer to me in those situations. Is that right? Yes. That I would, in that situation, I would be generous to myself. Generous to my confusion about what's the appropriate response to this person. Careful of my response and patient with my confusion and my uncertainty about how to respond and diligent and all that with myself. And the same with the person. Be generous towards them. Be careful of how to relate to them and so on. Was there anything else this morning?

[38:19]

I mean, this afternoon? Thank you very much. For more information, visit sfzc.org and click Giving.

[39:20]

May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[39:23]

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