Good evening. Thank you all for coming tonight and for being interested in the Zen Center, whether you come a lot or are here for the first time. You know, since I've sat up here, it's kind of interesting. I've been at Zen Center for many years, and recently, well, in the last five years or so, I noticed something changing for me. This is after about 15 years at Zen Center. I needed something, and I didn't know quite what it was. So first I did chaplaincy training for a year. I remember I was still something.

[01:02]

And I realized I wanted to study. I wasn't quite sure what. At first I thought Buddhist studies, do some graduate work or undergraduate work, see if that was what it was. But then I found out about Masters of Theology program at the University of San Francisco and went with one thing and another. I was actually able to apply, be accepted, and a very generous friend of mine spontaneously offered me the amount of money that I needed to go. And the program itself has very generous scholarships. So this was my first year, and there's many reasons I think I chose a theology program where basically we're doing Christian theology. And that is because that's the culture in which I live.

[02:05]

And I don't understand it. I don't know that much about Judaism or Christianity or things like most of our legal system is based on the Old Testament. But things like that, oh, oh, okay. So I... had to study for some Entrix qualifying exams, they were called. And I learned a lot. So, and I just want to thank the community. I know, both knowingly and unknowingly, I've been deeply supported, greatly supported to do this. I'm very grateful. Also, this first year has been the happiest I've been for a long time. I don't know, it's funny. And so I didn't go in the direction of studying Buddhism or what even might be called Buddhology.

[03:09]

We, you know, in Christianity it's Christology, all the historical and interesting things that have arisen out of this person that we know, we think of as Christ who, Jesus. And a lot of it had to do with people like killing each other over differences of opinion and stuff like that. So it's very complex. And I think Buddhology, we'd also find a lot of complexity. So it gives me a feeling for What belief systems are about? What's going on there? What is it we cling to? What do we use them for? How do they support what we already believe? Things like that. So, studying this Judeo-Christian theology, I realize it's about...

[04:18]

my self-understanding. At Zen Center I service not with criticism but just with sort of curiosity. There's maybe one or two people who have studied Buddhism academically and yet we teach it and we practice it and we study it. I'm fine with that, but I just am very curious about that situation. When I did work as a chaplain, I chose, once again, I'm not quite sure what this is about. So much of our spiritual life is intuitive, and maybe we make the wrong mistakes, I mean the wrong choices sometimes, I'm not sure, but I chose to work in a chaplain training program that specifically offered pastoral care to people from every type of religion or belief system or level of belief.

[05:24]

One of my favorite people I met was an atheist and he and I talked a lot. So I had to pray and I realized that prayers were helping me. You know, why is that? And I think it was because the language had a sort of an echo or a resonance or a meaning that I wasn't quite aware of because it's part of my culture. It's part of what I hear a lot, you know, so it was, I recognized it. And I don't have a religious background. My parents were different religions and I just went to my friends' churches, you know, stuff like that. So I didn't have a But what was this resonance and meaning that I felt praying and talking to people? One of the things about being a chaplain is if you talk to somebody or interact with people from some sort of idea that you're doing something good, actually you create a barrier between yourself and

[06:36]

The people who you're talking to, that can be patients, family, friends, and the hospital staff, them too. And they would often look at me and sort of be like, oh, it's the chaplain. Get the chaplain here, we have a problem. You know, I was a kind of a thing. And I learned to negotiate that. and look at people and be face to face as human beings. You know, we're all here for some kind of purpose and meaning. And working with the staff was very interesting as well. So having a good intention, you know, can divide you from people when you're doing that kind of work. but when you don't have good interactions or enjoyable exchanges, you know, not everything is difficult.

[07:39]

But I think that Chopin is someone with whom all of these people So people can direct their anger and their fear and their anxiety, as well as, you know, their faith and their acceptance about their circumstances. So it became this experience, our supervisor called it, hearing the words beneath the words. And I think that if there's a barrier there, it's harder to hear it. And of course, that. hearing is intermittent anyway. You can't always be there and always be right. It's complex. So I think that when we project some sort of assumptions or imagine who we are or what we represent or that we're doing something good, we get distressed when things don't go our way.

[08:46]

And I think that that is kind of natural. As I was thinking about this whole thing, my 16 year old niece was killed a few years ago in a drunk driving accident and the driver was her boyfriend's best friend and he wasn't injured at all and both of them were killed like that. And our reaction We're so interested, and we kept trying to rewrite it so that it wouldn't have happened. But it didn't, and that doesn't make any difference, but just, we just kept doing it and doing it. And my sisters were going to circumstances and everything, you know, I didn't do that. But I do think that part of my grief about that is permanent, that I did give up the rewriting pretty quickly. But here we are, you know, that's complex.

[09:50]

And we don't want to be uncomfortable. We don't want things to happen in a certain way and not happen in another way. But that isn't what happens. And sometimes our desire for that creates the opposite, I think. And maybe we even cling sometimes too much to something like Buddhism or any kind of context that we can hold on to to sort of solve our discomforts. But Buddhism, I think, in particular, and I also felt this studying Christianity is... It's a path to a full humanity, and that includes perfection and imperfection. As Suzuki Roshi taught, to do something rigidly is laziness, you know, because you want to understand it before you do something difficult.

[11:02]

So you were caught by some words. But if you are brave enough to accept your surroundings without saying which is right or wrong, then... A teaching you heard will help. If you are caught by a teaching, you will have a double problem. That is, whether you should follow this teaching or whether you should go your own way. So he said this in a lecture where he was talking about gratitude. And usually we associate with gratitude with sort of getting somewhere we want or... avoiding something we don't want, or having something come to our advantage. And that isn't what he was talking about. There's a story of a Zen monk, and he would go around on his begging rounds. And when people gave him food or money, he would thank them. And when they abused him, or, you know, sometimes people who don't like

[12:05]

a homeless person, you know, call the looms or something like that, you know, that kind of thing or avoid them. I don't think he would thank them for that as well because he thought of it as they were helping him to burn out his own karma. And, you know, we were worried about masochism a little while we think of that story, but I don't think that was it. I think he might have been acknowledging that sense that we create some of our own discomfort. And, you know, it can be true. Someone else is responsible for our discomfort. But we've also hurt people, rejected people, criticized people, manipulated people, and done all those things as well. And so that's what I think that story is about. Seeing that when we're uncomfortable... Well, we've done that to other people. We've done things to other people.

[13:06]

You know, we just have. It's not because we're not good or anything else. It just, that's the way it is. A lot of koans and stories are violent. And I wonder about this a lot. They're kind of upsetting. And I wonder if that's partly to prevent us from, you know, having some idealistic view about what And, you know, have an idea that we can exclude certain things from it. And I don't, you know, I'm not trying to promote some pessimistic guru or something like that. I think that we should have positive attitudes and we should have ideals. Those are the things that ground us. But they're not the anything. I think I'm concerned about holding ideals that we consider to be superior to others. In theological study, there's this word called idolatry, where you think of a deity or, you know, a figure like the Buddha or one of the bodhisattvas,

[14:26]

or a truth or an ideology of any sort, and we project onto it all your interpretations. And then we use those interpretations to be the actual thing itself. So after you've interpreted this figure or truth in your own way, then that's the truth that should apply to everything else. So Buddhism was an oral tradition for many centuries before it was written down, and that's actually true to some extent of Christianity, that by the time it was written down, it had been interpreted several times. And so it's one of those traditions, like many other traditions, of being interpretations of interpretations. So there's many different schools of Buddhism, and there's many different schools of Zen.

[15:27]

And we're always caught in that interpretive view of truths and ideologies and religions. But Buddhism didn't arise out of nothing. The Buddha was, or Shakyamuni was, walking around, meeting these people, as far as I can tell, mostly men, doing these deep practices. and um teaching so when we're like i'm very grateful for the teachings of the buddha and i think that that gratitude has to extend to the teachings that came before him the teachers who came before him and the people who are practicing with him they were creating buddhism with him and so are all the people who interpreted it and applied it after him And I think that kind of beginning and endless gratitude keeps us humble.

[16:28]

It allows us to feel humility. And I think gratitude and humility are complementary. They work together. Every month we take or we retake the precepts. during the full moon ceremony. And that's how we refine ourselves, not to some ideal state or righteousness, but to self-awareness and self-understanding, always renewing our vows because we make one mistake after another, not intentionally, but because we're all human beings trying so hard. I don't think that everyone is egotistical or selfish or anything, but I think that the precepts do address our egotism and selfishness because it's so tempting to be right or comfortable or unshakable in a kind of a, you know, rigid way.

[18:01]

It seems it would be so much easier if everyone did things our way and agreed with us and thought we were wonderful. But I remember one time that, and I think I've said this before, if the world were the way I wanted it to be, I probably wouldn't like it. And especially one of the reasons for that would be that there were a lot of people who would want it to be different. They wanted it to be their way. And so I'd make all of them unhappy. So would I really solve anything? I don't think so. And that doesn't mean the world couldn't use some improvement. I don't mean that. A kind of one of our ceremonies are offerings. Like there's candles and there's flowers on the altar. And when I came in, I offered some incense. We offer food and water. And most of the time we do that, we're not, it's not, you know, we're not really thinking about what we're doing in a certain way. But all of those are gestures of thanksgiving, of, you know, that's what offerings are for.

[19:08]

And they don't depend on how we feel, what we think, or what we believe. But I think they have an effect there that not just, a lot of it is on the person who's the officiant, the one who's making the offerings. Like when the priest does service in the morning, he circumambulates this. bowing that again and again and again. And it has an effect. And you offer incense again and again and again. And I think that that goes out to the sangha, that effect. And it's not specific and definable. And also when you hold that tray and praise, what is that? But all these are gestures of thanks. gratitude, and they have an effect. One of the few erosions that I studied that I liked, ended up liking the best right now, that could change, was Paul Tillich.

[20:14]

And I was kind of surprised. What was it about him? Well, he had, his life situation was very difficult, very high anxiety. He was a German. a Lutheran, and his political views were not in line with the German politics of the time. And he ended up having to leave Germany and he came to the United States. So he had to come here and he had to learn English. He had a classical theological education. He had to learn that language again in English. And then he ended up being a professor. I think that all of the things that made up those difficulties for him definitely affected his theology. And one of his systems, his basic system of theology is called the method of correlation. And what that does, to correlate means to bring into mutual or reciprocal relation.

[21:23]

And reciprocal means given or felt by each toward the other, complementary. So what the system actually does is it gives you the experience of interdependence. It questions every conclusion that you come up with. You have to ask where that has come from. What's the opposite and how do you correlate those? Liberation theology adopted his method of correlation to correlate the polarities of how Christianity was used to oppress people and how it also offered the possibility of salvation. So how could those two things be correlated so that you didn't have to throw out Christianity in order to protest against oppression of the church?

[22:24]

This is in South Africa. American countries, mostly in Mexico, that the liberation theology arose. And feminist theology, same thing, adapted this method. So that interdependence or correlation makes a possibility for us ambiguity. And ambiguity is essential. Any of you who are artists, it's essential. for creativity. Always deconstructing your idea of what you see and how you put it on paper, for instance, if you're a painter. Things become light, you know, and color in a way. And so you learn that ambiguity, but you're also needed for gratitude and for humility and forgiveness. You need to have that sense of ambiguity that things are not absolutely certain.

[23:25]

Suzuki Roshi, again, teaching on gratitude, quoted this saying, you cannot catch fish in the same place. So you catch this big fish, and then you want to go back to that same place where you caught it and catch another one. That's what that's about. And what the saying rules is, you know, all those conditions in that particular place have completely changed, even though it's the same place. It's easy sort of to catch a fish, an idea, a revelation, an insight, a moment of transcendence or excitement or something, but then to want to go back there or to idealize that moment. She says, tomorrow you should fish in some other place. And wherever you are, you can have that feeling of a kind of refreshed, pure gratitude.

[24:33]

In other words, you're in a new place, even if you go to that same place, actually. So gratitude is the opposite of resentment, according to Henry Nellan, who's kind of a more popular Christian writer. He writes, resentment tells me that I don't receive what I deserve. It always manifests itself in envy. Gratitude, however, goes beyond the mine and thine and claims that all of life is a pure gift. Gratitude can be lived as a discipline and involves a conscious choice. I can choose to be grateful even when my emotions and feelings are still steeped in hurt and resentment, or when I am criticized, even when my heart still responds in bitterness. Gratitude requires the courage to take risks because distrust and resentment keep warning me how dangerous it is to let go of my careful calculations and guarded predictions.

[25:37]

So I think Zen practice and possibly any kind of religious-based, I guess you would say, practice, 12-step work, I think, too, It asks a lot of us. And Zen asks us to hold everything equally without preferences for special states of mind. And I think that requires that tolerance for ambiguity and also for our own limitations and those of others. I mentioned that... This is the happiest I've been in many years. And I know it's always dangerous to tell people you're happy. But it's not because I figured anything out. Nothing. I think what happened is I found out that I'm actually kind of smart. I mean, I just kept getting these

[26:45]

these responses from my professors and the other students and doing really well, you know, and I just haven't felt sort of truly valued that way. I'm not saying that I should have been, but it was quite an amazing experience to find what I'm good at in this different sort of way. And you appreciated and allowed my bad days, you know, because in that world of academics, everyone is odd. You know, they're kind of, and I don't mean, oh, you know what I mean. I was kind of, You know, we're really attached to someone, do that, and we just, like, grab it and chew on it and tear the pieces and pull all these books off the shelf and find the things that support your idea.

[27:53]

So somehow that worked for me, just that excitement, you know, of looking for a way to describe something that, um, and these people, uh... I just developed this incredible respect and appreciation for people who do research, who write all these books interpreting, you know, all these levels of Christianity. And it's amazing. And it's really fun for me. And what it reminded me of is that when I was a chaplain, our supervisor said this a few times. He said, Listening is so much like love that when a person feels listened to, they fear it, and it's love. And I think, I was listened to, you know, I would hear it. I would read the stuff, I would understand it, and I would, I would spoke more in class than I think anyone else.

[28:57]

I was just happy. And it was also really difficult. But I think that That feeling of being loved, even though that's not, I'm sure, how they would describe it, helped me to keep going deeper, to push myself in a certain way, to keep asking questions of my mind. Are you making this up? Do you have good support for this thought, for this idea? You have to keep going. exhausting myself it was there's a cost you know to that kind of effort but I was willing to make it and it was kind of like when you do a practice period at Tassahara and your effort takes you to a place where all the edges kind of drop off and you just keep turning and turning and we don't use this word very often in Buddhism but the word conversion means

[30:04]

to turn and be turned by. And I think that it's a way of deepening understanding and sort of finding the bottom of things in a renewing sort of way. And it doesn't always look so good because it's almost like you're trying to keep your balance in a boat on the water, slamming up, you know, something like that. What I think that kind of effort does do is it makes this possibility for finding meaning.

[31:14]

And that is an intellectual meaning, but it's this appreciation and this weird joy because that kind of turning won't come to an end. It's always fresh. So I think that the renunciation or the sacrifice, as we kind of think of it, required for gratitude is to say and feel something positive and appreciative and hopeful and yet have it be completely unconditioned about our preferences or what we want to have be true or something like that. And I think that effort, too, feels like love. But will my experience of happiness change? Yeah. It's going to change.

[32:16]

Everything will change. Many years ago, I was talking to Mel Weichman about, I was going through this period where I didn't feel any pain in Zazen, even during Sashim, nothing, not a twinge. And I was a little worried. Am I not trying hard enough? That was what I was worried about. I'm not trying hard enough. So I asked him, should I, you know, change my posture? And he said, I don't know, why don't you just enjoy it? So I decided I would just enjoy this, you know, happiness thing, whatever it was. In one of his summons called The Right to Hope, Paul Tillich asked this series of questions. He says, do we have the right to hope, even against hope? even against the transitoriness of everything that is, even against the reality of death. And then this is a condensation of the answer he gave in that sermon.

[33:20]

There are many things and events in which we can see reasons for genuine hope, namely the seed-like presence of that which is hoped for. Hoping often implies waiting. Waiting demands patience. and patience demands stillness within oneself. We have an inner stillness with poised tension and openness toward what we can only receive. Such openness is highest activity. It is the driving force which leads us toward the growth of something new in us. We have a right to an ultimate hope. even in view of the end of all other hopes. We experience it in the beauty that life reveals as well as in the demonic darkness of it. And if we could only hope each for ourselves, it would be a poor and foolish hope. So I hope I understand him talking about here is a combination of gratitude and humility.

[34:28]

Like the monk who thanked people whether they gave him alms or abused him. And it doesn't ask for comfort or lack of discomfort, but it acknowledges this tension and openness toward what we can only receive, which sounds to me a lot like meditation or zazen. And I've never used to describe it, but I think that that's kind of what it is. Only receive. I think a lot of us come to practice out of some sort of suffering, a sense of imbalance or pain or confusion about how the world can be the way it is, even if people are trying to do good things and serve others. And when our suffering is great, it naturally causes us to feel resentment, not just for ourselves, but for others.

[35:31]

People shouldn't be oppressed, they shouldn't be hurt. But we also, that's a choice we make about how to deal with, we have to make choices about how to deal with unfairness and exclusivity and abuse and desire. And all those things that cause suffering for us and others. And also how to deal with kindness and understanding. Because those are not always pure either. Sometimes they're a kind of pity or something. So whenever, it's not like you find a good place necessarily. It's the human complexity. Kirk says that openness leads us toward the growth of something new in us.

[36:33]

And growth requires flexibility and vulnerability in the midst of all these mysterious workings. And I think that gratitude is related to mystery. And unknowingness brings up gratitude. And I'm going to read a poem by E. Cummings that I've liked since I was a teenager, and we'll see what you think. A wind has blown the rain away, and blown the sky away, and all the leaves away, and the trees stand. I think I too have known autumn too long, and I'd have you to say, wind, wind, wind. Did you love somebody? and have you the petal of somewhere in your heart pinched from dumb summer. O cozy daddy of death, dance coolly for us and start the last leaf whirling in the final brain of air.

[37:42]

Let us, as we have seen, see doom's integration. A wind has blown the rain away and the leaves and the sky and the trees stand. The trees stand. The trees suddenly wait against the moon's face. So thank you very much, and I know we usually ask for questions. If somebody wants to say something. Yes. should be equanimous in the face of death. And it seems like if a person is going to be equanimous in the face of death, you know, and it would be awkward because everyone else, you know, would expect that person to be grieving.

[38:49]

And so we were in the top 11 that deal with the face of death. these patients. Was that a little peculiar that you couldn't, or you knew that you shouldn't, or that you didn't have a dream, but they would expect you to be sharing their dream with them. And then would you see the whole world that they do, and they do. And you see, like, that's not the terrible I'm not sure I think that's right. Actually, I think that having an idea about how things should be and how someone should feel or how I should feel actually stops me.

[39:55]

from having equanimity. Equanimity is not not feeling things. It's actually feeling everything and not resenting it. Seeing what arises, think people are going to die. And you have to have your grief. I mean, like my niece. I was angry. I mean, you know, I had to be. I didn't have a choice. A 16-year-old girl, you know, dies. That shouldn't happen, right? So, I'm not sure if I'm answering your question, but equanimity doesn't mean not feeling those things. It means there's a context for them. I should overcome this pre-munch. that it's actually a kind of attachment.

[40:57]

I don't think so. You were attached to your niece's physical love of existence. And isn't it ultimately that you don't want to be attached to the physical body, you don't want to be attached, isn't that what? I often wonder, if the Buddha was sitting in front of us, who would we see? Who would he really be? And that's, I think, the question liberation theologians were asking, there's one particular one, who would we see if Christ were actually, Jesus, were actually walking among us? Would he be the person we imagine? Would Buddha be the person we imagine? Non-attachment is not detachment. Your non-attachment is that you accept that all of life is gonna happen and that death is gonna happen, but not without feeling, not without concern, not without wishing that people weren't suffering.

[42:11]

You don't want people to suffer, and if you don't want people to suffer, you will grieve and you'll be happy when they're not. You know, you'll be happy for people when they're not suffering, And you'll be sorry for, and I don't mean that in the sense of pity, but you'll be sorry when people are suffering. And when you meet people who are in a situation where someone is dying, the oddest thing usually happens. Everyone suddenly becomes happy. They're all joking and laughing. I went to visit this woman once and... There was a special request because she had asked for prayers, but when I went to see her, the room was full of people, and she was becoming comatose. She was not really physically there. And we were saying things like, oh, come on, mom, get on able with it. Don't just sit up. I'm just kidding, man. And this wasn't unusual. There was this kind of something would happen and I've met that over and over again.

[43:17]

And that, that happened in that case and often what happened is there would be a little bridge where people would then actually think about what was happening. But both of those things were there at the same time. They were grieving, they were under this rate of How should I feel? How should I look? What should I say? And there was also this sense of relief or openness. I'm not quite sure what it was all about. So you can't predict and you assume, right? You assume people are like this. But that isn't what happened. It was great variety. I noticed that you omitted the third page of the way you arose out of Western theology of Islam. And my question is, because you mentioned suffering and oppression by the church specifically, do you have any words to say on the role of Islam in the modern world?

[44:28]

And do you also feel it has contributed to suffering and oppression, especially amongst women, and being a woman yourself? Well, the reason that I actually limited myself to Judaism and Christianity is because I was talking about the cultural experience that is mine, that I understand. And one of the courses we had was called Monotheism and Dialogue, which was Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. And so I learned some things about Islam. And I think, you know, we make all kinds of assumptions. about things. We don't ask around the church, you know, has been so oppressive towards women and people in South America and in Mexico and all that kind of stuff. And yet it's easy to ask those questions in a certain way about something we don't know about, about a faith we don't know about.

[45:34]

So I can't answer your question. in a simple way, and I certainly, I don't quite, I don't have quite the same assumptions that I think I heard you express, and I'm not living that critically, I just, I learned some things about Islam. It seems that a lot of the conflict that today seems to be basically standing in front of human beings engaging in difficulty that, to my eyes, appears to be suffering, and this is escalating in our current context. Do you know a time when it was different? Just as a kind of perspective? I think, you know, that doesn't mean it's okay. It's just that, I think, you know, to say, and these are the worst of times,

[46:37]

And this is, you know... Well, I have to confess I have a little bit of difficulty with politics because it very seldom considers history. Well, I don't want to get into it because it's very complex, the whole situation of the world now and the sort of... One of the things that happens, particularly with religion, is that it becomes a form of idolatry, which is then applied in a political way. So, you know, that's one of the problems with... It's one of the concerns I have about, you know, us as Buddhists. Is that the direction we'll go? You know, will we create a kind of idolatry that we'll assume everyone else should agree with? And, you know, I'm just asking the question. I don't... And I'll, you know, what's right or wrong exactly about it.

[47:41]

Thanks. Okay. Did you want to check it? It's interesting to talk about your theological studies. I feel like the appreciation for having to get ambiguity or a lot of your studies. Would you say that? I said theological about that. I wonder what it would be like to study it now. I'm jealous. It's fun. I was afraid, though. I was afraid that, and sometimes a stick come up, that I would be seen as non-religious, and some people thought of me as being non-religious because I was a Buddhist. I appreciate that. Remember the things that happened? I think it's okay to tell you this. My last course, one of the people in the class, the teacher was talking about theologians, because that's what we're doing.

[48:52]

We're studying different theologians. And someone in the class said, what about Wendy and all this? And the professor was like, what do you mean? And I said, well, I'm Buddhist. I practiced as a Buddhist, and he went like this. It turned out he studies with a Chinese teacher, studies and sits meditation. But there was something about that gesture. I was just like, you know, so it is different maybe. Okay, maybe, is that enough? Okay, thank you very much.

[49:29]

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