Good morning. My name is Tova Green, and I live here at City Center. And I'd like to welcome all of you, especially any of you not working. How about now? No? Thanks. OK. Good morning. again. So my name is Tova Green, and I'm a resident at Zen Center. I'd like to welcome everyone this morning, especially those of you who are here for the first time. And I'd like to thank our Tonto Jordan for inviting me to give the talk this morning, and to Paul Haller, our abbot, who's leading the practice period that started last week, to my teacher, Linda Cutts, and to all those who teach me, many people.

[01:26]

And it's a gift to be able to sit on this Dharma seat. And I want to thank all of you for coming today. So I was invited to speak today in particular to celebrate the one-year anniversary of Zen Center's Queer Dharma Group. It's a monthly group for those of us who are LGBTIQ. We decided to call it Queer Dharma because there were too many letters to remember or to say every time. And I will say more about Queer Dharma later in my talk. If I had a title for my talk today, it would be The Pleasure of Giving. And I'd like to talk about... the mind states that encourage giving and bring out the best in us. And some of the threads that I will weave into the talk today are kind of far ranging.

[02:28]

So if I appear to digress, please bear with me. I'll come back to the theme. So some of the threads are these. I recently returned from two weeks in Vietnam where I was attending Sakyadita, Sisters of the Buddha, the 11th International Buddhist Women's Conference. And last night, two friends who went with me and I, Mary Morgan and Anna Thorne, and I gave a report back, but I know many of you were not there. And I'd like to refer to that really rich experience. And also, because today's talk is embedded in the practice period, which began last Saturday, I'd like to talk about some of the practices that enhance our experience during this time.

[03:35]

It's about an eight-week period this winter where we all make an effort to participate fully in the life of this temple to the extent that we can and some people participating in the practice period live here and some of you are here who are in the practice period who live at home but it doesn't make any difference we all make a commitment to deepen our practice and it brings many wonderful rewards even though we're not practicing to gain anything so So last Saturday, there was a one-day sitting that opened the practice period. And at the end of the day, we all set our intentions for this eight-week period and then said them aloud to one another. The theme of the practice period is sila or sila, samadhi, and prajna.

[04:40]

And those three Sanskrit words... I'll say what they mean, but they're sometimes thought of a three-legged stool because you need all three and the three of them balance, create a balance and are all interconnected. So Sheila is often defined as morality or ethics, as kind of what we live by, but a broader definition that Paul talked about is conduct, our conduct, our behavior, which is influenced by our state of mind. And samadhi has to do with mindfulness and absorption. And prajna is wisdom or insight. So all three together, practicing with our conduct, meditation, and the insight that comes from that are this three-legged stool. So in setting our intention, it would be very meaningful to just think about

[05:44]

something that you would like to dedicate yourself to in any given period of time. And in setting our intentions, I think we find our own wisdom and reach into a place within ourselves that intuitively knows where we need to stretch, find balance, or grow. And then saying our intention out loud really increases our commitment and helps us... support one another to realize our intentions. So my intention for this practice period kind of surprised me. It was to allow more ease and joy into my life. And I think of myself as kind of serious. I do have a sense of humor, but I don't crack jokes very often. And I tend to the word.

[06:45]

Prepare for things, kind of work hard, and allowing more ease and joy into my life seemed like it would be very beneficial, and I'm practicing with that this morning, trying to really be present and enjoy this experience of talking with you this morning. So one way of practicing with ease and joy is giving. And giving is not only about giving material things. It can be about a listening ear or a smile or giving your attention to someone or something. So one of the things I love about our practice is a ceremony that happens once a month.

[07:56]

It's a full moon ceremony. And this morning, we had a full moon ceremony here in the Buddha Hall about 7 o'clock. And at this ceremony, we renew our bodhisattva vow and our intention to practice with the precepts And this month of January is unusual because we had a full moon early in the month, so two full moons and two full moon ceremonies. The ceremony itself is a call and response with the kokyo. It's called Chants and Everyone Chants Back. And we start with avowing our ancient twisted karma and then asking the Buddhas and giving homage to the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas who help us with our vows and help us support our practice.

[08:58]

And then we chant the Bodhisattva vow. Beings are numberless. I vow to save them. Delusions are inexhaustible. I vow to end them. Dharma gates are boundless. I vow to enter them. Buddha's way is unsurpassable. I vow to become it. It's the bodhisattva vows that we chant at the end of every lecture. So if you're not familiar with them, you'll have a chance to chant them this morning. And this bodhisattva vow of living our lives for the benefit of all beings, I think, is really at the core of our practice. In living these bodhisattva vows, we develop some mind states that contribute to our being able to act for the benefit of all beings.

[10:03]

And one of these is the practice of giving. So... these mind states sometimes are called paramitas, or there are six paramitas that help us to develop the mind of, it's called the mind of bodhicitta, or the awakened mind, and the mind that wants to not only wake up for ourselves, but help other people and beings wake up. So, One of the precepts that we take, there are basically 16 precepts. And the first three are taking refuge in Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. And then the second are called the grave precepts.

[11:04]

And there are different versions of them. version is I vow to embrace and sustain right conduct. I vow to embrace and sustain all beings or all good and I vow to live and be lived for the benefit of all beings. So that's another version of beings are numberless. I vow to save them. And then There are ten grave precepts, and the second one is about giving. It says, I vow not to take what is not given, but there is another way of looking at each precept, which is not only to say what we don't do, but also what our intention is to do. So another way of wording that is,

[12:08]

not to take what is not given, but to give what we are able to give and to think not only about not taking, but also what we're able to give and contribute. an article that I read. It was an op-ed in the New York Times called What Could You Live Without? I don't know if any of you saw it. It was by Nicholas Kristof. And it started like this. It was a story about a father and his 14-year-old daughter. He was driving her home from a sleepover, and they stopped at a red light. And on one side of the street, They saw a homeless man who was begging for food.

[13:11]

And on the other side, they saw someone parking his Mercedes coupe. And the daughter said to her father, if that man drove a less fancy car, maybe that homeless person would have more to eat. And when they got home, she kept talking with her family about the inequities. that she was aware of and what could her family do to make a difference. And finally her mother said, what do you want us to do, sell our house? And the daughter said, yeah, that's a great idea. And they lived in a large house and their parents had thought it would be good for their daughter and son to have a lot of room in their house. But eventually the family talked about it and they decided to sell their large house, buy a much smaller house, and give the difference to an organization that would have an impact on global poverty, the inequities in resources in our world.

[14:24]

And they decided it must have been a very big house because they had $800,000 to give. And they did a lot of research, and they found an organization in New York called The Hunger Project that worked with people in West Africa building health clinics and providing microloans to women and looking at farming and many ways that they could provide better living conditions for people in quite a few communities. So they donated the money and then they were able to go to, I think it was Ghana, with a program director from the Hunger Foundation and visit some of the villages that their funds were benefiting.

[15:33]

But they found the most wonderful thing that happened from this was that because they downsized to a much smaller house, the family was living in much closer quarters and spent a lot more time together. And not only did they have all the time that they spent in trying to think about how best to use this money, but they found that they just enjoyed spending time with each other in much closer proximity, and it was a much more family-friendly house. It made me think of those of us who move into Zen Center some of us come from apartments or houses and live here in one room usually and share our bathroom and our kitchen, dining room and we trade a kind of independence for more interdependence which I think is what happened with this family as well and then also find we don't need some of the things that we've accumulated over the years and either give them away or

[16:40]

sometimes put them in storage and then give them away if we stay and really find that we don't need so much and that the experience of living together and the chance encounters at different times of the day and sitting at breakfast and having a conversation with someone about what they're reading or an experience that they had is just very rich. And really, for me, I've lived here for 11 years, part of that time at Tassajara and part at Green Gulch. The experience of living in community is so wonderful. I'm really glad that this is how my life has evolved. But, you know, in... Getting back to Nicholas Kristof, he had another op-ed the week before, which I looked up, called Our Basic Human Pleasures, Food, Sex, and Giving.

[17:52]

And he found that there are neuroscientists who have done brain scans that confirm that altruism has its own rewards. There was a team of scientists at the National Institute of Health who found that when a research subject was encouraged to think of giving money to a charity, parts of the brain lit up that are normally associated with selfish pleasures or so-called selfish pleasures or maybe self-oriented pleasures like eating or sex. And so we're, in a sense, hardwired to be altruistic. It's difficult, in another way of putting it, it may be hard for us to be truly selfless because generosity feels so good. And perhaps you can relate to that at a time when you've given a gift or given the gift of your presence to somebody who is upset or whether it's small or large, it doesn't really make any difference.

[19:02]

It's really very, very satisfying. So I mentioned that recently I spent two weeks in Vietnam at the Sakyadita Women's Conference, and I was wondering what it would be like to go to Vietnam as an American. I was a protester during the Vietnam War, and in Vietnam they refer to it as the American War. There was also a French War, but from their perspective it was the American War. But all I encountered was friendliness, generosity, warmth. And from, well, last night when Mary and Anna and I gave our report back, we were all really moved. And we mentioned the way we were welcomed. From the moment we, you know, you get off the plane, you're tired, long flight, sleeping on the plane or not sleeping on the plane, and we...

[20:04]

collected our baggage, and got through customs and not really sure where we were going. And we were immediately greeted by people with Sakyadita badges. We were given little gold lotuses to pin on our clothing and taken to a booth where we were not only told, we were given a volunteer who went with us to our hotel, helped us settle in. And throughout the conference, there were these... young Vietnamese women who also spoke some English and were so kind and so just wanting to help us with every need that we had. The very first day, the traffic there was overwhelming. This was in Ho Chi Minh City and there were lots and lots of motorcycles. We had to learn how to cross the street. So... We wanted to walk to the conference site, which was about 15 minutes from the hotel, just to see it, because the conference started the next day.

[21:08]

And this young woman walked with us and showed us how to kind of stare down the traffic and slip between the spaces, between the motorcycles, the cars, the buses, the bicycles. And one of the things they say... A gift a monk can give is the gift of fearlessness. I was afraid. But this young woman who showed us our way, she didn't seem to be. And then the next day we had a chance to practice it on our own. It was daunting. I think that was the scariest part of the experience of being at the conference. But anyway, the point I was making was the great generosity that we were greeted with. At the conference itself, there was a vegetarian restaurant that donated all the food for 2,000 women, and their staff was there chopping vegetables, and every day the food was different and delicious and abundant.

[22:15]

At the end of the conference, we went on a five-day, I think of it as a pilgrimage, but it was called a temple tour. on buses, and the buses were donated. The places where we stayed were donated. The food was, we visited different temples, and every time we went to a temple, we were given either a snack or a meal, bottled water, fruit, and a gift. It was a lot of exchange of gifts at this conference. Mostly we were receiving them. we did bring some gifts but there was no way we could have given except I think that they were just glad we were there and that was just pretty wonderful so just checking the time to see if

[23:24]

I can talk a little bit more about the Sakya Dita Conference. Some of you might be interested. One of the best parts of it was being in a gathering of nuns and lay women from 37 different countries, most of them Asian countries. People from the U.S., Canada, Australia, Europe, there were very few of us. There were about 1,700 nuns and laywomen from Vietnam. And the array of robes was incredible, the colors. Gray, brown, pink, white, orange, saffron. There were just a few of us in black. I had hearing papers a lot of the women who spoke the theme of the conference was eminent Buddhist women and there were papers on women from Taiwan Sri Lanka Thailand Cambodia places I've never been but who were leaders in their countries in developing women's sanghas

[24:53]

And just learning about how Buddhism manifests itself in so many different countries was quite a wonderful experience. And I'm very grateful that I was able to go. And I'm also now very much aware of the many temples in the Bay Area that embody some of these different traditions that I haven't yet visited. hoping to bring some of that experience of saccharita back with me. So just a little bit more about giving. I know there's been a tremendous outpouring of generosity in response to the earthquake in Haiti. And I think whenever there's a terrible situation somewhere in the world, There is this wanting to help and give and this connection that we feel to people far away.

[26:00]

I heard on NPR one day about a seven-year-old boy who wanted to help the people in Haiti. And as he was sitting on his mother's lap and talking about what he could do, they came up with the idea that he could do a five-mile bike ride. And he thought maybe he could raise $800 from all the friends and family members that they knew to give to the people in Haiti. And he ended up raising thousands of dollars. And similarly, when a couple of weeks ago, our abbots said that any donation put in the box in the hallway would be doubled by Zen Center and would go to the people in Haiti. I can't remember how much we raised. $2,300. was doubled. So there's that wish to respond, to give and the feeling of it is just one that I think creates a lot of happiness and connectedness.

[27:07]

I think that's the other wonderful thing about giving. It connects us with each other and with perhaps the best part of ourselves. So we have many ways of recognizing this nobility in each of us But then I think it's also important to look at those of us who are not treated so well and whose rights are not being upheld, and particularly in thinking about lesbian and gay people right now, our rights are being debated in the courts. And I just wanted to say we started the Queer Dharma Group last year to create a welcoming safe space for people who are LGBT IQ to come to Zen Center to practice and it's turned out to be a gate for many people who had not been to Zen Center before as well as some old practitioners who came back and then many people in the Sangha who just like to practice with other people who are LGBT and

[28:17]

We've met once a month for a year. We've had speakers. We usually, our format is to sit together, introduce ourselves, hear a Dharma talk, have some discussion, tea, and then small groups, and we end with another sitting. And this year, for the second time, we also participated in the Pride Parade. And I want to thank especially Daigon Gaither, who co-leads the group with me and who his energy and enthusiasm really brings so much to the group. And I want to thank everyone who's given talks or come to the group or assisted us in our monthly meetings. We've also had the support of Zen Center's leadership and of the Sangha. And when we march in the pride parade, we're gay and straight.

[29:21]

There's so many allies. And I want to say that a wonderful way of giving is to be an ally to anyone who's experienced marginalization in some way, whether because of their sexual orientation, race, class, gender, age, physical ability, there's so many ways. And To be a friend, to stand by somebody, and to understand what their worldview is can be a fabulous way to give. So just to come back to this family who gave their house, or half their house, and they've actually written a book that's coming out next month called The Power of Half. But the daughter said, no one expects anyone to sell a house. That's kind of a ridiculous thing to do. For us, the house was just something we could live without. It was too big for us.

[30:24]

Everyone has too much of something, whether it's time, talent, or treasure. Everyone does have their own half. You just have to find it. So I invite you to think about your own life and your own half. What ways do you give and What ways can you give more? And what brings you joy and ease? I'd like to close with a poem by Naomi Shihab Nye, who is a poet who gives a great deal. She has been to Zen Center for either two or three years on her way to Tassajara, where she and Paul Heller have taught workshops together. This poem is called So Much Happiness. It is difficult to know what to do with so much happiness. With sadness there is something to rub against, a wound to tend with lotion and cloth.

[31:31]

When the world falls in around you, you have pieces to pick up, something to hold in your hands like ticket stubs or change. But happiness floats. It doesn't need you to hold it down. It doesn't need anything. Happiness lands on the roof of the next house, singing, and disappears when it wants to. You are happy either way. Even the fact that you once lived in a peaceful treehouse and now live over a quarry of noise and dust cannot make you unhappy. Everything has a life of its own, It too could wake up filled with possibilities of coffee cake and ripe peaches, and loved even the floor which needs to be swept, the soiled linens and scratched records. Since there is no place large enough to contain so much happiness, you shrug, you raise your hands, and it flows out of you into everything you touch.

[32:37]

You are not responsible. You take no credit. as the night sky takes no credit for the moon, but continues to hold it and share it, and in that way be known. So may we all experience joy and ease and the pleasure of giving. Thank you very much.

[33:03]

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