This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. You must approach everything with beginner's mind, with an open mind, the mind that is questioning and looking and listening. and hearing and seeing and feeling and smelling without prejudgment, without preconception, without fixed views. So says our recently departed, deceased senior Dharma teacher, Saint Kate Blanche Hartman, in her book, Seeds for a Boundless Life. My name is Susan O'Connell, and you are in Beginner's Mind Temple.

[01:09]

So how many are here for the first time? Ah, you're all in this corner. It's a little safer to be in this corner, right, than to go all the way over to that side. Anyway, welcome. Welcome, everyone. New and repeat. I brought up beginner's mind because in my talk today I want to point towards beginner's mind by using a particular couple of words that may help us enter into the territory of beginner's mind. Sort of go through a gate towards beginner's mind. So those words that I'd like to going to turn with you today are judgment and discernment. So what is judgment?

[02:11]

It's an opinion or an estimate, a criticism or a censure, a verdict. And it's the power of comparing or deciding. It implies a power differential. I perceive myself to have power over you when I judge you. You are bad. It assumes that the person judging has the power and the right to determine what is good and bad in some absolute way, not just from their point of view. It has the sense of finality, like a sentence being passed. Judgment feeds the ego's deception of being better or worse than someone or something, of being separate.

[03:24]

Discernment, the way I'm proposing it today may seem like judgment. But the difference is a matter of approach. And it's significant. Discernment is a more conscious and personal approach. It involves a stable, quiet, open, and questioning environment. It's the cognitive ability of a person to distinguish what's appropriate and inappropriate. Can you feel the difference there between right and wrong? Appropriate and inappropriate. With discernment, we make good choices for ourselves and are able to consider the good of others at the same time. It's a very wide, wide state of mind.

[04:33]

It's described in various dictionaries as keen perception, insight, acumen. It's having the insight to see from our inner self, not from outer rigid standards or opinions or social pressures. When we discern, we're tapping into something much deeper than our ego's passing judgment. We're using our life energy to see clearly. We all know what it feels like to be on the receiving end of judgment. It sticks to us like duct tape. And... We feel the pain of that condemnation days or even years later.

[05:40]

Well, it just happened to me. I was judged. I had spent a great deal of time considering some particular actions that I had taken and their consequences. I was aware that some actions I had taken had resulted in painful consequences to more than one person. I could see in retrospect that I could have acted in a way that might have been less harmful. But because I was becoming aware of the pain that my actions had caused, I was pretty tender and vulnerable. When this friend of mine expressed their judgment of those actions that I was already turning and feeling uncomfortable about, my first response was, I don't feel safe around this person.

[06:58]

I felt the need to give myself some distance. Now, if that person had actually wanted to participate with me in this exploration of the consequences of my actions, to help me maybe better align my values with my actions, well... They had just dealt themselves out of that situation. The judgment was felt like a shove, not an invitation. So how could this person's opinion of my actions been offered in a more constructive way, in a more compassionate way? Well, this person could have said something like this. I'm upset by your actions.

[08:04]

And since I do not assume that you're a bad person, or that you consciously caused harm, I'd like to know more about the conditions of your actions. I want to stand next to you as you explore this. I want to see in what ways, if any, I contributed to those conditions. I want to dispassionately discern the situation and work with you to determine what is needed for healing. I wrote those words for myself to try to help me let go of the impulse to push away from this person.

[09:08]

I tried to imagine these thoughts and words coming from this person. And I think on some level, this person would actually be able to say these things. They didn't at the time because of the conditions in their life, because of the pain in their life. They weren't able to participate with me in this way. But this set of inquiries is what I'm talking about when I'm talking about discernment. This is not an easy practice. We're much more used to our judging minds. What a jerk. What a mistake that was. Case closed, mine made up. And I'm up here above the pain of that situation. I'm up here judging that I'm not like that.

[10:14]

Instead of looking at the parts of me that are exactly like that. This is the default position, judgment. judgments ignore the most obvious truth of all that I am the creator of my own judgments I am the interpreter of my own experience and when we judge we're often convinced that our ideas and conclusions are logical and reasonable and that they exist somewhere in the world as a concrete truth when actually they're just our conclusions based on the conditions of our own life. The exact same action can cause completely opposite judgments to arise.

[11:21]

As we see in our current political situation. This is an aside. I just want to share this with you. I'm not going to talk in depth about politics right now, but I discovered something the other day that was helpful to me. It's upsetting to be receiving the energy and the judgments and to participate in judgment about what's going on in our political situation and to feel really separate. from the side of the conversation where I do not reside, where I feel completely separate. And the other day on Facebook, there was a, someone had taken the last debate and made it into a song where they lip-synced what Donald Trump said and what Hillary Clinton said, and it's like,

[12:32]

I've had the time of my life, and I've never felt this way before. And so Donald Trump was singing that, and then Hillary Clinton, I've had the... They're singing to each other. And I want to tell you that the relief in my body of seeing two people say things... in a totally different way than I've been hearing. It just melted my heart. I could actually... So my judgment could be shifted just like that, just by seeing something different, by hearing something sweet, something sweet coming out of the mouths of two people who have not been able to be so sweet. It was... I was so grateful. I've been looking for something like that to relieve the othering that I'm doing to keep myself out of the pain.

[13:41]

So that's an aside. It's not written down here anywhere, but I just wanted to share that with you. So that came from saying that the same action can cause completely different judgments, and that's one of the things that's happening now. So here's something a little bit tricky. Am I saying that there's not an absolute right and wrong? It's a pretty scary thought. Many religions, organized religions, say this is good, this is bad, you don't have to worry about it. Buddhism famously says, Don't believe me. Find out for yourself. Our precepts are guidelines, not commandments.

[14:44]

One of my favorite things about this practice was the opportunity to study my values as an adult. to release myself from the solidified assumptions that I was given as a child, and to make a new commitment as an adult to explore how my actions right now line up with these precepts, these vows that I was able to, I was offered by this temple to study, to talk with others about, and then to stand up publicly and make a vow around them and ask for everyone's support to help me walk the path of gray, not black and white, to turn each precept, each situation, and to actively engage with the question, what's appropriate?

[15:49]

And to do that as an adult is a great gift. It's a great gift. Discernment lives more in the present and when fully practiced is not based on preconceptions. It is the epitome of beginner's mind. Start from now. Pay attention. Maybe notice the preconceptions that are coming up. the preconceptions we are habitual about. And we all have different ones. Discernment is flexible. So if we discern, for instance, that there's a person who is often negative and angry and puts people down and

[16:59]

And if we're feeling kind of tired at that moment and tender and not sure we can be so skillful in that kind of environment, we can discern that it would be healthier for us and for the other person at this time to choose to not spend time with them. Now, one could look at that action, And then one could say, well, that's not very much like the bodhisattva. You're withdrawing from helping someone. On the other hand, knowing where you are, paying attention to your body, knowing that you're tired, knowing that you would easily fall into some kind of judgment, you withdraw. That's flexible, that's skillful, that's being present and... actually being committed to doing no harm.

[18:01]

And even if that person continues to behave in that way, there may come a time when we discern that it would be beneficial to engage with that person, with our silent, compassionate presence, or in a mode where we give them feedback. You say, ouch, what you just said hurt. What's going on for you? Oh, you don't want to talk right now? Okay. Here's my phone number. Here's my email address. Let's have a cup of tea tomorrow. So you can withdraw, you can engage, but the most important thing is being clear having a clear field, an open field from which to take in the information that's present at that moment from your own body and mind, from the other person, from the causes and conditions that we can all perceive.

[19:13]

If we had just judged that person was wrong for acting in an angry way, we solidify them as something unchanging and separate. instead of dancing with them in this difficult, painful space. So what develops discernment? Well, it's helpful to be aware of any emotional charge in a situation that wants to be gotten rid of by separating us from the object of our judgment, we get charged, we feel a charge. And we're going to almost automatically remove ourselves or put ourselves above or below, othering, outside, separating.

[20:23]

So really what I'm saying is, Calm down. Just let it dissipate. Let the emotional charge, do not act from that emotional charge if at all possible. Calm down. We have a practice for that. It's called zazen. Not that zazen is calm, but zazen allows us to be with that strong emotional reality for us at that time, which feels completely true and completely who we are at that moment, and watch it dissipate. Watch it shift. Watch it lose its solidity, its reality, its absoluteness. So that practice is not necessarily a calm practice when we sit with the chaos of our emotional and mental

[21:30]

and physical bodies. But the practice helps us when we're not in that pared down, more simple space of a meditation hall or that corner of your room where you sit. And it helps us work with the energy of emotional response. It's a practice that develops the muscles of calming down. helping us be able to calm down. And with a mind that is trained to be still and to see clearly, what do we see? We see that distinctions like right and wrong, pleasant and unpleasant, are what we habitually attribute to things.

[22:31]

We see the habit of judgment. But we also see that those things that we say are good and bad, their nature is not good or bad. The essence of things lives beyond the chattering of judgments. And when we touch this essence that lives beyond the chattering of judgments, we're touching the ground of being, which is connection. And discernment from this place includes this sense of connection, a sense of ourselves not being separate and an awareness that there are causes and conditions for all actions.

[23:36]

And that in the same set of causes and conditions, we very well may have made the same mistake. And this opens up our hearts. with a calm mind and an open heart, we're able to better determine a skillful response. When we know what we're responding to, that we are responding to another being from a place of loving dispassion, we will offer a response that is more likely to be appropriate and potentially helpful. By the way, this is another aside. This difference between judgment and discernment is a key to how we study koans.

[24:46]

Looking for the answer in the area of right or wrong is a fool's journey. There isn't a right answer to a koan. There isn't a wrong answer to a koan. There isn't a right answer to anything. No absolute right answer. Discernment is the voice of the rational and intuitive mind working together. It arises from the balance of confidence in our own ability to see clearly and the humbleness in the face of the vastness of a universe that's unknowable. However, loving, accepting, being willing to be with others who hurt you is not about condoning their behavior or even tolerating it in your own life.

[26:11]

And it doesn't mean that there aren't consequences to behavior that you experience as harmful to you or unhelpful to you. It's not only your right to set boundaries in the face of these kinds of behaviors. It's imperative. But boundaries can exist in the absence of judgment. You can set limits that protect you and your loved ones without making someone wrong. Love and judgment simply cannot coexist. But love and discernment I'm going to leave you with something that's kind of a koan that Norman Fisher said once.

[27:31]

I don't know if it's written down anywhere, but when he said it, it knocked my socks off. As you see, I don't have any socks on. What he said was, it's not your fault. And you're responsible for everything. The causes and conditions of our life are vast and unknowable. And everything we do affects everything else. So when we're judging someone else, that question that I posed that would have been lovely if this person who I felt had judged me, if this person had said that. What, if anything, have I done that's part of this situation?

[28:40]

Bringing it back to our own responsibility and taking it off other is a really... helpful thing to do. Maybe one more thing because someone's going to ask this later. Am I judging that judgment isn't any good? So I thought about this and I would just say that the answer to that question is what do you think? What do you discern? Is judgment helpful and valuable? Check it out. You will. We will. We all do. We judge all the time. Check it out. Is it helpful? Maybe it is. Maybe there's a situation in which it is. Discernment. The way in which I've tried to describe it, sort of a wide open field where intellect and intuition arise together in a fresh,

[29:52]

beginner's mind kind of way. How's that? A little bit too scary? A little bit too ungrounded? Maybe it won't work right now for you. Check it out. Please check it out. So that's the end of this. And I wanted to... Tim, where are you, Tim? Sando, somewhere. Anyway, Tim... asked me to say something from the Dharma Seed about membership because we're in the process of bringing membership to people's attention. And I wanted to mention one thing that I, and this is something actually that you could discern. Is being a member of San Francisco Zen Center something that feels for you or not?

[30:56]

And are you already, do you already consider yourself to be a member? And how does that feel? And I've been noticing the past couple of Saturdays that there are people who come to this Saturday event who are not residential members, but who actually know the words to that Japanese chant without the paper. And I thought, huh, those people are members. Those people have been coming enough and want to keep returning and probably are getting something and they're definitely giving something by chanting and being fully present. So what does that mean to the people who know the chant? What kind of a member are you and what's the balance of give and take there? Just these are questions to ask yourself. So I'm going to ask everybody for like... 15 seconds to just discern, am I a member of Zen Center?

[32:01]

Am I not a member of Zen Center? Do I want to be? Is it about practice? Is it about Sangha? Is it about ritual? What is my relationship to this place? And do I feel it's absolutely in the right place right now? Just take 15 seconds. Thank you. Do with that what you will. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma talks are offered at no cost and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click giving.

[33:04]

May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[33:07]

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