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. I have a tendency of coming here when I was much younger and very visceral memory of coming in from outside, this charm of upset and not going to come in to the building. And much of today, I felt myself.

[01:12]

Shaken by the heads. Breaking the news. here, and I felt that quite a little bit of attachment to my children, which feels justified. Once again, we In the midst of this story of our ancient twisted karma, in the midst of the story of grieving hatred and delusion, these aren't just words that we say.

[02:29]

many ways that harm. Violence is acted and narrated in our world. It's the story of division. The story that we've been studying in this poem, the tradition made. The story of the illusion, of separation. Sorry, divisiveness with me and you and us and them. Sorry for creating an other that we then feel justified and not. Horrible, terrible, violent. And our practice is practice discovering the great mind and truth.

[04:01]

It's our effort to stop the war here. is the two-year anniversary of the murder of Mr. George Floyd Jr. It reminds us to feel the preciousness of each just the short time that I have been here, coming here, engaging in this intensive.

[05:08]

There have been five incidents of gun violence here in the U.S., which is just a slice of the violence across the globe. A long time ago, the Zen poet, Rio Khan, responded this way. He said, oh, oh, that my roads were wide enough to gather up all the suffering people, all the suffering beings in this floating world.

[06:10]

this a long time ago and yet the sentiment is true today. Oh, that our robes are wide enough to gather up all the suffering beings in this luminous, aching, Here, again and again, some version of the question, what should I do? Some of the men seeing that Clayton Senator who walked onto the Senate floor and said, what are we doing?

[07:17]

What are we doing? Because what they're doing is nothing. they're doing is refusing to pass my decision and we just require a safety check, which is firearms. There's something really important for us when we ask the question, what should I do? Because We can engage in a place that is the same, that brings the same line of divisiveness to our actions.

[08:22]

And it's not that there's nothing to do. There are many, many things we can do. We can vote. We can pray. We can weep. We can march. We can speak up. And the heart of our vow of our beliefs is the promise. It's the promise not to turn away. We vow

[09:25]

To turn toward. To allow the pain of the world to touch us. I think booty suffer. Goli, wise, awake, awakening. Sattva is a being, a sentient being. Goli Sattva is a wise, feeling being. I think that before we act, or at least concurrent with our activity, with our engagement, we have to let ourselves feel. You can hear the sensitivity, the sentience in the accounts words.

[10:47]

This deep wish to help, even if we're not sure. The vow doesn't come because we're nice people. It doesn't come because we're better than other people. It comes from this deep understanding of our connectedness.

[11:55]

From a deep understanding that I cannot wake up in each way of others. allowing ourselves to feel the heartache, to feel the heartbreak. Because when anyone suffers, we understand men as kin, as family. So our practice is here to help us not to normalize something completely not normal.

[13:00]

I don't know if it's anywhere in any Buddhist teaching, but it comes from years sitting with my own suffering, then sitting with the suffering of others. And the theory is that each of us helps Create the rare strategies to avoid feeling something. That's something really different for each of us. It is in the turning phase to feel our suffering that we soften. That we find a place

[14:21]

that we discover our true kitchen with others. And there's this strange throne when we really allow ourselves to feel the pain, to feel the heartache, the outrage, sadness, grief, we discover that there's something under all of that, which is love. But there's a reason we are upset, and that reason is because we care. Many white people, it took me a long time to turn forward the truth of collective racism and oppression.

[15:41]

I didn't think I needed to turn forward. in some ways it was yaksa art for me to look away. And it wasn't until I allowed myself to sit in a cauldron of other people who I had come to care deeply for and hear their stories and allow the statistics I read in the paper to become someone's brother or father or child that I could allow my heart to break. It can feel to us too much.

[16:58]

It's too much. It's not just them. Nineteen children, the one murdered today, and their teachers. And the extraordinary, excruciating pain of the families and what it wants. It's not just pretend to do the African-American people who are going down while they were shopping. Because someone believed his views. So I believe this myth of white supremacy, enough to believe it enough that we could take other people out.

[18:06]

But everywhere we look, million deaths from COVID. that perpetuate our religion and racism and oppression and keep the cycles of poverty and hunger. But this is ours. And it is too much for any one of us.

[19:16]

The violence of war works across multiple continents. It's too much for any one of us, but we hold together. We allow ourselves to feel the pain because beneath that there is love. Because beneath that we feel our deep connectedness. So I said, where there is sorrow, there is only ground. So there are some dimensions of this kind of difficulty that I think require something more than words.

[20:39]

So I want to offer us all a kind of ritual, a ceremony, very much in the spirit of zazen as a ceremony. We sit in the midst of something impossible in our human life, and as we sit in this ritual, we feel the mood from that celebration. Ceremony allows us to get to territory that our language can only And so I invite you to participate with words, with your wholehearted engagement, with your full attention, with your

[22:06]

So inviting us each to fully take our seat wherever we are here in the hall. And beginning by calling on only in our ancestors, our dharmic lineage, our karmic lineage, and those beings who have locked the path, asking them to join us. So you're lying then hovering here.

[23:28]

Buddha, Mahabharata, Mahabharata, Feeling the strength of this lineage of beings who have walked the path before us. Who are cheering us along. We will bear hands at our backs. being in this practice of the cultivation of metta, of the boundless heart.

[24:54]

This is the sutta that's chanted here at the temple. And it is a practice that was offered by Buddha to his foremost. It is this practice of full and well-made heart. We are often in a phase of difficulty, in a phase of feeling overwhelmed by distress. So beginning by breathing being in the back of the heart, bringing this quality of kindness and compassion to whatever it is here. May the truth be your heart.

[26:01]

May the signs. May the anions. We believe. Breathing in and practicing being with. Being with. Bring a lot of seed in your mom and choose here to be here and to be received. No. Not rejected. Then breathing in on the next inhalation, filling yourself.

[27:11]

Breathing in through the heart, letting the body be filled with your own care and kindness towards yourself. Whatever difficulties, body, heart, and mind, you may receive. of the world. It is resonating in you, as you. Breathing in kindness and care, knowing that you too deserve You will breathe out, excelling, sharing, you sing, carrying love wishes, this kindness and compassion with all of the others.

[28:36]

In the world we hear, in the Buddha all, those of you at all, wherever you are, extending out the capacity of the heart that cares. Extending your well wishes, your kindness outside the room to your friends, your family, your loved ones. in and out through the heart, receiving and extending kindness.

[29:49]

Imagine all of our collective care and emotion, look out a giant gentle wave, wider and wider presence, catching many, many dreams. loved ones with lives taken by COVID, ones suffering from the war, wars in Ethiopia, in Kauru, in Iraq, in Syria, in Afghanistan, in Ukraine. Many lives are turned and ceases dying from climate change.

[31:27]

Sending this greed of kindness in all directions. we sit together in this sea of grief and kindness, the names of the people who have been killed in this last section of time and ask you to take all of this practice She, Bernie Vosman, talked about Zazen sitting in our seat as a practice of bearing witness.

[32:29]

Just because we come to bear witness to our own suffering, we sit and bear witness to the suffering of others. Just to say that, of course, I will name a handful of names, but there are many, many of which, no matter how many I say, there are always more. This is George Floyd, Jr., who was 46 when he was murdered, in 2020.

[33:51]

to the lay-downs of the shooting, hating, gang, killing the shoppers at Topps Supermarket on May 14th, Aaron Salter Jr., age 55. O.J. McGill, age 53. Silas Dean Chaney, grandmother and great-grandmother, age 64. D. N. Haywood Kenny Patterson, 67.

[35:06]

Geraldine Kaye, known for her famous cheesecake, who was 62. Catherine Massey, lifelong advocate for gun control, who died at 72. Maris D. Morrison, 52. Carl Young. He ran for 25 years in our community. 17. Roberto Jury. was 86.

[36:11]

California. May 15, Dr. David Chang, 53, a married father of two who wrote the disarmed shooter in our entire name's prostitute in church. others in church who were injured but didn't die.

[37:23]

19 children and their teachers at Brown Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. Eva Morales, who was the fourth grade teacher, age 24. and her calm teacher, Romola Garcia, age 36. Both women had devoted their lives to education. And we flirted with fourth graders. 119 names we know so far.

[38:55]

Lexi, Ania, Rubio, ages unknown. Alitha, Ramirez, age 10. Elia Alma Cruz-Torres. Eli Lugo. Nicole Sumuero. Jacey Carmelo LeDronce.

[40:05]

Jose Flores, Jr. Paul, age 10. . [...] Regina Powers, Marie Marta, Lucia Garcia, age eight, and Javier Lopez.

[41:15]

Each name represents our own world. Each person is unique. And each name represents hundreds of others. And so inviting me to speak. or say some of you to yourself, names of your own loved ones, parents, family, who have died, including them in this field of happiness and care, this bearing witness, This actually goes off to .

[42:48]

That our robes could be wide enough to gather up all of the suffering beings in this wide, aching world. our vow to be willing to turn toward their witness, to sit in the midst of our excruciating discomfort, and to do this together, and hope that we can hold what's too much So they are too much for anyone who wants to move as someone.

[45:07]

Pay our care, our attention. Support the end of the wiseness and hate. may they all allow ourselves to be made in this function of love. Thank you. 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.

[46:08]

May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[46:10]

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