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, everybody. Can you hear me okay? Great. My name is Grace Damon. I was a resident here about 34 years ago. And I love this Buddha Hall. I love access both to the street, ironically, also to the courtyard. And I love this building. Most of all, I loved getting to practice real Buddhism and also go to work every day. I lived here when I was a resident at San Francisco General Hospital, which is as real as it gets. Recently, I was asked to... talk to the resident population as part of a training program that they're having, try to increase diversity, awareness, and issues among the resident population.

[01:08]

So about 15 years ago to this day, my daughter and I were in a collision on the Golden Gate Bridge, and a movie was made about our accident and its impact on my family. And so I had a great... They showed that film. I did Q&A the next day with some of the resident population over Zoom. And I love that conversation. So I'm going to continue that conversation today. So basically, I'm going to talk about my experiences with disability, both because my daughter's disabled and I'm obviously disabled. And I'm going to talk about Buddhism and how it helped me through this whole period. I believe in Buddhism primarily as a path of practice because it certainly saved me spiritually. Probably it saved my life. I'm going to focus primarily on the Eightfold Path, the first step of which is right view.

[02:12]

I think you all remember this. And while Buddhism knows very little about medical science or virology, it knows a lot about stress, better known as suffering. How we should treat each other, we all need to know. I lived at Green Gulch Farm for about 30 years, practicing Buddhism, being a mother, mostly being a physician. Sabrina and I were in a head-on collision on May 8th of 2000, or May 11th, 2008. And Sabrina and Mac, her service dog, were in the car. They had minor injuries. It's been a night in the hospital. I spent 13 months in the hospital. And then I returned to Green Gulch under Foos Care, Foos Schrader, who was the past avid, for about the next five years. And since I left Green Gulch, I've been living at Redwoods, a senior living facility in Marin County.

[03:18]

Wonderful place. I am what you would consider, by any statistic or any definition, gravely disabled. One in four adults in America is considered gravely disabled, not gravely. What you need to do to be disabled is you need to have trouble walking up the stairs, be deaf or have trouble with hearing, be blind or have real trouble with your sight. Let's see, have serious difficulty concentrating and or remembering to make decisions. And finally, for independent living, they consider if you have trouble going to the doctor, have trouble making arrangements, then you're considered not able to live independently. I have all of those things. I can't pull, can't reach my feet, can't pull anything over my head.

[04:19]

touch my head like I can't get on my own haksu. I need help. So obviously I can't dress myself. I can feed myself. I can toilet myself. But I can't move up. Obviously I can't walk upstairs. I can hear sometimes when I remember to where my hearing is. I can see. And I can't live independently at all. Nonetheless, can I have trouble concentrating? but I wouldn't attribute that to my disability. That's solely a function of aging. It doesn't happen to everybody, but it is happening to me. Despite all of these labels, I consider myself incredibly lucky. I practice medicine today, and considering that 20 to 25% of all adults are disabled, only 3% of all physicians in America are disabled. real misnomer.

[05:21]

And if you're disabled in America, only 20% of disabled people have completed a college degree or better. And roughly 20% have had no high school diploma. So in other words, the vast majority are really in the middle there. Finally, one quarter of all disabled people fall within the poverty line, meaning they're making less money than a person in poverty is considered to make these days. So in other words, if you're disabled in America, you're probably undereducated, impoverished, unemployed. I forgot to say that 20% of all. Only 20% of all disabled people are employed. And if you're in California, you're six times more likely to be depressed, two times more likely to be obese, and three times more likely to have serious heart conditions than your non-disabled compatriots.

[06:36]

I find these data points horrifying, and I'm sort of reluctant to bring them up in anything called a Dharma talk. But nonetheless, I feel like that wasn't the thing I was asked to do just by virtue of being disabled. And I feel compelled to do this because it's my way of educating both myself and everybody else. So my disabilities, as part of all day sickness and death, form the cornerstones of the causes of suffering for most human beings. Suffering and its transformation is what and why the Buddha taught. We all suffer daily losses, but mostly we suffer because of the stories we tell ourselves about those losses. She did that to me. He did that. I'm unlovable. It will be great again once Trump isn't president, etc.

[07:40]

Or once Trump goes to jail, I should say. Those are the stories that cause us great pain. Old age sickness and death, while horrifying to young people, pretty much your old hat as we grow into them. It all gets easier, I promise you, as you get older. Buddha taught that suffering caused by storytelling was able to be remedied with practice. That's my experience. So rather than look at sickness and death, I'm going to talk about a recipe for living. Because after all, living and dying a life or death, sickness or health are joined at the hip. And while there is suffering, there's also a cessation, nirvana, which brings joy and liberation. Someone tells a great story about the Buddha.

[08:41]

walking down the street, and they say, who are you? And he says, I am awake. This path and practice are our means of waking up. And what is it that we wake up to? A whole damn thing. Birth, death, the meaning of our life, how we can be better people, how we can be kinder. And we can achieve this. by means of the eight practice, which rests on the Eightfold Path. I will go over this only once. Right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration. Right view itself rests in turn on understanding the causes, conditions, and cessation of suffering. the practices comprising the Eightfold Path, all of those I just listed, as well as understanding what's wholesome and unwholesome in our thoughts, actions, and mostly it teaches us about love and compassion.

[09:55]

I asked GPT4, what did the Buddha have to say about love and compassion? She said, the Buddha doesn't talk much about love Love and compassion directly, unless you look at the, you know, the metasuta. But it does through the Eightfold Path. I'm convinced that the Eightfold Path is totally about love and compassion. So, fast forward to the real life. Almost 30 years ago, again to this very day, real life intervened, and Fush Rader and I got a call one morning when we were sitting in our house. Pond House at Green Gulch, having coffee. And the call was from a friend of mine, Pauline, who was in a prayer group. And she said, first of all, are you sitting down? So I knew it was serious. And I said, yes, I am. She said, second thing, I don't have any time to talk. It's got to be fast. Are you and Fu prepared to be foster parents for a gravely disabled HIV?

[11:01]

No, we didn't know that. a drug-addicted baby who needs a home. And I repeated back to her, is that a baby? And she said, she weighs three pounds, and she's almost a month old. And I said, Fu perked up when I said baby. And she said, baby, what baby? And I said, I got to talk to Fu about this. And I covered up the mouthpiece and told Fu what I knew so far. And she said, Can we see the baby? Now, seeing a baby is the stupidest thing. I mean, you don't just look at a baby the way you look at dogs. But anyway, I was too concerned about my hand over the piece. And I said, okay, I'm going to work it out. So the next day, we drove up to Santa Rosa with her step-grandmother and her biological grandmother. And, you know, we fell in love at first sight.

[12:02]

There was just no question. But because Fu was also the director of Green Gulch, and I also was working full-time in the city, more than full-time, in the city and in Marin, we thought we should talk to the leadership center, which is always smart when you want. But you don't ask permission. You say, this is what we intend to do. Is it okay? And luckily, they all said, it's okay. So they gave us the green light to go ahead. But who and I had given no thought whatsoever to becoming parents at that time? So we gave ourselves a second period of Zazen, you know, from 6 to 640, to make a decision about whether we were ready to become parents. We were going to sit independently with the question. So, of course, we both came out.

[13:03]

Happened to be a beautiful day. And we both said, without even bothering with coffee, yes, yes. We said yes to her life. And I haven't talked to Fu about this recently. It was the best decision I've ever made and a decision that I will never regret. So after one week and five days of pregnancy, We then became the proud parent of a four-pound, one-month-old baby girl. We had been told by the social worker that the only way we could become foster parents was if Green Gulch built a fence around our property, which is the pond, so that Sabrina couldn't fall in the pond across the street. Think about it. She's four pounds. She can't walk, do anything. Anyway, so the next day, the maintenance crew built us a fence.

[14:06]

So, yes, we were all set to go. But luckily, there were parents at Green Gold who actually knew something about parenting. For example, one day, two months later, Rusa, Reb's wife, was babysitting for Sabrina, and she decided to give her a bath. Luckily, I wasn't there. The way Fu tells the story, Rusabat brought back a very clean Sabrina, and she brought back the bathwater, which was filthy. And we learned the morning that we were about to get Sabrina from the hospital, that she was HIV-infected, and again came out of the Zen, because we gave ourselves one more period to think about whether we were ready to be... parents of an HIV-infected child. And we both said, let's go forward. Because we thought, if not us, then who?

[15:08]

And if not Zen Zen Greengold, then where? We'd fallen in love with her. So Zen Center gave us tremendous support. Sabrina's biological grandparent. gave us tremendous support. And Sabrina finally landed in her body at about six months of age, and we were convinced then that she was going to live. She was here to stay. She is a force of nature. When we took her out of the hospital that day, it was 105 degrees in Santa Rosa. You know, the nurses just watched this. We bundled her up, put on a hat, because that's what all the baby books say you should do with a new baby to make them feel secure. And they just said, you're getting a powerhouse. Anyway, we walk outside. She starts screaming, screaming, screaming. Boo looked at me and said, what do we do now?

[16:09]

And I said, beats me. Luckily, we were both dripping wet, so we decided to take her hat off. She responded. I am telling you, we had no idea what we were doing. But in just saying yes, we got all of the help we could have needed then and forever. Because she was born with HIV disease, she had certain symptoms, like she was unable to walk except with a walker. So Green Gulch built paths. She sped around Green Gulch in this yellow power mobile. And luckily, because she was disabled, we could also get a service dog, which she trained to get us if she ever fell out of the machine, which luckily never happened. But, you know, unlike me, Sabrina has always been or has never experienced not being disabled.

[17:09]

And she thinks it's a piece of cake. She loves, you know, mom, let people drive you. Mom, let people do things, unless it's her. Let people do things for you. But if it's her, she'll say, Mom, you can do it yourself. You know, I can't do it for you because you can do it yourself. You've told me that for years. For me, the most amazing thing about the accident and the beginning of my disability is that when I look back on it, I'm really grateful. which is a bizarre thing to say. I mean, I'd love to walk. Don't get me wrong. I'd love to be able to serve, but I am grateful because what I learned was something very important. I learned that I probably knew everything that I needed to know, but I just didn't know it. Fortunately, and, you know, when I woke up after 48 days in coma, I started singing, You Are My Sunshine.

[18:17]

I thought, I want to figure out where I was during that 48 days. And then luckily I remembered this line from a colon, which goes, not knowing is most intimate. So luckily I decided not to get hypnotized to try to recreate my Bardo state. I thought my body had a reason for taking me offline. Let's go with that. Once I got extubated, then people were coming to see me in droves, and I was getting so bored of talking about myself. So I would ask them, how are you doing? How's your life? How's your work? And you know in California, half the people are miserable in one or the other, if not both. So I would ask them, how is your relationship? And they would say, whatever. Didn't really matter. I'd say, if you're not happy, are you and your partner thinking about marriage or whatever form of public commitment you believe in?

[19:25]

And if they said no, I said, get out. If it's not marriage material, get out. Get out. Or if you don't love your job, get out. Find something you do love and just do it. The line to see me got to be so long. I got the reputation. I mean, I couldn't remember two things, but I got the reputation of being a truth-sayer. So Fu finally had to stop them because I was exhausting myself with telling everybody to just say yes to your own life. Fu and I were approached early on by a lawyer who wanted to sue the Bridge District, you know, Golden Gate Bridge District, on behalf of Sabrina and me to put in a median barrier. And on July 4th, the day that I woke up out of a coma, Sabrina was with Mark and Helen, who were friends who had taken her to the Bruin County Fair.

[20:29]

And she said to them, you should just make a movie about my mom. Her idea was she was young and impressionable. Her idea was that Sally Fields would play me and that we would make a lot of money and the day would be great. Mark and Helen had to tell, look, we're documentary filmmakers. We don't make any money anyway. But it did give us two things to think about, the film and the median barrier. When I finally got back to Green Gulch, Zen Center really came through in a wonderful way. They gave Fu two years off because she was now a single parent, and she was taking care of me. They retrofitted our house totally, or they retrofitted a house so that it was ADA spiffy, ADA wheelchair accessible, et cetera. And I had retired. I'd been forced to retire from my job because I couldn't do it, obviously.

[21:33]

And I would joke, and I was sewing in Ocasa, and I joked that it was for occupational therapy. Every time I tried to sew it, I would get seasick because I was shaking so badly, you know. And I was running around in circles. So finally, Christina got me sew it on a Zafu. I was suffering, but I was no longer dying. I had energy to give and energy to burn. I was alive. For me, pain in the aftermath of my accident was in not... feeling like I was fully alive because I couldn't move. Literally, I couldn't move anything. But finally, the idea of working and being of service made me feel again like I was coming alive. My old employer wanted me to come back to work as director of a pain clinic.

[22:35]

I hated the idea of pain clinic, but nonetheless, it was an offer. And my doctor finally, finally certified that I was safe enough to practice medicine. I'm not sure that's true at that time. But nonetheless, I did. And I didn't do harm. When there are so many things that you can't do, the can-dos become much more significant. What did living well mean? What did dying well mean? For me, it meant, didn't mean no pain. And it didn't mean no suffering. It meant living well right up until the end. I want to know that I've loved well. At this point, that's still an open question. I mean, ask yourself. I think it's an open question for most of you. To me, loving well requires some kind of wisdom.

[23:40]

that takes it out of the empathic, take care of suffering only school, meaning it's got to be directed toward the best possible outcome for the person who's the recipient. And that requires information, that requires knowledge, that requires real sensitivity and sensibility. And it's important for me, it became important for me that I would give, teach, or serve in every moment of my life. And what may you say do I have to teach? That's a good point. And how will I know when I'm ready? Well, I look around the Zendo. I don't know many of you, not like Gringo, but I know many of you I do have an acquaintanceship with for years, like David, like Tobe, you know, like,

[24:41]

Vicky, anyway. How will I know when I'm doing it adequately? I will ask the people I trust. I will ask any of you. That's a one great advantage of Sangha. It's having people to ask. How am I doing? After all, the triple treasure is not just Buddha and Dharma. It also includes Sangha, probably most importantly. Community of people surrounding you, trying to practice the Bodhisattva way. As to what I have to give. And if you don't have a sangha around, you guys all have sangha right now. But if you don't have a sangha around, ask the people you're with. Ask the trees. Ask the stars. And really listen to what they have to say. You'll get the information you need. As to what I have to give and teach, I know what I know.

[25:43]

And that's amazing. It has given me a bedrock knowledge of just this is it. Just this moment is it. I was very lucky that I lived at Green Gulch for all those years. And I was a very iconoclastic practitioner. And then I would get to drive out every day. I'd get to have lattes on the way to work. I got to... eat meat in my own house, got to have a drink whenever I wanted. I got to go out for ice cream. I could go out for almost anything. I loved the teaching and I pretty much appropriated it and lived according to my definition of Buddhism. That appropriation fortunately ended with the accident. And I'm so grateful that I spent that time in the Zendo. I would start many days by coming down to the Zendo to sit once Sabrina was old enough to be left alone.

[26:50]

And I learned to relax and to see. The world was a little bit brighter whenever I came out of the Zendo. I remember walking the walks around Green Gulch in the early morning, up to the bullpen, to the pond house, to wherever, as I lived almost everywhere there. And I remember the seasons, how the air would feel different each morning, sometimes full of dew from the ocean, sometimes wet. Sometimes you could smell the ocean. And the days were different. Slant of light was different. With every day passing, days becoming longer or shorter, the light became just a little bit clearer. And the clarity made everything different. Truly magnificent. And then I would pack up and go to work. And when I was in the hospital, I was so glad that I'd spent so many days, so many day fours in Sashin.

[27:56]

You know, day fours are like, at least for me, writhing in pain or in state of total bliss. I had really learned that everything changes. Everything. Great pain. great bliss, great boredom, great freedom. Outside, nothing much changes, except perhaps the slant of light and the dominant bird song. But inside, you're going through waves of grief, joy, pain, sorrow. This is the practice of an in-zazen, which is getting to notice the content of your mind, and working on those contents, looking at the aversion and the pleasure closely. I spent a year in the hospital after the accident and had something like 13 operations. And what I remember to this day is not the pain, not the anxiety, not the missing of Boo, Sabrina, or Mac, but what I remember most is the wonderful feeling of

[29:09]

kindness and love of life, of people around me. I can remember my first bath. It was exquisite. After three months, the CNA finally decided to take me away to the bathtub, not asking my doctor anything. She just plunked me in the bathtub. I can remember the feeling to this day. Each drop of water on my back, on my head. It was magnificent. I've never felt that kind of vitality or just wonder at life. And I felt that wonder, not so intensely, but I still feel it today. And the awe, I feel that vitality, wonder, and awe that we get to live life and we get to decide what and how we want to live. And I decided right then and there that I wanted to be of service both to the people I knew, and the people I didn't know. And I'm grateful also that I learned something about Buddhism, something about the four noble truths, and something about the vows we take each day.

[30:20]

For example, at the end of this lecture, we're going to chant the four vows, beings are numberless, I vow to save them, etc. The constant repetition of vows, the four noble truths, And the simplicity of the world appearing clearer. It's great to have a path of practice. And I'm so grateful to have been head student. Which came after I moved out of Green Goat. But it was really kind of hysterical. Because everybody in the practice period got to be my legs and arms. They would get me up in the morning, dress me. They rang the wake-up bell for me. That's a no-no. Meanwhile, and they found it, they were encouraging me so much to practice. And then I was practicing, and that encouraged them so much.

[31:20]

And that was my only job, was to encourage them in their practice. And I'm so, so lucky that I survived. We had Zen Center behind us. My family and colleagues and friends, all with me, and I had a purpose. I wanted what happened to me and Sabrina not to happen again to anybody else. So we brought a suit against the Bridge District with the guy who hit us. You know, we became friends, and we lost our suit. But that same day that the California Supreme Court came out with its decision, the Bridge District decided to fund a median barrier for $25 million. So that was good. And a movie was made about our accident and a work of love on the part of the filmmakers and a willingness on the part of Boo and Sabrina and myself to be totally naked on film.

[32:24]

Just before I was discharged from rehab, I met again with this holiness, the Dalai Lama. And that meeting convinced me or revitalized my commitment to practice. And it made totally clear what my purpose really was. I'd met him before, but I met him this time because I'd been asked to give a speech at a luncheon at which he was being honored. Now, why I ever accepted the request to give a speech at that time was just because my brain was mush. Really mush. I could barely think two thoughts, much less string together two sentences. Ten-minute talk. Me today, I think, you were totally crazy. And I was, but I did it. I came to the hotel, which is the Ritz-Carlton, and everywhere wanted to touch everything.

[33:26]

I mean, the dresses, the floral arrangement. I'd been in light green for 13 months. Colors were fantastic. Smells were fantastic. Kept touching everything. Boo kept saying, you got to get to the hall. We have to get you up on stage. I kept saying, stop, stop. I get to look. I get to see. I get to smell. So I went up on stage first. And my bliss quickly turned horror as I looked at his holiness. And I watched him coming up on stage. He was... looked at me to be in pulmonary edema, meaning he was panting. And I thought, oh my God, not on my watch. He can have a cardiac arrest. I have not been in a code blue situation. I'm a doctor. Here I am. I should know what to do. I don't remember any of it. So I'm sitting there on stage going over code blue scenario in case he should die.

[34:28]

I forgot, of course, that he's got this whole retinue of secret servant. were better trained than any, certainly than I was at that time, to do anything that was needed to keep him alive, but nonetheless. And he nuzzled me. He was doing the same thing with me. I mean, the last time we'd met, I'd been able-bodied, and, you know, he was looking at me, and he was rolling his eyes, and he was saying, the microphone isn't working for you, Grace. and he kept trying to adjust the microphone. He had as much tech knowledge as I did at that point, meaning we were helpless. So finally I suggested, why don't we ask the tech guys up here? He said, good idea. So we invited the tech guy to come up and give support, and they arranged my microphone, but he stood by my side while I gave this 10-minute talk that Fu said nicely was okay.

[35:31]

past mustard. And he nuzzled my forehead. I nuzzled him. It was so wonderful. And I thought, if this guy, given all that he's been through, given the exigencies or of what he's been through, can be as wonderful as he is, as kind and as lovely, then practice must be worth something. As a matter of fact, it must be worth everything. And the world probably It would be a much better place if all of us were practicing. So when I found myself later feeling particularly desperate or semi-suicidal about having lost so much physical and cognitive ability, I would remember my commitment to his holiness that day because I committed myself to practice that day. And after that commitment, to practice, and after the awe of the life force which led both Sabrina and I not only to survive but thrive, I couldn't contemplate suicide that I would be able to enact in any way.

[36:46]

I'd like to end by speaking a little about disability and right view. The Oxford English Dictionary, which is my go-to source, except for GP4, GPT-4, says that sickness is a state of being ill, a disorder, structure, function in the human being that produces a specific symptom and is not simply the direct result of physical injury. And what does it say about the state of being ill? It says, once again, a disease is a period of sickness affecting the body or mind. In many ways, disability is looked at as sickness. It can often leave people much less able to care for themselves. It is a disorder in the structure of human beingness. And as we saw earlier, it can leave human beings, people, in a different situation in terms of class, education, and opportunity.

[37:55]

So what is the proper relationship between sickness and health? There are several koans, which I love. Sun-faced Buddha, moon-faced Buddha, Dengshan was unwell, the whole earth is medicine, which suggests that the proper relationship is very similar to the Eightfold Path. What is required is a complete understanding of impermanence, no self, suffering, and nirvana. But we all know this. We know this from our practice of zazen. We allow whatever to arise, arise. We let go of it, hopefully. It's not so easy, this letting go. It's one of the reasons we do extended retreats where we're separated from Netflix, chocolate, ideally. Probably not. And either we're out flat or we're out of our usual resistance patterns.

[39:02]

And hopefully, if we're lucky, you know, one minute we're ill. We're lonely. We're feeling so sorry for us. We are desperate. The next minute, we feel totally on top of the world. And hopefully, we get to the point of not attaching to either one of those. And we say, like Dongshan does in Case 94, Book of Serenity, the sick one takes care of the well one, and the sick one, meaning the old monk, doesn't see that there's any sickness there. Illness, disability, feeling less than, and health are harmonized and unified, because in every moment there's simultaneously one who is sick, meaning all of those things, and one who's not sick. I remember this day during the January intensive this year at Green Gulch when we were sitting and Audrey had a bad flare-up of sciatica.

[40:08]

So I offered, it must have been sushi, I offered to go to the Zendo. I mean, I offered to go to the dining room to get our dinner. And it was during the atmospheric river, so it was really pouring outside. And, you know, I don't know how many of you have been to Green Gulch. You know, that hill that goes down to the dining room, not ADA certified. It's like a 10-degree thing, not a 4-degree thing. Anyway, so I'm going out bravely, and I'm slipping and sliding on the hill. And all of a sudden, I start yelling. I say, this is shit. Fuck this. You know, and I was swirling around. I kept turning around. Wheelchair was just spinning around and around and around. There was no way I could get down or up the path. Somebody said, what do you need? I said, I need room service. So transcending this duality in practice doesn't mean living in delusion.

[41:14]

We, after all, live in a world of climate change, fearing horrendous, more horrendous Supreme Court decision or what the GOP is going to do next. In terms of limiting women's reproductive rights. And we live in a world of absolute beauty and majesty. They are the same world. And we are simultaneously magnificent and also. And we've got to take refuge exactly at that point. We are both and. So what do you do when you encounter a disabled person? You do exactly what you do when you encounter yourself, meaning you follow the eightfold path, practice with whatever aversions you're having, whatever attractions you're having, and you try to not cause additional suffering. You try to remember the precepts, meaning don't lie, don't misuse sexuality.

[42:15]

And most of all, you try to practice compassion. We never know what the future holds. We can worry about it all we want. Everything does change and always will. And that opens the real possibility of love. Love and compassion. Not because we know what they'll bring to us. But we do it just because we do it. We show up. We learn to love. And we just do it because that's our gift to the world. and to ourselves, to each other. Just do it. Just say yes to life. Thank you very much. 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.

[43:22]

May we fully enjoy the Dorma.

[43:25]

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