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 by people like you. Good evening. First, I want to apologize for outdressing everybody here. Um... I knew that it was just a ruckus, but I was debating when I got dressed what to wear underneath the ruckus, and here I am a little overdressed, so don't worry about it. I pushed, yes. Thinking about tonight's talk, Mia had left me a message saying what the overall topic was for this summer and I'm kind of a little bit on the fringe of that topic I think with my talk tonight.

[01:34]

I was thinking of community or Sangha or how we are with all beings you know every every day we say I vow to save all beings I vow or I take refuge in Buddha I take refuge in Dharma and I take refuge in Sangha which is the community of all beings and when we do the Bodhisattva ceremony where we kind of take the vows again. After we say, I take refuge in Sangha, we continue before all beings, bringing harmony to everyone free from hindrance. How do we do that? And so I've been thinking a lot that

[02:45]

usually we tell ourselves stories I mean you probably all heard that over and over that what goes on in our heads are a barrage of stories one after the other and often when we communicate we just tell each other stories and we tend to tell the stories to the people that we think agree with us and if other people have other stories we often try to convince them of our story or get them to agree with our story and when we have conflicts then that gets even more heightened now which story is the true story and can we find a lot of support for our stories to have you know a lot of friends that see it the same way and those are the friends and the others are kind of questionable what they are from not friends all the way to really enemies that are out to get us so how to get below the stories or how to be with the stories that are inevitably coming up because we always tend to

[04:12]

kind of explain to ourselves what's happening inside and outside and it has to make sense and if it doesn't make sense we're kind of disturbed so Pema Chodron says some place Learning how to be kind to ourselves, learning how to respect ourselves is important. The reason it is important is that fundamentally when we look into our own hearts and begin to discover what is confused and what is brilliant, what is bitter and what is sweet, it isn't just ourselves that we are discovering. we're discovering the universe. And in the Ehe Koso Hotsugan Mon it says some place in this life save the body which is the fruit of many lives.

[05:27]

In some ways it's really by knowing who we are, ourselves, what's going on and being kind and open-hearted with that, which isn't so easy, is how we learn to be kind to all beings. How we learn to be in harmony with all beings is by learning how to be in harmony with ourselves. And when we say, I vow to save all beings, it's like We can only do that when we wake up. David White has a wonderful poem which I think has something to do with that. It's called The Faces at Braga.

[06:38]

which is a place somewhere in China or Mongolia or in that region over there. In monastery darkness, by the light of one flashlight, the old shrine room waits in silence. While above the door we see the terrible figure, fierce eyes demanding, will you step through? And the old monk leads us bent back, nudging blackness, prayer beads in the hand that beckons. We light the butter lamps and bow, eyes blinking in the pungent smoke, look up without a word. See faces in meditation, a hundred faces carved above, eye lines wrinkled in the hand-held light. such love in solid wood.

[07:40]

Taken from the hillsides and carved in silence, they have the vibrant stillness of those who made them. Engulfed by the past they have been neglected, but through smoke and darkness they are like the flowers that we have seen growing through the dust of eroded slopes their slowly opening faces turned toward the mountain. Carved in devotion, their eyes have softened through age and their mouths curve through the light of the carver's hand. If only our own faces would allow the invisible carver's hand to bring the deep grain of love to the surface. If only our own faces would allow the invisible carver's hand to bring the deep grain of love to the surface.

[08:44]

If only, if only, if only we knew, as the carver knew, how the flaws in the wood led his searching chisel to the very core. We would smile too. and not need faces immobilized by fear and the weight of things undone. When we fight with our failing, we ignore the entrance to the shrine itself and wrestle with the guardian, fierce figure on the side of good. And as we fight, our eyes are hooded with grief and our mouths are dry with pain. If only, if only we could give ourselves to the blows of the carver's hands, the lines in our faces would be the trace lines of rivers feeding the sea, where voices meet praising the features of the mountain and the cloud and the sky.

[09:51]

Our faces would fall away until we, growing younger toward death every day, would gather all of our flaws in celebration, to merge with them perfectly, impossibly wedded to our essence, full of silence from the carver's hands. If only we knew as the carver knew how the flaws in the wood led his searching chisel to the very core so we have a puppy at our house and it's just a puppy and you know we always hear about dependent core rising so here comes the puppy and to my utter dismay up comes

[10:57]

an old, old Christina that I knew from when I was a child, when I was in my family with my siblings at school, and that is being concerned that, is she gonna love Marsha more? Are they going to have fun and I'm just not that funny? And not that much, you know, great to play with? Am I going to be left out? And the first thing that comes up is that it's a feeling, actually. It's not even those questions. It's a feeling that I... I don't want to feel. I don't want to have it.

[12:00]

And the amazing thing is, so it's the feeling. Then I start paying attention. And I start having stories. When I'm not here, Marcia's going to want her to be her dog. So she'll bribe her and she'll do all sorts of things with her so that she'll be her dog. So then I start watching. And I say, you know, see, she's following you. And the conditioning is such that actually it affects my perceptions. out everything you know and this training is great but it's also you know you just can't help seeing it which of course you don't like either because it's very humbling so you're kind of between a hard place and a rock you don't want to feel the way you're feeling or I don't want to feel the way I'm feeling and then on top of it I don't want to see what I'm doing

[13:20]

doing when I'm feeling this way. What I'm doing is I pick out what supports my perception. She's following Marcia. Marcia is, you know, giving her treats. Marcia is taking her away from me, calling her and they're having fun and I'm left out. And she doesn't like me so much. Then Marcia points out, but now she's following you. And I say, well, it's only because. So I dismiss what contradicts my story. On some level, the story is a distraction. Because when I sit down and I'm still and just look what's inside, I actually feel the different feelings.

[14:34]

I feel fear of exclusion. I feel fear of not being loved. I can feel that when I have those fears, I actually, there's a hostility growing in me that I start to dislike these beings that bring up those feelings. I just suddenly don't want to really have this dog, let it be her dog, you know. But then I'm not going to clean up after her. That's another fear. She has fun and I'm doing all the work. great story I start hating myself for feeling that way and I become very distrustful of the intentions of other people if I can allow myself to feel all that I have

[15:48]

less impulse or less energy in trying to manage it, to kind of hide it from myself and from others, change it. So living with a partner who is also practicing Buddhism and is a psychotherapist and we have give each other permission. So she points out when I'm trapped in those stories, when I'm ignoring contradictions to my story. And if I don't go to how it feels behind the story, then we start having an argument who's right. We cannot choose what comes up.

[16:59]

So I had no clue that this puppy would bring something up that my siblings used to bring up or other school children used to bring up. Never dogs would bring up. I never had a dog. You know, I always wanted one. I took care of all the dogs in the neighborhood. I never had a dog. I would never have dreamt that a dog, a puppy dog, would bring those feelings back up. So boom, there you are, you know. So a little ingredient in your environment shifts and you get put together in a different way. And that we can't choose. That's just what happens. What we can do is be kind to ourselves. by allowing everything that comes up to be there but like in its in some ways you could say in its original way and not in a mitigated thought about talked about way just as feelings and fears then we have we learn about

[18:19]

the universe and we become more able to not position ourselves to let it be fluid instead of making a stronger and stronger and stronger position. So and of you know the older I get the more I there is a part in me that still keeps track and keeps saying well now after all these years of practice you should be over you know these things shouldn't happen to you anymore or you should be able to let just drop them like this you know and not not not get caught by them or not have them and What I find so interesting is that David White says, thank you, if only we knew as the carver knew how the flaws in the wood let his searching chisel to the very core.

[19:35]

The ideas we have of how we should be or how we want to be and the way we actually experience often is not the same. And so we think, of course, this is a flaw. But actually in the Genjo Koan it says, where is it, those who have great realization of delusion are Buddhas. And those who are greatly deluded about realization are sentient beings. So it's about learning about those mechanisms. which allows us to kind of relax and be completely who we are. Hafiz has a poem, a very short poem, which is at the end of the book, the last poem in the book, The Gift, the collection.

[21:04]

And the title is, And Love Says, And Love Says, I will, I will take care of you to everything that is near. I will take care of you to everything that is near. So love doesn't choose to what it takes care of. It takes care of everything that is near. So whether we feel crummy or happy or sad or angry or irritated or confused or you name it love takes care of it doesn't say well you don't deserve it and you deserve it you better get better before I take care of you you better change and to everything that's near to everything that arises

[22:21]

That's in front of us. If only we knew as the carver knew how the flaws in the wood led his searching chisel to the very core, we would smile too and not need faces immobilized by fear and the weight of things undone. So that's for me another way of expressing how when an old conditioning gets triggered, like what happened to me with the puppy, there is an immobilization in there. There's something that is kind of, you know, it's quite shocking to realize this has just been waiting in the wings, you know. It hadn't changed, it hadn't been aired, it just hadn't been triggered. So now I think it starts to change because I actually, the flaws are right in my face.

[23:29]

You know, so how, and that there is a weight coming with it because I can see, first of all, I can see how I must have puzzled my siblings, which they kept. which they kept telling me but I you know in my position I had always an explanation for it that didn't I couldn't hear them but now I can suddenly see how they did not get had no clue why I was suddenly you know kind of in a bad mood or or angry with them or ignored them or hated them you know just boom because I felt excluded But I didn't, of course, say I feel excluded. And so I didn't own how I felt. I made it out there, they're doing this to me.

[24:31]

And so how they were puzzled and didn't know what to do with me, and how this has kind of... immobilize me throughout a long time in my life because at school I couldn't be interested in what was taught at school I was all the time looking was I excluded or not excluded or did they have fun and I wasn't you know I wasn't being fun to be with and all those things so that took up enormous amount of time and energy and focus so but then do I go back there and let myself be weighted down or can I just kind of I sometimes have the image of a bench where I as a practice I whatever I feel I just give it the space on the bench and then another feeling comes up and I just let it sit on the bench and they don't make sense and you know they are often very contradictory and

[25:41]

the tendency would be to have one win over the other or they can't be both in the same space and I just they can all be on that bench and have the same amount of space and that's just where they are and I'm not doing anything with them they can just hang out there but for me that is like allowing them to have a space and not get involved in talking myself out of it or into it or changing it or anything when we fight with our failing we ignore the entrance to the shrine itself Pema Chodron I think it's in the wisdom of no escape says that to be fully awake fully human

[26:41]

to be fully alive fully human and fully awake everything for that is present in any given moment in the particular circumstances of your very own life there is never anything missing for that to be possible so that's when we fight with our failing We ignore the entrance to the shrine. You know, we say delusions are numberless. I vow to end them. And then we say Dharma gates are boundless. I vow to enter them. So every moment, whether we think it's a good moment or a bad moment or, you know, enough of a moment is an end. gate to the shrine.

[27:48]

I also think it's in some ways the same as taking Zaza and mind into everything. So if we had conversations that would be more just revealing like opening a landscape, a window to the inner landscape for the other person and listening with a mind that lets it be the landscape of the other person and not getting involved in there and meddling and fixing it or having opinions about it but just it takes a lot of trust because mainly what I find we do is that we we want to protect what's inside and we we wrap it in a story or we wrap it in yeah mostly in a story instead of just saying this is this is what's going on inside which also may be a story but it's a different story than if I tried to tell you explain to you inside usually

[30:59]

first there's no explanation there's just a rising it's just this is how I feel this is this is what goes through my mind but it isn't packaged and so if we could first listen to ourselves that way and just not or kind of settle down when we see that we're fighting with how we feel we would have less tendency to kind of arrange everybody out there to not make us feel that way. And if we would say what's inside and if we could listen to what the other person is sharing and appreciate it, listen or be like a witness in compassion and with appreciation, there is a harmonizing happening that has nothing to do with having the same view or being in the same space so one can be very upset or very sad or very distraught or very confused and the other can be totally happy and totally fine in their life if we have heard that, have been

[32:31]

have received that sharing there is something in sync and both can be where they are but they're in sync because they know they've heard they've been given the gift of having had that window opened having had and being honored by being told what's going on inside here. And I would very much encourage you to try that. You know, you would have to have an agreement that it's not a conversation, nothing needs to be fixed, I'm just sharing what's going on inside right now, and the other says, I'm just listening. with no task but to just receive.

[33:38]

Because in the meal chant we say the unity of giver, receiver and gift. And that's one way how that really is true because the person that shares what's happening is giving a gift. The person that really listens is not doing anything gives a gift of listening and is also the receiver of the gift by listening and is so is the gift it gives the gift and receives the gift both of them do that because if I share what's going on inside me I I give a gift, I give a gift to myself, I am the gift, and I receive the gift of someone listening to me.

[34:42]

I receive that. And it's very powerful. And it takes a lot of, it takes practice, because very quickly, particularly if you know people, and if you have, you know, the more we know them, the more we usually have opinions about them, we tend to listen in the way that our opinions get in the way, but to just practice leaving it there and not getting personally involved in having a story about it. You know, one time I was at Tassajara and we were, you know, Tassajara you eat during the practice period, you eat formal meals in the meditation hall every day, three times a day.

[35:46]

And so when people are on serving crews, and I had a story about one of the people there that was, that that person was not honoring boundaries, no sense of boundaries. and the teaching at that time it was Reb giving doing leading the practice period was he spoke a lot about contradictory self identical or self identity and so but there was this person totally different from me she would always find a way of being the first server in which in my opinion, you couldn't do without kind of managing outside and controlling outside who's doing what so that you can always be the first person, you can always go and serve the abbot. So I was sitting there watching this happen, and nine out of ten times it was true, so I was confirmed.

[36:50]

So every meal when this group was serving, I was totally busy watching that person do her thing. and being completely convinced that that was happening. And my story went on, and I said, and if I would talk to her, she would tell me a completely different story, and of course that was just, she would deny it, she would just not be truthful, because what I saw was the truth. So this went on for a couple of weeks. Suddenly I sit there and think, oh, I am really crossing boundaries here. You know, the thing that I was sure only she's doing over there and I'm good at boundaries. Suddenly I thought, that's crossing boundaries. I am just making a story, pasting it on her, if she would say that's not what's happening I would just say yes that's what's happening and that's just totally crossing boundaries and not respecting her boundaries and and that was such a wake-up call about also that identical thing that what I thought was so different than I was was actually totally me and I have no idea what what happened with her but I

[38:16]

So how to step out of that is how to bring harmony to everyone, how to live in community. I think I have no idea what the time is. In monastery darkness, by the light of one flashlight, the old shrine room waits in silence. While above the door we see the terrible figure, fierce eyes demanding, Will you step through? And the old monk leads us, bent back, nudging blackness, prayer beads in the hand that beckons. We light the butter lamps and bow, eyes blinking in the pungent smoke,

[39:19]

look up without a word. See faces in meditation. A hundred faces carved above, eye lines wrinkled in the hand-held light. Such love in solid wood. Taken from the hillsides and carved in silence, they have the vibrant stillness of those who made them. Engulfed by the past, they have been neglected, but through smoke and darkness they are like the flowers that we have seen growing through the dust of eroded slopes, their slowly opening faces turned toward the mountain. Carved in devotion, their eyes have softened through age and their mouths curve through the light of the carver's hand. If only our own faces would allow the invisible carver's hand to bring the deep grain of love to the surface.

[40:26]

If only we knew, as the carver knew, how the flaws in the wood led his searching chisel to the very core, we would smile too and not need faces immobilized by fear and the weight of things undone. When we fight with our failing, we ignore the entrance to the shrine itself and wrestle with the guardian, fierce figure on the side of good. And as we fight, our eyes are hooded with grief and our mouths are dry with pain. If only we could give ourselves to the blows of the carver's hands The lines in our faces would be the trace lines of rivers feeding the sea, where voices meet praising the features of the mountain and the cloud and the sky. Our faces would fall away until we, growing younger toward death every day, would gather all our flaws in celebration to merge with them perfectly, impossibly,

[41:37]

Wedded to our essence, full of silence from the carver's hands. So I don't know if anybody wants to say something or comment or ask a question. you all a good night. 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 the practice of giving by offering your financial help. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click giving. May all beings be happy.

[42:40]

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