This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. My name is Susan O'Connell, and I'm in my 17th year of residency at San Francisco Zen Center. eight of which were spent here. And before I became a resident, I was just like you, sitting there on Sundays listening to the Dharma. So watch out. In recognition of the younger people here today, I would like to offer you a story, okay? I'm going to tell you a story, and then you can go with Nancy and the others and go enjoy your children's program, okay? So this is a story called The Girl Who Never Made Mistakes.

[01:05]

And I'll give you the book later so you can look at the pictures when you go out, okay? So Beatrice Bottomwell got up, matched her socks, and put them on the proper feet. She remembered to feed her hamster, Humbert, his favorite food, which was broccoli. And when she made sandwiches for herself and her brother Carl, she used exactly the same amount of peanut butter as jelly. When she stepped outside to greet her fans, she didn't forget to be polite. She had a lot of fans. They asked her if she had made her bed. She had. They asked her if she forgot to do her math homework. She hadn't. What about tonight's talent show, they asked. I'm ready, said Beatrice with a smile. After all, her juggling act had won three years in a row. Most people in town didn't know Beatrice's name. They just called her the girl who never makes mistakes.

[02:10]

Because for as long as anyone could remember, she hadn't. At school that day, Beatrice was on a cooking team with her two best friends, Millie and Sarah. And to make their giant rhubarb corn muffins, they needed four eggs. So Beatrice went to the refrigerator and carefully picked the eggiest eggs she could find. But on her way back, her legs slipped out from under her. The eggs went flying. Beatrice was about ready to make her first mistake. But she didn't. She landed on her back, leg in the air, caught one on her foot, two in her hands, and one in her mouth. That was close. Now, for the rest of the school day, Beatrice could not stop thinking about her almost mistake. At supper, Beatrice barely touched her food.

[03:13]

Is everything all right, kiddo? asked her dad. I'm worried I'll mess up tonight, said Beatrice, and everyone will be watching. Worry, he said with a smile. You don't make mistakes. Beatrice tried to smile, too. After supper, Beatrice got ready for the talent show. First, and it would help to have the picture book to see this, but first she woke up her hamster, Humbert. Next, she got the salt shaker from the kitchen table. And finally, she filled a big yellow balloon with water. So these are the things she's going to juggle. Her hamster, a salt shaker, and a water balloon. Now, she's done this three years in a row, so she knows what she's doing. When she got to the school auditorium, it was packed. Beatrice felt her stomach jumping around inside of her. You know what that feels like, right? When you have to stand up in front of class and say something, right? Like me, right now. Then she waited for her juggling music to begin.

[04:17]

That's her, the girl who never makes mistakes, said a woman. Oh, we know she'll be perfect, said the man. When the music started, she tossed Humpert into the air. Next, she added the salt shaker. And finally, the water balloon. She didn't miss a beat. The crowd was clapping with delight. But Beatrice noticed something odd about the salt shaker. Little black specks. were coming out of it. Suddenly in midair Humpert let out a big and because he was frightened his little claws went and grabbed the yellow balloon and popped it and raining down on Beatrice's head were all three things. Humpert pieces of balloon speckled fur with pepper

[05:23]

Beatrice, for the first time anyone could remember, had made a mistake. The music stopped. Beatrice didn't know what to do. Should she cry? Should she run? Then she looked up, looked up at Humford on her head, and he looked down, and she began to chuckle. And the chuckle turned into a laugh because he looked so silly. And then the audience began to giggle and then chuckle and then roar with laughter. And then they were all roaring with laughter until they couldn't even remember why they started laughing in the first place. That night, Beatrice slept better than she ever, ever had. In the morning, no fans greeted her. She got dressed and for no reason at all, she put on one polka dot sock and one striped one.

[06:29]

And this time when she was making her brother Carl's sandwich, she put the peanut butter and jelly on the outside. Carl loved it. Lunch was messy, but delicious. Now, people no longer called her the girl who never made mistakes. They just called her Beatrice. So that's the story. Maybe you've made mistakes. Maybe you haven't. Probably you have. So one good thing is to admit them. And then kind of be kind to yourself about them, right? And laugh. Because it was pretty silly. Okay? So here's the book. Is there... Do you want to take her? Olivia or something? Here. Do you want to take the book? Are you going outside or are you going to stay here? She's coming. Okay. Would you take that book? Thank you. Thank you very much.

[07:32]

Go enjoy your day. Hi. Hi, sweetie. What's your name? Finn? Finn. Finn, two Ns. We'd love to see that front if you'd like to move forward. Yeah, go ahead. Sure. And when you're done, you can give it to Olivia and she'll give it to me. So I'm going to talk to us grown-ups about mistakes too.

[08:46]

I was happy to see what a bright sunny day it was out here at Green Gulch because perhaps the sunniness of the day can take the edge off of the potentially painful territory of what it feels like to make a mistake. This year, my son was having a difficult time. Grown son, he's 42. And I did my best to make myself available to him. But ultimately, I couldn't cauterize his pain. And I was aware at that time this strong arising of shame for what seemed to be my participation as a mother in his maybe lack of ability of handling certain parts of his difficulty.

[09:57]

That pain was searing, searing pain. I've been talking to people about mistakes recently, and someone the other day said, I said, how do you work with your mistakes? And she said, the hardest ones are the ones in which others are harmed. So here is a parenting mistake in which I feel as if my son is harmed, has been harmed, and the harm potentially reverberates through his entire life. impulse at the time was, what do I do with this pain? And so I think some of the things I did are a few of the missteps that I think we all try to do. So I'll just tell you about them. I wanted to tell him I was sorry, but I'm pretty sure I wanted to tell him I was sorry so that he would forgive me and the pain would go away.

[11:07]

That's a conditional self-oriented purpose. I wanted him to castigate me. I wanted him to punish me in order to also make it completely go away as if it never happened. And I kept offering, you know, for my birthday, I would like us to have a dinner in which you can tell me anything you want to tell me. I mean, how many of you wanted to do this with your kids, right? Yeah, right. just tell me what a bad mother I was, and then, you know, it'll all be better. And my very wise son, was I helpful in that wisdom? I don't know. He avoided that conversation quite a bit. And eventually, in a conversation where he was in a lot of pain, he said something to me. I said, I understand. And he said, no, you don't. He said,

[12:09]

You didn't prioritize family over work. And he was right. What did that do? Did that take away the pain? Did it make it disappear? It somehow met it. It was met. Part of the pain was met with that interaction. But it didn't come from me leaning into him, asking for forgiveness. It came from some kind of conditions that allowed him to come forward and say that to me. And it was very non, there was no anger in his voice. It was just a fact. So. You know, when I was writing this talk, I wanted to say. You know, I know that as a mother, I made mistakes and then. I wanted to add a caveat.

[13:11]

I wanted to say, well, as a young mother, right? Because I also have shame. I want to control what you think of me. I don't want to be a person who would be the person I actually was. I don't want you to know that. This is part of this territory of shame, which I think is... Not such a skillful way to work with our mistakes. But look how instinctual it is. Habitual, let's say. I don't know how instinctual it is, but habitual for sure. Wanting to do whatever I need to do to make that thing, that action, go away. And then control my thoughts about myself and others' thoughts about me. But this is our human life.

[14:13]

This is our human life. And what is different now in my life that can help me work with this and maybe give you some tips too? This is a discovery process for me. I don't claim to have landed anywhere. But this is an important discovery process. Because... Ultimately, in talking about mistakes, ultimately, we're mistaken about everything, we think. Everything. There's great freedom in there. Great freedom in there. But not too soon. Don't go there too soon. Don't empty out the suffering too soon. So in in studying this strong arising that I was feeling, which I was calling shame, and I looked up various definitions of shame and spoke with people about that, and I realized that there's another word, there's another word, and I'm gonna arbitrarily pick a word that doesn't quite meet it yet, but it was the closest I could find, and that's regret.

[15:37]

And I'm working with them as different approaches. They could be seen as similar, and of course there is a similarity, but regret has a gradation in it. There's a coolness potentially in regret, at least the way I'm holding it. So one difference between shame, as I'm using it, and regret, And there's some wonderful TED Talks about this. There's a woman named Breen. Boy, I wrote her name down, and I'm sorry, I didn't bring that piece of paper. But there's a TED Talk in which she brings up shame, and one of the things she points out is that shame is thinking that I'm not perfect. And she uses the word guilt as the other word I'm going to use regret.

[16:44]

Regret is that the action was not perfect. So one thing about shame is it is very self-referential and self-reifying and establishing and solidifying. And in this practice, that's a warning sign. Because Regret could be seen as not self-oriented, but maybe oriented towards we're all in this together. The conditions arose for this action. There was an intention. There are consequences for that intention. But we're all in this together. It doesn't relieve the responsibility for any action. but it takes it out of the realm of control and punishment.

[17:48]

To me, if I look at mistakes using that word regret, it feels like it isn't engaged with that searing, paralytic shame. I've been trying to collect stories that people are willing to tell me about their mistakes. And I was told a story recently, this person down at Tassajara. How many of you don't know what Tassajara is? One. So it's a place in the Ventana wilderness, which in the winter, is closed for monastic practice. So monks go down and stay down in the valley for six months and do a lot of meditation and study. And then in the summer, it's opened up for anyone to come and do a personal retreat or to take workshops and be in this beautiful, beautiful valley. So this was during the closed time when the monks were in practice, in deep practice.

[18:59]

And this person, this man, was in the kitchen crew and had cut up little cubes of tofu and filled a hotel pan with it for the next day's meal. So he was carrying this into the big walk-in refrigerator, and as he stepped in, the pan slipped, and he dropped the tofu all over the well-trod floor in the walk-in. The shame of having made a mistake was so strong that all he could think to do was just scoop up the tofu, put it back in the pan, put it on the shelf and run. So then he went home. Yeah, it's funny. Right now it's funny. He went back to his cabin and absolutely could not sleep that night.

[20:00]

Could not sleep that night. I mean, here we are. We're in this practice and we're practicing the precepts. And we're lying, right? We're lying about our actions. We're hiding our actions. It's so highlighted in a situation like that. So the pain was strong. No sleep. Got up the next morning. Brought himself to walk up to the head of the kitchen and confess. Just like waiting to be killed or something, right? Waiting to die. Waiting to whatever, right? Because the ego... actually was waiting to die. It was begging to die, actually. Like, let me just die, will you? No, no, no, no, no, not me. This was not me. This was not me. I'm perfect. The little boy who never made mistakes. So the head of the kitchen turned to this person and said, well, let's just spritz off the tofu.

[21:01]

Spritz it off. So there's this like, you know, in the dishwasher, a big spritz thing. So you just dump it in a big colander and you just wash it off, right? That would never have occurred to the person frozen. Frozen and burning in the hell of shame. Paralyzed, not able to think of a very simple response. And the kind head of the kitchen met that and said, okay. No castigation. No reprisals. Kindness. This person has never forgotten that. Either the pain, the kind of watching what he did, or the kindness with which it was met. So shame can be so strong that we don't even want to acknowledge a mistake.

[22:09]

It kind of gets hidden in the potential for touching shame that kind of keeps the mistake over here and we deny it. Or, you know, I was a young mother, right? We lighten it. We try to lighten it, the responsibility. So we want this mistake to go away. And guess what? That's not possible. It's not possible for it to go away. It happened. It actually, there was a cause and there are effects. So what a waste of time in a way, right? All that energy trying to erase our life doesn't work. So shame has also an aspect of evaluation. I didn't do this well, or he or she didn't do this well. And it's negative and paralyzing.

[23:15]

And it's based on non-acceptance of oneself. Not being willing to accept oneself as actually the human being that we are, that I am. We all make mistakes. There's a statement in... I think it's in Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. One continuous mistake. What is Zen? One continuous mistake. It's a little bit bragging, I think. So shame can lead to depression and frustration rather than change or potential learning. We get stuck there. Now, the response that is very self-oriented, which is, you know, oh, I didn't do well. I meant to do better. You know, that can look like humility.

[24:18]

I wasn't a very good person. But, and this may be tricky for people, but it can also be a form of self-deprecating humility. Laziness. In the same way, and this is something that my teacher gave me many years ago, which is a koan for me. So I tend to work a lot. I work hard. I work many hours. I enjoy it. But my teacher said to me one time, overwork is another form of laziness. He got me right where I lived, right? Why do I work so hard so that no one thinks I'm lazy? Among other things. So this kind of I'm so bad, I'm so unworthy is a kind of laziness.

[25:22]

A laziness of not turning towards, just turning towards the action, the behavior where this kind of fire is radiating from, this kind of misalignment of who we want to be and what we did or what we said. That misalignment, there's kind of a friction there. There's flames. So saying I'm not worthy is one way of not looking at it. Not turning towards it. So Regret, on the other hand, could be regret for past unwholesome actions. It's kind of appropriate. It realizes that there was an error. There was a misalignment. But the coolness of it, the coolness of it, it gives us the potential to rededicate ourselves to not acting like that

[26:35]

When? Now. Now. You can't erase then, but how can we be right now? So we can regret the circumstances, which include our intentions and our ignorance, but they're not just our individual actions. It's unknowable. how and why things happen. We carve out little pictures that we can relate to that tell a story, but ultimately it's unknowable how things arise when they do. Is that news to you? He just made a kind of a sound. So how do we encourage the diminution shame and transforming it into more like regret.

[27:40]

Well, one way might be to recognize that the person who acted in a particular way doesn't exist anymore. Who are you holding on to? Where is she? You are different now. You are not the same. You are not disconnected. There is a continuum. But everything has changed. Everything has changed since that action. Even if it only happened ten minutes ago, everything has changed. So you look back at that person, that phantom, that idea, with compassion. person is your child. That is a child of you. It is a version, a younger version of you.

[28:50]

Treat that child the way you would treat your own child, the way I want to treat my child. I wanted to treat my child then, and I want to treat my child now. Understand the suffering the confusion, the ignorance that that person was experiencing at that time. Practicing on yourself widens it to be able to offer that same kind of understanding to others. Because we have an opportunity right now to practice ethically, ethically, with the breach of ethics. This is the response. Upright, kind, patient.

[29:51]

Tell that situation the truth. Don't make it worse than it is. Don't raise it up and put yourself down. Don't take what is not given from the situation. Use right speech with the situation. Be enthusiastic about looking at what happened. Work with all of the tools that our practice gives us. Don't hate her. Don't harbor ill will for the person that acted in that way, or for the circumstances that arose. So while shame has a sense of evaluation in it, the bodhisattva vows that we take, beings are numberless, I vow to save them,

[31:06]

Delusions are inexhaustible. I vow to end them. Dharma gates are boundless. I vow to enter them. Buddha's way is unsurpassable. I vow to become it. These are aspirational vows against which we do not judge ourselves or others. Do we break our vows? Or do we fall away from them? You know, in Zazen, we sit upright and balanced. But very, very seldom are we actually balanced. Most of the time, we're moving through balance, right? A little bit this way, a little bit that way, a little bit this way, a little bit that way. It's our life. Sometimes, you know, like a broken clock is right twice a day, right? Right? How often are we actually in full balance?

[32:08]

And so I lost myself. I just saw the clock and now I just, okay, I'm totally gone. I wasn't going to say that. Okay, so was that an error? So precepts are... when we receive the precepts, which I am so grateful. To me, there are many things about this practice and this whole experience of entering residential community and working with my fellow Zen students and the teachers and everybody that we come in contact with. This is an amazing experience. But it was highlighted for me, it began for me, when I had the opportunity to to study these precepts. And which were not that different from the commandments that I was taught when I was a child, except that they're called commandments, you know, as opposed to precepts and guidelines, which is really I prefer, but because I could break the commandments.

[33:28]

Right. You don't want to hear those stories, but Maybe you do, but you're not going to. So as a grown-up, to be in a ceremony, to study each precept, not killing, not taking what is not given, not misusing sexuality, all of these kind of ways of human behavior that can be helpful or harmful, to study them and then receive them consciously, purposefully, intentionally, In a ceremony in which everyone in the ceremony is not only given permission to give me feedback when I am not being upright, but encouraged to do so. You heard me say I didn't want to lie. Therefore, if you ever hear you think I'm lying, you have permission to say something to me about it. This was an amazing rebirth.

[34:29]

rebirth into the middle of a value system that I completely own, that I feel completely responsible for studying. So this precept work we do encourages us to be wise and compassionate. The wisdom Understanding that we're all in this together, that circumstances are completely unknowable in their vastness. And compassion, which is that kind of warm-hearted response to, oh, somebody just got hurt. What are we going to do about it? We're going to stand there in the middle of it with a warm heart, a non-judging heart. and not want it to go away.

[35:33]

We do not abandon anyone or anything. We do not abandon our mistakes. We do not wish them to be otherwise. So when we Practice this way with the mistake. We are actually alongside of this kind of awareness of the mistake, developing a way that is beneficial in our entire life, a way of being. Practicing with this mistake is practicing to meet all beings, all mistakes. It's good to start at home first, start with ourself, and then see, can that be applied? others so there's much more to say about this there's um there's the realm of of repenting confessing repenting there's the realm of forgiveness and i'm uh

[36:57]

I've dedicated this year to continue to study this. I'm interested in your stories about how you practice with mistakes. I would like to continue to open this territory for myself and for all of you. I want to end with another story. Some of you may have heard this story. One day at Tassahara in late April of 1969, right at the end of the practice period, right when the summer season was about to open, Shinryu Suzuki Roshi, who is the founder of these temples and the author of the wonderful book, which many of you may know, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, was walking with a group of students down to this area.

[38:01]

in Tassajara called the Narrows. It's beautiful, down the creek, and they had their lunch, their sandwiches, and it was a hot day. And sometimes at the Narrows, people are naked, but not this day, not with the teacher. They were in shorts and bathing suits and things. So was it a surprise to you that sometimes people are naked at the Narrows? Yeah. So they... And these rocks, there's a beautiful, like, Bufano, Benny Bufano sculptures, the way the rocks get smoothed by the water over time, granite rocks, beautiful pools and rocks that you can kind of slide down with the waterfall into a deep pool. And so the students were really enjoying the water and... Some of them were sitting full lotus and slipping down the rocks and over the waterfall into the pools and having a good time.

[39:02]

And Suzuki Roshi noticed that there was a place on the other side of the creek above where the waterfall was that looked like a good place to go sit down and eat his apple. And for some reason, he just started walking across the very fast-moving Tassajara Creek. He got in the creek and it did just like Beatrice. Fell on his back and went up over the waterfall and into the deep pool. And so picture, you know, the scene above, which is people are going, oh, isn't that sweet? He's in the water with us. And then from underneath, he's kind of looking up and later he said, He thought maybe he could walk out, but he couldn't. It was too deep. And then he was looking up, and all he could see were the pretty girl's legs. But they were too far up for him to grab.

[40:04]

So there he was with the trout in the bottom of this deep pool, and the students above thinking he was just being a Zen master and showing them something. So eventually, someone said, he's not coming up. Someone dove in, pulled him up, got him out of the deep pool, coughing, you know, water in his lungs. It was a serious moment. So everyone, you know, he got through that and people walked back with him. And I don't think it was that night, but very soon after he gave a talk. And by the way, That was a mistake, right? Here's the Zen master who's responsible for all of these students and feeling deeply responsible for training them and teaching them. He didn't know how to swim.

[41:07]

He forgot that he didn't know how to swim. So leaning into wanting to help others, you have to remember whether or not you know how to swim. before you go to help others. He forgot. So that was kind of a big mistake. But as he practiced with this, this was his teaching. He said, this is a quote from his lecture, I cannot swim, actually, but because they were enjoying swimming so much, so I thought, I may join, but I couldn't swim. But there were so many beautiful girls over there, so I tried, you know, to go there without knowing I couldn't swim. So I was almost drowned, laughs. Since then, my practice has improved a lot. So, thank you very much.

[42:11]

Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our programs are made possible by the donations we receive. Please help us to continue to realize and actualize the practice of giving by offering your financial support. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[42:38]

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