This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good morning, all of you. Welcome to Green Girls. My name is Haku Shonesta, one thanks for me. Taking care, hosting you all, so I can, you know. So here, once, make sure you sit in that seat down there. Also, happy Mother's Day to all of you, especially all mothers out there. The Buddhist scriptures, and a lot of them, he's addressing the assembly that he's speaking to, is daughters and sons of good family. And I was, I think the first time I read it, it seemed like maybe like a bit of a uncharacteristic judgment of the Buddha's part.

[01:04]

At least you who are listening to me are from good families and the other ones are bad, but I don't think that's what he meant actually. As I understand it, it's more that who we are and who's showing up right here is because of the causes and conditions that brought us here. And our parents, first and foremost, gave... birth to us, so we would not be here if our mother had not nurtured and carried us, given birth to us. And secondly, if we are seeking for truth and peace and harmony in this world, again, what has shaped us into having those aspirations and that desire This all have to do with what's happened in our past, and our parents are so fundamental in that regard.

[02:05]

Even if... How easy or complicated our relationship with our parents feel, you know, somehow, us sitting here is not separate, can't be separated from the way in which our relationship to them. I had a feeling of embarrassment actually coming up as I was standing out and all waiting to come in because I realized that in preparing for this talk, I had failed to congratulate my own mother on Mother's Day. Given that she's in Sweden and nine hours ahead of us, it'll be tight to get that message to her for the end of the day. So I want to confess my... make it against in that regard. And also to say, I recently received an email from her where she was, as she's in Sweden, I see her maybe every other year.

[03:18]

So it's kind of far away. But she was sharing her joy in being a grandma and caring for my sister's daughter, my niece, and this, yeah, the joy of being to care for a child again, and how there were these complicated emotions around regret and some grief, feeling that she was getting a second chance, not being a grandma, and in ways that she feels that she missed while being a mother. And so that pain really struck me. And I'm happy to say that I have a much more generous assessment of her motherhood. I feel incredibly fortunate to not carry any difficult emotions around her, actually, or either of my parents.

[04:32]

But I've also become aware, as more and more of my friends and people my age are having children and my close friends, and just how this herring probe seems like the ultimate version of the Zen practice of one spontaneous mistake. Zen Master Dogi said, there is a principle of the way that we must make one mistake after another. So I actually even Googled the phrase, one continuous mistake, to see where the origin was, and it brought me to a page of Zen and parenting. All parents out there, thank you for the ways in which you picked up this impossible practice, knowingly embraced it. We also had Wendy Johnson here giving a talk to the residents last week, and she was letting us know, I didn't know this before, but the origins of Mother's Day was actually initially, this came from social justice advocate, Julia Ward Howe, in 1870, she wrote this proclamation, but I'll be part of it for you.

[06:02]

It wasn't until 1914 that mother say became an official u.s holiday but initially her her call was for mothers of all nationalities to band together into an assembly for a settlement of international questions the great congenitor's interest of peace so a day of council for women to gather from all over the world and discussing the means for achieving world peace yeah herself she hadn't been nursing him the sick and wounded during the Civil War, and also working with widows and orphans of soldiers on both sides, seeing how the effects of war go so far beyond the killings of soldiers in battle. So this is part of her proclamation. Arise then, women of this day. Arise, all women who have hearts. whether our baptism be that of water or our tears.

[07:05]

Say firmly, we will not have the great questions decided by irrelevant agencies. Our husbands shall not come to us reeking of carnage for carers in the falls. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy, and patience. We, women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs. From the bosom of the devastated earth, a voice goes up with our own. It says, disarm, disarm. The sword of murder is not the balance of justice. So it felt almost... in this regard, and Wendy pointed that out, but yesterday we hosted the Kaosu Haga from the East Point Peace Academy here at Green Goldsboro, a one-day workshop for residents and guests coming from outside.

[08:10]

Kaosu is a trainer in Kingian nonviolence, so it's based on the teachings and practices of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and philosophy teaching us about also drawing connections between King's teachings and the Dharma, which I found really fruitful. And there's a lot of connections to be made there. So we were learning the difference between non-hyphen violence, which is like the absence of violence, and non-violence actively caring for the benefit of beings. working to deepen relationships. So it's not just abstaining, but an actual positive force in the world, which would, maybe not what we think of when we hear nonviolence. We also did this exercise where we were asked to define, in order to understand nonviolence, to define violence in four words or less.

[09:18]

It's just... a challenge, but I think part of the challenge is to cut through our intellectualizing and complicating things and getting to the heart of the matter. So it's interesting doing this in a Buddhist setting where all the four different groups working on this, some version of violence is the denial of interbeing. act of body, speech, and mind that is counter to our interbeing, the way we're not separate from each other. As Dr. King said, we're caught in an escapable network of mutuality tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be.

[10:26]

So just this teaching that our happiness and peace and well-being is bound up without others, and to act in accordance with that is this positive force of nonviolence, and to deny that reality and act accordingly is, on some level, either subtle, could be seen as violence. Lately I've been trying to study this sitra called the Sitra of Complete or Perfect Enlightenment, which is a Chinese apocryphal sitra.

[11:30]

So it originated in China, and it's the setting, even though the setting is the Buddha teaching to an assembly, it actually was written in China rather than India, probably about 1200 years or so after. after the life of the Buddha. But a lot of these Mahayana sutras take place in such a setting. And sometimes if it's true or not, there's less concern in Mahayana Buddhism in particular, whether it's factually what happened, but is it helpful or not? So that's how to assess these sutras and this is one of the more influential ones in China. And in it, the Buddha is lecturing to an assembly of Bodhisattvas. They're each coming up in each chapter and asking a question of the Buddha. And they're not asking it just on their own behalf.

[12:33]

There's also this, they're asking it on behalf of the beings in the degenerate age or in the Dharma ending age. There's the idea in Buddhism that after the life of the Buddha, his teachings will emotionally decline, and there will be beings in the future, counting from back then, who will have less access to the teachings and be easily led astray. As the Bodhisattva of Universal Enlightenment asks the Buddha, world-honored one, Sentient beings in the dharma ending age will gradually be further away from the days of the Buddha. The sages and saints will seldom appear while the heretical teachings will increase and flourish. What kind of people then should sentient beings seek to follow? What kind of dharma should they rely on? What line of conduct should they adopt?

[13:34]

Of what faults in practice should they rid themselves? How should they arouse the awakening mind so that the blind multitude can avoid falling into erroneous use? So I think this idea of the degenerate age, seeing how often it shows up when these texts have some appeal, and it seems actually somewhat comforting to me to see that when this was written, 700 in the common area so yeah they were probably writing actually for even though the writing you know putting this back in the context of the buddha they might have considered themselves to be in this age where we're kind of going farther farther away from truth and people being led astray by non-truths and just denial of it to be and so we might find

[14:37]

for ourselves, too, that this very age where we're living now is one of the dharma ending, the truth, the realization of Dr. King's beloved community, enlightened society, is somewhat further away, and we're so far away from it. This is a common idea. in Buddhism, and I think some of the appeal is maybe just that we're recognizing the suffering in the world that we're living in, aware of that, and how far it is from the division of a beloved society, enlightened society. And I think also in Buddhist texts, if you're saying that this text is for the beings in the degenerate age, and everybody thinks they're in this age where the Dharma, truth, is no longer being buried and we're all lost, then it's going to be, oh, so they're speaking to us right now.

[15:52]

So I wanted to bring up a portion of this, which is the teachings of the 412s, 4 illnesses. which is part of the response to this bodhisattva of universal enlightenment. So these are misconceptions about Buddhist practice, how we tend to think of it led astray, and also considering how transformation might occur on other levels, just the spiritual, personal as well. So the four that we should be aware of we don't succumb to our striving, accepting things as they are, stopping our thinking, and elimination of the mental states, defilements. So on the surface of it, these may all sound like sound practices on the path of enlightenment.

[17:02]

This is why the Buddha is warning not to get stuck in either of those. They all have some kernel of truth in it, but it would be caution to get caught, stuck. So the first illness of fault is that of striving. This idea that the reason why we're, if we think, ourselves as deluded, it is because we're not trying hard enough. We must make more effort, right? To push harder, we'll be rewarded with some inner peace and wisdom and dignity. And the fact that we're not means that we're not trying hard enough. We're not practicing good enough. And there's some

[18:04]

temptation to see Zen practice in this way because it's kind of, it demands quite a lot of us. I've been reflecting on how during practice periods we do a ceremony at the end of the practice period week. So practice periods are periods of two or three months of more rigorous practice where we're spending more time in the Zen Do and the days often go from 5 a.m. to 9 p.m. It's a little race in there, but it's a long day. And so we do this practice period for limited periods of time. And every other week, as we do the ceremony, ending the week of practice and go for some rest, every other week we're chanting this chant where it's Buddha's sun shines and everything, and the wheel of Dharma turns and turns, and the teachings are safely advised. Green Driving Temple right here.

[19:06]

And then every other week, there's this, the chant goes, like, for each day, your life also decreases, and you are to practice constantly, as if to save your head from fire. So it sounds like, just as you're about to go and push harder, you know. Actually, I think, I think that's not someone that's meant to buy it. I think rather it's like, now we go and enjoy our rest, and please consider that as a practice, too. Let's not think that practice just happens in the Zen, though, and then you go off and go for a walk. We talk with our friends and eat a meal, and those are opportunities to practice, too. One of the limitations of this application of striving is that we think that certain activities will bring us to our goals and others will not. So we will apply some sincerity misguided to some activities in our life and others we don't pay that much attention to.

[20:21]

Zan Macedogian also asks his admonishment to have no designs on becoming a Buddha. I feel it gets to the heart of some of this that if our practice is led by striving, then I think inevitably we end up constructing our own goals based on our own deluded ideas. It's a blind league in the blind here. And actually the rigorous aspect of Zen practice, part of what makes it difficult is that it doesn't give us that much space to design. You go to the Zendo, the bell meets when you get up and it's sort of the packed day of activities. It's just you follow along with that and you get to come up with the idea that I know what's best. And do we actually?

[21:28]

There's also the complications of this you-must-try-harder mentality or that that is the way to put transformation to occur. It discourages investigation into what's really going on to actually look for. We're so focused on where we're trying to get to and how we're not there that we're not really paying attention to the journey. that we're on right now, what's arising in each moment? It's not what we want, we want it to be somewhere else. And also both for practicing in, you know, personal practice and also looking around us in society, this you must try harder approach, it's really cold. There's not a lot of warmth, not a lot of space for compassion. If that's the voice, you know, if that's what we're telling ourselves, it's not really paying attention to the hindrances and challenges that we're meeting.

[22:45]

And similarly, if we see the suffering that we might see in our society, if we see particular groups of people struggling, if we're deeming that to be because they're not trying hard enough, that there's a denial of our interbeing, right there. We're not acknowledging the particular hindrances and systemic oppression. So the second one of these is accepting things as they are. So that might sound good. Especially if we're not going to strive. Then why don't we just accept things as they are? Make peace with everything. There you go. I don't know if it's actually possible.

[23:46]

But even thinking that that's what we ought to be doing and maybe judging ourselves because of that, it's helpful. One of the obvious problems is this could easily lead to indifference, right? That if I don't think I can do anything about it, I worry, and I should just go along doing what I've always done. There doesn't seem to be a lot of space for transformation there either, actually, if we consider it. So in Buddhism, there are four noble truths. foundational teachings, so there is suffering, that's the first noble truth, we look for the causes of suffering, there is a way out of suffering, and then we try to practice, you know, this way out of suffering by addressing the causes.

[24:48]

So it's hard to see all those fitting in with disaccepted things as they are. Also, as human beings, we need to have some sort of direction that we're moving in. We do better with some focus. Out of that reason, both intention and vow are fundamental parts of Buddhist practice. So we do make an intention to live in a certain way. vow and maybe take formal vows to live in a certain way and then that's orienting ourselves towards the goal in some sense and then once we get that orientation then we really pay attention to the journey there not concerned about ever getting there we orient towards the north star we don't think we're ever going to reach there and then

[25:53]

regularly we stop and check in and remind ourselves of where is it that we actually want to go and notice how we've gone astray and realign ourselves yeah set course in the direction where we're trying to go again i think Suzuki Roshi is teaching you're perfect just as you are but you could use a little improvement speaks nicely to this, that if you just said the first thing, you're perfect just as you are, then the practice of just accepting things makes a lot of sense. But you could use a little improvement while thinking about it, considering this planet that we all live on. The conditions for human life and for so many other forms of life are perfect right here, actually. just the way it is.

[26:59]

And that doesn't mean that we shouldn't care for it and try to keep those conditions perfect, actually, to see where things are getting in the way for these perfect conditions for life to flourish and see if we can address those hindrances. really not get ourselves in the way, but also try to see what we ask the species to be led astray and see how it's perfect and we need to character it in order for it to be perfect. And the third, illness of fall is that stopping our thinking. So it's a common idea that in meditation particularly we should be able to stop all our thoughts and if we're not able to do that then failing.

[28:12]

How many of you have had that idea that this is what you should do when you meditate? Is to stop your thinking? I see a few hands. I certainly had that. I remember clearly when I first came to Green Gulch, I was a guest student applying to be a foreign apprentice. And I spent some time in some vipassana centers before, and I felt that I could settle into a pretty concentrated state there. And then I came here, and I had the idea that residential practice would be just like that, and that I was overwhelmed with how much thinking of what was going on in medication period after period. And I met with Suki, actually, as part of considering the farm apprenticeship, and I thought, I can't get my mind to stop thinking. And she looked at me, she said, in her warm and non-judgmental way, oh, it sounds like you have a very busy mind.

[29:22]

And that was... Such a relief for me. There's space for me to practice here, even though I have this deeply ingrained habit that just seems impossible to overcome. There's such a need, so implicit. And now I get to sit... a practice leader myself, and people come to me and tell me that they can't gather minds to stop thinking. So it's only now that I'm fully immune. I seem to think how pervasive that idea is, that meditation is to stop thinking. If we can't do that, then we're failing. And people sort of actually giving up on meditation out of that Not one idea. There are techniques of Buddhist meditation that helps us cut through the trains of thought that we're planning to generate over and over again, and those can be helpful, but the goal isn't... Buddhist practice is not to stop our thinking.

[30:46]

There's actually little learning to be done in the space where there's no thoughts. Rather, if we can settle our body and mind a little bit, it helps us to see a little more clearly what's actually going on and get to learn our thought patterns and habits and maybe be a little less swayed by them, not jumping on the same train of thought every time. And also practice this practice of meditation, seeing how little control we have over our mind, actually, if we can have some openness or hold that lightly and care for it, it's a practice of humility.

[31:50]

And the fourth and last fault was this elimination of defilements, the mental states that cloud our minds. We can see how those are problematic and then we try to eliminate them, being that practice is to be separate from those. Yes, according to this teaching fault. Mental states would include the attachment. The versions are some of the major ones. Ignorance, pride, jealousy, anxiety, fear, irritation, desire, depression. These states should not be had. In some way, this is an instruction for advanced meditators to avoid falling into what's called the Zen sickness, where everything's empty and nothing really exists. We detach from the world around us and become kind of indifferent to other people.

[33:02]

Those fall into that state. It's more than the other three illnesses. This is not incurable. It's a little closer to termite. It's a part you should take out of. You think that you're really on to something. You really got it. To those around you, you really know it. So I think maybe most of us may not suffer from this, but just the idea that practice is about detaching from our emotions and mental states and what's around us, that this is, you know, it's all empty and not really important. This is a fault and it's a pursuit practice for this kind of mind. You know, again, we're journeying in the wrong direction. And so the kernel word is attaching isn't the way, but detaching is not the way of practice either.

[34:09]

This is why we used to talk about non-attachment, Buddhist practice, to be able to acknowledge what's going on and give it full attention and not be attached to it. It's a difficult balance to strike. And I think just knowing that the difficult emotions and mental states that we experience, not to judge ourselves from that, that becomes another hindrance to transformation. It's like, if I really knew how to practice, I shouldn't be feeling this. That might be worse. might use against ourselves sometimes. I can't believe this is bothering me. It's actually trying to separate from what's really going on and giving it full and kind attention.

[35:14]

So, these are the four faults. So if we're not supposed to fall into any of these, what is the practice that we should be taking out? In the sutra, right after the Buddha has been lectured along these four falls, he puts the emphasis on how sentient beings in the dharma ending age wish to cultivate themselves should. to the end of their lives, make offerings to virtuous friends and serve good teachers. And I find this support that we cannot do it alone. And actually, that's, even if we could, it would still be a cold, detached practice. So rather to care for the relationships to

[36:28]

good friends and teachers and really all everyone around us to really see if we can avoid this denial of interbeing and practice in accordance with Dr. King's teachings of the Piloto community. Thank you very much. For more information, visit sfzc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

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