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. How are we on sound? Can you hear me? Ruth? Good. A little louder? Okay. How's this? Testing, testing. Good. So here we are, second day of Sashin. Wonderful. And I'm filled with so much gratitude to be here. I want to thank you, Kathy, for all of your teachings and your support. And you've nourished my practice so deeply over the last years.

[01:00]

really teaching how to be seamlessly embodied in the world and in this practice. And your commitment to us in the natural world with the understanding how intimately we're intertwined is passionate, wonderful, and deeply important. Thank you. And Norman? You've been doing this for a long time now, and it's really a gift to have a teacher who has matured and can teach us. Please live long, stay healthy, and continue to teach us for a long time. See, I think we have universal agreement here. Sorry. I wanted to thank also the Everyday Zen community because they so warmly adopted me, and it was unhesitatingly.

[02:08]

And I just, I love this about the Sangha, how seamlessly, again, I was just engulfed in this warm embrace of good Dharma friendships. Thank you to everyone at Tassajara who's been running around for weeks figuring out how to do Shiho for four people in the middle of practice period, creating all these different spaces and different rooms and everything we need. And I know that it's taken you out of your regular routine. I really appreciate that. And I really want to express my... deep gratitude to all you dear Dharma friends this practice period. Practicing together with every one of you here at Tassajara has been an amazing, wonderful, extraordinary experience. It's been full of love, full of challenges, full of, hmm, I don't know, writing out the agony and the ecstasy of

[03:19]

what is it, three different seshines in one practice period, which is a new thing that I had not experienced before. Enjoying the colorful parade of the yellow, green, red, blue, rainbow umbrellas through the rain. And I really love how the CTA has become like the village well, where we meet and connect and get the latest news of our friends, our weather. and along with hugs and encouragement. So together, all of us here, each one of us, has helped to create this beloved community these past weeks. I have especially felt touched and inspired by the extraordinary willingness to be raw, authentic, and vulnerable here at Tassajara.

[04:21]

Your away-seeking mind talks have been incredible, each and every single one of them. The Shusos talks courageously laid bare personal suffering and how it weaves into our practice. And when I attended my first ever 12-step meeting here in the all-inclusive 12-step meeting on personal day, I was really blown away by how people can create safe space to fully speak their truth. And I still remember the first time at the CTA when I asked someone, how are you? How are you doing? They actually told me. I was a little surprised. So seeing our practice expressed this way, I've been inspired to give you a different kind of Dharma talk than I usually give. And I'm a little nervous.

[05:25]

And I want to give my apologies to those who I promised to talk on the opening lines of the fourth chapter of the Abhidharma Kosha. Not going to happen. That's what I am going to talk about. I'm going to start with a koan, case 35 in the Mumunkan. I'm going to read it from The Hidden Lamp. Senjou and her soul are separated. Senjou was the beloved daughter of Chokan. In childhood, she played with her cousin, Ochu, and Senjou's father jokingly told them that they were betrothed. They believed him and later fell in love. When her father told her that she would marry another man, they were heartbroken. Ochu left the village in a boat before the marriage. As he left, he saw a figure running along this riverbank calling to him. It was Senjou. Joyfully, she joined him, and they traveled far away where they married and had two children.

[06:32]

Five years went by, and Senjou longed to see her parents and ask their forgiveness. They traveled back to their village and Ochu went to her father and told him the story and apologized for them both. Chokhan, astonished, asked Ochu, What girl are you talking about? Your daughter Senjou, replied Ochu. Chokhan said, My daughter Senjou? Ever since you left, she's been in bed, unable to speak. Then Ocho brought Senjo up from the boat. As they approached her parents' door, the Senjo who had been sick got up from her bed, smiling. When the two Senjos met, they merged into one. Senjo said, I saw Ocho going away, and that night I dreamed that I ran after his boat. But now I cannot tell which was really me.

[07:37]

The one who went away in the boat? Or the one who stayed home? Later Zen Master Muon said, Senjo was separated from her soul. Which one was the real Senjo? This story of Senjo is a beloved folk tale. And Mumon added a capping verse, The moon and the clouds are the same. Mountains and valleys are different. All are blessed. All are blessed. Is this one? Is this two? And Zen Master Mumon turned this ancient beloved tale into a koan by asking, Senjo was separated from her soul.

[08:38]

Which was the real Senjo? Levcadio Fern published this story in English for the first time in an 1898 essay. He encountered the story in Japan when a friend told him about koans in the Mumonkan. Upon hearing this story, Levcadio asked, but wait a minute, what about the clothes? And his friend said, what do you mean about the clothes? And he said... wouldn't the two senjos have been wearing different clothing? I love this koan for many reasons. Maureen Stuart Roshi often gave taisho on it, and it raises the question of the deep suffering and pain of separation from ourselves. Senjo couldn't be her own full self, whether she stayed with her parents, or went away with her love. The solution to her seemed to be to run after the boat, to get married, to have children.

[09:42]

But it wasn't a complete solution. She longed for her parents. And the Senjo that stayed with parents lay sick in bed, utterly depleted of energy, unable even to talk. Like Senjo, We may not even know that we've lost part of ourselves. We may not even know that we've lost connection with ourselves. And yet we feel this longing, some archetypal yearning for wholeness. This practice period, I've had an intensely personal resonance with this koan. Returning to Tassahara has been... a return to the start of my own spiritual path, to a time when, like Senjo, I was way more deeply split than I realized. I remember arriving for my first practice period at Tassajara as a traumatized 20-year-old.

[10:47]

In 1980, we didn't talk about trauma. We definitely didn't have a vocabulary to talk about childhood sexual abuse. and I had experienced years of it from the age of 12 to the age of 17. Early on, my abuser told me that if I spoke the truth of what was happening, they would commit suicide and I'd be placed in an institution. I believed it. I became frightened and anxious when talking to anyone about anything, terrified that I might let slip a shred of the truth that would give us away. Not long after the abuse started, like Senjo, I ended up leaving my family to live with the abuser. We lived in a remote town where no one would know us. And like Senjo, part of me never stopped longing for home. Also like the Senjo laying ill at home, I became so separated from myself that at one point I stopped speaking altogether.

[11:56]

For weeks I lay in bed unable to talk in a near catatonic state. I remember feeling that I was in a world of snow falling, piling up on me in layers and feeling comforted by the imaginary weight. When I was 17, I took a small inheritance from my grandmother and I escaped to Europe. Like Senjo, running after the boat, the dream of a full life. Traveling around Europe, I created another self, one who played guitar and leapt off high rocks into the Mediterranean. A self who would drink Ritzina under a full moon and wildly dance on Kazantzakis' grave in Greece. A self that would write long poems and ride fast motorcycles through small Italian villages, careening around corners as the old women in black and dogs and chickens scattered in front of me. I abandoned my own internal senjo, who still lay quietly ill, frightened and alone under her blankets of snow.

[13:08]

I still had never said a word to anyone. For that first year at Tassajara, I sat with these different selves, lodged in my body, deep in the bone. I feared that if I admitted in the sick, ill, depleted senjo side of myself, I would become completely her. So I kept her hidden from myself as well as from others. And yet, Tassahara became the first place I ever hinted to anyone what I'd experienced. During a Ruhatsu Sashin, I decided I needed to break my silence. I can still feel how it was to be that young woman waiting for Dokusan in the flickering kerosene lamplight, uncontrollably debating as, I thought, should I? Shouldn't I?

[14:10]

Do I really want to do this? Because even though rational thought was telling me, he isn't going to institutionalize you, the fear of speaking out had been deeply embedded and embodied. And I finally, in Dokkasan, managed to admit out loud that I'd been abused. Being at Tassahara during those years, sitting Zazen, living in community, opened up my path to healing and to wholeness. I was held by the practice, drinking in the truth of the Dharma, believing that there truly is a path out of suffering, In Zazen, I began to let go of the small, controlling ego-self that kept me safe and secure. I began to let go of everything that I thought would make things better.

[15:11]

I got out of the way so that my heart could heal, just the same way when we get a deep wound, if we just keep it clean and stay away from messing with it, it will heal of its own accord. I learned true forgiveness, the forgiveness that feels the hurt, that doesn't condone, and begins to understand that people cause pain out of their own pain. I viscerally felt how hanging on to anger and blame was like that hot coal burning my own hand that didn't have any impact at all. on this person who had caused me pain. I also learned that forgiveness that understood that the 12-year-old girl wasn't to be blamed, but to be loved.

[16:12]

She was like the senjo who didn't even know that the other half of her was missing. Sometimes sitting in Zazen felt like sitting there in the blazing fire of karma. Sometimes it felt like a cool drink. Sometimes I felt utterly alone and scared. Sometimes I felt connected to every person, animal, plant, rock in this valley. Through it all, I began to learn to meet myself fully and to accept, to see things as they are. And continuing to practice took strength. It took the faith that this practice works. It took the support of community and teachers. And it took engaging with absolutely every aspect of our teachings on this Buddhist path. Slowly I began to welcome the disowned parts of myself.

[17:19]

Like with Senjo and her soul, there were welcome reunions. Not one big, dramatic reunion, but many small reunions, each one bringing more vitality, aliveness, more ability to feel love and compassion for myself and others, more ability to actually experience joy. So while my particular story involves and is about trauma, I do believe most of us have grown up with little control or agency and feeling this split, even if it isn't through trauma. I think that like Senjou, children know what their hearts want, but they're not allowed to follow it.

[18:23]

Perhaps as a child you're in love with a red dress but told it's not okay for boys to wear dresses. Or perhaps you love art and are told you need to choose a real profession. We humans have a deep, deep need for belonging and security, especially as children. So through many countless ways we learn what's acceptable to our parents, to our teachers, to our friends, to religion. And then our very clever ego self separates out what is acceptable behavior and what is not. And we get in the habit of looking to others. Those bits that aren't acceptable to ourselves or others become what Jung called the shadow part. They're abandoned, disowned parts of ourselves. The senjo who is lying ill in bed depleting of our own vitality, life force and connection. And then we begin to experience ourselves as unbearably separate, alone, a small self adrift in a huge threatening world.

[19:35]

And often it feels like something is deeply, painfully, shamefully wrong with us. So I relate to this koan of Senjou as encouraging us, each one of us, to reunite with the lost and disowned shadow parts of ourselves. It's a mythic story of our practice as a path of healing into wholeness and then releasing beyond wholeness into the very ground of our being. And it's reminiscent to me of Buddha's enlightenment story. You probably all remember that when Mara saw the soon-to-be Buddha was about to become enlightened, what did he do? He sent armies of what we called or were then called demons to stop him. He sent in lust in the form of seductive young women.

[20:38]

He sent terror in the form of crushing rocks and flaming arrows and continued to send fears, desires, the griefs, the shames that live inside of all of us humans. Yet Gautama sat unshakable through it all, not fighting them off and not engaging with them. And after several armies of demons failed to sway the Buddha, Mara brought out the big guns. He brought out that gut-level shame, fear, unworthiness experience that's so familiar to so many of us. that deep unworthiness that says, something is wrong with me. I'm not okay. I'm broken. If people see me, they won't like me. Mara challenged the Buddha, who are you to think that you can become awakened? Who do you think you are to follow your heart? And the Buddha touched the earth, calling the earth godness.

[21:44]

the very ground of our being, to bear witness. So our practice of healing and becoming whole follows the Buddha's practice under the Bodhi tree. We sit zazen and develop our meditative stability. We begin to allow, even invite in, absolutely everything. We greet our grief, our despair, our failures with a warmth. then we allow them to self-release without clinging to them. We begin to discover those imprisoned figures who crowd our thoughts and dreams, the one who wants to sing or maybe swear in anger, the one who is filled with passionate desire, the one who is more critical or embarrassingly more needy than the eye wants to admit. And slowly, we allow them all in to our awareness, sitting quietly, following our breath, not throwing ourselves into big stories about who's showing up.

[22:56]

And through this practice, the stiff, contracted ego self begins to soften, open, until like Senjo, we're reunited with our whole self. Our human heart is freed up. And as Maureen Stewart Roshi says, we touch in on the source, the very ground of our being, and taste the truth that samsara and nirvana are not separate. Delusion and enlightenment are not separate. Even the words separate or together are not separate. After all, life and death, health and illness are all one. The true face of this universe includes all things in it. All of it. So returning to Tassajara all these many years later, it's been another process of reunion with the bits and pieces of the young woman that I once was.

[24:06]

I have to say that the first weeks were really a trip down memory lane. and seeing some of the big changes at Tassajara. You know, big changes at Tassajara means a new building out on the flats, and the fact that priests no longer come into the zendo to put on their robes while they are standing up. Little things that we might not even notice in other worlds that just leapt out strongly. Another thing I noticed was that the way that water trickles down your arm when you hang up the washboard after doing laundry has remained the same. So it feels poignant to me that it's here at Tazahara that I am, for the first time, publicly speaking out about this aspect of my life and weaving it into a Dharma talk.

[25:09]

And I know that truly it's your love and your courage, your vulnerability, your examples that have allowed me to do this talk, each one of you. And I was thinking about how when together we shine our light in dark places, the wonderful warmth of the human heart is released. While I could say this all feels like completion, in reality, there's really never anything to hold on to. There's never any place to rest. Our practice, thankfully, never comes to an end, right? I don't want to be forced to retire from this. I don't know about you. Whenever we think we've attained something, we're already in big trouble. So it's a constant process of letting go, of learning, of growing and integrating, constant, never-ending.

[26:14]

And I had the amazing privilege of witnessing this when my mother was dying. My mother had spent her adult life, her whole adult life, tormenting herself with feelings of failure. She'd become pregnant at the age of 17. She was sent away to live with an aunt. before the pregnancy showed and she secretly birthed up and then gave a brother that none of us ever knew becoming pregnant again as soon as she got back with the same man she was forced by her parents to get married and she had my older half-brother four years later in despair she left her husband and son she blamed her parents for having ruined her life She moved to LA and took up a wild, artistic, bohemian existence, yet kept carrying great, great, painful guilt.

[27:19]

Again, like Senjo, who ran chasing after the boat of her love, my mom chased various desires that she kept thinking were going to end her suffering and fulfill her. Even when she was married and had the family into which I was born, She felt like a miserable failure at everything, a miserable failure at being a mother, a wife. And she would say things like, I think you'd all be better off without me. And she was also, I have to say, a delightful friend, a fun person, great sense of humor. So it wasn't like she was only one big dark cloud. I also have to say that she was a student of Norman's. And she did Jukai with him. I think it was the late 80s, early 90s. So when she became sick, when she was 86, she spent many, many hours listening to CDs of Norman's talks.

[28:21]

And then she'd say to me, I hear everything he's saying, but I just can't put them into practice. I was a bad Jew, and now I'm a bad Buddhist. When her degenerative disease became life-threatening, my mom decided not to risk a messy, frightening, painful death. And she stopped voluntarily eating and drinking, or voluntarily stopped eating and drinking, I guess is how you would say it. In the first day, she spoke quite a bit with Norman, and she began to realize and see the fact that she had been practicing all these years. She met with her local rabbi several times and realized that by being a good, ethical, compassionate person, she had in fact been a good Jew. She brought all of her children together and told each of us, or all of us, that love is the most important thing and encouraged us to realize how precious each moment of this life is.

[29:28]

She completely, lovingly, wholeheartedly embraced all of who she was in those last days of her life. It was just like Senjo when the two parts walked into each other. All of the parts of my mom's life came and melted into her, and she began to radiate this great, amazing peace and contentment and loving presence. So friends and family who came by to say goodbye were totally amazed. And for nine days, I lived in her room. Besides listening to Norman's talks, I led guided meditations. She meditated, dozed, and dreamt. On the eighth day, very weak and dehydrated, she looked up at me and mouthed, why aren't I dead yet? And I said, it's all those health kicks you went on. They worked. She laughed, and those were the final words that she said.

[30:35]

When she stopped breathing about a day and a half later, she was so relaxed, so quiet, so present, it was hard for me to tell and believe that it really was her last breath. So let's not wait to do this until we die, right? Let's do it now, right here, right now. In this session, we can do it together. This is a safe container of trust. We're here to love and support each other to do this. trusting our intimacy, trusting this practice. We can let go, sinking deeper into our hearts, into our horrors.

[31:37]

This is Zazen together under the Bodhi tree in deep silence, sensing what it is that belongs to every human being, every animal, every plant, every tree, every stone. the whole universe. We are sitting like the wolves in Zen poet Diane de Prima's wonderful book, Loba. There come the safe times when we congregate in the snow under large barren trees and each one of us is aflame, an offering to the moon at such times It is unnecessary to sing. In Zazen, seated firmly in still, stable awareness. You know, recently I've been thinking, aware-ing is a better word.

[32:42]

We're aware-ing. Thoughts arise, emotion arise, saying yes to whatever arises, not pushing it away, not latching onto it. Every time we find our mind wandering off, we gently, sweetly, with warm, unconditional self-regard, bring ourselves back to the physical sensations of breath in the belly. And notice how good it feels to be present, whole, and lucid again. Each time this is a moment of happy reunion, Our two souls smiling at each other. Merging. Eventually, naturally, counting will just take over and zazen is sitting you. Breath is breathing you.

[33:43]

Just breathing. Just being. Just awareing. Just this. And then we see as Maureen Stewart Roshi, so beautifully expresses. Every single act, everything we do, is the expression of our true nature. We may not know it. We may not be aware of it. We may not even think we have any insight. But everything we do, everything we do, is an expression of who we are. Standing up, sitting down, eating, drinking, laughing, crying, washing our bowls, everything. Mumon said, the moon and the clouds are the same. Mountains and valleys are different.

[34:47]

Is this one? Is this two? All is blessed. All is blessed. Thank you. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma talks are offered free of charge, and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click giving.

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