This podcast is offered by the the slightly shorter people over here, and I'm going to offer them something you can listen to if you'd like, and then they'll get a chance to go and do some other activities with people who are helping to work with the children. So I brought this, which was a present to me. Do you want to hold it? Do you want to hold it and pass it? Is it too big for you? Maybe we'll start over here. And it's an example of a Buddhist superhero.

[01:09]

Okay? So I'm going to read you a little story. And this story was written by one of the priests, a Zen Center priest named Jared Michaels. And it's about, it's called Hey Little Superhero. And it's a manual on how you become a superhero like that superhero right there. He wrote this for his niece, Paige. So you ready for the story? Okay. Hey, little superhero, you've come such a long way. Welcome to the superhero club. I'm happy you came, and I am happy you're here. Hey, caped crusader, I have a present for you, a superhero training manual to help you make your dreams come true. So pay close attention. I'm going to give you some tips. Okay, ready? Here we go. We're off and away. One fun part about being a superhero is that you get to wear whatever you want. Plain clothes or a uniform designed by you for blending in, or if you want, you can flaunt.

[02:16]

You'll become a master of 10,000 tools. Just make sure you use them for good. That's the first superhero rule. Or sometimes you'll get tired when you're a superhero, right? And you'll need a break. Or you'll want to go upside down like in yoga, right? Even superheroes need breaks. Then just curl up like a puppy and take a nap, and you'll be as good as new. Or do something nice for a stranger or a friend. One small kindness makes you stronger for days and days on end. You should know, thank you, sweetheart, You'll watch, okay? You should know that being a superhero can be lonely, but it's okay. To be a superhero, it's necessary now and then to do things your own way. And if you ever get lost, stop. Find a quiet place. Breathe and breathe and breathe and breathe. And slowly, a smile will spread across your face.

[03:23]

And if you still need help, ask someone who's wise. you'll know who they are by trusting yourself inside. So train hard, and you'll be so great that you'll march right up to the scariest things and hug them so tight that they'll show you that they're really soft and cuddly and sweet. There's some scary things here. See those scary things? They're kind of scary like ghosts, right? And you'll make them into superheroes too, and they'll love you for it their whole lives through. We hereby dub you an official superhero. Now get on your way. Go save the world. Enjoy yourself. But first, repeat after me the world-famous superhero creed. Love is power. You want to say that? Love is power. Power is love. So superheroes love everybody.

[04:25]

North. South, east, west, down below, and up above. Congratulations, little superheroes. Okay. So you can take this book with you. Maybe you want to take the book. Are you going to go into the other room or not? No? You're going to stay here? Maybe we'll give it to you. You're going to stay here? The other room? Okay. Then please take the book with and see. These are your... These are your superhero trainers. They're waiting out there. They have their superhero garments on, and maybe they'll show you how to draw your own or make your own, okay? And if you want, you can take this superhero with you, too. You want to come get this, Stephen? Okay. Thanks. Thanks. Oops, I missed a superhero over on the side.

[05:26]

Bye, sweetie. what I want to talk to you about is what I've been really focusing on this year, and I've been calling it practicing in the mud. So let's see how that comes across and how we understand it when I'm done talking. When I am asked to offer Zazen instruction,

[06:31]

I often ask, why is it that people come to practice? Why do they come to meditation? What do they expect? You might think for a minute about what is it that you have in mind. Hi, Beverly. I haven't seen you in a long time. Hi. What do you have in mind when you come to practice? Some of the answers that I get are, I mean, they're so beautiful. It's I want to be more calm. I want to be patient. I want to be able to avoid acting in anger. Some people even say they want to be enlightened. And most of these answers are about something which hasn't come to be yet, some insufficiency. And we look at practice sometimes, Zen practice, as the ultimate thing. self-improvement program.

[07:34]

So why did I come to practice? And why am I still dedicating my life to this activity and this study of the Buddha way? Most of us, I think, carry with us a sense of imperfection. Something is missing. And we have various responses to that belief that we hold pretty dearly. Many people actively work to improve ourselves physically, socially, through relationships, emotionally, through different kinds of therapies, financially. And that's one way. Another way is when we notice that there's something, we think something missing, we withdraw. And we say, well... I'm not going to play those games. And in a way, that makes us special in a different way, that withdrawal from the game of better.

[08:36]

One of the reasons I came to practice is that I came across someone, a teacher, and this person seemed to be living a fully awake life. And this seemed to generate... Deep wisdom, deep compassion, and he also had a really stable and visible yogic practice, physical yogic practice of stillness and flexibility. And I wanted to be like that, which meant that I thought I wasn't. I was convinced I wasn't. I was born imperfect. I had a congenital situation where my hip sockets didn't fully form. So I didn't have hip sockets. And my parents supported me in that situation by saying things like, there's nothing wrong with you.

[09:48]

There's nothing you can't do. And deep down, I didn't buy that. That's what I'm seeing now, more and more and more. For many years, I took their admonition. There's nothing wrong with me. There's nothing I can't do. But something, something deeper is being revealed at this point in my life. The other piece of my story is that at that time when I was an infant and went in for surgeries, they didn't allow parents to visit every day. They thought it was a wise thing to do to have parents come once a week so that the child didn't get upset each time the parents came and went. That was the wisdom of the time. So the combination of being aware that there actually was something wrong and being left laid into that little bitty mind a pattern of

[10:55]

I was abandoned because I'm imperfect. I am unlovable. So that's my story of unlovability. What's yours? It's yours. Think about it. Feel it. And come with me on the rest of this journey. So in my life... When I saw opportunities to hide this deep truth, I grabbed them. I covered my imperfect way by learning to walk in such a way that I fooled people well enough that I was a Hollywood starlet. I was on television. I was in Hollywood. I was in the movies. And every once in a while, someone would say, Did you hurt your foot? But I was creating a camouflage around myself, a huge energy field and an effort so that I couldn't actually be seen for who I was afraid I was.

[12:07]

Huge effort went into that. And then when that phase, when I got a little older and the parts weren't as interesting, I got into producing movies. And that meant glamour and glitz and all that, everything you can imagine. which was a huge, it was like the Buddha, right? With the glitter coming down. Someone gave that to me and I wondered in what spirit that was a gift. The glitter rolling down over the Buddha. For me, the glitter was camouflage. I didn't just want to improve and be perfect. I needed to be perfect. And I did years of therapy, which I am very grateful for. It helped me play better with others. And then I was introduced to Zen. And I thought, whoa, this is the most efficient way to improve. This is it.

[13:09]

You know, it doesn't get any deeper or wider or more inclusive than this. Now. Imagining that the efforts that I've put into practice all this time would make me better, really, it has served me. And I'm not saying that this isn't a wonderful Dharma gate. I can't imagine many people come to this difficult practice. There's the idea of, I want to be happy. But before that, you know, that's maybe a little bit too vague. I want to be better. I want it to be different than the way it is. That maybe is what a lot of us have in common when we come to this practice. So it is a valid gate. And please, please know that I see that. And I'm grateful for what got me started. But something is shifting in me now. And there's a doubt, a doubt that is I can't ignore. So.

[14:12]

There have been years I've been pursuing the path to get better. And some reason, right now, I am more aware of the clash between my deep belief that I need to get better in order to be lovable at all, and my devotion to a practice, which is, ironically, about deeply accepting everything, you, this, everything, everything, exactly. as it is. So there are some conditions I can see that are present that are bringing this to the surface, this clear paradox. And one is I'm getting older. And I have this sense that I have been running from my imperfections, running from them. And the road, when I look forward, isn't long enough to outrun them.

[15:19]

They're like catching up with me. And I think aging has something to do with it. You're more aware of the physical decline. And that's where some of my, you know, some of my issues are. But, like, it's really clear the road's not long enough. That's helpful. That's a condition that I can see. Another is I do want to be happy. and this is not making me happy. This is always about not enough. This is always about not enough. And the third thing, and this is, I think, something I see because I have the great gift of living in community. I am aware that I am very judgmental, as are some of my fellow practitioners in this room. And ironically, I am judgmental in one area of the teachings of meditation that are about getting better.

[16:27]

Because you see, I think it's better to have a teaching that is about not getting better. I actually function this way. You know, pulling the covers off of this thinking is really amazing. So People often give meditation instruction, and there are some tools that are possible, you know, counting the breath and being aware of emotions and naming them, which are maybe slightly from a different school of Buddhism, but they're offered because they help make the practice more accessible. Not in my zazen instruction. You know, people are, like I'm told, no nets, no tools, jump into the deep end. Ooh, sorry. It's because I can barely stand how much I want to be better that I can't tolerate helping people be better.

[17:28]

It's just really unfortunate. So, it's a confession and an apology for those. Although, Dogen doesn't mention the breath in his food comes out. I just want you to know, he doesn't talk about the breath. He talks about the body. Still, whatever needs to be offered that's helpful should be offered, and I haven't allowed myself to do that. I have a judgment that's getting in the way, and I'm tired of it. I'm tired of it because I'm tired of it, but also I get feedback, and they're right. The feedback is accurate, and I don't want to do that anymore. So last weekend I was in a training seminar, priest training seminar, and was offered an exercise that revealed to me the strength of my resistance.

[18:29]

The content of the exercise is not so important, but maybe what I saw would be helpful to you. I saw that the perfection I seek... is too pure and too far away. And that the unlovability that I'm running from is as dark and ugly and imperfect as the perfection is holy and worthy and about freedom. Stuckness, freedom, beautiful, ugly. The distance is... is equal in both directions, and they're totally dependent one upon the other. So, this beauty, this looking into the unattainable future, or barely or maybe attainable future, is this idea I have about what freedom is.

[19:36]

And I think Zen offers freedom. I really do. And I don't think this in some casual way. I think as the result of receiving teachings for many years from people who I see how skillful they are. Their freedom is exhibited in skillful response. And I have faith in the way that they say, Zen, can allow us to see freedom. But what do I think that freedom looks like? And where will I get the courage from to drop my ideas of perfection and settle into the radical acceptance, which is our Zen teaching? You know, the image that we use

[20:40]

quite a bit in Buddhism about the lotus in muddy water. I have to admit, I think that freedom is the lotus. And that the lotus for me represents pure and reaching upward and separating from the mud. And I also admit that I think that the everydayness of our human life, mistakes, the flaws, the weaknesses, the sins, the mud, is something to be avoided. This makes me really sad that I think this, but I think this. Right now, I'm kind of teetering on the edge. This picture, this beautiful picture, which keeps me moving, can I let it go?

[21:44]

Can I turn towards my own humanness? And where will the courage come from? And where will the love come from to touch that unlovability? And what needs to happen first? It's so stuck to me. it's a familiar if unhappy dynamic. And as I get closer to this question and I keep looking and looking, the urge to escape gets stronger. You're like, ooh, no, I'll just keep going. Um... And so then the ideas about this potential pure state become greater and greater and it gets more and more beautiful and perfect. And that idea gives me temporary respite from this unstable, transient, uncontrollable human existence.

[22:57]

continue to use the energy that this life gives me to avoid this life. Thank you. In thinking about talking with you about this, I thought, ooh, I better find a way. offers something that's a bit of a foothold. And, you know, what would be helpful to me right now? What words? Because it's this, I am very resistant to letting go. But I did find something, a couple of things that Suzuki Roshi said that I'd like to share with you. Because he talked about the mud. And he said, and this is a, from a lecture of his, but I've edited it, so it's not every bit that he said, but he said, we should not forget all the water is originally the same.

[24:20]

So only by Zazen practice, you will find pure water in muddy water. It's all water, right? Without being attached to the pureness or the clearness of the water. That will be the pure water. When you sit zazen, you are very much discouraged when you see the muddy water for several days or a lifetime. But actually, water is not so pure. If water stays for a long time still, you'll have silt. Which means to me, if we try to hold on to the purity of the water, it becomes stagnant. We try to hold it as pure, and then it loses that very purity that we're trying to hold it to be. And then Suzuki Roshi says, something else will appear in this water when it's still, bugs, flies, because it is dead water.

[25:27]

If it is running, you know, he says, there must be something in it. So if we're alive, we're alive as human beings. We're not alive as some empty, holy, pure essence. We're alive as human beings. There's something in the water. And then he says, that is actual, you know, world. We should live always in the actual world. We should not live in something, some imagination. When we live in the actual world, there is no problem. Oh. He also said this small thing. He said, it's not small in its content. Your true nature is something which is beyond good and bad. It is valuable because it is beyond good and bad.

[26:31]

It is valuable. because you cannot figure out what it is. I found out that when I was doing this training last weekend, Mark Lancaster gave a very similar talk. He told me the other day. And he said that at the end, someone came up and asked him, well, what is freedom? And he didn't have, at the time, at that moment, a response. And then later he thought, this thought came to him. Freedom from the thought of freedom is freedom. And I hear that and it takes my breath away. Can my beautiful picture of freedom dissolve? And can I let go into not knowing? Hmm. Can I let go of my foolish ways and have some other idea without having another idea in place?

[27:40]

This is sometimes called stepping off the foot of the 100-foot pole. Can I practice the radical acceptance that I'm convinced is the way? So a step towards that I can say, I can consider, is that right now freedom seems to me to be freedom from having to think about being better. I can feel a little relief, not quite trust, not quite 100% trust, but I can feel the sense of Relief. Not having to do something. So I'm offering you this talk, but I'm not offering you an answer.

[28:54]

I don't have the answer. But I suspect... that the mud isn't really muddy, that the water isn't really pure, and that the pain is based on my idea of freedom. 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. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[29:59]

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