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. Good morning. Welcome. Unity Church San Francisco Zen Center Collab. Welcome to everybody who's here for the first time. Who's that? Hi. Nice to see you. Welcome to the people online. Ryan, could you wave to them? If they can't see me. Okay. Welcome. And welcome to all the supporting beings. So... This church has been under renovation. And so they quickly swept everything into, I don't know, closets or wherever to make it ready for the weekend.

[01:11]

It's an incredible amount of work. So if you go downstairs afterwards, you know, as you're walking through the church, you'll see that there's a whole lot of new glass that admits light. And today we're going to be talking about practices that admit light into our lives. And not necessarily the light of wisdom or perfection, but the light of compassion and kindness. And that's what we're going to be talking about today. I'm just wondering if there are any grandparents in the room. Okay, any grandchildren? Just to get us in the mood, I'm wondering if there are a few grandparent or grandchildren words that could serve as cues for some of the important features of grandmotherly or grandfatherly mind.

[02:23]

Any grandparent or grandchildren want to say something? And I'll echo you so we don't have to pass the mic around. Just a word or two. Yeah. Calming. Thank you. Calming. Experience. Delight. Okay. One or two more words. Wisdom. Warmth. Thank you. Okay, so now we have a little bit of a feeling for grandparently mind. So I want to give a little story to illustrate grandparently mind. I received a video the day before yesterday, and my identical twin sister who lives in L.A. has two granddaughters.

[03:24]

And one just turned two last week, the week before last. And one is one and a half. And they're very small people with very big personalities. So in this video, my brother-in-law had seated them on an ottoman. And the two of them are small enough so that they could fit on the ottoman when it was sideways. And he fastened a rope to the ottoman. And he was pulling them around the house. And the mom of one of them was going, chugga, [...] choo-choo. Chugga, chugga, chugga, chugga. And then the little kid went, choo-choo. And everybody was laughing. And my brother-in-law was getting really thrilled about this. He said, little girl train, little girl train.

[04:26]

And the kids had these big smiles. Their smiles were bigger than they were. When he said, little girl train. And they were going choo-choo. Everybody was into it. Anyway, they went all the way around the house. And then finally, when he started getting tired of pulling the ottoman around, he said, I think we're coming to the last stop. And everybody went, last stop, last stop. Chugga-chugga-choo-choo, last stop. And it was adorable. I must have watched that video 20 times. Just there's something very special about the kind feeling of this guy. There are serious illnesses in the family. There are big things to deal with in the family.

[05:28]

But at that moment, he was just pulling around an ottoman and being a little girl train conductor. And I loved it. And I thought, this is not such an easy week, but this just made it so much easier. And then I thought, I know, I'm going to talk about compassion. I'm going to talk about kindness. That's what's important to me right now. This feeling of being with the children and just on their own terms. and doing something that would delight them just as they are. That's important. This is an important thing that needs to be in the world. What is it? It just is so simple. So anyway, I studied up, but I may not use all the scholarly information from studying.

[06:31]

But that's the image I want to give you. So grandmotherly qualities, you know, warmth, you know, acceptance, wisdom, experience, grandmotherly, grandfatherly qualities. I left one out. What was it? Delight. Yeah. So... There is a bodhisattva, an awakening being, that symbolizes these qualities in Buddhist practice. And there's different versions of this awakening being, ava-lokiteshvara. Some are more kind of royal and dignified and special. And some are more everyday. And so today I'd like to talk about the everyday ones and give some translations of Avalokiteshvara's name.

[07:41]

These translations started in about the 400s or the 500s, and we've been thinking about them for a long time ever since. So we say in the Japanese... in the Soto Zen tradition. That's my tradition. Soto is a reference to the names of the founders. And Zen is a word that goes all the way back in time because in Japanese it's Zen. In Chinese it's Chan. In Sanskrit it's Dhyana. Dhyana. is concentration. So it's a concentration school, and it's the kind of yogic school of Buddhist meditation. And so this bodhisattva, this awakening being of Avalokiteshvara, has some Chinese names that I think it's important to understand.

[08:50]

And excuse me, but I didn't look up the tone, so this is going to be English. approximation of what these names actually sound like. So Guan Shi Yin is the hearer of the cries of the world. So Guan is literally, it's a word that means to see. So in Japanese it's kan. And this kan has, it literally means to see or observe, but it has a special connotation in the yogic sense. that it's concentrated seeing. It's liberated seeing. It's the kind of seeing that takes in what it's seeing and contemplates it to really understand what it is and be able to respond appropriately in the world. And shir just means world. Yin means sound. So guanyin or kanon, that...

[09:54]

On is sound, literally sound. And other names in Chinese are also very interesting. So hearer of the cries of the world, hearer of the sound of the world, sound observer, but also how sound illuminates or sees us are all part of this name. But also there's Guan Shi Shan. which shen is just the word for body or form. And so that it's the perceiving the bodily causes and conditions. And there's guanshuri, which is to perceive the intentions. And there's guanshuriye, which is to perceive the karma, which includes all the other names. So Kanze On, the hearer of the cries of the world, like a grandparent, not only hears when the baby cries, but also understands or absorbs the bodily karma of the baby.

[11:11]

So grandparent might know even better than a parent when a child needs to be changed or is uncomfortable, hot or cold. They don't really expect as much of the kids as a parent has to, or their expectations are more like wishes that they observe the child as. And a grandparent might also see things in the child, like the potential of the child or the intention of the child, and might... really because they're stepping back a generation and they have all that experience and have made all those mistakes and have been through all those things, they might actually be able to perceive the karma of the child, the whole kind of active ecosystem that the child is in or will be part of for their life. I think that's a really cool function of grandparenting that includes delight,

[12:15]

includes the other qualities that we said. And that quality we name as compassion. And the word for compassion, again, the kanji or the character for compassion, there's two that I want to point out. They're very interesting because Chinese characters and Japanese kanji are different from English words because, first of all, the same sound can be so many different words, so you understand it in context, so you have to know context. But the other thing is that the characters have pictographed in their pictographs and they have sections, the characters have sections or pieces that are used again and again in different characters.

[13:22]

So when I first studied Chinese poetry in college, my professor asked me to translate the same poem in 20 different ways. So he asked me to translate it visually according to the meaning of character. He asked me to translate it kind of English the way that we would read it in a poetry book in the United States or in England, and asked me to translate the music of the character because they're in tones. And also the rhythm of the character, because it has a rhythm as well that makes it a poetic form. Anyway, he kept asking me to translate it in different ways, and it was almost like different poems. So these two words for compassion are really important. So the first one I want to point out is he. So it has little kind of forks on top, and it has...

[14:25]

I'm going to try to do heart backwards. It has the heart character on the bottom. So the top part, the un part, means mistake or something negative or an injustice. The bottom part means heart or mind. So that character means something that we can translate in English as compassion. but it has the sense of looking at something that's out of balance with the heart. So isn't that interesting that that character has such wisdom for us that we wouldn't necessarily see something bad as just something bad, but also see it as a gateway to fellow feeling, grandmotherly mind and action. So that is a really interesting word to me. And then the second one I wanted to point out is called He.

[15:29]

And it's like, it is a character that we recite several times a week in a dharani, a kind of poem that carries dharma called the Dahi Shindarani, which is about the blue-necked one swallowing the entire ocean of suffering at one gulp. so that the nectar of life could come out. So that's what that poem is about. But that character has several parts, and you could read those parts as one part is one, one part is putting together, one part is kind of nicknamed the short thread, and one part is heart. So it's kind of like... as one, you put together the short threads from the point of view of the heart. So that's all in that character. So it's really a concise language.

[16:32]

Okay, I highly recommend that you Google these characters or Google these because it says something about grandmotherly mind. So let's say a kid falls down and a grandmother might... take it in stride and say, oh, let's see what happens. What happened here? Oh, you got up. Good fall. You know, so a grandparent might say something like that. Right? Or what just happened? Oh, it looks like you spilled. Let's get a sponge. Right? So you're putting together kind of the short thread from the point of view of the heart. That's part of grandmotherly mind. So I want to present very, very briefly three models of compassionate action that some wise people have given us.

[17:32]

So bear with me. I'm just going to name them and then just briefly talk about what they are. And I'll say where you can find out more about them so that you can do that if you want. But I'm not going to try to present these things all you know, the whole thing. So I really don't want to keep you here forever. Okay, so you might want to adjust your posture, fasten your seatbelt, sit up straight, take a couple breaths. And here are some models that have been established for compassionate action, which I use as part of my Zen practice and I highly recommend. Okay, the first one is by Paula Arai. Hala Arai is an amazing scholar of Buddhism, and particularly of Japanese Buddhism, and particularly of Japanese women's practice.

[18:33]

And she wrote a book called Bringing Zen Home, which isn't about the kind of high church official practices of Zen, but about the things that women do at their altars in their own houses, to relieve suffering. And she's a scholar, so she wanted to write the characteristics of these practices, which I'll just... It's okay if I just read them. And just, you know, you might want to lower your eyes and just get a feeling for what these characteristics are, and I'm not going to explain. I'll just read them. So she calls them the Ten Principles of the Way of Healing. experiencing interrelatedness, living body-mind, engaging in ritual, nurturing self, enjoying life, creating beauty, cultivating gratitude,

[19:44]

accepting reality as it is, expanding perspective, and embodying compassion. I'll read them again so that you can hear them. Experiencing interrelatedness, living body-mind, engaging in ritual, nurturing self, enjoying life, creating beauty, cultivating gratitude, accepting reality as it is, expanding perspective, and embodying compassion. Okay, so these are ways in which women are kind to themselves at home to help with suffering. And these women were amazing. Paula, is part Japanese, and when she showed up to do ethnographic study with these women, they kind of took one look at her and decided that they were going to adopt her and tell her things that nobody ever hears because they're usually in the private realm.

[21:04]

And so she was able to find out about these things. And she's been bringing them to people ever since. And like in her own home, she has beautiful artwork and an indoor garden. She does this herself. And so she's not just a scholar who speaks about things from the point of view of mind. She speaks about them from the point of view of what nourishes the heart and her own personal experience of it. Anyway. Check out Paula Arai. And the second model that I think applies to grandmotherly and grandfatherly kindness is by David Trelevin, who wrote Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness. So his understanding is how to work with the conditions that limit our ability to be together because of trauma. past pain, past hurt, that lives in the body and mind today.

[22:07]

So his work is about how we can be with that, whether it's personal pain or epigenetic pain or acquired pain, whatever it is. So I'll just read some of what he wrote about so that you could get a feeling for his work. And... I can tell you a lot more about that work, but it's really helpful. So he divides his work up into foundations, which are kind of like an understanding of what trauma is and how it hurts us now. It's not just past pain, but it hurts us now. And the foundations, he speaks about there being visible and invisible trauma, just like... You can see a wound from a child who's fallen, or you can understand that they have a need that you haven't seen yet. And he also talks about stress, and he talks about the impact of history, taking history as real, and about the connection between the brain and body when we're limited by pain.

[23:22]

And that's in preparation for his five aspects of trauma-sensitive mindfulness, which are, and I'll just read them. We can talk about them more later. There's a window of tolerance, and so stay within the window of tolerance. Don't exceed our tolerance or our capacity. There's shifting attention so that we don't get trapped in fear or immobility with our pain. There's keeping the mind and body connected so we don't have to avoid our pain by disassociating. There's practicing in relationships, so having allies and people around us so we have intimacy and positivity in our life. And then there's understanding of causes and conditions such as social context.

[24:28]

So I'll read those again just so that you can get a feeling for what it is. This is big picture stuff. So I'm not going to go into them. But be inside the window of tolerance. Shift the attention so you don't get trapped in fear and pain. Keep the body and mind together. Be in relationship and understand more. Okay, so that's model two. I highly recommend his work, David Trelevin, Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness. And then there's a third model I want to reference and that I won't go into the whole thing about that model. There's also courses about acting compassionately that Roshi Joan Halifax at Upaya Zen Center has made. Her model is called GRACE, and she's made it in consultation with doctors and healing professionals.

[25:32]

And it's just gathering attention, R, recalling the intention, A, attuning to the self and other, C, considering what's going on, and E, engaging. So it's just a model of how to stay in your body when you're trying to be compassionate. Okay, that was enough. That was enough stuff. So the three people I'm asking you to look up, if you want to study grandmotherly, grandfatherly mind in action, are Paula Arai's book, David Tree Levin's book, and Roshi Joan Halifax's course. Okay, there's lots more that we can study. For instance, Thich Nhat Hanh's whole statement of the precepts or the guidelines for practice is completely grounded in compassion.

[26:34]

But let's put this stuff away. Why I think this is important. How am I doing on time? 10.44. Great. So why do I think it's important? And why do I think it's important to name these different modalities? So we often talk about turnings of the wheel in practice. So the Buddha's mission, his understanding, with a heart of care for the world... is that the human condition is one in which we often get what we don't want. We often don't get what we do want. Or we get what we want, but it ends. People die. Stuff changes. Stuff that we thought was important to us changes.

[27:37]

Stuff we thought was good turns out not to be good. You know, stuff we thought was really central to ourself turns out not to be that way at all. So the Buddha called that dukkha. Okay? Dukkha is, if you picture a bicycle wheel and the spokes are different lengths, it hasn't been tuned for a while. And so when you try to ride it, it goes ka-chunk. Ka-chunk, ka-chunk. It's not comfortable. And so that word is translated as suffering, but it's more like a persistent discomfort or dissatisfaction or not rightness that we tend to have in human life. And the Buddha felt that that was the main problem with being human.

[28:39]

He called it suffering. We call it suffering. And the whole, his huge insight after years of study was that suffering has an origin, which is that we want what we don't have or we don't want what we have. Or we're confused about what we want. So greed, hate, and delusion. give rise to attraction, aversion, or confusion. And that messes up our life. But that when we see the cause of the problem, that helps us understand the cure of the problem. And that that cure or that solution has particular steps which we call practice and can do. So that insight that he had

[29:41]

is called the Four Noble Truths, and that is wisdom. And that was called the first turning of the wheel. After a while, though, people started... Buddha had a model. He had kind of a short, a medium, and a big model for how to understand not-self. that what we think of as himself is actually a collection of experiences. So he had a model for busy people, a model for medium people, and a model for people who were willing to spend all the time in the world to study it. So he had different models for different people. And that was called the first turning of the wheel. But in history, after a while, people got attached to his ideas And that turned into a form of suffering itself.

[30:41]

So then there was the second turning of the wheel, which was the wisdom teachings. So the wisdom teachings were about emptiness or about that even these models aren't real. And then there was a third turning of the wheel, which was about experience and how experience is understood in different ways. So it can be understood from the point of view of wisdom or potential, could be understood in conventional ways, or it could be understood in action. That was the third turning of the wheel. But I think there needs to be a fourth turning of the wheel. Buddhism has been around for a long time. And where we need to take it, from my point of view, is towards kindness, towards an understanding of impact.

[31:47]

Because we can have all the ideas about practice and how kind we are in the world, but it won't reach the standard of grandparents. How do we reach the standard of grandparents? How do we grandparent the world? So I think one of the main things about grandparents is that grandparents are with the child. They're with the impact of what they do. If it's not changing the diaper, it's something else. And what is it? They're with it until it works. And they're with it with a sense of nourishment and kindness and compassion. in all of those different ways. They understand the child's pain and don't let the child go into states of fear or fight. Right? They understand what actually gives refuge to a child who's suffering.

[32:52]

Right? And they actually understand how to respond to the child. That's why I picked those three models. Paula Arai's model, David Tree Levin's model and Roshi Joan Halifax's model can teach us about different skills that grandparents are really good at. So that's what I call the fourth turning of the wheel. We were sensitive to the whole history of whoever or whatever we're with. that we're willing to actually live with it and be unconditionally kind to it, to whatever's going on, that we have unconditional love for everyone around us in whatever situation exists. It doesn't change the fact of suffering in the world or dissatisfaction in the world.

[33:57]

but it gives it different meaning. You know, we're willing to accept a child's cries as part of the process of growing up. Right? You know, I'm sure that when the train stopped and it was the last stop of the little girl train, the kids were like, more grandpa, more grandpa, train, train. You know, they didn't want it to end. Right? I'm sure that happened. But Grandpa understood how to take them to the next thing. You want some pretzels? You know? So maybe that's the wisdom. I have a poem in which we don't forget sadness or difficulty.

[35:00]

This poem was by Ehe Dogen Zenji, the founder of our school in Japan. And it's about circumstances. It's not about people. So Dogen said, wind in the pines loudly echoes in the summer evening. The rustling bamboo raising a clamor. At dawn, tears flow. Just touching the path, the whole body moves. Who would forget the ancient road and lament? I like this poem a lot. It's about the world and not about people so much. But pines are a symbol of fidelity and bamboo is a symbol of resilience. So it is about people. So the wind in the pines loudly echoes in the summer evening.

[36:07]

So challenges to fidelity loudly echo in the time of mature life. The wind in the pines loudly echoes in the summer evening. The rustling bamboo, resilience, gets beat down and comes right back up, raises a clamor. It has a sound. At dawn, the tears flow. Just touching the path, the whole body moves. Who would forget the ancient road and lament? So Dogen, the founder of our school, started his practice when his mom died when he was seven years old. And he was at the funeral and they were burning incense and the incense smoke went up in the air and then it disappeared.

[37:16]

And he was sitting there with the death of his mom. watching the incense smoke rise and disappear. And he realized something very important about life. He realized the transience and change of life and realized he was going to have to practice and understand human suffering and how to have meaning. At that moment, Dogen Zenji started to mother himself. started to mother his own practice. And he ended up being awake with dropping off his historical body and mind in that he saw its potential and living the dropped-off body and mind in that he developed a sense of kindness and connection with the whole world and everything in it. And so at the end of his life, he wrote this poem.

[38:24]

Wind in the pines loudly echoes in the summer evening. The rustling bamboo raising a clamor. At dawn, tears flow. Just touching the path, the whole body moves. Who would forget the ancient road and lament? So at that point, Dogen never had children, but he had us. And I would say that that was the birth of Dogen Zenji, the grandpa, or the grandparent. And who would forget that ancient sorrow as we are with the movement of faith and the crackling regeneration of resilience. So thanks grandmas and grandpas everywhere. Thanks for coming. Tim the Tonto will probably see this lecture later because he's at an ordination now.

[39:32]

Thanks for inviting me. Thanks Ryan for sound. Thanks online people for coming. Thanks everybody for being here on this beautiful day. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[40:10]

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