This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfzc.org Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good morning. Going home without my sorrow Going home sometime tomorrow Going home to where it's better than before Going home without my burden Going home behind the curtain

[01:03]

going home without this costume that I wore. So this is the biggie, that deep and abiding wish to go home. Whether at the end of a busy day or at the end of our life, there's a longing, you know, primal longing to go home. I've never forgotten an old man who lived on the street where I was. I had a place when I was in college near the Panhandle. He wore a dark suit and a tie and a hat and every day he walked up and down the street and whenever anyone passed he said, can you help me go home? So I talked to him one time and he said when he was a little boy his family moved from Italy to California and He didn't know how to go home.

[02:05]

Sometimes I'd cross the street so I wouldn't have to see the disappointment in his face again. So in this day and at this time in our human history, although it's always really hard to see exactly what's going on, there's a lot of talk about homelessness and about refugees and immigrants and to some less extent about sanctuaries. And yet I think we know that there are millions and millions of people on the move or living in camps longing for a safe place for themselves and their families. How many of you have seen 4.1 miles I think it was nominated for an Academy Award. Anyway, it's a short documentary about the small Coast Guard on the island of Lesbos.

[03:13]

And every day they go out hoping to rescue the thousands and thousands of people who are out there on the water, 4.1 miles of treacherous water between Syria and Greece. And many of the small boats capsize, and there are hundreds and hundreds of bodies washed up on the shore of Lesbos. 4.1 miles. So I watched this film. It's not very long. And I felt really sad, and I started to cry, as, of course, we do. And then I got really angry that all these great navies of the world are not out there helping those people. You know, that the 911 call to the world is not being answered. So in the meanwhile, you know, I sit here among the privileged few who I truly hope have a home.

[04:29]

a safe place, a place maybe even of great beauty, like this one where we live. And I hope you have a family and you have nourishing food and friends. And when I think about that, I think, well, it's always been that way for me. It's never been otherwise. I've never wondered where I'm going to have to sleep at night. I've never been without food or clothing or furniture or, from the day I turned 16, my own car. I could always find work, go to school, have my body and my teeth fixed as needed. And I really don't know what it's like to be without any of those things. In other words, I take my life for granted. I think a lot of us are trying to understand how it is that we've come to take our lives for granted.

[05:35]

How did that happen? How would it be to not take our lives for granted? So how would it be to understand how our ancestors, my ancestors and my parents and my siblings, my child and me have come to live such privileged lives? So on reflecting on that, how it is for me personally, I've become willing to look at the larger picture. How has it been on a larger scale for so many of us to take our lives for granted? What are those actions that have happened historically, mostly violent, that have led to this unimaginably inequitable distribution of resources? on this planet? And some of those answers are pretty well known, if we're willing to read our own human history, as painful as it is.

[06:45]

I was very grateful years ago to read Jared Diamond's Nobel Prize, but Pulitzer Prize, winning guns, germs, and steel, which was followed up by another quite eye-opening and startling book called Collapse. How societies choose to fail or succeed. So we do know, and we know a lot. For example, we know that the things we take for granted have mostly been taken from others. Including this land, right here, where we have built our homes and where I am privileged to live today. And yet somehow knowing that doesn't seem to change anything. Not for the better. And that's pretty easy to understand as well. Because to change things for the better for others would be to change them for the worse, for me.

[07:50]

And yet as people of conscience, we really ought to do that. I think we really ought to go back home. to where we came from. And unfortunately, like the old Italian gentleman, I have no idea where that is or how to get there. I don't even speak the language. Which leaves me and probably many of you believing one thing and behaving another. It's kind of a cringe. So with those thoughts as background, what I want to talk about today is another kind of change, a change of heart, which is really the only dimming hope I think we have for humanity, that common ground we all share, the human heart. And it's certainly what drew me to the Buddhist tradition in the first place. It was hearing the words of the gentle Buddhas,

[09:01]

spoken to and from the human heart. Words like loving-kindness and compassion and generosity, ethics, patience, honesty, and perfect wisdom. And yet, even though such words have a great power to change the way we feel, to change our hearts, what's more difficult is to change the way we think. To change the core cultural beliefs and values of the societies into which we were born and educated. For me, as a white American female, the values I was taught to believe in include independence. And it's a big holiday around here. I was taught to believe in competition. for grades and for athletic ability.

[10:03]

Patriotism. Love it or leave it. Acquisition of whatever I could get my hands on. And I was taught basically to be a winner. To see myself as somehow better and more successful than others. avoiding the painful alternative, which is to be a loser. I often reflect on that particular odd thing that happened in high school called homecoming, where there was one king and one queen, one best, one valedictorian, and then everybody else, all the rest of us. What were we to think? So how is it to be a winner in a culture where we live?

[11:06]

Well, nobody's really sure how to be loved or admired, but we've sort of been told that if you acquire enough education, wealth, property, that maybe that will make you lovable. And I think that's what was meant by the American dream. at least the way I understood it when I was a child. I remember being really disappointed in high school back in 1962. You know, I was a little bit of a tomboy back then. And I was excited to go to high school, and they had some electives. But for girls, the only two were typing or home ec. Home ec, or home economics, was cooking, cleaning childcare. Meanwhile, the boys got to take shop. And I was really jealous because I knew it was going to be a lot more fun in the shop than it was in the kitchen.

[12:13]

So I took typing, thinking just maybe I'd go to college. Maybe. Since that time, I have really come around to the joy of cooking, mostly because the Zen Center requires us to do so. They put us in the kitchen right away. So I realized that it wasn't home economics that was the problem. It was not having a choice. I didn't feel happy about being assigned somebody else's idea of what it meant to be a woman or a citizen. or a worthwhile human being. And I don't think any of you like that either, men or women, anybody else's idea of who you are. Going home without my burden, going home behind the curtain, going home without this costume that I wore. Following high school, the first major event of my life was leaving the home of my parents.

[13:26]

Trauma. Major trauma. And I knew full well that my sole job in the world was to go home again, to my own home. To find my home. That ever more elusive centerpiece of the American dream, to own one's own home. There's a lot of own in that. And then I moved around a lot for about 10 years. I traveled and enjoyed my independence until I came to realize that the only way I could find my own home is if I found my tribe, you know, my people. And I'd had no idea who they were or where they'd gone. I'd studied political science in college, so my heart had been turned by those ultra-liberals at San Francisco State toward collective societies, toward a consideration of a communal lifestyle.

[14:33]

And we read a lot about the various collective options that were being tried at that time and up until this very day. There were the communists, in Cuba, in the USSR, there were the socialists in Sweden, and there were the fascists in Spain and Greece at the time. So I pretty much knew that the only choice that I could see that wasn't the result of mass incarcerations and bloodshed were the socialists. They'd been voted in. So I'm still convinced that The socialist ideal is the only way to go, but I think it's going to take a lot longer to catch on, because even our kids don't like to share their toys. While I was in college, I spent a year in Sweden to see for myself what it was like to live in a place with free education and health care, but most amazingly of all, of transparency around issues of home economics.

[15:39]

One of my Swedish friends asked me, how much does your father make? And I thought, that's none of your business. I was kind of appalled. And I found out later on that along with sex, money is taboo, where I come from. We're not supposed to talk about it. And why? It's rude. So that's one of the puzzle pieces that's been laid out before us to try our best to figure out what's going on here, and perhaps to make it stop. If we're persistent and somewhat lucky, there comes a moment when we get it. You know, aha, that's why I'm not supposed to talk about money. Because those things that might bring shame or embarrassment to me, to good people like me, are taboo. how you got that land, where you got that money, how much you're paid, how much more than the people who work for you.

[16:48]

It's a secret. Your tax returns. So these things bring embarrassment to us. Like Jared Diamond was inspired to write his book by a question he was asked by a New Guinea Highlander. who said to him, how come you people have all the cargo? That's embarrassing. There's a chant we do in the mornings before eating our food here at Zen Center. We reflect on the effort that brought us this food and consider how it comes to us. We reflect on our virtue and practice and whether we are worthy of this offering. But that's the kicker. I always cringe at that line. The story of the Buddha's awakening also begins with that very cringe.

[17:51]

He saw, at the age of 14, the effort that brought him his food. He saw cattle being whipped and fields being plowed and all the tiny animals that were being killed. While everyone else was celebrating, he became despondent and he slipped away from his family and sat by himself under a tree. And then for no reason he could tell, suddenly he found himself at peace, deep peace. It is a beautiful world after all. Then at the age of 29, he left home to find that pathway once again through the world of human sorrow. taking with him all of the many puzzle pieces that had been offered to him along the way. And after many, many years of trial and error, remembering himself as a boy, he once again sat down under a tree. And again, for no reason that he could tell, he rediscovered the ancient pathway.

[18:58]

And being a kind-hearted young man that he was, he went to find his old friends to tell him what he discovered to share with them, the good news. And that good news is being shared to this very day. In fact, sharing is at the very core of what he learned and what he had to teach. Sharing food, space, insight, comfort, kindness. Regardless of race, gender, ability, nationality. religion or creed. And sharing with others may really be what we have here at Green Gulch to teach as well. In fact, many of us were drawn here to this community, to the lifestyle, the traditional Buddhist lifestyle, an idealized practice called not going home, but leaving home.

[20:02]

This ideal of the home leaver is at the very center of the tradition that thrived in India, in China, in Southeast Asia, and now in Marin County, near Beach, California, USA. When one of us ordains as a priest in the Zen tradition, the ritual we undertake is called leaving home and attaining the way. Shūkei tokodō. And leaving home, for those of us who have professed to do so, is a lot more complicated than just not having your own house. Leaving home is a deep spiritual commitment to see into the human tendency toward acquisition. And to realize that this drive to own or possess persons, places, and things is at the very heart of our suffering. And that's the very insight

[21:07]

that transformed this young man into a Buddha and awakened me. The puzzle pieces fit perfectly, only they were upside down and backward. Upside down and backward from the usual way that we humans think. So primary among them were giving instead of getting and selflessness instead of selfishness. And once again, it's very easy to say those things, but it's terribly hard to do them or to become them. Upside down and backwards. So I've been thinking that maybe Green Gulch could offer a course in communal living. We're doing okay. We have a lot of meetings. And a few rules. Just a few rules. They're mostly not

[22:08]

You know, we really don't have a police force or anything like that. We just remind people daily. Please don't do that. Please do that. So I really believe that we're all going to need to do that. We're going to need to live together and to share our toys. Or many among us who are least able to hold on to their homes will simply perish. They're going to perish one way or another, if not from disease. from despair and loneliness. It's already happening. I read a study, I think it was yesterday, maybe you saw it. There's a downward trend among middle class in America of life expectancy for the first time in many, many years. And it has to do precisely with despair arising from involuntary homelessness from joblessness, divorce, and overall a lack of self-respect, leading to alcoholism, drug addiction, and suicide.

[23:17]

I remember talking to some of the parents of my daughter's friends when she was going to school in Mill Valley about what seemed to be an enviable lifestyle. Many had big houses on the hill. very big automobiles, and seemingly unfathomable amounts of money. And I said, you know, how is it in your neighborhood? And they kind of look at me like, what do you mean neighborhood? They didn't know their neighbors. And one woman who had recently divorced, you know, she said, I don't live in a home, I live in an asset. And by 2008, those assets had plummeted in value. Many of our friends moved away, and others managed to hold on until things could be taken for granted once again. At that time, the foundation that I am volunteering with shifted a huge amount of money from environmental education to mortgage relief and the Marin County Food Banks.

[24:37]

and the Legal Defense Fund. Close call. So how does a Buddha think about pathways to the end of suffering? Well, as I said, it's not so much about a change but about a revolution. It's a revolution in the way we think and consequently in how we feel. The Buddha called this revolution the four upside-down views, which is the normal way we think. Upside-down, inverted. And correcting those views is considered to be the very pathway he discovered to awakening. So I wanted to tell you what they are. They might seem familiar. The first one is a belief in a singularity called the self. Me, myself, and I. The second is a belief in the existence of objects, real things out there that are built to last, such as a new car, a new home, a new job, or a new husband or a new bride, built to last.

[25:55]

Number three is the belief in the ability that the self, the singularity, when it's able to possess those objects, is going to be happy, perhaps forever after. I like to call this the shopping model of human happiness. Some people call it retail therapy. Number four of the upside-down views is the belief that the shopping model actually works, that it's true. And so we keep trying again and again to satisfy ourselves by acquisition. And again and again, there's a Sanskrit word for that called samsara, meaning endless circling, again and again, unbroken chain. It's also called the cycle of birth and death.

[27:00]

And the reason it's called that is because there is a natural law that you all know the law of impermanence, that nothing is built to last forever. Not the self, not objects, not places. This is called the law of impermanence, meaning that everything has to go. Gotta go. Going home. Like Leonard, dear Leonard Cohen, he made it. And yet our suffering isn't a result of the way things are. It's not a result of impermanence. It's a result of not liking the way things are. Not liking or accepting aging, sickness and death. Not liking the 50,000 mile repair bill for my Prius or for my teeth.

[28:03]

And then there's the mold that grows on the bread and the weeds in the garden. and this mysterious number that keeps appearing on Zen Center's balance sheet every year called depreciation. I don't even know what that is, but I know it's bad. And I know we'd be fine without it. If only. Nothing ever broke or aged. So there's two ways to deal with reality. One is denial, and that's popular. The other way is to be truly honest with ourselves about what we expect from the world and from one another and what kind of promises we can make to ourselves and to each other once we begin to awaken to how it truly is to be alive in the flow of transient phenomena. As Master Dogen, the founder of our school, says in his work, the Genjo Koan, an attachment blossoms fall in a version of

[29:11]

Weed spread. Meaning whatever we do as separate, isolated individuals is doomed to fail. Because we are not that. We are not that. We are connected deeply to one another and to everything in the entire universe. We are born of connection to our mother and our father, to the earth, to the light and the water, the soil. None of it, none of it is for sale. None of it. You can't buy it. Connection. So, but we dream. We dream we can acquire maybe something more, something better. And then those dreams become nightmares. You know, we've become terrified of one another. Now, the kind of language, not from the human heart, but from fear,

[30:13]

It's wild. There's an epidemic of fear, terror. You know, we're afraid of being robbed and dismissed, exiled, fired, bombed, tortured. And so we really do need a change of heart. And we need a growth in courage and we need a growth in wisdom. And so we sit. This is why we sit. It's not exotic. It's not special. It's not hard. But it's really important to give yourself time to watch your mind at work, the way you think, and how that creates the way you feel and then what you do. The virtue of these teachings lies in their power not to just overcome our fear, but actually to shut it down.

[31:16]

Not building walls to protect ourselves, but tearing them down, taking off the roof so we can really see the sky. We can see the world, this beautiful world all around us. And we can come to understand more clearly the illusory nature of everything that we fear, including ourselves, just as the Buddha did, sitting under a tree. He was no longer afraid of his own mind or anybody else's. As we come to know ourselves ever more deeply and truthfully, the puzzle pieces fall neatly into place, right side up. And on seeing that, our gaze softens, the world brightens, and for a timeless moment or two, we smile at one another. I'm so glad you're here.

[32:25]

Perhaps we are here in order to say house, bridge, fountain, gate, pitcher, fruit tree, window. At most, column, tower. But to say them, you must understand how to say them. How to say them more intensely than than the things themselves ever dreamt of existing. Rainer Maria Wilka. Thank you all very much. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our programs are made possible by the donations we receive. Please help us to continue to realize May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[33:29]

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