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 and welcome to Zen Center's City Center. My name is Wendy Lewis and As I was thinking about this talk, I was remembering the first time I came here for a Dharma talk. And I kind of sneaked in the door, and there was a chair right by the door. And I was like, yes, thank you. And I sat down, and it ended up being a very momentous experience for me, which I think is the reason I'm sitting here now. And I'm not promising that for you, but, you know, just keep coming. Somebody else will happen. But the momentous quality of it is, I think, what gives me the courage to speak to you today.

[01:05]

And what I would like to talk about is love and forgiveness in the context of practice. A couple of months ago, I gave a Dharma talk, and it was about impermanence, karma, and practice. And I mentioned that the great Wisdom Beyond Wisdom Heart Sutra, this foundational, fundamental wisdom teaching, is expounded by the bodhisattva of compassion, avokiteshvara. So in a similar way, what we call, it's the metta-sutta, what we call the love and kindness meditation, begins, this is what should be accomplished by the one who is wise. who seeks the good and has obtained peace. Let one be strenuous, upright and sincere, without pride, easily contented and joyous. And for many of us, that's asking a lot. And it's not because we're incapable of wisdom.

[02:10]

I don't think wisdom requires a lot of research and academic effort or anything like that. It's more a... perception that history, you know, where we all come from, is not in the sense of repeating itself, but it holds all the possibilities for what could unfold on a personal or global level. And that's both wonderful and horrible when you think about history. And I think wisdom also recognizes that the world arises conditionally, moment after moment. There's no place to stand where things are changing or affected by impermanence. So wisdom has to be informed by the shifting circumstances, by letting go, by forgiveness.

[03:18]

And I think forgiveness has given its purpose. and applied through love. But how can love be defined so that it's grounded by and can be applied through wisdom and peace? So as I proposed in my earlier talk, applied faith practices or ethics, I think, are the key. The metasuta describes some of the aspects of love. Let no one deceive another nor despise any being in any state. Let none by anger or hatred wish harm to another. Even as a mother at the risk of her life watches over and protects her only child, so with a boundless mind should one cherish all living things. Suffusing love over the entire world, above, below, and all around without limit.

[04:20]

So let one cultivate an infinite goodwill toward the whole world. So in ethics, the goal is not self-righteousness or, you know, claiming the moral high ground. I recently read that the moral high ground is that very overcrowded place. But it's inclusiveness, suffusing love over the entire world. And that includes oneself as well as others. And if this sounds impossible, that's because it is. And that is the point of applied faith or ethics. It includes the past, the present, and the future in the form of hope. And a friend of mine recently said that hope is a very underrated virtue, that perception of the history or, you know, kind of moving through into the future and saying, well, this is happening now.

[05:24]

It's going to affect what happens next. How can I live then? So there is very few, you know, sort of absolute conditions or qualities we can... give to that hope or to what we think the future will be because our idea of how things would be best would be very different from someone else's idea. So if things were the way I want them to be, other people are going to be unhappy. So this hope that can't be pinched or narrowed. So that kind of hope is expressed in something like the Bodhisattva vow. which encompasses eternity. Beings are numberless. I vow to save them. Delusions are inexhaustible. I vow to end them. Dharma gates are boundless. I vow to enter them. And Buddha's way is unsurpassable.

[06:26]

I vow to become it. So love, you know, which may seem kind of easier, warmer, more accessible than wisdom, actually may require a deeper insight and maturity. There was a wonderful course that I took with Taigen Leighton when I first came to Zen Center on the bodhisattvas. And there's three great bodhisattvas, Manjushri, Samantabhadra, and Avalokitesvara. And... A lot of the ways that they're depicted and also the way I experience them is I think of Manjushri, wisdom, being sort of youthful. Samantabhadra, faith, shining practices, being kind of middle-aged. And Avokiteshvara, the sort of elderly grandmother or grandfather. So...

[07:30]

This sense that love might require more maturity than wisdom doesn't mean they're not completely interrelated, but it's the image that I have. So the concern of ethics is to allow the future to be possible, whether the future is 10 minutes from now or an hour or years or centuries. There are times when I've been in very difficult relationships with people, like all of us, and sometimes I would just have to stop and say, okay, I give this one a century. You know, even though it seems hopeless, can it be seen in this kind of wide place? And I don't know if that's the right way to look at it. I mean, maybe I should have tried harder. I'm not sure. But I think that hope... can bear to wait for this resolution or whatever it might be.

[08:35]

And I think that's where forgiveness comes into it. There's a book that I would highly recommend. It's called Mistakes Were Made But Not By Me. Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts. And what the authors are doing is they're examining what is the value of admitting we were wrong or saying we made a mistake. So they consider this from the personal level and also the global one. They point out that admitting to being wrong or to having made a mistake... is particularly difficult in the context of Western cultural values. But I think it's pretty clear when we see the justifications all over the world for exploitation and oppression and sexism and racism and wars and so on, I think that the issue of justification is everywhere.

[09:45]

So toward the end of a chapter, which is... towards the last quarter of the book, entitled Wounds, Rifts, and Wars, the authors describe these three options for resolving conflicts or other issues, and they're based on their work with married couples in which one partner has deeply hurt or betrayed the other. So, in the first, the perpetrator unilaterally, that means... all on themselves, puts aside his or her own feelings and realizing that the victim's anger, mass enormous suffering, responds to that suffering with genuine remorse and apology. In the second, the victim unilaterally takes it all on themselves, lets go of his or her repeated angry accusations, after all the point has been made, and expresses pain rather than anger.

[10:49]

a response that may make the perpetrator more empathic and caring than defensive. So then these two psychologists comment on this. Either one of these actions, if taken unilaterally, is difficult and for most people impossible. So there we are. I think that perpetrators often think that the person they've hurt or betrayed or something has a problem with anger. Can't this just be over? And the person who's been hurt, the victim in their language, sees the perpetrator as being unable to see the consequences of their actions and how it affects them and other people. Because usually we have very habitual ways that we hurt each other or ourselves or whatever. So the third way they suggest is the hardest but most hopeful. for a long-term resolution. Both sides drop their self-justification and agree on steps they can take together to move forward.

[11:55]

And the comment on this is, if it is only the perpetrator who apologizes and tries to atone, it may not be done honestly or in a way that assuages and gives closure to the victim's suffering. But if it is only the victim who lets go and forgives, the perpetrator may have no incentive to change. and therefore may continue behaving unfairly or callously. So as with most moral and ethical questions, definitive answers are elusive. These issues, they happen between very complex people and in very complex situations and globally, just the way we've dealt with each other for eons is what it feels like. But I think one of the things to remember is that forgiveness is only necessary when something unforgivable has occurred. And on a daily basis, you know, we swing through moments like that all the time.

[12:58]

Giving offense, pleasing, feeling pleased, being angry at somebody, on and on. And some of them stick. And they... bring into our relationships either or both resentment and sentimentality. So as I was thinking about my topic, love and forgiveness, how do you find it in all this? I read that resent actually means, when you think about the word, to re-feel. So something happens, it may have happened so long ago we've forgotten it, but we re-feel it whenever we're in a similar situation, or we have a bad interaction with someone, and every time we see them, we re-feel it. So this resentment comes. And that's happening all over the place, because we've all been hurt. I mean, why shouldn't we understand that there's this hurt that keeps coming up?

[14:07]

And then... On the other side, sometimes something will please us, something about somebody will attract us or something. And we play that over and over again. And that has the same problems to it, even though it could also be very positive and warm and connecting. But it's attached to those same things of recognizing these pleasing and unpleasing things and replaying them. So in my theological studies, the course that had the most impact for me was moral theology. I was like, ooh, this is going to be fun. We're going to study Greek philosophy and Augustine and Aquinas, people I've been interested in. I'd read them, but a lot of these kind of older, particularly older philosophy, but even all kinds of sort of deep academic scholastic things,

[15:08]

they open more when you read them with someone or study them with someone. So I was very excited about that. Well, these wonderful armchair perspectives, you know, about reality. But we ended up thinking about them and referring to them in contexts that were much more visceral. And during that course, several times, after class, or if I was up on campus, you know, doing research or something like that, I would go to this chapel in St. Ignatius Church, and it's a chapel to the Virgin of Guadalupe, and I would just sit there, and there's a verse on the wall, and partly what it says is, listen and hear well in your heart. What frightens and troubles you is nothing. Am I not here? and I could breathe, you know.

[16:12]

And I think this is very reminiscent of, you know, Avalokiteshvara in Buddhism. And this is a, you know, that's the male figure of compassion in China and Japan. That figure has kind of metamorphosed into a female figure, Kuan Yin and Kan Seon. But that same sensation, I would, sitting in that chapel, I would just, for a few minutes, would sort of help me in this kind of inexplicable way that I think those types of figures have been comforting people for centuries. Because the things that the course covered is issues or incidents, historical incidents, like Rwanda, we watched a documentary, you know, people butchering each other and stuff, and I'm sorry, that's all I'll say about it. It was quite painful and frightening, actually. religious terrorism, the Holocaust, street children in Brazil, their lives, how people see them, immigration issues in the United States, what that involves, feminist ecology, the whole sense of water.

[17:30]

Where does our water come from? All of our assumptions about water was a lot of that. Youth crime and punishment in the United States, how our justice system works with youth. And then a guest speaker came. He and the professor had helped to establish this organization that addresses the issue of global sexual slavery. And so he talked about that, how the organization was founded and what they do. So... These are issues that usually, you know, we try to sort of keep them to the side, even ignore them, you know, or forget about them in our daily life. They just bring up all kinds of worries. But I also think they ask deep questions, you know, about our complicity of silence, complacency, and helplessness. As well as the acknowledgement that these issues often, you know, are...

[18:33]

both ignored and they're used to kind of jazz up our lives. In the newspapers and the television and stuff, there'll be these horrible stories. Oh, isn't that awful? And then we go back to doing what we usually do. But I think they offer this challenge to our notions of what love and forgiveness are and what they do beyond this kind of level of... false or forced concern that comes up when we actually have it in our face. So in those contexts, how do we have the nerve or the presumption to say or imagine suffusing love over the entire world? One of the books we read is The Sunflower on the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness by Simon Weisenthal.

[19:41]

And it's based on the author's Holocaust experience of meeting a German soldier and that incident and how it affected him. And at the end of telling the story, what he has done is he's invited all of these scholars and religious leaders and states, to answer a question. What would I have done? So his address is to have the person ask, what would I have done in this situation? So as one of the prisoners in a concentration camp, Simon's placed on a work crew to go to this makeshift hospital for German soldiers in the town. And on the way, they pass a cemetery for German soldiers, and on each grave, there's a sunflower that has been planted, and it's this bright yellow sunflower, and he thinks of it as drawing in the warm blue sun down into the ground.

[20:49]

And he feels the contrast with the probable death and burial that he's going to experience. And at the hospital, a nurse approaches him, And she explains, she tells him to follow her, and explains that there's a German soldier who's dying, and he wants to speak to a Jew, he says. So she takes him there and leaves him in the room with this man, Carl. And Carl tells Simon that he wants to make his confession to a Jewish person. Carl's covered in bandages. They cover his face. He's been burned. And he's very close to death. And even though he is, he manages to get hold of Simon's hand. And so they're sitting there in this situation.

[21:55]

And Simon, you know, he's a prisoner. He has no rights. Somebody could shoot him for one reason or no reason. And he sits through Carl's confession. And what Carl wants to do is tell him about these horrible things that he and his friends and these other soldiers have done to the Jewish people that they've been involved with. And Carl describes a lot of his own horror at the ability that he had to do these things. And at the end, he asks Simon for forgiveness. And Simon is silent. The next day, he goes to the hospital, and I'm shortening the story. The nurse comes to him again and says, follow me. And he's like, oh, no. And she hands him a bundle and says that these are Carl's possessions that he wants Simon to have.

[22:58]

So the story that is written is not very long, but it's followed by those responses, by these very thoughtful people who have considered academically or religiously these huge issues about forgiveness and resolution and all these things. And the ones that most surprised me were the ones who unequivocally thought that Simon should have given forgiveness to Carl. That's what should have happened. And, of course, what they're saying is that's what they would have done. And I thought, okay. What surprised me is that they seem to not recognize the context of the situation. Simon was compelled to go there. He wasn't invited. And he's doing this in the midst of his own probable death and death of his family at the end of the war. Simon and his wife had lost 89 members of their family.

[24:06]

So this is all happening around him. His friends are dying and all this stuff. And he might be killed by some young soldier, just like this poor man who's dying. So in a way, they also seem to forget that this was Simon's confession. He's confessing. Here I was. Someone asked for my forgiveness, and I didn't say. What would you have done? What would I have done? And what struck me about the story is that excruciating intimacy that was happening there. And my impression of the hope that it actually gave to Simon when he survived and what he did after the Second World War. He was one of the founders of the Jewish Historical Documentation Center. And this... takes as its task identifying and locating Nazi war criminals and bringing them to trial.

[25:08]

So, you know, this is a very difficult thing to think about. Matthew Fox is one of the commentators, and he says, I wonder if Simon did not receive his vocation from the dying SS man. It is a strange exchange, a strange bond between these two men. And even though Simon is silent, Carl doesn't seem to resent that. He gives him his things. So I thought, you know, perhaps a light symbolized by that sunflower, he calls the book the sunflower, was shining, you know, into Carl's and Simon's darkness and also into the darkness of all the victims and their families and into the perpetrators as well. In conjunction with reading The Sunflower, we also read a Vatican document, Caritas in Veritate, Charity and Truth, and it states, In every truth there is something more than we would have expected.

[26:19]

In the love that we receive, there is always an element that surprises us. We should never cease to marvel at these things. In all knowledge and in every act of love, the human soul experiences something over and above, which seems very much like a gift we receive or a height to which we are raised. Now, all those other things that we studied in the Course had this same sort of ambiguity and that excruciating intimacy with these unsolvable sort of situations, what feel unsolvable. And I think that that quality is what clarifies ethics for us. There's no answers, but there's a context for approaching and responding to all this variety of circumstances we encounter close to us and those that seem as though they're very far away. And in Buddhism, I see this context encapsulated in the precepts.

[27:28]

You know, we often sort of blithely describe them as impossible to keep. But I think what that ultimately means is that the precepts as a wisdom teaching sort of help us to deconstruct our sort of limited, self-absorbed perspective and create spaciousness. for love and forgiveness. And not as an easy response, you know, but as a hopeful one. I think love and forgiveness are actually powerless without the wisdom perspective. And a concern for the possibilities of the future brings our present moment to life. It deepens our experience and imbues it with peace. It's not an undisturbed peace, but it's the inclusiveness of past, present, and future.

[28:35]

And in the metasutta, this is expressed in this way. All living beings, whether weak or strong, in high or middle or low realms of existence, small or great, visible or invisible, near or far, born or to be born, may all beings be happy. So there are very few absolute conditions that can be applied to this hope or the wish for the happiness of all beings. And in Simon's account with his meeting with Carl, that excruciating intimacy and ambiguity, I think Simon sort of brings Carl back to life and allows his... remorse, his humanness, his fear of death, all those things to be alive so that we can experience that in those circumstances. And writing that story, just like if we tell our stories about a time when we were hurt, we know we're going to be in this position of being both judged and forgiven, understood.

[29:50]

and misunderstood. And I think that that's one of the courageous things that people do when they talk about, write a book like The Sunflower, or talk about the situation in South Africa, all those things, that courage. One of the commentators in The Sunflower writes, in recent years, I have found myself drawn to the notion of Gilgul, reincarnation. Perhaps God will send this man back to the world, and he will live a life in which he resists evil and does much good. And I think that's a wish that could apply to many of us on a sort of small or grand scale. So love and forgiveness inform wisdom. In that third way towards forgiveness and resolution, in which both sides drop their self-justification, and agree on steps they can take together to move forward, it's the hardest, but it's most hopeful for a long-term resolution.

[30:58]

So there has to be a context for the difficulty and its resolution. And I think if the third way is even partially successful, what happens between those involved affects everyone. The metasuta ends... Standing or walking, sitting or lying down, during all one's waking hours, let one practice the way with gratitude, not holding to fixed views, endowed with insight, freed from sense appetites. One who achieves the way will be freed from the duality of birth and death, or, in the original, will not be reborn. So as one reflects on that sort of ever-extending function of karma and impermanence, The concept of birth, death, and rebirth is part of ethical development. It's a way to perceive the future as it moves through the past and the present as holding a possibility and opportunity for the enlightenment of all beings.

[32:04]

The bodhisattva ideal that we try to understand and live in this impossible way includes all the struggles and the ambiguities both for ourselves and for others in the context of wisdom, concern for what is conducive to well-being or the good of all, and peace. Perceiving truth and love together makes forgiveness possible, and that is a rare gift which we can be grateful to receive or to offer. Thank you very much. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click Giving.

[33:07]

May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[33:10]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_96.94