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. And welcome everyone to Beginner's Mind Temple. And a holiday greeting to you all. I'm... I really didn't expect to see very many people coming out on Christmas Eve for a Dormaton. Thank you for being with us. I had passed out to you a couple of things that maybe are my Christmas present to you. They're both very inspirational to me. Both the Buddha's teaching on loving kindness and Naomi Shihabrai's poem on kindness.

[01:06]

Just to just to remind us of our aspiration and to remind us how much difference it makes in the world when people are kind. And I connect very much this season with kindness. When I was, let's see, more than 70 years ago, when I was in the Girl Scout Chorus in Birmingham, Alabama, we sang a... Christmas concert at the Episcopal Church every year. And there is one song that I still remember all the words to, which is not a familiar Christmas carol for most people, called Good King Wenceslas.

[02:20]

How many of you know it? I remember all the words because... And so since some of you don't know it, maybe I'll sing it. Good King Winsolaus looked out on the feast of Stephen When the snow lay round about deep and crisp and even Brightly shone the moon that night Though the frost was cruel When a poor man came in sight, Gathering winter fuel. Hither page and stand by me, if thou know'st it telling, yonder peasant, who is he, where and what is dwelling? Sire, he lives a goodly hence, underneath the mountain, right against the forest fence, by St.

[03:23]

Agnes Fountain. Bring me food and bring me wine, bring me pine logs hither. Thou and I shall see and dine when we bear them thither. Page and monarch, forth they went, forth they went together. Through the rude wings, wild lament, and the bitter weather. Sire that I grows darker now, and the wind blows stronger. Fails my heart, I know not how, I can go no longer. Mark my footsteps, good my page, tread thou in them boldly. Thou shalt find the winter's rage, freeze thy blood less coldly. In his master's steps he trod where the snow lay dented. Heat was in the very sod that the saint had printed.

[04:28]

Therefore, Christian men, be sure, wealth and rank possessing. Ye who now will feed the poor shall yourselves find blessing. So that was... I wanted to mention that because I think that my character was affected by that song. And my father had very strong feelings about fairness and equality and we lived in Birmingham, Alabama, after all, in the 30s. So it was... A very, very clear situation of unfairness all around us. But for me, somehow that song, I think, somehow shaped my concerns and has something to do with...

[05:49]

what I'm doing sitting on this chair right now. I have, I had and I have an aspiration to be kind. I don't always live up to it. It's always a great disappointment to me when I don't. And so I took... very much to heart. I'm going to use a lot of quotes here because there are a number of things that have affected me deeply that I want to share with you that come up for me right now when this whole ceremony season of joy to the world peace on earth, goodwill to all, where these messages of this season, the message of generosity, it comes at the time astronomically when the days have grown shorter and shorter and now they're just beginning to get longer

[07:16]

and we celebrate the return of the warmth of the sun, return of the light of the sun. So there's a lot of light in the holidays that come around this season. There is, of course, Christmas, and the lights on the tree, and the candles all about for, and let's see, what's at Santa Lucia with the crown of candles, Hanukkah, with the Feast of the Lights or the Miracle of the Lights, Yule in the pagan tradition, which comes at the same time of year. We're all very familiar with this change. And, you know, I was thinking of it as universal, and I thought, oh, wait, no, this is... Northern Hemisphere. I was thinking that because our abbot Paul Hauer is down in Brazil now.

[08:18]

It's summer solstice down there. But here in the Northern Hemisphere, at least, there are many religious observations around the return of the light. And I think it's a... an excellent time for us to... There's a reason we make New Year's resolutions also. This is also part of this season. We do our best, and then we notice that, gee, it wasn't so good there. That's a little questionable there. So we renew our intention. We renew our aspiration, and we make a stronger effort. to live the life we want to live. You know, Joan Baez, I have a quotation here from her somewhere. It says, you don't get to choose when and how you die, but you do get to choose how you live now.

[09:24]

And I think this is a very important point that comes up again and again. I have a quotation here, which I have many quotations here. But I have one in particular that I would like to bring up just now, and that is a quotation from the Talmud, which is the teaching of the great teachers of Jewish tradition in the early years. It says, Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly now. Love mercy now. Walk humbly now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it. This is about how we live now. Live justly now.

[10:27]

Love mercy now. Walk humbly now. I ran across a quotation which Lou had kept for a long time. That is connected with this walk humbly now. And it's from The Cloud of Unknowing, which was written by an English priest, I think. who lived during the latter half of the 14th century, and said, in itself, humility is nothing else but a true knowledge and awareness of oneself as one really is. I think that's a great quote.

[11:35]

We know, however noble our aspirations are, we know that we fail to meet them again and again. And we return to our effort to live in the way we truly want to live. But I think that there's a little bit of humor in that. Humility is nothing else but a true knowledge and awareness of oneself as one really is. And I've shared with you before many times, this quotation from the Dalai Lama, which I have found to be one of my sort of daily aspiration, renewing sayings. Every day, think as you wake up, today I am fortunate to have a human life.

[12:37]

Today I'm fortunate to have woken up. I am alive. I have a precious human life. I'm not going to waste it. I'm going to use my energies to develop myself, to expand my heart out to others, to achieve enlightenment for the benefit of all beings. I'm going to have kind thoughts toward others. I'm not going to get angry or think badly about others. I am going to benefit others as much as I can. So even though I'm familiar with this quote, and I know King Wenceslas by heart, and so forth and so forth, I find that I mean, I found as I was preparing for this talk today, a couple of days ago, I got a phone call from a homeless person I know quite well who comes here quite often and whom I have helped on numerous occasions from jail.

[14:03]

And I was irritated because I was already in bed, and so it woke me up. I mean, I get pretty early these days. And I was not tied to him. And, you know, there's no way I can undo that. And it's been, you know, I have been really, really... struggling with how can I sit up here and talk about the importance of cultivating kindness, of being aware of all the people around you with the total inspiration to be helpful. When I cut this person off on the phone and said, please stop calling me, Not kindly, harshly.

[15:07]

And I thought, I cannot get up here and speak about the importance of kindness without revealing my own struggle with how to be kind in those moments when I don't feel kind. How to at least not be harsh in those moments when I don't feel kind. kind of try to excuse myself from the situation and say, I'm sorry, I'm not in a good mood right now or something. So in order to cultivate our aspiration to be kind, we have to be awake and alert to what's going on in us as continuously as we can. So that if I had noticed I was irritated getting out of bed, I would warn myself, be careful. Be careful.

[16:10]

Don't hurt somebody with your anger. It's your stuff. But I have to be alert to it to keep it from tripping me up. Otherwise, I'll just react instead of responding from a deeper place in me that wants to be timed. This is what we do in practice is try to cultivate a continuous alertness and awareness of what our motivations are and to catch ourselves when we stray away from the direction that is our aspiration. So much of our lack of humility and lack of kindness comes from clinging to some pride or some self-image that we like very much and would like to polish up and have that be the way we're seen.

[17:30]

There's a quote here from the book Happiness by Matthew Ricard called Happiness and Humility. He starts with a quotation from Dilgo Kense Rinpoche saying, if you keep your mind humble, pride will vanish like morning mist. He says, how many times during the day do we feel pain because our pride is hurt? Pride, the exacerbation of self-importance, consists of being infatuated with the few qualities we possess and often of imagining ourselves to possess those we lack. It hinders all personal progress because in order to learn, we must first believe that we do not know. In the words of one Tibetan saying, the water of good qualities does not pool on top of the rock of pride.

[18:40]

Conversely, another quotation, humility is like a vessel placed at ground level, ready to receive the reign of qualities. He goes on to say, humility is a forgotten value in today's world. Our obsession with the image we... have to project of ourselves is so strong that we have stopped questioning the validity of appearances and endlessly seek better ways to appear. So rather than being concerned about how we appear, our concern is about how we actually are in the world. And we need to just keep it in In view. Another quotation I want to... You know, I subscribe to the website gratefulness.org and they send me daily quotations that are inspirational, which are very helpful.

[19:49]

It's the first thing that comes up on my email in the morning. This one is from December 23rd, just a moment ago. kindness and compassion toward all living things is the mark of a civilized society. This is Cesar Chavez. And I went on retreat last fall with Gil Fronstal, and somewhere there, I can't remember now where, I saw this quote. Freedom is found by letting go, so the beauty of the Buddha mind can come forth. There is nothing whatever that is worth clinging to. Freedom is found by letting go, so the beauty of the Buddha mind can come forth.

[20:53]

There is nothing whatever that is worth clinging to. So this is based on our understanding that all beings have the nature of awakening. Each one of us. We need to see it in ourselves and we need to see it in everyone. So the beauty of that awakened mind can come forth and express itself in the world. Here's another word for the day from GreatRules.org. GreatRules.org is the website that Brother David Steindelrest has set up along with the support team.

[21:56]

Brother David is a wonderful Benedictine monk who practiced with Suzuki Roshi at the very beginning of Tassajara. and who still does workshops sometime at Tassajara with Paul on Buddhism and Christianity. And he and I did a workshop on... Gratitude came up very big for me after my heart attack when I walked out of the hospital and said, Wow, I'm alive. I could be dead. Oh, the rest of my life is just a gift. oh my gosh, it's always been a gift. It took a heart attack for me to notice it. So gratitude became big for me and it occurred to me since Brother David was down at Tassajara and it's big for him. He wrote a book called Gratefulness, the Heart of Prayer. Although actually he's Austrian, he pronounced it gratefulness, which I kind of like.

[23:01]

It has nothing to do with us being Austrian, but it gratefulness it sort of emphasizes the nature of it anyhow another word for the day from gratefulness.org ever let mercy outweigh all else in you let not our compassion be a mirror where we may see oh excuse me let our compassion be a mirror where we may see in ourselves that likeness and that true image which belong to the divine nature and divine essence. Ever let mercy outweigh all else in you. And from Suzuki Roshi says, if you can just appreciate each thing one by one, then you will have pure gratitude, even though you observe just one flower, that one flower includes everything.

[24:11]

So the Buddha has given us some... some instruction in this kindness thing, in the teaching on loving kindness, the metta sutta, which I've passed out to you but neglected to keep for myself. Well, it's been changed slightly there because it says, may I, and I think the original sutra, the way I know it by heart, is let one. So... I think I'd like, if you don't mind, Barbara, a copy of the way, of the format in which I passed it out. Thank you. So there are two things here. There's the poem by Naomi Shihab Nye. And...

[25:26]

It might be nice to read that. This is a fabulous poem. And if you put her name in Google, this poem comes up first. Before you know what kindness really is, you must lose things. Feel the future dissolve in a moment like salt in a weakened broth. What you held in your hand, what you counted and carefully saved, All this must go so you know how desolate the landscape can be between the regions of kindness. How you ride and ride, thinking the bus will never stop, the passengers eating maize and chicken, will stare out the window forever. Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness, you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho is dead, lies dead by the side of the road.

[26:28]

You must see how this could be you, how he too was someone who journeyed through the night with plans and the simple breath that kept him alive. Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing. You must wake up with sorrow. You must speak to it till your voice catches the thread of all sorrows and you see the size of the cloth. Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore. Only kindness that ties your shoes and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread. Only kindness that raises his head raises its head from the crowd of the world to say, it is I you have been looking for, and then goes with you everywhere like a shadow or a friend.

[27:39]

So I would like to close with this excerpts from the Buddha's teaching on loving kindness. This is something we chant regularly here and as I say, in the form of let one instead of may we. I know it by heart but I think it will trip me up if I don't read it now. This is what should be accomplished by one who is wise, who seeks the good, and has obtained peace. May we be strenuous, upright, and sincere, without pride, easily contented and joyous. May we not be submerged by the things of the world. May we not take upon ourselves the burden of riches.

[28:54]

May our senses be controlled. May I be wise, may we be wise but not puffed up. And may we not desire great possessions even for our families. May we do nothing that is mean or that the wise would reprove. May all beings be happy. May they be joyous and live in safety. All living beings, whether weak or strong, in high or middle or low realms of existence, small or great, visible or invisible, near or far, born or to be born, may all beings be happy. May we not deceive another nor despise any being in any state. May we not by anger or hatred wish harm to another. Even as a mother, at the risk of her life, watches over and protects her only child,

[29:58]

so with a boundless mind may we cherish all living things, suffusing love over the entire world, above, below, and all around, without limit. So may we cultivate an infinite goodwill toward the whole world. Committing this to memory and seeing it to ourselves at least once a day is a very good thing to do. this line, suffusing love over the entire world, above, below, and all around without limit, so may we cultivate an infinite goodwill toward the whole world.

[31:08]

This is an aspiration that it's worth dedicating our life to. We can let kindness start here, where we are. And again and again we can return to it every time it's pushed aside by irritation or anger or self-concern or whatever may push it aside. We can come back to it like a compass pointing to the North Pole. Every time it gets rattled, let it come back to point to the North Pole of kindness. again and again and again. The more times we catch ourselves and return to our intention, the more clear it becomes. But our self-clinging can pop up when we least expect it.

[32:18]

So we have to be quite alert. and catch it and say, no, that's not the way I want to live now. That's the big thing. How do you want to live right here, right now, in this very life, with the very people that you are already connected with? How do you want to live? And each time some difficulty arises and you start clinging to some point of view that you identify with. Just take a look and see that closed fist of clinging and say, I don't want to live like that. I want to open my hand and embrace the world. Again and again we have to return to that aspiration. There's

[33:22]

This being a holiday and the fact that we're going to be going off to whatever holiday events we're going off to, I think there will not be a discussion period. Therefore, if anyone would care to bring up anything that you might have brought up in a discussion period, you can do it now if you like. Yes. One of the greatest acts of kindness shown me was by somebody who actually did get angry. I was going on and on about my family, and this person, who was a classmate, replied by saying, you know, every time you talk about your family, I get really pissed off. You ought to read, I think you ought to read Alice Miller's The Drama of the Gifted Child. And if you really want to go further, I know this excellent Al-Anon Adult Children of Alcoholics meeting.

[34:29]

I go to it myself, and if you like, you can come with me. This woman got right in my face. This woman got? This woman got right in my face. And I was actually very curious, and I went to the meeting with her, and I introduced her to a resource. So did any of you hear that? She's saying that one of the kindest things that ever happened to her came from someone who was speaking in anger about her speaking incessantly about her family and who recommended that she go to to Al-Anon. And it was a great, great help to her. Well, I suppose one can be kind in the midst of anger.

[35:30]

It's not most generally the way that kindness is expressed. But perhaps you were rather resistant and needed some strong medicine at the moment. I like this person very, very much. So there was a context. So there was a friendship there as well. Yeah. Anyone else have anything? Yes. You read something from the Palma that seems to suggest that your talk that justice and kindness are related. moment. Is that what you meant to convey? Could you explain all that? Well, I'm not so sure that it's... I think what that's saying is justice is a very high value and kindness is a very high value.

[36:42]

Mercy, I mean, do justly now, so let your actions be just. Love mercy now, so let compassion be... And walk humbly now, don't be proud. I think these are just three important values in the Jewish tradition. I mean, in the world, but I think because justice is such a high value in the teachings... of the Talmud, that you find a great many people of Jewish background involved in various activities having to do with justice. I think it was the source of my father's passion about injustice in the...

[37:50]

south around race. And of course, my father was my idol, and I wanted to be like him. I fall somewhat short of it. Thank you for your presence this morning. I remember somebody pointing out to me a long time ago, a very long time ago, from the book of Micah, do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God. And... I think I was being critical at the time of an institution.

[39:00]

I mean, it was a local institution, and I was being critical, and it was a religious institution, and the person who wasn't particularly religious brought up this quote, and it really, took me aback, and I said, because it's very clear, it's a very clear, very clear teaching, it makes very good sense. But also, there was a time when the phrase tough love was very popular, meeting people with certain difficulties with tough love, and And there's something more gracious about humility and humbleness. That's an interesting question, I feel, this morning. That sounds like so close to this quote that maybe this was in a commentary on Micah.

[40:09]

I don't know. Well, thank you very much for your kind attention. Nobody... Anything further? Yes? I'm just curious about the image over your left shoulder there. It looks like a wrestler, a resolution wrestler. Who is that character? That's, I think, supposed to be Bodhidharma. There is an event happening here called Dharma Transmission. Rosalie Curtis and... Mark Lesser are receiving Dharma transmission and one of the things they do is to bow to the Buddhas and ancestors every morning and to bow to Bodhidharma who is the ancestor who sort of founded Chan in China.

[41:11]

And on the right there is... a calligraphy that says, great protector of the practice principle, Gaigen Shuri. They also do a lot of ballet. Essentially, the German Transmission Ceremony is a week-long intensive meditation on lineage as the people are receiving the authority to teach in this lineage from their teacher. So there's a lot of bowing and vowing in the ceremony. And that's why Bodhidharma is on the altar just now. Actually, Bodhidharma is generally on the altar here in that form, which is a much less dramatic

[42:16]

presentation. Anything else? Yeah. Would you say that one has to be kind to oneself first before one can extend kindness and long kindness to other people? Well, I would say it would be a big help. But you learn a lot about kindness that way. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[43:14]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_95.47