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, everyone. Can you hear me? This feels sort of odd. Very happy to see you here today. Is anyone here for the first time? Welcome, welcome to Zen Center. My name is Laura Burgess, and I sort of feel like I grew up at Zen Center. I've been here a while. I would say that Zen Center saved my life. One of my earliest experiences of Zen was, I saw an article in a newspaper, in a magazine, about the practice of kintsuji. The first syllable kin means golden, And the second syllable, tsuji, means joinery, to join with gold.

[01:02]

So this was a practice developed over centuries where a potter, having broken a bowl or a pot or a cup, would rejoin it using a kind of lacquer infused with gold. So in this way, rather than disguising or hiding the cracks, they are illuminated with gold. the practice of Kintsugi belongs to the ideal of wabi-sabi. And this is the appreciation of objects that are simple and earthy and unpretentious, especially objects that have a rustic or weathered quality. And in the book Wabi-sabi by Leonard Koren, he says, Wabi-sabi is a beauty of imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete things. It is a beauty of things modest and humble. It is a beauty of things unconventional. So the older I get, the more I like the idea of wabi-sabi.

[02:08]

I was in the Tassajara Zendo in 1979. We were having a Shosan ceremony with Abbott Richard Baker, and someone in the back said, hey, there's a fire back here. And we looked back and there was a kind of pink glow in the hallway. And we just got up and luckily there was a door up by the altar and we ran out. And within moments, the whole zendo was engulfed in flames. Unfortunately, the fire pump was in town being repaired. So we had a bucket brigade to try to put the fire out. Luckily, the kitchen was saved. But the library and the hallway and the zendo burned. And if you've been to Tassajara, that's the place now, it's covered with an arbor, and the students eat their meals in there and often prepare lunch, you know, cutting vegetables at the picnic tables there. Well, the Buddha, the ancient Gandharan Buddha that had been on the altar, crashed to the floor.

[03:15]

And the Asian Art Museum was at the Diyang at that time. And they were really excited about repairing that Buddha. And they told us to gather up every tiny little chip and part of the Buddha that we could. And I went and we took it to the Asian Art Museum. And I went to visit the Buddha when it was being fixed. And it was so moving to see it because the Buddha had, you know, reattained his form, but with a kind of roadmap of white lines all over it where it had been repaired. And today, if you go to Tasara and look at the Buddha on the altar, that is that same Buddha that was damaged. And looking back, I sort of feel like that was sort of a symbol of a great upheaval in our Zen center community that we survived and perhaps became stronger because of it. So, you know, in our youth-oriented society, we're...

[04:17]

People and things tend to be discarded when they get a little tattered or worn. I think wabi-sabi is a wonderful reminder of the preciousness of worn but still useful people and objects. So there's a story about the ideal of wabi-sabi from medieval Japan. Senno Rikyu was traveling through southern Japan and he was invited to dinner and the host was anxious to... to impress him with this beautiful, elaborate antique jar. Rikyu, however, didn't pay much attention to the jar. He kept waxing rhapsodic about the branch swaying in the breeze outside. So the host was very frustrated by this and he picked up this antique jar and dropped it on the floor and it broke into a bunch of pieces and he went to bed. But his guests gathered up the fragments and joined them together using kintsugi. And when Rikyu returned sometime later and saw this antique jar with these golden threads in it, holding it together, he exclaimed, now it is magnificent.

[05:28]

So I brought you a picture of some tea bowls that had been broken. I don't know if you can see this, but tea bowls that had been broken and rejoined with this golden lacquer. And you can see they're very beautiful. So in his song, Anthem, Leonard Cohen says, Ring the bells that still can ring. Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in. And all of us are slightly cracked. All of us have places in us that are broken. And sometimes we forget that these places where we're broken, where we're vulnerable, you know, where we've suffered, that's the very place where we are able to connect with other people. You know, if we were an inviolable castle, we wouldn't be able to connect with others the way we can with our own broken hearts.

[06:34]

If we've suffered a terrible grief, we're uniquely able to reach out to someone else who's suffered. And if we've suffered a great loss, and we all have, we can reach out to someone else who has lost. If we've overcome addiction, we have the unique ability to help another suffering addict. And if we've been through a life-changing trauma, we can help someone else who's suffering in that way. So when we turn around and face our own life and move towards healing and... I do feel this is best to do in a sangha with other people that want what we want, that want this way of life. As we move towards healing, those places in us that are broken glow with a kind of golden thread. And I also think that we forget that sometimes that is our flaws, our mistakes, our shortcomings, our misdeeds that actually make us lovable.

[07:43]

People don't love us because we're perfect. They love us because we've shared our vulnerability with them. And yet, we are supposed to be moving ever upwards towards some kind of perfection. So we don't sit to try to improve ourselves, to become a better version of ourselves, to perfect ourselves. And yet, as we sit, we do come to know ourselves in a very intimate way with all our flaws and cracks and also the places in us that are seamed with gold. Part of this knowing ourselves is waking up to the way we treat other people. And we may be responding to other people in a habitual way that we learned in our families of origin. And because we swam in that water, we don't necessarily question it. we may be responding to others in a habitual way that pushes them away rather than allowing them to come closer to us.

[08:52]

So I love a Mexican proverb that I learned from my friend Chai in Oaxaca. And I used to be able to say this in Spanish, but I don't remember how anymore. And I love this proverb. Some of you might have heard me say this before. He said, every person has four parts. the part that everyone knows, the part that only that person knows, the part that everyone but that person knows, and the part that nobody knows. Of course, we all have a lot more than four parts. But for this argument, I love these four parts. And practicing with others can give us a glimpse into this part of us that everybody but us knows. And everyone is aware of us except us. And it's really only in relationship to others that we can truly see ourselves. Now, we all laugh when we think that other people can see something in us we can't see.

[09:57]

But don't forget that sometimes other people see very special qualities in us that we can't see ourselves. You know, and it's in a deep, long friendship with other beings that we learn to feel appreciated and worthy when we... when we are there for our friends over time. So other people can see special qualities in us that we're blind to. But at the same time, I think other people can also give us important information about the way we push other people away in order to retreat safely into isolation. Suzuki Roshi said, and famously said, you're perfect just the way you are, but that doesn't mean you can't stand a little improvement. And I'd like to talk today about some of the ways in which we might push others away without even being aware of it. So, you know, often we carry damage with us, cracks in our surface, cracks in our being that push other people away when actually what we long for is intimacy.

[11:08]

And... There are unskillful ways of being that we may be unconscious of, and we may have learned these ways of being in our family of origin without really questioning them. You know, maybe we were spoken to harshly or in a very critical way, and that's the way we think people who love each other talk to one another. We may feel justified in our unskillful behavior because we feel other people haven't treated us as well as we would have liked. But especially if we're parents ourselves, it's important, I think, to turn around and look at these habitual ways of being so that we don't pass on this source of suffering for ourselves and others. We can shift these ways of being that I'd like to share with you into a way of relating that encourages peace and harmony and reconciliation. I work with children. I've been teaching third grade for 30 years.

[12:11]

And I miss Blanche. And one of the stories I told her about my students was... She liked to tell the story that one of my students, Nathan Miller, was walking by my desk one day and he did this little dance. And I said, Nathan, what were you thinking about right then? He said, Laura, do you ever forget you're alive and all of a sudden you remember? LAUGHTER So I was there for Nathan's enlightenment experience. And my daughter Nova is a preschool teacher and she takes her little ones on nature walks. And here's what some of her little four-year-olds said when she took them to stand on a hill in Oakland looking over the bay. Lucas said, I hear the entire world. Kai said, I hear the birds singing and I can hear the bay water. A sufferer said, the earth is saying, if you see trash, pick it up. Carl said, the earth is saying, don't forget to trim my plants so they can grow better.

[13:17]

And Clementine said, the earth says, children, I like your walking feet. So these are our little bodhisattvas, if we can appreciate them. So we can invite children into compassion, peacefulness, and awareness. And there's a wonderful movement now called Mindful Schools, which I adopted in my own classroom, in the hopes that children can grow up with more skillful ways of dealing with negative emotions and impulsive behavior. So we can invite children into this place of peace, but first we have to practice these things ourselves, of course. And I think that compassion and peacefulness and awareness are... elements that we try to foster and cultivate in our Buddhist communities. Gandhi said, be the change you wish to see in the world. Mother Teresa, who's going to be designated a saint tomorrow, by the way, she said, we can do no great things, but we can do small things with great love.

[14:23]

And of course, Duke Ellington said, it don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing. So... How can we be agents of peace in our own lives? In Buddhism, our intention is to develop compassion for others and to cultivate resilience within ourselves. So to reach out from our hearts to other people and also to build within ourselves a kind of resilience so that when we are visited with the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune that we can get up and move on with our lives. And one place we can shine a light here in the world is in our day-to-day actions with others. You know, I love that Suzuki Roshi also said, shine one corner of the world. And one place we can, that's sort of like saying we can do no great things, but we can do small things with great love. We can choose one corner of the world where we can have an effect.

[15:26]

And for me, that's in my third grade classroom, my little corner of the world. But in our day-to-day actions with others, we may overlook the damage and distress that we can cause by responding to those, even those we love, let alone people we're not that crazy about, in unskillful ways. And I recently came into contact with the work of John Gottman, Ph.D., And this teaching has been embraced by the Greater Good Project at UC Berkeley. He's done research on what constitutes a healthy marriage. So this work is aimed at healthy love relationships, but I think you'll find that these principles can apply to any relationship. The relationship you have with your friends, with your children, especially your adult children, your families of origin, and in your workplace where you maybe spend more time with the people you work with than your family.

[16:30]

I think these are things to look out for. Four ways of being which, and they're all too human, we all do these things, but they tend to destroy intimacy rather than invite it. So these four things are criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and withdrawal. So the first one, criticism. It's probably impossible to have an intimate relationship with someone if there isn't room and space to air differences and deal with conflict so that each person can be heard and get their needs met. And there should be trust and freedom to air complaints and concerns. You know, if we just stuff those things, that isn't healthy either. But when criticism becomes a problem, is where there's a tendency to criticize our friend or our family member in a kind of global way by making proclamations about them, about their character or their personality, rather than dealing with a discrete or specific complaint or issue.

[17:38]

So you know you might be doing this if you use the word always or never. Because we don't always or never do anything. And when we sort of accuse somebody of that, We're probably already embarking on the wrong track. So if you say to someone, you never think of anyone but yourself, that's not true. And also, it casts the other person back into the position of defending their very being. It puts them on the defensive. So an alternative to that is when we're in relationship and we're making a complaint, it's probably best to focus on our own feelings. So rather than saying... you're so selfish and inconsiderate, I could say, you know, I feel lonely when you're late for dinner because I enjoy being with you. You can see what a different response that would get. So when we approach conflict or difficulty with love and with genuine curiosity about the other person's feelings, we have a very different outcome.

[18:42]

And this is a good time for active listening. So if I've offended someone I'm in relationship with, I can invite the other person to share their feeling with me in order to demonstrate that I'm really listening and that I actually care about how they feel. And you may know about active listening. Active listening can feel a little strained or a little strained or artificial until you get used to it. But First, you can paraphrase what the other person is telling you. So put it in your own words so you make sure, without embellishment, so you make sure you get what they're saying. And then ask appropriate questions, you know, of the other person. Expressing empathy in a natural way. Thinking about the body language you're using. So if you're leaning back with your arms crossed, you're probably not conveying an openness to their feelings and thoughts.

[19:46]

Is this thing still working? And once you've really heard the other person, and we avoid giving advice or judgment, then you can ask them if they're open to hearing your point of view. And at this point you might say, well, you know, remember this morning I told you I might be late, but I'm sorry that I didn't call and let you know. And this really diffuses a conflict while giving each person a chance to air their feelings. So thinking about criticism in the way that you do it. The second one is contempt, expressing contempt to people. And this is communicated in many ways by our tone of voice, our body language, and it's just treating others with disrespect. Sometimes someone can say something very biting to us and then say, well, I was just kidding. But when...

[20:47]

a barbed comment is couched in sarcasm or kind of bitter barbed humor, it hurts. So ridicule, sarcasm, mockery, eye-rolling, these are all things that communicate contempt. And it's kind of a hallmark of intimate relationships that we can do this. So in a long-term relationship or a friendship or a work relationship, an antidote to this You know, familiarity breeds contempt. An antidote to this is to take a breath and remember, why is this person precious to me? Why did we become friends in the first place? How did we meet? How has this person been with me at times when I needed them? And this transforms our minor irritations and in a kind of figure-ground perspective, it brings to the foreground what we're grateful about, about this person. Now, this doesn't mean we're never going to get irritated with anybody, but it can shift and transform a kind of habitual negativity that can be laid on top of a long-term relationship.

[22:00]

So the third one is defensiveness. So when we're criticized, even in a skillful and kind way, it can be very easy to go into a defensive mode. And again, this might be something we learned in our family of origin where our response to criticism or in some cases abuse was to withdraw or to defend ourselves. But in a minor conflict with someone, rather than taking responsibility for ourselves, it's very easy to start enumerating the wrongs the other person has done to us, listing grievances long past What about the time you, you know? And when we respond in this defensive way, the other person doesn't feel heard or understood or even valued. So an alternative to this is to take time and listen to and reflect the other person's concerns. Again, another place for active listening.

[23:02]

And to take responsibility when it's appropriate. And also to remember that we lose nothing by simply apologizing. A sincere apology can go a long way to healing any kind of conflict. And in fact, I've read that the most successful marriages are the ones where the husband just does whatever the wife wants. This is what research has proved. I know that's heterocentric, but that's the way I read it. Oh, so the fourth one is withdrawing. Now, this might seem like a more benign approach when someone is criticizing us or we're in conflict with another person, but it's still very harmful if we just withdraw and stonewall someone that we care about. We might do this because we're afraid of our own strong emotions, that we're afraid of our own anger, and so we might feel it's kinder just to leave the house without telling the other person where we're going,

[24:09]

or just to withdraw into ourselves without explanation and not share our feelings with the other person. So this is a kind of passive-aggressive stance which makes the other person feel abandoned and rejected. And, you know, when we just pull into ourselves and we might say something like, well, if you don't know what's wrong, I certainly can't tell you, or... I remember once one of my little third graders, and they're eight years old, one of my little girls turned to one of the boys in the class and said, how can you talk to me that way? Can't you tell I'm feeling vulnerable today? I told her mother that story. She said, oh, I wonder where she heard that. So an alternative to withdrawing and pulling back is just to say I'm really interested in hearing about how you feel I'm not able to do it right now. Could we talk a little bit later?

[25:11]

Or just to take a few deep breaths. And gently adjust the microphone. Thank you. And if you feel you're not able to engage in a positive way, just tell the other person when you might be ready to talk. So this eases the other person's... sense of upset and it reassures them that you care about them and you're gonna be ready to talk at a future time. So in this way you communicate that you're taking care of yourself but at the same time being thoughtful rather than rejecting the other person, including them in your thinking. So if we're careful about expressing contempt and expressing criticism in a more generous way, if we're on guard about being defensive with others and be more open to other people's feedback towards us, then we can be more aware of the subtle ways that we inflict hurt on those we love.

[26:24]

And of course, we may be inflicting a kind of hurt that was inflicted on us deep in the path that is triggered by events today. But I think this is one of the great gifts of sitting is it gives us a moment, a kind of breathing space. You know, I love something Robert Thurman said. Robert Thurman was, I believe, he was of Danish origin but lived in America, went to Tibet and learned Tibetan and was one of the first translators for the Dalai Lama. And he said, meditation isn't just about sitting on the cushion, it's about standing up and going into the world. And when we're confronted with a choice, rather than responding instinctually, we respond in the appropriate way. We turn in the appropriate direction. So this is not the same thing as denying our feelings or pretending that we're fine when we're not, but it's integrating those feelings into our being and seeing other beings as luminous beings

[27:37]

taking care of them as we want to be cared for ourselves. So let's treasure the cracked and mended bowls that we all are and let us shine. Let us find those golden places where we've healed and reach out to others who seek healing as well. So I want to share with you one of my favorite poems by Mary Oliver, When I Am Among the Trees. And I want to say, you know, I really love trees because they just live where they are. You know, they take what they need from the soil and they give us shade and beauty and they bend with the wind. I think, for me, my teachers are trees in a very... lifelong way that I've learned from trees.

[28:38]

So Mary Oliver says, when I am among trees, especially the willows and the honey locust, equally the beech, the oaks and the pines, they give off such hints of gladness. I would almost say that they save me and daily. I'm so distant in the hope of myself in which I have goodness and and discernment and never hurry through the world, but walk slowly and bow often. Around me, the trees stir in their leaves and call out, stay a while. The light flows from their branches and they call again. It's simple, they say, and you too have come into this world to do this, to go easy. to be filled with light and to shine. When I am among trees, Mary Oliver.

[29:42]

So thank you very much for your kind attention. 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.

[30:14]

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