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. It's always strange to hear your voice going, like that. Good morning to everybody, big and small, who's here today. What fun to be here for the children's program. And I want to start. Here's the thing. I want to start with the bell, the bell game, OK? So what we're going to do is everybody's going to close their eyes. And I'm going to strike the bell. And I want you to listen to see if you can hear when the sound stops.

[01:08]

So listen right to the end while it fades away. And when it stops, put up your hand. Has it stopped? Has it completely stopped? Is there no bell anymore? Or is there still a tiny little bell continuing on out there? A little tiny sound.

[02:10]

Anyway, we'll do the bell again and see if we can listen and see how long it goes on for. So I'm going to read a story. We have a book that Chelsea, the wonderful Chelsea, gave me. And it's a story called The Sun in My Belly. So the sun up there in my belly down here. And the story is about, it's really about how everything is connected. Me and the sun. We're both together. So the story, the two people in the story are Jenny and Molly. Is there anyone called Jenny? Is there anyone called Molly? We can all be Jenny and Molly.

[03:13]

Mostly we can be Jenny because she's the star. It was an early morning. The blue sky was hiding behind dark gray clouds. It was just like today. Jenny and her friend Molly were playing with a red ball in a meadow. My turn, Jenny said, throwing the ball as far as she could. Molly ran after it. My turn, she said, throwing the ball as far as she could. So they were taking turns with the bow. It's with the ball. It's my turn, said Jenny, reaching for the ball. No, I want another turn, said Molly, taking the ball and running away. Then I don't want to play with you anymore, said Jenny. Fine, said Molly. I don't want to play with you either. And she took the ball and ran away. So Jenny felt all alone in the meadow.

[04:22]

Her friend had run away. She sat down beside a big tree and she started to cry. Big tears ran down her face. She cried until she didn't have any tears left. And she was sitting quietly after her tears and she felt something warm. And she looked up and there was the sun. The sun was coming up over the clouds, over the mountain, lighting up the sky with gold and orange. And the warmth of the sun reached all the way down through her body into her belly. Oh, she said, the sun is so beautiful. The sunshine is right inside me. But then the dark gray clouds came back. And it started to rain. And the rain got stronger, and the big raindrops fell, fell on her face where the tears were.

[05:30]

And she said, the raindrops are mixing with my tears. They're about the same. She looked around, and she saw water everywhere. Water in the rain, water, the grass, the trees, the roof, the pond. She drank water. She took a warm bath every night. And she said, the water and the sun are both part of me. I can't wait to tell Molly. And then she remembered that she and Molly weren't talking. She felt very sad. She turned around and headed back over the meadow. And then she saw Molly coming with an umbrella to come and help her. So her friend had come with the umbrella. They stood under the umbrella together, and they watched the rain. Jenny said, I'm sorry, I said I didn't want to play with you. And Molly said, I'm sorry, I didn't wait my turn. Let's be friends. Then Jenny said, I think you must be inside me, just like the sunshine and the raindrops.

[06:37]

And you must be in me, along with the sun and the rain, said Molly. I like having all these things inside me. So they went home. They headed back to the house to have breakfast. And they stopped under an apple tree. And Molly lifted Jenny up. And Jenny plucked two little apples. And they had one each. So the apples were in their bellies as well, along with the rain and the sun and each other. Jenny was quiet for a moment. like we were when we were listening to the bell. Jenny was quiet, and she thought about what had happened. She knew she had learned something special. Even if there was nobody with her, she'd never be completely alone. All the different things that were on the earth, the people, the trees, even the air, they were all inside of her.

[07:45]

So it ends. This is a nice story. Whenever Jenny is sad, she remembers the sun and the rain. Whenever she's lonely, she remembers the sun and the rain. And she knows that she is connected to everything else in the world. So that's Jenny and Molly and the sun and the rain and the apples. and everybody else, everybody connected to everybody else. I think you guys can go and play in the garden and hear some more about connections. I think Chelsea has a plan for children to hear about connections today. So... Thank you all very much for being so quiet. You were great. Maybe they're really disappointed or maybe they forgot.

[08:53]

Good morning. Thank you for coming. Thank you for staying. Do you want to close the door? Thanks. My name is Jean Gallagher, and this is the first time I've been up here. And I want to thank Anna for inviting me to give the talk today. I don't have kids, so this is a tough audience. But I know walking around with my sister's children, holding them by the hand, that you cannot schedule anything. You're used to your daily life, and you say, I'll be there at 12. And then you have a small child putting on its socks one by one and complaining about the color of its sandals. That's the time. You're on child time. So it's really fun to be here in this very scheduled environment and to also have the demands of child time.

[10:59]

They're the boss. They're running things today. And what sweet kids, you know, they seem to be doing pretty well. I think the bell helped. I learned the bell trick when I was volunteering in the women's prison. The group of prisoners were pretty unsettled and it was hard for them to settle down, really hard. They were in a very frightening environment and everybody was tense and edgy. And striking the bell and asking them to listen to the bell was a really helpful technique for them to come into their bodies and be present. And it was very sweet to see this simple thing bring people, bring people down from that cerebral activity that was, they were figuring out all the angles and trying to protect themselves in various ways.

[12:12]

They had a lot on their minds, and I think that's something that we all work with is constant mental activity. I know for me, so I know for me, when I'm listening to a talk, quite often, not inevitably, but quite often, there's a bit in the middle where I find myself thinking about lunch. or the traffic on the bridge, or politics, or whatever. And I suspect that happens. I suspect that might happen here today as well. So I'm going to propose that every so often I'll hit the bell, and I will do it more than once, but I'll hit the bell and we'll just sit quietly and listen. to the bell and return to right here in this place, in this room, this intention that we had to come and listen to a talk, to actually come and listen to what's been said.

[13:27]

So yeah, the kids are gone off with Chelsea True, the amazing leader of the children's program, and she told me that today she's going to teach the three sisters, which I had never heard from. I'm from Ireland. We don't have, we have potatoes. Does anybody here not know what the three sisters are? Oh, good. Good. So the three sisters is... a Native American legend that explains and informs about the three crops that grow together really successfully, which is corn, beans, and squash. And they create a little micro ecology where they... all three grow successfully. And they also get this, I didn't even know this, that they provide a perfect balance of nutrition from plant-based foods.

[14:38]

So Native American, many, not all, but many Native American tribes were living on corn beans and squash and eating the perfect diet. You can see, anyway, no, I won't go there. So I'm going to tell the three sisters story. Or you could go out in the garden and hear Chelsea tell it. You stay in here, right? They're going to plant the three sisters today. They've got a little pack. They're going to plant it in the children's garden. Once upon a time, there were three sisters. The first sister was very tall and strong, and her name was Corn Girl, and she had a pale green dress and long yellow hair. She liked to stand straight and tall, but the hot sun burned her feet and hurt her. And the longer she stood in her field, the hungrier she got.

[15:40]

And every day, more weeds were growing up around her and choking her. The second sister was very thin and quick and speedy, and her name was Bean Girl, but she wasn't very strong. She couldn't even stand up on her own. She was good at making food, so she made the mulch that would have supported Corn Girl, but she had to just lie there, stretched out on the ground, and she would get dirty and wet, which wasn't good for her. And the third... sister was squash girl and she was short and round and she had a yellow dress and she was hungry too. For a long time the sisters didn't get along. They wanted to be independent and free and not have anything to do with the other two. They were chasing their ball on the meadow. Corn girl stood there with their sunburned feet and got hungry and hungrier. Bean girl lay on the ground and got dirtier and wetter and little sister squash girl was hungry too.

[16:41]

And you kind of know where this is heading, I feel. Bean girl talked to squash girl and said, why don't I feed you some good food and you can hold me up so I don't have to lie on the ground and get all dirty. Corn girl thought that was a great idea. And then little squash girl said, how about if I lie on your feet, she said to corn girl, and shade them so you won't get sunburned. And corn girl thought that was a great idea too. So the three sisters learned to work together so everyone would be healthier and happier. Corn girl helped bean girl stand up. Bean girl fed corn girl and squash girl. And squash girl shaded corn girl's feet and kept the weeds from growing up around them all. So enmeshed, inter-kicked. connectedness in a simple, old story.

[17:44]

It's about this amazing country and what grows here and how people taught each other what to grow. Do you want a bell? Is everyone still? Everyone, look, you're all wide awake. Good. Yeah, everybody benefited. It's a great teaching for kids, too. You know, that first idea of who we are, of who we are as a self, being the separation from the mother and going, oh, this is me. This is, I have an eye, and I'm gonna get stuff for me. And that's a really important part of the child's intellectual growth We seem to get stuck there a lot. We get stuck in that idea of me.

[18:47]

Me and what I need. There was something important I wanted to... This is not the standard idea of how things work. Being kind, being connected, supporting each other, selflessly and generously giving to each other. This is not the great American way. This is not the great Irish way either, I have to confess. We're not a whole lot different over there. In fact, I don't think it's the great anybody way. We have the idea that we need to get stuff first. There's this great me first idea that there's not enough to go around. That if we don't get what's ours, will die or be lonely or ejected from the place where people have fast cars and good jobs.

[19:57]

There's a book in the library. There was a book on the New York Times bestseller list for a long time called Get What's Yours. And I think it was about... social security or something like that. It was probably really helpful information in it. But the fact that a book called Get What's Yours could be such a big seller was kind of sad. How about give what's ours? Share what's going on with everybody. Get what's yours. It's really primal. If I give you something, I'll have less. And if everybody's behaving that way... There's a thing called game theory, which many of you know about, and the idea of the zero-sum game, where there's only so much, and if I have this much, then you don't have it. And it all adds up to 100%, but if I have...

[21:04]

60%, then you only have 40%. And if I have 90%, then you only have 10%. And that mindset underlies the whole view of the economy, what's going on. So what's really important for me is to try not to live in that zero sum game mindset, to live in an everybody wins world. that everybody has needs, and everybody has gifts to give, and that we can negotiate helpfully together. You ask me for what you need, and if I can, if I can give you it, I will. When I first came to Green Gulls, it was a January intensive 2002, and was from a culture where kindness and friendliness and generosity are not the norm.

[22:13]

And maybe part of what I was seeing here was just this sweet West Coast effort to live in a mindful, open way. But I really think that what I met here, the kindness and openness that I met here was rooted in rooted in Zen practice, rooted in the openness and clarity of Zen practice. It was also, it didn't seem to me, and I really believe this to be true, it didn't seem to me to be people pretending to be kind or people pretending to be nice. It wasn't hypocritical. People genuinely felt to me like they were They were generous with their things. They were generous with their attention. They were generous with their time. People paid attention.

[23:15]

People looked me in the eye. People met me and said, hey, who are you and how are you? And it was like, wow, wow. It's pretty cool. I remember standing, do we call this the Engawa here? standing on the Ingawa with somebody who'd lived here for quite a while. And you know, people who live here don't have much stuff. And someone had sent her a little bag of candy, and she was standing there eating it. And she had two left. And she said, would you like one? And I said, well, you only have two. And she said, well, yeah, one for you and one for me. And I'd been here about four days at this stage. so touched by this offer of the other candy. I was so moved by it. I thought, wow. I walked down to Muir Beach and sat on the beach thinking, I want to come and live here.

[24:18]

And I did, many years later. But it was tiny little acts, huge acts of kindness around candy. why at help entering and leaving the Zen, support, doing little, little things that invited me and that welcomed me into Zen practice, that was a sign, a really clear message to me of the power of this teaching. Yeah, I remember, I discovered how goodwill worked So, you know, I had stuff. I came. I had clothes and high heels. Kind of bizarre. I came to Green Gulch wearing high heels. It's okay. People laugh.

[25:18]

And I had to go down to Goodwill and find something that I could walk around in and that didn't look completely ridiculous. And I discovered Goodwill. We have this Goodwill. downstairs and donations and also things that people have stopped wearing. And I discovered that attitude of, I got a sweatshirt, I think, with some interesting stuff going on and I was painting and someone said, oh, I used to wear that sweatshirt. And that relationship was the thing. Because I had brought some sweaters and then I left them in goodwill. And then when people wore them, I think, oh, that's my sweater. But I saw here this, oh, I used to wear that. I wore that for a while. I had a relationship with that sweatshirt for a while. And then it went away. It wasn't mine. It wasn't my thing. I didn't own it. So that was, yeah, it's a,

[26:26]

a sophisticated relationship with property, which is, again, not the zeitgeist. It's not what we're being taught by all the messages we get from the world. And it's a really strong teaching that we're getting from this way of practice. The loving Kindness meditation line, or lines, the two lines that go, let one not be submerged by the things of the world. Let one not take upon oneself the burden of riches. It was such a radical idea that riches were a burden, that one could be submerged by the things, that the way of practice, the way of uprightness and calmness, in the world was to not be yearning, craving, greedily grabbing all these things.

[27:31]

Maybe everybody wins. Maybe the burden of riches gets in the way of happiness. There's another story I'm going to read. You have to forgive me. I know reading is kind of tedious, but this is such a great story. Not this part of it, but it made me cry in the end. I cried about this story. It's a book called Secondhand Time, and it's just out. And it's written by somebody you've probably never heard of, but she won the Nobel Prize for Literature last year, Svetlana Alexievich. And she's this amazing woman writer. You've heard of her. She's this amazing woman who, actually, she's a reporter, and she reports on suffering. And she writes like an angel. She's a beautiful writer. But the Nobel group kind of stretched the rules a little and gave her the prize for literature rather than reporting, which was great. And she's telling the stories of people living in post-Soviet Russia, who obviously grew up in Soviet Russia, and then finally being allowed to speak about what happened before perestroika

[28:49]

before the dismantling of the communist system. So Olga Karimova, she married a man who had spent 12 years in the Gulag, in Stalin's camps. He was 16. His parents had both been executed by the state. He was 16. He went to the camps and he spent 12 years there. So he was nearly 30 when he came out. And she describes in great detail how how it wounded him and how scarred he was and how beautiful he was, how much she loved him. She said, Russian women do this. They take care of people. They take care of their men who have suffered so much. At rare moments, he'd tell stories, but he'd tell them so vividly, so avidly, I could just feel the happiness he'd taken out of there. Like when he got his hands on some tire scraps and pieces of rubber. and tied them to his felt boots.

[29:51]

When the men were transferred, he was so happy to have them. Another time, they got half a sack of potatoes. And somewhere on the outside, while they were working, someone gave him a big hunk of meat. And that night, in the boiler room, they made soup. And it was so good and so wonderful. And here's the twist. When the authorities finally released him, they gave him a reparation payment. They gave him a huge amount of money for his father and for the house and the furniture and all of that. It ended up being a lot of money. He bought a new suit, a new shirt, new shoes, and a camera. And he went to the best restaurant in Moscow where he ordered the most expensive things on the menu and then cognac and coffee and their signature dessert. And after the meal, when he'd eaten his fill, He asked someone to take a picture of him at the happiest moment of his life. When I got back to my apartment, he said, I caught myself thinking that I didn't feel any happiness.

[30:57]

In that suit with that camera, why wasn't there any happiness? I've lost the rest of it. At that moment, the tires and that soup in the boiler room. came back to me. So I'm gonna hit the bell. Think about the tires and the soup and the signature dessert. So without downplaying the immense suffering of the people living in the camps, I think that something about monastic life and the renunciant's life is kind of similar.

[32:04]

The person offering me the candy on the ngawa was the soup or the tars in a lifestyle that was mostly brown rice and kale to have eaten a tiny treat was so special. I was so aware of it. Everything was precious for this man. Everything was rare. the place of emptiness, in the dropping down in Zazen, particularly in Zazen, but in the dropping down that can happen in an environment where I feel safe-ish, where I feel like I know what to expect.

[33:07]

There's opening up of the heart. My heart opens up There's an opening up for all of us, I think, to the wider space of creativity and love and connection. A guy called Narciso Cuelliato, stained glass artist who was the first director of city center of the temple in the city and did the three amazing pieces of stained glass that we have there of Suzuki Roshi's hands, Katagiri Roshi's hands and a beautiful, I think I will look at it for a holding the wish bestowing jewel. If you're ever in the city, go in and have a look. They're just there. Narciso came and gave a talk and talked about creativity

[34:12]

and talked about settling. When he was working, he said Zazen gave him the space to be creative. And what was really interesting for me was that he warned that if you go to the space with an agenda, it doesn't happen. You can't settle into the space going, now I'm going to be creative. Now I'm going to get. the material for my story, my artwork. I can't go there wanting to get. I can't go there with the craving mind, the me first mind. That has to take a rest for a while. I put that to one side and just sit, just sit quietly in the space. That first time I was at Green Gulch a decade and a half ago, it seemed to me to be a container for that kind of space, for a space of love and connection and openness to what comes.

[35:33]

It seemed a safe place where I could learn to be a little less scared. wanted to be here. And I ended up living in Tassajara for a long time and then living in the city and never lived here, really. It'll happen in the future. And I have a few minutes left, and I want to read a poem by Naomi Shebnai that seems to... Anyway, I won't tell you what it says. I'll read you the poem and you can hear what it says. One last bell. So the poem is called Kindness.

[36:38]

Before you know what kindness really is, you must lose things. Feel the future dissolve in a moment like salt in a weakened broth. What you held in your hand, what you counted and carefully saved, all this must go so you know how desolate the landscape can be between the regions of kindness. How you ride and ride, thinking the bus will never stop, The passengers eating maize and chicken will stare out the window forever. Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness, you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho lies dead by the side of the road. You must see how this could be you, how he too was someone who journeyed through the night with plans and the simple breath that kept him alive.

[37:41]

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing. You must wake up with sorrow. You must speak to it till your voice catches the thread of all sorrows and you see the size of the cloth. Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore. Only kindness that ties your shoes and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread. Only kindness that raises its head from the crowd of the world to say, it is I you have been looking for. And then goes with you everywhere like a shadow or a friend. Please help us to continue to realize and actualize the practice of giving by offering your financial support.

[38:54]

For more information, visit sfcc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[39:03]

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