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. Whether we residents at Tassajara or guests, the days in this valley tend to be long ones, so I'm aware of that then, but 8.40 at night down here is sort of later than 8.40 at night in most other places. So for those who don't know me, my name is Hakusho, and I'm a resident here at Tasahara, and currently hold the role of Tanto, head of practice. And one thing I, one question I get, heard repeatedly through the years, once people, can we turn the volume down slightly?

[01:17]

Once people, I think the shaved head and all, and you know, once you identify as a Buddhist and people see that as the question of, is there free will in Buddhism? Is it something people want to know? And it's a complicated question, and it seems to belong to a category of philosophical, speculative questions that the Buddha would refuse to answer. He didn't want to spend his energy on it, as he didn't think it was actually leading anywhere in terms of spiritual practice. Didn't offer any significant direction of how to orient ourselves in our practice. famous quote is, I teach suffering and the end of suffering. That was what he was concerned about and the speculation about the more merely philosophical issues were not worth worrying about so much.

[02:22]

So I'm not going to try to answer that question tonight However, I've been and continue to be intrigued by this sort of question of how do we practice, how do we cultivate a path of practice and a culture of awakening when our karmic condition is so persistent and can't be escaped from. So from the viewpoint of the Buddhist teachings and karma, we carry some incredibly deep and persistent habitual patterns. And these habits exert some major influence on the way that we act, the way we speak to one another and even how we think and how we look upon the world around us. And aware of how so much of what we're doing is driven by habit. How can we actually orient ourselves towards liberation and not just go around the same

[03:28]

Same wheel. So each morning after we've sat, sat and meditation in here, we have a 25-minute ceremony of service. That's sort of the first step as we go from silence into our daily activities and the world of language and communication and relating to one another. And we start with a practice of bowing together, lowering our bodies to the ground in an expression and practice of humility. And then the first words that we begin to chant, they're an admission of our karmic conditioning, one I'm speaking about, how we're so... ensnared in old deeply rooted habitual tendencies of all kinds chant all my ancient twisted karma from beginningless greed hate and delusion born through body speech and mind i now fully avow so three times we chant this and as i understand it it's as much of a reflection on our past

[04:55]

physical actions our speech and our thinking and how they they're flawed at times and it's also a reminder of what we're up against a caution for us to question our impulses and our thinking as we go forward and as we're all susceptible to less enlightened actions we chant these together And I think it's significant to you that directly after this, we chant, we take refuge in Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. And I'm not going to go into those. I could spend a whole talk on what that means. But I think sufficient for the points I'm wanting to make tonight is to sort of summarize them as an expression of faith in the human capacity to awaken, to fully awaken from our delusions.

[06:00]

And faith in a reality that's quite different and much more incredible than what we, the reality we think we're living in. As well as the teachings pointing us towards that reality. And then also in the community as a place to practice this awakening and for really embodying and manifesting another world. And so I find this order of significance because after the first invitation to reflect and caution against this blindly running with our, you know, with our habits or, you know, not questioning our intentions and motifs for doing things and reflecting on the impact we have on others. So this kind of stopping us in the tracks.

[07:03]

And then we're turning towards something positive to orient ourselves towards. And so much of Buddhist practice really rely on a kind of dissonance between what's being basically what is and what we aspire to. at the heart of Buddhist teaching is a recognition that there is suffering and there is also a way out of suffering and we need to find a way of practice a way of orientation that allows us both for enough humility and patience for us to be able to touch our imperfections and hold them as well as enough aspiration and love for the world to work to transform the hindrances that we encounter.

[08:04]

So we all have different habits, certain grooves that we easily get stuck in. And the ones which are potentially harmful to ourselves and others are especially harmful, I should say, are called kleshas in Sanskrit word. afflictive emotions as one of the translations sometimes described as poisons or toxins because on the spiritual path they're kind of setting us back and they're counter to what we're trying to cultivate and these are you know as habits that may have been established early on in our life or more recently maybe have inherited from family or from the culture that we live in, or if we believe in past lives, perhaps they were carried on from even longer ago as well.

[09:11]

And so it's our actions and intentions behind them that have shaped us into the people and personalities that we are right now. And often in the case of trauma, for example, these actions that shaped us may well have been the best actions that were available to us in a challenging and overwhelming time in our life. And then they become internalized in a way that they're no longer serving us. And yet it's our go-to response when things are threatening. And because habits are really easy to form and much harder to break we need to be careful with how we act because if and when we act in a way counter to how we want to manifest in the world we strengthen these habits and if I act in a mean way it will be easier to act in a mean way in a similar circumstance again

[10:23]

And so we're best off not forming bad habits to begin with if we can avoid it. A friend of mine in Sweden, which is where I'm from originally, ran a restaurant for many years. And during this time, he switched business partners. And his new business partner was wanting to handle some of the income in such a way that they were sort of funneling off away from the tax authority so they wouldn't need to pay taxes on this and increase their income a little bit. And Swedish taxes are high and Marcus wasn't making much money off of his restaurant and supporting his family wasn't easy, so... It was a temptation here, and it was quite easy for him to sort of rationally justify why this was an okay act to engage in, and how the laws were unjust, et cetera.

[11:36]

In the end, though, as he was reflecting, it became clear to him that he didn't really want to engage in this kind of creative bookkeeping. And his reason that he gave me was, he said, I don't want to become such a person. That was his reason. And he's not a practicing Buddhist, but I found it wonderful. And I was impressed with his understanding of the Buddhist law of karma, actually. How clearly he was able to see that even just doing this act once was... very likely to create an increased craving for more, and that this extra money that would be coming his way was coming with a hidden cause there of corrupting who he was, actually.

[12:36]

And he wasn't willing to pay that price once he could see what it was. And so when we embark on a spiritual path, we take our old bad habits and dispositions with us, unfortunately, as well as our good ones. And so even if we radically transform the way we live, we're still bringing our karmic baggage with us into our new life. And we're still prone to having old patterns emerge patterns of being in the world and looking at ourselves and others and so from a buddhist perspective it's less of a sort of the word words from amazing grace came to me i once was lost but now i'm found and the buddhist perspective is once more like i once was so lost i didn't even know i was lost and now i'm just still

[13:48]

kind of lost and I keep getting lost every day but I'm aware of it and I keep reminding myself of how lost I am and there is a path of practice and there is aspiration here and that's what I'm returning to and aware of how lost I am and how little I can trust my own thinking I will include humility as an essential practice ingredient on this path And I will seek the guidance of others who I trust and who have demonstrated a firm commitment to walking this path. You see how the Christian way is a little catchier, right? And you might see why I'm not in the business of writing spiritual songs. Also, you may see why there's Very little proselytizing in Buddhism because it's a little bit of a hard sell, I think, to say that you're not saved.

[14:54]

You can't do it on your own. And even though we have limited control over our minds, if anyone who doubts that, try meditation, I say. That will show you how little control you have over your own minds. Even though we have very little control, we are actually responsible for all our actions. Okay. And nobody can do the practice for us. So that's the bad news. I'm sorry. I remember, I don't know who it was that said, but if you haven't taken up meditation yet, you might consider whether you want to do it. Or not, you know, before it's too late. So I want to talk a little bit about these afflictive emotions or poisons, toxins, and how they manifest.

[15:59]

So we have these three conditions that need to be present for them to manifest. And if you can be aware of this, then there's a little space to see where there's where to put our intentions and aspirations and how to direct our lives. So for these emotions, there are kind of Latin tendencies to lay dormant much of the time. And so... Let's see where I am. Well, unless we're fully awakened Buddhists, we have some of these. And under certain conditions, they will be triggered and arise and sort of overtake us, occupy us.

[17:00]

And if we're not careful and present enough in the state, then we're likely to cause harm. ourselves or others and sometimes you know I'll say the wrong thing in a certain time out of ignorance of somebody else's current state or their particular sensitivities and there's times when a you know a whole group of challenging conditions are present for us And they frustrated us or frightened us so much that we're inadvertently hurting even the people that we love the most, perhaps. It's not necessary for any of these to have a negative impact on others in order to stunt our spiritual growth either. Something like pride, for example, is considered one of the major afflictions.

[18:06]

It might well be that we're, you can imagine a situation of us doing something positive and helpful that's others appreciating and there being excessive sort of pride and self-absorbedness coming out of that. We're the good ones, we did the right thing, right? So that has a... then we're getting, yeah, it's not a self that we wish to cultivate either. And it's a harder one to catch in some sense because there's not a negative impulse, you know, and feedback coming to it. Some feedback coming from outside might be quite positive. So, for up against beginningless greed, hate and delusion. I'm sorry. the heavy parts of this is the beginning of the toxin. I encourage you to stay with me through the end.

[19:07]

When I will reveal a little more how to, what our way out is. But so there are these, so there's these latent tendencies and then there's two more factors that need to be present actually for the latent tendencies that really manifest, get triggered, manifest and sort of overtake us. And the first one of these, the second condition is the appearance of an object that triggers these tendencies into actually manifesting. It's usually what we think of as the cause of our problems, of our suffering. We're most likely to place the blame. He said that, so therefore it's his fault because now I'm feeling like this. So these objects often seem external, such as the example I gave, but it could also come from our own thinking.

[20:12]

I'm sure you've experienced this yourself in one way or another. And so, for example, having an interaction with somebody, and then we walk away, And then we started to get really upset, you know, thinking about what they told us and, you know, what it might imply. They don't like us or they don't value us enough. Something like this. Are they the trigger for our emotions or are we the trigger? Where is this arising from? What is it that's making us so upset? And so the point I wanted to make is actually both these two need to be present. The latent tendencies, they're thankfully only triggered at certain times, at certain conditions.

[21:14]

And then there's a certain object or set of conditions that fit perfectly just with that tendency, just as a magnet kind of pulls it up to the surface. And so we're each unique in the way we react for some people anger is a really predominant emotion that comes up a lot for others it's greed and others it's pride or you know fear anxiety so and in that too we can see how somebody one person who might might get really upset and feel easily insulted in one situation and somebody else might not be bothered by that at all right so that also gives us a hint of that it's not just the external, the seemingly external that's causing this, but there is something coming from our side, even though we can't control it, but these two meeting that's causing this event and this strong emotion and this mental state.

[22:19]

And some of the ways, since illustrate one of the ways of working with these, afflicted emotions is to try to remove ourselves from the triggers. We can position ourselves at a safe distance or sort of turn our backs towards them, away from them, then we don't need to be constantly triggered in this way. Those who have a history of substance abuse are well aware of this. It's wise to stay away from those substances. And there's some wise reflection, too, to learn and understand that there are other conditions that really bring up the craving and make it particularly strong. And if we can, to the extent that we can handle those conditions, we're less susceptible of falling into this, you know, a self-destructive old pattern.

[23:28]

So this kind of deliberate positioning has a value and is part of spiritual practice. And we're all, you know, whether we're here for a few days or months or years, we've come here for retreat, right, in some way to, out of some belief that removing ourselves from some of the objects that easily trigger us are likely to trigger us on the other side of this mountain, then we can avoid falling into some of these habitual reactionary and unconscious responses to the world. And with the space that opens up, then we can create something and try to meet the world in other ways and touch other aspects of ourselves that don't seem to have much space to grow and to be nourished when we're in. triggering, you know, regularly being triggered by the same things.

[24:33]

However, there's a limit to this approach of removal as well. As the 8th century Buddhist sage Chantideva famously said, where would I find enough leather to cover the entire surface of the earth? But with leather beneath the soles of my feet, it's as if the whole world has been covered. So we can't manage all the conditions around us, right? And if we retreat with the expectation that the whole world is sort of cooperating with us and forming itself to our needs, then we're likely to fall into frustration again. And this sometimes happens when people come to Tassajara and you're thinking, well, if only this person wasn't here, then I could really practice and I could be really calm, you know? You know, if only they weren't working on my work crew, then I could really be diligent and really practice concentration. And now I'm just being distracted, you know, because they're so annoying.

[25:36]

Or if only we were sitting more zazen. If only there wasn't so much zazen. If only it was, you know, not so warm or not so cold or, you know, just a little, you know, not so anything, right? Then we could really practice. So... I think we need to be realistic to what point this removal works as well. And again, it's easy, it's good, it's crucial to remember in those situations that our disturbance is never ever the result merely of an outside agitator. It's always the meeting with something that we're carrying with us all along, even though we can't see it. It's like a seed buried in the ground and it only starts to sprout once we water it. And if there isn't a habitual pattern laying dormant, the event that's occurring wouldn't be triggering the strong reaction.

[26:40]

And so to blame the manifestation of an afflictive emotion on something or someone other than ourselves isn't actually helping us. In fact, it's harming us. And so there's an old saying that goes, resentment is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die. And so there is a third condition needed for a troubled, some mental and emotional state to overtake and possesses. And there's more possibility and opportunity for this. It's actually a lot of where our opportunity for practice lays. And so the third condition that needs to be present is actually a negative one, as it's the absence of grounded and caring attention. When we're distracted and out of touch with ourselves, there's no presence and no spiritual strength which should meet any of these challenges that have been triggered.

[27:55]

And... So we tend to move from sort of an absent-minded state of mind, you know, into an even less conscious state where we're just reacting unconsciously and reflexively and out of our own habit patterns, but not, you know, on the outer lines with our aspirations with how we really want to be in the world. On the other hand, if We're relatively mindful, settled, and aware when a triggering object appears that sort of touches, connects with these tendencies that we carry around. Then we've created enough space for ourselves to sort of shine some light on this process. We can have some capacity to notice what's going on. how something we've been carrying for much too long has actually been brought to the surface right now and not just merely resort to blame of something else.

[29:02]

And so we can tend to this situation both to our own internal response and what's going on and also refrain from reacting out of our own habits and sort of blaming the object. And so one of the ways I've been practicing with this recently is in relationship with my partner. And for some reason that's hidden to me. I don't know where this karma is coming from, but it's clear that it's in there somewhere. And the situation that keeps arising for me is that I'm experiencing, that I'm being told what to do. And I don't like it. And so, I don't know, I don't see myself as a person that has problems working with people or, you know, authority issues, but there's something with working with a peer, you know, it's like actually being close to somebody that's like, this is so easily triggered for me.

[30:16]

And it's curious. And again, the point is not to understand where that's coming from, but to be aware that it's a pattern. And so I can see when I'm not so present and settled in myself, the reaction, like, don't tell me what to do, or I didn't ask for your opinion, whether that's coming out verbally or just sort of in my body expression, body language. And then when I'm more settled and calm, I can still see the little impulse being triggered, but I can kind of detect that it's touching something in me too. And there's enough space to not jump, reflexively act, and to notice what's going on. And with that, there's a little more space to try to meet this

[31:18]

what I'm perceiving as being told what to do with my aspirations for how I want to be, how I want to relate to my partner and how I want to be in the world. So hopefully at least with some patience, maybe with some kindness and sometimes with some humor too. As I'm a calm enough state, it can be kind of funny to see, like, even though we try, you know, we just... can't help being ourselves that's just the way it is and there's something that I can do yet to address this trigger of mine so you know I go back and forth between succeeding and failing and I think my successes give me some faith in this practice and you know I've gotten somewhere in some way this is a path worth pursuing and My failures bring me some humility and if I can forgive myself and actually find some way to repair and apologize for my reactions and push me to continue to practice as well.

[32:36]

So the last thing I want to say on this point is that most often it's our most intimate relationships that are the most difficult to deal with. My own ancient twisted karma gets so entangled with somebody else's ancient twisted karma and there's this big bundle there and every now and then we find ourselves just stuck. So a really good thing to do is to take come back to ourselves, take some time alone, perhaps, whether it's in meditation or a long walk or something like this, and just find that little bit of settledness and groundedness. And it might seem selfish to just go be by ourselves, but man, it's actually a really good way for us to be in a space where we can care for those around us. And I think particularly when those that we're closest to, it's particularly important.

[33:42]

And so far the easiest place to get caught in these are in family. There's no other place where there's the richness of history and dynamics as there is in family. I'm saying this because... A recent conversation I had about a student, too. And I've had this experience myself with spending time with my family. It's like, well, I'm just the same person as before. I'm just reacting in the same person just the same ways as before. And so I've had that experience with my family. And I've had other times when I've gone and visited them, and it's like, oh, this dynamic has shifted. But it's a particularly sticky place, and it's a particularly important place for us to be. actually kind and gentle and understanding ourselves. And so I do want to say, before running out of time here, but one of my favorite quotes about spiritual practice in the spiritual path is by Ram Dass, who said, if you think you're so enlightened, go spend a week with your parents.

[35:01]

Yes. And so to summarize, there are these three conditions necessary for this kind of toxic emotional and mental states to arise. It's the laden tendencies, dispositions. It's an object that's favorable to provoking these tendencies. And there's the absence of attentive awareness. And so we can't do much with the first, with a sort of karmic depository of responses. That, with careful practice, it slowly, gradually gets transformed. There's some space in removing ourselves from particularly triggering situations and some ones are really crucial actually because they're so harmful to us. And the most space for practice and to really act in accordance with our aspirations is if we can practice mindfulness and concentration and take a proactive approach so that when When something that's a trigger meets some part of us and these emotions arise and we're ready and prepared to meet them, we're not so blindly overcome with them and end up acting out in ways which are not what we want and hurting those we don't want to hurt and causing pain to ourselves as well.

[36:28]

So... And... When that doesn't work, there's still the possibility of forgiveness. It's a powerful practice as well. And sometimes that can bring us even closer than we initially were. Thank you very much. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma Talks are offered free of charge. 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 sfzc.org and click Giving.

[37:22]

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