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. My name is Mary Mosin, and my Dharma name is Hone Zenki Dharma Cloud Total Joy. So the Zenki is different from the one you may be used to. but I used Mary. And I just want to introduce myself a little bit. I went to Tassajara as a guest in the early 80s and went to Zazen instruction and was so intimidated that I never went in the Zendo. It was partly my perfectionism, but it was also... There were a lot of rules.

[01:02]

And I really started in March of 1988 with a workshop here led by Yvonne Rand. And it was a very gentle introduction. We started out in the conference center, you know, just sitting kind of informally the first night. And then the next day at some point, And she brought us into the Zendo and showed us how to get in and out and how to get up onto the tons, the platforms. And we sat in here for a little bit, and we sat more and more, I think, during that weekend. And I just felt like I came home, and I found out there was a Berkeley Zen Center right near my house where I lived in Berkeley. And I started sitting there the following week. Monday or Tuesday, maybe. And then I began to, I came here on Sundays.

[02:08]

And in 90, the fall of 90, I went to Tassajara. And I stayed there for almost four practice years, practice period years. And then I came here and I lived here for about... And I was what was then called the guest manager. I'm not sure if there's a sheikah these days or not, but whatever. And then they needed me to go to a city center, so I wound up there for a few years. And I was ordained by Sojin Roshi Mel Weitzman in September of 94. And... I was with Norman Fisher at Tassajara in the winter of 98. No, that can't be.

[03:11]

Is that right? Maybe it is. At any rate, January to April or whatever it was. And then in 99, I... moved out and started a small center in Vallejo, which is where I am now. I'm the guiding teacher in Vallejo. My official title is Abbess, but I think that these little places where few people live, it doesn't make much sense to be called an Abbess. Yeah. So I call myself a guiding teacher. I've done prison work. I also do work with lawyers. And my retreats give them a place where they can actually talk from their hearts.

[04:21]

And say things that you don't get to say if you're a lawyer in court or something. I get scared. Or sometimes I lose my temper so quickly and it's actually frightening to me. Things like that. Or somebody else loses their temper and I'm terrified. Which I had to learn that that's a reaction that people, that lawyers even have. I always thought that we would all... as I did. I mean, my tendency is to be aggressive when I'm frightened. And I think that's common with lawyers. But that's not true of everybody. It's something I learned. That's not what I wanted to talk about today, however. I thought of a million ways to start this, but my current favorite is... Hi, my name is Mary, and I hate Donald Trump.

[05:23]

Because, you know, that's a standard AA kind of, you know, hi, my name is Mary, and I'm an alcoholic. But it's true, and it's not something I'm proud of, and I don't think it's... I mean, I tend to make jokes. This is my family. I'll make a joke. You know, if something really touches me. I might well make a joke. I just did, I guess. But I don't think it's funny. And and it is like an addiction. And I think a lot of us share it. It's I want to say it's really important to me that we. have a place, make a place where people who love Donald Trump or people who believe abortion is murder or people who are okay with the death penalty or whatever, that they feel comfortable practicing here.

[06:41]

So I don't mean to exclude everybody. I mean, there we are in Marin County. And there probably are not many people here who support the MAGA movement. And there may be some. And I want you to feel welcome and to hear me out. Because it's a basic tenet of Buddha's teaching that Hatred is... I'm trying to think of a more polite way. I mean, it's just not okay. And it's a foolish thing, and it's not helpful. That one was my fault.

[07:48]

I do need to confess that I enjoy hating him. I enjoy the jokes and the cartoons. I make jokes. I bond with friends with his hatred. I think these are all common things. I don't think that I'm confessing to something unusual. And I think that it's not useful, and it reinforces my making him and those who support him other. But years ago, Linda Ruth Kutz gave a lecture here, and she was talking about speaking of others' faults.

[09:02]

And she called it wicked fun. And it is. It's both of those things. It's fun. It's how we bond. One of the ways. And it's not a good idea. I found this. This quote. From. Where did I put it? Oh, yeah. The Dhammapada is like a compilation of Buddha's teachings. And paragraph 63 in a chapter called The Fool says, A fool who knows her foolishness is wise, at least to that extent. But a fool who thinks herself wise is a fool indeed. So there's a little ray of hope.

[10:04]

The Dhammapada has some very famous advice analysis in the first chapter, which is called the Pairs, P-A-I-R-S. He says, mind precedes all mental states. Mind is their chief. They are all mind-wrought. If with an impure mind a person speaks or acts, suffering follows her like the wheel that follows the foot of the ox. And again, mind precedes all mental states, and they're all mind-wrought. If with a pure mind a person speaks or acts, happiness follows him like his never-departing shadow. So with what mind, with what heart do we speak? Do we act? He continues.

[11:11]

He abused me. He struck me. He overpowered me. He robbed me. Those who harbor such thoughts do not steal their hatred. And I want to come back to that. She robbed me. She struck me. She overpowered me. She robbed me. Those who do not harbor such thoughts still their hatred. Hatred is never appeased by hatred in this world. By non-hatred alone is hatred appeased. This is a law eternal. And this is a teaching universal. There's a wonderful Martin Luther King Jr.

[12:12]

sermon that he gave in Birmingham early on. And he talks about love thy enemy. And he says, Jesus meant it. And it's practical. And it talks a lot about how, it's basically about how to overcome your own hatred. And I'm working on it. I wrote a chapter, a book called, there's an anthology, I think it's called Practice in Challenging Times, or Zen Practice in Challenging Times. And my essay in that book was called I Hate Donald Trump. And that was quite a while ago.

[13:13]

And of course, it was about how do I practice with it. And I have practiced with it since I think it refers to it being right after the election. And so I was coping with my disappointment that Hillary Clinton was not the president. And what I'm... very aware of now and practicing with more now is my fear. And I know for me, and I think for most of us, what's underneath the hatred? What is that? And that, for me, is fear and hurt. I feel hurt. I feel rejected. I feel dismissed and offended.

[14:32]

As somebody in my Al-Anon group said years ago, she gave an introductory talk and she talked about offense and she pointed out that you don't have to take it. We take offense, you don't have to take it. Oh. you know, it's like, you made me angry. No, I took care of that. So how do we practice with this? And I think knowing the fear, and when I say knowing it, I mean, including your body, letting yourself feel it in your body. However you feel, you experience fear. So it's not, it's not A head event. It's a body event. And what do you personally do or how do you experience it? I know for me, I experience it as a rawness in my, I guess, maybe sort of my solar plexus and an impulse to cringe, to protect myself.

[15:51]

And years ago, my teacher, Mel Weitzman, told me, we were talking about fear of death, but fear is fear. Anyway, he told me to breathe into it. And I think my face must have changed. And he said, I am not telling you to suppress it. Because that is what I thought. that he meant, and it was not, and so I went away and tried it. And it's hard. It's scary to sit up straight and breathe into it, because if you're feeling raw, you know, right in your gut, in the middle of your body, you know, the thought of expanding your belly, is frightening in itself.

[17:00]

But try it sometimes. The main thing that I want to point out today, though, is that I need to, and we, I think, need to let ourselves feel the fear, know the fear, so that it can, as things do, Arise, abide, and pass away. But I think it's necessary first to allow it to arise. Because if you just turn away from it or just take this Dhammapada advice, say, oh, okay, I won't hate anymore. Best of luck. You know, it just doesn't work like that. You can't legislate your feelings. You can encourage yourself.

[18:02]

You can tell yourself affirmations. They can be really useful to support your intention, to pay attention, to support your intention, to allow yourself to physically feel what you feel, to allow things to arise and allow them to pass away what is it non-hatred that's a wonderful phrase non-hatred allow it to arise and see that it's empty that it doesn't have some vast existence outside of you that it passes away.

[19:06]

And then non-hatred can arise. And you notice, I mean, who knows, this is a translation from an ancient language, maybe Pali. And it was somebody's recollection from an oral tradition. So I'm hesitant to say this is what he meant. But that phrase, non-hatred, in other words, it's not anti-hatred. It's not attacking hatred. It's not punching hatred in the nose. It's just non-hating. non-hating, what would that be like? There is a famous fascicle by Dogen, the Fukan Zazengi, which is kind of his Zazen instruction.

[20:16]

Dogen was the Japanese founder of our school of Buddhism, and he was born in 1200 in Japan. He says, and this is actually, I think he's quoting somebody else, but at any rate, it says, It's a settle yourself and then think not thinking. How do you think not thinking? Non-thinking. It's a wonderful locution, non-thinking. Because as you probably know, when you sit Sazen, minds think. That's what they do. Uchiyama calls them brain secretions. Your stomach gurgles, your mind gurgles. So it's not about pushing the thoughts away. It is about not getting tangled with them. What is that bumper strip? Don't believe everything you think. Just allowing them to come and go.

[21:16]

And if a thought of hatred arises, that may take a little more attention. Don't hate the hatred. That's just getting yourself really caught some more. So I am working with it, and I am frightened, and I do feel disrespected, unseen, unheard of someone. I could go on and on. with those kinds of words. And I mean to come back to this, and if I don't, maybe you could bring it up if you have a question or something.

[22:23]

It doesn't mean, non-hating or not hating, doesn't mean that One doesn't engage with something that you think is problematic. It doesn't mean that you withdraw into some idea of emptiness. Don't become the kind of person that when their mother dies and somebody says, oh, I'm so sorry about your loss, do not say that. oh, that's okay, we're all one, and there's no life, and there's no death, and so it's fine. It's not fine. Your mother died. And what's going on in this country is not fine. I doubt that anybody, well, I don't know anybody, but there are few people that think everything is fine, no matter what your beliefs are. So...

[23:27]

Jesus and King and John Lewis and everybody who has real wisdom, you know, says, don't hate. But hate the sin. I think this is the way John Lewis said it. He's that wonderful man who said, get into good trouble. Anyway, he said, hate the sin, but not the sinner. One of the things that I've been kind of sitting with and struck by is knowing my own fear and my own hatred and my own feeling of being disrespected. have some sense of what someone from the MAGA world might feel in relation to me.

[24:36]

And I don't know what to do with that exactly. And I think it's useful. The more I know myself, the more I know you also. Because we're actually kind of boring. We're not that different from one another. I told my analyst many years ago that I would work through something and I'd really get down to it and it would be a cliche. You know, like sibling rivalry and I found out on some primal level I wanted to kill my sister. And I get down to these things, and I remember saying to her, this is really boring. I work hard, and I really get to something, and it's just a cliche.

[25:39]

And she looked at me, and she said, there's a reason why they're cliches. Oh, and it's true. It's true. On a primal level, we do want to kill our siblings. That doesn't mean you're going to do it, just in case you're worried. But knowing that about myself, I understand better. And we have all kinds of... It's common to go into a group of people that you don't know, maybe at a conference where you don't have a lot of friends in the group yet, and to walk in and feel... uncomfortable and feel like you're not really included, you're not really welcome there. I tell you, it's gone. I tell you, I feel you.

[26:41]

And I've worked with that for a long time, and it's much better now. Because I don't believe it so much anymore. I found out if I got up all my courage and went and sat at a table with some people that interested me, turns out they didn't look at me and say, what are you doing here? And this is common, but I know it. I know it in this body, in this mind, in this heart. So I know, and I try also to make it a point if I answer that kind of a thing. Now I'd be at one where I... already knew a lot of people, but to go and sit with people that look like they're a little bit alone or sit with people that I don't already know. And so far they haven't told me to get lost either. So knowing my fear, I have a little bit of sense of what their MAGA people's fear is.

[27:43]

And It's complicated because I think, and what do I know? I've never really, you know, I have some relatives who in 16, you know, wrote that they voted for Trump, all caps. I don't know how they feel about it now. They're in the Midwest, so we have very little contact, and I certainly don't see any point. But maybe I should. One of them I actually have a little bit of a relationship with. Anyway, I have ideas about it, and I may well be right about a lot of it, that there are cisgender white men who feel their power slipping away and are threatened.

[28:47]

by the fact that our country is going to be minority white before long. I don't know if California is yet, but we're working on it. And for some people, I think that's very frightening. And they feel rejected, and they feel disrespected. And of course, it's being exploited and amplified. And I don't approve of that. I think that's harmful. I think it's harmful to attack a woman's right to choose. I think it's harmful to go after LGBTQ.

[29:47]

I don't know. I'm sorry. I'm old. Whatever the initials are. And it's particularly harmful to target trans people who are already targeted so much. And it's harmful to ban books. And I just say that that slavery was helpful to some people because it taught them a trade. I mean, sorry. I'm laughing because it's scary to me that people are saying these things out loud. And it's hardly the case that we were never a racist country. I mean, we have that wound, which will stay with us until we address it, I think.

[30:49]

But at any rate, I don't like these things. I think these things are harmful. I'm trying to not say wrong. They're harmful. They're not just, not simply not useful. They're actively harmful. And they divide us. And they hurt us. And I keep thinking of, you know, I'm not sure if I can say this right, but Lyndon Johnson years ago said, you know, if you can convince the lowest white person that he is above the best black person, He will empty his pockets for you. It's like we need somebody to look down on.

[31:59]

How do I respond to this? let's call it, this white nationalism and so on and so on. How do I respond without hating? How do I respond with non-hate? How do I respond with, give this the tough love, maybe? There are times when one must be fierce, when one must set boundaries. But my work, and I think the work of a lot of us, is to do that, but without hating. I make a distinction between anger and fierceness with the lawyers I work with, that anger is when you don't care about the consequences anymore. You just want to punch back. You want to hurt somebody. And fierceness is when you stand up and...

[33:09]

say, no, that's not okay. Or you set a boundary. You say no in some way. But as Adamapada said, you know that mind precedes mental states, and mental states are mind rot, W-R-O-U-G-H-D, rot. So with what heart, with what mind do you set a boundary? Zazen helps. Sitting quietly helps. And also knowing your own fear, knowing what happens in your body and remembering that though you very much disagree with what you're hearing, you know that to some extent it comes from fear.

[34:15]

And how strong that is. And how, I don't know about you, when I said before, when I am frightened, I can be aggressive. And I know that. And I watch, I have antenna out for If my voice gets louder, or I start speaking faster, or I exaggerate, or I start swearing a lot, and I can also feel it in my gut, that urge to lean forward, to lean in. When I notice these things, those are red flags, and I lean back. And take some breath. And let that part go. And I think that's a lot of what Sazen's about, is letting go.

[35:18]

Noticing that you got on the train and getting off. The train of thought, I mean. Just letting go. Some periods of Sazen are just, it seems like it's just slogging. You notice you're on it. you come back. Notice, you come back. And just like that for 30, 40 minutes. We are practicing simply being present without adding all the opinions and ideas that we have. And then, then you can see. You can see if you're talking to somebody who is railing about how all the Mexicans are taking their jobs. Look in their eyes. Listen to them. Notice their body language. See if you can feel the fear that's underneath that or whatever is underneath it and not get caught by their anger.

[36:33]

For me, this is really difficult practice because I feel like my country is under attack and it's frightening. The question for me, I think the question for us is how do we respond? How do we respond in a useful way? and not a reactive way. It's easy to say, and it's not easy to do, but it is very much my practice right now. 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.

[37:41]

May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[37:44]

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