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 evening. Welcome. I'm Valerie. I'm a resident priest at Green Gulch. I lived there about nine years. And I'm wondering if there's anyone here tonight besides me who it's their first time. at one of these talks. Thank you. Good, I have company. Great. Okay, welcome. And it's nice to see the rest of you. Thank you for the invitation to talk tonight. I want to take up with you the second most problematic word in English in Buddhism tonight, the word right. And so you won't sit here all evening wondering what the first most problematic word is. It's arguably emptiness, and we'll save that for another evening and probably for somebody who knows more about this subject than I do.

[01:07]

And they do sort of go together, but tonight I would like to take up right. Where do we find this? We find this in the fourth noble truth, the way out of suffering. right view, right intention, right speech, et cetera. But it's not sort of the right that we tend to think about. The right that kind of goes on in our everyday culture means what? What comes up when somebody says right? Correct, exactly. And then what's the opposite of that? Wrong. Right. So there's this judgmental quality of right, which is not at all what's meant by the Noble Eightfold Path. But I think this word trips us up a lot in terms of perhaps our practice of saying, are we doing it right? And the thing is, the opposite thing that we tend to think of is, are we doing it wrong? But that's, in my understanding, really not what's meant by right.

[02:12]

Right. So I'm going to use, hopefully not wear out tonight, a metaphor that I like for right, and that is to ride a ship. So if we think about right in terms of as to ride a ship, then what is it when we are not right? It's not that we're incorrect, it's that we're listening. We're off-center. Now, what's interesting about the ship metaphor is that ships, if you watch pictures of ships, or you've been on a ship on the open ocean, the ship is never really upright. But it is built and has a tendency to return to uprightness. And we have that too. We are, by our Buddha nature,

[03:13]

naturally upright. We just forget. So we list and we lean. And if you actually physically do this for any more than about 10 seconds, it hurts and it feels uncomfortable. And you really want to come back up to uprightness. And I think we all want to come back to uprightness. So it's not about getting here and holding on and staying upright. It's about developing the tendency to be able to return to uprightness. That's sort of the first part. To be able to return to uprightness when we're leaning and eventually to be able to incorporate that leaning into a broader definition of upright. So to be able to lean and acknowledge that we're leaning, and yet find the uprightness in that.

[04:18]

Can we do that? Can we find the uprightness amidst all of the crazy leaning that goes on back and forth? So how does a ship do that when a ship is going back and forth like this? Well, the ship has three characteristics, if it's a good one, and that it has a low center of gravity, it has a deep keel, and or it has a wide base, like a catamaran. And that helps it come back up to uprightness, swaying a little bit, but having that tendency to come upright. So where can we find, how can we find our own deep keel, low center of gravity, and wide base? Well, one answer, of course, is in Zazen. that's a real helpful part of the black cushion, is it helps us get down out of our heads and lower that center of gravity. So you might think about that when you're doing zazen, is what you're really doing is lowering that center of gravity so that you can find that ease and uprightness.

[05:29]

The problem is, is that we often have leaned so long in our lives that we think this is normal and you all, are all tilted. I'm fine. What's the matter with all of you out there? And we tend to sort of get actually dragged around by our leanings. This is called suffering. But I want to sort of call it what it really is. It's not just suffering, it's greed. You might call it greed, hate, and delusion, but actually those three are actually just one. It's all greed. And that is that if you're leaning towards something, and grasping and clinging, that's a greed to have it. And if you're leaning away from something, that's a greed to not have it. So you could all just boil this down to just greed. So just to call it sort of what it is, greed and suffering. So what are these leanings? They are opinions. They are obsessions, judgments, and addictions.

[06:35]

And the ancestors had... a real concern about this actually for us. And several of them had some comments to say about this tendency of us to lean and then to forget we're leaning and to get stuck there and to think everybody else is leaning and not us. So I'd like to just say what several of them said about this because it's really important that this has been important throughout the ages in Buddhism is to study how we lean. And that in itself can alleviate, perhaps not end, but alleviate suffering. So Dengshan said, he actually used not the ship metaphor, but the sea metaphor. When you hold on to something, you are cast into a poisonous sea. So when you grasp and when you lean, you are cast into a poisonous sea. Hakowin said, don't seek the truth, just let go of your opinions. And Nagarjuna, who I confess I don't understand hardly anything he has to say, but every once in a while something comes up that really does make sense to me, and I like this one in particular.

[07:45]

If you don't want the problems caused by firm discriminations, stop making firm discriminations. Yeah, good luck with that. Easy for him to say. But to notice, so a firm discrimination is not only leaning over here, but getting ossified, getting stuck in that leaning over there. And the longer we stay in that leaning, then the harder it is for us to return to this upright. This is naturally ours. Now, I'm going to go way out on a limb here for just a minute and saw it off behind me, so I just want to let you know I'm going to do that. I would say that this is the... a difference, a critical difference between Buddhism and some other spiritual traditions, and that is that Buddhism does say that we are, in fact, naturally upright. We just forget. We are not naturally skewed and then have to fight like crazy to get out of that position.

[08:47]

We are actually naturally upright. We do have a deep keel. We do have a low center of gravity, and we do have a wide base. You might call those Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha, maybe. But whatever, they are ours, and they're always there. We just forget. So I want to talk a little bit about where... we get off and where we list and where we lean. But I first want to acknowledge, because one of you inevitably, during the question and answer or out in the hall, will say to me, yeah, Valerie, but sometimes boats capsize and sink. And that's true. And so do we. Sometimes we capsize and sink. So I just want to acknowledge that. And sometimes it's a deep problem that no amount of zazen is going to fix. But I would like to suggest that sometimes when we capsize and sink, it's because we haven't attended to the accumulation of leanings that are going on, and then we fall over, and then it's hard to get back up.

[10:01]

So I'm not going to talk this evening about the extreme situations when we capsize and sink. I'd like to stay with this leaning that we do and how we can remember what we are. which is naturally upright. So the Buddha actually had some things to say about this. In the Noble Eightfold Path, he not only gave the eight rites, so to speak, but also talked about how we get into leaning situations in each one. So I would like to go through those and think about, in each case, how do we start to lean? And the first one is right view. And the major place that the Buddha said that we go off the rails or begin to lean in right view is the view that everything is permanent. So when we have a view that things or people are permanent, that's a leaning, and that's a grasping to want them to stay that way. That's tova. I know Tova.

[11:02]

She's always going to be like that. She's always going to be Tova. And even though I like Tova, this is still a leaning because I have a fixed, if I have a fixed view of her, that cuts off both of our creativities. So this is a major way right off the bat where the Buddha said, we begin to lean. And that is in our view that things and people are permanent. There are other ways to get off the rails in view, but that's a major one to think that It's permanent because permanent is stuck. Stuckedness. Another word for permanence, you might say, is stuckedness. So right intention, the second of the Eightfold Noble Path, we go off on this one and begin to lean any time our intention comes out of anger. And the major intentions that the Buddha said that come out of anger are revenge and retaliation. Also the silent treatment.

[12:04]

I don't think he listed that one, but you might think of the silent treatment as a type of retaliation. So I'm sure you can think of all the kinds of ways that we retaliate. And I'm not talking about missiles flying back and forth. I'm talking about the ways we may sabotage each other or express anger in sort of a covert way. So this is a major way in which we begin to lean. And the leaning on this one does have a judgment. And that is, I'm right and you're wrong. And I'm going to get you back for that. So this is very important for us to watch, especially in Sangha life, is where can we find that initial inclination to want to... retaliate, even in small ways. What might retaliation look like? Not bowing to somebody. I don't know.

[13:04]

What is it? But we can do it in such subtle ways in community sometimes. It's how do we want to retaliate? How do we want to get the person back? They didn't say hi to me. I'm not going to say hi to them. So this intention to get back, to make it right so I'll feel good, is a major way of leaning. The third one, I think, is the hardest. At least it is for me, so I'll own up to that. And that is the third of the Eightfold Path is right speech. Oh, my goodness. Can we start to lean awfully quickly on this? Because what comes out of our mouth sometimes is not mindfully considered before it comes out. It's really easy. That jerk cut me off, right? Or whatever. All of a sudden, it's out of our mouth. And there are so many ways we can go wrong about this. Sorry, shouldn't have used that word, should I?

[14:06]

So anyways, we can lean about this. Speaking ill of others, blame, praising self at the expense of others, lying, just even small little verbal digs. Even... the cartoon balloon that's going on up here that maybe isn't even being said. But that cartoon balloon shows up in our actions. Even if we don't say it, the body takes on that speech. So it's not just speech that comes out of the mouth. It's what's your body saying. And is it leaning? Is it expressing a preference? Is it shying away from someone in your speech? the ways that we can lean in action and not be of right action, sort of the obvious ones, killing, stealing, misusing sexuality, and intoxication.

[15:11]

But I'd like to deal with the first two of those, killing and stealing, and particularly stealing. And we lean into stealing in particular, not so much that anybody in here is going to do grand theft auto or anything like that, But how do we steal from each other and steal each other's creativity? Or how do we steal each other's solitude? To invade someone's personal space might be a leaning this way. To not engage with them might be a leaning that way. So what is the action that we demonstrate with our bodies? that we lean one way or the other in a preference or leaning away from that? Are we killing someone else's spirit by being in their face all the time, perhaps by the only time they ever hear from us is when we are critical of something that they've done?

[16:15]

Is there a balance to be found in our actions? In livelihood, talking about right livelihood. This one may sound kind of odd. How could we be leaning in our livelihood and not upright? But the Buddha's list actually is pretty specific. And I'm quite sure nobody in this room is doing any of these things, but it's interesting to hear what the Buddha considered as off-balance in livelihood. And here's the list. Dealing in weapons. Dealing in persons as property. In other words, slavery. dealing in alcohol, drugs, and poisons. So that's pretty severe, right? And I think we'd all consider that rather majorly leaning if we're engaging in any of those. But I wanted to tell my own story of a livelihood that, for all intents and purposes, on the outside looked great. For 20 years, I did corporate human resources.

[17:19]

and mostly enjoyed it because I felt like I was helping people and helping people have a good work life and helping managers to be good managers. And then a terrible thing happened in the last six months of my work life. I got promoted and it was dreadful. I became a vice president and all of a sudden it was executive politics and I wasn't helping anybody. And I realized what I was doing was I was really leaning away from doing that, and not wanting to engage with any of the executives, not wanting to come to work for the first time in 20 years, and really, really averting from that, severely averting to the point that I ended up on a heart monitor for an irregular heartbeat. So this stuff does show up. This leaning actually does show up in physical sensations that you might have. And your livelihood might be a contributor to that.

[18:22]

So it's interesting to examine, are we in a livelihood that helps us feel aligned and responds to our inmost request? And perhaps if we can't be, is there a way to find some equanimity and to perhaps not lean away from it, perhaps quite so much? And I'll talk about that in a bit, talk about how we might do that. The sixth of the eightfold path is right effort. And when we are leaning in right effort, we are doing things like fueling aggression, pouring gasoline on the fire. If we're making an effort in our actions and the effort in some way harms or causes suffering or, again, this retaliation idea or getting back or pushing through when we really ought not to be pushing through, I was talking with someone yesterday who had had a difficult conversation with someone, and she just wanted to keep coming back to the person, keep coming back until it was fixed.

[19:28]

Those were her words. As you might imagine what was happening, as she was going closer and closer and closer to the person, what was the person doing? They were going like this. So they were leaning away from her effort, even though it was well-intentioned. But what is this effort, this extra effort to maybe fix something that we could just leave for just a moment or to retaliate? So it's kind of the juice that we put behind the action. Is there some leaning there in the effort because we want something? Back to the idea of, are we trying to make ourselves comfortable? Are we trying to get that person out of our life? Are we expending extra effort to get what we want and make ourselves comfortable rather than coming back to our wide base and helping others have that wide base. The last two in the Eightfold Path are mindfulness and concentration. Now, these are kind of interesting because there is a very fine line sometimes between mindfulness and concentration that is helpful and dwelling and wallowing.

[20:39]

which is a type of leaning. And what's important if we find ourselves dwelling and wallowing and leaning like this is to examine the benefit that we're getting out of the dwelling and wallowing. We wouldn't stay there if it wasn't some benefit. And what might that benefit be? It might be, for example, to wallow in something might be the benefit that I'm right. And if I stay over here in my rightness, I don't have to look at another side of that story. So some care around mindfulness and concentration to make sure that they aren't actually protective stuckedness. I don't know what else to call it, but I think that works. What are we doing? What looks like mindfulness concentration, but it's really keeping us... off balance and keeping us from this broader view, which brings it back to right view, this 360-degree view of what's going on, rather than just staying in what we think is right.

[21:46]

So those are two, in particular, to be careful of to watch. Am I being mindful or am I wallowing and being stuck in a position that I think is right? So if we can recover our rightness. What does that look like? Ed Brown says that right is awareness without judgment. Oh, that feels kind of nice. To be aware and not have to layer over that a judgment. And Hockoen simply said right is ease. Now, I think I got the right translation here. He didn't say right is easy. He said, right is ease. And again, to imagine that ship on the ocean. So where can we cultivate this right as ease? Well, we need to study what makes us lean. And Suzuki Roshi said that every Dharma talk should have an encouragement to practice and to sit zazen.

[22:51]

So here's the one in this Dharma talk. All right. Nagarjuna again said, an understanding of the nature of suffering is a necessary prerequisite to relinquishing it. So to study our leanings in zazen, either on the black cushion or whatever other sort of quiet practice, I might suggest that you can't study suffering while you're multitasking because that kind of is suffering in itself in a way. And that's like leaning in six different directions, you know, maybe. So what do you do about that? But if we are in zazen, let's just imagine that we are in zazen, what might we do? So I have some suggestions. The first one is to realize that any type of leaning is actually non-acceptance of the situation as it is. In any type of leaning, we are not accepting the situation as it is. We either want to make it better or get away from it.

[23:52]

So it's not being present if we're leaning. So the first thing to do would be just to notice and acknowledge that we're leaning. Believe it or not, just to do that actually brings you back up a little bit. So I want to give a story. For a Mother's Day present, my daughter took me to musical Cats over here at the Orpheum Theater. And some of you probably are familiar with this musical. It's been around for a long time. And during the end of the first act, Griselda gets up to sing Memories, right? This woman had a fabulous voice. And she started in and launched into Memories. And a person about 10 rows in front of me and my daughter whips out her cell phone and begins to record. Yeah, exactly. That was my thought. And my expression was kind of like, what the hell are you doing? So despite all the signs up all around the theater that said, no recording devices, right?

[24:58]

So Griselda starts on this, and this woman pulls out her cell phone and holds it up, right, to record Griselda singing memory. Now, true, the woman had a fabulous voice. I wouldn't mind recording it myself. But the point is, you know, it's a no-no, and it's sort of blocked. And what I realized was that I was not hearing Griselda sing. I was totally consumed by this woman ten rows in front of me who had whipped out her cell phone. Now, the good news is that all the people around her sort of piled on at that point and took care of it, but I was still missing the song. And what I realized was that, you know, I was doing this, right? I was trying to get away from her. And I was stuck in this seat in row LL or something like that. And my daughter was right here. And I realized that I wasn't hearing Griselda sing. I wasn't paying attention to my daughter who had, you know, got me this ticket for Mother's Day and was spending Mother's Day with me. And I actually said to myself, because the music was really loud, so I could say this sort of under my breath. I said, I'm really knocked off balance by this woman and her cell phone. I actually said that.

[25:59]

I'm really knocked off balance by this woman in her cell phone. And what was fantastic was immediately the vision or the words or whatever you want to call it, I don't know from where, came and said, focus on our costume. And so I did. So I focused on our costume, and that brought me right back. Right back, and all of a sudden, I was right back in the song, tapping my toes, enjoying the fact that my daughter was right there, because we both know the soundtrack backward and forward. At least we didn't get kicked out of the theater for singing it. So right then, I was right back, but it so helped. I have no idea where this suggestion to focus on our costume came from, but just saying and acknowledging that I was leaning, I'm really thrown off by this woman and her cell phone, and actually saying that under my breath helped. So to just acknowledge that we're leaning, I think maybe not brings us back upright, but it loosens that muscle that's pulling us a little bit and takes some of the charge out of it so that we can do the next thing, which is to notice what the bodily reaction is when we're leaning.

[27:13]

So if we're leaning, where is it tight? Where does it grab? You can't sustain this. very long. It takes muscles to do this. So where is the bodily sensation? If our mind leans, the body suffers the consequences of that. So can we find the place in the body that is contributing to that leaning and perhaps put some breath there? Are we leaning toward or away? And what's involved in that? Can we feel the physical sensation of the leaning that's going on? And then to notice where our mind goes. This is the story that comes up. And I'm going to give an example of this in just a second, so I won't go into it too much here. But what is the story that comes up about the leaning? Is it a rehash of a conversation that we had? What is it that comes up? And the fourth step is very critical, and that is to stop for a moment and be willing to entertain the possibility, even the smallest possibility, that the story isn't true.

[28:21]

can we do that? Can we entertain the possibility that what we're leaning forward and away from and the story that we have that goes along with that isn't true or isn't complete or both? That will help us get a little widening of the base there if we begin to consider that other possibilities might be contributing to this story. And finally, number five, to do what I asked with the woman with the cell phone. And that is to ask for help. And help shows up. And to say, I am leaning. I'm thrown off by this cell phone. Help. And what the help will do is help us get a broader perspective. When I was distracted by the cell phone, I wasn't seeing Griselda's costume. And the suggestion to focus on her costume broadened my base. so that I was able to come back upright and appreciate the story. So let me take you through a real fast example of all of this. So you're sitting there in zazen and your knee is screaming.

[29:28]

This happens, right? And you notice that you're pulling away from the knee. So that's the noticing. And you're noticing the bodily reaction. You might be pulling away from the knee a little bit. You also might be tightening up around the knee. A doctor friend of mine told me the other day that some recent research says that in injuries, 80% of the pain in the injury is not the injury itself. It's all the tightening up we do around it. So your knee hurts, and you're tightening up around your knee hurts. And here's where your mind goes. The mind goes to, oh, no. What is that called in there? Is that the meniscus? Did I just tear it? Am I going to get up and not be able to walk? Am I going to have to have surgery? I'm not going to be able to sit for weeks. I'm not going to be able to go to work. I'm going to have surgery. I'm not going to be able to walk well again. Okay, we go here. Okay, this is called suffering. This is the huge story that we tend to make out of some small things sometimes. So can we entertain the possibility that our knee hurts and we're not headed to surgery because our knee hurts?

[30:31]

And then perhaps to ask for help. we might ask the knee where it would like to sit because it probably knows better than our head does because the head's a long way from the knee. And the knee probably knows where it might like to sit. And perhaps we could summon up enough courage, even though, yeah, we're supposed to sit still in zazen, that maybe we could move the knee a little bit or even put some breath in there if we're not quite ready to move it yet. So to examine and to be willing to investigate. This is generosity, I think. Being willing to investigate our leanings and being generous with ourselves to say, maybe there's another side to this story that will help me regain my balance and have a broader base to which to balance myself. It takes some ethics to do this, to let go of the desire to revenge,

[31:34]

or retaliate, especially against ourselves, if that knee isn't behaving, to lecture it about how it needs to behave because we're good Zen students and we're sitting here and it's for good. So behave, knee. Can we not do that? Can we have some ethics and can we have some patience with our body? And the place to do that and to do this investigation is when we can be calm and still. And to allow this investigation to give us the first of the Eightfold Path, the right view, which is a broad view. What do we need to do to get that broader view that will allow us in three dimensions to balance better like a ship on the ocean so we can have that wide base and that low center of gravity and that deep keel? Can we use our practice not to find uprightness and stay there and grasp it and hold it, but to use our practice to be able to recenter ourselves through a broader range of understanding, that's right view, and a broader range of options.

[32:56]

That's what we're really talking about here, is a broader range of options in our speech, in our intentions. in our views, in our actions, in our efforts, so that we can be like those well-made ships on the ocean, gently rocking back and forth, recovering from the big waves because we've understood the little waves that have gotten us knocked off balance. questions and comments and I will be out in the hall afterward. I'm just thinking about how your talk relates to something that a very common experience through the end of making mistakes. And sometimes I'm ashamed of all that. Yeah. Yeah. And you have to think of mistakes in the context of

[34:00]

of ways we might be leaning, but we don't have that. Anyway, I just think that that would be a helpful way of what we make mistakes, which we all make. Yeah, thank you, Toby. Two things come up for me there, and that is a mistake you might think maybe is a wave, knocks us a little bit, you know? But also, especially in communities, something that can help upright is to ask for help. Rumi says in one of his poems, open your hands if you want to be held. And that's a wonderful way to live, but also to recover from mistakes, because often we want to withdraw. And instead, that doesn't widen our base. That doesn't help with the deep keel. But this does, even though it's scary. Thank you, Toby. Thank you very much. It was a treat to be here with you this evening. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center.

[35:02]

Our Dharma talks are offered at no cost and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[35:22]

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