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 to Beginner's Mind Temple. A couple of days ago here in the temple, we had a significant loss. Someone died. In a basic way, no different from the people who were shot in Norway, the young man shot in East Palo Alto down the peninsula, or the young man

[01:10]

young men shot across the bay in Richmond. You know, every life is precious and every life is a loss. But you know, we're living the life we're living and the one that's right in front of us is the loss that we feel the most. Maybe the challenge for us is through living this life to touch all life and through living this loss to touch all loss. This loss was particularly poignant because the person committed suicide. Not that any life ending is easy.

[02:15]

It's still a loss. But when one is cut short in a way that it didn't have to be, the poignancy of it, the way it tends to stimulate our regrets. If only I had noticed, if only I had said, only I had remembered. It seems to me that suicide comes with an extra dose of that cutting edge of loss. And then last night, the residents in the building and nearby who knew the person well, we had a meeting to talk about it.

[03:27]

Not that we knew what we were going to say to each other, not that there was anything specific that we had to say or not say, but just the very process of coming together and bearing witness to who we are and what we are in this moment. And this is quite literally the heart of Zen practice. In some ways, the thing we all yearn for, wish for, And then in the same time, almost in an utterly paradoxical way, seems like the most difficult thing for us to contact or stay true to or remember how much it nourishes us or how important it is for us.

[04:30]

In the process of Zen practice, We don't have a God to pray to. We don't have a God who can ask to save us from the travails of life, the injustices in the world, the inevitable loss of the people we love, the fears and distress within our being. It was remarkable last night as we talked about this person, how much we knew who he was, you know, as the stories would come forth. So many people having experienced intimate contact, you know, this odd mix of a very funny person.

[05:38]

Several people said his humor... His sense of the comic was amazing. Someone said, I told him so many times, you could be a stand-up comedian. That side of him. And then some voice of despair that when it roared, it silenced everything else. Every other voice that spoke of hope. or a constructive way to work through difficulties. His profound sense of longness and his ability to be intimate, to feel connected, how that would somehow fall away when despair

[06:44]

declared the truth of what is. There's nothing to live for. There's nothing to hope for. It's only pain and difficulty. So in Zen, we don't have a God. We don't have a benevolent force that will intercede. There is no supernatural power. And there is. We are it. We are the supernatural power. Everything is the supernatural power. I came across this little poem on a bookmark.

[07:46]

hard not to love the world but possible when I'm like this even the swallows are not God even the yellow school bus even the children inside wanting out are not God of course we can think and feel like that but we can also think and feel the opposite. In the heart of our practice is to think it and feel it and taste it so thoroughly that we can trust our life to it. This one precious, fragile, vulnerable life, searching its way through an unpredictable world.

[08:56]

You know, the process of practice, the process of awareness, is to not simply rely upon our psychological defenses that are the capacity to deny, neglect, ignore, avoid what's challenging and difficult and painful, but to actually turn towards it. It's a fierce proposition. Fortunately, within the practice, there are tools that help us develop the stability, the resilience, the insight, the compassion, the kindness that bring that into being, bring into being the trust that can face such a world and live in such a way.

[10:09]

But it's a delicate proposition. As fierce as it is, as challenging as it is, its very fierceness, its very challenge offers something. Reminds me of the lines by Naomi Shihab Nye. Before you can know kindness as the deepest thing inside, you must know loss as the other deepest thing. in listening to our community last night. As I say, there was no agenda to what we were going to say to each other. There were no guidelines as to what to say and what not to say. But just to speak from the heart, to speak what's in your heart.

[11:18]

Maybe even to speak in the connectedness, in the intimacy of sangha, of community, to say what maybe you wouldn't even say to yourself. I'm angry at him for doing it. I have thoughts that way myself at times. I'll miss him terribly. And as we entered into that authentic heartfulness, someone's saying, why aren't we like this all the time? Why are we so busy? Why do we not have time to be like this with each other? So the difficulties, the losses, the pains of our life tear at the normalcy, tear at the security that we put together, often unexamined, in the service of sustaining our one precious life.

[12:51]

And it's a delicate proposition to relate to that undoing. Of letting those defenses, avoidances, distractions, those yearnings. But if that happens, then everything will be okay. Okay? So something through the course of our life is opened. Naomi told me she wrote that poem, which in a very interesting way sort of made her career as a poet. I've known her for many years now, and the poem's called Kindness. I think of it a little bit like a rock star being asked to sing their greatest hit.

[14:00]

She's written literally thousands of poems since then, but that's the one. She wrote it after she was robbed in South America on a bus in Colombia and ended up in a village with knocking. Before you can know kindness as the deepest thing inside, you must know loss as the other deepest thing inside. maybe she was speaking from experience and to remember that even though there isn't a supernatural force that can save us from all of this there is there is a supernatural force and we are it the yellow school buses that the swallows are red and the children in the bus not wanting to go to school maybe like all of us not wanting to face what we don't want to face and this bearing witness we could describe

[15:31]

the unrelenting inner dialogue of Zazen as our deep wish to be heard. And of course the one that can listen in Zazen is ourself. Can you listen to your narrative about life? Today's commentary And can you listen deeply? Not half distracted. Someone was telling me about a Buddhist teacher who was going to give a talk. I think it was at Google. And the idea was, while they were giving the talk, everybody would Twitter with their friends. And he said, no. You can't Twitter while you're listening to the talk.

[16:32]

This is Buddhism. We just do one thing, you know? Whether we like it or dislike it, whether it charms us or whether it breaks our heart, you know? That's it, you know? This deep, this authentic being You know, you might think in the abstract, oh, that meeting you had last night, it must have been excruciating, painful. It wasn't. It wasn't enjoyable. But it was nourishing. It was incredibly comforting. reassuring and instructive to be there together.

[17:37]

It was inspiring to hear the voice of courage speak the truth. How can each one of us be such one? And Zen practice is saying, you don't need to wait until everything's taken away. You don't need to wait until the fierce world of unpredictable impermanence comes along and snatches away what you most wanted to hold on to. Each day you can turn towards And how do we do it? How do we turn towards? How do we find the fortitude, the resilience, the courage, the personal and collective kindness and compassion?

[18:50]

To face loss. When you get lost, tell me what you do when you get lost tell me tell me what you feel how things look to you what happens in your head what do you say to yourself tell me can you see anything when you get lost can you hear what's about you can you perceive life at all tell me Tell me what scares you most when you get lost. Tell me what you draw from deep inside. What you use to hold you up. Do you move yourself differently? Tell me. Tell me what you do to reach a special calm.

[19:57]

When do you know the weight? When do you know the risk? Tell me what you do when you get lost. Tell me. And tell me how you know when you're not lost. Tell me. basic tenets of Buddhist practice is the truth of dukkha. Often described as pessimistic or nihilistic perspective on life. But it can be thought about other ways.

[21:03]

Not even a... a sobering, painful dose of honesty. There's a way in which the fragility of life is very close to the tender preciousness of life. the person said last night why don't we talk to each other this way all the time why are we so busy why does this seem like bottom of the priority list the way of being that we don't have time for there's a strange way

[22:11]

in which our sense of loss, when we're not dictated to by our fears, our sense of loss draws us closer, closer to ourselves, closer to our own feelings. Tell me what you feel, how things look to you, what happens in your head. what do you say to yourself when the voice of despair roars loud what happens in your head how do things look when your response to hurt is anger does it silence everything else Is kindness banished completely?

[23:16]

Does the rigidity of fixed view exile a sense of maybe so, a sense of is there another way to look at it? What can we say to each other? What can we offer each other? In Buddhism, in Zen, we call community a treasure. A treasure just as much as the practice of awareness. Just as much as all the amazing teachings and insights that can arise when we look clearly and carefully at the nature of what is. Just as much the practice of talking to each other, of being together.

[24:29]

Last night when we talked, there were long moments of silence. Sometimes life goes beyond words. Sometimes it doesn't fit within the verbalization we want to address it with. And sometimes it asks us to hear the words underneath the words. like this morning, I would hope, not so much that what I say becomes a replacement for your own ideas and feelings, but more that something in it puts you in touch with something in yourself, something asking to be listened to, something asking to be heard.

[25:52]

And I would hope that you would ask the question, you would make the inquiry in a way that speaks the language of your heart, of your authentic being. Just as I'm trying to do right now. In my life, I grew up Christian and became disenchanted. Something of its orthodoxy didn't nourish me. Actually, it annoyed me. I disapproved. Then somewhere in my life,

[26:57]

I find, after many, many years of Buddhist practice, I find that poetry spoke to me. Tell me what you do when you get lost. Tell me what you do when you experience loss, when the world feels unpredictable, uncertain. Tell me what you do when you feel like you have to hold tightly onto possessions, onto fixed views, onto fixed attitudes and judgments. What loosens that up? And of course I'm talking to myself as I talk to you.

[28:09]

And my hope is that if those are not the words that work for you, what words do? What words quicken the preciousness of your life? What words, what ideas, what feelings let you hold your life with kindness? What way of being, what way of talking to the people in your life help support you? Sometimes We don't know what to say until we start talking to someone else. Tell me what you do when you get lost. Tell me.

[29:11]

Sometimes we don't stop. We don't all come together. until something tears at the fabric of normalcy something declares beyond any kind of questioning things change you can take it for granted that things are going to stay the way they are you can act in that way, but they don't. Tell me, can you see anything when you're lost? Can you hear what's about you? Can you perceive life at all? Tell me what scares you most.

[30:25]

Can you draw from deep inside? Can you draw from deep inside what you can use to hold yourself up? Can you discover the supernatural in the natural? Can you discover that the resilience the fortitude the empowerment to live this life to its fullest is assured activity that practice is intervening last night as we talked about this person David said

[31:29]

So available for intimacy and charm and humor. And then a nagging sense of separation and aloneness. That we charge back in and flood out, apparently, at times, all else. The great gift of opening up is receiving. We receive everything because we're connected to everything. And the great mystery is why we resist it. What are we thinking? How could this seem like the appropriate response?

[32:36]

Resist, stay separate, keep your defenses up, and keep your head down. And yet, in a way, earning our own trust, trusting that I can be one who can keep their head up. who can put their defenses down, who can open their arms, open their heart, open their mind, who can let loose fixed ideas and opinions and judgments that form a conviction for separation. We do it a little bit.

[33:39]

And if we pay attention, we'll see how it inspires us, how it teaches us, how it supports us. We earn our own trust. And as we connect to each other, We learn to trust non-separation. You know, Einstein said, apparently, asked the question, is the universe a friendly place? I think Buddhist practice says... Depends on whether you're friendly to it. No.

[34:46]

That strange occurrence in Norway where someone managed to shoot in a rampage over 80 people. What was he thinking? Quite literally. What was he thinking? How come that seemed like the thing to do that day? How come that seemed like a helpful way to live his life? That seemed like a way to express what he holds dear and valuable. That's what will bring forth a better world. Could he think that way? Could he act that way? If something about the precious fragility of life was in his heart speaking loudly, something about the mutuality of our welfare was being lived in his non-separation.

[36:09]

right here in this August Zen Center one of our practitioners committing suicide how could that be how could such a thing happen This is the life for sure. Inside and outside. How will we live it? How can we let the very nature of this life nourish us rather than turn us

[37:24]

towards despair? How can we find within it the support to keep living rather than an isolation that turns us to stone? All this comes to bear in each moment of practice. In each moment of simple kindness. Then tell me, how do you know when you're not lost? I would add, in how do you live that life?

[38:27]

Thank you. 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, please visit sfzc.org and click giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[39:02]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_96.54