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 want to start by thanking the Tonto head of practice at City Center, San Francisco Zen Center City Center, where I am a resident. Thank you, Nancy, for coming. inviting me to speak this morning. And I want to thank all of you for joining in this space that we create together. And I would request, if you're willing, that you turn on your video at least for a little bit so I can see who's in the room today. Thank you very much. I see many Dharma friends near and far.

[01:07]

And also one of my friends from college is here. She lives in Maryland. And that's one of the wonders of being able to connect by Zoom. And so I'm really happy to see you. All of you, thank you. Just to say a little bit more by way of introducing myself, for those of you who don't know me, and some of these things I'm going to say may surprise some of you who do know me, I've been a resident for nearly 22 years. I've lived at Tassahara Green Gulch and City Center, and it's City Center the longest. I identify... I think of myself as a white, racialized, cisgendered woman. I'm queer and I'm aging. And just to tell you a little bit about my work at San Francisco Zen Center, for the last three years, I have been what we call the liaison for our branching streams, sanghas.

[02:16]

And that's a network of over 70 Zen centers and sanghas in the U.S. and About nine of those are in other countries, including Canada, Mexico, Ireland, Northern Ireland, the UK, Germany, Italy, Austria, and Colombia, South America. I may have left out one or two, but that's one of the things that I do. And then since February, I've also been writing... short articles for our Sangha News weekly online newsletter. So my work has involved a fair amount of writing, especially since the pandemic, I've been writing weekly, I call them newsettes, short newsletters, to connect all the branching streams groups, as well as writing these blogs for Sangha News. And I have been an avid reader since...

[03:23]

going to the library with my mother for story hours, and continued to love reading, and also been a writer much of my life, starting in high school when I was the features editor for our high school newspaper. So I just want to put today's talk in some context. First, the time we're in and some of the challenges of the time we're in. This is a time of year when there are so many things to celebrate. We had a full moon ceremony this morning at City Center. We're going to celebrate the solstice in a few days. And then New Year's soon after that. Pre-COVID, we also had... Christmas tree for children in the neighborhood who would come and get gifts at city center, but we're not able to do that this year.

[04:30]

And it's also a challenging time in our country and around the world. It's nearly two years since the beginning of the COVID pandemic changed all of our lives, and it's still affecting everyone. And I think we're all aware of the changes in the climate, the drought and floodings in some parts of the country, wildfires, tornadoes, extremes of heat and cold. And in the wider world, we see around us racial injustice, refugees trying to find safety and shelter, and great disparities in wealth. You know, this morning we had a residence meeting and the question came up, what keeps us positive? What keeps us positive? How do we sustain our engagement with the world and with our lives when there's so much that's challenging?

[05:42]

And certainly Buddhist practices and teachings can ground us and nourish us at this time. And there are many other things as well. So I'm going to introduce the theme of my talk today with a short story that in March, just as we were beginning to become aware of this coronavirus, I was visiting Branching Streams Zen Centers in Texas in San Antonio, Austin, and Houston. And after my visit at Austin Zen Center, I was given a gift of a t-shirt, which I brought to show you. I'm not sure how well show and tell works on Zoom, but here it is. And what's significant about this t-shirt is what's written on the back.

[06:42]

And it says, everything changes. Everything is connected. Pay attention. So taking these words to heart, I decided to structure my talk today around those three, you could say, teachings. They were written by Jane Hirshfield, a poet who spent several years at Tassajara when she was younger. And I find those words... very encouraging in these times. So I'm going to speak about each of those succinct phrases and illustrate them with some Buddhist teachings, poems, and a reference to a novel that embodies some of these teachings as well. And I hope as I

[07:45]

talk that you'll find points of connection in your own experience and that this talk will be nourishing for you in some way. Again, thank you for being here this morning. So everything changes. This points us to two of the fundamental teachings of Buddhism, of impermanence, that everything Everything is fleeting. Depends on, you know, your perspective, but the whole universe is in flux, and certainly we see impermanence in the changing of the seasons, in the climate changes that we're seeing in our lives.

[08:46]

day-to-day. And another fundamental teaching is the changes we can see in our sense of ourselves. There is no fixed self, no self that is solid, even though we may be able to have some sense of continuity in how we express ourselves in our lives. We can see changes even in one day in our moods, our thoughts, our activities, changes year to year and changes over a lifetime. And yet, for many of us, change is quite difficult. It may be difficult to accept changes that we haven't chosen.

[09:47]

And it is also very difficult to change some of our habitual actions or our perspectives. And along with impermanence and change, often comes the need to deal with loss. And there have been so many losses for probably for everyone in this world. Zoom space for each of us in this year and last year as well of the pandemic. And they range from not being able to at times to be with our loved ones, not being able to move freely in our environments, whether urban or especially in cities, but I think everywhere.

[10:52]

Losses of, for some people, losses of loved ones. I think, you know, at first I didn't know anyone who had been affected by COVID, and now I know so many people who have been affected by COVID, many who have died or have lost loved ones. loss of jobs, loss of homes. It's a time when it can be helpful to say really recognize and give space for grief and at the same time to cherish what is precious and meaningful in our lives. And a teaching that I think can be very helpful is a very old one.

[12:04]

It's the five remembrances. These are the words of the Buddha. And there's a beautiful translation by Thich Nhat Hanh And these words have come up for me recently. A friend asked me to meet with someone who was very ill with cancer and was dealing with a lot of anger. And I was able to meet with this person by Zoom. She's in another state. I mean by that geographically, but as we deal with serious illness and approaching death, we may be in another state mentally and emotionally as well. But when I first met her, I was really wondering what could be helpful to her in dealing with her anger.

[13:07]

And some of it was about the impending loss of her own life. Some of it was also at a family member. And so I thought I would share with her the five remembrances, which I'm going to share right now, because I think they are really helpful in a way coming to some kind of acceptance with some of the changes that we face, either face currently or may face later. The first one is, I am of the nature to grow old. There is no way to escape growing old. I am of the nature to have ill health. That's the second remembrance. There is no way to escape ill health. And third, I am of the nature to die.

[14:08]

There is no way to escape death. All that is dear to me and everyone I love are of the nature to change and there is no way to escape being separated from them. My actions are my only true belongings. I cannot escape the consequences of my actions. My actions are the ground upon which I stand. So, those teachings can be sobering. And of course, not everybody grows old. Some people lose their lives when they're young. But if we do grow old, we are of the nature to have ill health. And we all are of the nature to die. And we have to leave our loved ones and our belongings.

[15:09]

And this last one, my actions are the ground on which I stand. And those actions really are how we'll be remembered. So I think that points to engaging with our lives moment to moment as fully as we can. And Understanding that life includes loss, that we can't avoid it, and how we meet it is where we have some agency, I would say. So I'm going to move on to everything is connected, and there's so much more that could be said about impermanence.

[16:16]

I actually want to spend most of my talk focusing on the many ways in which we're connected, not only with other humans, but also with the living world. I recently heard a talk about eco-poetry. It's poetry that celebrates our connection with the living world. calling it the living world rather than nature, because as we think about the living world, we are part of the living world. We are not separate from it or in charge of it. And the living world includes the other animals, thinking of ourselves as animals, not separate from animals, dogs, cats, and all kinds of animals. And the living world includes trees, plants, Mountains, rivers, oceans, the air we breathe, the wind, the sun, the moon, galaxies.

[17:26]

The living world is both very small and very vast. I want to share some words of Joy Harjo. She's been the U.S. Poet Laureate since 2019, and she's from the Muscogee Nation. She says, when I begin to listen to poetry, it's when I begin to listen to the stones, and I began to listen to what the clouds had to say, and I began to listen to other, and I think most importantly for all of us, then you begin to learn to listen to the soul, the soul of yourself in here, which is also the soul of everyone else. And when we think about our relationships to trees and stones and the living world, it's possible to have this sense of connection with things that we might ordinarily think of as insentient beings.

[18:37]

But there are many teachings from early, the time of the Buddha, of how We are not separate from the living world. I'm just thinking about our residence meeting this morning when one person was talking about this question, what keeps us positive and engaged? And he talked about going up to Alamo Square And there's a very old, very, very old tree there. He thinks it's older than the city of San Francisco. And he walks there and hugs the tree. He touches the tree almost as often as he can, sometimes every day in a week. And that sense of connection that we may have with trees, things in our gardens or parks,

[19:45]

You know, in the city, there's so many beautiful trees. And I think we're fortunate to live in a city where trees are planted by the city and parks and places where we can find that connection. But we can probably find it everywhere when we look up at the sky at night and when we're aware of the air that we breathe. And I think, of course, In recent years, we've been paying much more attention to the air that we breathe because it's not always good for us, actually. But, yeah, thinking about not only our relationships to these aspects of the living world, but there are many teachings that we... intimate or show that we are connected with things that we might think of as inanimate objects.

[20:52]

And that we have relationships from the time we're babies with things like blankets and stuffed animals, blankies and stuffies, favorite toys or games. I recently watched a performance of The Velveteen Rabbit. I don't know if any of you are familiar with The Velveteen Rabbit. It's a book for children, but I also think it's a great book for grownups. And it talks about the relationship between a rabbit, a Velveteen stuffed rabbit, and a young boy who become very, very close. And initially, you know, the Velveteen Rabbit... joins the other toys in the nursery, and he wonders, you know, he wants to be real.

[21:54]

He wants to be a real rabbit. And he's told by a toy horse in the nursery that the way you become real is by being loved and being used by this boy. And, you know, gradually his sheen wears off, and he has some... sticky places on his fur and so on, he becomes real and that there's some magic in that story because he also dreams of rabbits who are in a forest and eventually At the end of the story, he actually joins those live rabbits. So what is real? But also, that may be a little bit of a digression from this sense, but I think the sense of connectedness that we have with what we usually think of as inanimate objects, and they can also include

[23:12]

pieces of furniture that we become close to or attached to, works of art, things made by friends or family members. And I'll just ask you the question, what are some objects that you have relationships with? And one thing that I was very aware of during, especially the time when at City Center we were all quarantining and not meeting, in person and I was spending so much time in my room and I really missed touch and touching other people and one thing that helped me was playing my cello, being able to touch the strings and the bow and feel the vibration of the instrument. I think I I know I have a relationship, a long relationship with my fellow.

[24:13]

And other people talked about touching things in their apartment with a lot of care and finding that comforting in that time. So objects in our lives can have a lot of meaning and can develop a relationship with them. I want to... A friend, Brenda, gave me a poem recently called The Patience of Ordinary Things that I'd like to share because it illustrates some of the ways in which things take on meaning in our lives. So it's called The Patience of Ordinary Things by Pat Schneider. It is a kind of love, is it not? How the cup holds the tea how the chair stands sturdy and four square, how the floor receives bottoms of soles or toes, how soles of feet know where they're supposed to be.

[25:19]

I've been thinking about the patience of ordinary things, how clothes wait respectfully in closets and soap dries quietly in the dish and towels drink the wet from the skin of the back. and the lovely repetition of stairs and what is more generous than a window. Love those lines, the lovely repetition of stairs and what is more generous than a window, a window that allows us to see what's outside and expand our sense of our space. So I recently finished reading a new novel by Ruth Ozeki called The Book of Form and Emptiness. Ruth is a Zen priest. She was ordained by Norman Fisher and recently did a practice period at Tassajara with Norman Fisher.

[26:22]

And she's also a novelist, writer, and filmmaker. And this book explores... The Book of Form and Emptiness. Form and Emptiness is a phrase that we repeat every day in the Heart Sutra, and it's surprising to see it in the title of the book. But this book is full of, I would say, Buddhist teachings, but they're not expressed as teachings. They're embedded in the events and characters in the novel in a really creative way. This was a book that I really enjoyed reading and it has stayed with me. And I'd like to share a few things that the book talks about and also

[27:27]

some of Ruth Ozeki's reflections on this book. She gave a Dharma talk recently at another Zen center, which I listened to, and it was very interesting to hear some of her thoughts about writing this book. So the book explores listening not only to the characters in the book, but also to the voices of objects, including The Book of Form and Emptiness is actually a book that has a relationship with one of the characters, a 13-year-old boy named Benny O. And near the beginning of the book, the character Benny says, shh, listen. Things speak all the time, but if your ears aren't tuned, you have to learn to listen. So this idea that things speak, you know, it may sound mystical or magical, and maybe it is, but this was very real to Benny.

[28:39]

When Benny Oh's father, whose name was Kenji, suddenly died, which was a tremendous loss for him, 13, and for his mother, Benny began to hear the voice of his father. starting with his being at the crematorium. And then he started hearing other voices coming from objects such as chopsticks, flannel shirts, sneakers. And meanwhile, his mother's response to the loss of her husband was very different. She was unable to... throw away anything that had belonged to her husband. And the objects that had been his became very, very meaningful to her. But in terms of these, Benny's hearing things speak to him.

[29:45]

Ruth Ozeki said in her talk that after her own father died, She heard his voice for over a year. She became curious about what it means to hear voices. And she said, as a novelist, I experience voices coming to me, the voice of a character or of the book itself. And in this book, she also explores our relationship with objects. And she talked about... in her talk, her experience of clearing her parents' house after they died. Her parents were both born in 1914 during the Depression, and they never threw things away. Her mother was Japanese, and she had kept polished stones from her father, who had collected them while being interned in a camp.

[30:48]

for Japanese, an internment camp during World War II. And Ruth's father was an anthropologist who studied the Oneida people and had special objects that had been given to him. And when Ruth was clearing her parents' house, she didn't know what many of these objects were, and she pondered, if only they could talk to me. So... She explores the teaching in this book that insentient beings express the Dharma and that all things have Buddha nature, which is one of the teachings that Dogen writes about, Dogen the ancestor who brought Zen from China to Japan who lived about 800 years ago. There's much more I could say about this book, and I'm noticing the time, so I'm just going to share one other theme in the book, which has to do with Annabelle, Benny's mother, which has to do with her difficulty throwing things away.

[32:07]

This reminded Ruth of a book by Marie Kondo, which you may have seen or even read yourself. It's a very small book. small in contrast to the Book of Form and Emptiness, which is quite thick and quite large. But this book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing, Marie Kondo teaches an attitude of respect to objects that we own. And in the process of organizing and decluttering our spaces, she has a way of, she advises people, and I tried doing this at one time with my clothing, to hold up each item and ask, does this item still spark joy? And if not, can I let go of it and pass it on so that it can either be discarded or recycled and someone else, it might spark joy for someone else.

[33:16]

and that sense that all these objects have a life of their own. So in the novel, Ruth created the character of a woman who became a Japanese nun who wrote a similar book called Tidy Magic, and that book Tidy Magic somehow fell into Annabelle's hands. And it became very helpful to her, and over time she develops a relationship, first through emails and then in actual giving some of the book away, but it's a very small part of the book, with this Japanese nun named Icon. And I'll just share a little bit more about what Ruth says about the book itself. She says, we think of books as singular, unchanging objects.

[34:17]

I think of books as a collaboration. The book is sent out into the world. And each time a reader brings her own experience to the book, the reader makes their own version of it. As long as books are being read, they are alive. Just one more thing. Much of the book takes place in a library, which seems to be, it's an urban library, not unlike San Francisco Public Library. And for those of us who enjoy libraries, I just got a whole other appreciation for libraries as refuges and very important places, which we couldn't visit for two years during the pandemic. It's wonderful that libraries are opening up again. So, I also, you know, Suzuki Roshi, in a chapter in Not Always So, says that, you know, I think this, the connection is through this sense of objects and things as having lives, of being,

[35:41]

things that we cherish and sometimes even have conversations with. There's this attitude of respect for things that is such an important part of Zen teaching and training where we learn to really treat every object with respect. I'm thinking of ways we pick up our zafus in the zendo or the Buddha hall, we fluff them up at the end of sitting zazen and put them down again. We don't move them with our feet. We lift them up in the Buddha hall. And the way kitchen practice can teach us to take care of our work spaces, clean up after we've chopped some vegetables, take good care of the knives and sharpen them. And this kind of respect for things, Suzuki Roshi says, can lead, it carries over into respect for one another.

[36:45]

So one way we also take care of our spaces is, you know, at Zen Center we have a period every morning for soji, temple cleaning. And usually, at the end of the year, we've had a dai soji, a great big soji, where many people in the community joined residents at Page Street, and we started at 8 o'clock or 8.30, and we do a big, thorough cleaning of nooks and crannies in the building that had been neglected, and then follow that with... noodles in hot broth. The noodles are a symbol of longevity. And then we meditate and ring the big bell. And then we have a bonfire in the courtyard where we burn old papers, sutras that we're not using any longer or attendance sheets.

[37:56]

And people write something that they wish to let go of, something about the previous year and throw it in the fire. And I think that also is a way of sharing our respect for things, taking care of things, and then also learning ways to discard them. And Marie Kondo says in her book that the moment we start tidying up, we reset our lives. and our living spaces affect our bodies. And, you know, many people find when they, I've heard this, when they come into City Center, or I think to Green Culture, Tassajara as well, there's a sense of the place having been cared for. And I can really, and that it feels calming or peaceful.

[39:03]

So I think the way we care for our belongings and our spaces can really make a difference in our lives. So I want to come to the last part of Jane Hirshfield's words, paying attention. And I'm going to end with an example of this in a poem by Mary Oliver. called The Summer Day. And one thing I love about this poem is the description in the middle of it, of a grasshopper. You'll hear it in a minute. And how that can lead to a great appreciation of life. So this is The Summer Day. Who made the world? Who made the swan and the black bear?

[40:06]

Who made the grasshopper? This grasshopper, I mean. The one who has flung herself out of the grass. The one who is eating sugar out of my hand. Who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of coming, instead of up and down. Who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes. Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face. Now she snaps her wings open and flies away. I don't know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass, how to be idle and blessed. how to stroll through the fields, which is what I have been doing all day. Tell me, what else should I have done? Doesn't everything die at last and too soon?

[41:10]

Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? So, the description of the grasshopper And then this sense of wanting to kneel down that she describes. Mary Oliver, in some of her prose writing, describes prayer as the doorway into thanks, a silence in which another voice may speak. So this sense of her connection with that grasshopper. And then... realizing that the grasshopper and everything else is fleeting. And this really poignant question, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

[42:14]

So I just want to mention that Jane Hirshfield, and again I want to thank Denise, one of our residents at City Center for pointing this out, that Jane Hirshfield was recently interviewed in Krista Tippett's On Being podcast. If you're not familiar with On Being, it's a weekly podcast that is almost always really inspiring. And on this podcast, Jane Hirshfield spoke about writing. She said, Great writing tells us that where there is sorrow, there will be joy. Where there is joy, there will be sorrow. Acknowledging the fullness of things is our human task. So everything changes. Everything is connected. Pay attention. Thank you very much for your attention this morning.

[43:19]

May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[43:44]

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