This podcast is offered by San Francisco's Zen Center on the web at sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to City Center by Proxy, where our main building over on Page Street is being renovated for the year. So we are sort of moving around and establishing relationships with various neighbors. And Haight Street Arts Center has been very kind to let us have this space several times so far this year. And we're today having a one-day sit. So we've been sitting here since 6.30 this morning. And for those of you who are sitting with us, it's a beautiful thing to sit with you all.

[01:00]

I kind of like the space. We sort of do it here or at Unity Church, which is down the street on Page Street. And they're very different spaces. And it's just wonderful to sit here today with you all. So I would like to thank Central Abbot David Zimmerman for allowing me to sit in the Dharma seat today. And I want to thank my beloved teacher, Rinso Ed Satterson, for his incredible patience. And welcome to everyone who's online today. Thank you very much for coming and thank you to you all for making time in your busy schedules. to come here and practice with us. The name of my talk today is Practicing with a Broken Heart.

[02:04]

Modern spirituality in many ways addresses a basic contradiction that we have, or that I have anyway. And that is that we're both separate and that we're interconnected. Buddhism made sense to me when I first came, because subconsciously I had this suspicion that I was connected to other beings, but my behavior was often in contradiction to that feeling. I was selfish and self-centered in so many of my actions. Many of us come to this practice, to zazen, which is the name of what we do. Za is seated, zen is meditation, seated meditation, zazen, with what is written on our hearts. We bring the conditions of both the one and the many to our cushions.

[03:07]

We come conditioned by our past, by our gender, by our race, by our class. And much of these conditions exist and are cultivated in our minds. In quotes, it's all about the mind, end quote, wrote James Ishmael Ford in one of his books. And he spoke in this seat, although it was at a different place, last Saturday. And we bring our minds to Zazen. In fact, it's our minds that bring us to Zazen, not just our bodies. Zen is sometimes called the mind-only school. And the Langavatarasutra, the sutra which Bodhidharma, who was our founder of this lineage in China, said that that sutra was all it is that his disciples needed to read, and that's sometimes called the mind-only sutra.

[04:10]

The mind, which is the product of the brain, is extremely complicated. is an extremely complicated organ where wars are started and love is registered. The conditions of our lives closes our hearts and minds together. Zen practice is about opening them up again. So at Zen Center we have a rolling dialogue, a dialogue that's based on the Dharma. and the Dharma's purpose is to open us up, to wake us up to full awareness. A Dharma talk is given, and hopefully it influences how it is that we practice together. It seems counterintuitive to me, but opening up the heart and mind, which close in response to our conditioning, close as a means of protection, opening up is actually a way to achieve more intimacy and can seem dangerous to some conditioning.

[05:26]

We want to protect ourselves and that's where closing begins as an appropriate response to harm. Two weeks ago, Jiria Ruchman Beiler, who's the abiding abbot for our sister temple over in Marin County, Green Gulch Farm, he gave a talk where he spoke about welcoming practice. And this is opening the heart to whatever it is that arises. If boredom arises, open to boredom, not adding to it or taking anything away. This is boredom. When something painful arises, welcome it. This is pain. It arises, it comes into being, and it fades away. And we'll be continuing this dialogue around welcoming practice in our upcoming practice period.

[06:35]

where myself and Tova Green and Eli Brown-Stevenson will use as our main text, Galen Ferguson's Welcoming Beginner's Mind. And he'll be actually visiting us during the practice period. In the practice period, there'll be trainings in deep welcoming of all that arises and we'll be taught how to fine tune the capacity for opening the injured heart to awakeness. how to feel all things as it is, as Suzuki Roshi said. So because of the renovation that we've been undergoing since the beginning of the year, and it's going to last through until January, so it will be one whole year, because of that, we've been experimenting with, obviously, our our locations, but also with our Wednesday evening events, which usually have been Dharma talks just like this one.

[07:38]

But several weeks ago, we started with a series of dialogues on our 13th century founder in Japan, Ehei Dogen's writing on busho, which means Buddha nature. We called it a salon, mostly because we served tea, but the idea was to have a dialogue and focus on conversation much more rather than the Dharma talk format. These past two weeks, on Wednesdays, we focused on having dialogue around our basic practice. Last week, we focused on chanting, this last Wednesday. And the week before that, we spoke about the Zazen experience, what's actually happening inside when you sit Zazen. We didn't serve tea at these past two-week events, which I was a little disappointed about.

[08:45]

So they weren't called salons. They were called open Dharma circles. Very important difference there. At the one that we did on the Zazen experience, more than one person mentioned to me afterwards the courage that it takes to not only sit Zazen but to talk about it. We make ourselves vulnerable when we have no distractions and we're left with nothing but to study the self with all of its conditions. For me personally, sometimes there's a vast darkness, but it's not an ominous darkness. It certainly has mystery to it. It seems to take place in vast space. It includes all known-to-me phenomena and an awareness of a much greater unknown.

[09:49]

It swims, it moves, kind of like the wind. It seems that there's movement of both time and space. It includes war and suffering, but also a sense of acceptance, even well-being, that somehow things are as they are. It includes my own suffering and breaking of the precepts. The 16 Bodhisattva precepts are received in a public ceremony called Jukai. And when I received Jukai, my first teacher, Michael Wenger, asked me how I was doing the night before. And I told him that I was really nervous. And when he asked why, I told him that because I had already received a broad interpretation of the precept not to kill. And so this includes all kinds of killing we do, not just lives but including people's spirit when we're inconsiderate in some way I didn't think that I could uphold this precept of not killing and he said just by standing here we're killing millions of beings by breathing in and out so this taught me that we go forward with our imperfect behavior and

[11:19]

through this practice are able to somehow survive seeing that we survive is crucial we just continue with the darkest knowledge knowing that what we do is opening to the vastness it's possible and seeing that it's possible to tolerate it this is what practice opens us up to we let go of our certainties and see that we can handle it We have the capacity to see inside of all reality without leaving anything out and somehow continue to go on to the next moment. And through that process, we gain an advancing awareness of not only what it is that we have done, but what others have done. we have an understanding of what it is that's happened.

[12:22]

We know anger and injustice and harm. We see how harm and suffer occur. It's with understanding that we first see how we have come to act in a certain way, and therefore how others have done so too. By looking at ourselves, we understand the deepest elements of others and we cultivate forgiveness. Forgiveness is created through the interaction of wisdom and compassion, which must act in union together. Compassion without wisdom is sometimes derisively called idiot compassion, the giving up on understanding why something has happened and trying to just forget it. This is not true compassion. but closer to nihilism, a radical skepticism that all conclusions are empty and the pursuit of truth is futile.

[13:27]

As human beings, we want to know the truth. We're compelled to look for honest answers as to why it is we suffer because we have once again this deep natural understanding of the interconnectedness of all things. We feel our suffering and when we come to a Zen temple and are told to face the wall and don't move, and somehow it seems to make sense to us, even though it can be painful in both our bodies and in our hearts. This is called studying the self. We're admonished by our teachers to study the self, investigate, Investigate, says Dogen, over and over again. To look at the workings of our mind and see how our conditions affect all that goes on there.

[14:31]

To not try to do anything or push anything away because practice is itself realization. Very importantly, we see the impermanence of our conditioning and of our thoughts. You are not your thoughts. They come into being, arise and fade away if we don't cling to them or try to push them away. We see our conditioning, we feel how deep it can go, but we see it is not permanent. So I am trained as a fine art, that's what I studied in college. And when I moved into City Center two years ago, after practicing there for over 20 years, I had about 35 years worth of artwork which hadn't sold. I'd sold a lot through my career, but there still was quite a bit left over.

[15:39]

Probably some 40 paintings and many more drawings. And I suddenly had nowhere to store them. because I'd given up my studio. After looking around a lot, I got an expensive storage space and very quickly realized that I would need to get rid of the paintings. I gave a few away, but had no choice but to go to the dump. Obviously, this was very painful. I would fill up my truck with artwork each Sunday and take it to the dump. Some of the paintings, my earlier ones, were quite big. I was filled with ego even more than I am now when I was younger. And I paint on wood, so they were really heavy, substantial objects, records of parts of my life.

[16:48]

And as you can imagine, there was a sense of great loss as I was unloading my truck at the dump. I had a feeling of lack as I tipped the paintings out of the truck. Something of meaning was now missing and it broke my heart. So this is grief, the feeling of loss, of saying goodbye. In this case, I was saying goodbye to objects that recorded my past hopes and dreams, the creative expressions of my inner world, parts of me that were important at the time. I was at the dump and it hurt over there on Tunnel Road. This practice asks us to welcome such moments, which obviously are very hard.

[17:51]

We acknowledge what is happening. I'm saying goodbye to parts of me. We acknowledge the hurt. It is painful. We see that the pain, however, is not consistent. It shifts from moment to moment. Now intense. Now the intensity has slightly, only very slightly diminished. Then it returns, this time more powerful. Then in the next second, diminishing again. Then for just a brief second, it's almost completely gone. And for the briefest of moments, I'm completely free before the pain returns. But I know this time that I will be all right. And this is the key, that I can feel the most profound loss

[18:55]

and with the passage of moments and an awareness of what's going on, knowing that I will survive. In grief therapy, they call this grief work. In Zen, we call it being present and seeing the impermanence of all phenomena. Knowing that you're not permanently the feelings that you have, even the most powerful ones. By practicing in this way, slowly, and just biting off small bits, by opening to whatever occurs, it's possible to eventually tolerate whatever it is that arises. This is Zen training. But you need to be careful. Especially if you're working with depression or any kind of trauma. We do this slowly. There's no rush. Beware of the conditioning that says we need to arrive somewhere.

[20:00]

You're just investigating, noting what it is that arises. We always feel grounding in the body. I'm on this cushion and I am safe. This is of the greatest importance to make contact and be able to return to this safe place right here with these people in this safe space. Cultivate a strong relationship with impermanence by experiencing it over and over again. Develop faith in impermanence. We take refuge in Buddha, That's the first precept when you take the Bodhisattva precepts. Whatever it is that that means to you, whatever Buddha means to you.

[21:04]

We take refuge in the Dharma, which are the teachings, and we take refuge in Sangha, which is the fellowship of practitioners. We are all in Sangha. Even if this is your first and maybe last time that you're ever here, you're in Sangha today, right now. This is the fellowship of practitioners, which also includes teachers. This means you don't have to do any of this on your own. Sometimes it's necessary to have some therapy. I've had lots of it and probably will continue to do so. There seems to be quite a bit of work that needs to be undone in that format. What I've described is the process of studying the self. and learning that all phenomena, including painful experiences, are not permanent. Nothing stays. It's coming and going. It arises, comes into being, and degenerates.

[22:09]

This is the Dharma. This is what the teachings try to make clear to us. Not only that all phenomena is empty of permanence, but that it all is interconnected. This interconnectedness is seen in sangha. We do this slowly and in communication with others in the sangha. Please have practice discussion. Talk with a teacher. You can talk today with a teacher if you want to. You can talk with myself or with David or with Tova. There'll be an announcement about that after this Dharma talk. You don't have to reinvent the wheel or be on your own. I found that my experiences that arose in practice, the ones I thought that were unique to me, I had actually shared with others, particularly with the grieving process.

[23:11]

This is something that a famous story in Buddhism explains to us. It's the story of Kisa Gotami, whose son died. and she was completely and utterly distraught and went to the Buddha pleading with him to bring her son back to life. And he said that he would do that if she could go and find a mustard seed from each house that had not experienced grief the way that she had. And she went around from house to house and obviously couldn't find a mustard seed, because she couldn't find a house that hadn't suffered from grief. But while she was doing that, people invited her in and spoke with her about their grieving experience. And that's how it is that she saw that this deepest of all pains she actually shared with everyone else. She eventually became enlightened, they say.

[24:15]

So it's quite true. that I am the sewing teacher at City Center. We sew our own robes, so I sewed this, actually I didn't sew this robe. Christine and Lenhair sewed this robe and loaned it to me because my robe is horrifyingly in tatters. It's very bad for a sewing teacher to have such a unrepaired sewing robe. But we sew these sort of smaller robes that are just as legitimate as these bigger robes. And you have to go to sewing class and there has to be a sewing teacher there to instruct you. And that's what I am. I'm one of several sewing teachers that we have here. And when we study with a teacher, with a Dharma teacher, and they feel that we're ready for receiving the precepts, they ask you to go to sewing class and sew your robe. And these robes are made of panels, and the panels are made of, for the smaller ones that are called rakasus, they're made of one short piece and one long piece.

[25:29]

This is a priest's robe in Okesa, so we have two long pieces and one short piece in these. And the short pieces are delusion pieces or ignorance pieces. And the long ones are the wisdom pieces. So once you become a priest, theoretically, you're supposed to have a little bit more wisdom. So we get two wisdom panels. So the point of this is that we, in our practice, we're not trying to get rid of the bad stuff. We're not trying to get rid of the delusion and the ignorance. We actually sew it together with... the wisdom panels, to try and get rid of the delusion and the ignorance would be dualistic. We include ignorance in our understanding of being awake. We actually sew the delusion panels to the wisdom panels because this makes the whole picture.

[26:36]

We're trying to be whole, and we need to see the whole picture in order to do so. It's here that we find what Dogen said was bliss and repose in our practice. My teacher, Ed Satterson, is always telling me that the pain I feel is in direct proportion to love that has happened in some connected way. And it's up to me to find that love somehow. So... Be kind to yourselves today. Those of you who are sitting with us and those of you who are going to leave, please be kind to yourself. Do whatever it is that you need to do in order to look after yourself. Be kind to your heart. Don't believe all the things your mind is telling you. Importantly, as Suzuki Roshi said, don't take your thoughts personally. So I'd like to finish up with a short poem by David White called The Well of Grief.

[27:52]

I'm going to read it twice because it's short. Those who will not slip beneath the still surface of the well of grief turning downward through its black water to the place we cannot breathe will never know the source from which we drink. the secret water cold and clear, nor find in the darkness glimmering the small round coins thrown by those who wished for something else. Once again, those who will not slip beneath the still surface of the well of grief, turning downward through its black water to the place we cannot breathe, will never know the source from which we drink. the secret water, cold and clear, nor find in the darkness glimmering the small round coins thrown by those who wished for something else.

[28:53]

Thank you all very much for your attention. 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 sfcc.org and click Giving. May we all fully enjoy the Dharma.

[29:26]

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