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, everybody. Can you hear me? Good. Well, thank you for the introduction and thank you so much for your technical support. Thank you everybody for being here and coming to lecture. I see so many Dharma friends from my Sangha, Dharma brothers and sisters, people who we've practiced together for decades, and people who I'm seeing for the first time. I would like to encourage you to sit comfortably. And if your camera is off, you can stand, walk, or lie down comfortably.

[01:04]

Actually, it won't bother me if you stand, walk, or lie down, if that's the way to maintain a sense of rhythm and comfort as you hear this talk and as you respond internally and later externally. So... You know, the workshop was described as love and power relationship. And today, I specifically want to go into the shadow side of intimacy, the shadow side of relationship, because I think it's really important. And to do that, I would like to... just show a couple of photos first. Actually, I want to show you first this photo.

[02:10]

And this is my teacher, Sojin, Mel Weitzman, and me. And the time is... in the mid-1990s. And we're studying, we're having coffee and preparing for my Dharma transmission. And the intimacy of Dharma transmission began with the fight. So I had been assisting Sojan and Tenshin Roshis. They were abbots together. And there couldn't be two different styles of a basial leadership. I don't know if you know them, but they had complete opposites. The only thing they agreed on was the Dharma. But they basically disagreed from their personalities and from their sense of priorities in life.

[03:16]

And agreed on the Dharma, but disagreed on... many important decisions about how to study the Dharma. So I had a wonderful example in those two teachers, both of whom were sincere all the way from the inner light to the tips of their fingers with everybody. And yet, as the assistant, you know, the assistant is just kind of sitting there taking notes and, you know, and getting things, doing stuff to support the teachers. And that was my training. But the other training that I was getting was in fair fight. Fair fighting. Where annoyance, irritation, anger. were clearly reflected, for instance, when it came time to write some big document or to decide how to do something.

[04:23]

And I would be like frantically trying to take notes on two completely different points of view. And then they would come to some unified position and present it to the Sangha. And that's what we would do. And the solution was so much richer and more mature and longer lasting because of that feedback that they gave each other. And because of how they survived annoyance with difference, I got some very valuable lessons about practice. Those were to hold me in good stead. When I had really enjoyed my position as the abbot's assistant, and one day it was about time for work meeting, and at the beginning of every work day at San Francisco Zen Center, for people who don't live there or haven't been to live there, there's a circle that's announced with a...

[05:40]

a han, which is a wooden instrument that makes a percussive sound or a drum or another sound. So at Tassajara, it's announced with a han. And then there's a work, actually, no, there's a work drum. I'm trying to remember Tassajara. There's a work drum. You can correct me if I'm wrong. And the work drum goes something like, ba-dum, ba-dum. Ta-da, ta-da, [...] ta-da. And then there's a space of about five minutes in which everybody gathers in a circle at Tassajara or in the city. And then there's a peace bell that goes something like bong. We stand in Shashi silently to ring that bell. So between those two, between the drum that makes you enthusiastic and the peace bell that allows you to settle, Sojin Roshi came up to me and he said, your time as abbot's assistant is coming to an end.

[06:51]

I want you to be Tenzo. Tenzo is the head cook. And immediately I thought, oh, no. That sounds really hard. And I said, I don't want to be Tenzo. And Sojin kind of dug in his heels and he said, I want you to be Tenzo. And I said, no, I don't want to be Tenzo. And then he said, I want you to be Tenzo. And I said, if it's so important to you, why don't you be Tenzo? And people are kind of gathering and going, oh. And then he just stood there and he said, I want you to be tens up. Okay. And then the following Wednesday night, which was the city center lecture,

[08:00]

Sojan Roshi gave a talk about the importance of the Zen kitchen as a practice place. And I was training as Tenzo. And then we had the little kitchen work meeting right after the regular meeting that day. And then suddenly... So Jin Roshi was there, and he was standing in front of the person who hands out the assignments and manages the crew, who's called the Fukutan, which means the person who helps the Tenzo. And I thought, uh-oh, what's going to happen now? And what happened was he put his hands together like this and turned to the Fukutan and gave the Fukutan. his full attention. And then he said, I'm here to volunteer.

[09:02]

What would you like me to do? And the Fukaten kind of went, wow, inside, but I can see that body reaction. And then the Fukaten said, apricots. And then Sojin Roshi said, how would you like me to do them? And the Fukutan showed him, and then they bowed, and then Sojin Roshi stood at the table, you know, stood at the table, chopping the april pots, with a body language that was upright, open, and deep.

[10:02]

And it was like time stopped, and the whole kitchen became peaceful and harmonious. And it hadn't been, you know. So, you know, when people get together, sometimes they do get annoyed with each other, and The abbots weren't the only people who were annoyed with each other. When I came to the kitchen, I found that everyone could be annoyed with each other and still practice together. And the very beginning of that was someone was standing there chopping. And the person next to them said, that's not how we do it. And that person said, And the other person kept criticizing them, and then suddenly we were having a fight in the kitchen, and it was supposed to be silent. And then I thought, oh, no, what do I do?

[11:08]

What do I do? And that's the story for another time, what I actually did. What I would like to focus on now is the body language that Sojin Mel Weitzman Roshi used. when he was in the kitchen. And I would just like to introduce the body language by showing some pictures of Maitreya Buddha. And so I've put together a little panel with Maitreya Buddha for you to see. Maitreya Buddha is the Buddha of the future. Maitreya Bodhisattva is a future Buddha. So right now Maitreya's Bodhisattva is And in the future, Maitreya will be a Buddha. And Maitreya is often seen as very, very serene. And in other versions, like Hote, Maitreya is seen as very happy. But today I would like to talk about Maitreya, the weeping Buddha, the weeping Bodhisattva, actually, who will be a future Buddha.

[12:22]

And so this photo is from Koryuji Temple, and there are two Maitreya Buddhas side by side. In Japan, Maitreya is called Miroku. And Miroku Bosatsu. And one of them is serene, like this, with a very peaceful face. And the other one is crying. just think about that for a minute. You can hold the picture of weeping miroku in your heart. And why would a person who's a bodhisattva and going to be a Buddha in the future take time to weep? What could that benefit? what could be the benefit for beings of having someone who is devoted and dedicated to the inner light take time to weep.

[13:35]

So nevertheless, whether we don't know or whether we do know, we can create a body that is tall enough and wide enough, and deep enough to safely hold our tears, our anger, our frustration, our despair, our anything. And we can, even if we've slipped and allowed our despair, our anger, or our you know, sorrow to run us. Even if there's generations of despair, anger, sorrow, frustration, rage, traumatization, or whatever there is causing us to be distorted in our reactions in the present day.

[14:44]

We can still create a body that's tall enough, wide enough, and deep enough to safely hold those reactions and cultivate the seeds of light in us. We can mourn where we're not Buddha, and we can rejoice as we safely hold those reactions. and allow them to transmute in the fire of our experience and in the earthiness of reality. They can transmute into awakening. And so the shadow side of practice allows our practice its uprightness to be strengthened. and stabilized, its openness to be expanded, and its depth to be experienced and expressed.

[15:55]

And we can learn this through the body of zazen, through Buddha mudra. So Maitreya's face of serenity could be seen as a state that Maitreya Buddha's in. or as a practice that Maitreya Buddha is doing. So if you remember, the weeping of Maitreya didn't ruin the posture of Maitreya. And we can be that way too. So let's look at some of the physical qualities that we can establish in Zazen posture. that awaken the possibility of holding anything that comes up as if it were arising in Buddha's pure land. Maitreya is often associated with pure land.

[16:57]

And the practices that we do with Maitreya Buddha are often devotional or looking towards a pure way of seeing anything that comes up. So what are some of the physical postures and actions that help us to hold life in that way, in this way? Let's study them in the body. So what I'd like to ask you to do, remember Hote and how Hote just goes like this with happiness? You can start by just expressing happiness in your upper body in some way that you can, okay? And allow yourself to feel the impact of that, okay, no matter what else is occurring in life. And it's been a very difficult week, right? No matter whether you're living in the U.S. or anywhere else or whatever your political position or political spectrum position is, it's been a challenging week in so many different ways.

[18:11]

So let's look. Just for a moment, like if you're sitting on a chair or on a cushion, you can do this upright. If you're lying down, I'll explain a different way of doing it. If you're walking, I'll explain a different way of doing it. So if you're sitting on a chair or cushion, take the outer hand and hold the seat of your chair or the bottom of your cushion. And just steady your arms so that you can draw the inner shoulder blades slightly forward without strain. If you're standing, have your arms by your sides with the palms facing forward. And your shoulder blades will come towards the back of your chest. And you can do that if you're walking too. And that will help the front of the body express itself. You'll notice that, and you can let go of that if you can maintain that, the torso action that you just felt.

[19:20]

And notice how at the beginning of inhalation, after the pensive moment at the end of exhalation, there's kind of a space. And then in the beginning of the exhalation, the feeling of who I am begins to arise. You might have to... get meditative to be able to notice this. So if lecture's too exciting to notice it, then just hold that thought for the next time you do zazen, okay? But you can try it a couple times if you want to just steady your arms. And then as you inhale, let the lower diaphragm open to receive the inhalation. You'll be able to feel that at the beginning of inhalation, there's kind of a rising mind. which is a rising of the self. And you'll notice how at the end, if you hold your chest up as you exhale, as the chest stays up and the body empties of breath, there's a kind of emptying out, not just of breath, but of the sense of self.

[20:29]

Okay, so you could try that if you want for a couple breaths. And this steadying of the arms and torso, is one of the postural features of Maitreya Buddha to hold anything. So this feature of making the body upright enough to hold anything is one of the postural features of Maitreya. But the content of what Maitreya holds, the developmental content of what Maitreya holds is pain and joy, the responses to pain and joy. And so we find that there's a long process of awakening for Maitreya Bodhisattva in which the pure land of Maitreya becomes more and more capacious.

[21:37]

It always stays of the nature of friendliness or loving kindness, but it expands to be able to appreciate the opening quality or gateway qualities of pain and also the gateway qualities of pleasure without averting from pain or attaching to pleasure. And we call those openings to that compassion and and sympathetic or empathetic joy. You can create the capacity for that in the body as well. So for instance, when we feel pain, often our diaphragm becomes hardened in one place or another. Our body becomes withdrawn or narrow in front. If you think about painful experiences, if somebody's in pain, or experience sorrow, they often take a posture as if they were being gut-punched.

[22:41]

But we can actually open the posture to even the feelings of pain. And one of the ways to do it is by stabilizing a sense of physical enjoyment through the body. So what I'm going to ask you to do is just to bring your arms out to the side, whether you're standing, walking, sitting, or lying down. If you're lying down, you can have your palms back of the hands flat on the floor and bring your arms flat on the floor and slightly press your arms. But if you're standing, you can turn your hands up, your elbows up, your upper arms up, and then open the collarbones and the inner shoulder blades. and lift the chest so that the area right under the collarbones becomes full. And then you can put your hands back in the mudra, and you'll feel literally, the body's very metaphorical in this way, a wider sense of tolerance for suffering.

[23:53]

So we worked with uprightness, with heart support, and... with tolerance as features of Maitreya's posture for pain. But what about for joy? Okay, so what I'm going to ask you to do now is to, if you're in a chair or on a cushion, you can place your hands, again, under the cushion or under the seat of the chair. If you're standing or walking, you can bend your arms. Actually, everyone can bend your arms. Don't hold your chair. Just bend the arms and have the palms face each other. And make the upper arms very stable or solid. And now spread or open the chest to the arms. Okay, so that is another way to... That's a way to feel...

[25:00]

and hold joy in the body, that no matter how expansive it is, it's bounded by the arms. So it's safely held. And you can bring that into your sitting posture if you put your hands into the mudra, let the arms be stable, and feel what that gives. So the ups and downs of pleasure and pain can be safely held. And when we can hold ups and downs with always being upright, open, and deep, that is the posture of Maitreya Buddha, who can weep or laugh with abandon and turn everything that happens, over to harmonious existence in the Buddha's pure land.

[26:08]

Okay? So, anyway, I've spent a lot of time on how to create a posture that opens the possibility of future awakening. while holding the emotional challenges and celebrations of the present moment. And that to me is the beauty of the visualization of Maitreya as a bodhisattva, who waits to become a Buddha because not all situations have been responded to. pleasures, and pains have been held. As long as there's one pleasure or pain, one sorrow or attachment that hasn't been held and transformed, Maitreya remains, Maitreya's Buddhahood remains in the future.

[27:20]

And that's why Maitreya is a bodhisattva. Bodhisattva means awakening being. turning over those emotions to the light that's inside all of us and safely holding it there so that it can be appreciated, held up, and transformed to the fulfillment of our deepest wish for and with all beings. So... What does this have to do with intimacy? So far I've just talked about intimacy with the self. Intimacy with the first moment of selfhood after the exhalation is over and the inhalation begins. So far I've just talked about that. But what about when something happens? What about when you're asked to go to become the head cook and you don't want to?

[28:21]

There's annoyance between two people you idealize and you get scared and frantically take notes to handle your fear. You know, just speaking, just hypothetical, that really never happened to me. Nothing like that ever happens to me. I have no shadow because I'm a completely awakened Soto Zen Buddhist teacher and nothing bothers me. I see no evil. Everything's fine. Fine. It's just fine. So anyway, just saying that the point of having people who train and become examples for other people is not that things would stop happening to them. It's not that they would never experience a reaction ever again. It's not that we're aiming for perfection.

[29:22]

Besides the settled, upright, open, deep posture, there has to be a dynamic tension. Otherwise, there's no transformation and no awakening. There has to be the fire of what happens and how we hold it and how we make mistakes holding it to show us the limits of our capacity in the world. This is true whether we're an individual, whether we're a relationship, which is like a body that's not two and not one, whether we're an institution, which is a corporate body that holds a relationship with the world, or whether we're a culture that's a kind of a, you know, like a zeitgeist that holds, you know, our dream life. our imagined and potential life in a structural way.

[30:28]

So what is the shadow? Why don't we start with interpersonal relationship? Because it's more visible in interpersonal relationship. And that's why Dave and I have been focusing on interpersonal relationships and on... love between people for the past several years. The past several years, we've been doing these workshops twice a year. But what you don't see is that Dave and I have been studying this material and trying to work with it. And he's been like, I don't know how many books he has written over the past five years. He seems to just be able to write books and focus on these topics and bring them up in very accessible ways. So if you haven't read any of his books, I highly recommend books like How to Be an Adult in Relationship. And he's written a couple that talk about the shadow side. And so what is the shadow side of intimacy?

[31:36]

Maybe it's a little non-threatening to say, okay, well, if we're working with metta practice or the practice of maitri or loving kindness, As we move through the friendliness, compassion, sympathetic joint, equanimity, which are kind of a heart education, they train the capacity of the heart to hold the insights that we experience in Zazen. So the heart-mind has to be trained. Otherwise, we can have the most profound insights in the world and still be complete jerks, individually and collectively. That is possible. It has been known to happen. But we don't want it to happen. We want to develop. So what are the possibilities? What are we working with as we move through those? So I want to say that each step of the four Mahabrahma Viharas takes us away from seeing the world or other people or ourselves as an object and develops a subjective understanding

[32:43]

in a very particular way. So for instance, if we have hardened concepts like repulsiveness and limitations on our best intentions, but we may still need to hold other people as objects for ourselves. I may have to say, okay, my twin sister, okay, sister, you are you and I'm me. We're identical twins, so differentiation, big deal for us. Okay, you are you, I am me. But there still is that time, you know, do you remember that boyfriend I had when we were in high school and what you did? You know, so there might be a concept that's been hardening since I was in high school. And working with friendliness allows me to, or loving kindness, allows me to remember that in the context of our entire relationship.

[33:47]

And instead of holding my twin at a distance, because of that past karma, I can create a shared story or shared experience when there is friendliness or loving kindness. So it becomes more not two, not one. But there's still a sense of objectification. Suppose that I've had a habit of cruelty towards my twin sister in relationships for all of that time. My reactions around intimacy are distorted because I'm scared that... You know, whenever I have someone who I care about, my twin sister's going to come in and say, she doesn't really do this. She never does this. She only did it once when we were like 14 years old. Really, she's not like that at all. I'm just setting up like a straw person so that we have something to talk about.

[34:53]

But she really is not like that. She has a much better sense of humor and tolerance for people than I have ever had. Really. But, you know, suppose I was cruel to her. You know, like, suppose that, like, when bad things happened to her, I kind of went inside, nanny, nanny, bo, bo, and you still my boyfriend, or whatever, and saw that as a justification to get back at her in subtle ways. Well, I could work on that through being able to feel the shared pain and so cruelty is addressed through compassion and then what about if I am very well practiced in loving kindness and I'm into compassion and have practiced it for a long time well I can get kind of bored and slightly burned out by the practice of always being involved in

[36:01]

pain and being able to feel together pain. And so there's this aversion and boredom, which is a more subtle form of objectification, which are addressed through empathetic joy. And then finally, what if I kind of attach to the possibility of awakening or the benefits of friendliness and so on? That greed is addressed through equanimity. I don't have to be excited by the compassionate superpowers that come with focusing on the four immeasurables. So I have to understand that my real enemy is ill will, whether it's gross or subtle. That what can fool me and make me stop short of real intimacy that has a full range is is like a drama of affection and aversion, which can be gross or subtle.

[37:05]

And my real intention is to be able to explore the pure land of not one, not two. So I need to keep working at the foundation to notice hindrances or blockages and create not just a physical structure, but the emotional structure that's cued by that physical body of uprightness, openness, and depth and capacity. So I just want to point out some of the shadow things that can come up, whether we're working with ourselves, whether we're working with another, or whether we're working with a larger group of people or all beings. For instance, like if we were angry, let's say we were angry at injustice, a cultural injustice. So one of the things that we could do is if we were angry at a cultural injustice, we could get over-involved with revenge.

[38:19]

and not be willing to repair. We could be bored by the process of repair and actually be more interested in, okay, so for instance, let's say sexism. Let's say I got some really important, massively important position, and men came to me and said, you know, there's so many women who in positions of power and authority in your administration that I don't really have anyone to relate to. And then, you know, I could say something like, nah, let's talk about it in 1,500 years. You know, that imbalance stands because we've got 1,500 years to make up for, or 15,000 years, or whatever it is, a large... amount of years to make up for. So I'm getting mine. You got yours.

[39:21]

I'm getting mine. So too bad. Suck it up. Okay, so that's called abuse. That's called the shadow of abuse. Okay, so instead, we have to be willing to understand both sides of the duality with compassionate, empathetic joy, so that we can repair instead of retaliate. And suppose we can be vengeful in any relationship and so on. So that's an example of the shadow. Of course, anger always has a message, as do every emotion. All the emotions have languages. in which they are constantly giving us messages of what is needed for repair or non-objectification.

[40:22]

Okay, Matt, I see you opening your picture, which is a very, very subtle hint, which I appreciate that we're getting close to 11 o'clock. And I promise that I will be done with the lecture and ready to do Q&A between 11 o'clock and 11.05. Thank you very much for that. Okay? So another example of the shadow. Let's say, you know, no matter what happened in the United States in the last week, that we are grieving how divided the country is. Or let's say, no matter what happened in our relationship with our significant other, in our very tiny space in which we live with one other person, we are upset about something. I heard from a couple that have very different styles of where to put socks after you're done wearing them at the end of the day.

[41:30]

So one of the people in the couple thinks that you just take the socks off and you just leave them because it's time to relax. And the other person in the couple thinks that when you're done with those socks, you either roll them up and put them back if they're clean or you put them in the laundry bag if they're dirty. And this has been going on for 10 years. And now because they're together and the place that they live is small, this sock thing has become like an emblem for every single problem in their relationship. And so, you know, at first they were doing, you know, the thing that I was called into to speak about was that they didn't realize that they had this conflict about socks. This sounds so silly, doesn't it? Socks. But basically what they were doing was that they were denying that they had this problem about socks.

[42:33]

And so they were just getting more and more annoyed with each other. And they asked me to come in and kind of facilitate a conversation that was practice-based. And it turned out that the gateway into the entire issue was SOX. And I don't know what they're going to end up doing. I don't know if they're going to end up like, okay, for one week we get to leave the socks on the floor, and the next week we put the socks in the laundry basket, or we do something in between, like we have five minutes at the end of the day where we play basketball with the socks in the laundry basket. I don't know what they're going to do. But the main point from the point of view of the Maitreya Buddha practice is that the grief, is the thing that, the grief is the matter, the great matter, that Maitreya Bodhisattva stays on this earth to resolve, and that the resolution itself is the pure land to become Buddha.

[43:46]

And so the presets are a way, you know, are a specific way that we can work with this. All the practices of Zen work with this. And exactly how they work with this, I don't really want to, like, you know, kind of describe how they work with this. Instead, what I would like to do is invite us to work with this. Invite us to work with every emotion. on the wheel of emotions and every message that the emotion is giving. And what is the neutral message of that interactional emotion? Like for anger, it is, what is my boundary about socks? What is your boundary about socks? How do we negotiate those boundaries? What about respect is brought up in this longstanding conflict about socks? What issues about respect? And what needs do I have?

[44:48]

So that's the message of anger. So you see, when we turn to face the anger and acknowledge it with another person, we're open to feedback as a kind of a... So the anger can become a kind of compost for the expression of awakening in the relationship. Anyway, I'd like... I'd like to quote, Dave is also a Shakespeare, sorry, geek. He loves Shakespeare and really, yeah, I don't want to, actually, I don't want to denigrate. I'm not denigrating geekdom. I'm a geek as well. I'm a Zen geek and a yoga geek and many other kinds of geek. So I'm not denigrating geekdom. I'm using geek in its kind of complementary sense as a fanatic about a particular subject, which you study the beginning, the middle, and the end.

[45:57]

So Dave points out this quote from Taming of the Shrew. My tongue will tell the anger of my heart or else my heart, concealing it, will break. My tongue will tell the anger of my heart or else my heart, concealing it, will break. And just to reveal in a neutral way, What that emotion is brings up the possibility of using it as a gateway of establishing loving kindness with it, of safely holding its pains, of acknowledging its joys, and of finally

[47:07]

holding it up in the light of Buddhist pure land. Anyway, I offer this very brief introduction to the shadow side of intimacy for the benefit of your relationship with yourself, with your past and present, people and beings and for the benefit of all beings. May I be well, happy and free from suffering and the causes of suffering. May you be safe and well, happy and free from suffering and the causes of suffering. And may we, together with all beings, be well, be safe, happy, joyous, free from suffering and the causes of suffering.

[48:27]

Thank you very much. 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. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[48:54]

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