This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. I wanted to, before I begin talking about the subject of spiritual bypassing, I wanted to bring up two things. One is our... our mudra during zazen. So during the practice period, we've talked about ga sho and shashu, and I wanted to bring up the cosmic mudra that we use in zazen. And I will add, if that works for your body, I know some people have injuries where they have to have their arms open, so I'm I'm including that.

[01:00]

So the cosmic mudra, you know, when we hear the Fukansa Zengi, it says, put your right hand on your right leg. That is assuming that you're in full lotus, where your heel is up high and you can actually touch your hand against your foot or your leg. But if you're or half lotus as well, but if you're not sitting in full or half lotus, to try and rest your hands on your legs is actually too far down for the shape of the mudra, your whole body has mudra, and the arms and hands. So the arms form a circle, the elbows are loose, and away from the sides. And you've all heard this probably about the raw egg underneath your arms.

[02:06]

So if your arms are too far out, you'll drop the raw egg. If they're crunched down tight, you'll crush the raw egg. So there's a kind of roundness in your armpits, roundness here, roundness in your hands. The Buddha has his right hand on top of his left hand in our figure on the altar. Manjushri has his right leg on top of his left leg. So often figures will have it differently than what Phukhansa Zengi says. And usually it would be right hand first. with the left on top, and we talked a little bit about balancing energies. The fingers of the left hand, now there's two possible instructions.

[03:11]

One is they go right up to where the palm begins. Another is to match the first knuckle of your middle finger, which means for me, my fingers go into the palm a little more. So I usually have the fingers right up to where the palm begins. And the baby fingers are two inches below your navel, grazing your belly and resting on your belly rather than your leg, which might be much further down, or if you're in Sesa, there isn't even a lap there. So the belly... but the touching of the fingers two inches below the belly is a warm spot, like a home spot for your hands to rest. And the wide shape of the cosmic mudra, this elliptical shape, when you look down at it, your thumb, because it can go...

[04:22]

It can swivel, you know, forward or backward. When you look down, your thumb should block your view from your middle finger. So that's, you can see if it's going too far one way or the other. So those are rules of thumb. No pun intended. Rules of hands. And... You know, this may be different for your body, if that's the case. So I just, this placement of the hands, which might be higher up than you're used to, goes along with your upper back pain, if you have any. There's a tendency when the arms are straighter and lower to pull on the upper mid-back. And... I know some people have knife-like pains in the middle of their back.

[05:26]

And I know people who have been relieved of those by lifting the mudra. First of all, you have to get used to it. But bringing the mudra up and relaxing the shoulders. So please experiment with this. Sometimes it's helpful if it feels like you're holding the mudra up with your arms or wrists. to maybe fold a little support cushion in your lap and rest it at the right spot to get the feel of it. So you can, you're not holding it, it's really resting. And the shoulders are relaxed and the elbows are loose, really. And the sternum is lifted up, not out like this, but up. and the energy goes up and around. And many of you have heard me say this, and I repeat myself, this roundness of the arms, which people think, oh, I'm holding, I'm holding.

[06:35]

This is the relaxed, this is floating, this is astronauts floating in zero gravity. They float like this, this rounded shape, and also dead mans float in the water. You can try it in the plunge. If you leave your arms, they don't go out like this. This takes a kind of effort. This is the kind of relaxed shape. And when you breathe, you might also, on the exhale, you might imagine breathing down and right through the mudra and up through your body. kind of elliptical shape of your breath. So we have circles and circles and circles. So the word mudra means both expressing something and evoking something.

[07:39]

When you see a mudra, it evokes something as well as expressing. So this What does that evoke for you to see that cosmic shape, that round shape, relaxed roundness? The other thing I wanted to mention was knees. The knee is very complicated. If you look in anatomy, a book, how the knee is put together is just amazing. I just learned that the patella, which is that kind of what we often think of as my kneecap, right, protects the knee joint. And we're not born with a patella. It develops in our first years of life. And it's a bone that's inside of a tendon.

[08:40]

So it's like encapsulated in a tendon. And I think when toddlers are learning to walk and they fall down on their knees, it stimulates their growth and maybe stimulates, actually I couldn't find this, whether it stimulates the growth of the patella itself to fall down, being, you know, that kind of strong impact. However, for us as adults, please be careful. It's really unusual during Sashin we don't have Zabutans to bow on, or many of us don't. And I hear that crash of our patellas. Yeah, the group of patellas going crash. So please use your hands. I think to come crashing down on your knees is probably not so helpful. Anyway, when you get into your cross-legged posture, if you're sitting cross-legged, Please be sure.

[09:42]

And the knee, I used to think it was just a joint, a simple joint, but it's both a joint and a gliding mechanism. So part of it is a joint that just hinges, and then there's this gliding part with the patella gliding back and forth. So it's very complicated, and when we hurt our knees, as many of you know, they are hard to heal, and it's delicate in there. So when you take your cross-legged position, I'd like to recommend, if you think of this as my knee, let's see, can I do this, that instead of pulling and torquing kind of from the bottom up, you first... No, I think I'll do it with my leg. First, pull your knee like this towards you and keep this joint gliding event like this and then turn from your hip joint, the ball and socket which is meant to rotate.

[10:56]

Keeping this in its nice shape, turn from the hip rather than kind of pulling up from there. And also use your shin bone rather than your foot, which is a nice strong bone. And your foot, if you pull on the foot, it sickles the foot and pulls on this ligament that's directly connected into the knee. So you want to use your shin. You can also, just the last thing, many of you know this, there's this cavern, kind of a cave back behind your knee. You can put your thumbs in there and spread out the calf to make a little more room to pull when you place. And having worked with somebody here in the practice period, it made a huge difference with how far they could get their leg up on their thigh for their cross-legged position and also pain.

[12:01]

So I try to do it every time, pull up, turn from the hip. If you're sitting full lotus, that second leg can't really do that, so you have to kind of do a bend down. So that's protective, and please let me know if you're trying that for the first time and if it makes a difference. Okay. So I wanted to bring up spiritual bypass because this is a term coined by a practitioner and psychologist John Wellwood. He coined it in the 80s and to... to kind of describe something that he was seeing in his own spiritual community that he experienced himself and saw in other spiritual communities and with practitioners who came to see him in therapy.

[13:14]

And I wanted to connect our little mini study or look at what spiritual bypassing is and kind of studying a little bit internally, whether this speaks to us or not. and also connect this with skill and means, with our bodhisattva vow, with living in the world with gift-bestowing hands, compassion, because I feel like it's really one conversation, and this is coming from a little more psychological, but in a practice sense, not a psychological study devoid of... of our basic practice, the rest of our practice life. And there's a few stories that I want to tell that I feel illustrates this traditional stories that I'll try to tell with delicacy.

[14:19]

So the definition is basically of spiritual bypassing is using spiritual practices, spiritual ideas to avoid the difficult and painful parts of our life, which are, for the most part, relational difficulties, emotional, psychological issues, and mostly with relations with other people. I think that's, as we know, where often the greatest pain, confusion, upset, where we get triggered is with human beings. We're fine in nature and fine with animals, you know. So these relational issues are often very old, unresolved issues from our earliest life.

[15:25]

that we have managed to survive and and have found ways of surviving that have been creative and intelligent and you know should be lauded that we were able to find ways to survive some of our backgrounds that we have had not everybody of course the what happens when we find ways to deal with difficulties is that those conditions change and we're now adults, we're not living with those people anymore, we're out and about, and yet these very same attitudes and actions and ways of thinking remain and color all sorts of other situations and also our relationship with our self.

[16:34]

So what happens in our spiritual practice is coming, often we come to, as we've heard in all of the Way Seeking Mind talks, and if each one told a Way Seeking Mind talk, we would probably say the same thing. Our life was not working. We were not, it wasn't okay. Things were not okay. We were not getting along so well. There was a lot of difficulty, suffering of various kinds. We were introduced to the Dharma blessedly and felt like, oh, maybe I can work in a better way and help myself and live in a way that I want to. So we enter practice, and sometimes what happens is the practice then becomes a way to continue to avoid, let's say, continue to avoid those very painful things that brought us to practice.

[17:45]

The practice then can aid us in sidestepping, not having to look at these difficulties and issues. And of course in our practice we have these wonderful bodhisattva vows and emptiness and compassion and living for the benefit of others and no self and all these beautiful teachings And those can sometimes dovetail completely with our own internalized way of thinking about ourself. Like no self, for example. Well, I'm not a worthy person. I'm kind of a horrible person. And oh, no self, that's great. That's kind of a, I think of myself anyway, kind of low self-esteem.

[18:48]

There's no self anyway, so great. This is the practice for me because it's, what I think anyway. That kind of misunderstanding and connecting with the practice in a way that further supports our own karmic tendencies, habits of mind, defenses. I just want to say that Having read about this spiritual bypass from various places, a lot of what this talk is stemming from is this tricycle interview with John Wellwood from 2011, where he was asked a number of questions about it, which is worth your time. Maybe we'll print it up and have it put it out.

[19:49]

So... the kind of confused, difficult relationships we have with people, our messy life, we feel like, oh, we can transcend that. We can rise above that in this beautiful practice and work on emptiness, work on no self, work on detachment and these spiritual endeavors and meditation and kind of rise above and not have to deal with The fact that I'm not getting along or want to spend or see all these different people or my family or just laundry list of things that we don't have to deal with anymore because we're going to rise above that now with our beautiful practice. Now, the problem with this is that we don't actually rise above. It's more that those difficulties remain with us.

[20:54]

are part of our life, animate us, and come out in ways unconsciously that we don't expect. Blowing up at someone, or being mean to someone. It's like, where did that come from? I'm supposed to be practicing. Acting in ways that you really are embarrassed about, actually, that I'm, you know, after all this expensive Zen training and still I do such a thing that in the outside world, maybe I would have been really gotten in trouble when I can, you know, this is a very compassionate group here if you're in residence where people, you know, give us a lot of leeway, but these areas of immaturity areas that were not developed, they don't go away.

[21:56]

They don't get sort of transmuted by just sitting. We have to actively engage with these issues in our life and recognize and examine and work with. So the tendency with the spiritual bypassing is that there's a privileging of all the wonderful things, the ultimate, the absolute, no-self, emptiness, all these things get kind of privileged. And what gets downplayed and maybe even disparaged or not taken heed about are the human. side of our life, our needs, our attachments, our form. It's like emptiness, but form.

[22:58]

But it's forgetting the teaching of form is emptiness. Emptiness is form. And we begin privileging one or the other. And this transcending, trying to transcend all of our stuff, all of our unworked out immaturities, let's say, and I add myself to this, I'm not talking about you, I'm talking about me as well, reminded me of in Gencho Koan where it says, Koan where it says, if a bird or a fish tries to reach the end of its element without moving in it, that bird or that fish will not find her place right where she is. It's way or it's place. When you find your place right where you are, practice occurs, actualizing the fundamental point. Fundamental point is not one, not two, that we are perfect just the way we are Buddhas, and we can use a little improvement, right?

[24:13]

Suzuki Roshi. All things are Buddhadharma, therefore all things, all things, including our immaturity, is marked by the seals of impermanent, not-self, nirvana, and interconnectedness. So rather than privileging one and these other ones we don't pay attention to, Each thing is Buddha Dharma come and worthy of our attention and empty and needs to be taken care of. Emptiness does not mean, oh, we don't have to worry about it. Form is empty. Emptiness is form. Form is form. So if that bird or that, if you try to get to the end and transcend all the messiness of our life,

[25:13]

we actually can never find our way or our place. And it sets up a kind of split within ourselves. And this is a subject that comes to me in Doksan, where people have a very strong split between their basic human needs for life love and relationship of all kinds, friendship as well as coupledom, and then what they have glommed onto as the practice that I shouldn't have these needs. It's all empty. I should be detached. Somehow this real split in one's own body-mind, one's own psyche, that's very painful and also comes out in our relationships with others and in the Sangha. Our own needs get poo-pooed and maybe even denigrated.

[26:21]

We think it means we're weak and we shouldn't have needs. And that, but we do. And those needs come out in kind of unexpected ways, unconscious ways. And if you're in a Dharma center long enough and take on positions of leadership or teaching. This can be devastating, as we know, where unexamined, unconscious needs, coupled with brilliance in dharma teaching, can become manipulative, using students for one's own gratification in all ways. And we know of these stories, and... It is devastating. It's one of the most painful situations to encounter is when someone we've looked to as a spiritual teacher, because of their own humanness, unexamined, unworked out, not worked out, I don't know if we ever get it worked out, but not working with

[27:40]

psychological issues, and that gets played out big time in the Sangha and with students. But even if you're not in a position of leadership or responsibility, or all of us are in a position of responsibility in our own Dharma position, this affects everybody we see and talk with and come in contact with. So these wounds that we come to practice with and want to heal and have a chance to heal can be also successfully sidestepped and bypassed and put over on way back in the back burner in a compartmentalized way. And I think I...

[28:41]

I've written about this actually in that anthology, Being Bodies, where I have my talk in there, where I very successfully compartmentalized different parts of my practice life and didn't take care of something that needed to be taken care of and was the shining practice bodhisattva just doing the schedule and very, very happy. But this whole other part was not incorporated, was not metabolized and incorporated. So one of the basic things that John Wellwood calls one of these wounds is our feelings that many of us have that we are intrinsically not okay, not lovable, not valued, not able to love.

[29:53]

We can't love ourselves and therefore we can't love others. And this, and I won't get into the kind of attachment theory. But anyway, there's ways in which we were not attuned in our earliest, and this very, very early, these tests with babies, you know, very little, six months, eight months, ten months, little babies who are very attuned to their caregivers. And what happens when the caregivers are not attuned to them? or are unhappy, depressed, confused themselves. And what happens to that, that new life form who's just all ready to connect and the effect

[31:03]

For this kind of condition, the effect on the nervous system of babies is huge. But in the wisdom of, well, if that person's not going to be there for me, then I'll figure out something else. And it doesn't matter. We can do that kind of thing. Human beings can find a way to get through these kinds of... However, what happens is often if we're not valued and we are not attuned, and this attuning is incredibly important, the eye contact and one's needs, not overdoing it, leaving space for someone to find their way, but not neglecting. And, you know, this is skill and means, basically. When that's not happening, then we tend to not value ourself either.

[32:07]

This gets kind of internalized. They don't value me, or they can't attune, so then I'm not a value. So we carry that. This is extremely painful, and John Welwood calls this the wound of the heart that many of us carry. you know, for a lifetime. So along with that, not feeling loved or lovable, not valuing ourself, along with it can be self-loathing, self-hatred, a kind of out of body, not really in our body, not grounded, insecure, anxiety. These are all things that come along with that. It's not just, well, that's how it was and I'm fine and dandy.

[33:09]

This has an effect on us. And this is a suffering that many, many people share. So this Disconnection from ourselves also means we don't feel connected with our community, with our family, with the kind of institutions that older generation, religious, if we're into religious life or our practice center, just not feeling particularly connected. with any of it. A kind of alienation that hangs about and the pain that goes along with that.

[34:12]

So we turn to Dharma for help for community, for a practice that makes sense. Many people have said in their Uesiki Mind Talks, I sat down on the cushion, I felt like I was home, and I feel like that home is not home-home, maybe you're home-home, you could never relax, but somehow some deep embodiment and grounding like, oh, some human aliveness. And I think there's a great confidence that our practice will help us. And I think it makes an enormous difference. And I think we can also not exactly work the system. It's almost like our defenses are so smart that it can do things

[35:29]

without us knowing, like right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing, that we're not even aware of using the teaching in some way to not face what's hard to face, not facing all those things I just mentioned, which is painful, painful to read the list. So we can come into a Dharma community and and be a good Dharma practitioner, you know, and that's a different identity. And we can receive the benefit of people trusting us, giving us responsibility, asking us to do things. Hey, you know, even though I feel so lousy about myself, this is pretty good, you know. So we can, in that situation, we can, you know, have a modicum of, you know, this feels good and I can find my way. However, we may still harbor these feelings of not being good enough, not being okay, looking at others and feeling like they've got something I don't have, or not feeling part, all those things.

[36:48]

So even though we can be accepted and feel like we have a new chance and a new life, there's still work to be done. There's still lots of work to be done. So for me, just to say about my situation, some of you know, I spoke about this this summer at Tessar a little bit, having had a very traumatic experience. as a young woman and which broke kind of my connection with my family or changed everything so radically that I couldn't really find my place anymore in my home family and with my closest people and lots and lots of difficulties and then being exposed after some very difficult times being exposed to Zazen practice and a chance to practice and coming to Zen Center, it seemed like, fine, I can leave all this behind, all those people who didn't treat me right and this, that, and the other, and I'm gonna sort of leap into a whole new thing and be okay.

[38:08]

And, you know, I had a bedroom sale, before I left St. Paul and gave all my possessions away to anybody, all my friends and my sisters. They could come and pick whatever they wanted. And my mother was horrified. But it was like, nothing can touch me. I'm totally detached. And fine, take everything. Take that watch. That was a gift from my mother. Gee, that was a nice watch. Later. Years later, I thought, gee, that was really a nice watch I gave away. And all these clothes and books and everything. And I came to Zen Center to start a new life and didn't think about any of those things. But meanwhile, those things were there, you know. And... As I said, I had this compartmentalized life and didn't think about those things.

[39:18]

I think zazen for me might have been a way to suppress thinking about or dealing with or facing many things, but the wisdom of the body didn't allow that to go on too long. I began to move involuntarily. So even though I was a shining practice bodhisattva type, following the schedule and doing whatever anybody hiked asked me, and was given lots of responsibility, I couldn't sit still. Hmm, what's the matter with that one over there? And it was wildly not still, not just a little bit, but like holding onto my magic carpet. and flying around the Zabuton. I had long hair at the time. Do you know that song, Whip Your Hair?

[40:19]

How does that song go? I whip my hair back and forth. I whip my hair back. That's what I would do. My bun would come undone and the clip would go flying and I'd just whip my hair back and forth. And then the bell would ring ding. So it was very strange. Talk about being split. And that lasted for 10 years, that moving involuntarily. Not quite as wild at the end. So what was I, gee, what am I, what was I not looking at? Some issue? There must be some issue. But I didn't even think about it. It was like, oh, I guess I'm moving in Zazen. I can't sit still. But I didn't think about it. Except, why can't I sit still?

[41:23]

It was like the compartmentalization began to break up. I couldn't hold it. I couldn't hold it. And that's a good thing. I think other people who are more successful can suppress and keep at bay their emotions. and just do concentration. I wanted to say a little bit more about meditation. Yeah, using meditation to avoid these uncomfortable feelings, which we can be successful at, although I wouldn't call that zazen. I'd call it some kind of concentration practice. And these unresolved life situations, relationships, I just won't think about it. And if we're in denial, which I was completely, about these personal wounds and feelings, what can happen is we can reinforce a kind of coldness.

[42:40]

defensiveness, a kind of distancing, disengagement from others. Because these painful parts of our life and engaging with them and understanding with them, facing, working with, is what allows us to have free-flowing life, really. If we're keeping it in a box, compartmentalized, and I'm not going to bring up that mess, The energy that it takes to keep a lid on is huge. And that means we're a little bit wooden, a little bit disengaged, a little bit cold. And our practice can become kind of grim and solemn and judgmental because of other people and... all their messy needs that they keep talking about. We have lots of judgments about other people and their needs.

[43:43]

This is not, for me, the image of a spiritual life. Spiritual life, for me, is the image of the Dalai Lama laughing and crying in the same minute, you know, somebody, you probably know this story, told him this sad story of something that had happened in Tibetan. He's sobbing. And then the next moment someone tells him something else and then he's rollicking, laughing, just ease of emotion and empathy and compassion and kindness and connection. That's what I, that's my understanding of the spiritual life, developing our characters so that we are connected, attuned to one another.

[44:45]

And if we're denying our own feelings and denying our own needs and our own wounds and our own relational difficulties, psychological issues, we can become this kind of cold, we can follow the schedule perfectly, maybe. but it's with a kind of grim, determined solemnity that privileges that over, you know, taking care of another person, maybe. And I think during this time, for me, it was very hard to express an opinion, to express a like or dislike or anything, to be open with my feelings, transparent about, it's like, no, it all had to be kept lit on. And still that's probably more, I have a tendency more that way.

[45:50]

And it's very scary and threatening, can be threatening, painful, to look at the depth of our pain, actually. So we have to do it with care and slowly, slowly. So one of our important terms is non-attachment. But we can use non-attachment like, oh, well, I'm non-attached. It's not coldness. It's non-attachment. But I would say it, and John Welwood brings up, true non-attachment is is not stuck in non-attachment or clinging to non-attachment as the way. Non-attachment knows that both attachment and non-attachment are empty and impermanent, and either one, you use one for skillful means when it's appropriate, and the other, you don't get them mixed up.

[47:01]

You can tell the thief from your son. You know what's what. When you mix them, you know where they are. So to be stuck on non-attachment as the way and shunning any kind of attachment or connection with human beings is very lopsided. And it's not real non-attachment anyway. It's avoiding our life, avoiding attachments. Using a spiritual term, non-attachment, beautiful term, non-attachment, to not deal with what's difficult. So to be non-attached, flowing from our understanding of the mind of no abode is beautiful, and that's how we are with what we're attached to as well, with mind of no abode. So I wanted to tell

[48:08]

I'll just bring up one more, a couple more, and then I want to tell two kind of koans, Zen stories. One is if we come to Zen Center with a tendency to depression and this hard time valuing ourselves, it may be strengthened, as I said before, with these teachings of no self and the quiet... We have to be very careful about that, that the practice and our tendencies do not become intermingled in such a way where we can't tell one from the other. Also, everybody comes here, and everybody does this all the time, which is projection, basically looking out onto the world and seeing things according to our karmic formations.

[49:18]

And often that has to do with issues that we're working on, so if we're not accepting our own needs, then we project, oh, they're too needy, and we can't stand them because they're so weak and needy. And if we turn the light back, we might see, I need to look at my own needs, that I'm not, I'm not accepting, I'm in denial about. That's why they're bothering me so much, you know, this person who's out front. There's also a way in which we project parental, our family of origin and our parental, what we grew up with, we can project that onto sangha members, teachers in particular, and not be so aware of it. The teachers, both positive and negative.

[50:24]

If it's positive, oh, they can do no wrong. Positive, the good mother, the good father. And then there can be sibling rivalry. Oh, she or he likes that student more than me, or how come they didn't adjust my posture, or they didn't ask me for tea, or whatever. And this can be a whole... underlying thing that goes on in the Sangha that I would call sibling rivalry around teachers. Another thing is negative feelings about parents where the person can do no right as long as they're sitting in that seat or in the authority position we can't stand it because of our own. So these things, just to be aware of it, I'm sure you are, but it really, it can't be, we can't legislate that away or something.

[51:29]

It's just human life. But to be aware of when we're doing it, I think, is important. So the two stories I wanted to tell, one I think is... a traditional story and it's often told probably to illustrate different points but it seemed a perfect spiritual bypass story and the other is a kind of a similar story that illustrates you know a kind of mature student who's not spiritually bypassing so the first story is about and maybe many of you heard it I'm going to use the term monk and you can It's not male or female, it's just monk, it's just a practitioner. You can think of it however you want to. So there was once a monk and an old woman supported this monk for a long time.

[52:33]

She built the monk a hut and fed this person and supported this person with all their needs, really, clothing and food, for 20 years while this monk practiced. Well, one day the woman, after 20 years, thought, I'm going to test this practitioner. And she thought of a way to test this practitioner. This was her way of testing. She asked... a young girl from the village to go and go into the hut, knock on the door, go into the hut and sit on the practitioner's lap and say, what are you feeling now after spending some time there? So the girl went into the hut and sat on the practitioner's lap and said that.

[53:38]

And among the practitioner's after being asked, how do you feel, said, cold tree stump on a rock. Something like that. So the village girl came out and told the old woman, the old woman was furious. 20 years I've been supporting this monk, this practitioner. You imposter. How dare you? And she... got her, she kicked the monk out of there and hit him and sent the monk, practiced her on his way, on the monk's way and burned down the hut. So that's one story. And that to me is a story of spiritual bypassing. Now we can talk about this because you might say, but wait, wait, or something.

[54:41]

I'm going to tell another story, which is a wonderful story. I don't know where I found it. I was looking, trying to find, but it's a beautiful story. So here's a monk, again. It doesn't have to be male or female. It's a practitioner monk who is practicing takuhatsu begging practice. Takuhatsu, you wear a hat so you don't see... who's giving you what and you wear a special takohatsu outfit and you chant and you hold out your begging bowl and receive donations, traditional practice, which harkens back to the Buddhist time when they got their meals by begging and in other places too, Thailand and so, anyway, going begging. monk was on pilgrimage, was in a different town than he was used to being in.

[55:42]

Excuse me. This practitioner was on pilgrimage in a town that this practitioner was not used to being in, practicing. And a woman, a young woman, put donation in the bowl and recognized this practitioner, this monk. This monk came from, they had the same hometown, a village. And she was very glad to see this old friend. And it turned out she, because of her family situation, had become, to help her family, had become a prostitute in this town. They spent some time together chatting, and she said, come, come back to where I'm living, and let's spend some time together.

[56:54]

And you were always very kind to me, and we could really be together if you want. Offering herself and her charms to be with this practitioner. So the practitioner went back to her place and said, because of my vows, I'm not able to be with you in this way. But let's stay together tonight and have tea and talk about old times and our families. And so they did. They had tea and a meal and hung out. And in the morning, the practitioner went on the practitioner's way. So in the first story, we don't know what the response was.

[58:08]

of the practitioner could have been to this particular contact with this other person. And why I say that this is a story of spiritual bypassing is because this distancing, cold, leave me alone, get out of here, I'm doing my important practice don't bother me thing is what gets conveyed, right? And what the old woman gets so wildly upset about. Is this the kind of practice that this practitioner is doing? Is that what your spiritual practice is leading to? This is, this is, I can't believe it.

[59:10]

Get out. Go find something. I'm not supporting you one more second. That's not bodhisattva way. That's not why I supported you. I remember reading that story and thinking, well, what might this monk practitioner have done or said? I don't know. There's other places where you hear about flowers growing on a rock, and that's the right thing to say. So how come this was so bad? But when this other story illuminated it for me, this warmth, caring, compassion, kindness, shared life, gone our separate ways, friends, our hometown,

[60:10]

And admitting, these are my vows, but hey, I care about you. And what can we do together? And that story to me was so, I remember when I first heard it, I had this feeling of warmth actually, like invade my heart chakra, you know, because that was the answer to that other koan that I've heard tell and discussed in various ways over the years. It was like, this is our practiced life, this warmth, flexible, soft, not distancing, not privileging one over the other, whatever her life had come to be this practitioner, appreciated, valued, respected.

[61:15]

So those are my two illustrations. And I bring this up, as I say, from my own experience and also hearing and talking with various people over the years. How are we going to take this up? And I know for many people, therapy, you know, this isn't a place where we can do therapy, but therapy along with our sitting practice, along with our, all our practices, Zazen, in all its manifestations, and... other kinds of work where we can face and have a guide to help us to face what is excruciating to face. And maybe we think, oh, I already faced that, and now I'm here. Well, maybe so, maybe so.

[62:20]

May it be so. And if not, and if these, how are our relations, how are our Sangha relations going along? That's one way to look, one place to look. How are Sangha relations? And how are we meeting the ups and downs of our daily vicissitudes of our life and the conditions that happen that trigger us and how are we meeting this? And so I I just offer this as something to bear in mind and to value as I do, having been in therapy for 30-some years, which actually helped with my stopping moving.

[63:23]

It's like the more I worked on these psychological issues that I thought I'd already taken care of, I knew what they were. the smaller the rocking became until it was just... Is that what it's like to sit still? So I know I've talked for a long time, but I thought there might be some questions today for this particular thing, or maybe not. Maybe you want to just sit and turn this over. Yes, Levi? I would probably contort in all these weird ways and make them extremely uncomfortable.

[64:35]

I don't know. There's a way in which that doesn't feel right. This kind of feeling it or letting it express itself doesn't feel right. And so I'll drop it. I'll just bypass it in a way. Use different practices to see through it or use different things. And I do this with lots of different stuff. And I also resonate deeply with all the symptoms you mentioned of this bypassing. So I'm wondering how to know the difference, really. Is it skillful to have some control and be able to interact in a way that is energetically unskillful at the same time? Yeah. So there's a difference between acting out, you know.

[65:36]

There's, you know, we talk about repress and suppress, which I don't recommend for anyone. And then we use the word express. And then there's acting out, which is different from express. So acting out is, I think... I'm just going to go with it, and I don't care. And the devil take the hindmost. It's like, go for it, or whatever. Just let it go. Let it rip. And I'll pick up the pieces later, or something like that. And I think that doesn't work. It creates neuronal pathways where that will happen again, where there'll be less. If we act out, and this is a whole... But anyway, if we act out on anger or different things, the neuronal pathways get deepened so that the next time those causes and conditions arise, there's more of a trigger effect where you fall into it and not much space there.

[66:44]

I don't know what, when you said all sorts of things, I don't know, breathing, counting to 10. There's practices that you can do that are not necessarily bypassing, but not necessarily acting out. And expressing, when I use the word express, people use it, I think, more like acting out. Like I was just expressing myself when they actually just had a temper tantrum in the kitchen and chased somebody or something. Just expressing myself, isn't that what we're supposed to do? And actually... Expressing yourself is your fullness of your practice. Can you express the fullness right now of your practice? That includes the tension you're feeling and your care for the other person in your relationship and your ability to breathe and witness what's happening. Those are all being mindful of the emotion arising.

[67:45]

tension is arising in me, you know, these kinds of things. That to me is expressing, and can you speak from there? I don't feel like that's bypassing. However, there may be more work to be done in a different way, like not with that person in front of you. Like what is happening? What is it about, maybe it's a particular person, and how do you kind of work on that in a way that's fruitful and not overly psychological, you know, especially during practice period, but to notice what are the conditions, you know, things can be going along, going along, going along, and then all of a sudden it's like full bloom thing. Well, what happened when it was just these three things, what was going on? And then, so to be mindful, you know, and also acknowledge to yourself This person is very difficult for me to be around.

[68:48]

I'm anxious. I'm afraid of them maybe even. And maybe you work on that somewhat rather than I should be yada yada. There's a lot of shoulds in spiritual bypassing. We take the Dharma things and I should be this and I should be that. And there's a lot of commandments kind of around how we should be acting. That would be something maybe to explore or write about even. What's going on? What's your intuition? So those are some things. bring out what I was feeling and interaction with them.

[69:55]

All you need is sit and all this is Tori, she's got nothing to do with me. And I just felt very thankful. I hope we can talk more about this. Thank you, Joanne. And I'm sorry for those interactions. I've had them too. Once, and I learned this, this was in practice discussion years ago, I came as we do in practice discussion or doksan, very open, very ready to share, and the person had some issue with me about something totally different that was not for the doksan, it wasn't doksan, PD, not for the practice discussion room, and they just threw this thing at me, and I was in this kind of open state going for help, probably about my involuntary movement or something, and it was, very wounding, you know. So this can happen, this can happen.

[70:55]

It's between teachers and students, between students and students, and how we can heal those things, talk about them, bring it up. And I think people are on different, some people are very psychologically astute and have done a lot of work in this area, and some people I would say are on the other end of that spectrum really have not much interest or sense of the psychological side of things, that that might be something worthy of attention. So there's quite a range. Yeah. Yeah. Was there someone here? Dagmar? Yeah.

[72:01]

Well, I think it's, I think it's something for us to work on for ourselves, to look at our own. And I think, I mean, if somebody is doing damage and manipulating others or something like that, I think bring it to the attention of their teacher or practice leader to work on that. Unless you want to have some kind of connection yourself and try to bring it up. It's very hard it takes a kind of trust between people to be able to hear some things sometimes. So we have to be skillful if maybe we're not the person to bring it up, but we can ask someone to help us with it.

[73:04]

But I think mainly to look at our own tendencies is where most of our work lies. What happened there? What happened? OK, we're here. First of all, thank you very much for giving this talk. I just wanted to say, personally, being in analysis, it's providing me with this different perspective. And I remember saying, because I think resentment is a very, very big part that was coming up for me. And I remember her telling me, you know, let's work that in this container, in this particular environment.

[74:14]

And I thought that was just just so wonderful to hear because I didn't have to take that back so much into community life and be this toxic, leaking being to people who didn't even deserve it just because I couldn't be in control or be this person that everybody thought was just always easygoing and just don't worry about it. So I feel like this other container outside of, let's just say, Zen Center as a whole, providing you with this space to work with, talk about, share my feelings that I can't do with a practice leader, even sometimes you, or that I just need another voice, another presence. And so I just feel like that's psychologically

[75:18]

the healthy part that I can help to integrate with my spiritual practice here. And so that has been such a big opening for me. And I think I shared it with everyone here in the beginning of my Way of Seeking Mai talk is that grief, personal grief brought me to analysis. It really opened me up to my humanity, which I think, really, for a lot of years, I was really trying to hide within this spiritual container. And again, just to add, though, that this has also been so beneficial for me. And now to just be able to have this opportunity to integrate those two together even more so as I get older, it's just such a blessing. So I just wanted to thank you for bringing this up. It's very difficult. subject. Thank you.

[76:19]

Thank you so much for your clear testimonial for how the two can integrate into wholeness. Maggie and then Hendy. I find myself brings up a lot for me I feel overwhelmed because I hear these things that happen between people, between babies and children and babies and their parents and it just seems like everyone has these wounds and how do we not leak? I see so many examples in myself and in other people around me of people who who may be in a position of responsibility and I get word that I will be in a position of responsibility and have a week, you know, have a piece, a part that I have not looked at and have that negatively affect someone.

[77:38]

But I also don't know how to avoid that without just crawling into a hole the rest of my life. I can't do that either. But this prospect of Hurting people that way is terrifying. Well, everybody makes mistakes and everybody leaks and everybody has blind spots and immature areas or undeveloped areas. Everybody, everybody. And these things will happen. I think the importance of staying connected with others, peers, and friends, and also with teachers about our life, it's not a guarantee, but I think the

[78:47]

It's when people become isolated and kind of put on pedestals and treated as if they can do no wrong that the biggest, you know, things happen. But just the regular, just being part of the fray, the human fray, together, and we will help each other, you know? And we will be hurt, and we, so... We will hurt, and we will be hurt, and we have to work. That is, you know, that can't stop us. That will just teach us. Well, if we can learn from all that each time, learning more and more, that's how we will refine our lives and our characters. And, yeah. So there's no worry because everybody's... Everybody's, there's nobody exempt, somebody who's like outside somewhere looking down, you know.

[79:53]

And ask for help and give help. Yeah. And maybe that'll be the end because it's, I think it's almost time for lunch. Is that true? Not quite, but Hendy. Yes. So this question might be too long to answer, and I'm okay if it's not. We talk about psychology and practice as if they're separate things. Well, they resonate, but they're, I think you could, they resonate together, and, you know, there's overlaps, maybe two circles that have overlaps. That's all my question. I was a bit confused. In my mind, my understanding is that there's sort of just two different lenses of looking at things.

[81:01]

Two different lenses. And maybe that's because that's how I sort of came to practice before I knew Zen and this practice, the way I see try to address issues in my life is by learning about myself through formation of psychology. And eventually that leads me to practice. And so to me, two of them was sort of like, they're all one big thing. So that was okay. Yeah, yeah. Well, good. I'm glad that that integrated for you. You know, the study of the mind, the study of the psyche, and your practice life It's the practice of studying the self maybe is one thing for you. I think for some people it's like there's a kind of stigma around psychological, even the word, you know, psychological or therapy or issues that it's like we just sit, you know, just practice zazen.

[82:08]

And in fact, when I first came to Zen Center, that was kind of the regular, that was... Don't do, just sit. Don't do anything else. Don't do yoga. Don't exercise. Don't, nothing was happening. No psychology. Don't do astrology, which was very big. Don't smoke dope. Just sit. And I think over the years we realized the Western, not necessarily Western, but this culture, there are, there is... a place, not only a place, there is a need for understanding of psychological issues, like to help us to practice. We can't somehow think that's a side issue. And it sounds like for you, they became one thing, really. Okay, well, thank you all very... Did you have something, Shaka?

[83:11]

Excuse me for not mentioning you as a practice leader yesterday when I was mentioning... Quick, a quick... Based on Hendy's question, it kind of begs the question that I kind of want to hear your response to. So what's the difference? What's the difference? Practice. Yeah. Well, I think the form is different, you know. I think psychological study... with another person or therapy, let's say, working with dreams, working with active imagination, talking about childhood formations and so on and so forth, is very different from chanting and sitting zazen together and studying. So there are different forms. But what I bring to those studies of the dreams and issues, I want to bring my zazen mind, my openness and calm and not turning away, which is what I bring to zazen.

[84:30]

So they resonate, but they have different lineages, you might say. Okay, well, thank you all very much for your patience and attention. 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, Visit sfcc.org and click Giving.

[85:11]

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