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. Wow, what a big voice. Or not. Oh, it's back. I don't know if you can sense it, but there's an awesome feeling in the room, magnificent stillness. You can especially notice that if you've been outside and everybody else is here, and then you walk in. So thank you for allowing me to enter as late as I did. So you could already have established

[01:01]

great stillness that's here. And, you know, not just in the room, but in each of us. Pretty awesome. So thank you for your presence. This is also known as presence. You know, and it's our shared good-hearted presence. Which seems appropriate for Mother's Day. And I enjoy coming to talk here on Mother's Day as I appreciate my mothers and the art of mothering. You know, we not only have our mothers, and some of us have been mothers, But both men and women, if we're lucky, we learn something in our life about mothering.

[02:06]

You know, mothering ourself and mothering others. So I feel fortunate to have, for instance, learned to cook, which for me is a kind of mothering, to bake bread. you know, to become the mother that, you know, all of us, there's aspects of mom that we didn't quite get. So as we grow older, we can learn how to mother ourself and be the mother that we didn't have that we always wanted. So I've spent a good deal of my life learning how to mother and how to mother myself and to mother others And obviously not always so successfully in spite of my best efforts and my sometimes wayward efforts.

[03:17]

Well, when mothering slipped. So I want to start at the end. at a high level, if I may, and then we'll come down and we may end up back there again or we may not. We'll see. I don't plan these talks out ahead of time. I'm sorry. I'm a fan, for instance, you know, if you're cooking, you You don't make a plan ahead of time. You look and see what you have and dream up what to do with what's there. And then if something changes as you go along, the plan changes. So my lecture changes. I didn't know about the awesome stillness in the room until I got here.

[04:18]

And then I can share it with you. Yeah? And so on as we go along. We'll see what happens. Oh, just one more comment about that, and then we'll get into Mother's Day and Mom. But I'm finishing up a book about food and cooking and Zen and eating, but there's no recipes. So the book is now called No Recipe. Because finally, when there's... And thank you, Margot, for the title. Because finally, we keep thinking you could follow the plan, and if you followed the plan, you'd successfully have what you wanted to have. But how is that working for your life? There's no recipe for it.

[05:22]

You have to dream up what to do with yourself. I'm sorry, there's no help for it. And the more you follow recipes and think there's a recipe, then the more you suffer. It didn't work out. My recipe didn't come out the way it's supposed to. So you stop trying to follow the recipe and see, you know, we sit down and see what we have to work with and dream up what to do with, you know, I live here and this stuff, the sensory information and the feelings and thoughts and inspirations and everything coming through you. Dream up what to do with it. What am I going to do with my life? So, In my world, anyway, you see a good mom will help you be in that space of not knowing what to do and won't give you too many recipes. But I may have it wrong. That's just my way of mothering. Because there's also something to be said for following a recipe when you're a child, when you're a baby.

[06:28]

And when you're growing up, you follow the recipe and then at some point you start to like, maybe I'll go and sit and see what I can come up with to do now. From inside. Rather than following all the outer instructions and directions and how do I please them? How do I make them happy? How do I gain their attention, their approval, their affection? What do I do for that? And instead we shift over to what do I have to offer, what's in my heart to share, what's in my being to give to the world. So as I mentioned, I want to start high. So in Buddhism and in Zen especially, we have something called the perfection of wisdom. And the perfection of wisdom is, you know, a woman. And the perfection of wisdom is considered to be the mother of all the Buddhas.

[07:30]

So quite an awesome personage, awesome presence. So we have a hymn to the perfection of wisdom that we recite. And the very first part of this, homage to the perfection of wisdom, the lovely, the holy, Every day at home when I offer incense and sit, I say that, homage to the perfection of wisdom, the lovely, the holy. And I've been doing this now for 30 years, 40 years, 50 years, a long time. So pretty soon, you know, instead of being, you need a telescope or something to find her, She's here, perfection of wisdom. She's come down and down and down over the years. So every so often I check, say, where is she?

[08:34]

Here now. So pretty sweet. Mother's Day started out most likely as a commercial enterprise. get some roses, get some candy for mom, and it stimulates the economy. Probably is why Mother's Day was started. But we get to celebrate it as we choose. So one of the mothers I think of is the mother of all the Buddhas, the perfection of wisdom. So we say, omnis to the perfection of wisdom, the lovely, the holy. The perfection of wisdom gives light. Unstained, the entire world cannot stain her. She is a source of light and from everyone in the triple world she removes darkness. Most excellent are her works. She brings light so that all fear and distress may be forsaken and disperses the gloom and darkness of delusion.

[09:44]

She herself is an organ of vision She has a clear knowledge of the unbeing of all dharmas and does not stray away from it. The perfection of wisdom sets in motion the wheel of the dharma. This is a very high mom. It reminds me of when I'm in Europe. I go for six weeks, two months every year to teach at... different centers there, Zen and cooking, and Lidze Sheens. And while I'm in Europe, I like to visit the Black Madonnas. Do you know the Black Madonnas? There's one in Mount Seurat outside of... Is that Barcelona that it's outside of? No, it's... Maybe it is Barcelona.

[10:47]

High up. Anyway, but the ones I visit regularly, every year I go to, one of the centers I teach is in Eisenberg, and it's in Bavaria, and it's very close to a town called Alt-Oting. And Alt-Oting, there's a, in the center of the square, there's a round building. Round building. Are we getting a picture here? And inside is enshrined a black Madonna. And she's a metal sculptor. No, she's not a metal sculptor. There's other things in the room. No, she's a sculptor, and then she's got a baby Jesus. And she's black. And nobody knows why these black Madonnas are black. and why people started venerating Black Madonnas.

[11:48]

But there's the most awesome, awesome feeling in that room with this Black Madonna. And it's completely silent, you know, nobody's talking. And people come in and there's little kind of cubby holes that you can, there's a few people can sit in the little cubby holes with a little table. And then other people can stand in the room. And then if you want, you can go and kneel at the... There's a kind of fence between the room and the altar area. And I just sit there. Often I go and kneel at the fence. I don't know what it's called. Excuse me. But it's amazing. because you just feel love.

[12:49]

And feeling that kind of love, I don't feel like it's appropriate to ask for anything. Thank you for keeping an eye on us and my beloved friends and family. But, of course, when you're in the presence of that kind of love, often people feel a rush of their emotions, their inner world can surface, because their inner life surfaces in the presence of love, which is part of the gift of, you know, mothering. That there's enough love that love tolerates and accepts and receives feelings that are in the, you know, Suzuki Rishi said, you know, one day at Tassahara, and Zen people don't often talk about love, but one morning in a lecture, you know, it's back in the 60s, he said, we practice Zen to purify our love.

[13:57]

Usually our love, and of course we don't literally purify love, what we purify is all the things that usually come along with it. If I love you enough... I expect that you'll love me back. I expect that you'll be good to me. I expect, you know, I want this or I want that. So often our love, in Suzuki Roshi's language, you know, he used gaining idea. You have an idea of what you might gain. So that kind of love, it becomes a kind of trade. I'm going to give you this love, but, you know, I want something back. Rather than, I'm just going to give you love. And you receive it or you don't receive it, and you honor it or you don't honor it, and you appreciate it or you don't, but, you know, you don't. And what we do in Zen that's, for me, the most like that, you know, is when we have meals here in the Zen Do, the cook puts little food in little dishes, and then we put it on a tray.

[15:03]

When I was the cook 50 years ago at Tessahara, I thought, this is so stupid. Like doll food? I'm serving food for the dolls in the dollhouse, or what? I have more important things to do than make up little dishes of food. And the Buddha doesn't even care. The Buddha doesn't even eat it. And the Buddha certainly doesn't say anything about it. But what we do, it's so magnificent, finally, because you... And it took me only about 20 years to realize this. You know, way after I left Zen Center, maybe it was 30 years, and then I remember, oh, you cook the food, which, as you know, is so close to love. It's one of the reasons why it's so heartbreaking when somebody doesn't like it. You don't like my love? Do you have any idea what I'm sharing with you and just making this food?

[16:07]

So, you know, we put the food in the dishes and we bring it into the zendo and then there's a roll of the drum. The big crescendo. And at the height of the crescendo, the server in here offers, holds up the Buddha tray. This is love. We honor it. And then we put it on the altar. And then you bow. And then you walk away. It's not a trade. We're just offering it. And then, in the ceremonial context, Buddha doesn't say anything. Buddha just sits there. So from a horizontal perspective, you know, did you like the food? I mean, come on, thank me. Tell me how much you appreciate it, you know, and so on.

[17:14]

You know, you want to hear back. But from the vertical perspective, I offer my love and the Buddha receives it. And I bow and I walk and I turn and I walk away. And I don't... I'm not waiting around to see, what do you think? Am I gonna, you know, get some credit here or anything? It's really awesome. So, Suzuki Roshi said, we practice then to purify our love. It becomes more just generous. compassionate, offering, receiving, rather than negotiating what I'm getting back. But of course, you know, we all grew up with mothers who were also living in the horizontal realm.

[18:16]

So, by the way, while I'm, you know, but before I get to that, I do want to finish up with a Black Madonna. So, in our 13th, that's an awesome, awesome, And you can feel it. The vibration in that room, it's high. It's not a vibration at this level. The vibration is way up there. And then... It's amazing. So then I go to the... I've been in Munich, going to Munich for years now. And I finally found out there's a black Madonna in Munich. And it's right on Leopoldstrasse in a church called the Teotina. And the church itself is, you know, all white marble and very ornate. What is that? That's not gothic. Is that gothic? Or anyway, it's the ornate style before they got, after it was simple, simple and carved things and

[19:26]

But right when you come in, and off to the left, there's a little alcove for the Black Madonna in Munich. And you can sit there, and again, you just are loved. It doesn't matter who you are. I've never been to, who is it, Amaji, who you can go and she'll hug you? Ten, twenty thousand people a day. People say you get, you know, it's love. But, you know, I go. And then now I visit a third one each year in Switzerland near the retreat center there, Felsendorf above Lake Lucerne. And there's a village, a town there now on Seedown. And on Seedown, people have been visiting this Black Madonna since, you know, about 8.50 or 9.50. And at times during the Middle Ages, 50,000 people a day would visit her. Now 50,000 people a day go to see the Giants play.

[20:31]

You know, we live in a different world. And the Black Madonna I see then has over 50 outfits. People over the centuries, they hire someone, they pay someone to make ceremonial dresses and things for her. And then they give it to the church. And there's one man now whose job it is, and she's considered to be the best-dressed Black Madonna in all of Europe. And every day there's one man whose job it is to make sure she's dressed for the occasion. Isn't that amazing? That's just life's work. Dressing the Black Madonna in Ein Sieben. But it was amazing. I went with a friend, a woman who had been at one of my courses, and she was sitting there and just tears started coming down her face.

[21:36]

It's mother. You know, it's the presence of mother love. And then feeling her own feelings, feeling her mother's feelings, feeling her mother's mother's feelings. And you know, all the things that happened in their lives. and sitting in that presence. And, you know, love finally doesn't fix things, heal things. I mean, it heals because you relax. You realize you're held in sacred space, and that's healing. But the love itself doesn't go like, hey, I'll fix that. I'll take care of that for you. You relax and receive this love, and you're supported and held. And you say, thank you. Thanks, Mom. So, to come back to, you know, more horizontal levels I mentioned, but it's not just horizontal, you know, our everyday world.

[22:52]

I had two mothers, and I had a very important experience here at Gringotts, giving a Mother's Day talk, I don't know how long ago, it is now 15, 20 years ago. And it was important because I realized that there's a difference between me and my mom. I want to tell you about it. And since then, I've sensed even more about this, My mother died when I was three, just after my third birthday. She had cancer. She'd had cancer when she was pregnant with me. And the doctors told her, you know, you'll live longer if you have an abortion. And she said, no, I'm having a baby. Later they said, you lived longer because you had a baby. And you had so much love and warm feeling for your baby.

[23:56]

You lived longer, it looks like. So here I am. It's pretty awesome, any of us who are here. We all have had mothers. But the interesting thing is that I've sensed and I've realized even more clearly that my mother, although full of love, also along with that love, and because of that love in a sense, which is it? She was angry. She was scared. She was anxious. She was worried. She didn't want to lose her life, so she couldn't be here to take care of her boys. worried and anxious and scared and resentful and why me and all kinds of things. And since that talk here at Green Gulch, I've done various courses and retreats and process workshops where you go back to the womb and get to hang out there.

[25:09]

It was horrible. There was all these intense feelings People say, the womb, you're in this peaceful space. No, no, no, you're in the space of, unless your mother is particularly skillful, very skillful, energetically skillful mothers know to bubble their baby in the womb, and that's the baby's space and not theirs. But not very many mothers know this. You just assume that space is yours. It's like, by the time the kids are teenagers, sometimes they have a sign, don't come in my room. Because parents don't know. You knock on the door and say, may I come in? This is what a mother possibly can do. This space is sacred. It belongs to the baby. If you want to talk to the baby, can we talk now?

[26:11]

Otherwise, you're keeping... all those feelings out of the womb. You're protecting some space there. But mostly, most of us, and I have a mom who's just a mom. She's not some skillful shaman or something. Human being. So I felt all these feelings. And it was so hard. And other people I've worked with have said, it was so hard, you got out as soon as you could. So I was born three weeks premature. And I used to think so. The other day somebody asked me, when did you start practicing Zen? That was when. Because I spent three weeks... In the incubator, mom went home, and I did my first meditation retreat.

[27:13]

Three weeks out of the womb. You're in your own little cubbyhole. You don't talk to anybody. Nobody talks to you. Occasionally, they come by and give you a little bottle or something, and maybe they walk a little bit. Otherwise, so what can be closer to that? You come to a Zen doll. You sit there. You have your own space. Sit there. Face the wall. So it's either, you know, when the Zen practice is either post-traumatic reenactment, Or the original time in the incubator and being three weeks premature, that was my first Zen retreat. This is the way our life goes. We don't know. Was it a blessing? Was it a curse? Which was it? Was I getting ready for my future destiny? That's what I came here to do, apparently. And I started right away. Get some practice in. Anyway, it's pretty interesting. And then I came home to my family, and my mother's a very loving, very loving person.

[28:23]

But she continued to have emotions about what's going to happen. And my brother, who is older, still remembers the conversations that she would have with my father, with our father. And they assumed that we would forget about her and that he would marry someone else. And, you know, we would... You don't. You don't shift from mom to another mom. You just don't. But what I want to explain to you is that, you know, for years in my life, I had this feeling of being sad and scared and worried and anxious and angry and resentful. And finally, it began to occur to me, those are all the feelings that my mother had before she died. And you don't distinguish between self and other until between three and a half and four. So when mother dies at three, then what I did is I said, Mom, it's OK.

[29:30]

I'm going to go on feeling your feelings for you. Don't worry. I'll feel your feelings for you. And I'll call them mine. And at some point, you start checking in with mom. Mom, did you want me to go on spending my whole life being anxious, scared, and worried the way you were when you were dying of cancer? And mom says, no, no, no, I wanted you to have a happy life. I wanted you to... to grow up and become a beautiful man, a beautiful human being. I didn't want you to go on feeling my feelings for me. Very interesting. And then I began to realize, those feelings aren't mine. And I can put that aspect of mom outside.

[30:34]

And that's actually love. That's a purification of love. So that I can receive love and not be just lost in this ocean, like being in the womb still, lost in this ocean of feeling that's not even mine. That somehow, along with the love and everything else I received... So it's not a simple business, our life, you know, how we... are mothered, and then, as we grow older, how we can remother and appreciate the gift that Mother gave us, the gifts, the blessing, and also realize, oh, I have some practice. So, of course, another of Suzuki Rishi's useful expressions for me was, you know, we practice hindrances become the opportunity for practice.

[31:40]

So all these wounds become opportunity to study. And the wounds, the way we were wounded, is also our character. We have something to work on, something to work with, something to... Zen Master Dogen said, with a good teacher will take a poor piece of wood and make a beautiful sculpture in a bed. Teacher takes a beautiful piece of wood and turns it into something not so great. So, you know, we try to find good people to hang out with and good people to spend time with and maybe to meditate with and, you know, to set up a house with. And we study how to, you know, have the difficulty we have. And it doesn't mean that we can't be loved. But love is there all the time. And we can have difficulty.

[32:44]

And then that's mom. That's our mothering for ourselves, for others. Mom can say, you know, it's okay, sweetheart. And, you know, the... It's a little difficult to talk about any of this because I think it was Harriet Lerner, I don't know, I read these different books about psychology and various things, but she says, we used to write about dysfunctional families. Now we know every family is dysfunctional, so we don't bother to put dysfunctional. You had a family. And there's ways it worked and ways it didn't. So now as you grow older and you're an adult, you can study, what do I do with this? How do I handle it? And you begin to more and more become a mother to yourself, as well as some fathering and other things that you might take on.

[33:47]

I had a second mother, and I want to tell you briefly about her because it's so fascinating when we look at these things. So after I was in an orphanage for four years, and then my father remarried, and I only found out about 50 years later that they'd known each other all along and that my adopted mother had met my birth mother before she died. I had no idea. She was over for breakfast with my mom and dad. What does that mean? Anyway, they eventually got married, and so my brother and I moved back in. And one day my father said, I don't want you boys talking about your birth mother, Frances, anymore. It makes Anne nervous. Okay, Dad. And... So again, about 50 years later, I got up the nerve, Anne, excuse me, but did you know that Frank sat, you know, my brother and I down and told us not to talk about our birth mother?

[35:13]

And that you would have been upset if we did? Would you have been upset? Because I was suspecting that wasn't about Anne, that was about him. It's going to make who nervous? It's going to make Dad nervous. And she said, no, I think that would have been pretty normal if you'd talked about your birth mother. But it's very interesting because part of what's interesting is I only found this out after my adopted mother died. We had a memorial service. There were 16 people at my house. And we passed around champagne for the people who were going to toast with champagne, and some people had sparkling water. And we were about to make a toast to Anne, my adopted mother. And her brother said, the real tragedy in Anne's life.

[36:18]

And I thought, where is this going? And I thought, oh, is this that her brother was shot down over Germany in World War II? And he said, no, that's not the real tragedy. And then he told us, he said, that when he was 12 and my adopted mother was 18, was 1932, they had a five-acre raspberry farm in Palo Alto. And the bankers came and presented them papers evicting them. And her mother was, and my uncle said he watched out of the back window of the house while his parents were given the papers of eviction. And he said that his mother was so upset, she went out to a shed in the backyard and hung herself.

[37:28]

And the beam broke. So after that, she was in and out of the hospitals. You know, it's hard to know. Nowadays, you look back, you know, a lot of people were jumping out of buildings and all kinds of things in that time. Is that, you know, I mean, what does it show? Anyway, my grandmother was in and out of hospitals, so my adopted mother, Anne, decided I'm not having children. I don't want to pass on this mental illness. At least when looking at it from outside, we're calling mental illness. High levels of being extremely distraught and upset and whatever, but we don't know. So she said, I don't want to pass on my mother's mental illness, so I'm not having children.

[38:40]

I am going to look... for a man who has children that I can adopt? My mom. That's how she became my mom. Because, see, that's what she wanted to do. So I'm very fortunate I had a second mother. And I never knew this, she never talked about it. A lot of things aren't talked about. Maybe you hear about them, maybe you don't. And all the time we're held in sacred space. And we're seeing if these hindrances can become an opportunity to, you know, sometimes we say in Zen, the everyday food and drink of a patch-robed monk. Everyday food and drink. This is all everyday food and drink. What did you think this place was?

[39:43]

I only know a few expressions in German, but one of them is, In a pinch, even the devil eats flies. Apparently you can say that whenever you want. Things are so nice. This is such great food. Well, in a pinch, even the devil eats flies. Or when you just have the worst food ever, like, well, in a pinch, you know, even the tablets flies. So I want to finish sharing a poem with you. Take care. Thank you for being here, as long as you have. Some people are going to get the tea ready for all of us. This is a poem by Rilke, and it's the version by Robert Bly.

[40:49]

The first line of the poem is, you see, I want a lot. And in German, he says, du siehst. personal to you you you see you see I want a lot because otherwise you say you see you see Zayn you know you all you all see you know this is very personal I want a lot and then suddenly you know we going to go from the horizontal world you know we go vertically and he says the darkness of each infinite fall, the shivering blaze of each step up. He doesn't want just like good food and peace in his life and a good relationship and a nice car. I want a lot.

[41:59]

The darkness of each infinite fall, the shivering blaze of each step up. So we're entering this vertical world. You know, the stillness in the room, the love from beyond. There are those who live on and want little and are raised to the rank of prince by the slippery ease of their light judgments. You've noticed that? Horizontal world. But what you love to see are faces that feel thirst and do work. You see a lot more of these faces in Europe. Just on the street. People, you know, they look like they live. They don't look like, I'm busy, I've got things to buy.

[43:02]

I don't know. It's funny being in America after you've been in Europe, but excuse me. You know, you're only here because you're not part of that mob out there, so excuse me if I talk about them. But anyway. You see, I want a lot. Perhaps I want everything. The darkness of each infinite fall, the shivering blaze of each step up. There are those who live on and are raised to the rank of prince by the slippery ease of their light judgments. But what you love to see are faces that feel thirst and do work. Most of all, you love those who need you like a crowbar or a hoe. Mom, help me out here. It is not too late and you are not too old to dive into the increasing depths of your life where it calmly gives out its secret.

[44:05]

You understand? It's not too late and you're not too old to dive into the increasing depths of your life where it calmly gives out its secret. Just this morning I thought we could use enlightenment there, but secret is a good word. Secret is a great word where it calmly gives out its secret. And this is very much like in, you know, that you actually, that we actually can go down and we can be in the depths of our life and then in the darkness. And that's good. That's how we become transformed. And in Buddhism we have a term for this called trust or faith. It's in Sanskrit shraddha. And shraddha is said to dive. into the water that could be muddy with doubt or filled with sense desire or all these emotions. And it's described as colorful water or roiling water or muddy water or water that's full of moss and sloth and torpor.

[45:17]

But when faith dives into the depths, everything becomes clear. This is in Rilke's poem. It's not too late and you are not too old to dive into the depths of your life where it calmly gives out its secret. And of course, what's helpful for diving into the depths is to have, you know, we need some stability. and some well-being and a sense of presence. So to be in the depths and, you know, that part of that trust is, you know, at times, you know, bringing some presence along with you. Sometimes Mother's love can come all the way down there.

[46:20]

So I say, you know, at those times, homage to the perfection of wisdom, the lovely, the holy. whether it seems like a blessing, whether it seems like a wound, whether it seems like a mistake, a disappointment, a frustration, homage to the perfection of wisdom. And by the way, of course, before I finish, I should mention to you that You know, I also, you know, I have more statues at my house of Kuan Yin, the bodhisattva of compassion than anything else. I've needed over the course of my life a lot of mothering. So I get all the mothering I can. Look around the room and there's Kuan Yin and Kuan Yin and Kuan Yin.

[47:25]

Thank you for being here with me. Hmm. So I'd like to sit quietly with you for a minute before we chant to end the lecture, and we can just sit with our mother, however we picture her. Kuan Yin, the perfection of wisdom, the mother we grew up with. Oh, and in that regard,

[48:28]

I'll share one more thing with you. Come to the question and answer, I'll share it then. Let's just sit with Mother's love for a few moments, if we could. I appreciate how we've all been blessed in our lives. We wouldn't be here today without our Mother. For more information, visit sfzc.org and click Giving.

[49:33]

May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[49:36]

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