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. So this is our last full day of sitting in stillness. And I very much encourage you to take advantage of it, to really remain quiet. Don't think about tomorrow or after the practice period. If you do, come back to your body, to your breath. Because tomorrow will come by itself if you don't have to help it. And if we think about it, it takes us away from our life that's happening right now. It's not happening tomorrow before tomorrow arrives.

[01:03]

So if we don't jump ahead, or when we do, if we just return gently, that's what I would recommend for everything. And, you know, I have been emphasizing tenderness, kindness, gentleness, patience, tolerance. because they're actually the necessary foundation to do the absolutely and ultimately radical practice of Buddhism. I haven't talked about that much, but I will today, because it's a little bit stark, but it's what the aim of this whole teaching is. It's asking everything and all from us.

[02:04]

It actually requires, ultimately, a transformation at the base of our innate sense of existence. We talk about the Buddha body being a transformed body. That means all its cells have been transformed at the base. They're not anymore just aimed at survival of themselves or of their species. I had the incredible luck and opportunity when I first got to Green Gulch in 88. Yvonne Rand had invited Tarek Tulku to give teachings for two weeks at Green Gulch. And I don't know how they did it at that time, but there was so much time and spaciousness that I don't find any more now.

[03:08]

That all of us were invited to go to the talks. It wasn't like, no, you have to work, you can't go to talks. And we went to all his talks in Buddha Hall, which was the old barn at that time, not renovated. So he would come in his Tibetan outfit with a smile on his face and some puzzlement because the same people were sitting like... Nobody smiled back at him. Nobody looked at him. And you could see that that was kind of puzzling to him. And then he would sit on the seat like a jewel in a very simple casing. and talk about emptiness. And while he was talking, I understood every word. It was absolutely wonderful. The moment I stepped out of the zendo and tried to remember what he had talked about, I had total chaos in my mind.

[04:16]

My mind couldn't accommodate what he said, so I would go back in. I would understand every word, totally clear, no problem. And because I had two weeks of that, I started to really understand that this was a cell-to-cell, a body-to-body transmission that didn't go through central and bypassed my little, small attic room where my conceptual mind was living. and spoke directly to the being. And his body was doing that because I looked at him and saw that he didn't have many habituated tensions in his body. He was just flexible and movable and

[05:17]

So that was such a gift that just by chance happened to me. But that's what this practice is aiming at. And it's only successful if we have built a really stable and strong foundation of kindness, tenderness, gentleness, generosity, patience, steadfast, effort and courage. Otherwise, we just traumatize ourselves or violate ourselves or are harsh to ourselves or think we have to use force, you know, brutal force to get ourselves to achieve this goal. That's not how it gets achieved at all. Maya Angelou has a beautiful poem about that.

[06:25]

It's called We Unaccustomed to Courage. We, unaccustomed to courage, exiles from delight, live coiled in shells of loneliness until love leaves its high holy temple and comes into our sight. to liberate us into life. Love arrives and in its train come ecstasies, old memories of pleasure, ancient histories of pain. Yet if we are bold, love strikes away the chains of fear from our souls. We are weaned from our timidity. In the flush of love's light we dare be brave. And suddenly we see that love costs all we are and will ever be.

[07:29]

Yet it is only love which sets us free." So all these practices of refraining from harsh speech to others or to ourselves, to create space, to cultivate our ability to be with what is our experience at the moment without meddling in it, without grabbing it, without trying to fix it or change it, to just let it be. To take care of this body which is the means of our life. We're not alive here now if we didn't have this body. So it's a very precious thing.

[08:36]

All these practices open our hearts. And whatever you have made space for in your heart during these days of sitting and during the weeks of practice period, whatever you have acknowledged that it's here and it was here, the presence of what was here, no matter how small or big, has added to the depths of stillness, of quietness, of silence, has nourished and encouraged everyone's heart to open in their own way to their very own experience. So this morning the thought came to me, like, we are an orchestra with all these instruments, and I may be the conductor for this time.

[09:39]

If your instruments weren't here, there would be no orchestra to make music from. So we all have created these soon to be ten weeks and have contributed and made it what they are. So we have one more day and then half a day, which will be a little bit more rocky probably, And then we have a big ceremony at the end. But all these things support us to be courageous and be willing to be and to feel vulnerable. Because vulnerability is the strongest capacity. When you watch babies, what they can endure and keep thriving and living and overcoming and plans.

[10:42]

And for us too, when we are vulnerable or willing to be vulnerable, we are much more flexible, much more resilient than if we stiffen in fear or defense or protective measures. Then we're breakable. That's why the bamboo is one of the symbols of Buddhism, because bamboo is very strong. But when the snow comes, it just bends down to the ground, and when the strong leaves, it stands back up. It doesn't fight the snow. More brittle trees, their limbs break when there is snow, like later in spring, when they've leafed out, and they're not ready for heavy loads. They can do it in the winter, but they can't do it if we have snow later in the year. They break off. So that's what we have been training with these qualities of gentleness and tenderness.

[11:50]

And it's not to make us soft and go, oh, You know, everything is fine. I don't have to make this effort. You know, it's not babying us. It's really transforming habituated patterns. And it also builds equanimity, which is its near enemy is indifference. Equanimity means you don't get out of balance or you regain balance in the midst of a storm. Indifference means you're not touched. You have created a little safe island for you and everything else is of no importance. That's indifference, or one way you can describe indifference.

[12:52]

Equanimity is you're fully present but you have created a route of stability and a toolbox, how to regain your stability when you get knocked off. So I've also talked about the paramitas, which are the enlightened qualities of our heart-mind. They are the very essence of our true nature. And they also start to talk about the radicalness of this practice, which we often don't really emphasize so much, I think. So, in the Perfection of Patience, the Shanti Paramita, it says,

[13:56]

This paramita is the enlightened quality of patience, tolerance, forbearance, and acceptance. The essence of this paramita of patience is the strength of mind and heart that enables us to face the challenges and difficulties of life without losing our composure and inner tranquility. We embrace and forbear adversity, insult, distress, and the wrongs of others with patience and tolerance, free of resentment, irritation, emotional reactivity, or retaliation. That's a tall order for us humans. But that's what this practice is asking us to cultivate.

[14:58]

To forbear adversity, to forbear insult, to forbear distress, to forbear the wrongs of others with patience and tolerance and free of resentment, irritation, emotional reactivity or retaliation. That's the quality that lives in our being as a potential. So we can nurture that, we can cultivate that, we can remember that, and we have to be patient and tolerant and unirritated and unresentful towards ourselves if we have trouble with that. But we don't give up. So it goes always both ways, practice. It goes towards ourselves and towards all beings.

[16:04]

Then there are the eight stances for training the mind, which also bring this home, this radicalness. And they're written by Geshe Langri Thampa, that Tibetan teacher, and he lived in the 12th century. And I'm reading them to you because I find them really uplifting and at the same time mind-blowing. With a determination to accomplish the highest welfare for all sentient beings who surpass even a wish-granting jewel, I will learn to hold them supremely dear. Whenever I associate with others, I will learn to think of myself as the lowest among all and respectfully hold others to be supreme from the very depth of my heart.

[17:13]

It says, I will learn. It's a learning process. In all actions, I will learn to search into my mind and as soon as an afflictive emotion arises, endangering myself and others, firmly face and avert it. I will learn to cherish beings of bad nature and those oppressed by strong sins and suffering as if I had found a precious treasure very difficult to find. When others out of jealousy treat me badly, with abuse, slander, and so on, I will learn to take on all loss and offer victory to them. When one whom I have benefited with great hope unreasonably hurts me very badly, I will learn to view that person as an excellent spiritual guide.

[18:23]

In short, I will learn to offer to everyone without exception all help and happiness directly and indirectly and respectfully take upon myself all harm and suffering of my mothers. So in Tibetan Buddhism, you think of all beings having been your mother in one or one of the former lifetimes. We have all been each other's mothers. That's what this refers to. I will learn to keep all these practices undefiled by the stains of the eight worldly conceptions, which are like and dislike, gain, loss, praise, blame, fame, and disgrace. These are the eight worldly conceptions. So I will learn to keep all these practices undefiled by the stains of these eight worldly conceptions.

[19:32]

And by understanding all phenomena as like illusions be released from the bondage of attachment. So I don't know how it is for you, but when I read this, I can feel, you know, but, but, but, but coming up in me, you know, kind of little resistances. That's a little extreme. But underneath that, you can feel how liberating You can feel the liberation mind and heart attitude would bring if it was cultivated and available. And we have it. We all have it.

[20:34]

We have moments of that where it's available. It's maybe not with our enemy, but with people we love. We are in that way generous and forgiving and... and taking the burden on ourselves and say, I do this for you, or, you know, we all have already experience of that. We just have to really take it on. And every day we take refuge in Buddha, in Dharma, in Sangha. We take refuge in those qualities, in ourselves, in those qualities in all beings. And we actually, when we do the full moon ceremony and we mean the vows we say, we vow to get there, to be on that road of learning these qualities, of liberating, you could say, these qualities of your heart-mind.

[21:38]

Because they're just obscured by conditions and beliefs and which are just conditions and beliefs, but we cling to them because they give us that sense of existence. And that gets challenged by these practices and gets transformed. So Karl Friedger of Durkheim was a German who was a Nazi, then was a prisoner in a camp in Japan and learned about meditation and became a meditation teacher and psychologist. And he writes, the person who being really on the way falls upon hard times in the world will not, as a consequence, turn to that friend who offers them refuge and comfort and encourages their old self.

[22:40]

to survive. Rather, they will seek out someone who will faithfully and inexorably help them to risk themselves so that they may endure the suffering and pass courageously through it, thus making of it a raft that leads to the far shore." So this is saying the adversity we experience in whichever form it comes about, from outside or from inside, if we open up to that suffering, if we create space around it, it turns into a raft that leads us to the other shore. Only to the extent that is also quite stark. only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over again to annihilation, can that which is indestructible arise within us.

[23:53]

In this lies the dignity of daring. So annihilation is actually annihilation of our beliefs, of our self-image that we cling to, of habit pattern that we build up to have that sense of actually independent existence, which doesn't exist, but we make it like it exists. That's the annihilation. Or to think, How dare you talk to me like that? Rather than say, okay, we can talk with each other and teach each other how we would like to be talked to or how we could hear what is said or how we learn.

[24:57]

So it's not like we just swallow everything, but we look at these eight stanzas, at these directions. See, where is my speaking coming from? And he says, thus the aim of practice is not to develop an attitude which allows us to acquire a state of harmony and peace wherein nothing can ever trouble us. That's also the story of the bodhisattva who vows to not enter nirvana. to not check out even when they can, but to return to the world. Maybe they take a little vacation in nirvana and then they come back. But they vow to come back. They vow to come back into the midst of the suffering. And not as the one who knows everything, kind of.

[25:59]

But to be company, be the best company for the people that suffer so they can slowly kind of learn to be more present and suffer less. So I would very much hope and wish and encourage you that you continue to practice these soft qualities of the heart, these expansive qualities of the heart, even when the practice period is over and there is not so much maybe talk about it, but that you take what has resonated with you

[27:06]

What resonates with you means it lives in you. What I say may ping it. It's like make the instrument sound, but it can only sound because it's there. So that's in you. That is totally independent. Dangerous word. which is not dependent on me or somebody else. That may make you feel a certain way. You only feel that way because that feeling is in you and gets arised. It's not the other person who is the author or the source of that feeling. They may touch it and it comes forward, comes up. So to really hold dear what you engaged in, what resonated in you and you engaged in, because that is how your capacity, and that goes with you wherever you are.

[28:23]

And then, One of my favorite poems, Rainer Maria Rilke says about the speed we usually do. So one of the things we really tried to remember and to implement and to practice is slowing down a little bit so that we notice, slowing down to the degree that we notice. And he says, we set the pace. But this press of time, take it as a little thing, next to what endures. All this hurrying soon will be over. Only when we tarry do we touch the holy. Young ones, don't waste your courage racing so fast, flying so high. See how all things are at rest. and morning light, blossom and book.

[29:51]

So these texts will be on the portal at some point if you are interested. And we will return to Stillness in the center. Stillness while we're working in the kitchen. Stillness while we walk around. Stillness and rest that is in everything. And be kind. You know, the Dalai Lama says, our religion is kindness. Thank you very much. Thank you very much.

[31:16]

I had to say that [...] Sorry. I just thought, you know, this word annihilation. If we have a judgmental mind that is still very active and something that feels like annihilation comes at us, that might say, you deserve this.

[32:24]

And that's not what this is talking about. It's only a kind mind that can deal with that sense of annihilation in a transformative and liberating way. The other one just keeps us in the old trap of not being worthy or deserving bad things happening to us. So it's very, very important that we look with what mind do we hear words and understand words, because they can have a totally different meaning and a totally different effect. So we can harm ourselves if we do these practices in a harsh way. And we harm others if we do that. You look puzzled. What's your puzzlement? You don't understand what I said. I said, if something happens that we feel it's mean or it's hurtful,

[33:38]

And then we deal with a judgmental, our judgmental mind comes in that says, well, you're bad, so you deserve it. You deserve the meanness. You must have, you know, you deserve it. Yeah, oneself. I deserve it. My judgmental mind says to me, you, Christina, deserve this. That is not what is transformative. That is keeping me in the trap of feeling unworthy, of feeling bad, and fortifies the judgmental mind. If I say in a kind mind, ouch, poor baby, you know, that hurts, and practice what they say, forbearance and patience and not vilifying the other person and not denigrating them.

[34:46]

So you don't denigrate neither yourself nor the other person. That has transformative power. 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.

[35:20]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_69.8