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. Did you hear me say it's so sweet to be here? That's the most important part of the talk. The sweetness of being here. for the first time. Welcome. I feel like I'm here for the first time. I'm here and I'm feeling ill. So I'm a little wavery. I might be a little tattered. A little tattered at the edges. And I've been sick for

[01:01]

Whenever was the end of the practice period, it's been a few weeks. And so a lot of how I thought it was going to be, you know, we have these plans. When the practice period is over, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do that. And I wasn't able to do the things that I had imagined I could do. But I was able to do a lot of other things that I didn't know that I would enjoy doing. Rosalie. Thank you for inviting me. Thank you very much. And the focus of the talk today is about how we connect or we don't connect with loving ourselves. Loving ourselves just as we are. And I'm probably going to refer to my notes much more than I usually do because I'm feeling a little tattered and sometimes... I use a wooden cane, and sometimes I use paper that has my notes on it.

[02:02]

So it's good that we have those things, I remind myself. So connecting with loving ourselves just as we are. And I'm going to start with the story about myself and a little bit about the illness so you have a sense of... of what is composing this bunch of stuff that I brought here today. And it's also, you know, telling some story about myself is my favorite subject. I'm the object of my own meditation. We're all the object of our meditation. So fascinating. So, let's see. I wrote a whole other talk. I was up until 12.30 last night. I wrote a whole other talk, and I thought I could dazzle you. And when I woke up this morning, I decided dazzling wasn't asked for.

[03:05]

Transparency is my best suit. And I think it's important for us to be transparent with each other because often we're not... And it feels a little crazy when we get a sense of something going on with someone, but they're telling us, no, that's not going on. I don't know if anybody else has ever had that experience. So I just assume be what I call two cents plain. Two cents plain long ago when I was a girl living on the East Coast. The old Jews, I lived in somewhat of a ghetto in Baltimore, Maryland, and the old Jews would go to the drugstore on the corner and sit at a counter, marble counter. Boy, I wasn't going to talk about this at all. Sit at a marble counter, and they would order two cents plain. And what that is is seltzer water with U-Bets, U-B-E-T-S, U-Bets chocolate syrup.

[04:06]

And they called it, and it cost two cents. In my grandmother's time, it was two cents. I think by my time, it was around 12 cents. And so the reason it was called two cents plain is because a lot of times, if I was a very good girl, I could have a little bit of ice cream in it, and then it wouldn't be two cents plain. It would be two cents with ice cream, seven cents, because they charge five cents with ice cream. But usually, because we were a poor family, when there was a treat to be had, we'd go to the drugstore, my father and I, or my grandma and I, and we'd order two cents plain. Because that's the people that we are. We're plain. And so, I don't know why I told you that story. Maybe just because some of you don't know me and I thought it would maybe.

[05:11]

I don't know why. I just told you that story. I don't care really why. So a few weeks ago, this thought came into my mind. I cannot get out of bed. I woke up in the morning and I could not get out of bed. That was the thought. Different than I can't get out of bed because I don't want to get up. You know, I think I like to sleep another half an hour. Now, I cannot. Get out of bed. And the quality of the thought carried with it, the tone of this is so. It's a very serious, yes, you cannot get out of bed. And I lifted one arm, then I lifted another, and lifted them very slowly. And when I went to put them down, they kind of just fell down because the body was so weak. I couldn't keep the arm up. Then I thought it probably would be a good idea for me to do this so that it will help wake the body up because it wasn't that I felt sleepy.

[06:18]

I felt profoundly tired. So I, for some time, was lying in bed, arm like this, and plop. And over some time, I was able to let the arm float down. It didn't just fall down on its own. And I realized that I felt more tired in the morning after I had eight hours sleep than I did when I went to sleep the night before. And so the other thoughts came, uh-oh, something's wrong. Something's really very wrong. And then, I don't want this. This really sucks. You're familiar with it. this when you're ill. This really sucks. I'm too weak to get out of bed. And then another thought popped up that comes from, I don't know if many of you read Dub Liners by James Joyce, but there's a line in there that has stuck with me.

[07:21]

Mr. Duffy lived a short distance from his body. That has really struck me as something I had been trained to do. to live distant from my body, felt safer to live distant from my body. So I resonated with Mr. Duffy living a short distance from his body. And sometimes what our body tells us that we want to push away, our body is telling us something and we want to push whatever our body is telling us away. And so then there was another thought, I'll just go back to sleep. And then I wondered, if I go back to sleep, I mean, having all this dialogue in my head, if I go back to sleep, would I be emulating Mr. Duffy? If I go back to sleep, is that cultivating being a short distance from my body?

[08:21]

Where is wisdom here? And so I asked the body, you know, where is wisdom here? What is the most appropriate response? It's something we say a lot in our Zen practice. What is the most appropriate response? And I reminded myself that it takes courage to welcome everything that comes to us. And anybody that's lived as long as I have has had to cultivate courage because our life is filled with a lot of pain. And sometimes if we're living a distance from our body, we're able to cut off from the pain. And when we practice meditating and focusing inward, our focus is to actually not be distant, not be distant from the body, and not to just believe all these thoughts that come randomly.

[09:22]

So it occurred to me that I could check out the thoughts that said I couldn't get out of bed. But I didn't want to. I didn't want to check it out because fear came. Suppose I get out of bed when the thoughts are telling me I can't and I fall flat on my face. Where's my cell phone? Do I know how to dial? Can I do 911? I sleep with my cell phone next to my bed because I listen to Dharma talks before I go to sleep. Sometimes I fall asleep in the middle of a Dharma talk. Oops, maybe somebody will be listening to mine and fall asleep. May you have a good night's sleep and wake up completely at peace and relaxed. Looking at how can this illness that I've been living with for such a long time benefit? How can it be beneficial? So that's a benefit. A side note, benefit. You could fall asleep to my Dharma talk. So...

[10:27]

So what I've been experiencing since the end of the practice period a few weeks ago is what I think of as a flash flood of an illness I've had for 30 years. And many people call the illness chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia. And the fatigue is different than I feel really tired because I've had a difficult week and I just need some extra sleep. It's really different. It's a profound tiredness that at times means that your body is really weak and can't get out of bed or has difficulty walking or walking downstairs, upstairs. And it's... hard to know. It's hard to intellectually know what is the most appropriate response when the body is so profoundly tired. Because it's when my body has been tired, not chronic fatigue tired, but just tired like I worked really hard all day and I'm tired, the appropriate response is rest.

[11:40]

With chronic fatigue, it sounds like that would be the appropriate response. But sometimes it's not because the lying down induces lying down. Less energy induces less energy. So it's kind of like when you hurt something in the body and you don't know whether to walk or run or not. And somebody says, oh, no pain, no gain. But sometimes somebody says, if you walk on that knee, you're going to damage it severely. So the best thing to do is not be distant from our body. So I decided that I would allow my body to teach me the most appropriate response. And as I focused in on the body, a lot of fear came. And I figured it was fear because the body got very contracted and wanted to keep it out.

[12:43]

And then I remembered, oh, this just simply takes courage to face the fear. Fear itself can't really damage me. It's an emotion. It's part of my emotional life. It's part of our emotional life. So I can face the fear. It's okay. I can be with this. And I can be careful when I get out of bed. I will go very slowly. asked the body what it thought of that thought, and the body didn't respond. So I just laid there. I don't know for how long. And then the body sent me some encouragement. It moved a little bit without my moving it. It just moved itself. And the body didn't feel as weak as it did when I first woke up. And so I decided to get up very carefully and very slowly.

[13:50]

And I did that, and I started to walk around my apartment in circles very slowly with such gratitude. I mean, so much gratitude. One of the benefits of having an illness is that when you start to feel better or... You start to notice things in a new way. Oh, for a moment there I thought I couldn't get out of bed. Maybe I would never get out of bed. Now I'm out of bed. Wow, whoopee. I'm out of bed. And look at that. The sun is shining and the leaves are reflecting the light and it's so beautiful. And I'm walking. And look at that. I'm walking. And then I started to wave my arms around to waken up the body more. And And I probably did that for around 30 minutes. And then I made myself a cup of tea and sat and enjoyed the tea.

[14:53]

And I felt so grateful that I was able to have the energy to make a cup of tea and to drink a cup of tea. And then the ideas I had about what I would do for the day started to come into the mind. Oh, can I do that? Yeah, I think I can. And so then I was on to the next moment, which was, let's see what came in on my emails and like that. What I keep learning through this illness is that paying attention to the body's inherent wisdom instead of the thoughts that are telling me what's going on is... a very relevant focus of my attention because the thoughts are random. They come and go. Some of them, I haven't even the slightest idea whose thoughts they were because sometimes they're not even anything I would think I would think.

[15:56]

Have you ever had that kind of thing? All of a sudden you have this thought and you go, where did that come from? So sometimes we have those thoughts, we don't even know where they come from. And then if there's an emotion that's attached to them, we actually believe that thought. but maybe it's not true. So I'm a firm proponent of looking to the body to tell me what's true. So I find that it's a really important aspect of being ill, an aspect of the practice life for me, because pain and illness really gets our attention, really gets our attention.

[17:06]

And when we are in direct contact with with experience, being in touch, directly experiencing, we have an opportunity to invite in kindness and patience, self-compassion, as we check out what's happening. A very beneficial practice. It's been a beneficial practice to me as I continue to cultivate kindness and patience, loving and compassion towards others. I've noticed it's really beneficial to start with myself first because that's how we really learn. And many of us, certainly in my life, I didn't learn that in my childhood.

[18:11]

I didn't learn that in my history. The people that were my caretakers that grew me up didn't know how to do it, so they couldn't transmit that information to me. I was barely helped by Abbas Christina, who's here today during the practice period, because I had bouts of a lot of illness during the practice period. I was the head student here during the practice period, and And I got very sick for a couple of weeks. I couldn't get out of bed. And I was so loved that I learned how to be loving. That that I would wish all of us to have had in our histories, to be so completely loved and accepted for who we are in this moment. It's so healing.

[19:13]

And when we can offer this to ourselves, we can heal ourselves. And as we heal ourselves, we can be there for others. Our bodies don't lie. Our thoughts lie to us all of the time. But our bodies tell us the truth. They tell us all about how we really feel, what we really want, and what we really need. Our bodies teach us in a very concrete way about the reality of impermanence and interdependence. They teach us about love, compassion, and intimacy. I took this off of our San Francisco Zen Center's website when Samantha Ostergaard, who is a yoga teacher, I think she's also an acupuncturist, she used those words to describe a workshop she taught earlier this month here.

[20:29]

I think it was here. And the workshop was called The Body Beyond Knowing, Zen Mind Yoga Body. So those are her words, and they really resonate with me. Our bodies don't lie. Our thoughts lie to us all of the time, but our bodies tell the truth. They tell us all about how we really feel, what we really want, and what we really need. Our bodies teach us in a very concrete way about the reality of impermanence and interdependence. They teach us about love, compassion, and intimacy. When we cultivate being a truth teller to ourselves, we can see through our deep-seated desire to feel or be a particular way. And when we cultivate telling ourselves the truth about what's actually happening in reality, we can realize deeply that we don't have to feel or be different in order to be free.

[21:43]

We can experience acceptance that comes with staying truthfully present with what is. I say truthfully because our thoughts often lie. So we have to check the thoughts out. Is this really true? Truthfully present with what is. These last few weeks I see that sometimes I can get out of bed and sometimes I can't. I had Peter's phone number right on my contacts that would come up first if I couldn't get out of bed. I was going to call Peter and say, help, help, carry me over to Zen. It's a little dramatic, but those were the thoughts I had. And knowing him because he was so there for me, as he assisted when I was just so, the head student here, he was so there for me, I trusted that he would be there if I needed him. So another event happened a few weeks ago.

[22:52]

Kogan Abby Sheldon, did I see her here? Hi. Asked me if she could write an article for our Zen Center community newsletter. We have an online newsletter about some of my present activities at the time, or still my present activities. And one of her questions, what value you defined in marrying Zen practice with psychotherapy? My immediate response was something like, Oy vey. I didn't know that I was getting married. Her pause, her question gave me pause. How would my practice be effective if I did get married? I got married to myself. I mean, that's the title of this talk, intimacy, something like that, marrying myself. I was asked for a title, so that's what I came up with. These random thoughts, oftentimes a mystery regarding what activates and tickle me sometimes. You know, what if I get married to myself?

[23:56]

And sometimes the more I laugh about them, the more they stay with me. And do you want to come in? There may be a chair over there. Chair right over there. If you want to come in. Of course, now what are you going to do? Laughter A double bind. Sometimes we're our mothers whether we want to be or not. I hope it's okay with you that I put that, yeah. Whoops, I lost where I was for a moment. Well, here I found myself. Here I am. Sometimes these random thoughts are often a mystery and they tickle me. And what's good about laughing about some of the thoughts is we realize how absurd it is as human beings.

[25:02]

Our mind just secretes thoughts. That's what minds do. Secreting thoughts, secreting thoughts. And it's so lovely when some of the secretions make us laugh. It's very amusing to be a human being sometimes. So Kogan's question most likely was based on her knowledge that I've been a psychotherapist for a long time, since 1981, and a Buddhist practitioner since 1990 or 91, something like that. And many of the workshops I teach, I teach a lot of workshops, focus on how the Buddhist teaching can help us relate. to the pain that naturally comes up in our life. It's a part of what it is to be a human being. I used to believe that if I felt pain, it's because I did something wrong. Many of us still have that belief. We feel pain because it's a part of the human condition. It isn't that we've done something wrong. And it's not so easy being a human being, is it? We share...

[26:08]

a so-called primitive brain, the mammalian brain, with other animals, that part of the brain that scans the territory to keep us safe. And as we do so, we start to have these thoughts. I want this. I don't want that. I have to have this. I better get it. I want more, more, more. of what I find pleasurable, none of what I find unpleasant. I'm not at all happy with how things are right now. Actually, I'm madder than hell, and I'll do what I have to to get what I want or avoid what I don't want. In Buddhist practice, we call these thoughts, greed thoughts and hatred thoughts and delusion thoughts. I didn't get to delusion yet. Let's roll back the tape and take away that word delusion.

[27:09]

And sometimes we just pretend that what's happening isn't. Or we ignore what's happening. Not purposely, just to tolerate. It's an unconscious, primitive brain, mammalian brain strategy to help us tolerate things that are very painful. kind of a pretense, this is not really happening. I can't really believe this. Sometimes what we hear or see or feel is so painful, we say, that's hard to believe. When actually what we mean is, ugh, this is so painful. This is so painful. You know what I mean? Some of you do. These qualities are common to all human beings and can lead to much reactivity and the suffering that accompanies reactivity.

[28:17]

And so the activities I engage with, what I spend most of my working time doing is paying attention to how we, how I, relate to these common human tendencies that arise from desire, aversion, and delusion. When I started meditation practice a bit over 20 years ago, I was interested in living a stress-free, relaxed, happy life, free of pain. Simply a human being that had been conditioned to believe that if I'm not happy, there's something wrong with me. Or them. Something wrong with me or them that has to get fixed. And my secret wish when I first started meditation, oh, this is being recorded. I think my secret wish was to go for the bliss. I wanted to sit bitty, bitty, bitty and get into a bliss state.

[29:21]

And there are meditation practices that help people get into a bliss state. And so I practiced some of those for a while. I never quite was able to hold a bliss state for longer than, say, 30 or 40 seconds. But I knew it was possible to be in a bliss state. And... And so I figured that I could achieve this by meditating more. And then whoops. Then sometimes I couldn't get in a bliss state. And that would create a lot of suffering. I want the bliss state. And I admit sometimes that really still sounds good to me. And I discovered that aiming for a bliss state It's just not very realistic. At least it's not realistic for me. It isn't how I want to live my life awake in this state with my feet right planted here with all of you. And if, like me, you're interested in marrying yourself for the long haul, it's important to learn how to relate to everything.

[30:36]

Everything that shows up in partnership with ourselves. Not just the small self, the bunch of stuff that came together that I call me, but the self that makes up everything, the large self, the ultimate self, which I'll say a little bit more about, but that's not the focus of the talk today. As many of us know, who have been partnered up, it's helpful to have a feet-on-the-ground practice because Those of us who have partnered up know that bliss isn't always present. So I originally came to Zen Center, San Francisco Zen Center, for a year respite from years of professional activities as a professor, a psychotherapist, supervisor of psychotherapists. I look at my own resume and I'm completely dazzled. Because you live long enough and you're interested in the things that you're doing and you do a lot of things.

[31:38]

And I've done a lot of things and I've really appreciated all of these elements of my life along the path. And... When I came to Zen Center, I had already been diagnosed a few years before with a chronic illness with this fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue. I'd come through a couple of years of severe cognitive impairment. And I felt as if I were caught on a train accompanied by lifelong companions, depression and anxiety. The depression and anxiety was not just about being so sick. depression and anxiety had accompanied me most of my life and I didn't have a way to relate to those what I call mood states and I was really tired I was wired from all the activities I was tired and I wanted to get off of the train but I didn't really quite know how and that's when I decided I was just going to take a year off of work and

[32:45]

I applied to come to Zen Center and I was accepted. So I came here for a year, I thought. Of course, I was here for years. Many of you know that. So I came to Zen Center having put in a few years of meditation practice before I came. And I came with the intention to stop and to turn inward. Inward towards what? Towards intimate self-understanding. deeper wisdom understanding not the understanding that comes through the intellect but the wisdom that's available to all of us when we settle down and we become still we cultivate finding stillness or stillness reveals itself to us and when stillness reveals itself to us and we're very quiet and we shine a light on what's actually happening sometimes Wisdom comes to us. We can't make it happen. You can cultivate the conditions in which we can actually be with wisdom.

[33:53]

I discovered that I didn't know very much about the practice of how reality actually works. I didn't really know how to be still. I thought I knew how to be still. But as I practiced for a longer time, I realized stillness can become stiller and stiller. I didn't know that at first. Some of me knew, some wisdom knew, that I needed to devote myself completely, devote myself wholeheartedly to cultivating awareness of awareness. And that's why I came to Zen Center. At Zen Center we call cultivation of awareness of awareness. Zazen. Just sitting. Sounds so simple. Just sitting. The practice instructions are simple and staying close to reality as reality reveals itself to us can take much courage.

[35:04]

How wonderful to know that courage is available to all of us. The more we practice courage, the stronger it gets. Check it out yourself. As we stay close to what comes, we begin to notice the phenomena of physical and mental events. All phenomena are marked by impermanence. Phenomena arises. As I mentioned earlier, we want to hold on to the pleasant phenomena, avoid what's unpleasant, or we pretend that what's happening isn't happening if it doesn't serve us. After all, it is all about us. It's all about me. Let's forget that it's all about me. And all of us from time to time recognize how self-centered we are. It's wonderful to notice that because the moment we notice how self-centered we are, we can make a decision to widen our point of view and include the bigger self of who we are.

[36:09]

And as we practice Zazen, and we can simply be with phenomena, physical and mental phenomena, as phenomena arises and passes away, we can notice that This phenomena is not us. The phenomena that passes through is not us. It's not you, and it's not yours. We don't have any control over the phenomena. It just comes and goes. When we sit... We can actually touch how phenomena just comes and goes. Blip, blip, blip. Energy flowing. This synapse touches that synapse. This synapse sends a signal that the mammalian brain should send something to take care of us in the body or stop sending what took care of us because it's time to stop now.

[37:22]

Blip, blip, blip. That's what's happening. It isn't us, it isn't you, and it isn't yours. We cannot control this. So coming back to getting married to ourselves. Being in deeply committed relationship to ourselves. Now I almost didn't use the word getting married to ourselves because there's still so much controversy with LGBTIQII. about some states saying it's okay to acknowledge you as loving each other, and if you want to get married, you can do so here. So for me, the word marriage kind of has, I don't know, it's got some mud slung on it in some way because not everybody is equally free to get married if they want to. So I didn't want to raise any kind of, I didn't want to activate marriage

[38:25]

Anybody getting mad at me? Because I'm using the word married when some people can't get married. So I hope I haven't harmed anybody. When I talk about marriage, what I mean is deeply committed decision to be with each other for a long period of time. That's what I mean. But I'm going to keep using the word marriage because that's the word I'm used to. I just wanted to clean that up, and we can talk about that more later if you'd like. So coming back to getting married to ourselves, being in this deeply committed relationship with ourselves, it can be valuable to listen to our ancestors, to people who know what it's like to be deeply committed. Oh, wow, that sounds like deep wisdom. And so I've heard that A.H. Dogen, who's the founder of our... our Zen school, said, enlightenment is intimacy with all things.

[39:33]

Not just the things that I like. Not just the things that please me or that might lead you to think I'm great. But intimacy with all things, welcoming everything, Enlightenment is not a fixed state. Enlightenment is an ongoing activity. It's a verb. Enlightening activity is intimacy with all things. All things. All phenomena. So coming back to Kogan's question, what value do you find in marrying Zen practice with psychology? My experience when I started to sit Zazen was was similar to that of falling in love, a new lover. Honeymoon period, you know? When we're falling in love, we notice what's pleasant and we ignore or push away what isn't. If something shows up that's unpleasant, we can fall into the delusion that we can change the person to fit this ideal person we have made them up to be.

[40:45]

Does anybody know what I mean? In the room, you know? In the honeymoon period, we push away the person as they are oftentimes until the oxytocin that came. Oxytocin comes when we fall in love and we have that glow. It's an oxytocin glow. It's a hormone that comes at the first sign of love. It's what happens with nursing mothers. It's what happens when we hug each other. Even for 20 seconds, a 20-second hug can release oxytocin. I'm a big hugger. I've had to learn, and I didn't know. I didn't know. I just was reading about that. I've done some of the scientific research, kind of cursory looking at some things. And I read somewhere that a 20-second hug can release oxytocin. No wonder I'm going around trying to hug everybody.

[41:47]

I have to ask them first. Because some people are not comfortable with touch for very good reason. I love to be hugged. If you ever need a hug, just come to me. So falling in love is like being in a hypnotic state. Anybody that's fallen in love knows what I mean. Everything has a glow about it. We want to hold on to the glow. Maybe it hasn't been like that for you. I don't know. Maybe I'm simply exposing my own experience. But I know there's nothing quite like the glow of first falling in love. Because oxytocin is a hormone that comes at the first sign of love, eventually it comes down. Because there's... that shows itself up in our relationships. Oxytocin production is necessary for the formation of bonding and relationships.

[42:58]

So oxytocin is not a bad thing, it's a necessary thing. And... Some of us, when we go for a massage, in fact, it occurred to me when I woke up this morning aching and creaking and stuff, gee, maybe I'll go for a massage because massage will probably release some oxytocin. What a great idea. So I'm going to look for a time I can have a massage. So as I read some of the science, I realized that that we need oxytocin to form our relationships. And we also need to know what to do when the excitement of new relationship starts to flow into the long haul of relationship if we decide that's what we want to do. So when I first began to practice meditation, I felt in the honeymoon period.

[44:00]

And as the honeymoon period began to touch reality, Like, that person sitting next to me is breathing too loud. Or that person over there keeps scratching themselves, how annoying. I'm feeling sad and I want the sadness to go away. Too much sadness, stop it. The glow began to fade. And this was when it can be helpful to call on what I call Tush on the Kush practice. And that is that it doesn't matter whether there's a honeymoon period or not. It doesn't matter what comes across our experience. What matters, the most important thing to me anyway, is to be with awareness, aware of what is actually happening. Not what I want to be happening, but what is actually happening.

[45:02]

Because when I do that, I'm in touch with life. I'm in touch with life. This life that just was given. Just like that. Just was given. And it's going to be not here in a few years. Or maybe in the next minute. I don't know. We don't know. So that's the most important thing to me. To be awake. To show up for what's really happening. So I became less interested as I sat more... and devoted myself to cultivation of awareness of awareness, I realized that I was less interested in psychological process and more interested in what's common to all human beings underneath our individual personalities. By being interested in being with what's what didn't mean I didn't give up with being a psychotherapist or being interested in... in psychology, but it wasn't my first... I didn't move to that first.

[46:09]

It was actually through the process of being a psychotherapist that I became interested in practice because I saw so many people from all different kind of histories and cultures and different conditions in their life, and they all wanted to be happy. They might be going about getting happiness because they wanted to get happiness in a way that cut them off from a possibility of them finding satisfaction in their life. But basically, they all wanted to be happy and I wanted to be happy. And it's the same for all of us. So I became really very curious about how the commonality of what I saw with all human beings. And Of course I was interested in the histories, but I was more interested in the process of how the body-mind works. And so that's what I became more interested in, deeper and deeper interest in how mind-bodies work.

[47:18]

And what I discovered is that deep inside of me, There's a lot of love. And there's a lot of kindness. And there's a lot of compassion. I didn't know that. And as I discovered that, as I sat, I began to discover that those qualities that I saw in myself were qualities that everybody has in themselves. It's common Loving and kindness and compassion is common to all human beings. It's a part of our human nature. Check it out. Sit for a while. And when you sit for a while, it may be that you'll notice these qualities in yourself.

[48:25]

But you can't take my word for it. You can only check it out in yourself. So this body has taught me in a very concrete way about the reality of impermanence and of interdependence. Because everything I see in myself, I also see in you. I see myself reflected in you. The body is teaching me, as it is now, has a lot of time. to teach me love and compassion and intimacy. Conventionally, we walk around and we think that we're separate from each other, and that's really helpful so that we don't bump into each other. And some of us forget that we're all intimately interconnected. We're all in partnership. We're all married. We're all married to each other. We don't often notice this.

[49:26]

Just for a few moments, just close your eyes for a moment so you can have... sense of what I'm talking about. I put this together this morning. And if you don't want to close your eyes, you can have your eyes open and maybe look through the floor just so you can focus inward for a few minutes. So in this very moment, all of us can recognize that everything is married to everything else. Do you recognize that everything is married to everything? Everything is married to water, to oxygen, to earth, to fire. All of us composed of what everything else is composed of. This breath that I call my breath is our breath.

[50:27]

Every single person in this room living an embodied life. Everyone in this room is breathing together. No separation. All of us occupying where we are right now. It's breathing together. No separation. All of us occupying where we are right now. In relationship. ever-changing together. Our bodies made of the same elements in different forms. When we realize that we are already married to each other for the long haul, it can be helpful to pay attention to what needs loving acceptance. What needs kindness? What needs Patience.

[51:32]

What needs truthfulness in this moment? And then in this moment, checking in with yourself. And now coming back together in the usual way that we come back together. Perhaps taking some of the discovery that you may have noticed just now. to your practice. Our bodies don't lie. Our thoughts lie to us all of the time. But our bodies tell us the truth. Our interconnectedness, our interdependence tells us the truth. So our bodies don't lie. They tell us all about what we really feel, what we really want, what we really need.

[52:33]

Our bodies teach us in a very concrete way about the reality of impermanence, the reality of our interdependence. They teach us about love and compassion and intimacy. I'm so glad I got out of bed this morning. Because it's kind of lonely when you're sick. It can be really lonely. And sometimes I'm really happy to be alone because I don't want people to know how sick I am. I don't know why. It's just like there's a vulnerability with sickness, feeling lesser than. But it's not lesser than. It's simply the body's illness. And so it's so wonderful to come out of bed and to meet all of you and to say, here I am, just as I am. you know, shaky and trembly, somewhat tattered. Actually, I don't feel that way at all right now. I feel connected to all of you.

[53:36]

Deeply, intimately connected to all of you. I couldn't be here, I wouldn't be here speaking if you didn't all show up. Right. So we need each other. Thank you for coming. And in a few moments, there'll be a... cookies and tea, and that's going to be followed by question and answer period in the dining room and dining hall. Okay. So for now... 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 Dorma.

[54:30]

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