Good morning. Maybe we can just take a little moment and feel into our body right this moment. How am I here? How is this body here today? The physical body the emotional body, the mental body.

[01:04]

When I was waiting upstairs, I heard a par honking and honking and honking, more honking. And I could watch my mind was just honking. After a few times it was, hmm, I wonder what's happening. And so I could watch my mind get involved in wondering and then I thought maybe somebody here starts wondering is something wrong with where I park my car or something to do with me or why doesn't it stop honking or this is obnoxious or um so we all get pulled all over the place moment by moment very easily by what we see what we smell coming in here lunch

[02:25]

what we like, dislike, what we hear, what we think, or a pain in our body. So one good practice is to occasionally just stop and kind of visit with yourself, just visit your body, take stock. what's available to your awareness at this moment. I want to talk about the three characteristics of existence today, which you could say in some ways is fundamental to Buddhist teaching. The three characteristics are impermanence, suffering or unsatisfactoriness, and no self.

[03:38]

So the first two, impermanence and unsatisfactoriness, were known by other cultures before being elaborated. What's A little more specific to Buddhism is the stressing of the no-self. And I want to talk about this in terms of life and death. In my own personal life, I have been graced by the death of my mother about two and a half months ago. There's right now a dear long, long-term member of this community in the process of dying.

[04:40]

He's giving us the gift of dying. And another long, long-term community member is in the process of surviving a very, very life-threatening accident. And we don't know what surviving actually means at this point. And these are incredible wake-up events. Because all those three characteristics are right there and very, very obvious, or more obvious than they usually are.

[05:47]

Usually we don't see permanence so well because we are very busy. to relate to things as if they were permanent, including ourselves. Because on some level, that's just the way we experience them. If Keith walks in, I know it's Keith. Every morning, I wouldn't say suddenly, hi, Tony. It's still Keith. So that kind of blinds me to actually be curious, well, who's Keith? Who's coming in the door this morning? What key is here? Or I'm pretty sure my house is still standing when I get home. And often it is, most often. When I'm getting Alzheimer's, my house may be not there where I think it is.

[06:52]

So then my mind has, what has become impermanent? Could be a really interesting question there. Impermanence means everything is in constant flux. And if we look a little bit how much we struggle, you know, we wake up in the morning and we feel different than we would like to feel, than we think we should feel. And then we try to talk ourselves into feeling the way we think we feel and kind of do a lot of things to get to how we think we should. feel or be. And that hinders us to actually just be with the life that is expressing itself at this moment.

[08:03]

And because we are so busy with relating to things the way we think they are and the way we think they should, you know, they should make an effort to stay that way. We fight with our friends because they're not exactly how we expected them to be. We carry grudges for years and years and years of our lives because someone behaved not the way we think should have behaved, and we spend a lot of time going over and over that whole story, reaffirming out of you. So then, boom, comes a phone call. There was an accident. And first you think, oh, poor person. Right? Or you read it on, actually you read it in the paper, you hear it on the news, and you say, oh, wow, terrible accident.

[09:11]

And then comes a phone call. And suddenly it's very close to your own life. It's actually somebody you know. You know since many, many, many, many years. And everything immediately changes. Nothing is the same anymore. And nothing will be the same anymore in some ways. And there's this little self that thinks it should stay the way it is because I made plans for my weekend. So this is a confession. I have plans for my weekend to finally clean up all the stuff that's been piling up and I can't get on top of it since I left to be with my mother three months ago.

[10:14]

So here comes this news, and one thought is, oh no, this is kind of ruining my weekend. I won't be able to do this stuff. Just immediate. Because I'm busy with thinking things are the way I think, and it's going to be that way next weekend, and I can do this, that, and the other. So when it's not such a big thing, somebody's life being absolutely threatened, it's much harder to see that, you know, much harder to get out of that mindset and really stay upset for a long time or even be angry with a person who suddenly says, you know, actually today I'm not feeling so well and so we can't do what we planned this weekend. When it's so stark, it makes it more obvious. You know, and it's not about then feeling bad because that's a second relation, second way of dealing with it is then, oh, I'm such a bad person to have such thoughts.

[11:23]

You know, I'm so selfish. That's, again, being concerned about myself. It's like, oh, this is actually how self functions. So there's nothing wrong with it. It's more like, can we catch it and can we go back? Can we not be trapped by it? So we had a, you know, here I'm talking about death and illness and suffering and impermanence because for that person, her life changed in one second absolutely drastically. There's nothing similar as it's been before. Nothing. And this can happen to any of us, any time. So we had a baby shower. And one of the Zen students that was at the baby shower with her, one of her two babies, the smaller one, said to the mother-to-be, said, you know, and sometimes you really hate it.

[12:30]

And then don't beat up on yourself. Because sometimes you'll just be overwhelmed and hate it. And that's okay. There's nothing wrong with it. You can hate it for a moment. And then her husband said, yes, do it like us. We then just beat up on the baby. And then everybody laughed. Which made it very clear that it wasn't actually what we think if we really acknowledge how we feel that we're doing bad things. But actually the unkind people sometimes terrible things we do to each other is when we do not really recognize and own our feeling. It's when we kind of talk ourselves into, and usually our mind does that, I have a right to feel that way because you did this to me.

[13:34]

So you are the cause of how I feel. And then we don't really feel what we feel, then we get rid of the feeling by fighting the person out there. So he said it, and it was so clear, those babies are so loved, and they're not full of bruises, and so it just made that space in there that you can hate, and if you can feel that you really, at this moment, just hate this situation, you can still be there. for the other person. So impermanence is everything is in continuous flux, including ourselves. Because one of the funny things too is that we usually walk and live with double standards. There is everything, and then there is this separate me.

[14:37]

that is not treated the same way, that doesn't get related to with the same standards, with the same intentions. Because we are mostly stuck in ideas about how we are, what we deserve, what we don't deserve, what we can and cannot do. So impermanence is also intimately related to no-self, which means there is no independent, continuous, unchanging existence of anything. It's also, you could look at it in a different way, we are all created by myriads of conditions and circumstances.

[15:43]

And as those change, we change wisdom. And one example I think you can all relate to is if I talk about the dying of my mother and my experience of that, or the experience I had at that time, what I remember actually would be much more precise, If I talk about that to one friend, I will emphasize certain elements of it just by sitting with that person. Then I talk about that to another friend, and I'm telling a different story because, you know, the basics are the same. a very different facet of it. And then I talk to a third person about it and it's again different.

[16:44]

So we actually create each other and everything creates us all the time. What you ate this morning influences how you're digesting and how you're digesting influences your biochemical metabolism and how that's working can affect your mind and your mood and your body, and you may be sleepy or you may be awake, and the air we breathe. So this, we're all... Buddhism says we all arise moment by moment by moment. What is the, you know, what is the other thing about that is also that... it is so. And if we can start to notice when self is kicking in and makes us isolated and separate, and kind of acknowledge that as we acknowledge, well, I'm being really grumpy today.

[17:51]

So I was one day, I was for several days, I was in such, you know, such just a bad mood and I was working in the office at Green Gulch and that was my job. So I had Doksan with my teacher and I said, I talked to him about how, you know, extremely grumpy and bad, you know, tempered I was and that I basically, you know, everybody who came into the office, I was ready to kill. They were just bothering me to an extreme degree. I just couldn't stand them. So he said, well, why don't you make a sign? Danger may kill you or something. And each time somebody comes in the office, just flip the sign. And I burst out laughing.

[18:57]

And I made a mental sign, and somebody came in. I flipped this sign up. I really mentally kind of imagined myself doing that. I could feel the way I was feeling, and I could be there for everybody in a kind way. And that's something that to this day still helps me. Because I felt it just cracked me up. And he cracked me open. I was so caught up in feeling that way and feeling bad about feeling that way and not wanting to feel that way because I was so wrapped up. And it wasn't something that could be there. It was kind of a forbidden feeling. I couldn't see the people anymore. But having this permission to kind of have a sign. And it would have been actually interesting maybe another time I actually make a sign and see what happens when people come in.

[19:59]

It just diffused that prison of being wrapped up in my ideas and my self-concerned struggles. So to really acknowledge and own how you feel. You know, imagine you're grumpy, and you're going out, and the other person is very, very happy, right? And so I was talking along happy, and look at this, how lovely, and you go, and look at that. No, don't talk to me about that. If you were at the beginning to say, you know, I have to say to you, I am just in a very grumpy state, you probably could allow the other person to be happy, and they wouldn't think... It was about then, if you weren't so happy, and you could probably be a little bit grumpy, and then over time it would probably change. Anyway, so that's another form of how we can get out of being trapped by what we think can be shared and what cannot be shared, because we usually don't want to know it ourselves.

[21:15]

Well, this talk is like usual going in another direction than I thought it was going to go. So, for example, with this friend that's struggling with her life, When I imagine, when my mind goes into imaginations of best scenario outcome, worst scenario outcome, I don't know anymore what to wish for. I'm trapped by imaginations. When I think of her as just her and who... Who she's been for me, the oldest innumerable experiences I had from her. There is just wishing well-being.

[22:27]

Just love, wishing well-being, wishing comfort, wishing blessings, and those have no form. And it connects also to, you know, when we go into a forest that has not been intruded upon by humans, the forest looks very chaotic. It looks very different than a park, for example, which has been designed, which is, you know, dead wood is carried away. It's raked, it's the lawn is mowed, and trees are trimmed. And if you go to, just go to Muir Woods, for example, very close by, it's absolute chaos. You know, dead trees, half dead trees, alive trees.

[23:31]

And if you're there, you can feel that, you know, you can watch new life coming out of the dead trees. So now what's good and what's bad? Is that bad? Is life good? What's better? You can't tell anymore because it's so intricately connected that you can't separate it. It actually is dependent on each other. So if we kind of... play and experiment with impermanence and kind of lighten up when we kind of get all, when we put each other in a little box, then we can start to see the underlying harmony. And that was a part that the dying of my mother was really an incredible gift.

[24:35]

I tell to all of us, I have six siblings and my father is still alive too. And my parents are married 63 years. And my mother was 90 years old and two weeks something. And my father is going to be 92 in August if he makes it till then. He thinks he has to do a few more things and in not too long, several months, he'll be ready to go to. My mother was very ready to go. For a year she went to bed praying that she didn't have to wake up next morning. And my father said, I went to bed beside her praying every night that she would wake up in the morning. And he said about a month before she died, somewhere around there, he said, and now I am ready. cannot do this anymore.

[25:36]

It wouldn't be kind, it wouldn't be loving if I did that." So he stopped praying that she would wake up the next morning. She wanted to die. She said 15 years ago, she said, I can go now anytime. I did all I feel I had to do in this world. I had so many things, there's nothing out there that I feel I have to have to die happily. And I do not want to live a hundred years. And then she had a very, very slow process of dying, which was a very big gift for us. It was very hard for her because she tried everything. She would say, I just have to figure out how one dies. And she would really put her mind to it, you know. Her mind was sharp till the last day. So that was a big gift, too, because she could tell us how to take care of her, what she needed, which, of course, was immensely helpful.

[26:42]

And she was a woman that didn't have trouble admitting how she felt. So when I was 18 and I asked her about how it was to be pregnant with me, she said, You know, I really was struggling with being pregnant again. She got pregnant three months after her first child was born, my older brother. Again, for six months, I fought the pregnancy in my mind. And she didn't feel guilty about it. She said, I'm really sorry about it, that it was that way. But she was able to... admit, you know, not happy feelings or struggles or, you know, difficulties without defending them, justifying them, and without kind of using them to kind of crush herself, you know.

[27:49]

So she helped me tremendously by admitting that. You know, by just saying that, not even admitting that, just being so truthful and honest, because it made me understand a lot of things I'm struggling with in my life, because we get conditioned, you know. So she tried everything, because she thought she could... If she wanted to die, she would just die. If she wanted enough to die, she would just die. And then she also thought, if we all let her die, then she could die. So she said, you don't let me go. So we kind of looked inside and we thought, actually, to the degree we can access things, we all are... sad if she's not here, but we're all happy for her to go if she wants to go. Nobody felt she has to stay here because I can't survive without her or something.

[28:49]

So she, too, you know, it was also teaching there is a time, there's a Zen saying that says, the snow falls every snowflake in its appropriate place. So there, you know, every death and every birth, and every moment, is absolutely not the same. It's just not comparable. And it's totally individual. So what I felt... I wrote to my friends while I was in Switzerland, and one thing I wrote at the very end was, when I look back over the last five weeks, I am filled with deepest gratitude, reverence, awe, joy, and wonderment for life.

[29:57]

The universe, my mother with her clear, sober, radiant, loving, and indomitable spirit, My father's capacity of unconditionally loving and abiding presence reserved his client. And his undying, enlightening and enlightened sense of humor. The tangible support we felt throughout from all the loving thoughts you were sending our way. At every stage of this journey from life to death, the universe's timing was impeccable. there was always just enough space, just enough time, just enough awareness, just enough support, just enough flexibility available to adjust because every day was completely different and every day

[31:06]

in the day would change. Moment by moment situation would change and change and change. In that realm, it has been an irrefutable experience of dependent core rising and of the fundamental harmony that runs through the whole universe. When I was able to be there and no one kind of pulled at me, which was just such an incredible gift. I was given support and permission by my partner, by all the people I had actually commitments to, to work with them, by everybody. And my father and my mother trusted us just absolutely, absolutely, which was in itself, kind of, Just an incredible experience. You know, my father has been a very dogmatic, critical father.

[32:10]

So to see them transform and see how support and trust just allows you to be responsive, responsive, responsive, respond to this, respond to that. And it wasn't me. It wasn't me doing things. It was really just... being responsive. And that was supported by everything. And not every death is that way. And at the same time, I think in the big picture, there is a deep, deep harmony. And if we start working with that reality that we are not separate, we are not firm, unchanging entities. we are so interconnected, then the question, what's good and what's bad, becomes not so much what we're bothered with.

[33:15]

We're more connected to life, and life is inseparable from death. I worked, when I was in Switzerland way back, I worked in a nursing home, and there were many, many people who suffered from, you know, late stages of Parkinson's and other kinds of diseases. So they couldn't, some of them couldn't speak, couldn't move, but were living. So we had to feed them and we had to clean them and dress them and take them out of bed and they couldn't move themselves. We set them in a chair, we put them back to bed. You know, you didn't know which way they liked their food. You know, did they like it all mushed together or did they like it all separate? You know, you had no idea because they couldn't tell you. And sitting there, you know, first I got depressed.

[34:19]

And I, you know, every day I went home and I was feeling like, oh, I'm so, so depressed. This is no life, you know. this is no life. And they went and went and went. And over time, there was very clear, there's no way of judging what this life in this form means in the big picture. There's no way of saying this is no life. And it's just that was also such a gift that they gave me because that's something that comes back to me or I can access when my mind goes, oh, this is really terrible and this is not valuable. So, because we don't know if we're going to be here tomorrow, if our loved ones are going to be here tomorrow,

[35:27]

Another kind of dealing or kind of practicing all of that without having to go too much in your head and think about no self and unsatisfactoriness, which has to do with that it's always changing. So what we like, you know, the restaurant we like to go to just closes down so we can't get our favorite dish anymore. So, you know, that's all things that exist. change and in that is an unsatisfactoriness. Because we may get what we don't like and we may lose what we like. So if knowing that, the practice of appreciation is really helping with that. If we practice appreciating what we have at this moment. You know, one thing I want to say again about my parents, one thing my mother said at some point way back, she said, you know, they had a very alive marriage and they supported each other in their difference.

[36:42]

They didn't try to kind of clone the other to themselves, but we often start trying as soon as we get used to each other, you know, as soon as first... An interesting part is although we tried to make the other so that he doesn't disturb us or she, you know, doesn't get in our way, which is kind of making a clone. Can you imagine a double serving of yourself 24 hours? It's not very attractive, but we don't think that way. We just still want to try to change the other. So they didn't do that. They really recognized how different they were. My father was very dogmatic, Catholic. My mother was a very free-spirited Catholic, totally free-spirited. And they accepted that and supported each other. She said, one of the things why we are so happy is that we are not very ambitious people.

[37:43]

I thought, hmm. And then she said, yes, we didn't. always think we had to have something more or we had to get some other place. So they had time to actually appreciate what they had. My father felt, said once, you know, 95% was circumstances and luck. We were born in Switzerland. We didn't have a war. happening right in the middle of the lives. They were affected, but on the fringe. We live in a moderate climate. And I had a lot of luck. We didn't have big accidents in the family. We didn't have much sickness in the family. It's just luck.

[38:45]

It's luck. We don't own this. And he always said from the very beginning, he shared his income with other people. Because he said there are people out there that are not so lucky and it's not their fault. It's just, you know, where that snowflake is falling. So they both practiced. And so to practice appreciation and to say it, And to say thank you for the shelter you have, thank you for the food you have, thank you for the smile, thank you for having a partner. Express it. If you do that, you start living in abundance and you start seeing how it's all interconnected. Probably it's time.

[39:53]

What time is it? 11 o'clock. So not taking anything for granted, not becoming complacent and kind of blinded by the comforts we are having at this time or by the discomforts we are suffering from.

[41:03]

Kind of, when your mind starts making judgments about something, kind of to hold those lightly. You know, the mind's going to make that, that's bad, or I don't want that, or whoa, not in that direction. Hold it lightly and just say, well, let's see. Let's see what's actually going to happen. Because we don't know. What may look very dire in one way may open doors to other ways of being. I worked as a physical therapist for many years, and it was really interesting to see the difference between people having really life-altering accidents or illnesses, and the ones that kind of... could allow themselves to be the way they were.

[42:23]

They all felt it actually changed their life in ways that it opened areas that they weren't aware of before, and they felt enriched. And the ones that wanted to get back to how it was before they felt diminished. looking for a good ending. You see, we go all the time.

[43:23]

So there is a poem by Hafiz that I think ties into that understanding that we are all part of a bigger, you know, of the whole universe. We are a particle of the universe. And if the Big Bang was what created the universe, you know, we are an expression of the Big Bang. So we all share the same life. The poem goes, and love says, and love says, I will, I will take care of you to everything that is near. So it doesn't say I only take care of you and not of you. Whatever is near, whatever is in front of you, says, I will take care of you.

[45:02]

Because by taking care of what's in front of us, we take care of everything. Because we're all so interconnected. May our intention...

[45:22]

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