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. Good morning. Or indeed, good afternoon. Or good evening, depending on where you are. just acknowledge the great loss that this sangha has experienced with the passing of Sojin Mel Weitzman, who was a kind and good man and a great teacher. And when I try to summon up an image of Mel in my mind, he's always smiling. He always has this. little smile on his face.

[01:00]

So my teacher, Ryushin-Paul Haller, is Mel's Dharma heir. So that makes Mel my Dharma grandfather in this lineage. And that's what he feels exactly like, a kindly grandfather. When I first met him in Tassajara, I was pretty new and pretty confused. And he always paid attention. He always listened to me, turning his ear towards me. He always seemed patient and he never stood on ceremony. And later, you know, as the years went by, I discovered what a significant person he was, how important Mel was to the history of Zen in America, how widespread his Dharma heirs were.

[02:09]

He was a really important person. And my experience of really important people before... encountered Zen was that they let you know how important they were. And Mel seemed to have absolutely no investment in impressing people. He was kindly and friendly and it was such a breath of fresh air and a great Zen teaching in fact. So So that's a role model right there for me. Mel was the grandfather teacher in the lineage with a grandmother mind. And it's that ease and lightness of touch that encouraged me to keep following this path. So it's kind of strange and wonderful to be here.

[03:18]

5,000 miles away. And even more importantly, at the moment, to be here eight hours away, it's 10, 1020 there and it's 620 here. And 720 in Germany and Slovenia and 820 in Greece. So instead of negotiating the space distance, we're now negotiating the time distance. I'm eight hours away rather than 5,000 miles away. And I'd really like to thank Nancy, Nancy Petron, Head of Practice at City Centre, who invited me to speak, and to David Zimmerman, the City Centre Abbott, and Ed Sadosan, the Central Abbott, and, as always, my teacher, Ryushin Paul Haller. I've given Saturday morning talks in the Buddha Hall at city center when I lived there.

[04:19]

And it was, in retrospect, it was a really lovely experience to sit at the top of that beautiful, airy, light-filled room with tall windows and the tatami mats. and the candles and the incense and the flowers and a crowd of people all sitting quietly on little cushions. I find that human beings sitting quietly together is part of the joy of a meditation space for me. But none of us is truly quiet. All those hours and days spent sitting silently in meditation in Zendos with groups of people and discovering how noisy we are when we're being silent. All the tiny movements of our bodies, the fabric on fabric, the breathing, snoring, our hearts beating, little tiny rustles,

[05:36]

It's part of the environment that teaches us almost subconsciously about community. And when we're listening to talks, we murmur and we laugh and there are sudden intakes of breath and we signal in all sorts of ways that we're present, that we're there. So here I am now with a group of people and you're all muted. You're all completely silent. I can't really see you. I certainly can't hear you. I think it's important. I can't smell you, all the pheromones of people's bodies. The artificial silence and distance is a new reality in our practice. If I was really here, if I was really here, am I really here? If I was really here in the Buddha Hall, I'd start by looking around the room.

[06:41]

I'd start by going, hi. I'd catch people's eyes. I'd be smiling and nodding and just feeling the spider web of connections, the Indra's net of interaction with old friends and new friends. I'd usually ask who was here for the first time. So I wonder, could we do that, Kodo? Could we ask people to put up their hand? Would that be? Can people do that? Can you look? Put up your hand. Click on participants and raise your hand. Oh, I didn't mean to do that. Joe, Joe Xin. Great. Miguel. Michael.

[07:42]

Ah, this is wonderful. Thank you. I can see you. I can feel your presence. How wonderful. Karen, my niece. Hello, everybody. So you're very welcome here today. And I know some of you are here for the first time in the sense that it's always the first time, but some of you are really here for the first time. So hello. Welcome. Welcome to this space. So I'm thinking of myself as a newcomer as well. in Beginner's Mind Temple. This is my first talk at San Francisco Zen Center on Zoom.

[08:48]

So it takes a little getting used to giving a dormitalk to just a screen with a mosaic of silent faces. But I'm willing to take the leap and ask the 100-foot pole and give it a go. This new reality is not really how I think it should be or how I thought it would be, but how do I practice with that and let go of my story about how it should be and just do my best to stay upright in the tsunami of what actually is? I aspire to the reality resilience and flexibility of teachers like Mel Weitzman or Paul Haller. Watching Paul give talks and lead workshops and Sashin online has been a genuine inspiration.

[09:52]

Watching somebody who's been doing this in one way, like in physical present practice for a very long time, and who evolved really quickly to respond really skillfully to this new reality. So watching the teachers and learning from them how to do this. Sitting Zazen in front of a computer screen would definitely not have been a choice. And I still, you know, people email me and ask if they can come along to the Zendo and when they discover it's a Zoom Zendo, they go, oh, I can't do Zoom. And I think, I can't do Zoom either. But I tried it and it's been okay for the most part. I've grown really familiar with it in the last 10 months now and I've grown to be really fond of it. Here I am sitting Zazen on my cushion in my spare bedroom.

[10:58]

I started out, I've said this before, but I started out sitting Zazen on a cushion in my bedroom approximately 45 years ago. And after a long and very eventful journey all around the world, I've ended up back in my bedroom, sitting Zazen with a group of people from all over the world now, not just Belfast. So there's a thing right there that's really good about this new digital world we're inhabiting. And it makes me wonder if the essence of practice, the distillation of practice is the same no matter where I'm doing it. I traveled halfway around the world to discover that it's not dependent on beautiful rooms with high windows and shoji screens set in the middle of a forest.

[12:06]

that I can carry this practice into the small, dull rooms of life outside the monastery, that I can bring the light of practice into an ordinary bedroom. Life in the marketplace with the reality of driving my car, making my dinner. the reality of my daily life. But I really see in this that the Zoom connection with others is what's helping. When I sat alone in my room aged 15, I was alone in my room. And it was hard to sustain a practice. Sitting in my room with people from all over the world, that changes the quality of my practice, this connection with the sangha, this community of people, my friends in the dormant that I sit with every morning.

[13:22]

It's the great truth of connection, of human connection, I think. Before I came to live in Tassajara in 2007, I was working in Dublin. And one of the ways I allayed my discomfort about writing for a large right-wing Sunday newspaper was to spend seven hours a week volunteering with a group called the Simon Community in Dublin, which was set up... by university students in the late 60s to help people living on the streets. It's a volunteer group. And they're very efficient. Things work really well. They have a little housing area in downtown Dublin with rooms for people who come in off the street. And there was a particular volunteer group that I was part of. And we were called friends, I think.

[14:30]

And we weren't... I wasn't really sure what we were doing. We would stand around trying to look friendly. And we didn't have an actual job. We'd answer the door and wash dishes, but we weren't essential to the functioning of the place. But as the weeks went by, I began to realize what my role was. We were there to listen. We were there to connect with people. We were there to pay attention. We were there to see people as fellow human beings. The real people, the real workers who did the technical stuff and the administrative jobs and the making the meals and the sterilizing the rooms and the washing of the sheets didn't have time to do what was really important, which was to welcome people and to be kind to them. and to teach them that you could be friendly.

[15:34]

You didn't have to be a particular kind of person to be accepted. So we chatted over cups of tea. We used to drive a truck over to a big supermarket to pick up the fancy food that would expire at midnight, would bring back these really elaborate sandwiches for people who had barely enough to eat. It was a very interesting experience. We had to pat people down to see if they had alcohol on them. It was a dry, it was a dry community. We stored their garbage bags full of their clothing that they couldn't carry around on the street. And we heard their stories and we laughed at their jokes. I used to play chess every week with the man who never spoke to anybody. He never said a word, but we played chess. And that was a conversation as well.

[16:35]

So there we were, playing cards and watching TV and hanging out and being a little community, being friendly. And after I'd been doing this for a while, the Simon community ran a countrywide survey to ask the people who were using the shelters what they most wished for. There were other questions, but this was the one that really struck me. What was their heart's great desire? And when I read the final results, I kind of expected that people would want houses, particularly houses. This was a shelter for the homeless, that they'd want a house or an apartment. or money, or a car, warm, dry clothes, shoes, regular meals. And, of course, that wasn't what they wanted.

[17:40]

People wanted connection. One response was, I want people to look me in the eye. When I beg on the street, people mostly just ignore me. Sometimes they stop to put money in my cup, but they always turn their heads away. Nobody looks me in the eye. I want people to look me in the eye. So here was a man who had nothing, and the thing he wanted was for someone to look him in the eye. There was another guy, and it really, really touched me. He said, You know what I really want? I want to dance with a woman again, just once, to put my arm around someone's waist and dance with her. So that was eye-opening. I had been the person dropping a few coins in a paper cup, and for some, I don't know why we do it, I just look away.

[18:48]

I think I didn't want to embarrass them or embarrass me. But I didn't want to have a connection in that way. I didn't want to have a human connection with the person I was giving something to. It was really helpful to hear that it's not just the money. The money is helpful, but that's not what people need. They need to be seen. People wanted a connection with other human beings. So there's a teaching that the next Buddha, Maitreya Buddha, the Buddha of love, the Buddha yet to come, Maitreya Buddha of future birth. And Thich Nhat Hanh talked about this and said, I'm going to quote,

[19:50]

It's possible the next Buddha will not take the form of an individual. The next Buddha may take the form of a community, a community practicing understanding and loving kindness. We desperately need love. And in the Buddha's teaching, we learn that love is born from understanding. The willingness to love is not enough. If you do not understand, you cannot love. The capacity to understand the other person will bring about acceptance and loving kindness. So, I very much like the idea of a community.

[20:53]

being the Buddha. When we have our meetings in Berlin and in Belfast, we have a practice where we invite each other to speak. It was Tova who taught me this because you can't just go to the next person on a Zoom screen because everybody's got a different sequence of people. So I speak and then I say, I'd like to invite Coda. And then Coda speaks and he invites Miguel. And it's so delightful to see people go, oh, thank you, yes, to feel the connections. And I feel like we're encouraging each other to feel a part of something bigger than ourselves. Strangely, the distance of Zoom, the distance of this digital way of interacting seems to be bringing us closer together.

[22:10]

But this thing that Thich Nhat Hanh mentions, the capacity to understand the other person, that will bring about acceptance and loving kindness, I see... What a difficult task that is. How can I maintain that attitude of friendliness and acceptance in a situation where I feel threatened by the other person? Certainly in the Simon community, there were some difficult interactions. There were people who had severe mental health and addiction problems and a tendency to act out physically when they were frustrated. And I learned a lot about the dance of moving with somebody who was trying to express him or herself with anger.

[23:24]

But I didn't feel threatened. I felt secure in that environment. So I didn't have the defensiveness that comes up in other situations. What I've been noticing lately, and I wonder if other people are having this experience, when I leave the house, which I'm doing very rarely these days, all masked up and carefully, I'm noticing myself, if somebody comes towards me not wearing a mask, that my body pulls back in a really abrupt way. And I think I don't want to feel this kind of separation from my fellow human beings, but I'm also frightened. The infection rate up here is something like One person in 40 has COVID.

[24:26]

So the friendly person coming towards me, shouting loudly, not wearing a mask is possibly going to infect me with something. And I'm like, keep away, keep away. So I'm learning to be more gentle with that and to go, I'd really rather you kept your distance if you're not wearing a mask. I'm learning to be a little less... abrupt in my pushing people back. But it's so interesting. It's like kind of a first to be in that kind of startled relationship with my fellow human beings. My vow to be friendly and open and welcoming and embrace people, as long as you stay six feet away, is... It's quite a koan of practice, and I'm working with it all the time. Yeah.

[25:27]

I think all of us are having to negotiate that space of being with people who might be a risk. So this last week, given the craziness of the situation in Washington DC, which of course we watched all around the world, I was certainly noticing in myself the strong urge to regard the people who were breaking windows and climbing through doors and behaving in a violent and destructive way. And I could notice my judgment arising. I wanted to push them away as I would want to push away someone who was approaching me without a mask. So I'm not sure that this group of people would actively wish me ill.

[26:38]

I don't feel like they're that interested in me being well. How do I... Practice with friendliness, openness, kindness, encouragement to people who don't have my best interests at heart. Is it naive or careless to not push back? I've been struck in talking to some of our Sangha members in Belfast or in Northern Ireland. I was really struck by people talking about how familiar this all is. Our history on this island involves many, many years of rioting and chaos and people violently

[27:46]

responding to situations that were well-nigh intolerable. So, it has created this great cultural division, this great separation. And one of the strategies to contain it was to build actual walls. I mean, to build build walls at flashpoints between the two communities, the peace walls to separate the two groups who, I don't know, for a long time seem to be just automatically going to a position of Push that one away. I discovered a phrase when I came up here and I'd never heard it before.

[28:51]

Demons. People say demons to describe the other side. Demons out there building their bonfires. Demons out there failing their exams and getting drunk. And both sides think of the others. And it's almost used affectionately and in a self-mocking kind of way, which is very endearing. And it does speak to, I see, just the hurt, the suffering, the distance, the separation. I think we're... in leaps and bounds, evolving beyond that dualistic division. There are people who don't even remember the Good Friday Agreement in 1998.

[29:52]

There are young people for whom these separations are meaningless. But it's way too easy to slip back into them. I think we pay a kind of... mindful attention to our reactivity. And I want to, in a community where people are very tender about being pushed away, I don't want to be pushing people away in case they take it personally. I've heard that when the Dalai Lama came to Belfast in 2000 and he planted trees on either side of the peace walls, on both sides, And I've heard that he was very friendly and cheerful and interacted in a really amiable way with everyone he met. And that he seemed just kind of amused by the divisions, by the shenanigans, not by the suffering, but just by the habit of separation.

[31:06]

I can't imagine him maybe taking that attitude to Capitol Hill on Wednesday. Just like all these young people, in fact, a lot of them were middle-aged, but all these people just acting out like teenagers. But is that enough to... distance myself and go, ah, look, people reacting again and again. Is it, do I need to take sides in this situation? Do I need to take sides with the Capitol Hill situation? I really don't want to. I don't want to have to align myself with good guys or bad guys.

[32:18]

I need to remember... I need to understand that there are... Really, there are no good guys and no bad guys, not in my way of understanding human beings. I think that we are... all more complicated than that. I think there's a stage in developmental psychology where infants go through what's called splitting, which is an extremely simplistic division into black and white, good and evil. Good guys and bad guys. And if the child gets stuck there, that can turn into serious mental disorder. And I need to remind myself that a healthy adult has evolved through that divisive, simplistic, dualistic division of good guys and bad guys.

[33:30]

So... when I encounter somebody who's stuck in that split phase, it doesn't help if I push them away. It doesn't help for me to react to their reactivity. I need to practice not fighting back. I had an experience of something many years ago that was quite dramatic for me, quite a dramatic shift of perspective. And it was, I looked it up, it was 18 years ago in 2003. And I traveled 5,000 miles and took three weeks off to go to the January Intensive at Green Gulch. And in the middle of the first week, You know, we were sitting all day long and we were eating karaoke, listening to Dharma talks and working in fields in the garden.

[34:42]

It was lovely. And then in the middle of the first week, I think, there was a huge march planned for San Francisco. It was quite a way from Green Gulch to protest the US invasion of Iraq. in 2003. It was just about to happen. And I really wanted to go on this march. This was my natural place to be. If there was a march, I was going to be on it. In Dublin, if there was such a march, I'd be there. I thought of myself as an anti-war activist. And here I was in or quite close to a big city that was going to have a big march. But then the teacher leading the intensive said that no, said that it wasn't recommended to leave the intensive to travel downtown for the march and that they had heard that people were going and they were...

[35:57]

fine with people going, but that it wasn't part of what we were doing here and they would prefer if we stayed and sat Zazen. And I was really surprised because I had thought that my, you know, my urge to protest was peacemaking, that this was, isn't this what Zen practice is about? Being... in favor of peace and therefore anti-war. And that going and marching in San Francisco was a way to achieve this. So it meant I had to really think about what it was that I was doing and what I had traveled 5,000 miles to do and how I would voice my opposition to the U.S. invasion of Iraq. And eventually, after a lot of time thinking about it and discussing it with my friends there, I decided that staying in the Zendo and looking at a wall was the ultimate opposition.

[37:14]

So, I don't know. I still don't know if that was the right thing to do. There's a... a moral inquiry that you can make about every action, and it's, if everyone did this, how would the world be? So if everyone went downtown to protest on either side, if everyone protested, how would things be? And if everyone stayed in the Zendo looking at the wall, then there wouldn't be a protest, but there would be no resistance either. So can I express my resistance by staying still? I remembered that Blanche Hartman did go downtown to protest again and again, and Blanche would sit perfectly still on the street, outside, I think it was outside City Hall, and she would sit.

[38:26]

And she would express her wider perspective, express her resistance in this fearless willingness to just be present. I remember a photo from Derry, or London Derry, from Bloody Sunday in 1968. There was... It's very poignant, and it's an amazing shot. Look it up if you can. There's a boy who has been shot, a civilian, who's been shot by the British Army, and he's been carried... In fact, he died almost immediately.

[39:32]

And there's a Catholic priest, Father Edward Daly, waving a blood-stained handkerchief and walking towards the army with their guns, walking towards the troops that had been firing on the civilians. And he... It was just so courageous. He wasn't running away. He was trying to help. He was trying to help that boy. I remember saying to Paul, that's the kind of priest I want to be. And Paul said, it's not going to work so well in an acasa. He was wearing a Catholic dog collar. But he was, you know, he was a neutral observer because he wasn't participating. They allowed him to approach. And I thought, yeah. Can I help like that? Can I be present with people and not shy away?

[40:37]

So the other night, after the Capitol invasion, after the situation on Capitol Hill, I saw... a freely poignant photograph of a congressman called Andy Kim. You may have seen this. And he was kneeling down in the rotunda, and he was putting all the rubbish in plastic bags. He was cleaning up. He was helping to pick up all the trash after the chaos. He was helping. And... I think, like many of us, I thought, again, I want to be that guy. I want to be Andy Kim. I want to be Edward Daly. And I remembered a quote from Mr. Rogers, who, if you don't know, is a character on children's TV from many years ago.

[41:51]

And Mr. Rogers, who was always kind, said, When I was a boy and I heard scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping. So this is my bodhisattva vow. How can I help? How can I clean up? how can I support people who are suffering? How can I be there? 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.

[42:57]

May we fully enjoy the Dorma.

[42:59]

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