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. I hope you all know how happy I am to be with you all. Hopefully you can tell. And... I guess I'll say a word or two of introduction, is that right? Okay. I am Lisa Beth Huffman, and one of Zen Center's teachers involved for a few decades now. My heart teacher is the late Darlene Cohen, Surae Ken Po, great spirit manifesting Dharma, and she really was. And I'm semi-retired now from working with nonprofits, so I can immerse myself even more in dharma and fun.

[01:08]

And I want to thank Tonto Tim for when he said, when do you want to speak? I said, Pride Weekend, when else? And I appreciate that he said yes. And our Abbot David Zimmerman isn't here, but... I want to express gratitude to him as well. He's always so lovely and supportive. And I also want to thank all of you and ask you to take a minute and look at each other. Look at your neighbor. Look around. Yeah, say hi. Because our three jewels are Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. And Buddha and Dharma... is embodied by you. You express the Buddha and Dharma. You are the Buddha and Dharma. And I always feel like, you know, if we teachers give a talk and you're not here, we're talking to ourselves, and that would be a whole lot of fun.

[02:13]

So thank you for being here. Thank you for embodying the teachings. And I also want to say happy Pride. I dressed for the occasion. And just am really grateful to be here. And I wonder who's new to City Center, to Zen Center? Raise your hand. I want to extend a warm welcome. And I hope you find nourishment and something new that's helpful, maybe more. and one something new that's helpful. And I'm just back from Tassajara. One of our affinity groups is called Queer Dharma, which was founded by three of our teachers, Abbot David being one of them, Tova Green, and also actually a resident, Dagan Gaither, who no longer lives here.

[03:19]

And we had a Sangha week, Is anybody not familiar with Tassajara? Does anybody not know what Tassajara is? That is our monastery, the first Zen monastery in the West that is in the Ventana Wilderness, near Big Sur, past Carmel Valley, and it's really beautiful. have sangha weeks and a lot of different retreats during the summer, which supports monastic practice in the fall and the winter. And so I'm back from Queer Dharma, which was a really wonderful sangha week. Choku was one of my co-teachers, the city center's director. And our theme was, oh, and Naomi joined us at times which was lovely and our theme was queer joy as resilience because it's it's those times where resilience is really important and joy is important to balance out the challenges and fears and anxieties that come up for so many of us so that inspires the themes

[04:45]

that I want to explore today, which are impermanence, identity, and no-self. I hope to unpack no-self in a way that's everyday. That's really helpful, because it can seem very vague. And pain, joy, how do we hold it all, especially during these times? And I want to begin with three events that are very much alive for our sangha, for my family sangha, for our queer community sangha. We also want to mention on a personal note that today is a very meaningful day for me because at a pink Saturday party in 2009, I met someone very significant. And I'm very grateful to our friends who had that party.

[05:49]

Very, very grateful. And they know it because I've told them quite often. So the first event I want to talk about is the Tassajara Zendo Fire. Because I was part of that practice period. I was there, part of the Bucket Brigade. which was part of how the community came together to try and save our zendo and contain the fire. And it was, as you can imagine, so shocking to be woken up a little after midnight by the head of our zendo, our meditation hall, shouting in an anguished voice, our zendo is on fire. I thought I was dreaming. Many of us did. And we went outside and saw 30, maybe even higher foot flames shooting up into the dark sky from the Zendo.

[06:57]

And I think all of us felt that that moment was incredibly surreal. Was this really happening? And it was. And we did... as much as we possibly could to save the zendo with fire hoses, with bucket brigades. And there was a moment where several people said, we've lost the zendo. We can't save it. We need to contain the fire so that we don't have an out-of-control wildfire, and so that we save Tassajara. And that's what we managed to do, which was... Amazing to us and also amazing to the firefighters who came about an hour and a half, two hours later. And when we woke up the next morning, we saw a pile of rubble where our zendo was. And also deeply shocking.

[08:00]

Also surreal and too real. I first set foot in the zendo in the mid-80s. as a guest. I didn't know who these people in black robes running around were because I'd never even heard of Tassajara. Friends took me there and I don't know, as they say, look at me now. But I spent many hours in that zendo with Darlene. I was able to do two practice periods thanks to my the support of my spouse and my life, and waking up to rubble, we just were all hurting deeply. And then a couple of weeks ago, two or three weeks ago, we found out that the cause of the fire was arson, which really, of course,

[09:07]

activated all of those emotions again and made them a lot more complicated. So the Tassajara Zendo fire, the reality of it, all the different emotions that we've had as individuals, that our community has had, has been very intense, of course. And then about two weeks ago, Our family had a deep personal loss, and that is we had to let go of our 18-year-old cat, ZG, at home. Her name meant indestructible confidence of the primordial mind. That was a tall order for an 11-pound cat, but she did it with grace. She was a tabby who just Brought joy to whoever came to our home.

[10:12]

Never met a lap she didn't like. And even dog people liked her, which I thought was pretty great. And a wonderful vet came to our house and explained the process. And I was holding Zigi's little head. My spouse had her hand on her butt. the rest of her. And we could feel those last moments after the injection when she stopped breathing and her heart stopped beating. And what a moment with any being, whether it's an animal or a person. For me it brought up memories of when my mother passed in intensive care. And my siblings and I were there, and we each had a hand on her, which is what she wanted.

[11:15]

And we shed many tears, and still are. It's amazing how they become a part of your life and your family, and just a daily presence that's deeply meaningful. And then the third event is pride, queer pride, which is, this is our weekend. And it's a mixed time for our community. I think there's always tremendous joy around queer pride. And as we all know, it's a difficult time. And the reason Pride weekend is on the 28th of June, is because that's the day in 1969 at the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village, a community of drag queens gathered for their Sunday rituals, a little different than ours, and maybe the same in the absolute realm.

[12:28]

And the NYPD gathered for their ritual. which was to beat up and harass the drag queens. But the difference on this day is that the drag queens rose up and they said, no, we're human beings, you cannot do this to us. And it's often described as a riot, which has always disturbed me. It was not a riot. It was standing up. It was an uprising. It was saying... no, this is not just, it's not right. That's what it was. And that's what we honor and what we celebrate all of June and this weekend, and particularly on the 28th. And I guess I'll try to humbly speak for our queer community in saying we are proud of our ancestors.

[13:34]

the Stonewall ancestors. We know that at least 10% of our Buddhas and ancestors were queer. We don't really know who they were, but I'd like us all to just bow to them for a moment and bring them to this room to inhabit this space with us, our queer Buddhas and ancestors. And I wanted to say a word about pride, because I think it's often misunderstood. I understand pride to be an appreciation of where we've come from, gratitude to the people whose shoulders and shoulder pads we stand on, and to stand with them.

[14:37]

right here, right now, in our ground of being. We're not better than anyone. We're not worse than anyone. We are all a big human sangha. And that is how I understand queer pride and pride in general. I like to, what's the word, retake that word, remake that word. And as I said, we're also aware of the suffering of our ancestors, of those drag queens being misunderstood and attacked and victims of violence, what's happening now, particularly with our trans siblings, and we stand with our community. And with that pain, What we get to hold is joy.

[15:40]

Joy in who we are, whether you're queer or not. Joy in identity that, as we understand it in Zen, is fluid. I don't know about you. Are you the same person last week you are today, 10 years ago, 20 years ago? That's because identity, the self, is fluid. There's lots of what we call causes and conditions that affect who we are and how we are from moment to moment. Have you ever had this thought, geez, I'm this way with this person and a different way with that person? How could that be? And that's about relationship, the causes and conditions of relationship, and what arises in relationship with different individuals, different communities. And that's my understanding of no self.

[16:46]

And I'm going out of order, but I guess that's okay. So I feel such joy practicing together we talked in Tassajara the day after the fire about how during a practice period you stay in this valley you don't leave and this particular practice period led by Abbot David was intimate there about 34 35 of us and we became deeply connected and We all felt that connection in looking at that fire, those first moments. And we have a phrase, one sangha body, that's how we met the fire. There were people who had experience, who said we have to replace the garden hose with the fire hose.

[17:53]

There were people who said, dish shack, buckets, the water's still running. We started the bucket brigade. And it was inspiring. It was actually beautiful how we were able to come together without turmoil, without dissent, with determination. This is our spiritual home during this practice period and beyond, and we wanted to save it and protect it. And we all felt that as we discussed it the next day. So what does losing a zendo, losing indestructible confidence of the primordial mind, and queer pride have in common? And what came up for me as I reflected on this talk is, of course, impermanence.

[18:55]

The reality that at one point each of us will lose everything, like we lost C.G. that day. And it is our practice of holding all of it, including that truth, that arises. And with my understanding and experience and practice of impermanence. One of my favorite teachers is Thich Nhat Hanh. And in the heart of the Buddhist teachings, he writes quite a lot about the teaching of impermanence. And how with the poignant truth of impermanence is the possibility of loving every moment because we know it will disappear. Like the way I'm loving these moments with all of you.

[19:56]

And those moments as ZG's life ended, loving her, being with my spouse together, in this moment. And after that reaffirming, let's live every moment to the fullest. Let's be here for our lives. Let's notice every little joy and nourish it and take a bath in it. I really like baths. And that's how we hold it all, right? The grief, fear, loss. I was so upset and angry when I found out about the arson. It was all the shock coming up anew.

[20:56]

And I just let that be. And what also came up was how much pain this person must have been in, how much suffering to do something like that, to plan it, to set fire to our zendo. Fury and compassion side by side, that's our human life. That's how we hold it all. That's how, as my dear Dharma sister Cynthia and I know from our teacher Darlene, That's how we are alive for it all. By feeling it all. And for me, that's a lifetime's work, but that's another Dharma talk. And I wanted to talk a little bit about attachment, because I think attachment gets a bad rap in our practice. I don't know about you, but I'm going to be 67.

[21:59]

I was attached to our Zendo. I was attached to ZG. Um... I'm attached to the rights that we've fought for as a queer community, and we have to continue fighting for. And I'm aware of these attachments. It's okay. That is part of being human. And I actually have no interest in, I don't know, being completely non-attached. It sounds kind of boring to me. I'm very interested in being aware of my attachments and how they affect me and other people, and to practice with them in that way, and to be open to letting go when it's time to let go, and to notice when an attachment starts to drift into being not so skillful, being unhealthy.

[23:02]

and to make different choices to take care of that. That feels like we get to be our full human selves with kindness that starts with ourselves. And I have to say, one of the things I love about queerness is how we play with identity, like those drag queens at Stonewall. and any other drag queens you might encounter or maybe play with. And, you know, I've been playing with painted nails and toenails, and it's kind of fun. A little surprising to me. And about 25 years ago, an alter ego arose. An alter duke. I'm gonna introduce her to you right now.

[24:06]

So my name is Trixie. I grew up in Brooklyn. I'm very close with our dear friend Tova Green from the Bronx. She's a Dharma sister. I actually retired when Lisa was about 50 because she thought, I'm getting a little too old for this. And Tova said, can Trixie come to Queer Dharma this summer? We need her. And I said, I kind of poked Lisa. And she said, all right, I can't say no to Yatoma. So identity, flexibility, joy, that to me is resilience.

[25:26]

Who here knew Blanche Hartman or has heard of her? She and Trixie were like this. After she got over the shock of Trixie's rakasu. I think this is a time where we need resilience. I know it. And our practice is about holding it all with compassion, with wisdom, insight. seeing clearly, and developing flexibility, flexible mind, the absolute and the relative mind realm turning together, to me, open up ultimate flexibility. So we include everything, even attachment, resentment, hate, and love, and joy.

[26:32]

and confusion. Our teacher Darlene used to say, if you're not confused, you're not paying attention. And in the golden light of our awareness, of our mindfulness, we hold them. They can arise and pass. With our breathing, arise and pass. And if they get stuck, we get stuck. We get to practice with that. We get to ask for help. Hopefully we have a teacher, we have friends, we have a sangha. And so we can notice suffering, ours and others, and attend to it, attention. We can attend to suffering. And what can we cultivate as our foundation, our ground being, gratitude? and love.

[27:33]

Knowing we'll lose everything is so bittersweet. And I hope together we'll cultivate the sweet. We'll take care of the bitter and we'll cultivate and joyously celebrate the sweet. And And I thank you very much. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma talks are offered at no cost and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[28:29]

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