This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good morning. Welcome to Green Gulch Farm and Green Dragon Zen Temple. I'm always kind of amazed at... There's something about, you know, I don't know what you all think about this ritual, right? Very formal feeling here in this zendo. But there's a way that through this formality, I feel like, and through ritual, there's a way that we create a certain space and certain atmosphere. Yesterday, there was a different, there was a priest ordination ceremony here in this space.

[01:02]

Not too long ago, well, maybe a while ago, maybe almost 40 years ago, I was married in this zendo and it was a very different feeling. A few years before that, this was a barn. This was filled with hay, I believe, and I think the cows were down underneath in the lower zendo. And before that, This valley was home of Miwok Indians who probably used to spend quite a, because it was such a mild, beautiful coastal terrain. I've been, it's interesting, I've been reading Einstein's biography, and I've also been reading Dogen, the founder of Zen in Japan, and they both say exactly the same thing about time. which is that it doesn't exist the way we think it does, and that all of those events and all events are all happening, that there's a mystery around time.

[02:14]

What I want to do is start by practicing a little bit, not only with time, but by being in our... in our bodies. So let's sit together for a few minutes. So if you haven't already, find a way to sit where you can be comfortable and alert at the same time. Again, just dropping in. I know I'm asking you, you might have just been expecting you were just going to sit there and listen to me, but no, I'm asking you to do something. To just notice, starting with, just see if you can notice your body any places in your body that might be tense holding see if you can bring attention to any places of holding and just relax softening the shoulders relaxing the muscles in the face the jaw maybe softening the belly a little bit just noticing

[03:24]

this body. And perhaps seeing what it's like to bring your attention to the breath, noticing that breathing is happening. Often we don't pay any attention to the body or the breath without trying to change anything. See if you can bring a kind of a childlike curiosity. What is this breath? Who is it that's breathing? What does it feel like to inhale and exhale? Again, in terms of playing with time, recognizing that this breath has never happened before and won't ever happen again.

[04:39]

Can you appreciate just being here, breathing, being alive. Can you hear the sound of the wind? Can you feel your heart beating? Playing experimenting a little bit, if you can, with letting go or at least reducing ideas of doing it right or doing it wrong. What would that be like to drop those ideas and judgments and just notice breathing, body, thinking mind?

[05:49]

We're not going to stop thinking mind. See if you can even appreciate your thinking mind. And if thoughts, judgments are there, notice them and see if you can bring your attention back to the breath, to the body. Allowing your full experience. Experience your experience. Just being here alive, human, whether you're lonely or sad or happy and full, whatever it is, just allowing it, noticing right now, breathing, breathing together. Just this effort of being present

[06:52]

supports everyone else around you. And those around you making this effort are supporting you. There's a few lines from a poem. Do you remember that time and light are kinds of love And love is no less practical than a coffee grinder or a safe spare tire. Who can find the time to sit out in the sun and listen? Do you remember that time and light are kinds of love? What if love were the default?

[07:55]

state of being human when we let go of everything else. Can you feel it? Can you be kind? Cultivate some kindness, warm-heartedness to yourself. Perhaps sending that feeling of kindness and love out to those that you love and care for and those here sitting together. And just coming back to your own experience, noticing what it's like to be here, alive, safe, letting go of doing anything extra.

[09:00]

Seeing, allowing love as a practice. To allow whatever is most important to you right now. keeping it simple, just simply breathing in, breathing out. And then let's all bring our attention back to being here with each other.

[10:13]

Thank you. I first came to Green Gulch. I was actually living at Tassajara, a Zen monastery. Carmel, near Carmel Valley. And I was tapped on the shoulder one day and said, it's time for you to go to Green Gulch. And we want you to learn and be in charge of farming with horses. And I thought for sure that someone had misread my resume. I like to say that I was pretty good at gymnastics in high school and I liked the horse. But I had never, ever seen the four-legged horses.

[11:17]

And I knew nothing about farming or welding and horse equipment. But I think this is, to me, a beautiful part of this practice is that I... I completely threw myself in to that work, and I brought all the love that I could bring, and I just fell in love with these horses and that way of life. One of the things that happened when I was living here, I got a call one day that my my mother called to say that my father was quite ill and thought that he probably didn't have long long to live so it was clear that I needed to go back and see what what I could do and at least go be with my my father a couple things my my father was quite angry maybe disappointed

[12:32]

in that I had, you know, being, maybe it's a little bit different now, I'm not sure, but at that time, leaving college and coming to Zen Center did not, was not high up on my parents' list of things that they wished for me. And in fact, all of the, I noticed, I think, especially then, and again, maybe some now too, you know, that, you know, as parents, we have great, We want our children to be happy and healthy and successful and take care of themselves. And I think it was just so foreign to my father what I was doing at Zen Center. And when I went back, he was in New Jersey. And what I discovered was that my father was quite ill. He had cancer. And in the hospital, they had him heavily medicated and even literally tied to his bed is what I found.

[13:45]

And my mother and older brother somehow didn't know how to deal with this situation. And I... I had some incredible support systems back here at the Zen Center. There were two women, a friend and a teacher, who both were helping me to find my way within the medical system. I could never have done this by myself, where they had said, untie your father. Tell the doctors to stop giving him medication and let your father know exactly what's happening. Have a real conversation with your father. And I look back and somehow I was able to do that. And I can remember little by little my father gaining more kind of awareness and consciousness and I was able to

[14:56]

to have this conversation with my father, letting him know that he was quite ill, that the doctor said that he probably didn't have long to live. And at the same time, I wanted to provide some hope and let him know that you never know, right? You never know what's going to happen. But in that moment of having that... that conversation and meeting with my father, something really powerful happened. There was a kind of love and meeting there. And my father looked at me and said, I don't understand what you've been doing, but whatever it is, keep doing it. And it was one of the most I still think of it, and it comes up for me in this space of that meeting and that story.

[16:00]

And I feel like some of the training that I was getting that I wasn't even aware of, this training of just being more alive, being more... and being in love, being able to love the work of being more aware, present, and in relationship. And that's actually what I want to talk about this morning, is this particular practice that it's the practice of love and the practice of loving the work. And there's a little bit of a backstory here to fill in that particular language. So jumping ahead in my own sort of life story, I went from, you know, being at here and Tassajara and about 10 years of my life being a resident here at the Zen Center,

[17:18]

and naturally went right from Tassajara to going to business school and found myself several years ago teaching Google engineers how to be meditation teachers. And I've spent much of my life, I describe myself as a stealth Zen teacher in the business world. And I've spent a good deal of time at places like Google. And in this particular instance of teaching Google engineers how to be meditation teachers, I brought in my good friend and Zen teacher who speaks here regularly, Norman Fisher, to come speak to these Google employees. And there was a meeting at Google of about a dozen people Google employees and me and a couple people I was working with.

[18:22]

And during this meeting, I realized that it hadn't been made clear to Norman exactly what we wanted him to do. And someone else had written up the agenda for what was going to happen. And I noticed on the agenda, it said, Norman gives talk about how to be a meditation teacher. And I very... kind of quietly put that in front of Norman so he could see what he was expected to do. And he very nonchalantly got out a piece of paper and a pen and wrote down these seven practices. And I was just completely moved by Norman's one ability to do that and also these seven practices that he wrote down and gave this, I thought, very encouraging practice beautiful, wise talk about. And the seven practices that he came up with were love the work, do the work, don't be an expert, connect to your own pain, connect to the pain of others, depend on others, and keep making it simpler.

[19:43]

You're pretty good, I think. Love the work, do the work, Don't be an expert. Connect to your own pain. Connect to the pain of others. Depend on others. Keep making it simpler. When I heard these, I immediately said, these practices go far beyond how to be a meditation teacher at Google. These practices, in a way, define how I not only want to work together but how I want to live my life and I wrote up something and I put them on everyone's desk who I was working with on my team and I started writing about them and little by little I could feel that they were starting to turn into a book and I started to feel funny about it until I called Norman and told him that I was really appreciating the seven practices and they were turning into something book-like and I wanted to know how he felt about it.

[20:55]

And of course Norman's response was, what seven practices? I have no idea what you're talking about. So I read the seven practices to Norman and he said, oh, those are pretty good. Good luck. Good luck with your book. So I want to talk about especially this first practice of which I think is kind of so basic and important of the practice of love of loving the work. So to me it's loving the work of being human. Loving the work of being human, loving the work of being alive, present, helping others in relationship. And I think so much of Zen practice is about loving the work.

[22:00]

There's these core vows that actually we will do, I believe, right after this talk. Beings are numberless. I vow to save them. Delusions are inexhaustible. I vow to end them. These are, to me, these are statements of love. They may be inherently contradictory and impossible, but love doesn't care about contradictions and impossibility. There's something about just love. Love welcomes a challenge, a challenging path, something that seems impossible. And if we're honest with ourselves, we are impossible beings. How did we get here? Someone told me about a new television show recently called

[23:10]

Some of you may have seen it. It's called Forever. And it looks like maybe not. In the first episode of this TV series, you're introduced to a husband and wife. In the second of the series, the husband dies. And I thought, this is interesting, this series. Just the second episode and the husband dies. In the third episode, the wife dies. And at the end of the third episode, the husband and wife appear in some other place. They're in some other place and they have no idea what's happening or where they are. And at some point... the wife turns to the husband and says, what are we doing here?

[24:12]

And he looks at her and says, what were we doing there? So what are we doing here? And I think that, to me, these practices, and particularly, what are we doing here? I think we're learning to love. I think we're learning, little by little, to love ourselves. to love ourselves, to love being alive, to love others. Despite all of the insanity, right, all the things that are happening in our world may not seem, this may not seem so obvious, but I think it's the thread underneath, the thread that kind of holds us all together, that allows for us to Really to be present, to be open, to feel what's possible, to be able to even imagine beings are numberless.

[25:17]

I vow to save them. Delusions are inexhaustible. I vow to end them. Some of you may be familiar with some work called The Hero's Journey. Right, it's a, there's a whole, a Joseph Campbell kind of studied, this anthropologist who studied and found that throughout, it seemed like throughout all of time and throughout many, many various cultures, there was a similar path that human beings seemed to be on. And he defined it in these kind of, I think it was 17 different ways. parts of the path. But the first part is called the calling, is recognizing this call, which is, to me, it's the call of what is it that you love?

[26:23]

What is it that we all desire to return to? In Zen language, Zen parlance, they sometimes refer to the the most primary request? What is the most primary request that you have in this lifetime? What is it that's most important? What is it that you're called to do? And again, in some way, the commonality is that we're all kind of called to return to to our true home, our true nature. But it takes some practice. So to me, it starts with this practice of loving the work.

[27:34]

I think I do want to try something I think I want to ask, I know this is unusual in this very formal zendo, but I'd like to suggest that in a moment that you actually turn to a person next to you. Ideally, it would be someone that you don't know, but if not, that's okay. Just find, I'm going to ask in a moment, find a person, have a short Introduce yourselves, but don't just say your name. Don't go down the road of talking about your life history. Introduce yourselves, and just have a very short conversation where you're addressing the question, this is what I most love is, or what I most love about this work of being human.

[28:37]

What do I most love about this work of being human? And see what happens. And we'll do this literally for four minutes. So make sure both people get a chance to speak and listen. But I want to encourage you that... It's an opportunity to practice listening. Just see if you can listen to what the other person has to say. What is it like to really listen, to be present? And if you're speaking, see if you can maybe surprise yourself. Say something that you haven't, perhaps, you might be surprised by. Allow yourself to drop in to some other place. We're not trying to impress each other, right? We're not, you know, and it's okay to be a little awkward even to bring your kind of, you know, we started by doing this sitting practice.

[29:45]

See if you can bring that kind of awareness of breath, body, mind into this very short conversation. And then Kristen will ring a bell in exactly four minutes. And then we'll, so it's about two minutes each, but we're not going to ring a bell in the middle. You're going to have to figure it out by yourselves. So find a person. Short conversation. What do you love about this work? Please, go ahead. I can join them.

[30:56]

Three's okay. Threesomes are okay. If someone needs a partner, jump in. Threes are okay. .

[32:48]

. [...] No. Thank you.

[34:15]

Thank you. All right. If you can finish, finish up. Thank your partners and come on back. Okay. We need to finish. Thank your partners and come on back. Great, thank you. So I'm curious, did anyone make a new best friend? I sometimes do this in these big companies and there's so much energy as though I kind of joke and say, don't they let you talk to each other?

[35:18]

And yes, here they don't let you talk to each other. Buddhism has this whole vast kind of literature around love. In a way, you could say it's all. You could say all of Zen stories. But there's particular practices that some of you may be familiar with. There's four practices called the four immeasurables, which are basically practices of love, which are loving kindness, the practice of compassion, the practice of joy, and the practice of equanimity. But I think in the short time, I wanted this to be kind of a short talk. So I want to briefly mention, address a little bit, like why is it so hard? Why is love so hard? And why is the world so messed up? And I think there's many ways we could talk about this, but I like looking at it in a way...

[36:23]

I've gotten to hang out a lot recently with scientists and evolutionary biologists. And I think the Buddha, the historical Buddha, is often referred to as a scientist. I also think he studied evolution, in a sense studied what is it about the human condition that this practice needs to counteract or be an antidote for. One of my good Google scientist friends is very fond of saying, we are descendants of the nervous apes, right? The apes that were chill, they all got killed, right? That we have evolved as in the human species, it's thought from some perspective that to do one thing and one thing only, which is to survive and pass on our genes.

[37:26]

And it's really good, in order to do that, it helps if you're always scanning for threats, right? If you think about what it was like not that long ago, right? 100, 200, but if you go back in time, being aware of threats. And we can, you know, like... The other day, I was walking in the hills just right above here, and my foot touched a stick as I was walking, literally, and something in my body thought it was a snake. And I could, in that instance, before I was even conscious, I could feel all of the chemistry in my body change and get ready to for action, right? Everything changed. Snake. Now, this happens in very subtle ways and not so subtle ways that we are prepared for threats.

[38:32]

And I also think this is probably why for most of us, most human beings, I've noticed, have this internal self-critic going. It's almost like this internal voice that is can be critical or shame us or be mean to us. But actually, I think it just wants to keep us safe. It's just sort of built into us for our own safety. So we need to learn to become friends, I think, with this voice. I'm amazed I get to work with incredibly successful people people in the business world, but when I ask them what stresses them, it's self-doubt, self-doubt and self-criticism. It's the human condition. If you feel that, you're not alone. You're not alone.

[39:34]

It's part of the human condition. So we're all descendants of the nervous apes. We're also descendants of of the imaginative apes, right? We have this consciousness that can live in the world of the imagination. And usually what that means is we're imagining what's lacking and what we need, and we're imagining things that we need to be satisfied. We're built, right, you know, one meal, great, but then where's the next meal? entertainment, feeling good about ourselves, the world of sexuality, all that we are built to crave. We have evolved to always need something else. So this practice, even just the practice of meditation, is a way of becoming familiar with the nervous ape and

[40:43]

We're not going to root out, we don't have to worry about rooting out our ability for fight and flight, but we can become so intimate with the habit. We can root out the habitual ways that fear comes up, the habitual ways that we're reacting. The same with the imaginative ape, right? Of course we, you know, we need to eat, we need that next meal. But we can become more and more intimate with what is it that causes, what's the cause of our own always wanting something else. And we're also the descendants of the empathic apes. We are wired to feel the feelings of others But because of our relationship with these other apes, we tend to feel separate.

[41:48]

There's a sense of separateness because of our fear and because of our imagination. If we can become more and more familiar, intimate with this ape that can feel the feelings of others, we can drop into and practice with oneness and lack of separateness. Seeing similarities as a practice. So important. If we're going to survive as a species, I think that we need to become more adept at becoming familiar with the nervous ape, the imaginative ape. and the empathic ape in all of us. And I think what can we do to make the world a more peaceful place? I think change our relationship to fear, to craving, and to separation.

[42:51]

And meditation and Zen practice. This was the, I think, the aha of the Buddha and of ancestors and of... loving the work. But I think loving the work allows us to do these practices. Well, I have so much more to say, but I think I want to end by reading a poem. And I read just a few words of this poem during the meditation that I started with. It's a poem called The Word by Tony down near the bottom of the crossed out list of things you have to do today between green thread and broccoli you find that you have penciled sunlight resting on the page the word is as beautiful it touches you

[44:06]

as if you had a friend and sunlight were a present, he had sent you from some place distant as this morning to cheer you up and to remind you that among your duties, that among your duties, pleasure is a thing that also needs accomplishing. Do you remember that time and light are kinds of love, and love is no less practical than a coffee grinder or a safe spare tire. Tomorrow, you may be utterly without a clue, but today, you get a telegram from the heart in exile proclaiming that the kingdom still exists. the king and queen are alive, still speaking to their children, to anyone among them who can find the time to sit out in the sun and listen.

[45:21]

Do you remember that time and light are kinds of love, and love is no less practical than a coffee grinder or a safe spare tire? Tomorrow, You may be utterly without a clue, but today you get a telegram from the heart in exile proclaiming that the kingdom still exists. The king and queen are alive, still speaking to their children, to anyone among them who can find the time to sit out in the sun. and listen. I read this poem the other day. My daughter was home for Thanksgiving and I read this poem and tears started streaming down her eyes. She looked at me and she said, will you read this at my wedding?

[46:25]

She said, my daughter's getting married next month. Of course, I didn't hesitate, right? I think I will read this at her wedding, but I just love, to me, I hope we can all let these words, I think they're, you know, the, yeah, that, to put sunlight, sunlight and love on the list of things to do today, and, or maybe today it's enjoying the rain, just enjoying the rain and the beautiful, beautiful cool breeze in here and out there and the sound, the sound of the wind and the ocean. Thank you all very much. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our programs are made possible by the donations we receive.

[47:29]

Please help us to continue to realize and and actualize the practice of giving by offering your financial support. For more information, visit sfzc.org and click giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[47:50]

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