This podcast is offered by San Francisco's Zen Center on the web at sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good morning, everyone. Can you hear me okay? So thank you, Kodo, for the kind introduction, and thank you, Nancy and David, for the invitation to speak here at City Center. And Nancy recently spoke at Green Gulch, so-called Green Gulch, Zoom, and shared with me she kept thinking of herself as being in the barn here, the barn zendo. In her mind she knew, you know, it's just another Zoom.

[01:01]

But she pictured herself in that old hall. And I'm finding the same this morning with you all. Picturing myself on the seat in the Buddha hall there with the streaming light and the floor worn smooth from so many decades of daily practice. So a nice thing in the past about speaking at City Center is that I could use the exact same talk that I'd used at Green Gulch or Tassara. And with the Zoom situation, doing so feels less appropriate. figure out how to include you all on my screen as though we were in that hall.

[02:07]

I see many of you familiar faces and newer friends, but thank you for being here. So I can't, I feel, I can't exactly give the exact same talk that I've given elsewhere, unfortunately for me. But the talk that I gave a couple of weeks ago at Green Gulch, the theme of that talk still is very much alive for me. And as I talk with people about their practice, I feel that it's alive for others too. So I wanted at least to start on that theme, maybe with a different emphasis, a different frame, and then maybe open up in a different direction. We can see how it goes with our time here together. So this theme that I've been feeling, interning, and sometimes, amazingly, even actually practicing with, is a feeling that's very accessible.

[03:19]

I can find it right now without much trouble, the feeling of overwhelm. Sort of overwhelmed up to... utterly overwhelmed. So the feeling of overwhelm is nothing new to me, surely not to you either. Practicing with overwhelm, seeing overwhelm as practice is a little different than just being overwhelmed. So for example, to be on this seat with this responsibility, this robe and your generous attention is rather overwhelming. When I remember that I'm practicing with overwhelm, I'm not just, oh no, I'm overwhelmed, I'm practicing with overwhelm.

[04:22]

Then that overwhelm isn't an obstacle so much as something that I can work with. Even maybe find, you may have found this little tinge, Hey, there's overwhelm. I've been looking for that so I can practice. Now I get to try out. I get to see if this practice is true, you know. I was just making it up. Let's see. Okay. I can practice with this. This is the object I'm ready for to practice with rather than like, oh no, when's it going to be over? How do I get rid of it? So being overwhelmed and practicing with overwhelm are not the same thing. I've noticed that in myself and I notice, I think that other people have that feeling being around me. A little question, we see that you're overwhelmed and we wonder if you're practicing with overwhelm and seeming overwhelmed or just being overwhelmed.

[05:27]

I hear things in my house, you know, my wife and children are maybe most intimate with my overwhelm as it manifests in the environment. Jeez, Papa, relax. Papa's so tense. So we see that you're overwhelmed, but we're not sure if you're practicing with the overwhelm. Maybe you are. But let's check. I was remembering a story that Ed Brown, our friend and longtime Zen center, a priest and disciple of Suzuki Roshi, Ed Brown talked about being in the Apple store back when a person could go into such a place. Being into the Apple store, which is an overwhelming, for him, was an overwhelming experience. And so he was standing kind of in the doorway of the Apple store and said to the clerk, I'm feeling overwhelmed.

[06:35]

And the kind clerk said, you should take a meditation. You should try meditating. So the clerk noticed that he was overwhelmed, but wasn't sure that he was practicing with it. Of course, he was practicing with it. But it was... And I don't know if that reminder helped him remember that I'm not just overwhelmed, I'm practicing with overwhelm. I think right already to say I'm overwhelmed is already practicing with overwhelm. It's already, this isn't just how I am. This is what I'm welcoming as my opportunity. I promised myself I wouldn't use that word opportunity. Overused. But still, this overwhelm is my chance to practice, to try it out. And that's a huge shift. And just when I can use that label when I can say, I'm overwhelmed.

[07:39]

Already there, something shifts, I open to an intention to hold this in a different way. Not just get out of it or complain or wait it out. So, of course, also it's overwhelming, you know, it's overwhelming to be in the seat. It's also overwhelming, for example, when the sun doesn't come up. There's an expectation, right? We talk about, well, what were you expecting? I was kind of expecting that the sun would come up on Thursday, Wednesday, whatever it was. Forgive me, you know, for holding to my expectation, but I just, I did expect that. And it was a little overwhelming that it didn't rise. You know, to look out at this air, or worse even still, to be out in this air and wondering, you know, when the flames will come.

[08:46]

So last time when I talked about overwhelm, I generously shared a long list for anyone who may be wondering what to be overwhelmed about. I shared a long list of things to be overwhelmed about. I'm not sure that was helpful. But the idea, the truth is that maybe we can let it in. It maybe feels like too much to take. It feels like too much to take when we're trying to hold it at bay. And it feels like too much to take. When we think that if we let it in, we're going to need to hold it in. If we let it in, we'll be stuck with it forever. So it doesn't hurt to name it and see if we can let it in, you know? And I know each of you, each of us has our own list of what's overwhelming right now in our life in this world. This overwhelming pandemic.

[09:53]

This overwhelming fact of racial oppression and injustice. both as to brutal caricature we see in police vigilante violence, and also in the all-pervading subtle, not-so-subtle stickiness. I see it like a layer of ash, you know, this thin layer of ash coating everything. And of course this climate catastrophe is overwhelming. It's overwhelming this world where our kids are afraid to get close to each other, they get a little close and say, ah, too close. The kids are afraid to get close to each other and know all about the AQI. It's 182. And they're gold bags. And tragically, you know, I'm really feeling the coming to see school as maybe many in the global family do, coming to see school more like an erratic luxury.

[10:59]

rather than this reliable baseline of life. School sort of shutting on and off like the power. So we all have our lists, and these feel like sometimes overwhelming times. And it's good to let it in, to let it be named. And it may be, you know, in a way this is the Zen proposal, is that it may be a little less overwhelming if and when we stop pushing it away. What is the Zen practice for overwhelm? How do we meet this emotion and state? So basically, the medicine that this tradition offers is called kshanti-paramitta. It's the practice of inclusiveness, the practice of including, welcoming, allowing things in. is to look at and find the resolve to turn around our habit of separating from things we feel are outside of us.

[12:14]

To turn around our habit of imagining and experiencing the world and all of its burdens and pains as outside of us and impinging upon us. It's our capacity to be with difficulty without turning away. There's an author I've been reading who calls it to stay with the trouble. And we stay with the trouble. That's kshantiparamita. So that we can respond skillfully to the difficulty. So generally when I'm overwhelmed, it's because there's something outside of me, or maybe even inside some part of me, that I'm trying to keep out. I'm afraid I can't keep it out. I'm not quite strong enough to keep it out. And it's going to crush me. So I try to find this great reservoir of strength, clench, hold it all at bay, against all odds, and utterly unsustainably. So that's the feeling. That's my feeling a lot of the time, and maybe your feeling too.

[13:22]

Yesterday, thinking about this theme, I suddenly remembered a translation, a line I read long ago from the late and great translator Edward Konza. I read this in the first months of my Buddhist practice a long time ago, and it etched itself into my mind. Here's what he writes, translating a Buddhist verse. Rain presses down on what is covered, but what is open lets it through. Uncover, therefore, what is covered, and so the rain will do no harm. Rain presses down on what is covered, but what is open lets it through. Uncover, therefore, what is covered, and so the rain will do no harm. So trying to chase down the source of these words from Edward Konza, as best I can tell, I think it's, to me, beautiful and profound.

[14:37]

translation of an early Buddhist text that actually means something entirely different, maybe even the opposite. And I've been in this bind before, you know, that my favorite Buddhist quotes seem to be the apocryphal or outright mistranslation. But, you know, they last, these mistranslations. these creative, revelatory misunderstandings seem to last in the tradition. There's old ones and there's new ones because they carry some wisdom. So of all of the textually correct but not so inspiring things that I've read, there are these, I think, textually incorrect but deeply inspiring to me words of Edward Konza. Rain presses down on what is covered, but what is open lets it through.

[15:39]

Uncover, therefore, what is covered, and so the rain will do no harm. So the heart, you know, my heart, our hearts, perhaps, are clenched and under siege. Uncover, therefore, what is covered. Allow it in. and let the flower of the life force bloom in that opening, in that openness. So this pressing down, rain presses down on what is covered. That's like this feeling I call overwhelm. Feel it pressing and I try to push against, keep it out. Batten down the hatches, reinforce the timbers. Be strong, you know, but we're not strong enough. So, Tragically, since we can't keep it out but can't bear to let it in, the main tool we have left in our ordinary way of being is to collapse and to turn away.

[16:44]

So that's what we do and that's what we see one another do. We see our society do. We can't keep it out but we can't bear to let it in. So we close our eyes and turn away. We turn away by denying the the catastrophic climate crisis. Or we turn away by declaring that it's game over on climate and throwing in the towel. Or we turn away by imagining that COVID is almost over. We'll be back to normal soon, guys. It's all going to be okay. Or we turn away by imagining that COVID will never be over. It will always be like this. We'll never hug our friends again. the different flavors of this same turning away. And we turn away by denying racial injustice and oppression. This present living legacy of slavery and indigenous genocide, the systemic racism in our institutions.

[17:49]

What systemic racism? Or we turn away by retreating to hating and blaming someone else, some others whose fault it really is, And we just need to destroy these flavors of turning away. And I wonder how it is for you. What in your life, what in your heart do you turn away from? And what is your flavor of turning away? And then how does it feel when you can let it in, let in this unbearable thing? How does that feel when we can stay with that, stay with the trouble? So I feel that that's what's at stake. That's the point of this Kshantiparamita. Can we cultivate some capacity that allows us to not turn away from a world that really needs us to not turn away from suffering beings who need us to not turn away?

[18:57]

The rain presses down on what is covered, but what is open lets it through. Uncover, therefore, what is covered, and so the rain will do no harm. When we open, there is capacity. There's great capacity because there's no holding. When we open, the rain will do no harm. If there's no roof, the rain won't break the roof. So if you take the image too literally, of course, then unfortunately it's not really true. And a lot of, you know, our religious images, a lot of the images of our practice have this problem of just not really being true if we take them too literally. The rain can do great harm, roof or not.

[20:02]

So I feel those in Louisiana and Texas praying for us here in our time of great fire. And so we pray for them in their time of great floods. We know the rain can do great harm. And architecturally speaking, a good roof is generally better than no roof. So practically speaking, practicing vulnerability I think that's what I'm talking about at its core, is this practice, this healing, vital practice of vulnerability. And yet, practically speaking, practicing vulnerability is not always, outwardly especially, practicing vulnerability is not always safe or wise. And we need to hold and practice with these images without taking them too literally. holding them in a way where they lose their truth, their life.

[21:11]

So the men in the Buddha Dharma Sangha at San Quentin have helped me come to appreciate both sides of this vulnerability, uncover what is covered, and then there's no harm. As over the years I've witnessed some of them practice fearless, life-saving, life reclaiming vulnerability I say fearless you know but what's inspiring isn't fearlessness it's the courage in fear so this courageous vulnerability I think of a Dharma brother inside who always sat Zazen with his back to the door he picked the seat so that his back would be to the open door And he shared with us that this doing so as a practice was working against his conscious, deliberate working against this lifelong training of always sitting defended. Sit with your back to the corner and the car parked facing out.

[22:17]

So just expressing in that small embodied way the call to vulnerability after deep conditioning in postures of self-protection. taking his life back, his heart back in that way. And then also hearing them, even the same Dharma brothers, share their struggles as they care for themselves in spaces that aren't as safe as the chapel room might be. Where the vulnerability, if there will be vulnerability, must be a vulnerability of the heart, a deep vulnerability, but maybe not a shallow vulnerability. Sometimes it's not right to sit with your back to the door. But I think from the point of view of the Dharma, it's always right to let your soft, open heart receive itself. It's sometimes out of reach, but it's never incorrect.

[23:21]

So that's the spirit, that's the level of our life that I'm talking about, that we're talking about when we talk about uncovering, letting it all in. So I don't have the idea or offer a teaching that outer vulnerability is always correct. Likewise, the house that I live in now has a roof. I'm really grateful for it and I hope that it holds. And I do have the idea and humbly and with all respect share with you today that there's a deep meaning and deep opportunity for all of us in opening, allowing it all in. Even if it has to be just in a deep and even secret sense, our practice is about opening, uncovering, allowing in.

[24:25]

So in the Buddha Dharma, it's taught and confirmed by our deep experience that we are better off vulnerable. Even if society tells us otherwise, and even if sometimes it hurts, we're better off. During the great koan, our ancestor Yunnan says, a body exposed in the golden wind. The body exposed in the golden wind. It's an image of free and open and exposed, completely vulnerable. So the monk asks, how is it when the tree withers and the leaves fall? And when the last leaf has fallen, what then? When the last leaf has burned off, what then?

[25:29]

And Yin Man says, the body exposed in the golden wind. Or another translation says, autumn's body exposed. Body exposed in the golden wind, body exposed in the autumn wind, and autumn's body exposed. This is one and the same. This body, not bracing against the wind, this body exposed in the autumn wind is... Autumn's body exposed. Right then and there, you know, when we stop protecting. Exposed the body in the autumn wind. The body is autumn exposed. So this is the basic spiritual attitude of our practice.

[26:32]

And unfortunately, it's easy to misunderstand. Please, if you're feeling tempted to misunderstand, please resist the temptation to misunderstand. This has nothing to do with being a pushover. It has nothing to do with pretending to not exist. It's just this teaching of the body exposed to the autumn wind. Autumn's body exposed. So Suzuki Roshi shows and shares the same practice, makes the same point in a short teaching from 1970, 50 years ago. There's a little bit of video of it, and I showed this short clip in my last talk, and I so love it, and I wanted to show it again today. Those of you who have seen it before, I may not regret hearing his words and feeling his presence again. So this is Suzuki Roshi giving a little example of how we might allow something in that we're trying to keep out and what happens when we do.

[27:43]

And it's a small example, you might even say a trifling example in light of the great pressures we face. But it's a small example that offers a deep insight, a way of practice that we can carry forward, that we can live out as we meet the big examples. So we'll see if this works. My friends here on the Zoom can please help if it doesn't. Let's see. maybe you see Suzuki Roshi if you think when you are reading something if you think bird is there you know blue jet is over my roof blue jet is singing but their voice is not so good

[29:01]

When you think in that way, that is noise. When you are not disturbed by the blue jade, the blue jade will come right into your heart, and you will be a blue jade, and blue jade will be leading something. Then the blue jade doesn't disturb your reading. Because you think bullshit is there. Bullshit should not be over my... When you think in that way, that is more primitive understanding of being. Why we understand things in that way is because of want of practice.

[30:03]

When you practice just and more, you can accept things as your own, whatever it is. Did that come through? Maybe even right into your heart as your own. So when we allow in what's outside, we transform. We see we can receive it. We can accept it as our own rather than as something impinging from outside. It is our own life. It's not something to hold at arm's length.

[31:12]

It is in us. It is us. A body exposed to the autumn wind. And it is autumn's body, open to the blue jay. The blue jay is reading. It's the blue jay using our eyes. So this thing that we're holding at bay is just our own true life already. It's not outside our life. We can accept it as our own. Let it right into our heart. So I've been endeavoring to practice that as I feel these surges of overwhelm and collapse, trying to name that, see what I'm holding out, and let it in.

[32:18]

And of course it may be easier with Autumn breezes. Maybe 32 AQI autumn breezes sound pretty nice right now. Squawking blue jay even. So maybe it's easier with birds and breezes. But it does work also. It holds. It is sound. The principle holds too of smoke, of painful feelings, of the great suffering and cruelty in the world. So we start with birds and breezes. We don't end there. We can hold all of this. This is our Buddha nature, our vast, deep Buddha nature can hold all of this. So how do we let it in? Dare we let it in? One of our incarcerated Sangha members wrote to share with us the image of of a bowl he was crafting.

[33:29]

He was crafting in his heart a bowl for each of the tragedies in our world and in his life that he noticed he was not letting in. I'm going to make a bowl for each one so I can bring it into my heart and be with it. Let it in. Uncover, therefore, what is covered, and so the rain can do no harm. Rain also sounds really nice right now. But, you know, imagine, imagine with me the rain pelting down and we hear in this Kshantiparamita this call to walk free and naked in this rain.

[34:32]

In our heart at least, perhaps. Sometimes, you know, the rain suit is not helping you. It's damp and sticky. Maybe some of this protective gear can be shed in this rain and our skin is okay. It can be wet. It has that capacity. We can let in what we're holding out. And when we do so, you know, I hate to say it, but we become one with the blue jay, one with the rain. one with the autumn. So to practice in this way is to receive and transform. These are the words that Thich Nhat Hanh uses when he talks about the same practice. He says this is the practice of receiving and transforming. When we open to something, we can receive it, not just to be stuck with it, but to transform it.

[35:37]

We don't just open to something and are then at its mercy. We open to something as our response, as the basis of our response. And in that opening, it's transformed. We're transformed with it. So here's a metaphor that Thich Nhat Hanh uses and that I shared the other day and I continue to turn and wanted to share again. He says... if you take a handful of salt and pour it into a small bowl of water, the water in the bowl will be too salty to drink. If you take a handful of salt and pour it into a small bowl of water, the water in the bowl will be too salty to drink. So of course, if you're offering some water to someone,

[36:41]

in a bowl, a small bowl, and then someone wants to dump a handful of salt in, you will be very worried. But I need to offer this water, and if the salt comes in, it will not be drinkable. But if you pour, Thich Nhat Hanh continues, but if you pour the same amount of salt into a large river, people will still be able to drink the river's water because of its immensity. The river has the capacity to receive and transform. So the bull, you know, is afraid of that handful of salt. The bull can't allow it because then how will it nourish? The river does not need to resist in the same way. And of course the rivers meet their capacity eventually. We're finding that painfully true. And yet the image holds. Because of its immensity, the river doesn't need to reject this handful of salt.

[37:42]

It can receive and transform. It can still nourish beings. So what if we could grow the capacity of the receptacle instead of just making sure no salt comes in? What if we can grow the capacity of the receptacle to receive it? What if the bowl that is our capacity could become a creek or a stream or a great river. That we could absorb this and still nourish. And that's what this practice of opening to things is for. It's this practice of gradually, slowly, persistently widening this space, this receptacle. And part of Part of what's beautiful to me about the river image is that the river also is flowing on.

[38:43]

So again, letting in is not holding in. And part of our fear of letting in is a misunderstanding of letting it in and holding it in. The river's not holding it in. Constant new streams of water, new moment, opening, receiving. Exhaling completely. All the leaves dropped off in this long exhalation. And body exposed in the golden wind. So I just wanted this morning to recommend and share and invite and encourage this practice of welcoming what you are right now holding at bay.

[39:48]

So we notice what we're trying to keep out. And sometimes it's just one part of ourself trying to keep out another. We might feel it in our body, embraced and protected against the world. We don't need to judge this. This is totally beyond right and wrong and good and bad. We don't need to reject or justify this posture if we're taking it, but we notice it, we notice how it feels. We can allow this thought, I would like to practice with this. I'd like to see if this squawking blue jay, or its incomparably more awful cousins, you know, can come into our heart. And then, You know, if we can stop fighting and holding and getting exhausted, but let it into our heart and then see what response comes from that. We may find, you know, you may find that there's more room than you knew.

[40:56]

There's more room than we know. There is in each of us, this is the Buddha's teaching, there is in each of us a great depth of water. a great capacity to receive that we hadn't fully realized. It's our Buddha nature. All of this room to receive and transform great suffering. I can leave it there. But maybe I'll, if I may, and it's hard to feel your presence here on this Zoom, but maybe one more, one more caution before we close.

[42:05]

There's a risk. I'd like to share a great risk of practicing intimacy with our suffering, really, intimacy with our overwhelm, feeling in humility and invulnerability our struggle and our limited capacity to meet the depths of our own and the world's suffering, to meet our deep propensity to turn away, as becoming intimate with this creates a serious risk of stumbling upon great compassion. you may accidentally come across great compassion for others, like genuine compassion for all living beings, which is a terrifying thought and a queasy feeling and maybe profoundly destabilizing even. So, you know, do this practice at your own peril. This happened to me the other day. It's just a glimpse.

[43:14]

Don't worry. I'm trying to shake it, you know, this glimpse of genuine universal compassion for all living beings based on my own intimacy with my struggle and overwhelm. Great compassion for all living beings. Maybe disorienting. allowing in this disturbance, allowing in not just the Blue Jay, but other suffering people as our own, as our own life, letting everyone, letting them all into our heart and sharing our life with them, opening to the fact that we are already sharing our life with them. They are already our actual life. It's a terrible truth. It's a heart-opening truth, you know, that we are each other's life. The Blue Jay is reading.

[44:16]

No one is left out of this great compassion that we might stumble upon. This doesn't at all mean that we'll come to like and appreciate everyone. Another phrase etched into my mind is a famous line of Dr. King. I'm so happy Jesus didn't say, like your enemies. I find it pretty difficult to like some people. I'm so happy Jesus didn't say, like your enemies. You know, this great compassion we stumble into through this practice may not be affection or appreciation. Dr. King calls this, you know, conflation of liking and loving, affection, emotional bosh, and great compassion. It's ludicrous, he says, slams it. This idea that he would or should like or feel anything sentimental or affectionate for the people trying day and night to destroy him, to bomb his home and threaten his children and block any progress towards justice.

[45:30]

He does not like these people. They do not deserve our affection. But great compassion, includes them totally. So as we practice letting the world in, we might find ourselves in this neighborhood of great compassion. So you might watch out for that. Open to that too, you know? Traditionally, when we, Ikshanti Paramita is tolerance, capacity, spaciousness, ability to be with suffering, and also ability, in the deepest sense, ability to be with the profoundly disturbing truth of how interdependent we are, how profoundly we are each other's life.

[46:34]

The old tradition says this. This is going to be hard. See if you can let even this in. We are one life. You are my life. I am your life. I am you in your shoes. You are me in my shoes. Rain presses down on what is covered, but what is open lets it through. Uncover, therefore, what is covered, and so the rain will do no harm. Just let that awful squawking blue jay into your heart, even just for one moment. So thank you for your kind attention this morning. Our practice here together embodied, each of us embodied in our place, even across our distance.

[47:43]

May our practice together here be of benefit to all of us and to others. We collect the great fruit of all of this shared practice and we offer it out. We hand it over to others. May all beings be free and safe from harm. So we offer our practice in this way. Thank you again. 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. For more information, please visit sfcc.org and click Giving. May we all fully enjoy the Dharma.

[48:34]

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