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. See, my name is Sarah, for those I haven't met. I use the pronoun she and her because I love being female, I realized. recently. Not because I love the gender binary. Yes. I use it. Oh, I see. I'm amplified. I thought it was just recording. All right. Yes. So she and her pronouns not loving the binary committed to liberating gender from a binary. Really invested. for the sake of all beings and wholeness.

[01:02]

I want to express my gratitude to everybody. Thank you for being here. Thank you for all the efforts. In a particular sense, thank you for the efforts that allowed this retreat to happen this week. unlikely as that might have been in moments and I know there's a tremendous amount of gratitude in the group and awareness like that we were lucky and a deep appreciation and thank you for the invitation to talk I felt your support And to all, to my teachers of many kinds, to Sangha.

[02:06]

And I have the intention to call in our ancestors, all of them, the many kinds of them. gratitude to them for bringing us together in Sangha. This is a Sangha. It just doesn't matter how fleeting people come together to take up the Dharma. That's Sangha. And I'm grateful for it and I hope our time together tonight will be of benefit and we'll honor then all. I'll name a couple. How long is this supposed to be? Okay. I'm a little like loosely tendered to linear time right now.

[03:11]

Not simply because of Tasselhora, but because of a lot of bad sleep. I have a lot. But I have to like, okay. I'll name a couple of the identities that I carry so you don't have to guess, besides identifying as female. I am white, American, Northeastern American, raised. I am a partner. My beloved person is Charlie Pokorny. We met here. Our oldest baby was born here, Kaya. And I'm a parent to Kaya and Sati and Milka. And each of my children shape me deeply and teach me.

[04:19]

I know people say that. because you can't get away from something. But you know, your Darwin teacher is not going to throw up in the middle of the night and force you to love them. I couldn't even name all the identities, but what I do want to say is I see that I am located in particular identities, and I see that that limits my perspective. And I can have really good intentions about being liberal and white and good and helpful and I can still cause harm, especially because of my whiteness. That's the one, you know, that I see as the condition around that just causes a lot of obscuration of other people's experience.

[05:24]

And I'm learning. And I'm devoted to learning. And I will be for the rest of my life. Since it took me almost time to become white. In the first place. And then I'll just tell you a little about my relationship to Tassajara, which is that I came here in January of 1998. The day I came here, there were ladybugs swarming. It was January. It was like they'd been doing the past couple days. It was so great. The dining room was being remodeled, so there was no dining room. So even in the winter, we used the student eating area, and there was plastic on the windows and heaters. And I guess the ladybugs were like, why leave? So it was wild to come here in the winter and have ladybugs swarming around. And I lived here for a number of years over the next nine years, and a little bit at Greenbulch.

[06:28]

I'm grateful to both places, and I never felt at home at Greenbulch, I can actually say. And I don't mean that. I just want, I've just been pondering that lately. It's a very difficult place for me to live. Whereas Tassara is like, I don't even, it's not even a place to me. It's like a realm of my heart, my soul. And I was in quite a bit of pain when I came here and feel like this land and this place and this song, you know, even though you all weren't here yet, suddenly you were. And it brought me back to life. Linda asked a couple days ago, would I be willing or like to give a talk? And I went to sleep, and she's like, you don't have to answer right now, which was very kind.

[07:31]

And I went to sleep with the question, like, is there anything that wants to be said? Which I maybe should have qualified, like, let me know in the morning. So I woke up at 2.30 with a many thoughts came, but one of them was Thich Nhat Hanh's teaching, which I think is really an important teaching, and David has said that he's talked about it as Thich Nhat Hanh, as far as I can tell, and maybe please fill me in if you know more about this, Thich Nhat Hanh did a calligraphy that said the next Buddha will be Sangha. And I first encountered this in an article by Seven A. Selassie called Sangha is a Verb, which I highly recommend. I also really highly recommend Seven A. Selassie's book, You Belong. It's a beautiful teacher. I want to just give a little cosmological context. I mean, I don't actually know what Thich Nhat Hanh meant. I've heard other people speculate similar to my speculation, but I don't know. Here's what I'm guessing. So Buddhist cosmology is super awesome and trendy.

[08:42]

In Buddhist cosmology, time is cyclical, and we live in cycles. So it's normal that there is a rising and there's destruction, falling apart, coming together and falling apart. And there's talk of traditionally at kalpas, so amounts of time that are so vast, they're like mythical, tens of millions of whatevers. Like we can't really even conceive of them, but the idea is... You know, we're part of this. We're part of this swirling of arising and falling apart. Don't worry. It's all right. That's not what things do. In fact, the whole universe, and more, more than just our universe, some versions. And...

[09:46]

And Buddhas, so then there's the three bodies of Buddha. Maybe you've heard of this. Our daughter's named after this idea. So kaya means body. And there are three bodies of Buddha that are always there, I guess. The nirmanakaya, so what we think of as the embodied Buddha, the historical Buddha, in our time, in our calendar, this era. Buddha is that Buddha. And the Dharmakaya, the body of the reality of teaching. And the Sambhogakaya, which I wish we had more time. But it's just really important to know. If nothing else, an essential body of the Buddha to be a Buddha is bliss, joy, ease. That's Sambhogakaya, the joy body. of wisdom.

[10:48]

And Nirmanakaya Buddhas are created by, or here's a version that I'm kind of making up, but it's somewhat aligned, it's a tradition. Karma and suffering call in a Buddha. So the body of a Buddha is made in response to the needs of the pain of that world and that time. custom Buddha for our suffering. So I really, for me, all that context is really important to think about Chittanyahu and saying the next Buddha will be Sangha. The next nirmanakaya, the next manifestation of the body will be Sangha. And again, not knowing what he meant. What I hear is wisdom in this world to respond to the suffering of this world will be multiplicitous.

[12:00]

That's the word. The wisdom body of response to the suffering of this world will be a multitude, will be a collective, will be a collaboration, will be relational. What's really... also wonderful about Buddhism. It's like anything that happens on a giant scale also happens on the tiniest of scales. So in any given moment, Buddhas can be born in response to the suffering that's there. And again, even there, I think, this teaching of taking anana is really helpful. The next Buddha, this next moment, will be Sangha. The Dalai Lama who is, in my understanding, the Dalai Lama's position in the world is actually like a Nirmanakaya or a manifestation body of Avila Kiteshvara. There's a reincarnation of Avila Kiteshvara. And there are not simply spiritual reasons for this.

[13:06]

There are also political reasons, as I understand it, for him saying this. But what he said is, next time around, I'm not coming in one body. I'll come in. Well, you'll find out. But he's said, you know, don't look for me in one body. That's what I understand. And again, like, chime in. If you have talked to them. Which is possible here. So, you know, I know, I feel it. Like, just right now, sitting here, we have not all had the same conditioning. by any means. Just looking around the room at the people I know, different countries, different cultures. But there is a heavy momentum around individualism, especially in the United States. So how do we move from individualism to multiplicity, collectivism?

[14:14]

shared leadership and responsibility and voices and remedies and responses. Individualism, as far as I can tell, depends on the delusion of separation. It's a deluded point of view. That doesn't mean to say that we're not particular beings. Look around. We are particular, but we are not separate. So, you know, rugged individualism, like rugged delusion. And, like, intractable. And, you know, I won't go too far down the, like, you know what's so messed up. There's just so much that's so messed up from the roots, you know, from the creation. white supremacy, you know, elevating whiteness, the destruction of people of color right in the roots of this country as it is now, you know.

[15:23]

And a form, an enactment of Christianity that is just, I would say, to some other creator, Jesus would be mad. Jesus, as I had heard about, which is cool, what I got to hear about. A Jesus that would not be down with the patriarchy or the homophobia or the transphobia or any of it or the uterus heating which is very very painful so painful I hope this is coming around with such a vengeance right now and you know so what I want to own is like I am of this I am of centuries of delusion I'm a white American person, colonial. Who cares where my grandparents were from? I have inherited the whole thing. And so I can speak from that place of like, then how do we learn?

[16:30]

How do people like me learn to be more spacious when I've been taught to be so isolated, delusional separation? In the Genja Koan, Dogen Zenji says, when Dharma does not fill your whole body and mind, you think it's already sufficient. You think you got it. I'm good. I figured it out. I'm free. I know things. When Dharma fills your body and mind, you understand that something is missing. And there's something that's missing is the understanding of how all things make any moment or make me or make the interaction. So when dharma fills us up, and that's not a static thing, right?

[17:32]

It's not like, oh, some people got to fill dharma and some people don't. There are moments, you know, when dharma fills you up and your perception... is softened by the understanding like there's so much more than I can see. And when we are in that state as human beings and as practitioners, we are receptive to the multiplicity. We're certain that my perspective is not the only one. And actually nothing useful will happen until there's at least a bunch of others. The other morning in Work Circle, I was there when David was sharing a story about the fires burning all around Tassajara in what year was it? 2008. 2008. So fires burning, like coming down here, burning. Well, things got burned.

[18:33]

And a few folks, and I'm sure some of you have read Fire Notes. And sitting at the edge of his bed at night because he was the director and needing to make lots of decisions. And that's hard and stressful, I imagine, when you're literally on fire. Sitting at the edge of his bed saying, I don't know. Don't know. Training in don't know. I don't know. Don't know. I was so touched when I heard that because I could look and see my own conditioning that says, to be in leadership is to be certain. Even if you're pretending. To be in leadership is to know stuff. To be in leadership is to know. I see this all the time around Zen centers. People are like, quote... You know, like, I know where that quote came from.

[19:34]

Like, it's great. It's beautiful. I love, you know, we can love the Dharma. But, like, just, we need to soften around the certainty. And elevating just the mind that knows. So that, like, so training and don't know. Training the mind, especially when we, folks like me. So not everyone else, you know, folks. who have received the kind of training I have, that say, to be an adult, to be responsible, first is to be certain, and secondly is to be in control. Because the delusion of separation never ends, you know? Or delusion never ends. It's like, oh yeah, you should be in control, you probably could. So they train in, I don't actually know, I remind myself, no I don't, I don't know. And when we as Dharma practitioners can do that, then we start to get more supple. We start to get ready for reality to show up versus being like, here's the picture I'm going to make happen.

[20:46]

In the Genja Quran also, Dogen talks about the circle of water. You go out to the ocean where no land is in sight and view the four directions, the ocean looks circular and does not look any other way. And I remember, I'm pretty sure in this Zendo, listening to Red Anderson say something like, and so what you need to know, it's not like you can see the whole ocean, you cannot, but you see the circle and instead of saying like, oh, well, the ocean's a circle, you say, oh, all I can see is a circle. And Red was saying like, so that if you're sitting there in a nice circle of water, and that's the way it's always been, but a whale comes through, you're not like, I don't know what you are, but you don't belong in the circle. And like the massiveness of the whale tells you, oh, there's quite a bit more ocean out there for something that big to exist. That means then it goes on, you know, it only looks circular as far as you can see at that time.

[21:56]

All things are like this. Though there are many features in that dusty world and the world beyond conditions, you see and understand only what your eye of practice can reach. And then he goes on. It's saying, like, it's like a palace. It's like a jewel. And it's possible to illustrate this with more analogies. Practice enlightenment and people are like this. So every time we look at one another, we can be like, whole worlds are there. whole world in there. And it takes time and space to allow for that. We have to go slow enough, you know, to look at a person and be like, well, especially people we think we know, you know, like, oh, I know. Or, you know, you're my partner or whatever the story is. Oh, yeah.

[22:57]

For those who know Charlie, we're about to be married for 20 years. Yeah. I'm old. I like being old, by the way. I say that as like a, yeah. I've made it to oldness. I've been looking forward to it for years. So we're ready, you know, we're ready for the whale of whatever the person is. So I've been thinking lately about, sorry, I hope someone's getting too wandering. So to me, that suppleness of mind is a condition for us to be together in true Sangha, to help the next Buddha come about. We have to be willing to be receptive to one another and stop trying to smear our And by our, I'm going to name what I mean there. I'm especially meaning white people, really. Because I see, I actually hear it myself so often, since I receive this feedback from people who love me, who are not white, who are like, can you just pay attention to what you mean when you say we and our endowment talks?

[24:11]

And I'm like, oh, and thank you for that loving guidance. So not smearing one's... But that's good for everyone. No one should be smearing their experience all over because, again, the whole world is there. And I've been looking at what is it that gets in the way of that being a quality of our interactions? I've had a couple painful interactions recently. Just a couple of days ago before I came down here. And... The person was upset and stressed out. But the experience on the receiving end was like, I was like, hey, looking for some information. No. No. Stop. Don't know. I need to control the situation was the response. I didn't feel received interaction.

[25:14]

And I knew that stress and fear was in the way. There's a wonderful document by Tana Okunen. It's called Characteristics of White Supremacy Culture. Do folks know this document? It's very helpful, but I can only ever remember Tana Okunen's name and not the other person. A wonderful other person who made this offering, whose name I will now go to learn. And it just names different characteristics. And I want to just pause and make sure that I'm defining what I mean by white supremacy culture, which is just like dominant culture in the United States that elevates white people, but also like white cultural ways of doing things. Does anyone like stop saying that word? No. Okay. Get disoriented or there's maybe old remedies of it.

[26:17]

And names these different characteristics, all of which are, for someone like me who was raised in white sperm sculpture, very illuminating. Because I was like, oh, I just thought it was reality. But, you know, this is just a white cultural, actually, the project of elevating whiteness agenda. One of them is a sense of urgency. And when I first heard that one, I felt like, oh, yeah, you know, when things are urgent. But I'm actually starting to realize, like, oh, In my experience as a white person in predominantly white cultures, those of us that have this identity are constantly generating a sense of urgency by overcommitting and overdoing things so that we're in a state of stress and not very yourself. When I was thinking about how to describe that, I was like, if I had to... Gotta give you the visual that I have of what it means to be white in America. It's like there's a, you know, whatever, there's lots of pieces to it.

[27:22]

Here's one that I've seen in myself and lots of other people. But there's like this gaping maw of guilt and shame in the center of many of us that is because racial inequity is pretty obvious actually. But there's also some really serious training around not noticing it early on when you're really small and formative. And so then there's just like endless effort to chuck good deeds in there. Does that resonate for any of you? Like just keep the good deeds. Somehow that mouth might be filled up with the good deeds, the goodness. Instead of like just stop. It's not There's plenty of help. Those of us who are the right need to be doing help. I don't know how it's not the right word.

[28:23]

There's not much work. There's much work. That's what I want to say. There's lots that needs to be done, but I think it would be useful if there was also like a general orientation, like just stop for a second and exist and feel the pain actually. If one's acculturation has not so far allowed for it, just make the room. Like, feel it. It's not going to kill you. It's going to hurt. And then from there, we can move into work, but not with the frenzy, you know? Like, I'm so good. I swear to God, I'm so good. You know, I'm sort of joking, but this is my life. Like, I've lived out this thing. Thinking, and really, like, and then it's like, if you pause long enough, or for me, I'm going to speak for myself, like I said to you.

[29:31]

When I pause long enough, and I feel the pain that I've been feeling, like little, tiny children. Someone like me, a small white child in a predominantly white environment, was very aware. And most of them are. That, like, something's funny about the racial reality. So since then, carrying that around, so there's, like, a lot of backlog to work with. Feeling that, and then feeling into the story, like, the demons that's created, like, I'm worthless. Which is funny, because in my experience, me and other white people walk around like, I'm super-worthful. It looks that way. But really, you can feel it. There's a sense of insecurity and a lack of self-worth because there's this extreme effort to not see what's real and not feel what's there to be felt.

[30:36]

So I think what we have to do is to slow down and move When it's possible, just slow down. Get less busy. Move at the pace of our hearts. Maybe better at our guts. In our retreat, this... So I wanted to show you one way this could look. In our retreat, this week, Katie Dion, who's here, brought a practice that she got permission to bring to the group. from the creator of this, Mia Clara Taylor, yeah, they came up with it, who is the founder of Fierce Allies, or Katie Chains. It's a practice, it's just a very simple practice of a hand gesture that the group can agree to include.

[31:40]

So you're in a group setting, it's like whole worlds are there, all 19 people, Lots is going on. The practice is, if somebody feels like something's off, so this is moving at the, this is at least recognizing the level of the gut. You can put your hand up like this, and we put it a little forward, so it's different than like, oh, I have a question. And then the practice is, everyone else puts their hand up once they see it, and it just slows everything down. And then if you're willing to receive feedback, you put your other hand up. Like this. There's a compassion mudra that's like this. It's like a mudra. And, you know, we didn't spend the whole, it was so cool to see how it worked. Because I think, I know, I think there's folks that hear that and be like, oh my gosh, you'll never get anything done.

[32:46]

It was really cool for me as a human being to experience how what it did was allow us to move at the pace of the guts, of the intuition. And Katie beautifully framed it, like, you don't even have to really know what's wrong. It's just something's off. And it made me realize, particularly as a female-identified person throughout my development, how I've been taught to not notice my guts. I've been uncomfortable. Lots of times. And I was trained to go, you know, oh, that's funny. When I was like, really? But, you know, no one said that was okay. And no one modeled that. So what happens when we move at the pace of our gut? When we make room for being like, I don't even know what it is. I just, can we slow down for a second? Can we stop with the urgency thing?

[33:48]

and just make a wound. And what's cool is to value the discomfort, and this for me is another, when I look at my cultural training, a totally new thing. I was, not explicitly, but implicitly, I've done some spitting of this, what I've been taught, which was like discomfort, It might kill you. Do everything you can to get away from it. It sounds funny. I want to laugh too, but I'm not joking. And the value of comfort of white people and white cultural ways of doing things was so high that it would run over, and the value of patriarchal ideas, you would run over the experience of other people. Everybody, actually.

[34:48]

So, like, what happens when we begin to not fear, make room for and value our discomfort? And, you know, this is just anecdotal experience from this week, but I can say, like, we got a lot of stuff done. A lot of rich things happened. It wasn't, like, that's so unproductive. In fact, it's just, like, created a field of everybody matters. Katie and Tim and I, who were the facilitators, didn't stop being the facilitators, you know. I talked for more than anybody else, I'm pretty sure. Nobody got really mad. No one got upset. So there can still be leadership, you know. We can still have roles of leadership and guidance. that's useful when it's not held in domination, when it's not held in certainty, when it's not held in obscuration of the experience of others.

[36:01]

And the Dharma really supports this, I think. I really feel deeply as a human being supported by the Dharma to do this deeply transgressive but healing practice of slowing down enough to notice and value and listen. There's page three. There's alternate page three. I'm almost done. It's kind of fun to have to handwrite things, actually. I heard there's computers, too. I don't know why you have access them. I was like, yeah. Recently, I was listening to a podcast called Brown Rice Hour with it. That's Conda Taylor.

[37:02]

I think her wasn't Taylor. She was in conversation with... I've met all four of these people, but I know two of them pretty well. So Conda Taylor, Kate Johnson... Crystal Johnson and Don Haney. Kate and Crystal are not related. And they were talking about a program they were, a quote DEIA program they were running for this program through Sounds True that it's like this two-year training for a mindfulness teacher. And talking about the terminology and the problems, actually, and some pain, particularly on the word inclusion. That was something that was a really important teaching for me at Conda, who's a black American woman, was saying she really doesn't like the word inclusion. She's like, because inclusion is like, white people need to like, include really. But in her experience, she was saying that whiteness is still the standard. She's like, I'm the standard. And I was like, yeah, okay, yeah.

[38:08]

But the language is always... And so they were having, in part, their conversations about, like, well, anyways, you know? And there was this recognition, like, well, you can't get it. And sorry, I know I just keep talking about the white people, but let me just say, in my experience of white culture training, like, white people are like, just tell me how to do it right. And feeling, so actually, well, let me first say, the words that came to my mind as possible alternatives were Healing and transformation. We have healing and transformation committees. And actually like healing then transformation. There's like so much healing to the end. And that probably, I'm going to guess that that is a word that's like not working for the day. So I have no certainty about that being a useful word. It just came up. It does, in my experience, it seems to be an important part of the ground for real transformation to happen.

[39:17]

There needs to be room for that and time and energy. You know, when things are broken, like in our bodies, you know, have you ever broken a bone and you get really tired? In my experience, like with little kids, you can tell, actually, in my experience with my children, you can tell when a bone is broken because they're super tired. Because the body's just like drawing all this energy to heal. So there needs to be a value. And then time and space are made. And it seems to me like that might be what's happening here at Tassajara right now. It might not be. It just depends on what everybody wants to make of it. But there seems like a really good chance, perhaps the best chance that I've ever experienced, and I started seeing this place close up in 1998, to slow down, especially in July, or at least June.

[40:20]

Slow down and make room and listen to everybody. And then make room for people who aren't going to talk until there's like a lot of room. And then make more room for some quiet, and then make more room. I'm kind of out of time, but the last thing I want to say is that, you know, in the morning, every day we say all Buddhas, ten directions, three times. I said that for years before I thought about it in any way, but lately it's really been striking me, like, oh, at least every day we say, so three times it's past, present, and future. Every day we say past, present, and future is right here. And I really want to lift up the possibility that when we as human beings, now I mean we as human beings, and those other practitioners, when we do the work of healing,

[41:34]

First of all, we set the conditions for transformation and healing for whoever are karmic descendants. I'm also deeply feeling that because the past, present, and future are not apart from each other, that we also help heal the history. So it's worth it. It's not just worth it. She's a sparkle hand. Thank you. But it's worth it even the right word because it's almost like there's my capitalist training. It's for those of us, and I'm going to say us meaning anyone that this sounds true to value liberation, making the space for this healing is

[42:38]

And it is opening the doors, making the conditions for the next Buddha. The next Buddha is here, actually. Kennedy is in any given moment. I'm a little bit over time, but I don't know. My family and I are moving across the country to Brooklyn, New York. in a couple weeks to work at, Charlie and I are going to work at the Brooklyn Science Center and be a part of that center and help support the practice there. And our children are going to be okay there. I need to convince myself right now. So I don't know when I'll be back here next. So I just need to quickly, don't get up or anything new. But I was like, can you just move a little in the center?

[43:51]

Charlie and I have taught for a number of years at the Storm Creek Zen Center. It's a different song with a different lineage. And people get eye contact during a talk. So when we come here, we're like, oh, it's a tough crowd. We do know. I remember being like, it's so relaxing. I'm just receiving. I'm really listening. I'm not asleep. When I lived here, I would look. But I don't know. I just feel like Zen does it. We've got to change. We might have to dance in here. Don't freak out, anybody. We might need to sing in here. We might need to scream. You ever been to a Zen funeral? It's so quiet. It's sort of helpful, but there's also the wailing that's required. It's okay. We're not disorienting the tradition. For us to... We're entrusted in this tradition.

[44:57]

It's living. It's alive. Because it's alive, it is changing. It's... The Dharma will survive. 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.

[45:32]

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