Good evening. Can you hear me okay? Great. Thank you. I just want to scroll through and really say hello to everybody who's here by just a minute. I'd first like to thank my teacher, Paul Haller, my parents, and all of the many beings and bodhisattvas all who've helped me in my life.

[01:09]

I'd also like to say that today the shootings in Atlanta and Boulder are very much with me and that I hold the lives of these 20 people in my heart as I'm speaking to you. One week ago today I came out of quarantine and I was handed a baby. I was standing in the courtyard shade at lunchtime with people about and I felt the weight of an infant 10 weeks old or so on my shoulder. And the soft, warm skin of this little being was under my hand. I could feel the bones of the rib cage and the lungs and the heart just sitting right here in my hand.

[02:18]

This infant... is only just able to lift their head. And they were looking up at the light shining through the leaves of the Chinese maple tree. We have this splendid tree in the courtyard here at 300 Page. And this infant was held completely and absorbed attention, watching the light shining through these leaves. And standing there with the sound of voices and this baby in my arms, I thought to myself that, This boat is completely full of the moonlight. There was such love and peace in that moment and the magnitude of all of it. We honor moments such as these as our Zen form of mysticism, if we use that word. The completeness and the wonderment of our interbeing.

[03:23]

The ones that stand out in my memory are those that seem to come from nowhere, the entire universe suddenly opening in magnitude. And the magnitude of it is the thing, the all-inclusivity, a scale that is beyond imagining. Events such as these can inspire a trust and confidence in the well-being of ourselves and the universe. Childhood memories can affirm to us that we are made of this. The magnitude of interbeing is us, so palpable, and at the same time abstract, greater than any intimacy that the self could grasp. These kinds of experiences brought me to a religious practice that holds direct experience at its center. While such events may have led us to practice, by establishing a certain trust in it, It's also true that for most of us, this is not the whole story.

[04:24]

There are other mystical experiences that don't have the same quality of mind-blowing awe and delight, and that arise from our suffering. Here's a story from A. Hei Dogen's One Bright Pearl that illustrates this point. Xuanzhua, great master of Zhongyi of Mount Xuanzha of the Saha world, used to be called Shibei. When he was a householder, he loved fishing and boating in the Nantai River, doing as fishermen do. One day, a golden fish came to him without his seeking it, and he suddenly had the urge to leave the dusty world. So he gave up his boat and went into the mountains. Then he went to Mount Xuefeng and studied with Xuefeng, great master Zen Chao, endeavoring the way day and night. One day, as he was leaving the mountain with his traveling bag to go to other monasteries to further his study, his toe hit a rock and began to bleed.

[05:32]

In sharp pain, he suddenly had a realization and said to himself, If my body doesn't exist, where does this pain come from? So he went back to see Zhe Fung. Zhe Fung said, What's happening, said Iqbe? Zwang Sha said, No one can be fooled. Zhe Fung loved his words and said, Who doesn't know these words, yet who else could say them? The leaping golden fish has such an exuberant buoyancy, powerful enough to inspire the urge to leave the dusty world. Leaving to further his study, the dusty world returns, full of stones and stubbing his toe on a rock. It's a stumble, a fall, a complete lack of composure. No one can be fooled. This is the gritty side of Zen. The more you study, the more you see.

[06:37]

In my early years of Zen practice, there were two experiences that were described that had completely different values, and both were treated with a kind of hush. The first was having an opening experience, which really counted, really meant something. The other was falling into the well. The quality of hush around falling into the well was a little different. It had the feeling of so-and-so fell into the well. A metaphor that we would use instead of saying what actually happened. The first is in relation to the absolute and the second the relative. Someone who's fallen into the well has a mark upon them. That's how it's felt when it's spoken. But for me, falling into the well goes more like this. My heart is broken again, and stumbling along in the darkness of my own misery, I fall into the bottom of a well.

[07:52]

It's my first time falling into the well. Previously in my whole life, I've fallen, and I've been able to spring back up again, brushing myself off with the words, I'm fine. But this time I'm down in the bottom of the well. Looking up through the long, dark tunnel of the well, I'm very alone and I'm feeling that isolation. I can see the full moon above and drowning in my despair. I cry out that I'm not strong enough, not big enough to live my own life. The entire world is too big for me and I just can't find my place in it anymore. And so there I sit, howling at the moon. We just came out of a study and during one of the Dharma talks with Norman and Kathy Fisher, Norman Fisher gave a talk and he stated in that talk that if you're thinking you're not big enough, feeling that some form of completeness is too far away from you, it's a form of arrogance.

[08:58]

I believe this is true. But what I understand from falling into the well is that I was living my life in a world of plans and disappointments, picking myself up by my own bootstraps and making my way in the world with pride in my own agency, moving from one small accomplishment to the next, and that ensuring up these foundations of respect, I had lost sight of my true dignity in the world. The destructive arrogance here is to be trapped in a sense of self that's built from its own agency and unable to see the karmic dynamics that have shaped its functioning. Sitting at the bottom of the well, there's an understanding of the dissociation, the separation that this has meant for you in your life. You only understand this dissociation because you're in it and it has bound you. You are no longer fooled. The well may feel like an environmental failure, but at the same time, you understand that there is a hole in the universe that you have built for yourself.

[10:04]

This was the person who first arrived to the cushion, as though walking in a tunnel. In Zazen, I didn't have to understand or explain my feelings. I sat in silence and I cried for six months, so grateful for the teacher and the community who knew not to interfere. Sitting in Zazen, something was being undone in me. We speak of just sitting or doing nothing, and it can sound trite at times. But to stop doing and to be is to be in contact with what is beyond all human agency and it liberates us from our karmic life. In sitting Zazen, howling at the moon shifted. It wasn't that grieving was going away. It was actually becoming larger and more tender. Sorrow had a magnitude and it was joined with a sweetness, a great love.

[11:14]

Down in that well, the light of the moon is there as it is anywhere else. Water is there to nourish and tears will fall from heaven. A more traditional story of falling into the well is referred to by Dogen, who refers to it as the story of Indra taking an animal as a teacher. In this story, a wild fox has been chased by a lion and falls into a well. After three days, the fox says in verse, due to misfortune, I suffer today and I'm about to die inside this well. All things are impermanent. It would have been better if I had been eaten by the lion. I take refuge in the Buddhas of the Ten Directions. Please know that my mind is selfless and pure. Indra was shocked by the call of the fox chanting the Buddha's names, and she felt her own lack. And so Indra flew down into the well from the heavens to talk with the fox.

[12:19]

The fox was struggling to get out of the well, and Indra said to him, Where are your skillful means? I see a fox, but you must be a bodhisattva. Please expound the dharma. The fox looked up and replied, You are the king of divas, but the Dharma teacher is down here and you are up there. You ask for Dharma without expressing respect. Why do you regard yourself as higher? All of the divas upon hearing this in the whole entire universe burst into laughter. And Indra turned to them and said, this is no surprise. I have been stubborn and without virtue. I need to ask about the Dharma. She put down her celestial robe, picked up the fox, and got him out. In this story, the fox wishes that he had given his body to the lion. It is not, woe is me, if only I had given my body to the lion, I wouldn't be down there in the well.

[13:26]

That's in the world that thrives on agency and calculations, anger and confusion, environmental failures and blaming circumstances. Rather, the lion represents impermanence and in seeing the great magnitude of emptiness within himself, the fox now understand that this well he has fallen into is his own ego and it is a trap. The Phakso can also see that there's no separation between himself and the moon and tells the moon, Indra, to get off her high horse. All the divas in the universe laugh at this, but Indra turns to them and says, this is no surprise. I've been stubborn and I have to ask about the Dharma. No one can be fooled. Who doesn't know these words, yet who else can say them? And so the light of the moon reaches down into the bottom of the well. I hear in this story a calling, a summoning, a calling in.

[14:30]

Isolation becomes a joining into the universe of our common suffering and grieving with a great compassion and reaches back for thousands of years. I'm putting words to a feeling and it has everything to do with magnitude. I can carry the sense of this forward. with a parable from the 13th century Sri Lanka, the same time that Dogen was writing. This is a story about the animosity between co-wives and what it conveys is more valuable than the discomfort I feel in the marriage arrangement. A wife is barren and wishing to have some control over her own future, selects a co-wife to be her subordinate. Yet should the wife bear a child, she would pose a threat. And so the barren wife poisons the food of the second wife, causing her to lose her first child, her second child, and then a third.

[15:32]

Learning of the barren wife's poisonings, the second wife swears revenge. In her next life, the second wife was born as a cat and the barren wife was born as a hen. When the hen laid her eggs three times in succession, the cat ate them up. The hen then vowed revenge and was born as a tigress while the cat was born as a deer. Three times the tiger ate the deer's offspring and so the deer vowed revenge. The deer was then reborn as an ogre and the tigress was born as a woman and became pregnant. She went to her mother's house for safety and bore a daughter. But when the woman was returning home with her child, the ogre saw her and lunged for the baby to eat it. The woman picked up her child and ran into the Buddha's temple, and the Buddha invited her in. The Buddha preached a sermon to the ogres.

[16:36]

Hatred that burns on the fuels of justifications must be quenched with the water of compassion, not fed with the firewood of reasons and causes. He then asked the woman to give the baby to the ogre to hold. The woman was terrified to give this ogre her baby, but the Buddha calmed her fears. When the woman handed her child to the ogre, the ogre hugged and caressed the child and was overcome by tears and wept. There's such a cascade of karmic suffering in this story of intergenerational trauma. The cascade of... lives is such that we no longer know who is who, good and bad, the difference between the victim and the perpetrator.

[17:46]

In place of keeping any count, there's something like a moral conscience that reaches far beyond good and evil in its magnitude. Similar to what I see in the story of the fox and the well is that shifting from howling at the moon to a calling into oneself. The deep wounds of environmental failure are healed by the coming together of Indra and the fox. Indra lays down her celestial robes and comes down to learn from an animal and in simple gesture of generosity and caring for life breaks through generations of karma. These are the tears of heaven. The shootings in these past few days have been painful and are so loaded with trauma that it needs to be spoken.

[18:51]

I can see in the lives of Robert Aaron Long and Ahmad Al-Ailawi Lisa, just the teeny bit that we know, which is hardly anything at all. that there have been generations of trauma leading up to this violence. And in Thomas Hubel's words, enduring and implicit effects of trauma across individuals generate a vibration of suffering within a culture. This tapestry becomes a wave field of collective trauma, and every human culture expresses pockets of generational trauma. Within these pockets, the culture unconsciously expresses the trapped memories and sensations of its common past. How do we not feel paralyzed by the magnitude of it?

[19:54]

Such a question is howling at the moon. The well is also a place to gather and I've been drinking from it and learning from others who've been there. Here's Resmaa Menachem. For America to outgrow the bondage of white body supremacy, white Americans need to imagine themselves in black bodies and experience what those bodies had to endure. They also need to do the same with the bodies of their own white ancestors. And they need to ask themselves this question. If we don't address our ancient historical trauma, what will we pass down to our children and to their children and grandchildren? Here's another story that I found to be helpful for me as a white person.

[21:03]

In the very first pages of her book, Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome, Joy De Grey describes children waiting in line with their mothers at the bank, The white child is running about as free as a bird. And when the black child wants to explore with her own curiosity, her mother gently scolds her and pulls her close. I've been in this exact same bank as a little white girl who is always free to roam. But I did not recognize this scene in its detail until as an adult, a black woman pointed it out to me. happy in my agency and free to roam, I was too innocent in my youth to be able to understand the true horrors that this detail now makes so vivid to me in its magnitude. In our child, both of us in that moment were already bound in the grips of intergenerational traumas.

[22:06]

Babies are little boats that are completely full of moonlight. They also come with oars and sails. To see a little one just able to raise its head, lying on its belly and arching its back, its two little fists held high in the effort to get off the floor, is to be amazed by the determination in our human agency, that internal drive, just to be able to stand and walk among us. We are wired in this way to walk together, to be in community. And it's also true that golden fish will jump into our boats and that we will step our toes. How is it that these things happen so deeply personally such that anyone can know it, but that it is rare to actually say? Like Indra, can we receive falling into the well as a gift?

[23:13]

and a teaching from an animal. with the true merit of Buddha's way. Beings are numberless, I vow to save them. Delusions are inexhaustible, I vow to end them. Dharma gates are boundless. I vow to enter them. Buddha's way is unsurpassable.

[24:17]

I vow to be coming. Thank you very much, Catherine, and thank you to the assembly. Just two brief announcements as we transition into some time for questions and answers. First, a reminder about the practice at San Francisco Zen Center during Q&A of Move Up and Move Back. It's an encouragement for full participation by everyone by taking note of who's speaking and who's not. And if you tend to move up, consider moving back and vice versa. Second, we're in the midst of a spring fundraiser known as the Zenathon. And I'll post a link in the chat. I want to encourage you to visit the website, read the stories from our friends, some from our teachers, some from our fellow practitioners, about the heartbeat of their practice, and contribute to the Zenathon on their page if you like.

[25:21]

You can also make your own page and become a fundraiser, and it's your generous support that allows SFCC to keep providing opportunities for practice and share these actually with people all over the world. So I'll paste that link and feel free to raise hands and then we can move into Q&A. Hello.

[27:04]

Hey, I can't see you. Hi. How about now? No. No. Let me go this. There you are. Hi. Hey there. Thank you so much for, yeah, your very moving words. a beautiful talk so you you invited me to reflect on how i can open up with compassion to myself in the midst of in the midst of my own suffering my own trauma my own pain I'm wondering how that process can be facilitated as a sangha that's going through its own pains and that is a place where these collective traumas arise.

[28:09]

How can we meet each other in the bottom of the well and come up together? Thank you. That's such a beautiful question, Kay. Thank you. Yeah. I think an important message in the story is that only you can know your own suffering deeply and that the human body is the vehicle for that. And so that there's a golden fish and a toe that is stubbed are events that are this one. And that feeling of separation and isolation when you're in the well is an important feeling. It's important.

[29:13]

So I trust that process. It's very strong. So my thoughts about this are, and I'm saying thoughts because I didn't use the word help because it's so much invested in a kind of agency that I'm interested in exploring that is actually being dropped. so that the magnitude of our compassion can arise from within our own bodies. I'm a little bit more comfortable with the word support. And I think that there's a somatic trust, that there's something in our bodies that can do that.

[30:21]

Does that make sense? So that's a piece of it. And that people feel in just the smallest gestures. I was handed a baby when I came out of quarantine. There can be such a release of generations of karma in those moments of interbeing and love and just... kindness sometimes, you know. I see Chris.

[31:25]

Hi, I'm Chris. And thank you so much for your talk tonight. It was great to hear. And thank you for... It was great to hear the reading of... I just recently read One Bright Pearl for the first time. And that story stuck with me as well. It's fascinating. I guess I also wanted to say thank you for... mentioning about the shootings. I have a close colleague that I've worked with for over 20 years. And she was in the supermarket just a couple hours before the shooting. She lives in Boulder. And I spent quite a bit of time talking with her about it since she's feeling she's suffering from quite a bit of PTSD reaction to the whole thing about having just been a few hours away from the shooting at its location. And And I guess one other thing that I... And thank you for what you had to say about all that. I mean, it felt like it gave some agency for what could be healing and what is healing.

[32:35]

And I guess the last thing I wanted to say is I just... In terms of like current events and that there's something today that happened that made me feel my heart full of a feeling of celebration and joy for the good things that can happen in our world. That Rachel Levine was... confirmed by the United States Senate as the first transgender person to ever be confirmed by the Senate to a federal office. And my son is transgender. And I just felt like, you know, things can get better. And today they did. So thank you. Thank you so much. Yes. Much joy. David. Hey, David. Catherine David yes I know hello that was so beautiful I was really just soaking it in it was like wow like your whole speech was really touching and it almost makes me although I appreciate the eloquence of your words and of this dialogue it's almost like it leaves me feeling like heartless almost because I lack such compassion

[33:52]

But not to point me like I'm ashamed. It's more just like, wow, like, okay. I'm trying to express something that's been on my mind since I've joined the Zen Center. I have come to appreciate this, maybe this flavor of Buddhism where I've been like, okay, I have finally learned how not to react the world like i finally learned this little secret of how to accept life on life's terms and like there's technique i've been like really just basking in where i'm not emotionally moved as much as i used to be like um you know on the ocean and and but then i see that there might be this might be a lacking practice where i'm not engaging in that compassion that I felt in observing you. So it was very beautiful to see that side of the coin. And it makes me reminisce on like my mom, who was always such a reactive kind of woman, so heartfelt, like just so loving, but it's almost like it was overwhelming for me when I was a child.

[35:05]

Like it was just too much reactivity. that I experienced in my youth and so I'm coming to the terms with this I'm like okay am I like bypassing emotionally like these traumatic things of the world am I not embracing it the way that I should and just feel the brunt of compassion and pain that the world is suffering right so this is like these are things that I'm mulling over right now as I hear you speak because it felt so authentic and and so beautiful, but there's this side of me that's like, I just don't want to react to these things. Like, I just, you know what I mean? Yeah, I do. I do know what you mean. Yeah, I think what you're saying is kind of at the, it's at the crux of it, right? You know, it's kind of our normal to howl at the moon. you know, to feel that gap, right? To feel that lack in ourselves. So this question, you know, of how do we, how could we ever respond to the magnitude of these events?

[36:12]

You know, we're just not big enough, right? Is howling at the moon or I don't have in me enough compassion is howling at the moon, but down there in the well, the moon is shining. And so my experience has been that just notice when you're feeling like you're howling at the moon. And a healthy reminder, really wonderful reminder. I just love this. When you feel the least bit of separation, just think to yourself, not to. And just that little phrase wells up in my heart somehow. Can you repeat that? When the least bit of doubt arises, just say to yourself, not to.

[37:15]

I remember that. Okay. Thanks. Thank you, David. We do have about five more minutes if there are more questions. Leslie. Leslie. Hi.

[38:18]

Thank you so much. A lot. I feel very much the same as David just said, taking that all in, the beauty of it. I guess My question might be similar to David's. Today at my work, somebody called out our company for being rightfully, somewhat inadvertently, the cause of great pain in terms of, well, it was a racist call out and not just, Sometimes when there's something that's so true and so hurtful, it doesn't feel like you can have enough compassion. And it's the same thing what some other people have said. There's not enough you can do. I want to give everything to everybody to try to equalize it. And there's not enough.

[39:19]

And yet here I am sitting in my nice house. There's just never enough you can do. I don't know what to do with that. Even if I have compassion, it doesn't feel... worth much because I'm not doing enough. I don't sometimes know what to do. Yeah. Yeah. Do you identify as a white person? When asked to fill out forms, yes. Yes. Okay. Yeah. I think there's a great responsibility in that. And just studying whiteness and learning from Black teachers is an amazing process. And looking, as Menachem said, at your own heritage very closely and really connecting with that at a somatic level. And there are helpful guides for this.

[40:22]

My Grandmother's Hands is the book that And that process is pretty powerful. So that's a place to start. I think that it does really start there. That's going deeply into the well and drinking from the water. And you can do that and you can grieve and trust that grief as your teacher. Could I ask one more? I have a sense that on this or on other issues around compassion that guilt could come in and that guilt almost eclipses and gets in the way of compassion. Does that make sense? Yeah, it does. My understanding of guilt is that it's very closely connected with shame in my body.

[41:28]

And if I explore my own feelings of shame, I'll understand and be able to relate to it a lot better. And that's helpful. Guilt is less helpful. So for myself, I kind of pick up what's underneath it. I think of guilt as like a secondary emotion and shame as a primary emotion. And yeah, yeah. Thank you very much. Yeah. On my clock, we have about one minute. Would you like to offer a closing word? Oh, gosh. I think to... Have trust in the process of grieving.

[42:33]

I feel that this is a time for that. Place your heart there. Thank you. Thank you so much. And thank you to the assembly. And you should be able to unmute now if you would like to. Thanks, Catherine. Thank you, Tim. Thanks. Thanks, everybody. Thank you. Thank you, Catherine. Thanks, Catherine. Bye-bye. Bye, Catherine. Bye-bye. Thanks, Catherine. Thank you, Catherine. Thank you, Sandra. Yes. Rick, yeah. David, thank you. Good night.

[43:46]

Good night, Nancy. Thank you so much.

[43:50]

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