This podcast is offered by San Francisco's Zen Center on the web at sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good evening. And wowie zowie. There's a lot of you here. Thank you for coming. I'm... I'm happy to have the opportunity to say a few things that are of interest to me, and I hope will be of some benefit, at least a tiny little bit, to you. And I got the phone call from Jordan inviting me to give this talk while I was away on vacation, and there was about, I don't know, two weeks after I got back between then and now, and... I had a really good excuse to say, no, that's not enough time, which I actually planned to do.

[01:00]

And then I had a phone call with somebody a lot of you know, Bender. We talked to him. And we were just talking, and he said something about something he was letting go of, or something about letting go. And I said, oh, is that the same as feeling it completely? And we got into this very lively conversation. And I said, well, maybe I could give the talk on this. I could talk about this. And so that was actually the birth of this talk. And I've worked on this talk. Every time I go to work on it, I throw most of it away and start again. So it's not going to sound too much like that conversation. But I still hope I remember when I get to the right place to give you my conclusion about that question. And just to let you know, Bernd and I for a while fantasized about bringing him in on Skype and doing this talk together.

[02:05]

Wouldn't that be fun? We thought it would be really fun. We had a great laugh about that. So anyway, I... I thought I would read my talk, which is kind of horrifying to me, so I'm probably going to do some hybrid thing of reading it and not reading it. I started out here saying that I've lived at Zen Center now a little over 11 years, and there's been plenty of times that I've been confused about what I was doing, because the schedule's always been really hard for me, and especially The first years of my time here, Zazen was like terrifically hard for me, brought up lots of disturbing experiences. But the whole way through, there's actually been one thing that I've never felt confused about that's always stayed steady, and that is studying the self and my commitment to studying the self.

[03:10]

And I feel deeply committed to that, and I think I felt deeply committed to that as a teenager, though I never would have called it that. It just seems to be, you know, how I am. So in the years that I've lived here, I've learned that I'm not separate from the universe. And so I think of studying this galaxy called Jane really as just studying a piece of the universe. You know, I'm just part of the fabric. And I'd like to do it as deeply as I can, as deeply as my awareness or my eye of practice can take me. And for me, that includes the body, because that's where a lot of my experience is, I think. Our senses are all based in our body, and we really wouldn't be here without one.

[04:15]

And I also believe my karma is living in my body, or that's how it gets expressed. And my pain and my pleasure, and just also my simple presence, my neutral, whether I'm not involved in pain or pleasure, but just my neutral presence also feels to me like it has a lot to do with being embodied. So, This actually started pretty early for me, because when I was 19, I came out to California from the East Coast, and I was in a terrible state. I'd had a lot of bad acid trips, and I was out here by myself. It was 1969. And I was in a panic, really, pretty much all of the time, except I found these classes at... what was then called, I mean, it doesn't exist anymore, but the Free University of Berkeley, FUB, does anybody remember that?

[05:19]

Anyway, they had lots of fabulous courses for free, and there was something about body awareness, I don't know what it was called, but I took it, and for those two hours, two times a week, I felt sane, and the rest of the time, I felt nuts. My only memory of what we did in those classes, I just remember standing with a group of people in the body, on the ground, grounded, and not... I don't even know if I would have described it this way at the time, but I wasn't so up here. I was, like, down here. And down here, it wasn't so complicated. And so I loved that class, and that was really the first time I knew that the body can actually be a resource. It can actually... be a source of grounding and centering and calm, as well as, you know, difficult experience.

[06:21]

So I'm gonna jump now and go right to one of our favorite things, which is emotion, and talk about what is the experience of emotion. And I thought just to make it vivid, I'd pick anger. So what is anger, or what is our experience of anger? Well, there's usually some thoughts around. I guess when I turn this way, I'm not, I won't worry about it. There's usually some thinking around, and I think the thinking often can have the function of, feeding the anger, especially if thinking is should thinking, like they shouldn't have done that, or they should have done that, or that shouldn't have happened. Somebody once suggested to me that whenever there's anger, there's some discursive thought with a should in it, and I've tested it out, and I've actually found that in myself every single time.

[07:36]

I thought that was interesting. So now I say it. But what else? you know, besides the thinking, well, to feel an emotion in the body, it's going to have a location. So one could ask, what does it feel like in the body when you're angry? Or where is it located in your body? But one of my favorite ways to ask is this one. How do you know you're angry? Or how do you know you're sad? Or how do you know you're happy? I do a kind of work called somatic experiencing. And sometimes, this isn't all that I do with it, but every now and then I have the occasion to ask this question to someone. And I usually give them fair warning. I'm going to ask you a weird question. And it might take you a while to answer it.

[08:38]

but if they've identified, oh, I'm feeling really sad, and I might say, how do you know? And that takes them on a journey that sooner or later lands on some usually physical sensation in the body. Like with anger, it could be tension or gripping in the jaws or tightness in the chest or heat in the face or narrowing of the eyes. the heart beating fast, and so forth. And just being present with one of those sensations, just actually giving it space to be there and being curious, what happens next? In most cases, the sensations don't stay the same, they change. They'll lessen and disperse, or they'll give way to other sensations, or they'll give rise to an image. which can become very interesting, or maybe there will be an impulse for movement.

[09:46]

But because these things don't stay the same, we're able to witness impermanence and flow. And also, if we're fully present in the actual physical sensation, our story will tend to drop away or at least recede into the background where it won't be so dominant. And I don't know how to say this, but my experience when that happens is like there's an intelligence or a wisdom in the body that can come forth at that time when our thoughts aren't dominant. And it's kind of a different world. And it has an intelligence and it knows in a way what needs to happen next. And it goes there. thinking we can't do that with our thinking so also being fully present with our body sensations they can fully express and fully expressing they may be able to complete themselves

[11:02]

And to me, now here's my answer to Barrett next time I talk to him, is I think that's very close to letting go. So I taught a class at Green Gulch over the summer on working with anger and fear, and I taught some of the skills of regulation of the nervous system that I know from my somatic experiencing work. And I told a story about how one day in Zazen, I just realized I forgot to mention about the four foundations of mindfulness. Anyway, one day in Zazen, somebody sat down next to me that I had an unresolved, really difficult relationship with. And I instantly, I was surprised that they didn't live there. And I was instantly, So at that time, I was receiving somatic experiencing sessions.

[12:13]

I was a client. So I knew a little bit how to work with this. And I asked myself, you know, where did I feel this in my body? And I got the answer while my throat was tight and my jaw was tight. And then I asked myself, did those muscles want to do anything? Because I had heard this question from my practitioner, and it was like, yes, they wanted to bark and growl. So I did. But not out loud. I looked like this, you know, I looked like this. But in my mind's eye, I was barking and growling utterly ferociously and fully and completely and deliciously.

[13:14]

It was delicious. It was the most satisfying way I think I could have allowed those feelings to express. And it went on for an amazingly long time. You know, because there's part of me observing, right? And... And then I'd go, and is there more? And then I'd be like, I'd start right back. And again, it was pretty much the full period of Sazam. And I was very clear that this wasn't harmful. It was, you know, I wasn't hurting anybody and I wasn't hurting me, but I was allowing the natural biology, kind of the healthy aggression of my, you know, the aggression to express in a healthy way. And that night, there was an amazing interaction between me and this person. It was totally playful. We were both in a class together, and I can't describe the whole thing, but...

[14:16]

Basically, I said, well, I said something to her. I led into it. I let her know I was being playful, and I did a little barking and growling at her in a playful way, and she, like, patted me on the head and said, down, down, girl, and I got on the floor and rolled over, and she petted my belly, and this was somebody I'd had, you know, serious conflict with for a number of years. So I was really impressed, and... And I think that was letting go. I mean, I think there's at least some strong relationship there. So I told this story in my class, and then I handed out evaluations at the end, and I got them back, and whether they put their name down was optional. The person, somebody who did not put their name, told me that they felt very alarmed at that story, and that they thought That's the opposite of what we're supposed to be doing in the Zendo.

[15:20]

And this was the most interesting comment to me of anything that I got. And I think about it a lot. And I still think I agree with myself that actually I would do that again. And I don't think it was harmful. And actually I think it was beneficial. But I think it's also an interesting question. So I'll just put that out there. I did want to mention, you know, we have a strong basis in our tradition in the four foundations of mindfulness, the Satipatthana Sutta. The first foundation is mindfulness of the body. And the Buddha is instructing his disciples to be aware of the body in very many ways. specific ways, so I feel in good company. And Reggie Ray, I don't know how many of you know him, this is called Touching Enlightenment, Finding Realization in the Body.

[16:30]

It's a great book. He says, In the beginning, although we may feel strong emotions, we find that they are tangled up with our storyline or narrative. Initially, we need to let go of our narrative preoccupation. We do this through entering into the body. When we do so, while the narrative may dissolve, the emotions do not. At this point, we simply rest. in the charged atmosphere of our strong emotions. I love that. Rest in the charged atmosphere. Oh, this is wonderful. Wherever in the body they may be appearing. And also, I think, you know, in the Genjo Koan, when Dogen says, when you see forms or hear sounds fully engaging body and mind,

[17:32]

You grasp things directly. When you see forms or hear sounds or feel sensations, fully engaging body and mind. So I think this is all the same direction when we're talking. Check the time. Of course, it's later than I thought. So I want to, now that I've said all that, I want to say something that It kind of comes in from the other side and might even seem a little contradictory or confusing. I'm not sure. And to do that, I want to talk just a little bit about the autonomic nervous system. I didn't bring my flip chart, although I considered it. It was a little too big. So I'm going to ask you to use your imaginations. So I want you to picture a sine curve. It goes like that. It's like an S lying down, a sine curve. And the upward part of the curve represents the sympathetic part of the nervous system.

[18:38]

This is the part that gives us our energy to act. Like, if I stood up right now, I'd be using the sympathetic nervous system, or if I wanted to go play sports. It's the gas pedal. And it's also the part where our fight-or-flight responses come. have a high, big spike. It wouldn't be a nice little curve like that. It would be like... Okay, the downward curve is the parasympathetic nervous system, and that's the relaxation response. It's the break. And all day long, our nervous systems are very naturally going and kind of activate, deactivate, activate, deactivate in response to food, and now we're fed. Is that a mate, possible mate over there? Oh, no, they're already taken. Okay, I'll settle down. Or is that danger? No. Okay, I'll go back to reading my book.

[19:40]

It's our basic rhythm. It's expansion, contraction. It's in-breath, out-breath. And in its normal range of resiliency, the nervous system's doing this all day long. Now, if there's some or has been some perceived threat to life, which could be either emotional... or physical, then a huge amount of energy floods into the sympathetic nervous system to prepare all sorts of hormones and chemicals to prepare our body to run or to fight. But if we are unable to run or flee for any number of reasons, maybe we're in a car hurtling through space, or maybe we're a little child being yelled at by their parent. If the fight or flight, if it gets too intense, then our biology protects us by kind of turning things off.

[20:41]

And a big part of the parasympathetic, a certain branch of the parasympathetic comes in. And this is called a freeze. You've probably heard of it. Freeze or immobility response. It's funny because to me this is sort of the most interesting part of my talk, but I see people starting to go to sleep. So anyway, in this case, in this emergency, we have a high charge on the sympathetic fight or flight and we have a high charge on the parasympathetic break. So it's like having a foot on the gas... and a foot on the brake, both down to the floor at the same time. So what happens when you have a foot on the gas and on the brake? Where does the car go? It's kind of immobilized or paralyzed. However, there's a ton of energy in the system. It might look, you know, if you see an animal in a freeze, it's going to look like this.

[21:46]

Wild animals do this. It protects them. there's actually a lot of charge in there, and wild animals, they naturally know how to discharge this huge amount of activation in the nervous system. They usually lie down and tremble, seeing pictures of it. And we have exactly the same mechanism in our body. However, we're not so connected to our instincts as the animals are, and we have our neocortex, our thinking minds, which usually have to go pick up somebody after school or get to work or something, and we don't usually let ourselves have that window of discharging the energy, which can cause problems, because we're not intended to have these huge amounts of energy in our system for long periods of time, and they can become symptoms later. Why am I saying all this? I'm saying all this because I spent the first half of my talk being a cheerleader for

[22:51]

feeling and being present with body sensations. But I also know that people who have some freeze in their system may not want to do that or may not be easily able to do that because freeze has a lot of disconnection in it. It's like a circuit breaker. And I bring it up because in my early days, well, I shouldn't even say that. For a long time, through my sitting history here at Zen Center, I had a lot of intense distress come up. And it's not that I couldn't feel it in my body. I was quite the opposite. I would get just completely pulled into it. I couldn't really be present and upright with it. I'd just be in the washing machine. And... It wasn't until I had the thought that I had unresolved trauma, which seemed to arrive out of the blue, but really resonated.

[23:57]

And then I talked to somebody, and they turned me on to Peter Levine's book, Waking the Tiger. And in the very beginning, he talks about fight, flight, which I knew about, and freeze, which I had not known about. And when I read about freeze, I understood... and living my entire life in freeze. And I started to understand myself for the first time. And I started to understand that some of what I thought was just my difficult personality was actually symptoms, which was really great news. And no kidding. And so that's why I'm bringing it up. I kind of want to spread the word. And I also want to be really respectful because I don't feel comfortable just saying, okay, everybody feel your emotions and feelings in your body because it's not so uncommon that that's actually really hard to do. And freeze can be some of the reason why.

[24:59]

And with freeze, you just need to go really slowly and really gently and really little bit at a time and find ways to find places of safety in the body so that if Because when you come out of that freeze, that intense energy that sent you into it may still be hanging around. And that's why it can be a little scary to come out of it. And it has these nice analgesic qualities that feel good. I wanted to say one more little thing, and then we can take a few questions. I wanted to come back to the curve. And... The activation, if it goes out of the normal range, now I'm not talking necessarily about fight or flight, but if it gets into a kind of highly activated range, which emotionally we would talk about in terms of agitation or anxiety or irritation or anger, or it could be positive activation, excitement, it could be manic.

[26:13]

then many times just bringing our mindfulness, our awareness to the sensations of activation, the sensations of activation, which are usually like a fast heartbeat, a strong heartbeat, sometimes heat, sometimes various constrictions or feelings of energy, many, many times that will... evoke the parasympathetic and will bring the activation down. And I just say that because I think our practice, I think this actually happens a lot in our practice and in zazen, that bringing our mindfulness together with our experience really changes our experience and our physiology. And it's... it's such a great tool that we have and that we're practicing with.

[27:13]

So maybe I'll call it a day and see if you guys have anything you want to say or ask. Yeah. Thank you. So when do you think we begin to stop studying the self, and forget the self? Well, that's such a great question. You know, I've been playing with this idea of differentiation. We have the oneness of the universe, and as we go into studying the self, we're kind of looking at... separate parts, well, you know, here's a heart that's beating fast, or here's a this, or here's a that. But if I use the metaphor of a body, when a dancer gets trained to dance, they'll take a while and learn all the individual parts, and they'll learn the individual movements, and they'll really differentiate, you know, this can do this, and I can do that.

[28:35]

But the result of that is that the whole, it has been different relationships with the rest of the body, more complex, more finely tuned, more connected. It has more relationship with itself. So somehow I think that studying the self is the same thing or comes around to being connected with the whole, which I would call forgetting the self. And I don't know if I know what I'm talking about, but that comes to me. Yeah. Hi, it's great to be here. Last year I went through a time camp for my father who was suicidal, very crazy, of a lot of trauma, and so I've been practicing there for five years in Australia.

[29:39]

But I hadn't known much about trauma, and I was so traumatized by an experience that I read people with lines and Rothschild's books, and I had an experience with my son, girl, where it came up, me in a group talking about what happened, and I just started shaking. But knowing, normally, and I've had it before in Sydney when I started shaking it, it suppressed it because it was a full right. And knowing, having this knowledge, I just shook for 40 minutes. And I didn't care what anyone thought, probably no one was thinking, no, no, no. But I was just like, and I just, and it moved. It moved. Something happened. It did happen to talking about it, pull it up. talking about it. And then I was able to talk to my father again, who is still alive, but without such charge behind talking to him again. And then that took process. So I feel like this sort of sharing with my discussion is, well, it's a bit, oh, yeah, it's just really important, I think, for me anyway.

[30:52]

Yeah. Thanks for sharing that. Maybe, what, one more? Are we okay, 20 months? Mm-hmm. Yeah. The Buddhists would follow the whole path, not really offend being very conscious of what she said now, and then you have all this anger on the inside. How did you deal with that and not be effective to bring... You know, not send out bad actions, the bad actions. Yeah. Sure. I actually feel that our experiencing or expressing it in a safe way and in a way that isn't going to hurt anybody is, I don't think that sends it out in the way that you mean it.

[31:55]

I think it's more dangerous to push it away out of fear of sending it out because I think if we push it away, it's going to come out when we're not looking. Does that make sense to you? Yeah. So I'm kind of new to this community and new to Zenn. So I've been reading up on some of Suzuki's books. Well, the one, not only so. And he talks about excelling into emptiness, and the simple all of this. So I actually think that your talk is so pertinent and so real, and I find it very helpful. But when I read Suzuki's books, it's almost like, So did he miss, did he just not get it?

[33:26]

modern developments. So, the question was more, you know, he came from Japan where these Western developments in psychology would have, are not as pervasive or as, like, accessible, I would think. So, my question is, did he just not, coming from that mindset, did he just not, understand that this is what the Western modern urban environment is calling for? You know, I just, my gut just says there's no contradiction. I don't think there's a contradiction between what you're reading in that book. Now, can I explain this? Give me one moment here. I think First of all, I don't know.

[34:30]

I don't ultimately know. But people are so different and they're in so many different places and one person's path may look very different from another person's path. And someday I might be, if I was really fortunate, able to just breathe out into emptiness. Or maybe what I described could be called breathing out into emptiness. I don't know. But I just have a confident sense that if Suzuki Roshi heard me, he would know I was practicing in a way that was harmonious with the Buddha way. I think so. I could be wrong, but I think so. Okay? For now. Now I think it's time to go. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center.

[35:40]

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 click giving. May we all fully enjoy the Dharma.

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