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. Outside, when I waited in Cloud Hall, in the hall, I heard nothing. And my concern was that there are no kids today. That would have been terrible. You're so quiet today. Still, we'll see. That might change soon. The kids might know that the first minutes we spent together with the grown-ups and I prepared a game. Actually, it's an experiment. That's why I'm still sitting here. You know we have holidays. You know that. Yes, you do.

[01:00]

That's good. It's a holiday about being. It's called Independence Day. It's about becoming free and responsible. And for us as Buddhists, it's also about that we are connected. We call it sometimes Interdependence Day. Do you know what it means to be connected? Do you have an idea what that is, to be connected? Say it again. We love each other. That is being connected. Yes. Any other suggestions? There are many ways of expressing it. Any other ideas? Kids? Connected. We love each other. Good. Thank you very much for participating.

[02:03]

And do you also know what an experiment is? Yes? Yes, you try something new. There is another tree or something to climb on and you don't know yet whether it will work out, but you try it. You think maybe you have to try it. Or there's another vehicle you can drive, a bicycle or something, and you don't know yet, but you try it out. That is an experiment. And I have something in my sleeve. I have big sleeves here. And one is very heavy. And when I was doing my bows in front of the altar, I thought it might fall out. I was a bit shaky because it's so heavy and I thought it might fall out. Who dares to grope and guess what I have in my sleeve? Who would like to come forward?

[03:06]

Yeah, you, because you had already participated, I take somebody else if that is fine. So you wouldn't look at it, you would grope and guess in here. Yeah, try without looking, just with your hand. Yeah. Do you know what that is? It's a very heavy ball of rope. Very good. It's a very heavy ball of rope, ball of wool. Why did I bring this? Why did she bring this? Yes? I cannot repeat that. Can you say that again? Because there's a cat here. At least one cat. Yes, thank you very much. Oh, as you can tell, I'm sorry. I'm Doris, and as you can tell by my language, I sound a bit different.

[04:11]

I am from another country, from Germany. And it might be a bit hard for you to understand me, so I slow down. So I said that we are... single persons. We have names. Our name is Steve and Stevie or Stephen. Sometimes it sounds the same. But you are all unique. You are all special. You have your own fingerprints, your own feet, your own voice. We cannot mix you up with somebody else. So you are unique. And the second part is we are all connected. And in Buddhism we have that one image of a net that we are all people in the whole world are somehow connected because there is no reason not to love anybody. We don't have to be related to love. We can feel connected anyway. And the idea is now that we try to make a net. And I would maybe, let's start on this side.

[05:16]

Oops, I think I should take, I describe it first and then I can take off my mic, microphone. So I would ask the people to my left that they hold the string and pass the ball of wool and don't have it too loose, so have some tension, like in a good net, and then we go from there. And the kids, it's good when you are up on the platforms because this time I would like the grown-ups to do this, passing the ball, and the kids I would like later to watch What happens? Yeah, so let us start. So kids, this time, the grown-ups play something and we watch.

[06:49]

We not only watch, we participate. Oh, could you give it up on the tongue? So that the kids, yeah. Yeah, the first row and second row, you can give it also from the back to the front. Yes. Okay. We do that one side at least. Okay, kids. And if you are sitting, thumb are already up. That's good. And if you like, please stand up so that you can see those people. You can also come here if you like or come to me and you may stand up on the platform. Right. My climb up there, another experiment. So look, and there's that one string, and people hold it. It's like the net, but we are all connected.

[07:59]

And yeah, if you don't get tired of it, just pass it as long as it lasts. But we start with the experiment already so that the kids don't get bored. Now I would ask, hi. Hi, Miro and Luca. I would ask, maybe it's just somebody who holds this string. Can you see? To lift slowly the arm. And kids, please watch. So one person, I don't tell you who, if somebody would slowly please start to lift, yeah? You're in the blue, please. She starts to lift the arm and we see what happens if anything happens. It's an experiment. Nothing happens.

[09:00]

What do you say? It works a little bit. It's not the way I thought it would work out. It's probably not tense enough. It's not tense enough, yeah. So it worked a little bit here. Would you take the hands down again? Okay, we watched this side because it worked somehow. Would again one person please lift the hand and the kids watch. Yes, look what happens. Look what happens. Can you describe what happens? Way back there? You wanted to see it way back there? It could happen, but it doesn't. That's okay. It was an experiment. Thank you very much for participating. How does it feel being... Yeah, you want to say something? It got tangled a little bit, yeah.

[10:08]

What I saw, because I wanted to see it, I think, was... that when somebody starts to do something, the others have to follow a little bit. It doesn't work that somebody lifts the arm and it doesn't have an effect. So it means something to all of the others that are around. And actually I did see that happening. Maybe I'm too complicated. Kids, can you follow that when somebody does something, that it means something to a lot of other people? And that I hope to see a little bit. Thanks for participating. Thank you very much. All right. And we have another word of another phrase of that we are connected. And that is the phrase, we are all sitting in one boat.

[11:09]

Do you know that one? And there's a song. And you have to help me. It's an English song. It's the song, row, row, row the boat, gently down the stream. Merly, merly, merly, merly, life is but a dream. Would you help me to sing that? And maybe sing it two, three times together. And then the helpers and parents who will go out with their kids could actually leave while we sing, continue singing. Okay, thanks for being with me so long. Okay. We start. Now it's us.

[12:15]

I bring you a story that some of you might know already. It's the story of Kisao Kotami and the mustard seed. It happened last week when I visited France that I had another take on it. I saw another angle. You know that we have always the same stories and we look from different angles at them. So I hope you're not disappointed if you know. How many of you do know the story of Kisabutami and the mustard seed? Oh, okay, not so many. Oh, good. Thank you. I'm glad. So there is that story among a place in India at the time of the Buddha. And the Buddha had a cousin, Kisa Kotami. She was a little of a poorer family, and she married into a wealthy family. And for some time, she didn't give birth.

[13:22]

And the story goes that she had, you know, as a woman in India, not giving birth for a while, she had trouble with her in-laws. And finally, she gave birth to a boy, to a baby boy. And of course, Family was happy. Kisakotami was happy. That child died. And that woman, Kisakotami, got mad. Out of pain, grief, the loss was so strong, so heavy for her, she turned mad. In the middle of the village, her dead child, she carried still on her hips or in her arms, she... tried out for help, for medicine. She didn't see, she didn't want to see, and didn't want to know that the child was actually already dead. Somebody had pity and brought her to the Buddha to help. And the Buddha saw, the wise man saw, that words would not help.

[14:29]

Words wouldn't be enough. The woman was, as we call it, she lost it. She lost her mind. She lost it. That's a good expression. She definitely lost the middle, what we call the upright. She fell into her pain and loss and grief. So the Buddha gave her a task. He promised her to, he called it, I can give you medicine to revive your child. if you bring me a mustard seed from a house, from a household, where nobody has died. And Kisa Kotami was so happy. Getting a mustard seed, she would have done more. She probably would have cut off her arms. She would have done anything, of course, to help, to bring life medicine to her baby boy.

[15:33]

So she ran, and I assume that she didn't even hear the second part of the Buddha's sentence, from a household where nobody has died. So again, she knocked at doors, cried for help, maybe begging for mustard seeds, and the people had pity. They opened the doors, no problem, and they were willing to share mustard seeds. That's okay, it's a small thing, maybe worthy. but not unvalid, but yes, they would share some with Kisabotami. But when they heard the second part of Buddha's phrase from a household, when Kisabotami asked, has anybody died here? They said, of course. That were the times where people died at home. Every home, every household had experienced one loss, one dead person. So the people just could shrug their shoulders and say, I'm sorry, my mother-in-law died here, my brother, my father, my young sister.

[16:40]

So that must have gone on for a while, the story goes. Kisa Butami, with all her energy and will and despair, didn't give up. It was also very physical, this being with it. But then, after some hours or in the evening, something must have happened, and there was a shift, and she understood. So one phrase or one word or one person must have reached her and her heart and her mind. One person must have said the right sentence or One encounter must have touched Kisakotami that she understood. I am not the only one who lost somebody. I am not the only one in pain. Pain and loss and death is universal.

[17:46]

And it was like a sudden awakening. She got it. She had an insight with the help of others. We don't know exactly what it was. But it brought her back into clarity, into reality. She could bury her child and she went back to the Buddha and she told him his experience and he could see that she calmed down and she was clear. She became a nun and Some of her poems and stories are still transmitted, and we are told that she was especially of help for families and people who lost children, and she could help couples, partners, and widows, and especially the role of women in families. So she was of big help for not only family questions, but death and impermanence in general.

[18:51]

So her own pain, loss, if you want to say like addiction to something, because I was just thinking of it, it's the same. When we have addiction, this not being able to let go, was transformed into something totally different. And there's one poem of a collection of poems of the early nuns. So what Kisa Kotami experienced was, this is not a law for certain villages or cities, nor is it a law for only this or that family. For the whole world, even for the gods, this one law is valid. Everything is impermanent. So we can talk about it and understand it in our heads, and impermanence is one of the pillars of Buddhism, how we see the world.

[20:03]

But that what happened to Kisa Gotami was more than understanding it with her brain. It must have been, as I said before, very physical that she knew it, you know, this knowing that is bigger than just knowing it in your head. She went through an experience and experienced its true. So the truth hit her, and she could trust the Buddha's teachings. That's why she became a nun, because she had experienced herself that it helped her, and it might help others. So that is how the story is usually told. And then I thought, what did the Buddha do? Actually, what was his skillful means, what is called upaya, skillful means? What did he see in her and how could he think of such a way to help her and wake her up?

[21:06]

He actually gave her a Koran. He gave her a paradox. He gave her an exercise and a task that couldn't actually be fulfilled. She didn't fulfill it, Kisakotami didn't fulfill it in a way that she found the mustard seed and then the story turned. The solution of the story was more that she put her whole willingness, her energy, her love, her despair, her physical ability into something she wanted to change and happen. in the first place. Then it didn't turn out the way she imagined it to be, like the medicine was not there to revive her baby boy, but what turned out was that that little mustard seed, or the seeking for the mustard seed, changed her.

[22:07]

It was the medicine for the mother, actually. It transformed her. Her seeking her putting everything into it, her love, her being willing to do anything for that kid or for the situation. So that situation was so tense, so extreme, that something had to happen, like an extreme pain, an extreme despair. In the darkest night, there has to be a change. It can... only go up. It could also end in death, but it actually had ended in death already. And death might be an image only, too, for another awakening. So this being so physical and so determined to crack, to solve that one koan, she didn't even see it as koan, as she didn't understand the whole thing.

[23:11]

As I said in the beginning, she just heard the first part of the phrase. But this sending somebody into a paradox which cannot be solved in a way we think it might be solved or what we would like, how it ends, that didn't happen. But it changed her. And as we know when we believe in Indra's net, and we know that we are connected, and we know that what the Buddha said, When I get enlightened, everybody else woke up with me. So that means all that I can do, all my energy, all my love, all my availability, willingness, intellect, whatever we have and put into use for something wholeheartedly, completely, will first of all change us. Maybe it won't change visibly the

[24:12]

world immediately, not the way we see it maybe, but what it will definitely do is, I think, that it will change us. And then with that, and that is what we do here, that we do our work, we work on our habits, then that might spread and it does have an effect Think of the experiment that didn't work. It has an effect. Whatever we do, maybe the smallest thing, gesture, phrase, whatever we do, does have an effect. The more if we put all energy and love into something, you know, that is beyond our own fortune. So Kwisa Kutami did it for somebody else, for her child. And then there's, for me, still another angle, because we are not all mothers, we are not all women, first of all, and we are not all mothers, and maybe we don't, not all of us have children.

[25:26]

For me it's an archetype story, and for me it's beyond being mother and kid. I thought, or I didn't think, it just came, How often do we carry around something with us that is dead already? You know, not only habits, maybe commitments that don't have a fresh energy anymore, old ideas, old opinions, or even new ideas, but in an old frame. How many old things or dead things do we carry around with us? For me, the archetype part, that everybody can find something in the story, so it's beyond being mother or kid. Everybody can find something in the story. A third part is for me, you know, this despair that is about the loss in the story,

[26:34]

But it is also the despair of our, you know, maybe politics, economy. There is so much sadness and despair and fear in the world. And somehow I put out of the story for me that that is okay that we get mad. It is okay to... get angry once in a while about the politics and what people do to each other. We are human beings and our, you know, like our how can that be might sometimes turn into anger. I dare to say that because I think not all of us can be upright all the time. I think that in our life is space that some of us lose it. Lose it because of loss, sadness, despair, get lost in addictions for a while. We get lost in something for a while.

[27:36]

And others are around us, maybe, hopefully, friends, sangha, parents, family, whoever. There will be others around us, like our neighbors, the people in the village, the Buddha, the sangha. who witness, who are with her, willing to share the mustard seeds, or just bringing her to the Buddha or the Buddha himself, having a right phrase, a right idea to help that person, or just being with somebody who is mad, lost it, and is running around. I think that we have the permission to do that because it happens. I think we don't even need the permission. It does happen. So I think it's part of the reality that we lose it once in a while because it hurts too much. When I was a teenager, I...

[28:46]

was in love, and a much older man, much older then, when you hear the age you will laugh, he was 28. But for a 14-year-old, that was quite a bit. He was already in his job and had a position, and then it was, of course, a big difference between us. And it was overwhelming for me. I couldn't bear it. I didn't know what to do. I didn't know what to do. We were together. but it was too much. Also how people around us reacted. I got so sick, and I had to go to bed, and I couldn't stand up anymore for several days. I got, of course, a migraine, and I cried all the time. I wanted to die. You know how teenagers can be. It seemed all very real, and I thought I would die. It was really hard on me. At that time, you don't, or I didn't have a very close relationship to my mother. You know, the mother is the last one, I think, was, for me, the last one I would tell about my pain and love affairs when I was 14 or 15.

[29:55]

And I thought, I was deluded, I thought she didn't notice. She wouldn't notice. And one day, you know, busy having many children, and... One day she sat at my bed, down on my bed, and I felt the movement. And she said, I wished I could help you. She didn't come with suggestions or recommendations. She didn't come with her own story. She didn't even ask, can I help you? She just, for me, she just shared her own helplessness. I wished. I could help you. She knew she couldn't. But her sitting down on my bed at my side, I don't know how it happened, but she woke me up. The migraine was gone.

[30:57]

I was grateful. I loved her. I felt that she loved me. Somehow she had done intuitively, because she didn't know words like witnessing pain of somebody, you know, A working class woman, very simple but very intuitive, being loving, saying and doing, saying the right thing, doing the right thing, just sitting there. And I could get up and I could continue. So I cannot tell you what helped, but I do trust that just being with people We know it from just being with dying. We say just sitting there, being there, being with them is a huge help. We don't have to do much more or develop certain skills. Skills are fine and to help, but my mother showed me that this just being with somebody, I wished I could help, got me out of my own despair.

[32:04]

So when I come back to the big topics, death, loss of a child, politics, despair, what really helps? What really helps? In the story of Kisa Kotami, it was seeing reality, seeing clear again, getting the head. Do you also have that image, having the head in sand, in a heap of sand, like the emu does, you know, hiding out, like putting the head in sand and not seeing anything, not feeling anything. There are so many ways of running away from reality, like having candy. It can be running away from reality when we have our own views and want certain things to happen.

[34:01]

But also this not wanting to see what is happening or taking sides or getting addicted to something. There are so many ways of actually running away from reality. And then it is good if you have some friends around, as I said before, or family, that help a little bit, hey, do you still need to be alone? Do you still need to be mad? Do you still need to be angry? Or shall I still be at your side for another little while? And we can carefully scope how far people are, what they need in the moment. They still need to be alone and just being us at their side. So I know that there is a need for change.

[35:11]

I don't know whether it's a need for change, but I know that many people around me want changes concerning justice and politics and economy, and they want maybe even to try new things, making experiments. Although sometimes I think we got a little bit desperate and are not so courageous anymore, like in the 60s, 70s, where we didn't ask much for security. We were open to leave a lot behind and try new things. And personally, I think that the big changes in politics and economy cannot happen without us changing first. This is the place, I think, to say it, that it is us who have to change first. That is our first job. And I'm not saying that we do one or the other, but what I want to try to express is that if we change, if we come back to the middle, if we come back to the upright,

[36:25]

then we are of much more help. Then we are of help and can see what makes sense to do or not to do in the moment. So instead of changing and arranging the outside world or getting desperate or getting excited, we here remind ourselves to take the backward step What is now? What is right now? What does the moment want from me? And not to underestimate what big of a job that is. And we can go to demonstrations and we can go to our groups and we can work on social justice and on the climate. We can do what we can. And Kisa Gutami did all that, helping others. But first, if you remember the story, she had to go through a lot of things first.

[37:32]

don't know how much we have to give up, how much wealth we have to give up or whether we have to, you know, concerning the resources. I don't know whether we can keep our big cars or whether we will have to orientate towards a more simple life again because we have so much. We have more than enough, I mean. So I don't really know of how much we can keep and how much we want to share or have to share to make it justice or to help. But I know we can start, and the starting is happening here in the now and in the here. And from here it will develop. Thank you very much. For more information, visit sfzc.org and click Giving.

[39:12]

May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[39:14]

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