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. Good morning. I want to thank the Tonto, Giyu, and Abbas Fu. for the invitation to be here today. How many of you are here for the first time? All right, special welcome to you. My name is Kidu Lien Shutt. I am ordained in this tradition, Lay, Priest, and Dharma Transmission by Zenke Blanch Hartman. She was the first abbess, of course, of Lens Center. My teacher now is Vicky Austin. Let me begin by saying that I have great concern for the current conditions we live in, both in this country, in the world, and in fact, for our earth.

[01:13]

So from this seat, this position, my desire, in fact, even my responsibility is to be as honest with you as possible. And in that honesty, to be very clear about why my intention is to offer you some relief, some hope, I also hope that I'm able to give you something useful about a sense of what can be done. And I'm limited from this seat, from this vantage point. So I'm kind of a newbie here. I've never lived at Green Goal Farm. And I think this is only my fourth talk here. And two of those times, I was here for the Youth and Family Program. And so I read some children's stories, The Missing Piece, and Wait.

[02:21]

Today, I'd like to tell you, I'd like to start with an adult story. And it goes like this. And if you know this first part, please join me. All my ancient twisted karma From beginningless greed, hate, and delusion Born through body, speech, and mind I now fully avow. This is called the repentance. We chant it every morning at the monastery. We do it as part of the morning service, a series of rituals to help us recommit to our vows, to a life of non-harming every day.

[03:24]

On many a morning, A flicker of guilt nudges at me. Mostly I try to ignore it. But like the mucus flies at our monastery in the Ventana wilderness, the flies continue to return no matter how many shakes of the head. You know those mucus flies at Tassajara. And like those flies, the memory keeps... landing. Mucus flies are always trying to get wetness. So they land on my head. I like to go in the nose, the ears, the eyes, the mouth. And the memory lands also on my head, but inside. And the memory goes like this.

[04:26]

It's Saigon, late 1960s. I'm about five years old. It's early morning. My mother just gave me two coins, two dong, to go buy my breakfast on the street, which is a regular habit in Saigon life. However, today is Tuesday, and it's a very exciting day because Ji-Fung will be at the market. Ji-Fung is a cricket seller. As I enter the south side of the market, I look across the plaza and see a swarm of children, mostly boys, surround Jifeng and her two baskets of crickets. I run up, pushing my way into the walls of boys with their faces pressed against the screen cages. Squeezing in besides Heng and Tam,

[05:28]

boys I know from my apartment complex. I, too, press my nose against the screen, looking inside at the crickets. Like Hung and Tam, I start my assessments of the crickets, a heap of them, and their concophony of cricket, cricket. These are male crickets, of course, singing their songs in love and in anger. We're all looking for the one, a cricket that's big. And not only should it be big, we're also looking for the one that seems to have a lot of vim, a lot of energy, a lot of assertiveness. The one who has climbed to the apex of the heap and then is able to stay up there, warding off others, trying to advance up this cricket mountain.

[06:29]

We're also looking for how large, and therefore presumably powerful, hind legs and mandibles. And so we want the pinchers to be active, opening and closing with force. When I spy the one I want, I point to him and enthusiastically say, Ji Feng, Lai Gong Nai Nai. Jifung, give me that one. She grabs him with a flashing practice hand and quickly shoves him into a small paper bag made from yesterday's newspaper, the seams pasted together with a glue made of water and rice flour. I give her the two coins, my breakfast money, and turn around to leave. My friend Hun is already at the same time. So we run back together.

[07:31]

At our apartment building, Hung says, I'll meet you on the rooftop. OK, I reply. And we both run up the stairs into our respective apartments. Arriving, I put my new cricket into the jar that will now be its home, adorned with a twig and a dark leaf mango, dark green mango leaf. Putting the lid on, I also grabbed my matchbox. It's a big matchbox, ones that used to hold kitchen matches. But now inside is just a single toothpick and a circle of my own hair at the end. To make it, I pulled out one of my straight hairs, looped it around at the end of the toothpick, and taped the hair ends together to make a hoop. Matchbox and jar in hand, I run up to the roof. Hung is already there.

[08:33]

He is opening his matchbox. He places the shell of the matchbox onto a tabletop, pushing an end against the wall so that there's only one opening. This will be the fighting arena for the crickets. The matchbox shell is a tight, confined forcing the two crickets inside to face each other. I go to join him. As a pre-fight preparation, I grasp my cricket from the top over his midsection, securing those big hind legs with my thumb and forefinger. The cricket's long antennae are waving left and right frantically, his front legs making small rapid circles. in the open air, holding him as still as possible. With my right hand, I take my hair-looped toothpick, twirl it against his face.

[09:38]

The cricket is pulling his head back as far as he can, trying to avoid being tickled. I continue, though, keeping at it, twirling faster and faster until he stops pulling back and starts to charge forward. Pincher's snapping at the loop. This is the moment I've been waiting for. Because now, now I know he's mad. Now I know he's angry. Now I know he's furious. And that's when I say, ready. Hung shoves his cricket into the matchbox opening. and I put mine in right after. We then hunch down at the table to watch the two crickets fight. Now that they've been riled, they face each other in that tight space and lunge at each other, long antenna flying like swords, pinchers opening and closing.

[10:48]

When a cricket comes running out of the matchbox arena, chased by the other, Hung and I take turn, each of us with our looped toothpick, twirling at the runaway cricket, both to herd him back in and to keep on amping up his anger and aggression so that he goes back in to fight. We want them to keep going back in, to keep fighting again and again. Because The loser is the one whose cricket is chased out for the last time. The loser is the one whose cricket gets hurt. The loser is the one whose cricket is harmed. The reason that I had to get a new cricket today is because yesterday I was the loser.

[11:55]

My cricket came out first, limping, as Hung's cricket kept charging, pinchers opening and closing repeatedly around my cricket's right back leg. By the time I'd reach out to scoop him up and put him safely back into the jar, his leg was hanging on by the tiniest part of a wet, stringy ligament. My cricket jar lives by my bedside. Yesterday, in the hours after the fight, I had watched the cricket drag his right hind leg as he ate or climbed up the twig until it fell off, dropping down from that perch onto the dark green mango leaf below.

[12:57]

Last night, as I was going to sleep, I'd heard his kukit, kukit, kukit fade, getting quieter and quieter and quieter. At the time, I thought I was just drifting off to sleep, soothed by his rhythmic song. But now, upon reflecting, I wonder if it was his death song. This is a story. It's a story based on my memories of my time in Vietnam. I've recently started taking a class because I wanted to explore some memories I have of Vietnam. I left Vietnam when I was eight, during what we call the Vietnam War.

[14:06]

Of course, in Vietnam, it's called the American War, after the Chinese and the French. And I had left because my mother, my birth mother, was dying of breast cancer, and she had us adopted by an embassy family. So my sense, I have many of my memories from that time. is that they're limited. They are static in a lot of ways. And they're also limited in these ways. I'm not really sure how much of it is my own experience, how much of it is facts versus things I've made up, or things that I've been told about a situation. Memories are like this for many of us, wouldn't you say? Murky, especially ones from a few years ago, let alone 10, 20, 30, 40-some years ago.

[15:15]

In fact, in the teachings, all of our thoughts are like this, not just memories. Any way you interpret an event is just that, yours. Consciousness arises from contact. A creation of an experience happens when one of our six senses, eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind, meets an object, contact. Sense consciousness is then created, becomes alive, because we identify, we label by contact, and from there, a whole host of associations get connected. This is how we make meaning.

[16:15]

Depending on which teaching perspective, this is called proliferation. A story comes into creation, is known, And with that, with enough repetition, with both further contact and further thinking about it, some of it our own, some of it others, becomes beliefs. Another way to explain it is that there are seeds buried. And depending on conditions, if that seed gets watered, you could say, it will grow. Sometimes. very often into something big. How we identify, label, and interpret our experience is uniquely our own. I always like to say to my students that in Buddhism, 99.9% of what we call experience is subjective.

[17:22]

In our practice, we acknowledge this. That's what we're doing when we chant the repentance. In fact, I would propose you today a repentance, which, by the way, we chant every morning here. We chant that once the interaction between people start to happen in our ceremonies in Sotusen, before we give the precepts, be it for lay people or priests in weddings, So at the beginning of these ceremonies, we acknowledge that we know that harming has been a part of our life. In essence, this is the first noble truth. There is harming in this life. And I am a part of it. It has come to me in present day

[18:29]

We could say that we've been conditioned. I think we all have some understanding of this. And yet the key to practice is that not only that you, you know, share it and go, oh, yeah, okay. It's that you have to find out for yourself. And you'll have to understand it not just as information, but really as a way of how do you realize it. How do you know the truth of it in your own life, in your living? And we do that through investigation. Is this true? How do you deeply know, deeply understand? How do you verify it for yourself? We do it through paying attention. Here's a classic Buddhist story. You're walking in the woods on a forest path, of course, in the Buddhist day in particular.

[19:33]

There are no flashlight, no lanterns. Your way is lit just by moonlight. You see something on the path, and at that moment, due to the causes and conditions, there's a cloud over the moon. And so the light on the path is filtered and speckled. when your eye makes contact with something on the path. In a nanosecond, you think, snake. And with that comes a whole host of thoughts and emotions. Oh, my. It's a snake. It's going to bite me. I'm going to die. Fear and a host of sensations happen. Fast heartbeat. a flush to the face, perhaps anger. And with that action, perhaps you leap. Perhaps you grab a stick.

[20:35]

And then again, because of causes and conditions, the clouds pass, and the brightness of the moon shines onto the path. And now, you see that it's just a stick. Again, contact happened. Eye organs make contact with object, and eye consciousness arise. And labeling stick occurs. And of course, with that, emotions, relief, thoughts, ah, I'm safe. Now, how much you're scared and how much you fully believe that you're unsafe with a snake, has a lot to do, of course, with how many snakes have you met in your life. Whether indeed you have been bitten by one, or the fear for many of us was taught to us.

[21:42]

Many of us were told when we were young that snakes are scary. Or from religious stories, perhaps. By the way, in Buddhist stories, snakes or nagas are revered. Or let's say if your job is to study snakes, then perhaps in seeing a snake you would say, oh, very interesting. What kind of snake is this? You would be curious. By the way, my brother, when he was just learning how to speak, he used to call a snake a sneak. So it's clear that consciousness arises. given conditioning and belief, bringing a whole host of sensations, emotions, thoughts, and beliefs. Everything I've told you is a story. There are no scientists studying snakes.

[22:48]

There's no path. No snake. No moon. No clouds. And yet, I say these words, and our minds, given our similar conditioning, our seeds, you could say, one called the English language, for one, have acknowledged and agreed these images we're having. So you see, it's not a problem to have, identify, to have emotions, to have thoughts. It's even necessary at time. Otherwise, I'd just been saying gibberish. And you would perhaps be saying, I have no idea what she's talking about. What is force? What is moonlight? What is snake? What is path? Perhaps like my little brother, you would be confused and say, I don't understand.

[23:51]

Is she talking about a snake? She's saying snake, but I think she means a snake. Again, having contact, perception, and labeling in itself is not a problem. The problem is when we forget that this is a story, and in particular, it's my story. And that stories go through drafts, go through revisions, go through changes. depending on conditions. For instance, in the class, I'm taking the Cricut Stories four pages long, and obviously I couldn't bring that in here in like 20-some minutes, so the version I gave you is like two pages. And of course, as many of you know, whatever script you have, be it on paper, in your computer, on your iPad, phone,

[24:57]

in your mind, et cetera. You have that, and when it's actually said and shared, it also changes, sometimes vastly. The problem comes, of course, when we don't understand that our view, our position is limited, and we try to convince. Say Q over there. that this is what she should be seeing. From this perspective, this is what I see. But Kyu sees it differently. But I'm going, no. You must believe my truth. In fact, look, Abbas Fu is on this side. We're in the power position. And so our view is more important than your view. So the repent, is to say or to acknowledge how I perceive as limited and the speech, actions, or ways of living I'm doing them.

[26:10]

One, not completely my own, all my ancient, twisted karma. It came to me, I was taught, I was affected by conditioning from beginningless hate, greed, and delusion. often through other delusion based on hate and greed and confusion. And I continue to act on it if I'm not aware, born through body, speech, and mind. When we say the last line, I now fully avow, we are saying, I am willing to take responsibility that I know that it's limited. If our aim, our motivation, the values by which we live, and I say in Buddhism, the main value is non-harming, then we cannot say, I know my truth is limited, but again, because people on my side think it's the right one,

[27:28]

this side of the zendo versus that side, then I can constrain you. I can annihilate you. Also, our points of views can change. And in fact, do change. When I get off the seat and go back over there to bow and leave, I'm going to have a different... point of view, different perspective. Our points of views are not static. Not if we keep our eyes open and are truthful in our observation. Here's from Audre Lorde, who's a poet, feminist. I think she also died of breast cancer. The quality of light by which we scrutinize our lives has direct bearing upon the product which we live and upon the changes which we hope to bring about through those lives.

[28:42]

To repent then is to also be accountable to others. Not only do we have to take responsibility, we have to be willing to be accountable. When we can acknowledge fully that each of us have different and equally important points of views, then we realize that we have to be open to other points of views. It means that we should ask, Q, what's your point of view? I see this over here, it looks like a snake to me. What does it look like from your vantage point? What do you think it is? And if it's a snake, because sometimes it is a snake, how do we best take care of it? And imagine if we could communicate with the snake, and perhaps we could also say, honorable snake, what is it like from you?

[29:57]

Most snakes, I think, would say, Where did you come from? I was just going this way. And wow, you are large. So much bigger than me. I am scared of you. Perhaps that's where this happens, the rattlesnake. Perhaps the snake would say, If you could just take a few steps back or just move over, I would go this way. If such a dialogue could happen, then a conflict does not need to happen. Then there would be no conflict here. Of course, my cricket story is for the class. or me trying to make a point with you about the snake.

[31:01]

And what I'm saying, though, also has real-life implication in real time. Take the situation we witnessed this week, and by the way, this is just one of many, in Puerto Rico. I thought when I was writing this, oh, what perfect example. of how somebody had to be accountable to a larger community. Here's from the associate press, in case you don't know what I'm talking about. After weeks of wave flagging, cowbell clanging, protests in the street, Puerto Ricans on Thursday celebrated the resignation of Governor Ricardo Rossello. Rossello. The governor's unprecedented resignation, which came at nearly midnight on Wednesday, after a series of huge demonstrations, was a big victory for the tens of thousands who took to the streets.

[32:09]

For some, it seems to open an endless array of possibilities in this U.S. island territory of 3.2 million people. Rocio was driven from office after a leak of my edition, 889 pages of vulgar and offensive chat messages between him and his close aides and an infuriated Puerto Ricans already tired of deep-seated corruption and mismanagement of what have sent the island into a 13-year recession. A $70 billion debt crisis. Many, too, were resentful over the slow and fitful recovery from Hurricane Maria, which devastated Puerto Rico two years ago. In the leak of the pages, the governor and 11 of his other men made insulting remarks about women and mocked their constituents, including victims of Maria.

[33:15]

And they were homophobic. Now, talking with a couple of Puerto Rican friends who have family, and other activists in Puerto Rico. You know, and I was wondering, well, why do you think this worked in this situation? And they shared with me about how in Puerto Rico there's a culture of solidarity, of helping out your neighbors, especially because of Hurricane Maria. And then also the frustration with how The money given to help with the relief hasn't reached the people because of the political corruption. So just plain exhaustion from 400 years of colonialization by Spain and the U.S. And so this was a point in which people could cross all political boundaries to unite. It was a, it did also bring up, what did I think about

[34:21]

how Raseyo, you know, like two weeks ago on the 14th, a week ago, how many days ago that was, he went to church, you know, to ask for forgiveness. And so that, you know, he wouldn't seek re-election, but, you know, he would just continue. So that brings me to the part about the repentance. He said, not only do we chant it, It's also a ceremony. It's part of ceremonies. And at the full moon, in fact, we do the full ceremony. Here we call it the full moon ceremony. In Japanese, of course, it's the ryaku futsatsu. It is based on a Vedic practice a long time ago. And then as it went through India, China, and Japan, It became this for us. Ryaku means abbreviated or simple, and fusatsu means to continue good practice or to stop unwholesome action, otherwise known as karma.

[35:35]

And it conveys the spirit of repentance and confession. It's interesting that the last line of the repentant is, I now fully avow. A vow in American English definition is to assert or confess openly. The repentance ceremony is a container for transparency. It is not enough to feel regret that's simply within me, not even between you and some one private deity or person, a good friend, even your teacher. It isn't enough variation when it's just a little group, especially these days on social media. Actually, I'm not on it, but this is what I hear is one of the, you know, like you're in a friend group and so everyone is just similar points of view.

[36:37]

It has to be a community event. And in fact, in our practice in Zen, it is a community event. Why? Because the impact of of our actions are important. We do not live in isolation. What we do affect others. And the wider, the larger what you've done that hurts others and impact others, finding ways to address it or to rectify it needs to include all who are affected. This means accountability. It has to be with accountability, or else it's only self-referencing an ego trip. People come to me often, in practice discussion in particular, and say, how do I live an authentic life? Many years ago, when I first moved out of Tassajara and to City Center,

[37:49]

I did a practice period with Blanche, and her chaiseau was Jana Drakka, who also passed. I remember nothing else about her chaiseau talks except this one line. We ordain to live a transparent life. I remember at the time I was like, oh! I had the blue rockets, so I had no idea I wanted anything else, right? Because it struck me so hard. Like, what? Especially in, you know, my Americanizing of being individualistic and having my own space. When the private and the public are in congruence, this is authenticity. when our speech, actions, our behaviors, in our minds, with our friends, in our communities, in the world, matches the words that we say are our values.

[39:03]

And again, let me say, to me, in Buddhism, the prime directive is to alleviate and eradicate harm. Then there is integration. I would propose to you today that the transformation we all want, dare I even say enlightenment, that we all want isn't some thing, isn't some sense of self that transforms. It's that our behavior and body, speech, and mind becomes more and more congruent and more and more visible. That what we think, say, and do match in a sustained way. That's the hardest part.

[40:06]

In a sustained way. Through space, private and public, and through time, 24-7. Again from Audre Lorde. This is from Sister Outsider in Essays and Speeches. We do not have to romanticize our past in order to be aware of how its seeds are present. We do not have to suffer the waste of an amnesia that robs us of the lessons of the past rather than permit us to read them with pride as well as deep understanding. We know what it is to be lied to, and we know how important it is to not lie to ourselves. We are powerful because we have survived, and that is what it's all about, survival and growth.

[41:16]

As a person of color, as a lesbian, as a woman, as someone who's pretty poor, they'll have survived. I do think that it has to be more than just survival. We have to be able to thrive. And how is it that we also create a way that people aren't just surviving? How is it that we all can thrive? One reason I want to explore my memories from Vietnam now is because after decades of living, putting both the lenses of therapy and practice on myself, my ideas about my past, I'm curious what they are for me now. How do they and how can they inform me of who I am and what I can be in my life, to live from awareness of the impact of the past as it informs my decisions and behaviors now.

[42:28]

We all have our stories. The more and more I teach, I really think it's my role to just give you information. Nor do I need to explain myself. I'm here to share with you from this position through all the spaces and times I've been through. I'm here to listen to all voices, all stories, especially the silence and the suppressed ones. Here's from Grace Lee Boggs. civil rights activists. She said, you don't choose the times you live in, but you do choose who you want to be. And you do choose how you think.

[43:35]

In the United States and throughout much of the world, certainly for our Earth, how we live our lives cannot be neither mindless nor heartless, but with awareness. How we live must be with purpose and intentionality. It must be in congruence and with sustained attention and focus on the values we want to permeate our lives, our lives. It's interesting, when we're talking about repentance with one of my friends who's also a teacher, I talked about how perhaps it's a sense of we're fragmented. How do we bring the fragmentation into integration? But the sangha is a microcosm.

[44:37]

We're practicing here to be accountable to each other. And yet our larger Our larger accountability is to all beings. We can no longer be careless. We must live with care. We must live in caring. We must give a damn. My life, your life, the Earth's life, all of us depend on. Thank you for your attention. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our programs are made possible by the donations we receive. Please help us to continue to realize and actualize the practice of giving by offering your financial support. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click giving.

[45:40]

May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[45:43]

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