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. Hello. Can everyone hear me okay? Yeah. Thank you. Good to see some of you. Nice to see many... names and faces. I am grateful to be here with you all this morning. I'm grateful for the invitation by Jiryu, who's the Tonto at Green Gulch. And I'm grateful to all of you at San Francisco Zen Center and at Green Gulch in particular, who are sustaining the practice there. And I'm also grateful that we can be together in this wider way.

[01:00]

I have a feeling we are spread far beyond that valley. And I'll introduce myself a little more, but before I do that, I just want to offer the possibility for us to take a few moments to gather our attention into our human bodies. The word that comes to my mind often in doing this is to arrive. I was thinking yesterday about the word concentration that we often use in Buddhism and Zen, the path of concentration, and how we can gather our awareness, like make a concentrate of our awareness and pour it into our bodies. Because so often our awareness is... Asked to be dispersed, you know, and not really, it's kind of all over the place. But just can we take a few breaths together if it works for you?

[02:02]

You know, it may not today for whatever, for many reasons. If your body is not a place you particularly want to locate, I understand. But if it's available, let's just take a few breaths together. And just... really attuned to the physical sensation of what is here for each of us for you right now is there anything you maybe hadn't noticed before or were maybe unconsciously skipping over Try not to make any stories, just like what is the sensation and how is it? So arriving.

[03:10]

For myself, I find this particularly helpful when we're meeting on Zoom. And, you know, we're lacking smell. We're lacking the physical warmth of one another's body. We're lacking a whole bunch of stuff that I think we don't even know about that is communicated when we're physically together. So it's good. For me, there's something really refreshing and sustaining about arriving in the body. So my name is Sarah and my Dharma name is Dojin, which means path of love or path of relationship. And I use the pronoun she and her. I'll just tell you a few of the identities I carry so you don't have to guess like that. So I identify as a female person. I identify as white in the racial parlance of the United States.

[04:19]

I'm European descended person. I grew up in the northeast of the United States in Massachusetts, and I have spent most of my adult life in California. And actually most of my adult life at this point in either living in or around convert Buddhist Zen institutions. To give you some context of my relationship with San Francisco Zen Center, I lived at different sites, both at Green Gulch and Tassara for nine years. a while ago. I've been gone longer than I was there in residence. But I came to San Francisco Zen Center in my early mid-20s and so spent that decade of my young adulthood swimming in that environment and I'm deeply grateful for that. And it was very formative to me. And so San Francisco Zen Center feels to me like extended family.

[05:22]

And, you know, I can name all, there's a bunch of other things that have shaped me and that I account for in offering Dharma talks. Like I'm shaped, you know, by all these different identities, my whiteness, my femaleness, my American-ness. the particulars and collective ways that those function, and by living in convert Buddhist Sanghas that were predominantly white, and never exclusively, but were always predominantly white, both demographically and sort of culturally, if that makes sense to people. Yeah, so that's just, that shapes me. And so this... Today, as I'm offering this talk, I want to name that my intention is to make an offering to you all and to us together that is supportive for our practice. And because I'm a human being and because I have these identities and because of the ways those identities work in the cultures that I live in, there's lots of places that I have ignorance.

[06:39]

And so even with my good intentions, I can cause harm. because of what I don't see and I don't know. And I just name that, well, because it's true. And also to name the context in which I invite your feedback, particularly if something I say does cause you harm, because it isn't my intention, but it may happen. And I also know it's exhausting to give negative feedback to people, so... Even if that happens, you may not have the energy to tell me. But if you do, I welcome it. So what I would like to talk about today is how Zen practice is relational. That's the fundamental thing I would like to offer, that Zen practice is relational. And I started thinking about this maybe a month or so ago. My partner was a man. Which I say because some of my friends who are queer were saying it's kind of annoying when people in straight relationships say partner and then it confuses people.

[07:46]

Anyway, my partner's a man. His name is Charlie and he is also a Zen priest. He was giving a talk and he was talking about koan practice in the Zen tradition. Are people familiar with koan practice? Is this a thing you've encountered? The few people I can see are giving me the thumbs up. So koans are this tradition in Zen, and they're very Zen, right? They typify something in Zen, which is, they're these teaching stories, many of which happened historically in ancient China, and they're exchanges often, not always, usually they're an exchange between a student and a teacher. And so in that, Charlie was saying, you know, like, so... These are foundational teachings in Zen, and they are elementally relational. They're about the intersection, the interplay of people.

[08:48]

And he was talking about that in the context of Sangha. And that was very moving to me. And then also what it opened in my heart was this feeling of how... In most of the koan stories, there's a question coming from a student that's like, the student's like representing delusion. And then there's a response coming from a teacher who's like representing awakening or wisdom, archetypally. And what I could feel in my body was the necessity of the, quote, delusion for opening the wisdom that followed. Is that right? Makes sense to everybody. Like if we didn't have, if the deluded question wasn't, if the grasping question wasn't asked, that particular wisdom wouldn't show up in the world of the response. And something in me, like I think I've had an idea about, I've had thoughts about the non-duality of delusion and enlightenment, but something in my body happened when I was like, wait a second.

[09:53]

This is how wisdom shows up in the world. It's by way of delusion. And like the necessity of delusion expressing itself so that wisdom can come from it. And it also, an image that came really strongly for me in that contemplation was this idea that like every time there's a moment of deludedness, there's a gate that opens. And then we could walk through that gate into a transformational process into wisdom with the right supports in place. The Dharma is a really big support. Our wholehearted presence is a really big support. Like opening that gate and walking through it and being fully present for that delusion then can, like that's the alchemy that Zen practice I think offers us and offers the world. But like here's delusion, a door opens and the alchemy of our full embodied wholehearted turning toward it

[11:01]

means we can walk through it and the transformational process is possible, and wisdom can manifest in the world, and that this is possible moment after moment after moment. And in light of this, then, our delusion stuff, the stuff that we call, you know, bad and dumb and deluded, is now precious. You know, if we take up, just even if you disagree with me on this, I just recommend for a second taking up this lens where delusion itself is the gateway to awakening. And at least I'll say what happened for me with this contemplation was like, oh, so when I do things that I don't like, when I enact conditioning, for example, from my historical conditioning or my cultural conditioning, and now I'm acting like a jerk, and I don't like what's happening.

[12:04]

I was trained in my cultural background to feel ashamed of that when I noticed that. And actually, and I was also trained, like, get away as soon as possible. So deflect and don't look. You know, ooh, that's, ooh, I don't like this part of myself. Turn away and move elsewhere. Move to a better place. Move to a better version of yourself. Make yourself better, you know. But I feel like Zen offers us something really different, which is like, don't leave. Take a breath. Slow it down and turn around this way. Turn inward. And be with what's here. And what's here is a potential dharma game. Don't be afraid, you know. A lot of it's ugly, yeah. Like there's a lot that we've inherited that's pretty ugly and yucky, you know. And every piece of it has the potential to open into awakening.

[13:07]

When we say in the bodhisattva vows, Dharma gates are infinite, I vow to enter them. This has become the image I have now of this. And there's two things that really get in the way of like that transformational walking through the gate in my experience. And they're related. The first one is duality, clinging to duality. And for myself, I can say a big one is good and bad. So suppose I'm moving through my day and I enact something ignorant. Which happens to me, you know, I'm paying attention, when I'm paying attention, like many times a day. I have the great gift of being a parent in this lifetime. And so, you know, in relation to my children, I'm like, it's amazing how much cultural conditioning that I've inherited that I don't believe in, I don't agree with, I was certain I would not replicate comes flying through me.

[14:21]

Do you know? Do other people have this experience? Like, whoosh! Like, there it is. Words I promised I would never say. You know? So... And then, what do we do in those moments? What can we do? And I would say that Zen supports us to stay. Stay. Turn around. Abide deeply. Feel it. One of the great things is that when we enact conditioning that is causing harm, even when it's unconscious, if we can stay for it and we feel it, it's painful. Oh, I think what I was saying was, but I was taught that the correct response was a dualistic thing, right? Oh, this is bad. I don't like it. Get away. The second obstacle then that I was also taught was that the appropriate response was shame. And that somehow, I actually, I've been really investigating this.

[15:26]

I definitely was taught that shame would be a transformational process to changing my behavior. So if I was doing something in this world that was unskillful and I noticed it and I felt enough shame about it, it was like that was the way to stop it from happening again. Is that familiar to anyone else? So maybe not everybody. I hope not everybody. This is, in fact, that's one of the conditionings I find flying through myself toward my children. Like I'm enacting shaming them and I'm like, I do not want to do that. I know it's not helpful, but it's like, it's so deep. And what I found in my life, though, is if I go to shame, I am looped back. I don't move forward into a different place. I'm looped back into my conditioning. It is basically not helpful. Regret can be helpful. And, you know, I'm just making up the distinctions between those things, but I think there is a difference, or at least I would like to, for this morning, say that let's make a difference between shame is this kind of, is a thing that loops us back into our habit energy.

[16:36]

That like, oh, I feel the shame. That would be painful, but truthfully, but I've also been trained to be conflict avoidant, and I've also been trained to be discomfort avoidant. And so I move away from it really quickly. And basically nothing has changed in me. So if I can, if I can put shame aside and I can feel fully like, Oh, I did this thing and it caused harm. And now I'm actually, I feel pain about having caused harm and breathe with that and stay with that. And now maybe I inquire, like, where did it come from? Where did I learn that behavior? When did it happen to me? When have I done this before? I can acquire, be curious, be steady, be stable. That actually I have seen change my behavior. So it's a really different, it's a different process. It's a genuine transformational process. And I would say in Zen, that's the alchemy of our full presence with something, especially with something painful.

[17:41]

When I lived at San Francisco Zen Center, and I'm sure this is still true, that every morning, pretty much every morning, when we do service, we would say, we would chant all my ancient twisted karma from beginningless greed, hate, and delusion, born through body, speech, and mind, I now fully avow. And, and this tells you something about my conditioning, for years, I didn't actually know what the word a vow meant, and I assumed that it meant I'd drop it, which I was like, oh, yeah, see my conditioning there? I was conditioned to let go of stuff that I didn't like about myself. And so it really made sense that I made up a definition of a vow, which was I'd drop and let go. And when I was conscious of that, you know, sometimes you get in the habit of doing things where you chant every day. But when I was aware of it, I'd feel this like, yeah, I just dropped all my ancient twisted karma. I'm free. But it turns out, one day I looked up the word of vowel, and it turns out it does not mean drop.

[18:50]

A couple of the definitions I found when I looked it up again recently, it means an open statement of affirmation, a frank acknowledgement or admission, an open declaration or acknowledgement. which is really quite different. It's like a vowel is a full turning toward. And we do it with one another in Sangha. We do it in community. We name this together. I now fully a vow. We do it in a way that others can hear us say and see. And we are doing that for ourselves too. Like, oh, I'm a vowing and I'm doing that with you all. And then, you know, it took me a few years to realize, oh, I'm owning. I'm owning all my ancient twisted karma. It's quite different than letting it drop away. So I've been thinking about, so this idea of a vowel. So one of the, a relationship that I think is really crucial to look at right now in terms of relationships, so the dialectics we can take up in Zen, right?

[20:01]

One of them is the relationship between our present being, and our historical conditioning. That's a relationship. It's a living thing. It's alive and moving and constantly reshaping. And I was thinking about the ways that we do this, both we personally avow and own and be in relationship with our historical conditioning, and then we collectively do it. And whenever I think of that, actually, I think of a friend of mine who some of you I know know named Michael, who lived at Green Galtz also when I lived there, who grew up in Germany. We haven't talked about it in a long time, but we have talked about over the years what his experience was growing up in Germany as a German child. He's a little bit older than me. I'm 50, so he's in his mid-50s. We were all born in the late 60s, early 70s.

[21:05]

And what his experience was in terms of his education about the Holocaust as a German person, maybe some of you here are German actually, so you can say what yours was. How he has described this to me and how I've heard others describe it as well is that since, as far as he could remember, like into maybe even preschool and kindergarten, He remembers learning about the Holocaust very frankly and openly, hopefully, and it sounds like developmentally appropriately because he wasn't, he didn't have negative feelings about this, that it was a collective project in Germany. It was kind of a, I'm sure some people disagreed, but the general populace agreed that the best way to move forward from the Holocaust was to never forget it. and to always teach it. There's something so touching to me about this and very different than what my experience is in the United States.

[22:09]

There's something so touching about a collective understanding like this is here. This history is here. It's not back there. It's not elsewhere. And because it's here, we teach our children how to understand that it's here. We talk about how it's here. It's painful, it's terrifying, but it's a part of what we are. And so we name it, we give them language for it, we collectively do this. In the book Cast by Isabel Wilkerson, she talks about, I've never been to Germany, I don't think, or maybe I've been through there on a train, but she talks about a train station in Berlin where there's like a story-high words are printed that says, Places of horror we shall never forget and then list the names of concentration camps. This busy train terminal, people are going in and out every day. So woven into the social fabric is an agreement to acknowledge this.

[23:18]

So that's a collective reckoning and kind of... It's not like a one-and-done thing, right? It's on the train station. If you go there, if you use that train station, you're going to see it every day. It's a relationship. It's a present relationship with the historical reality that is present. And so that's a way that human beings can do such a thing of a conscious avowal and turning toward of our collectively held history. And then we can do this also, I mean, we need to do it on all the levels. So in our collective, historical, national, global, you know, regional, cultural, down into the minutiae of what we consider to be, it is a delusion that we're separate, but we do also need to work with our very particular beings. So right down into the minutiae of our own beings. What is the stuff I have inherited?

[24:21]

What does it make me do in the world? And again, try to not be afraid because we have to see it to work with it. Yesterday, I had this great experience of being in a part of a three-hour teaching with Rhonda McGee at the East Bay Meditation Center. Oh, it was on Zoom, actually, but hosted through the East Bay Meditation Center on the Four Noble Truths. Have people met Rhonda McGee? She's a Bay Area teacher. She's a wonderful teacher. She wrote a book called The Inner Work of Racial Justice. She is a black woman, a law professor, and Zen practitioner. I think Rhonda McGee practices with everyday Zen as well as other songs. And she was teaching on the Four Noble Truths. and the relationship to racism and racial conditioning.

[25:23]

And when she started the day, she said, so I'll tell you what the outline for the schedule is today for the time we're gonna be together. I'll offer that to you and I'll let you know also that we're not gonna hold it very tightly. And she's like, no, just for a second, see what that does to you. So particularly if you've lived or If you currently live or have lived at Zen Center, you'll know what I mean by the schedule. The schedule. It is a thing by which like the whole organization, the community orients around the schedule. And what she was offering was. And she said, you know, if if the idea that we're not going to strictly stick to the schedule makes you uncomfortable. And then she paused and said, congratulations, you have inherited culture. It's like, oh, yeah, yeah. I can look in my own life and see how I've inherited cultural stuff that says when there's a schedule that's been set, particularly the one we've agreed on, that I feel quite a bit of comfort knowing that it's going to be stuck to really rather tightly, actually, if I'm being honest about what my conditioning has given me.

[26:47]

I feel comforted when people are a little tight about it. And that like emotional stuff or unexpected stuff is not going to interrupt this. You know, it's like a, it's actually truthfully, like this is a culturally conditioned delusion that we can have control over time and events. But also I was handed this as like, you know, when you agree on a schedule and you stick to it, that's professional, that's mature, that's being responsible. So these are the attributes that I was told. It's organizing versus chaotic, and it's upright versus messy. Yeah. And can we see that to have the orientation that's sticking tightly to a timeline is just a culturally inherited thing?

[27:49]

and not an absolute human attribute. Can we, does it let us loosen up a little? You know, can we be like, oh yeah, you know, right. Like I, you know, I might like that because that's what I'm used to. I was behind a car yesterday actually that had a bumper sticker that said, I'm not late, I'm on Hawaiian time. Which is a different, so it's like, that's a bumper sticker that's promoting a different cultural orientation toward relationship to timelines, you know, and I imagine that bumper sticker was created because people that have Hawaiian cultural, um, conditioning are a little tired of people that don't have that being like, why are you always late? No. Um, I just want to do a quick, so, so a quick review of the four noble truths that, that, um, that are essential to Buddhism and that Rhonda McGee was teaching on yesterday.

[28:50]

The first is that there is suffering. The second is there's a cause of suffering, which traditionally is craving or clinging, I feel like is the term we use more in Zen. The third is that there is a way that traditionally we say end, but I think it's also just as good to say interrupt cycles of suffering. because we can't absolutely end things that are living, but you can work with the cycles that are in front of you. And then the Eightfold Noble Path is the Fourth Noble Truth, which is like the how to maximize or how to make it more likely that we interrupt suffering. And one of the things that I was so... appreciative of what that Rhonda McGee was offering yesterday was this crucial point to in my experience which was that things that are familiar to us what's what's known and conditioned and familiar even if we disagree with them so stuff that we've inherited from our cultural backgrounds even if we consciously disagree with the values they represent they that subtly

[30:11]

they often produce a feeling, a good feeling. When something is familiar, it's predictable. It's culturally known to us, even if we don't like it. And that subtle goodness creates a craving for more of it, particularly if we're out of touch with that. If we can't acknowledge that actually we do kind of feel comforted by things that are familiar. Especially, and so I would say this especially now, I can say this as a female-identified person who has been feminist since I could think. I didn't like how I was diminished as a little girl, as a very small child. I was like, this is not okay. But I can acknowledge that patriarchal structures are familiar to me, and I sometimes help perpetuate them.

[31:12]

because I have been conditioned to do that deeply. Does this make sense to people? Like my values are anti-patriarchal. My conditioning is strongly patriarchal. Those things don't always, they often don't line up. I perpetuate patriarchal things sometimes, often, because it's familiar and it's known. And a lot of what my functioning is unconscious. And I think what Rhonda was pointing to, that actually there's a little bit of a positive feeling that pulls us in again and again to re-perpetuating things, even if we don't like them. Even if we're actively working against them. Even if we're giving talks to be like, hey, no more patriarchy. Hey, no more racism. That we still may participate in these things because we've been conditioned. And the key thing is, and so this is that Dharmagate thing again, that we...

[32:13]

Boldly and courageously and honestly look and see the fullness of our experience. Rhonda offered an example from herself, her own conditioning, around the dominance of the use of English in the United States. So that's like a, you know, in dominant culture, understanding that thousands of languages are spoken within the United States, I imagine. I don't know how many. Many, many languages are spoken within the United States by human beings, right? But in most spaces, the dominant culture says it has to be English, it has to be English. And that's been true since the founding of what we call the United States, right? The Declaration of Independence was written in English. So there's this major momentum around English speaking equals normative in the United States, even though we could really wonder about that, you know? England's like this tiny little country.

[33:15]

Why do we all speak English? But there are reasons, you know, and we should investigate. So she was saying that when she first moved to San Francisco, she found herself in different settings where a number of different languages were being spoken. Or maybe it was even that, like, predominantly English was not being spoken around her. And she... And this is where I feel like you could see the... fullness of her practice. She was aware, she was, she was aware of her feelings in relation to this. One of which was excitement. I think she was, I think she grew up in South Carolina. So she was like, this is exciting. I'm in a diverse environment. There was some anticipation like, Ooh, like what, what will be here? You know, what's this like? This was many years ago when she moved to San Francisco, but then she could also name, and this part is crucial that there was some discomfort. because she wasn't used to being in environments where English wasn't spoken.

[34:17]

And actually, if she was being totally honest, it was because she wasn't totally sure what was going on. Like, what if she was missing something? Or maybe like, what were people saying? And she wasn't totally sure. And I was just like, that's such a brilliant example. Because if we have a story about ourselves as being like culturally worldly and interested in other cultures and accepting of other cultures, then it's really easy to be open to the excitement and the anticipation that comes with being surrounded by people speaking languages other than English, if that's your conditioning. Because those align with our view of ourselves, if that's our view of ourselves, right? I'm a culturally sophisticated person, and I'm tolerant of many cultures, and I'm interested in other cultures. So those things would be okay with the self. What wouldn't be so okay, what doesn't go along with that story is, but I don't totally like this. You know? But that's the piece that we have to open to in order to be free from the tyranny of thinking that English should always be spoken.

[35:30]

And maybe a little bit enacting that. Every time I was just feeling this for myself, like every time there's been one of those discomforts that's dissonant with my story of myself as a good and tolerant person, as a liberal, culturally tolerant person, person interested in multicultural reality. Every time I've turned away from that second part of the discomfort that my conditionings offered me, I have actually given it power and I've buried it deeper and it's like gone underground and actually is, is probably pushing me around more than if I pull that thing up into the light of my awareness of my concentrated awareness. And I'm like, Hey, where'd you come from? You know, am I, you know, like where'd story come from that?

[36:31]

Everybody has to speak English in me. I don't have this story super strongly, but I know I totally knew what she was talking about when she was describing this, because for me, English is my first language. And I grew up in the United States, where I've actually heard people say things like, speak English, with tremendous harshness to people who are not speaking English, with violence in their voices, warning these other people around me, you need to stop that. And you need to speaking, you know, have other people seen that happen? Where people particularly, it's, you know, I've never seen it be anyone other than white people. I don't know, maybe, maybe. But anyway, it's the tyranny of dominant culture speaking. And that, you know, and it was, and it scared me in my formative years. And I was like, well, you know, and then it went underground. And I was like, oh, I'll never do that to somebody, right? Like, I'm not like that person. but I didn't look at how I am like that person also because I didn't like the story that I was like that person and didn't work with my sense of myself.

[37:44]

But I think in practice, in Bodhisattva practice, we need to look at the full spectrum of our experience in every moment. When there is delusion, Can I be with it as a Dharma gate? When I see myself clenching, when I see myself making a story that someone is other than me, based on tremendous momentum of conditioning, which, you know, I'm a white American person. I have received a tremendous amount of conditioning around race in particular, around othering people who are not white. I don't like it. I never have. I saw a documentary recently on the making of Sesame Street, and I was born in 1971. So if any of you were born around when I was born and you grew up in the United States and you watched Sesame Street, I recommend this.

[38:50]

I was like, whoa. I was so formed by the agenda of Sesame Street. What those folks were creating, they were very deliberately creating countercultural visuals of community that were multiracial. They also included kids with physical disabilities, kids with Down syndrome. Like I remember this really clearly when I was a kid. And I remember being like, that's my world. Yes. I loved Sesame Street. So I can own this, right? Like that's a big chunk of my conditioning. I wanted to grow up in a world that looked like that. That made sense to my heart as a young human being. And at the same time, I was being raised in segregated spaces, actually. My neighborhood was a segregated space. Not technically, but culturally. And in practice, it was. It was a predominantly white space.

[39:52]

It was a predominantly Christian space, even. The neighborhood I grew up in, there were a number of my friends... A few, a number of my friends growing up were Jewish. A few of my friends who were Jewish grew up on my street, but there were people on my street who made people who were Jewish feel uncomfortable about living on my street. So I can even name that piece, like religious domination. And I grew up in a suburb of Boston, which actually, I mean, maybe now people are a little more hip to that now, like Boston's a super sacred place. But, you know, it's a liberal place. It's politically liberal. And yet. And yet, when there are currents of extreme racial hierarchies, I do know them in myself. I have been conditioned in them. And I don't like them. And I spent years not wanting to look at them. And then I spent years looking at them and being mired in shame and guilt.

[40:57]

But now I feel... in the Dharma and with Sangha, that this is a particular place to look in terms of addressing the suffering of this country. And I just want to, the last thing I want to say, because I would like to hear how this is all for you, is simply that what I'm bringing in what I'm offering, that we need to be able to, in Sangha, look together at even the parts that we carry that are ugly and that are violent and that are totally not aligned with our hearts and our values is not political. And I want to name that word in particular because I get that feedback.

[41:58]

I'm just looking to see if it's exclusively from people who are white-identified. I think so. It's certainly predominantly from white-identified people. I get the feedback of, like, dharma tops should not be political. And so if I ever bring up anti-racist practice, I get that feedback. I don't feel like I get it as much when I bring up gender, but I think it's all part of a package. And... that this isn't political. To look honestly at our shared history and the things that shape us, that's a moral issue, first of all, and more generally. And in terms of Buddhism, it is an essential issue because it's how we address suffering. Suffering in the United States is particularly wrapped around racism. The founding of the country is particularly wrapped around racism. It's a root. of the suffering that we share.

[43:00]

If we're in the United States, I guess I am making the assumption that most people are in the United States. And it's the one that we collectively need to turn ourselves toward. We need to avow, which again was this open statement of affirmation, frank acknowledgement, declaration of acknowledgement. We need to avow these roots of suffering. The historical Buddha, whose awakening we celebrate on, we just celebrate, in Zen we celebrated on December 8th, or Rahatsu. There was Sashin, I think, at Green Gulch, celebrating the Buddha's awakening. The Buddha sat down and he resolved to wake up. He had momentums of lifetimes of effort behind him, just to mention. It's important to note. And he sat there under the Bodhi tree and he had these... you know, these storms of Mara.

[44:01]

So these storms of like delusion and distraction and guilt and shame and, you know, fear and terror all coming at him. And he just sat there and he sat there. And finally he, the story goes, he reached down and touched the earth for affirmation. And the earth herself, the quaked, in validation of that being on that seat and said like, yeah, he belongs right there. And then the Buddha said in the Mahayana stories or the Bodhisattva school stories of how the Buddha woke up, he says, I together with all beings realize complete awakening. And then he sees the morning star and he opens his heart completely. And then the first thing he does after that the story goes, is he taught the Four Noble Truths. He taught that there is suffering, there's a cause of suffering, there's a way to interrupt the causes of suffering, and here's the path to do it.

[45:10]

So this is super Buddhist, in my opinion, to fully and with great compassion and with tenderness and with one another, but with tremendous resolve, address the suffering of our collective and individual conditioning. Those things are not separate. We have to deal with them separately maybe sometimes, but our collective individual conditioning, they're all woven. And that this is actually the project of Buddhist practice, not a political thing. To say that the domination and dehumanization and exploitation of certain people over certain people is okay. To address the suffering that that causes. This is the Buddhist project of addressing suffering.

[46:11]

Rana McGee actually yesterday offered that also in the tradition of Buddhism, it's often said that the Buddha himself would say, I only teach two things, that there's suffering. And that there's a way to end it. She said, you know, the four noble truths itself is already in elaboration. There is suffering. But we have to start there and be like, oh, but what is it fully? What is it in each moment? What got me here? What brought me to this place? And then there's a way to interrupt it, which is not to move past it, but to turn fully toward it. and to own it completely with each other. 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.

[47:15]

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.

[47:29]

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