Good evening, friends. Can you hear me okay? Great. Okay. It's always good to check. You never know on Zoom. So I want to welcome you again to our twice-a-week practice session. And as you may know, my name is Tenzin David Zimmerman, and I'm the inviting abbot of Beginner's Mind Temple City Center here in San Francisco. And it's always a joy to be able to join you for these sessions in the late afternoon here in San Francisco. It may be a totally different time where you are in the world. And it's wonderful to be able to connect in this way and be able to kind of support each other to be able to navigate these particularly challenging times. And, you know, I think the reality is it's it's always a challenging time. Whether or not there's a pandemic, regardless of what's going on, there's always something in our lives that challenges us in a way which causes us to dig more deeply into who are we and how do we want to live this one wild and precious life.

[07:11]

So for those of you who might be new to this session, we'll begin with a 25-minute period of Zazen. Usually what I do is I offer kind of a guided meditation to begin and then gradually fade into silence. So we'll sit together in silence with a lot of parts. And then after the meditation, I'll be offering a Dharmet or a brief Dharmet encouragement that will last anywhere from 10 to 15 minutes. And then after that, we'll open up the session to all of you and see if you have anything from your practice. that you'd like to bring forth, any questions or anything you'd like to share in some way. So that's how this evening will go. And the goal is to wrap up within the hour. So without further ado, let's go ahead and begin our meditation practice. So if you haven't done so already, I suggest you get into your posture for meditation.

[08:18]

And whether or not you're sitting on a Zafu or a cushion in a chair, in a wheelchair, whether or not you need to stand or lying down in any particular posture that you're taking, find one that helps you to remain alert, attentive, and yet relax at the same time. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to ring the bell, and I invite you to simply listen to the sound of the bell as it first is struck, and then its duration. And then once it fades away, noticing what is it that remains in that space. So I'll ring it three times to begin the period, and then one time to end the period. that same focused attention that you gave to the sound of the bell, bring that awareness to your experience of this present moment.

[10:14]

Allow yourself to become aware of, connect with, and relax into your present moment experience. Be becoming particularly aware of your body and where it's making contact with the cushion or the floor or the chair. Bring your awareness to the whole body. Your feet, your legs, up to your torso. your chest, your shoulders, your arms, to the face and to the head.

[11:21]

Just let awareness, automated presence, be the prevailing ground of your experience. What is it to be this embodied being? Make sure you're right now. It can also be very helpful at the beginning of my meditation to connect with the breath. Come aware of the flow of the inhale and the exhale. It's that gentle, ongoing within breathing. And allowing ourselves to relax, even a breath.

[12:33]

Give ourselves over to it. And it's our busy day and schedule. It's the one thing we don't have to work on, we don't have to do. the body breathes us. We just give ourselves over to the breath. We continue to allow awareness to gently accompany the rhythm of breathing in and breathing out. we do so, we might notice the ways in which the mind might, even in a little bit, become a little bit more subtle and quiet. And as our body becomes still, so does the mind in many instances.

[13:48]

And if it isn't becoming quiet, that's okay. That's what's happening now. Only opening to this present moment experience. With as much patience and acceptance and a welcome that we can offer. the mind begins to wander in any way. The moment you notice that is a moment of waking up. Ah, yes, the mind has wandered.

[14:57]

Whether or not you've set it to pay attention to the breath, or to your bodily experience of presence, or to simply open awareness. Noticing. when the mind has wandered in, gently, kindly, and firmly redirect my attention back to the way we wish it to be. Once again, following the breath, being ready, exhale. to being aware of body presence. You're opening into sky-like awareness.

[16:03]

Exploring what it's like to be able to open to and welcome all experience in a non-reactive, spacious way. Exploring, it helps to bring a measure of acceptance, love, stability. Biggest present moment experience. We're continuing in this way for the rest of our meditation, allowing ourselves to be open and relaxed, befriending our experience of the present moment as best we can.

[17:50]

perhaps holding the wish that we may abide with peace and ease in this moment, in every moment, extending compassion to ourselves and to others. we're appreciating the preciousness of this life and the many things that we have to be grateful for. Thank you, everyone, for sitting together in this way, encouraging and supporting each other in the practice of simply being fully present with our experience, whatever it might be, and finding a way to discover more deeply who or what is it that is experiencing the experience.

[34:53]

I'd like to begin my Darmette today by sharing with you a poem by R.L. Nost that I recently came upon on Facebook. And as I was unfamiliar with the poet, I looked them up and learned that R.L.R. Nost is an American author, an activist, and the founder of a children's advocacy rights group. And The name of this poem, actually, I'm not even sure it's a poem. I think it's maybe a quote or a verse. It doesn't have a title, and I couldn't find the actual source for it. But I thought I'd share it with you anyhow and then say a few things about it. This is it. Do not be dismayed by the brokenness of the world. All things break. and all things can be mended.

[36:01]

Not with time, as they say, but with intention. So go, love, love intentionally, extravagantly, unconditionally. The broken world waits in darkness for the lights that is you. I'll read that again. Do not be dismayed by the brokenness of the world. All things break. And all things can be mended. Not with time, as they say, but with intention. So go. Love. Love intentionally. Extravagantly. and unconditionally. The broken world waits in darkness for the light that is you.

[37:09]

So I imagine it's not too hard right now to resonate with the sentiment that the world is broken. We live in a broken world, or at least you could say a very fragmented world. if our work and our lives seem to be going along very well, we're not feeling this kind of sense of fragmentation, we might forget about the brokenness happening around the world, for a period of time at least, until something suddenly brings it to the forefront of our awareness, some disruption or tragedy that usually affects us personally. We have a way to kind of almost tune out and disregard the brokenness of the world around us, only really caring about how it is that we ourselves are experiencing it and not noticing necessarily how many others are in many cases totally distraught by the ways in which they feel broken or the world has broken men.

[38:24]

And obviously, the world's brokenness and fragmentation had been made all the more apparent by the pandemic, which we currently find ourselves. Yes, of course, there was much that we could say was broken long before the advent of COVID-19. Our environments, our governments, our economy, the institutions and systems that have perpetrated social injustices, and various forms of oppression throughout history. And it's easy to become overwhelmed and fall into despair and dismay when we really observe the ways in which the world just isn't working. And, sadly, in large part, due to human behavior. So the world is in definite need of love, of loving and compassionate mending right now. course, you could say from a Buddhist perspective that the primary cause of the worldly brokenness and the subsequent suffering or dukkha that we experience is due in large part to the three gross poisons of greed, hate, and delusion.

[39:49]

And the root of greed, hate, and delusion arise from a fundamental misperception of a misperception and a sense of lack, that we're somehow not already whole or complete in some way. So many of us carry within us, and it's been conditioned within us from a very young age in many cases, to have a sense of division, brokenness within, that there's something wrong with us. And then this brokenness, we then project out into the world and recreate it in many instances on a local, national, and global scale. And in doing so, you make it true. This misperception of something broken within us, something lacking, the ways that we could foster that into the world and act from that.

[41:00]

and make it true, has devastated us for such a long, long time. And we can also easily recognize the truth of the words, all things break. So the brokenness of our world is not due only to human greed, hate, and delusion. But you could say it's also because of the fact of impermanence. Everything breaks in the sense that nothing lasts. due to impermanence. All things change. All conditioned phenomena are impermanent. And when we depend on any conditioned phenomena, that dependence gives rise to suffering, to dissatisfaction, to disease, and to heartache. We expect things to remain a certain way, not to dissolve, not to break up, not to change. And of course, we're going to be disappointed in the end. And because impermanence is the way of life, we somehow have this tended to sink.

[42:02]

It's a problem. It's just simply the way things are. It's actually what allows all things to bloom. And yet, as the verse also reminds us, healing the brokenness comes not so much with time, as they say, but with intention. So while all things change, true wholeness is a matter of directing the mind to bringing together what is perceived as separate, to not see things as being separate from us, to see a deep and profound intimacy and connectedness. So we make an intention, we make a vow, a commitment to think and act in a way that actually reconnects, that repairs, that heals, not only us, but the world around us.

[43:05]

And this healing balm, you could say, is love. So the poet says, go, go, love intentionally, love extravagantly, love unconditionally. And I love that line. love intentionally, extravagantly, unconditionally. It's a wild call for courage and aspiration to heal the world, to find a way to transcend our brokenness. Or you could say, move through and embrace our brokenness. And in that embrace, discover the ways that we are already. Now, Perhaps like me, you've had various definitions and ideas about love over the years. What is this word love? What are we pointing to here? And one dictionary definition of love is love is deep, unconditional feelings of admiration, affection, attunement, and connection.

[44:12]

So that's one definition. And I have myself a different definition than I've been working with recently. And that is that love is the knowing of our shared being. The experience of love is simply the felt knowledge of our shared being. And the emphasis for me here is on being as a verb. The experience of shared being is direct experience of non-separation from others. When we love, we feel and recognize in the vibrational quality of our being, that we are one with others, one being. Another Dharma name for the experience of love or shared being is what Thich Nhat Hanh calls interbeing, the direct experience of our interconnectedness without any mediation.

[45:17]

So love could be said to be the dissolution of any boundaries or borders which seem to separate us from one from another. In other words, it is the dissolution of the dualizing mind, the mind that perceives dualism in the world. The world's brokenness is ultimately a product of the dualistic mind, the mind that perceives a self and an other. We hear you over there. And that these are somehow, you know, discrete existences that aren't connected at a deeper level. I think the longing of love in any form is ultimately the long... Jack Kornfield says that the longing for love and the movement of love is underneath all of our activities.

[46:33]

It's what animates everything we do, work, relationships, fun, activism, even Zen. Sharon Salzberg, in her book, Loving Kindness, teaches that the Buddha describes spiritual practice as the liberation of the heart, which is love. So she urges us to remember that spiritual practice helps us overcome the feeling of separation and isolation. And spiritual practice helps us to uncover the radiant, joyful heart within each of us and then manifest this radiant heart to the world. And Val Hooks, in her book, All About Love, writes that all awakening to love is a spiritual awakening. So it's this love and this awakening to who we truly are that brings us into wholeness once again.

[47:48]

Another definition of love that I appreciate comes from Scott Peck's classic self-help book called The Road Less Traveled. And in it, he defines love as the will to extend oneself for the purpose of nurturing one's own and another's spiritual growth. The will to extend oneself for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth. And explaining further, he continues by saying, love is as love does. Love is an act of will, namely an intention and an action. Will also implies choice. We do not have to love. We choose to love. So in other words, love is a practice. Love is a verb. Love is an activity. To fully love requires an active element.

[48:53]

And this active element means that we direct a loving attention and a loving intention to ourselves, to others, and to our experience of the world. To love is to direct our attention and extend our heart to what's here, right in front of us. to what's calling us. We intentionally choose to take up the practice of directing a loving, benevolent attention to everything we meet in life until we have an embodied feeling of our wholeness again, of our shared being. In this way of living life, including its apparent brokenness, This way of loving life actually becomes our practice. And in reality, the world as it is becomes our beloved.

[50:00]

We see clearly and fully embrace the truth of things as it is. This is saying yes to the brokenness of the world. Yes to the ways in which Our greed, hidden delusion continues to create suffering for ourselves and for others. And in that yes, right, is the seed of repair, of mending, of healing. So it doesn't mean we have to like what's happening in order to extend our hearts to us. We simply need to open to the truth of what is in an all-inclusive, limitless way. in saying yes to the world and its brokenness that we can then begin to skillfully respond and address the particular causes and conditions for its brokenness, for the suffering and difficulty that we see in the world.

[51:07]

The last line of the poem reads, The broken world waits in darkness for the light that is you. So each of us is light. We would say the light of Buddha, the light of awareness, a loving light, an all-inclusive, welcoming light that leaves nothing out. There's no division in this light. Everything is equally, you could say, covered or met or illuminated by this light. So can we illuminate the ways the world is broken and the way it needs repair? And then give ourselves over to the intention to act on behalf, amending it through our bodhisattva activity. This endless endeavor to free all beings from suffering, to help them recognize their fundamental wholeness that has always been there from the beginning.

[52:21]

we were never truly broken. It's just that we haven't recognized our fundamental wholeness. And until we can recognize that fundamental wholeness, we're not going to be able to really fully heal the world. So I think I'll end there. and open up the session to anyone who has something that you'd like to share regarding love, regarding the brokenness of the world, regarding the way in which you are navigating this particular time. So I see we had May has her hand up, and Barbara is with us once again, and she's going to help us to unmute those who would like to speak.

[53:23]

May, are you there? Yes. Okay. There you are. Thank you so much for the poem. Thank you so much. Always heartfelt. I've been pondering this, what is love, for a long time. Just recently lucky to be with Mary Stairs for this long-term training. And then now I think this question is a little bit more intellectual, which is I don't like, but I want to know where does intention come from? Is that from Alaya or before Alaya? And then also you're saying love is knowing, knowing our interbeing. So it's a knowing. It still is not there. It's knowing. So I wonder love is beyond Alaya or is that Alaya?

[54:30]

So also, where does intention? Yeah, basically intention. My understanding is intention might come from the seventh conscious, right? It's an AS. But I'm a little bit confused. So, yeah. And it sounds like this was something that Mary was bringing up in her class. Is that true? I think because there's one slogan, talk about the absolute wudhichitta, talk about alaya. Because Alaya is this neutral state, right? Because we're going to be very careful about ego, right? So because ego is always around the show. But for this Bodhichitta, we really want to really observe this ego, right?

[55:32]

So we are actually really larger than this ego, which is more, more, more. So we're in the eighth conscious, which is Alaya. Now I actually feel good. It's fine. But now love and emptiness, I just feel like they got to be converted somewhere. So just where? I had a face that they're together. But also Alaya also is not there yet, but close to there. So I'm just wondering, love is there or here? Or maybe there's no concept at all. It's not here. It's not there. It's not here. It's just, you know, can't describe with concept. I would say don't try to describe love as a concept. In that sense, it sounds like you're getting a little bit caught up in that. Yeah.

[56:32]

So in this case, it finds it could explore and consider what, you know, what are the Buddhist... fundamental teachings around love, you know, and how they're expressed. But I would try to really have a felt sense of it. What for you, when you feel a sense of love that is non-grasping, that's illuminating, that creates no sense of division or separation in any way, what is that for you? Where does that come from, from your own experience? Does it come from a place? Or is it coming from what you naturally already are i think the second one so discover that at a very deep level for yourself because even now even if you have you some kind of intellectual kind of concept about how that all works it doesn't really matter until you live it live the felt knowing And knowing, you know, knowing, in some ways I think of it, knowing is just the illumination.

[57:37]

It's not knowledge in this sense. It's not you knowing something. You know, we could talk about just, you know, awareness knowing itself, Buddha mind knowing itself. And this self-illumination, you might say, you know, the self-illumination is what this knowing is, right? Wow. So it's what we are. Love is what we already are. This luminous, inclusive, open, expansive, non-dividedness, right? Yep. This boundless quality. Like we talk about the Brahmi Vihara, it's the boundless, you know, field of love, right? There's no end to this illumination. There's ultimately no division within it.

[58:38]

So trust that impulse to just rest in that openness. And it's fine, you know, to kind of entertain at times. You know, I try on definitions of love, but I don't necessarily stick to them. Thank you. I come back to... In my heart, what is the knowing of love itself? What is the felt sense of it? Trust the felt sense of it. Thank you. Thank you, May. I see Michelle Ferrer. Hello, thank you for sharing the poem. It was greatly appreciated. I was thinking, when I think about love, I think about it interpersonally. So I'm considering the term attachment. When you were talking about different definitions, I was thinking of attachment and how it applies to others interpersonally, like a partner or parents or friends.

[59:42]

And my question is, how do we love others without that inherent attachment or the struggle when that relationship ultimately ends or breaks, as the poem might be kind of referring to? And then is that inevitable? Is that something that, is that type of love to be given and received, is it inevitable to feel that pain? Well, I think sometimes love that has an attachment often has a sense of self and other to it. And of course, on a relative level, that's how we navigate the world. and we find someone that, you know, we care about, our parents or siblings or a partner, and we have some connection to them. And it really hurts when we feel that that deep fundamental connection is no longer as available as it used to be.

[60:45]

So, you know, the romantic love in a sense of attachment, like, I need you in order to be happy. I need you in order to be whole. There's something about you that completes me in a way that I'm missing something fundamentally, I think is a misperception and often is what, you know, where we start getting clingy in our relationships and expect people to behave in certain ways or that we have to be a certain way in order to be loved, right? So we go kind of going out of a ways to fulfill some idea of who we need to be or who someone else needs to be in order to love them. But I think the love that's being pointed here is a love that allows everything to be just as it is. And it doesn't mean that a parent can love a child and still say, please don't do that behavior because that behavior is harmful. I love you and I want you to stop that.

[61:47]

So it's this kind of love in which it's all embracive. It means I'm not going to disregard you. I'm not going to treat you separate in some way. And I'm going to do everything I can to recognize our fundamental intimacy as one being, we might say. And at the same time, on a relative level, there are causes and conditions which impact the ways in which we might express that love. And so we have to acknowledge that there are ways in which maybe certain relationships kind of run their course and for whatever reason that we may have a perception of the other person or ourself that over time changes or clarifies and we realize that what we had based our love on was actually conditioned. There was a conditional kind of attachment or request involved in it.

[62:53]

either on our side or on the other person's side. And the question is, what is it to love unconditionally? You know, to love in such a way that we don't, at a fundamental level, require people to be different. And again, that doesn't mean we wholeheartedly accept their behaviors if their behaviors are harmful. But it means that we don't disregard them. We love them in their brokenness, in all their flaws. Everything that we may say is problematic in some ways. And also, it's a challenge for us to love ourselves unconditionally. What is it to offer ourselves unconditional love? To still encourage us to do our best, to be... a person who we feel is living their full expression.

[64:00]

And at the same time, don't judge ourselves when we're not able to kind of measure up or show up in ways that we want to. So, you know, to explore what is unconditional love? What is a love that doesn't require something of us other than to love our very beingness. Is that helpful at all? I'm not sure it was so coherent there. Yeah, it's a lot of different thoughts. And one of the thoughts that I was thinking about, and it was helpful, thank you, but one of the thoughts that I was thinking about in terms of the Buddhist teachings that I had the impression of was this freedom of certain attachments. And so then how do we love without being attached to a particular person interpersonally? Or is that even not considered an actual Buddhist belief? Well, love without attachment, when you think of an attachment, there's still a division there.

[65:04]

There's a self and others. There's still a dualistic. There's something over here and something over there. So to study, what is the nature of that attachment? What is the root or the belief or the idea behind that attachment? What gives rise to, it's always a good thing to study, what gives rise to attachment? What idea do I have here about there being someone here and something over there? And what is missing in me that I have to attach to it in some way? It doesn't mean, you know, we still may deeply love and care for our parents, you know, and siblings and, you know, partners and so on. And we may have a sense of great grief when they pass, you know, if they die or something, you know, some reason we can no longer be with them. You know, that's something I think is to recognize and to appreciate the fact that we could love in such a way that we felt a deeper connectedness to them.

[66:17]

But Again, going back to this ultimate sense of there was never anyone separate in that relationship. There was Buddha loving Buddha. And so there are not two Buddhas necessarily. On a relative level, yes. On an ultimate level, no. So we have to live both of those simultaneously. They're not two different realms, actually. They're the same thing. They're just two sides of the same reality that we're experiencing. So as relative beings, we are going to create, we're not going to have attachments. We are going to find ourselves loving people in such a way that losing them brings up great grief and sadness and pain. But that grief and that sadness tells us that we loved at a very deep level. that we had the capacity to feel so deeply connected to another person, that their apparent disappearance or separation from us makes us aware of the ways in which we still perceive dualistically at some level.

[67:39]

Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you so much. You're welcome. And I noticed that it's also a little 6.30 now. And so I've been trying to end on time and haven't been so successful the last few sessions. So I think what I'll do today is draw this to a close so that all of you can go to dinner. Once again, I appreciate your presence and your practice together. If anything I offered today was beneficial, helpful, I'm glad. And if something didn't quite land for you or resonate or line up for you in some way, please just disregard what I said and discover for yourself what's true. Each of us, this is our true path, you know, to discover what is the truest for us. So find out for yourself what is love, what is unconditional love, and how can you embrace love

[68:45]

the apparent brokenness of the world in such a way that it offers you strength and courage and fortitude to persist in a deeper intention to wake up and offer the wholeness of who you are to the whole world. in all its unique and fragile beauty. So thank you all very much. I wish you well. And we'll see you, what is today? Today's Tuesday. You're welcome to join us for Thursday's session in a couple days. Take good care, friends. Hi, thank you.

[69:44]

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