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. Hello, everyone. Thank you for coming to this talk tonight. Whether you're here in the Buddha Hall or in your own homes, I want to also thank Nancy Petrin, our former head of practice, or Tanto, for inviting me to give this talk, and our current Tanto, Anna Thorne, for supporting this talk, and all of you, as I said, and also my teacher, Agent Linda Cutts. The topic of my talk tonight is on mending. And as Abbot David mentioned in his talk on Saturday, we're celebrating Pride this month in San Francisco.

[01:08]

We're flying rainbow flags in front of 300 Page Street, and we'll be marching in the Pride Parade again this year after several years of not, there was no parade last year or the year before. And the theme of this year's parade, is love will keep us together. So I have been thinking about what that means. How can love or how does love keep us together in our relationships or in our communities or in the wider world? And I want to focus... in this talk on times when, despite the presence of love, we need to be able to acknowledge and turn toward disagreements, misunderstandings, and conflicts.

[02:11]

And I'll explore the experience of mending within our own hearts and minds, and mending our relationships, our communities, and the wider world. And I'll suggest some tools that we can use. So mending is a task I sometimes put off, and I'm thinking about mending items of clothing that get torn, need patches. And one morning last week, Before work, I was sitting on my bed, mending my sitting robe. A tie had come off. And I was thinking about how soothing it was to have such a simple, concrete task to do. And I knew it would make my life easier to have all of the ties on my robe.

[03:16]

And as I was mending my robe, the idea for this talk came to me. Because I had had an experience just a few days before, it was a couple of weeks ago, when I was feeling a lot of grief. I had learned that Tassajara would be closing for the summer. And I was sad not just for myself, because I had been looking forward to spending time at Tassajara. This summer, but also for all the others who wouldn't be able to go. And I called a good friend. I'll call her Sarah, thinking she would be able to listen and empathize with me. But instead, she listened for a bit and then was coming up with advice, solutions, things that might make the situation better.

[04:24]

I could feel myself shutting down. A few days later, we had lunch together, and I got up the courage to say that I didn't feel met in that conversation. And she listened very carefully and reflected on her response and said she realized that she herself was grieving a recent loss, and she couldn't listen to my grief. because she didn't want to feel her own. And she said she was sorry she hadn't been able to be present for me. And I greatly appreciated her ability to recognize and talk about what had been going on for her. And then later she sent me an email asking, are we mended? And the word mended seemed exactly right. responded, yes, we're mended. So what does it mean to mend?

[05:28]

There are several definitions. I find a dictionary can be helpful in exploring a question like that. And one of the definitions is to put into good shape or working order again, to repair or patch up. And that was an aspect of what happened. Another definition is to improve or strengthen. It could be a relationship by negotiation or conciliation. And that definitely, it wasn't negotiation, but it was really through listening and speaking our truths. And another definition Definition is to make amends or atonement for. And I think that's where an apology can be very helpful. Just simply, I'm sorry. Some synonyms for mend are repair, fix, patch, cure.

[06:35]

Each has its own nuances. And I thought of the way... There's a Japanese way of mending broken tea bowls with gold called kintsuge. Some of you might be familiar with it. The broken bowl becomes more valuable than the original bowl. And there's a beautiful poem by Hannah Block, who's a contemporary Bay Area poet. She died a few years ago, which talks about this process of mending. It's called... So another word for mending can be rejoining. What's between us seems flexible, as the webbing between forefinger and thumb seems flexible, but isn't. What's between us is made of clay like any cup on the shelf.

[07:35]

It shatters easily. Repair becomes the task. We glue the wounded edges with tentative fingers. Scar tissue is visible history and the cup is precious to us because we saved it. In the art of Kintsugi, a potter repairing a broken cup would sprinkle the rosin with powdered gold. Sometimes the joins are so exquisite They say the potter may have broken the cup just so they could mend it. So I especially like the lines, scar tissue is visible history, and the cup is precious to us because we saved it. So mending a relationship or a broken tea bowl can strengthen it. And I find when I don't try to mend a relationship,

[08:40]

when there's been a painful interaction, when I avoid something that might be unpleasant or difficult, I run the risk of then distancing myself from that person. And then it may be harder to mend the relationship. And I feel it's especially important living in a community as we do at city center or in a family or with friends to learn to address conflict rather than walk away from it. Even though there's a saying, time heals all wounds, I know sometimes taking time out can lessen the intensity of hurt or anger, but time itself doesn't, in my experience, doesn't heal all wounds. It's an More is needed.

[09:41]

So I'll just ask you to reflect as you're listening. In what ways do you resonate with the need for mending in your own life with friends, family, or colleagues at work? And there was a time recently when, actually this was some months ago, another resident, I'm going to call him Sam, He and I got into an argument, and it was escalating, and there were several people standing near us. And I could feel my anger growing. I couldn't really take in what Sam was saying. And finally, he said he had to remove himself in order to avoid further harm. And we both walked away. And... I appreciated his wisdom in knowing that was what was needed at that moment. And later we exchanged emails.

[10:45]

We both wanted to talk about what happened, but Sam said he would feel safer if we asked a third person to meet with us. So we agreed to ask Nancy, who was then the Tonto, and set up a meeting a few days later. And with Nancy's support... We were each able to reflect on what we had contributed to that argument, where we had misunderstood one another. I think there was a basic goodwill between us. We wanted to kind of clear the air and get on a better footing with one another. And the end of the time with Nancy, we... We had a plan that we would each reflect on what we had learned from the conversation and meet again a week later. And we thought at that point we could do it without Nancy. And we did meet and we both learned a lot from that experience.

[11:47]

And it really did mend our relationship. So for those of you who are either new to San Francisco Zen Center or don't, live in community here. We have guidelines for communicating in conflict that are very helpful, starting with the conflict where it just requires a conversation, a difficult, maybe a difficult conversation, but a conversation between two people who are involved. And then if that either isn't successful or doesn't feel safe enough to one or both people, to invite a third person to be part of that conversation. And I think there are guidelines also for how to have a difficult conversation. So this is a skill that can be learned. I grew up in a family where we avoided conflict until something happened, and then usually my father would get really angry.

[12:58]

But it didn't resolve things. And I learned to avoid conflict. And it's really been a slow process of education, self-education and picking. We had classes in the past at Zen Center on difficult conversations and developing mediation skills. And all of that has been really helpful. I also find the precepts around speech can be very helpful when dealing with conflict or difficult conversations. And I'm thinking in particular of two of the precepts around speech. The one which we call it not slandering, but there's an affirmative way to put it. Diane Rossetto, who... has written a book about the precepts, calls it Speaking of Others with Openness, and that involves looking at how we might be judging other people and looking at our own motivation when we speak, especially when we criticize someone who isn't in the room or, you know, that can...

[14:26]

I think slandering might not be the best word, but gossiping is another word for that. But being able to speak of others with openness and curiosity and actually meet them with curiosity, that precept. And then the next one, the seventh precept, not praising self at the expense of others, but And Diane Rosetto's wording, meeting others on equal ground. So really appreciating our common humanity and again, noticing our judgments and being open to finding out who the other person is and what they think. And then being able to see our own contributions to a conflict and learning to apologize can make all the difference.

[15:39]

So moving from the interpersonal, I'm just getting out my watch so I know where I am roughly with this talk. So moving from the interpersonal in this Pride Month, I'm aware of how much still needs mending in our communities, our city, country, and our world. There are so many divisions. How can love keep us together? And yet mending in communities can be transformative. And I want to appreciate the work of Larry Yang, who is a Dharma teacher, social worker, co-founder of the East Bay Meditation Center in Oakland. He wrote a book called Awakening Together that's been very helpful to many of us at San Francisco Zen Center.

[16:46]

Because of Larry's own experience of not feeling included or that he belonged, As a gay Asian American in the predominantly white heterosexual Dharma groups he went to, he worked to create a more inclusive sangha at Spirit Rock, where he was one of the guiding teachers, and also to ensure that more BIPOC and LGBTQIA practitioners could become teachers. in that insight community. I think the last teacher training had 80% of the teachers in training were either BIPOC or LGBTQIA. So his work is really changing those communities. And in his book, Larry talks about how when there's a conflict in a group or an organization,

[17:54]

particularly around issues of inclusion, it's important, too, he uses the phrase break together rather than breaking apart. And where a community is most vulnerable or tender, even injured, is where that community might need the most attention and care. And he asks, how can we watch each other's backs together through the injuries? And he says, in the unconsciousness of our larger culture, when differences become strong, the predominant conditioned pattern is to fragment and scatter into our respective corners, spaces of comfort, familiarity, and safety, quickly polarizing into adversarial stances. This dynamic is ultimately the one through which all wars are begun.

[18:58]

And, you know, we can see that happening in our world together, in our world today, in many places. And we can see it in the U.S., in sharp disagreements around many issues that affect the daily lives of all of us. I'm thinking particularly of those of us who identify as queer, knowing that there are states in the U.S. in which elementary school children cannot be taught about sexual orientation, states in which parents of transgender or gender-fluid children can be accused of child abuse. if they support their children's questioning and search. And I feel fortunate to live in California where these things are much less likely to happen, or they're certainly not put into our laws.

[20:08]

But it's not like that everywhere in this country. So coming back to Larry Yang, he asks, how do we stay in the room in relationship with each other, regardless of what arises, rather than split apart? What would it be like, even amid all the complexity, even in the face of injuries, even in the face of harm, to break together rather than break apart? requires community processes or ways of creating the ability to listen deeply to one another. A process like a council where everyone has a chance to speak and also to listen deeply to what others are feeling and thinking.

[21:16]

Sometimes a ceremony, a ritual, or a memorial service can help heal a situation where there's a deep wound, a societal wound. And what came to mind as an example was something that happened last year on the 49th day after the killing of eight people in Atlanta. Georgia, six of them were Asian women. And several people got together and created an amazing Buddhist memorial service in Los Angeles. It was called May We Gather, and it was held at a Buddhist temple. It was organized by three Asian American Buddhists, Duncan Williams, Chen Xing Han, and Fumi Xu. And their message was, when someone is hurting, we come together as a community.

[22:26]

We gather because our lives are inexorably interlinked. We do not suffer alone, nor do we heal alone. Only when we gather as a sangha can we truly support each other's freedom. And one of those three, Duncan Williams, said, the notion of repair has to do with acknowledgement. We can't become free if we do not acknowledge who we are in all of our hurt, in all of our imperfections, in all of our fractures. And on the altar they created for that ceremony, there was a broken bowl that had been mended in the Kintsugi manor. So returning to the theme of this year's Pride Parade, love will keep us together, I think of mending as a form of love.

[23:28]

And I think mending will keep us together. So thank you for your kind attention. 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.

[24:03]

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