This podcast is offered by San Francisco Zen Center on the web at sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good evening or good morning. Let's see, a couple of people who it might be good morning for. Yeah. And my apologies that we're not, for those of you who are local, that were not in the Buddha hall. I find out this afternoon that I had COVID, so we canceled the on-site portion of the talk. On a point in business, you know, in terms of tracking down any people I may have had, contagious contact with.

[01:02]

I don't think there is anyone, but if you, if I'm forgetting somebody, let me know or let may know. Anyway, it's quite fitting that I would, I would have COVID given what I was hoping to talk about, which is, um, In a way, only sickness and death. But really what I wanted to talk about was caregiving. I came back on the weekend from spending almost two weeks with my daughter, about 11 days with my daughter, who was having a surgery to remove... A cancerous tumor in her throat beside her thyroid. And she asked me if I would come up and essentially be her primary caregiver.

[02:18]

And of course I said yes. I have some experience in that. And it's an extraordinary kind of immersion that is especially around serious illness. Actually, in her case, it's not so clear what the prognosis is. But certainly, it was a cancerous tumor that was removed. One of the things I've learned about caregiving is that the person going through the process of being ill, of needing care, of having their life disrupted by this illness, of having normal taken apart, and being presented with the more

[03:32]

ephemeral version of reality. And in the process of being there, I was thinking, one of the thoughts I had was, I remember when my daughter, when she was 12, and she asked me if she could volunteer at Zen hospice. And I was quite concerned that that would just be too much for her. But she was insistent, and she did. And then I was quite concerned again at Zen Hospice, which used to be just down the block from 273, it was, from that little mini park across the street and down the block from the city center. I find out that one of the people she'd been caregiving for was an elderly lady who had become, had a reputation for being kind of grumpy and critical and demanding.

[04:50]

And then I heard that Audrey, my daughter, had spent quite a bit of time with her that day. And so I was checking in sort of making sure that she didn't come away too damaged from this person's impulses to be critical and demanding. And my daughter very casually said, well, she's dying. I mean, who wouldn't be grumpy when they're dying? Nobody likes it. And maybe there's exceptions to that. I was struck by the casual wisdom of it. And so when I was caring for her, thoughts like that would arise. I was contrasting the process to when I first became a monk in Thailand.

[05:58]

And the first practice I was given was walk around and everything and everyone you see, say, this is impermanent. This is subject to being and passing away. This is subject to old age suffering and death. And I was comparing that to Audrey's approach. And of course, She's my daughter, so you'll have to excuse my patent bias in terms of who she is and how she's engaging this. I want to admit that. She has chosen to post how things are progressing for her on social media. I know she's on several platforms.

[07:01]

The only one I look at is Facebook. i get a link to it and and she has uh chosen to continue to write and do art as she engages in her romance except for the days right after surgery it was about three or four days where she was just too tired to really uh do anything whether they lie in bed and be fed and simple things like that. And that's what prompted me to bring it up into tonight's talk. My usual thinking is that it's polite and practical to be discreet around someone illness. Who knows if they want to talk about it, or they'd rather not talk about it.

[08:05]

It opens them to, in a way, an unwelcome demand, potentially an unwelcome demand. As someone tells them, oh, well, here's a particular remedy. I know a great Chinese medicine doctor that would be Wonderful for you to see. That sort of thing. And indeed, there was someone who said that to her in my presence. And I thought, oh, well, there it is. But her choice to make it public, her choice to live her life in an open way, to express her thoughts, to engage her art her making art she's a painter in kind of wordless dialogue with her illness I was struck by it I was struck by it in a variety of ways one as I just said

[09:32]

It's not an inclination that I personally have to be that public. And that also I was struck by what I perceive as a kind of deep existential proposition. Which is like, yes, this life is impermanent. This life will come to an end. And in the meantime, let's make art. Let's work. Let's plan the future. Let's maintain our concern about global warming. Let's attend to what we find valuable, precious, worthy of perishing in our life.

[10:36]

And as I thought about it, I thought, I thought, well, is this the bodhisattva way in contrast to the guidance and the instruction I was given when I became a monk in Thailand? Which to me was my experience of it. It was sort of holding certain dispassion. Yes, this is what's going to happen. So don't clink. Don't get too attached. Promote a dispassion within yourself. And I was thinking in a way, what Audrey was proposing was Sooner or later, life will break your heart.

[11:42]

That's the nature of improvements. One of the Bodhisattva vows came to mind. Delusions are inexhaustible. I vow to practice with them. often we say, I vow to end them. I think really what that end there is getting at. I vow to not get stuck, to end the way I get stuck, the way they stimulate my fears and my grasping as I try to wrestle with this existential dilemma. of living and dying. On our hand, it says, great is the matter of birth and death.

[12:48]

Audrey and I said, it's usually operations are early in the morning. So we were sitting, In the pre-operation. 6.30 in the morning. All the little protocols. And Chris is nodding. You know all that, don't you? And then literally five minutes before the surgery. The surgeon enters the room. And by this time, the protocol had been going on for a good, almost two hours. We arrived there at 6.30 and the surgery was at 8.30. So it was about literally 8.20. And he came in. And I was thinking, ah, what is it to meet others?

[14:08]

impermanence day by day. But what is it to let the whole process of the existential dilemma of the great matter of birth and death? What is it to let it tenderize us? What is it to remember Well, just as Audrey said, well, wouldn't you be grumpy if you were dying? Who knows? It's hard to imagine that wouldn't be what part of the repertoire of emotions. I suspect we all go through a wide range. As Suzuki Roshi said, I will suffer, talking about his own death that was imminent.

[15:12]

I will suffer, but that's okay. I'll be a suffering Buddha. And I just think of the surgeon, you know, is this, is this how he engages this? In some ways, he seemed to be trying to be upbeat. which honestly I thought was a little odd, but I think he was also trying to be reassured and kind. And he said a few words. And how interesting it was. I can't remember a single thing he said, but I remember his affect. I remember the way he was attempting to make contact.

[16:15]

I remember the way he was trying to be reassured. This surgery is not that complicated. I'm going to make the incision here. great matter of birth and death does indeed call it a dilemma. The impermanence has its own authority. The reflection on death is a very powerful one. It's inclined to bring up for many people, myself included, I must say, Elizabeth Cumia Ross's stages of denial, avoidance, you know, bargaining, anger, resignation, all of these.

[17:36]

And as she found out when her own death was coming, not in the orderly fashion she laid them out, in her first teachings. She discovered that even though she'd been teaching those for 30, 40 years, and when it came her turn, it was tumultuous. I had been present. When Audrey was born. And I had been present. When she gave birth. To her son. And. As we sat there. Waiting. For this surgical procedure. That sense of.

[18:39]

The continuance of life. how each one of us makes a precious contribution. And then in another way, each one of us is just part of what Thich Nhat Hanh would call continuance. I'm this generation, she's the next, and her two boys are the next. And yet, some deep sense of belonging arises for us. And I would say that it's precious. I don't think of it as contradicting the dispassion of the Arahant.

[19:42]

I think of it as... teaching us how to live a compassionate, authentic life. I was watching Audrey's art as it evolved and has evolved through this illness and thinking, oh, to my eye, I see a shift. It's somehow the preciousness of light. is encoded in her imagery, in her attention to detail, in the layers of detail that she puts on canvas. That way, part of our challenge is to live this wild and precious life that we have.

[20:46]

As Mary Oliver says in her poem, I don't want to say I was hesitant, filled with regret and adversity. Yeah. What do we want to say as we face this world of innumerable delusions? I also take exception with the word delusion. Of course, we have some notion about what life is. Of course, we have some way of formulating it and conceptualizing it and giving it meaning and purpose. And I would say the challenge for us in our practice

[21:54]

is to both cherish that and not get stuck in it, not get stuck in our clinging and grasping, not becoming desperate. And all this processing within me and attending to my daughter, in her bed at first too tired to move just cooling up her head as she sipped some water and in all this in the wordless moments of caregiving When is such an approach not appropriate?

[22:57]

Oh, it's more appropriate to be hostile, to be resentful, to be callous, indifferent. That strange way, which I don't think we can ever puzzle out. the great matter of birth and death and how we belong you know how we belong biologically and I think how we belong spiritually to me one of the great gifts of giving a talk in the Buddha Hall is that we're there together And something happens that goes beyond our thinking.

[24:05]

You know, we can, of course, we can conceptualize it and say, oh, well, we look around and we see others and we feel like, oh, I belong. This is my tribe. In early Buddhism, ordination consisted of a certain number of the tribe being present and welcoming you into the monastic order. I think it was about 20. An interesting notion of belonging. And I was thinking, As you can tell, I had a lot of time to think while my daughter slept.

[25:05]

I was thinking about the breadth and the depth of the Bodhisattva vow to belong to everyone and for everyone to belong to us individually. Like who would we want to deny their struggle with their life and their death? Why wouldn't we want that to be precious for everyone? And how is it that it teaches us how to look? How is it that it teaches us What's really important. Casual conversations I had with my daughter.

[26:08]

And the fierce and courageous person that she is. Just turning it towards. engagement laying out her plans for being part of the response to global warming climate change which she's quite passionate about and then for me from my own background of Theravadan Buddhism, the dispassion, the non-attachment that's invoked through dispassion. And then the Zen way, the Bodhisattva way, when we enter this world knowing that indeed it will break our hearts.

[27:25]

the package of being born is that someday we're going to die and how that um i think of hakua i could win very early in this practice became uh the way i've read it is quite literally terrified about the notion of death. And so he was on this quest to somehow, I don't know if he was trying to overcome dying or whether he was just trying to overcome his terror. But the way in which the passion he brought to it, was very troublesome for him.

[28:37]

The way it's written up in many of the versions is that he went to see a Taoist healer who gave him a visual practice to allow something to release within him. And that that enabled him to take that very same passion that very same energy and vitality and allow it to come forth as an expression of liberation. And I'd suggest to you, this is our Bodhisattva that we explore, hopefully, discover ways in which we can take this passion for being alive.

[29:44]

And rather than sort of corralling it in to desires and aversions, that we let it find a fuller expression. And we're guided by this deep, intrinsic belonging. Quite recently, I was reading a book by a biologist who has a doctorate in biology. But she also has trained in a Celtic Druid tradition. And so when she first would say, Just being in the trees, being with them, nourishes us, our human being.

[30:47]

And she was writing that, you know, at first she was just dismissed in the academic world. She was just dismissed as a kind of eccentric quack. And then somehow, as our physics, as our science has refined itself, you know, we've discovered that that the very oxygen that the trees give up stimulates our being that within us there are particles that actually have a sort of curative and refreshing quality to them and now she's uh considered to be you know an avant-garde wise person I suspect much to her amusement the way in which this world you know and the desires and the aversions of it are so blatant you know in ourselves and in our societies and

[32:07]

and in the way we govern ourselves, in the way we set priorities. And how caregiving is a way to engage the bodhisattva way that draws us back home, that draws us back into belonging. And then as we do that, we discover we can't own it. We can't own anything. And just greedily say, mine. It's an interaction. It's an interbeing. So I've come to appreciate

[33:13]

Audrey's social media excursions. And also to see something of to be instructed in some way to trust some part of myself. that expression, for me, will take shape in whatever way it does. It's not simply a matter of mimicking my daughter or anyone else. Ackerwood, when he was terrorized by his own mortality, it wasn't a plan.

[34:17]

He didn't, if he was thinking, and this is really going to enlighten me. By his own description, he felt tormented by the whole thing. So how do we commit? It seems to me is kind of reckless appreciation. this life. And almost paradoxically, there's a there's a deep knowing, we just this generation, you know, and there's been many generations before us, and there'll be many generations after us. And we're just this species on the planet. And there are many other species and plants. mammals and birds and that we intervene in a way that's extraordinarily challenging for us to conceptualize and I think when we care in particular when we give care we start to

[35:48]

feel the connection. Thank you. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma Talks are offered free of charge and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, please visit sfcc.org and and click giving. May we all fully enjoy the Dharma.

[36:23]

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