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. 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. 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.

[01:20]

And the soft, warm skin of this little being was under my hand. the bones of the rib cage and the lungs and the heart just sitting right here in my hand. 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.

[02:26]

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. 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.

[03:32]

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. 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. Heidogen'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.

[04:40]

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. 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 Zhui Feng. Zhui Feng said, What's happening, said Iqbe? Zhuang Xia said, No one can be fooled. Zhui Feng 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 further into study, the dusty world returns, full of stones and stubbing his toe on a rock.

[05:44]

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. 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. 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.

[06:49]

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. 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.

[07:50]

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. 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 in shoring 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.

[08:56]

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. 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.

[10:02]

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 its sweetness, a great love. 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.

[11:03]

After three days, the fox says in verse, Due to misfortune, I suffer today and am 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. 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?

[12:06]

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. 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 understands that this well he has fallen into is his own ego, and it is a trap.

[13:12]

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. Isolation becomes a joining into the universe of our common suffering and grieving with a great compassion that 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.

[14:16]

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. 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.

[15:20]

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. 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.

[16:24]

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. 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.

[17:34]

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. 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.

[18:40]

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 karma past. How do we not feel paralyzed by the magnitude of it? 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 is 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.

[19:53]

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. In the very first pages of her book, Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome, Joy DeGray 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.

[20:55]

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. 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.

[22:02]

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? and a teaching from an animal. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. 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.

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