So, welcome to Beginner's Mind Temple, and thank you for coming out on a blustery night. And those of you who are here in the Zendo, and thank you for those who are participating from your homes as well. My name is Tova Green. I use she, her pronouns, and I'm a resident priest here at City Center, co-leading this fall practice period with our head of practice, Tanto, Timothy Wicks, thank you, and Eli Brown-Stevenson, who's our Director of Inclusivity and Belonging.

[01:08]

It's a great joy to be teaching with them this fall. And I want to thank Abbot David for inviting all of us to co-lead this practice period, and as well to thank my teacher, Agent Linda Cutts, So today is International Transgender Day of Awareness, and I'd like to dedicate my talk to the safety and well-being of all those in our country and around the world who are transgender, including Sarah McBride, representative-elect from Delaware, who is the first openly transgender member of Congress. May they be well. So tonight my theme or the title of my talk is Finding Freedom.

[02:11]

And I decided to talk about freedom and what freedom means. There are different ways of viewing freedom. internal freedom, which is what I'll mostly talk about, but also how to find freedom or support freedom that has to do with racial and social justice and a view of our country and world in which everybody is respected and welcomed. So on Sunday, I went to a concert at the Jazz Center, San Francisco Jazz, of Sweet Honey and the Rock. Some of you may know about this women's usually a cappella singing group.

[03:17]

They were celebrating their 50th anniversary. And I remember... first seeing them when I was living in Boston in the 80s, so probably early in their career. And I was very inspired by the concert. There were five singers, and for the first time since I've been hearing them, they had a bass, someone playing electric bass. an acoustic bass as well. And one of the songs they sang had everybody standing and clapping with them. And the song was one they had sung in the past. We who believe in freedom cannot rest until it comes. And that phrase was repeated over and over, we who believe in freedom cannot rest until it comes.

[04:25]

And I've been mulling over that line. What does it mean to believe in freedom? And why is it that we can't rest until it comes? I think, and maybe I'm taking it too literally, but I think rest is essential. And I'm going to talk more about freedom in this talk and more about rest. The title of my talk, Finding Freedom, is actually the title of a book, by Jarvis Masters. You may have heard about Jarvis Masters. He's written a couple of books.

[05:27]

He's also given a Dharma talk here from San Quentin where he's on death row. He has been visited by many Zen teachers over the years and one of them, Lee Klinger Lesser, was able to have Jarvis call in from San Quentin to give a Dharma talk at city center was pretty amazing. Jarvis Masters initially went to prison as I think he was 18 years old because he participated in an armed robbery. And then later on, when he was already at San Quentin, a prison guard was murdered. And they accused Jarvis of having created a weapon that was used in the killing of the guard.

[06:37]

And although he has claimed innocence and he's had a couple of hearings, he's still incarcerated at San Quentin. And over the years he has developed a meditation practice and has written two books. The first one is the one that's entitled Finding Freedom. And his wisdom comes through in his writing and the way he has actually transformed his life even though he has found freedom within a very constricted space. So I want to, in thinking about what freedom means, share a quote from

[07:43]

Lama Rod Owens. I read it on his newsletter. And Lama Rod Owens is a Buddhist. He calls himself a Buddhist minister, author, activist, yoga instructor, authorized lama, and queer. And his newest book is called The New Saints. from broken hearts to spiritual warriors, a human refreshed, serving a world shaped by love. He talks a lot about love. And he also talks about freedom. So I'm going to quote him.

[08:48]

I've been reflecting on the ways in which the present is the pathway towards freedom. We can't get free in the future, nor can we get free in the past. It is the current moment where we can be grounded in our bodies and the earth and develop clarity and wisdom. give attention and care to whatever is arising. This act of deep care allows space for us to tend to suffering, both our own and that of others, and work towards disrupting that suffering as best we can in the moment. There's also joy in this work because we have the opportunity to put compassion into action, figuring out what the work is how we do that work and how we sustain the work. So that description of freedom being in the moment and being fully present in that moment and through that presence being able to relieve suffering reminds me very much of

[10:14]

bodhicitta, the bodhi is awakening, and citta is the mind, the mind of awakening, the mind of a bodhisattva. And the bodhisattva vow that we recite, and we'll be reciting it at the end of the talk tonight, starts with, beings are numberless, I vow to save them. But as I've visited other Zen centers, which part of my work is visiting Zen centers in the Suzuki Roshi lineage, there are a number of centers who have changed the wording to beings are numberless, I vow to free them. And in one center I visited, it was further changed, beings are numberless, we vow to free them. And there's something about that that I really appreciate.

[11:20]

We vow because it's an impossible job to save all beings, and it's probably impossible to free all beings. But the vow is really about helping other beings to wake up, to awaken. to practice or to find their own way of being awake. And the idea is that the bodhisattva frees other people before achieving that freedom themselves or before sometimes that freedom is thought of as finding nirvana or inner peace. But I think It happens simultaneously. As we free ourselves, we may be able to free other people. In any case, the idea of freeing all beings or saving all beings can seem overwhelming and

[12:38]

it's really helpful to remember that we are one of those beings and so taking care of ourselves, making sure that we have the capacity to meet each moment is where I think it's very important to be able to find rest and that where that line in the song of Sweet Honey in the Rock came up for me as a question, those who believe in freedom cannot rest until it comes. And I think it's especially important to rest if we're involved in any kind of... caregiving or social justice work or certainly, you know, I think for many of us at City Center, I've been hearing, and it often happens at this point in the practice period, that people feel really tired.

[13:59]

The schedule can feel... kind of unrelenting, and how can we find rest in the middle of a full schedule, busy life for those in the practice period who are commuters, going to work every day, coming to the Zen Center in the evening or sometimes in the morning. It can be tiring. So where can we find rest? And in my last Dharma talk, during the one-day sitting, I mentioned five invitations that were described by Frank Ostaseski, one of the early directors of Zen Hospice Project.

[15:04]

And last time I talked about the invitation to welcome everything, push away nothing. But there's another one where he talks about finding a place of rest in the middle of things. And that can, you know, we can find a place of rest on a busy day just by taking a moment to stop and take a few deep breaths or take a short walk, a bio break, go outside, look at the sky. But just thought I'd share a few of Frank Ostaseski's words about it. He says, finding a place of rest isn't about adding another task to your already too long to-do list, nor does it mean napping more during your workday, though this may prove helpful.

[16:08]

It is a choice, a choice to be alert, to bring your attention to this moment. That's very much like what Lama Rod said about being free in this present moment, that's how we—finding that pause that can help us refresh. And Frank Ostosysky goes on to say, rest is not an indulgence. as much as it is indispensable. Nearly all plants go dormant in winter. Certain mammals hibernate, slowing their metabolisms dramatically. All are guided by inner clocks to emerge again in the fullness of time when conditions are right.

[17:13]

This period of rest is crucial to their survival. And I think it's crucial to all of our survival. There's one other person who's been writing, I mean, there are actually a number of books that have been written recently about the importance of rest. This one is Rest is Resistance, a manifesto by Tricia Hersey. And she is also known as the nap. well, her ministry, she calls the nap ministry. And she writes about what it would be like to live in a well-rested world. So I think for us to find that place of rest in the middle of everything can be challenging, but it also...

[18:21]

is life-giving. I also wanted to refer to the study we are doing during this practice period. We're studying, many of you are in the practice period, but some of you are not. It's A Welcoming Beginner's Mind, a book by Galen Ferguson. And it explores the path of meditation practice, referring both to Suzuki Roshi's teachings and those of Chögyung Trungpa Rinpoche, who was Galen Ferguson's root teacher. And the path of practice is expressed through the ten ox-herding pictures that we've been looking at. during the practice period, and they start out with an image of a person.

[19:31]

It's a young person who is setting out on a journey, and then sees some tracks, begins to have a sense of where he's going, and then comes upon an ox, and right, first sets out to tame the ox and then finds ease in riding on the ox and then finds himself alone in a natural place. And then the eighth picture is just an empty circle, an enso, we call it, where there's no ox and no ox herder. And that seemingly empty circle is not unlike the experience we may have in meditation, in zazen, where we may have moments of just feeling at ease and our mind is quiet

[20:44]

It may not be quiet for very long, but there can be a moment of just settling and feeling a kind of spaciousness. And what Dr. Ferguson says about this picture is the empty circle, it's the eighth ox herding picture, is not really empty. This space suggests the open dimension of all our experience. Whatever we see, hear, taste, touch, think or feel is not fixed. This openness includes the changing nature of our bodies, feelings and thoughts, all our communities in the midst of changing seasons and changing times. So this sense of possibility also. And, you know, I found this morning when I came to the zendo and sat in my place and listened to the time drum after the, there's a time drum.

[22:11]

with several that it's called the time drum because there's a hit on the drum for each hour and then the bell rings for each period of 20 minutes so there were five hits of the drum and three bells and I just had this experience of being totally with the sounds of the drum and the bell and It felt to me like a moment when there was nothing else, and the thoughts started coming back soon afterwards. But if that's an experience of inner I think of it as I'm exploring what freedom means, just a moment of feeling that inner freedom, spaciousness.

[23:20]

So it's hard for me to give a talk without sharing a poem, so I do have a poem for you tonight. And it's another Jane Hirshfield poem. This one is called, The Subtle Deer. And I heard Jane Hurstfield talk about this poem in an interview. And she described she lives in Mill Valley and there are a lot of deer in Mill Valley. And she was looking out of her window one morning and actually saw a stag go through an empty space in a fence. So that's what prompted this poem. The quiet opening between fence strands, perhaps 18 inches, antlers to hind hooves, four feet off the ground, the deer poured through, no tuft of the coarse white belly hair left behind.

[24:39]

I don't know how a stag turns into a stream, an arc of water. I have never felt such accurate envy, not of the deer, but to be that porous, to have such largeness pass through me." So those lines, I would have assumed she was envious of the deer who had the ability to amazingly with the antlers that a stag has to go through a space without leaving any trace but it was actually the fence to have that experience of largeness pass through And I think that can sometimes happen in zazen as well.

[25:43]

So I'm coming close to the end of my talk. And I think I just want to mention that the ox herding pictures don't end there with this empty. And so they go on to show The ox herder first in nature and peacefully resting and then the last one returning to the world. Sometimes we call that returning to the world with gift bestowing hands and returning to the marketplace with gift bestowing hands. And that we may wish to stay in an expansive, quiet space, that's not really the point of our practice.

[27:00]

There's another song, I Woke Up This Morning With My Mind Set On Freedom. You may have heard that. It's a spiritual. And I think waking up in the morning and coming to the Zendo, that feels like a very apt phrase. I woke up this morning with my mind set on freedom. And just one other quote from the poet and writer Maya Angelou, the truth is no one can be free until everybody is free, which I think is coming back to the Bodhisattva vow. 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.

[28:07]

May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[28:09]

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