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 to Zen Center on this last day of 2011. My name is Wendy Lewis. And today I wanted to continue a topic I've been addressing, which is wisdom and compassion and how they inform each other through what I call applied practice or ethics. So ethics, how we judge the world, see the world, and how that comes from... our own background and assumptions, can be addressed through the perspective of how we make our choices and how those directly affect us and the people who are close to us, and then how they also affect the world that is farther away from us.

[01:16]

And in the direct effect, we can see ourselves And others can see us on our daily level of human interaction and communication. And the wider view is, you know, it's less detectable. We care about the world and what's happening in it, but we mostly sort of are upset or excited, but we just kind of carry on living our lives in the usual way. And now here is one year ending and another beginning. And it's a time that just I naturally and maybe a lot of people just naturally think of as a time of reflection. Not just this last year, but the whole of my past and how have I lived my life and what does that mean about how I'm going to live my life.

[02:23]

from today or from this year into next year. And so we can think about the choices we've made and what our values are and why, where they come from. My guess is that some of you are here today looking for something like meaning and community. And I think Zen Center is is actually a unique example of community in the modern world. The residents in the wider Sangha come from a great variety of backgrounds and cultural experiences. On the other hand, I think Zen Center's overall value system could be described, and this is just descriptive, not judgmental, as middle-class American.

[03:25]

I mean, that's where our values kind of land. And because Zen Center as an American Zen Buddhist group is marginal, there's also a sort of a touch or an edge of liberalism about our perspective. And of course, the community is much more complex than that. but the values of American individualism and utilitarianism are shaping this community and defining our lifestyle and our preferences, our level of comfort, and this is both on a personal and a political level. And I think that... As a community, because we're all from various backgrounds, there is a tendency to value personal wealth and property and ambition, as well as valuing our commitment to Zen practice and to understanding Buddhism historically and how it's developing in our lives and in the world.

[04:57]

And really, how can we interpret Buddhism or Zen Buddhism in any way except from what we already know. So I'm addressing the middle class American liberal tradition because I believe that that is the main influence at Zen Center. But there are different cultural perspectives, I think, that can mesh with that tradition. So the label is not... an exclusive one, as it may sound, and in fact it may be very appealing to people. The influence on this talk is a book that I kept coming across in my research on faith and ethics. It's called Habits of the Heart, Individualism and Commitment in American Life. It was written by for sociologists and a person with a background in academic philosophy.

[06:05]

And the first half of the title is taken from Alex de Tocqueville's Democracy in America. And in that work, at times she refers to the mores of Americans as habits of the heart. So what mores are is they are basically Traditions that are considered to be of central importance that are accepted without question and embody the fundamental moral views of a group. So these habits are rich in custom and in history, and they can also be marked by a kind of complacency, not always historically accurate cultural arrogance, and anxiety or reluctance. to doubt them or question them. And as is true of most habits, it's hard to pinpoint them, to find them, to find their origin, to examine their effect on how we see ourselves and others.

[07:15]

In the preface to Habits of the Heart, the authors refer to what Tocqueville was the first to identify as American individualism. they call it. Individualism, the first language in which Americans tend to think about their lives, values independence and self-reliance above all else. Yet it provides little encouragement for nurturance, taking a sink or swim approach to moral development as well as to economic success. It admires toughness and strength and adulates winners while showing contempt for losers. Just about every movie you've ever seen can show you something about that. So the authors contest this perspective in terms of America's history, I mean future. Their sense is that community has been kind of undermined or the other thing that they think has happened is that there have become communities of similar interest.

[08:25]

retirement communities where people are all from the same basic sort of social and economic backgrounds, same values about success and that sort of thing. And so they contest this. Being an individual, being one's own person, does not entail escaping our ties to others. And real freedom lies not in rejecting our social nature, but in fulfilling it in a critical and adult loyalty. as we acknowledge our common responsibility to contribute to the wider fellowship of life. American individualism resists more adult virtues, such as care and generativity, let alone wisdom, because the struggle for independence is all-consuming. Now, of course, there's no reason you should agree with these authors, but I found a lot of what they were describing... and their concern about it, their heartfelt concern to resonate with some of my own concerns and my own questions about how I live my life or how I'm seen to live my life and how that affects my relationships, particularly in community, where we look like we're one thing, but we're actually looking at things from different perspectives.

[09:50]

And one of the areas in which individualism as a kind of traditional habit can be seen and examined is in our relationship to authority, both in our presumption of it and in our resentment of it, and of course our appreciation of it. I didn't think of that. So in a close community, how is authority earned? and experienced, how is it given, how is it taken, and is it respected or is it not? Authority figures sometimes have a tendency to push boundaries and other times to promote those who are like them, you know, people who have the same goals or visions. That's very natural, I'm not complaining, but it's just something to look at. In whom are we putting our authority, and how do we see our own authority in that context?

[10:56]

In early Buddhist communities, the authority was considered to be seniority. So you had relative authority by the date of your ordination. Now, that doesn't really seem exactly fair or accurate, but how do we determine who has authority? What does that mean in a person with authority's relationship to someone who is less senior? How do we look at that? So our usual preference for our authority figures is that they promote what we believe in and that they promote us. We want to be seen by an authority figure as a person of value and... someone who should be recognized. And so this naturally involves a certain amount of flattery, you know, and favoritism.

[12:00]

And this is confusing. You know, who's in favor, who is not, who's appreciative? I mean, it's very natural. And I think it's actually part of the vitality of the community. I think it's important to recognize it, but it's also part of the vitality. So, For a community that we want to be part of and that, for instance, the Zen Center community, which is based in these sort of ethical perspectives that arise out of wisdom and compassion, this is all very complicated. Our habits of the heart and how they come into play are hard to discern in our society. decisions about how we shape our community in a way that's both viable and inclusive. There were two people who separately told me about how a group that is pretty fairly representative of Zen Center together took this, did this survey thing, I'm not exactly how the system works, but it's the Myers-Briggs system.

[13:17]

And it turned out that the majority of the people in the group were of a particular kind, type in this system. And what was interesting is that one of the people who told me about it, who was part of that group, was very proud. And the person who was not part of that group was very anxious. And I thought, isn't it interesting, you know, we have these systems of determining... how we're similar to each other, what we have in common, and the bond that that creates. And then what does it exclude? What does it sort of take away from our sort of sense of ourselves? So I think actually one of the ways we avoid examining our habits is to remain within a context that affirms them.

[14:17]

And it's when we meet people who are different from us without trying to convince them to be like us or to take on our preferences and assumptions that we can actually engage in conversations where we can see our habits more clearly and how they're limited, how they're also very generous. And this, I think, allows those habits to develop toward more conscious and mature forms. In Habits of the Heart, my theme for today, the authors write, the people who led us into their homes and talked to us so freely during the course of our study are very much a part of the authorship of this book. Their words appear in almost every chapter. They made us think things we never thought before.

[15:21]

And it occurred to me that to think things we never thought before is how we develop our moral perspectives and our creative critical thinking, which allows us to... Look at criticism and criticize the criticism so that our minds and our hearts remain flexible and available. In Bhikkhu Nanamoli's Life of the Buddha, according to the Pali Canon, there's a conversation that he has with his son Rahula, who has joined the community. The Buddha asked... What do you think a looking glass is for, Rahula? To look at oneself in, Lord. In just the same way, you should keep on looking at your acts of body, acts of speech, and acts of mind. The Buddha then went on to give him detailed instructions how to review every action before, during, and after its performance.

[16:28]

Now, this is a wisdom practice, and it's difficult. But a value of community, and something we also struggle with, is that we're always looking at ourselves and being shown ourselves in mirrors. And this is sometimes in affirmation, sometimes in judgment, sometimes in appreciation, sometimes in confusion and uncertainty. But that variety and complexity of the mirrors which we meet and the mirrors which we provide for others I think allows us to look at ourselves more attentively and even to develop a kind of confident humility and gratitude to each other. The basic wisdom practice that we do together is silent meditation.

[17:30]

That is where we're all... connected to each other in this mysterious way because in a sense we're all doing the same thing and none of us is doing the same thing. But that's its strength and its value. So we're not, the point is not that we're trying to sort of develop a superiority to others by being more compassionate and more wise or anything like that. But really, it's a matter of becoming capable of loving and being loved by each other. Love and community can be expressed in very simple ways that indicate our sort of mutual interdependence or mutual dependence. And I sometimes think our most compassionate acts are things like...

[18:33]

replacing the toilet paper and the paper towels, sponging off the counters in the community kitchen, and just tidying after ourselves a little bit more than we have actually sort of created. These small things can give us a moment of kind of satisfaction, a sense of giving in the smallest way to each other, but they also relieve the anxiety of the person who comes after us. And that's a very generous thing as well. These simple, very simple things. And at the same time, if we don't expect others to do those things for us, I think we begin to deepen our wisdom practice. That's the core of Buddhism and not just our compassion. We see, you know, the... Our relationship is not like, I do this, therefore I'm good.

[19:36]

The other person didn't do this, therefore they're bad practitioners. But how intricate it all is. How simple. At this time of year, the ginkgo trees, the leaves turn bright golden and fall. And then the branches are bare. And at the same time as that's happening, the magnolian trees, the buds on the magnolian trees are getting larger and larger, and all that's going to happen is first the flowers bloom. So those kind of things may not be so interesting or important to us urbanites, but in a way they can... remind us of the cycles of which we're apart. Reality is turning and turning and turning.

[20:40]

And it's never completely new because the ginkgo trees will turn golden and fall. The buds on the magnolia will swell and blossom. And yet each year there's something unique about it. You see it as a different person. The The leaves are stronger on one part of the tree than the other. They turn yellow at different rates. And so that uniqueness is worthy of our attention. And in Habits of the Heart, they refer to turning as conversion. Health kings turn and turn. We can formulate the need for a fundamental reorientation toward community and solidarity as a kind of conversion, a turning of consciousness and intention. An idea of turning away from preoccupation with the self and toward some larger identity is characteristic of most of the great religions and philosophies.

[21:52]

Conversion in Buddhism is referred to in terms of enlightenment or realization. the wheel of the Dharma turns, and we turn it, and we're turned by it. And some of us may be uncomfortable with defining or thinking of Zen Buddhism as a religion, or Zen Center as a religious institution or community, but perhaps we can apply our creative, critical thinking to the definitions of religion that we reject. consider what values can be discovered or rediscovered beyond that discomfort. At the end of Habits of the Heart, they actually have as an example a Zen student. And here's what they say. What he found is that the meaning of life is not to be discovered in manipulative control in the service of the self.

[22:56]

Rather, Through the disciplined practices of a religious way of life, the student found his self more grasped than grasping. It is not surprising that self-realization in this case has occurred in the context of a second language, the elusive language of Zen Buddhism, and a community that attempts to put that language into practice. So, in order for a community... to maintain its vitality and to be able to provide these mirrors for each other. It needs to include, I think, in a positive way, a diversity of people and types of people. We may be from similar backgrounds but have different perspectives on how we want the world to be and how we interpret the world to be. So it's not... It's not simply cultural, it's even sort of subcultural differences.

[24:00]

So the way this happens doesn't necessarily have to be efficient, and it probably shouldn't be efficient, but instead it can maintain this kind of long view of past, present, and future. Now our perspective for the sake of financial viability of Zen Centers so that it can continue as a community and as a place where people can come to understand and express themselves may have to remain in the context of a middle class American system of values. But I think there can also be an acknowledgement of the moral sense of the fact that there are real cultural differences among us, that we do not all want the same thing, and that is not a moral defect to find other things in life of interest besides consuming ambition.

[25:08]

And, you know, it's not quite consuming ambition to want Zen Center to survive, but there's an internal richness or necessity for depth that I think has to also be there. And it may not be financially rewarding to us. And that has to be part of the whole thing. I think those who historically and contemporarily pursue a religious vocation, and I'm comfortable with that language, often struggle with a perception of themselves as being impractical and lacking ambition. and being unable to take risks that would result in some sort of financial comfort or security. And at the same time, that kind of impracticality has its own freedom.

[26:11]

It's a very practical form of freedom from gathering possessions and money in a way that is harmful to others. So I think ambitious plans are necessary, and resistance to ambition is also necessary for a community to be strong. And if we include both, we allow both to have this conversation so that they can both learn the maturity Mature ambition and mature ambitionlessness. Part of why I've been thinking about a lot of this, too, is because next year, Zen Center is celebrating its 50th anniversary of becoming a legally nonprofit organization.

[27:14]

So... these times of transition or times like this turning of the year are times when we consider our past and the possibilities for the future. And I think in terms of Zen Center, even the person today who just walked in the door, as well as the person who's been here for years, has a lot to offer. to considering Zen Center's past, present, and future. Who do we serve? What are the needs? What are the criticisms? Can they be accommodated? Maybe not. So these moments of reflection include regrets and pride, but I think they're also moments of hope. It's when wisdom and compassion can meet in a sense of resolution and celebration.

[28:22]

And usually hope for our near future and our far future includes a lot more than will actually happen or be accomplished. And our expectations. a lot of them will probably not be met or not in the way we imagined them when we had those hopes. But when we know that, I think that the hopes and resolutions we actually make can be more reasonable and less selfish and self-serving. Hope can become the way that we identify our own good with the common good. And that's what community is. So, thank you very much and I wish you a very happy new year. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center.

[29:34]

Our Dharma talks are offered at no cost and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[29:54]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_97.96