This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. I'm so pleased to be here with you and thank you for being my teacher. I'd also like to thank Abbott Greg, sorry, Tonto Greg, getting a little ahead of myself here. for inviting me to give the talk tonight. So tonight I want to talk about problems. I've been thinking about problems lately. I'm now the president of San Francisco Zen Center, so you could say I have problems or problems have me. And sometimes that's the way I think about it.

[01:00]

Sometimes there are things that seem like problems. But I've noticed that how I think about what arises in my field, in my realm, and how I experience it has so much to do with how I think about it. It has very little to do with what it is and so much to do with how I relate with it. And I think that's just true in our lives. So I've been exploring that a lot in various ways. So problems, how we relate to them, and how we can be completely free within our problems. Suzuki Roshi said, in Japan, we call this era of civilized life the instant age because of the prevalent idea that quick solutions to problems are possible without difficulty. This idea takes many forms, instant coffee, instant sukiyaki, operations for physical disease, pills for mental illness.

[02:11]

In spite of all the benefits from our civilization, it is difficult for people to remain strong enough to be happy physically and mentally. This was about 50 years ago. And there was certainly a kind of a cultural progressive idea that quick solutions were the way to go and that it was really within reach and we just had to make more tang as we put a man on the moon and everything was going to be great. And, of course, it hasn't actually worked out that way, right? I was thinking, so then it was all about instant coffee. Now nobody wants instant coffee. Now it's like... the slow drip that's a ritual. And instead of instant sukiyaki, there's the slow food movement. So it kind of goes from one side to the other. And, you know, in the 50s and 60s, it was all about household appliances.

[03:20]

We're going to save time. You know, save time for what? The Internet? So now we have... I think most people would experience that we have a lot less time available to us just to be than we did 50 years ago. It's managed to fill up amazingly even though the amount of time we spend on, for example, housework or cooking food has decreased drastically. So how do we meet that? What do we do about that? It's really interesting to me that we're at an interesting juncture in the world where we're now actually recognizing that many of our intended solutions create problems, often bigger problems than they were intended to solve. So what do you do?

[04:26]

try to solve something and it's like, what was it, the sorcerer's apprentice? You know, he's got this broom and he makes the wish and it happens, but it just keeps getting bigger and it gets out of control. So we're trying to find our way back to something that actually makes sense. Because, you know, problems just don't go away. So it's how do we relate with them? I remember being in graduate school. for some period of years. And every year for the first several years, I thought, well, this year is difficult because I'm just starting back to school after a long time away. So after this year, when I'm like back in the rhythm of school, everything will be a lot easier. And then the next year I started my internship and I thought, well, this is difficult. This is, I'm just starting to see clients and it'll be better and I'll get over this hump and it'll be good. And then the next year, I think, was statistics. And I forget what the next couple of years were.

[05:30]

And about then, I started getting the picture that that wasn't really going to change, that there was always going to be something, something new, something that I was learning, something that I would think, after this, my life can begin, sort of. And I realized, how am I going to live this life? That became a much more compelling question for me was how am I going to live the life that I have now rather than thinking that I'm going to get over this particular hump? Because I think for many of us, as we grow and learn, responsibilities rise to meet us. You know, as we develop more capacity, there's a bigger request. I think for many of us that's true. And there's a deep desire to be able to offer more. There's a lot needed in the world, so we want to meet that.

[06:33]

So how do we do that in a way that's actually sustainable? Thomas Merton talked about the desire to do good and to keep adding more on in a busy way, was actually to do violence. And that struck me, you know, that this kind of overly determined desire to do good and to get really busy and push, you know, have that pushing effort behind it is a form of violence. And it's not that we shouldn't do good. It's just how do we do it? How do we meet whatever's there? So, you know, that's the problems of the last 50 years. But there have always been problems. 2,500 years ago, the Buddha was talking about problems.

[07:37]

The Four Noble Truths, you know. There is suffering. The term was dukkha. There is unhappiness or stress. There's a sense of wanting things to be otherwise. So, this is part of being human. This isn't something that we've just recently invented. We have particular forms of this currently. But, you know, we currently don't, we experience stress. We're currently not experiencing a lot of the things that were problems in the Buddhist time and problems throughout the world. So in many ways, we're very blessed. But we have a different set of challenges. So the Buddha said that birth, old age, sickness, and death were all suffering or stress. Not getting what you want, getting what you don't want.

[08:41]

So that kind of covers it. But basically, whatever's there, it only becomes a problem. when the object of the suffering becomes a fixed idea. So there's whatever the situation is, and then there's our relationship with it. And if our relationship with it is one of struggle, one of trying to fix it or control it or change it, before we actually meet it, like we're trying to hold it away or grab onto it, we don't even know what it is yet. It's just, ah. I want that to be different. I don't want it to get any closer. I don't want it to threaten me. This is worrisome. Blocking it out. Before we even know how to work with it skillfully, we're pushing it away. We don't even know what it is. So when we do that, it tends to become this fixed idea.

[09:47]

And we do this really a lot with people. This person is a problem. And I've often noticed that... Some people I can recognize are challenging people, but I can deal with them, and I actually kind of enjoy working with them because it's a challenge. It's like, oh, this is interesting. How can I work with this person? How can I make this be okay? How can I get along here? But when I feel like I don't know how to work with someone, it makes me feel bad about myself. I feel bad. I feel helpless or threatened or angry. I feel some way I don't want to feel and I think I shouldn't feel. So then I can see myself turn it and make it about them.

[10:51]

This has generally not helped me to do much of anything. And the sooner I see that, it's like, oh, I'm trying to protect myself. Okay, stop, back up. Where's the problem? Ah, I'm afraid, I'm mad, and I shouldn't be, whatever it is. Then suddenly we're having a conversation. It's a very different place to operate from. So what's our relationship to what we think of as problems? Or what's our relationship to our suffering? our unhappiness, our stress. Do we try to grab onto it with greed? Do we try to push it away with aversion? Or do we just kind of space it out? I'm a delusion type, so I've been exploring what it means to ignore things lately. It's really hard to catch in the beginning. But once you get a sense of, oh, I'm not even attending,

[11:58]

to what's going on. I'm just kind of like something arises and my attention wanders. It's like, oh, that's very interesting. What just happened there? So to start catching that, to be curious about your responses, opens up a whole new area of inquiry. And when you can get interested in a problem, it's a completely different relationship. When it's seen as a problem, almost always there's a sense of a separate self, an I that is in some way not okay, threatened, doesn't have enough, has a lack, has a hole, is empty. But once we start engaging, we're not separate in the same way. There's curiosity, there's engagement. It's a...

[13:01]

It's a system of this one and whatever it is out here. Suddenly we're a whole... It's a conversation. It's happening. It could be a conversation with me and a broken something, you know, something I need to repair or a relationship that needs some repair or something that needs to be done that needs... It's like, oh... How does this happen? How does this work? So we're in relationship. I have a friend who lives in a community and they have a saying, do you want to be right or do you want to be in relationship? And they're usually talking about it interpersonally. You know, like, I'm going to be right. So I'm shutting you out of relationship.

[14:03]

But this happens inside of ourselves too. This happens with everything. I don't want to look bad. I don't want to feel bad. Either to myself or to anyone else. So I'm unwilling to be in relationship. When we're in relationship, it's vulnerable. It's a big risk. You can look bad. By bad, I mean you can look ways that you think you shouldn't. Other people might think, wow, I finally get to see you. Isn't that great? You're finally showing me yourself. That's like, no, that wasn't the me I wanted to show you. I wanted to show you the nicely polished one. Which is not, I mean, it is you. How can you be other than you? but it's only a version of you. So being in relationship with the world is to be more vulnerable, but it's also to be safer because you're actually in relationship rather than having a wall up and not being able to see anything that's there.

[15:21]

So as president, since I'm part of leading a medium-large organization, I've been reading a lot of organizational development books because doing this is a very new thing for me. And I've been so interested that there's this whole section of thinking about organizations as communities and in ways that are so completely resonant with the Dharma. And this is really encouraging to me. It's just a different way of thinking about our practice in modern communities, modern organizations, rather than monastic communities of a thousand or two years ago. So one of the things that I've been reading about, for example, is... shifting the way that we talk about things.

[16:43]

And the first step is shifting from the language of complaint to the language of commitment. So often we complain about things, and it's sort of like talking about the weather. You know, it's just a way to talk and a way to connect with people. And we often bond around things that are wrong. Like if we can both agree that something is bad or wrong or should be changed or this person is not doing the right thing, it's very bonding. You know, it's like, yes, that's right. Our view of reality is affirmed. So it has a kind of a positive side, you know, of bringing you closer to this other person, but it has obviously a lot of negative sides as well. And I thought this approach was so interesting because it didn't say, stop complaining. That usually just shifts it underground and secret and it kind of leaks out in resentment or whatever.

[17:49]

But the suggestion, which I actually heard as a practice suggestion, was to investigate the complaint more deeply. was to take it really seriously and to listen underneath the complaint. So if you're complaining about something, what's implied is that there's a commitment that isn't being met, that you actually have a commitment to, you know, say your friend said something unkind to you, about you, not in your presence and you heard back about it. So you have a commitment to loyalty or trustworthiness or kindness or whatever it is. You have a commitment to this, and in some way this has been violated. So to tune in deeper to what the commitment is, to what you want.

[18:53]

And this is a shift in so many areas of... kind of all the social sciences. I think because after a while they noticed that focusing on problems just didn't work. I mean, that was the whole approach was, you know, we'll do a master plan and we'll list out all the problems and we'll get the solutions and everything will be better. And just like with, you know, going for instant coffee, it didn't work out that way. Those problems got solved. There were new ones. It kind of didn't make any difference. People weren't much happier. So there's been a shift to, they call it a strengths-based approach. It's like, well, you know, when you think about it, if we have all these problems, it's amazing that we even function at all. You know, you look at it and you think about it, it's like, how does this even go?

[19:57]

At Tassajara, that can be really evident during April work period. It looks like a lot of unformed stuff happening. And after you've been through it more than a few times, it's like, this is normal. This is what it looks like. Every year, we go through this, and you can see the places that are actually working. You see, it's really interesting, that shift of seeing the problems to see, you know, no, we got a crew head over here who's really enthusiastic. That's going to work. We have some good people on the cruise. You know, we have just enough people. We have some good attitude. This is all pulling together. Things are happening. And it's happened every year for 50 years. So after a while, it's like, I think we can trust this. So it's wonderful when the same thing happens over and over and over again, and even if you haven't seen it happen over and over and over again, other people have, and they can be like, yeah, I think we're going to be okay.

[21:14]

I think we don't have to freak out just yet. And then you start noticing, oh, actually freaking out makes other people freak out. And you get enough people freaking out, and then it actually isn't working anymore. Because worrying about problems tends to create more problems, and that's the way a lot of energy is going. So it's just really interesting to watch that. So it's like, what do you want more of in your life? What do you want to create? You know, Suzuki Roshi used to say, it's good for you to have problems. Ed Brown told a story once that, I think it was during Sashin, and every so often Suzuki Roshi would say something during just a period of silence, you know.

[22:20]

And one day he said, the problems that you have today, and you know the way you kind of finish a sentence in your head before the person's finished talking, so... The sentence that Ed finished in his head was, the problems that you have today will all evaporate like the dew in the morning or, you know, will all seem like nothing a few years from now. But what Suzuki Roshi actually said was, you will have for the rest of your life. And I think he went on to say something like, and this is actually great because you get to see them over and over again and you get very familiar with them. This is a lot easier than having new problems all the time. But I think Lauren and Kogan's little baby Calliope, who's a little over a year old, has a lot of problems. She can't even talk yet.

[23:21]

And she has a lot of wants. She can say, I think she says no some. But still, she's very little. And if someone wants to pick her up, she can't resist. So you could say that she has a lot of problems, like learning to get her hands around things. But that's how Calliope grows. That's how she develops. That's how she learns. If she didn't have any problems, she wouldn't have any opportunity to learn. And little kids... They just don't worry about stuff. They just go. The one and only time I ever went downhill skiing, I went with a group of kids because I was in Maine and my friends were teaching in a one-room schoolhouse and one day a week their PE was going to the local ski resort. So I got to tag along.

[24:25]

And they're all just zooming down the mountain. And I'm not so physically confident. I never have been. And it hasn't snowed in weeks, so it was basically just a solid sheet of packed ice. Like you snowplow and you just keep going. So this was not giving me a lot of confidence. And I'm asking the poor instructor who was completely used to just teaching kids, I'd say, so do I do it like this or do I do it like this? I wanted to have it all figured out in my head. before I actually tried it. Like, if I could just imagine it completely in my body, then I knew I could go okay. And she said, you know, I don't really know how to answer you. With the kids I teach, you know, you just point one way or you point the other. And they go. You know, they figure out how to do that, but they don't know how they figure it out, and I don't know how to tell you either. And these kids, you know, they're like... two and three and four years old and they're in their little bunny suits and they have skis about, you know, 24 inches long and no poles and they're just... And they're having a great time, you know, and they fall down and sometimes they get hurt and sometimes they don't and they cry or they get up but, you know, they keep trying again.

[25:46]

You know, this is how we learn. So how can we keep having that growth mindset, you know, that we can learn? It's like the yes, I can rather than no, I don't think so. That's not a good idea. You know, really, someone over here said that wasn't a good idea. So it makes it hard to try things. It makes it hard to just jump in. So this is very big in schools right now is having a growth mindset. And I think part of that may have come out of all the good intentions of child rearing some years ago that kids should have really good self-esteem and we should praise them and reward them a lot, make life easier for them, support them completely. And then the unintended consequence was that they had a hard time when things got difficult.

[26:46]

They had a hard time making a sustained effort. Because they expected to get praise for everything and they expected to get things to be easy. But when they got out in the world or even before then, if they encountered things that were really hard, it was harder for them to persist because they weren't good at dealing with failure. Winston Churchill said... Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm. I think the difference in Zen is that we let go of even attachment to the outcome. It's like not about success either. You know, just to make complete effort, complete commitment. on each moment with no attachment to outcome.

[27:49]

So, in those moments when it's not all about me and there's nothing to protect and nothing to defend, There's relationship, there's engagement, there's simple presence. Engagement not necessarily with anything out there, but just with what's arising on this moment. We can be free of self-doubt and free of this burden that we often carry around with us. So we all have moments of this, and that's actually how we become free of self-clinging. So our Zen practice is about learning how to live from that place, how to string those moments together to form the circle of the way. Continuous practice is the circle of the way.

[29:00]

So continuing on from Suzuki Roshi's quote earlier, says, It is difficult for people to remain strong enough to be happy physically and mentally. Why? Perhaps because a most important point is missing. The important point is to arrange ourselves from inside. Orientation from our inmost nature is wanted. The problem is how to make use of our civilization and not be ruined by it. The solution to this problem is zazen. It's the answer to everything, right? By sitting, we have to resume our own nature, and by great activity, we should acquire absolute freedom. The most important thing is to own your physical body.

[30:04]

That's really the place to start, just to own your physical body. Tassajara is such a good place to do that. It's hard to get away from your physical body at Tassajara. We're outside a lot, can be hot, flies, tired. So just to be completely with that rather than trying to get away from it. If you take a posture of slumping, you will lose your body. you will lose your connection with your body. Your body is somewhere else and your mind is too. Your mind and body is wandering somewhere. This is not the way. So when we sit in zazen, our body and mind are gathered into one suchness.

[31:07]

Completely present, body and mind. And the posture... The zazen posture is a great help in doing that. In the beginning, it's very challenging because our bodies are not used to sitting this way. But once we find our seat, it's extremely supportive. So just put yourself there and find out about it. Not like me trying to learn how to ski. Be like the little kids. Just put your body there and see how it is. Find out. We practice and we make mistakes and we fail exactly so we can see our deluded self. So we can see what we see. We can see... It's like a fish can't see the water it lives in. We don't see our beliefs.

[32:08]

But when we come up against things, when we try and make our best effort and we still fail, meaning we don't do what we intended to do, and if we're actually challenging ourselves, how can we possibly do what we intended to do every time? So making mistakes is how we learn. We learn more about ourselves. We learn more about the situation. So when it all works together, regardless of the outcome, there's no problem. Things are just as they are, which is how they always are. But for us to experience it that way is very different. Dogen Zenji says, you know, one time in a hundred, you may hit the mark.

[33:10]

What's the difference between the 99 times when you're trying to hit the mark and the 100th time when you hit the mark? The only difference is you hit the mark. The effort is the same every time. Every time, time after time. It says, you know, from a materialistic standpoint, not hitting the mark is not good. But from the point of view of our practice, it's all the same. To see it as, oh, this time I hit and this time I didn't. Okay. Can you be okay? When we can, when we can just let go completely into what is. Free from expectations. we can fully appreciate our life.

[34:14]

That's how we become free to appreciate our life. Of course, it could go the other way, too. We could fully appreciate our life, and if we do that, then we're free from expectations. So to appreciate our life, it's like I was walking down to the bathhouse, And I was director here for a number of years. And I lived here for many years. And I'm looking around at different things. And sometimes, you know, when I walk down there, I see the things that need to be fixed or that I would like to be otherwise. Oh, that could be repaired or that needs a paint job. But when I walk down there, this time, I was remembering... all the people that I knew who had worked on Tassajara, who had loved it and cared for it. You know, all the work periods, all the projects.

[35:17]

You know, so-and-so did this and so-and-so did that. And then looking at things that were long before my time and thinking about the people who had built all the rock walls and the bathhouse, everything. And I felt so completely one. with Tassajara and with all the people who've made Tassajara. So I was completely appreciating what was. There was not one single problem with Tassajara. It was exactly as it is. And we have that possibility every moment of our life. Thank you very much. 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, visit sfcc.org and click Giving.

[36:21]

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