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 morning, everyone. Good morning. Anybody here for the first time? Yeah? Welcome, welcome. All of the rest of us were here once for the first time, so... They're in good company. So nice to see familiar faces. And faces I don't know. Equally welcome. I want to thank, in particular, Lorenzo and Kevin, who have been so generous in terms of helping me with this particular presentation. project that I want to talk about this morning, and I want to thank Tim, being a very gracious Tonto, and San Francisco Zen Center for allowing me to be here this morning.

[01:09]

I teach only suffering. and the transformation of suffering," the Buddha said. And this is the essential invitation of our practice. And when we respond to this invitation, if it is to be an authentic activity, a fruitful activity, we respond through the doors of our very life. with this heart, this mind, this body, just as it is. The causes and conditions of our lives, as they are, just as they are, become the field of our practice, the field of our opportunity for liberation, for equanimity, and for peace.

[02:25]

And this, Darlene Cohen, whose teachings I want to speak about this morning, learned, practiced, embodied in a very deep way, and then taught those of us who were fortunate enough to be in her sphere and be among her students. And this, she said, this is the genius of Buddhism. this ability to actually enter into our lives, to enter into practice through the very essence of our lives. This is the genius, and this is the way in which transformation of suffering will actually happen. And as a result of this practice, if we enter into it wholeheartedly and with consistency, with the courage that it takes — it does take courage — then we will find ourselves actually in a place where we can be alive to our lives in a very deep, connected, and nourishing way.

[03:41]

For those of us, again, who were fortunate to be in her teaching sphere, I see Kathy, Lisa, anybody else that I'm missing? I guess that's it right now. This is what we saw. in Darlene Cohen. And this was her invitation to us as well. So, I'm here primarily because I want to share her teachings, which I've compiled in this book, Alive for It All, Wisdom for Everyday Life, the teachings of Darlene Cohen. Before I talk a little bit about those teachings, I want to just tell you a little bit about her. And I've been even though she has been not in physical form since 2011, she's been pestering me to write this book. That's who she was. And so finally, finally I'm here. We'll see if she leaves me alone for a while. But she was born in 1942.

[04:48]

I can't help but smile sitting here. facing out to the front of the building, because in 1970, she and Tony, the love of her life and her eventual husband, drove their hippie VW van and parked it right out in front there, and came in for a tour of the building. And what was interesting about that tour, which she spoke with David Chadwick about, which I capture in this book, is they were touring the building, getting a sense of what residential life might be like, and they were going en route to the zendo downstairs, what she called the raison d'etre of the building, which it is. And as they were descending that last flight of stairs, she says, this tiny older Japanese man... was ascending the stairs, surrounded by some students.

[05:50]

And he looked at them and kind of smiled because they were bedecked in hippie clothes with feathers and beads and God only knows what else. And he smiled. He was probably used to that garb by then. And they bowed to each other. And she says, she doesn't know how long that bow lasted, but when they rose up and looked in each other's eyes, She felt totally transformed. She felt seen. And interestingly enough, it kind of confirmed their journey coming here from the East Coast. They've been living in Boston. And it set Darlene, and Tony, but Darlene in particular, on a course for the rest of her life, for the remaining 43 years. Something that he had, she wanted to also feel and then give to other people. In her lifetime, she led four different sanghas, at least.

[06:52]

She started what she called suffering and delight groups that were specifically for people in a dharma-informed way to deal with chronic pain. And she co-founded a very innovative Soto Zen priest training program, which we called SPOT, which lasted for two cohorts. Each cohort was three years. And then, unfortunately, because of her death and then the death of Steve Stuckey, one of the other participants, the wheels kind of fell off. In her lifetime, she wrote a couple of books. This is one of them, still in print. Turning Suffering Inside Out, a Zen Approach to Living with Physical and Emotional Pain. And this particular book called The One Who Is Not Busy, Connecting with Work in a Deeply Satisfying Way.

[07:53]

And this book came out of a workshop that she gave at Tassajara and ultimately became the basis of a research project that was funded by the MacArthur Foundation and the National Science Foundation on how Zen and meditation and what we learn here and how we learn to hold life differently could help people in work situations. Darlene was really fascinated with bringing practice into work. And from my own perspective, you know, for many of us who are not either full-time monastics, retired or whatever, trust fund babies, work tends to be like one of our biggest practice centers, right? And one of the most challenging ones. And she found that fascinating, as did I. She was given Jukai in 1973 by Baker Roshi, who she considered her heart teacher, and then...

[08:58]

ordained and Dharma transmitted by her second much-respected teacher, Michael Wenger, in 1999 and then 2003. A very, very significant event in her life was that in 1977, after she'd been here for about seven years, she developed rheumatoid arthritis, a very crippling and painful disease. And she thought that, and was told, that she'd be an invalid for the rest of her life. And at first she was really, really depressed. I mean, not only because she had gotten rheumatoid arthritis and was in this state, and at that point in time she had a young child living here, and she couldn't get out of bed. And she thought that practice had not, she hadn't practiced well enough. That practice wasn't serving her in this state. And eventually, as she kind of awoke to the experience and adjusted to it, she realized that there was much,

[09:58]

that was in practice, that was still there for her to benefit from. And Baker Roshi gave her this name, Surya Kempo, Great Spirit Manifesting Dharma. And in that great spirit was a lot of determination. And with that determination, she actually was able to, in the course of that first year of getting that diagnosis, being able to get up and kind of walk or maybe just bounce off of walls. And then she worked with somebody by the name of Mare Schneider, a healer who uses self-healing. He's actually alive and lives in the city, has an original method of healing. He had trained himself to be healed of congenital blindness, and she worked with him and was a very close apprentice. And so that by the time I met her, while she was in pain, She was fully ambulatory and walking and living her life. At the end of her life, she left a treasure trove of teachings.

[11:08]

But I was aided in terms of selecting what to put in a book, because at the end of her life, she identified for us what she thought were her core teachings. what had really mattered to her in the course of her practice and what she really wanted to make sure we understood were the teachings for us to pay attention to. And those teachings that she identified, well, I should say that because of her work with her own transformation of physical suffering, this rheumatoid arthritis, working with the body and practice becoming very embodied, which is what it should be, but because of her incredible emphasis on trying to work with her body and find her practice in her body and bring that practice forward to her aid, she was acutely aware of that. And so body was always foundational as a teaching. Body-to-body practice, which is what we did.

[12:10]

She loved to do this. Loved to have people to her house for two or three days and just be body-to-body together. Having... Doka-san, sitting zazen, shopping, cooking, walking around. She felt that was extremely, extremely important. But the teachings that she identified at the end of her life were first concentration, awareness, and mastery of focus. And I think for myself, and I think for our times, this concentration is like really important. You know, not only because of smart technology and smart devices, but because the environment, external environment right now, the strategy seems to constantly distract us with rather fear-provoking news, right? But in our own lives, even without that, internally, externally, all the other things, but first, maybe I'll get a snack from the refrigerator, or what's the latest news?

[13:15]

We are very much living in a society that is full of distractions. And until we can actually get a handle on that and get a toehold, we can't really settle our minds and calm our hearts in order to be able to observe ourselves to see what our habit patterns are, to see how it is, what our default settings are of the mind, to see how we always tend to incline into a particular reaction, to see the strength of the habit energies of mind and of heart. So this concentration became really, really important and all of the awareness around it. And then having the ability to have mastery of focus so that we can see, oh, wait a second, there I am on the same, you know, hamster wheel of this particular thought, and to help ourselves to get off of it. The second thing that she thought was really important beyond concentration was what she called personal koans.

[14:22]

And I think probably most people here are familiar with kind of the traditional koan, which is, you know, does a dog have a Buddha nature? If a tree falls in a forest, will anybody hear it? Those sorts of things. And what Darlene felt was that if we were to look at the questions of our lives as personal koans, and while she loved koans, and while koans can be wonderful practices to help get us out of our discursive everyday mind, kind of destabilize us with these questions that don't on the surface make sense. While she thought those were important and loved them, what she really felt was that the questions that were right beneath our very feet became our deepest personal koans. So I'm going to read to you a brief excerpt from a section that will be actually...

[15:31]

excerpted in the summer tricycle, page 45. Good. So we were at Tassajara, and she had identified, for me, my personal koan. Her personal koan was, why did she continue to smoke? when she was living at Green Gulch. It was such a hassle. She had to carry her cigarettes, her matches, her own ashtray. She was a social pariah. Why did she continue to smoke? It was so unpleasant, right? And so that became one of her personal co-ons. Then she had another one which she talks about, which I think many of us can identify with, which is she always felt like there was a gap between her life and herself. always kind of a buffer zone, not feeling fully and deeply connected, moment by moment, breath by breath, with what our lives really are. But she identified for me a different koan. And one day we're at Tassahara having Doka-san, and she says, you don't have to be so afraid. What?

[16:34]

I'm not afraid. I said, what? Would you repeat that? She said, you don't have to be so afraid. And she very, very skillfully identified for me how for years I manifested and dealt with my personal koan of deep fear by developing hyper-competence. Right? Because actually, because of my karmic crucible and circumstances, I grew up in a family that wasn't very safe. And so... It makes total sense to me that fear of people in particular was something that I would carry with me. Darlene was the first person who kind of held up a mirror for me to look into. So we're at Tassajara, and she's telling me that this is my personal koan. And during a period at Tassajara, I was working on cabin crew. In this work practice, one tends to the cabin Guest cabins, making beds, sweeping floors, emptying wastebaskets and cleaning bathrooms.

[17:37]

A glass had spilled and broken in the cabin I'd been assigned to clean. I went to the crew leader and asked for a mop. She said if I'd just wait a moment, she would help me. Immediately, this struck me as so unnecessary. I just needed a mop. Tell me where it was, and I would get the mop and take care of it. While I waited... She helped several other people with their requests, and I found myself growing impatient, interrupting her skillfully, I thought. I said, if you just point to where the mop is, I will go get it. And I'll be done with this in no time. I'm sure I can find it. And she said, oh, just wait a moment. Just wait a moment or two, and I can help you. And she answered cheerfully with a smile. My impatience was escalating. This was so insensible to me, so inefficient, and frankly, a waste of my time. But I kept my manufactured zen cool as I seethed and waited. Finally, she came to me and said, let's go get the mop. Pleading my case again, I said, really, it's just a one-person job.

[18:39]

You don't need to help. A sly smile was her only reply. So off we went to fetch the mop. Now let's get the bucket. Just point me to the direction, and I will get it in a jiff. No, no, let's do it together, which we did. After filling the bucket with some warm water and placing the mop inside, she turned to me brightly and said, Here, let's each hold on to the bucket handle and carry it to the cabin. To which I replied, I can carry it. It's not heavy at all. No, she said, let's do it together. As we walked down the paths of the cabin, I commented silently but vehemently to myself how utterly crazy this was. Oh, my God, I reeled. Sometimes Zen is so pathetic. When we got to the cabin, she insisted on holding the dustpan while I broomed the small amount of glass into it. Resigned to her sweet yet adamant approach, I dutifully swept the glass in. Then she squeezed the water out of the mop and handed it to me. As I mopped the small area, no more than a square foot, she seemed both unnaturally engaged in this paltry task and unnaturally happy to be doing it with me.

[19:48]

Upon completion, she suggested that we carry the bucket and the mop back to their appropriate place. Together, of course. Taking a deep breath in my mind, relenting to the charade of quote-unquote work, we carried the bucket and the mop back. I don't recall her parting words, but I do recall her tenor was kind, as it had consistently been. I also recall my extreme reaction. a mind that was frenetic with judgment about the craziness of this experience. And beneath that cover of judgment, dark to my mind at the time, pulsed the fear of spending time with a stranger. The whole experience probably only lasted 15 to 20 minutes, though it felt like an eternity to me. It took me more practice on my personal koan to see the genius of what Darlene had designed and executed with the help of the cabin crew leader. It proved a Dharma gate which afforded me the opportunity to slowly recognize the underlying fear I felt, a fear utterly disproportionate to the situation.

[20:54]

The emerging awareness of my competence as a mask, conjoined with my palpable and pitched physical reaction, caused me to stay with the experience and wonder why it had been so disturbing to me. When I questioned Darlene about it later and her role in it, a trickster twinkle sparkled in her eye and she simply demurred. So that was personal koan. And it was for me so significant because I didn't even know how imprisoned I was by this unconscious fear that I had turned into hyper-competence that allowed me to navigate all of the moments and the situations of my life. Of course, with that level of physical suffering that she had, that didn't stop. I mean, she was able to work with it, but it never stopped, of course. She always had rheumatoid arthritis to the end of her life. The transformation of suffering, the third noble truth, was really, really key to her. And in the book, what I have done is I've secured permission from some of her best articles and a chapter from a wonderful anthology, that where she talks in depth about suffering.

[22:04]

and how she was able to alleviate suffering. And I want to read just a short excerpt from that, because it also speaks to one of her other profound teachings, which is part of Buddhism, which is to open our hearts and minds and bodies in such a way that we are not imprisoned by a dualistic perspective on life, that life is just one thing, that our experience at any moment in time is just one thing. So as a result of the therapeutics that she took at the end of her life for her rheumatoid arthritis, one of the byproducts was cancer, and she had developed ovarian cancer. And so she's gone into the hospital here for treatment. I had six treatments of chemotherapy. I was put in the hospital for the first two-day rounds so they could monitor me. They shot my belly full of toxic drugs until I labored just to take in air.

[23:10]

I felt pregnant, but not with a child of this world. I couldn't lie down or sit with that enormous belly on top of me. I could only walk. For hours, I staggered up and down the hospital corridors, pushing the IV stand ahead of me and occasionally stumbling with exhaustion against the wall. Finally, in the middle of the night, a nurse with tears in her eyes cut me loose from the IV and I walked free. The next morning I thought, dear God, what do you have to do to bring tears to the eyes of an oncology nurse? Great suffering, great suffering. And then she goes home a couple of days later and she says, in the midst of this, yet, simultaneously, Simultaneous to that misery was the most beautiful autumn I'd ever seen in my life, happening right outside my room in a grove of maples and redwoods. The slanting light characteristic of Northern California autumns dramatically showcased the reds, golds, apricots, and browns of the evolving plants.

[24:21]

As dawn broke each morning, sunbeams penetrated the windows along my eastern wall, progressively highlighting the dark wood of my chair and table, the threads of my blanket, the reds and blues of my life, I'm sorry, of my rug, and my waiting body. At such times, at such ecstatic times, I felt as if I were being lifted and carried right through the windows into the air on a heavy living sheet born by the sweet-faced angels that used to illustrate the turn of the century hymn sheets. Suffering and delight, non-duality, available to us in every situation. Here's this woman with her belly just shot full of chemo, with the news of this not probably having a message or a result that's going to be being able to continue in her physical form, but rather that her life is coming to an end.

[25:24]

And she sees that. but she also sees and deeply feels what else is happening in life, this beautiful, remarkable day in autumn, right? The detail in her life, the beauty of the sun on the rug, the colors, the red and blue, all of this type of detail, which she became so genius at finding in every moment of her life as an offset to her physical pain, but which I found extremely helpful to do. as an offset to my psychic pain, is such a bomb. It widens the weave of our minds and our hearts. And the other thing that relates to this that she spoke so often about is this teaching that is deep to the heart of our practice of non-preference, right? The mind of the great, mind of absolute trust says, The great way is not difficult for those who are unattached to their preference.

[26:26]

Whatever happens, it's not that we don't have preferences, but are we attached to that preference? And is that attachment going to cause us more suffering? She says, most of our preferences don't make much difference, like whether you choose chocolate or orange. But if you always go with your preference in every matter, then it's harder when it does matter, like preferring health to cancer. The statistical weight of your always choosing what you prefer becomes enormous and your flexibility sags under it. It's much harder to see everything as scenery. So the last of the core teachings was the importance of vow. How significant it is for all of us when we decide to enter into a vow-based life and how that just pivots everything. in our lives, how we understand things, how we view things, and how we embody our response. And the particular metaphor that she used, which I have always found extremely helpful, is that vow becomes a staff for us.

[27:34]

And the more we practice vow, the more we honor our vow, the more we stay in alignment with a vow, primarily our essential vow to do no harm, but the other vows that are associated with the bodhisattva vows, the 16 bodhisattva vows that we take through all of our ordination practices, this vow become, the staff becomes stronger and stouter and is always at our ready to use. And we find ourselves actually out of that relationship an embodied sense of vow, having vow come to our fore. Sometimes in situations where we are confused, vow just cuts through. She used to say, when you vow, you no longer have a life of misfortune. It's all just grist for the mill. What are you going to do, right? What is the right choice that you're going to make? The most appropriate choice at that moment.

[28:36]

One of the things that was so unique about Darlene to me at that time and attractive was that she saw practice as everything and everywhere. And so those were her core teachings. But I really wanted to capture the fact that everything, in the wide world is practice. And she took all of these topics on with great gusto and from her own personal experience. So I have a section where I've included excerpts from lectures that she's given that are about practicing with sex, practicing with money, gossip, depression, conflict, situations that are kind of, you know, the real muck sometimes of our lives. And how do we find our Buddha mind in those situations. How does a Buddha get angry? How does a Buddha practice with sex or with money? I'm so grateful. Those kind of form the spine, if you will, of the book.

[29:42]

And then I wrap around it some of my own personal experience with Darlene as a teacher. And I'm very, very grateful that many people responded to a request students and Dharma friends to provide memories and teaching situations that they experienced with her over the course of the years that they worked with her. So there's a wonderful section called Remembering Darlene. And this is like, you know, just kind of all of these vignettes kind of really bring her into 360, right? And bring her spirit into vivid technicolor. and really emphasize and show kind of the genius and the innovation of her teaching methods, but also the impact that years later, this is what people are carrying in their heart minds. And also her great sense of fun and her trickster spirit, as you can see from the exercise she created and engineered for me at Tassajara.

[30:55]

Everything from a recollection of how when she was working with her tea teacher earlier in her practice life, they were going home. She was driving her home to Green Gulch and decided to stop and get the car washed. And as they went through the car wash, Darlene lowered the window on the sides where her tea teacher was, and she got completely soaked. And the tea teacher, all in good spirit and knowing why Darlene had done it, because they had lunch in Japantown and the tea teacher had pushed all this wasabi at Darlene, who didn't know how hot it was, just bowed to her and said, good one, Darlene, good one. To moments where, you know, one of our Dharma sisters is suddenly diagnosed with a brain tumor. and remembers Darlene's teachings and talks with Darlene about, how do I deal with this, right?

[31:58]

So they're beautiful remembrances. We just had a quick conversation with Vicki, who was a dear Dharma sister of Darlene's. Vicky shares a story of how she's down in the sewing room. And Darlene comes down and says that she needs to sew a new rakasu, which is, you know, our first Buddha robe. And she says to Vicky, I'd like to make it fuchsia. And Vicky is kind of thrown back and said why. And Darlene kind of pulls her shirt down and shows, well, so it'll match my cami. Anyway, all right. So a wonderfully spirited woman where everything is practiced and where she didn't have to be so precious about being a practitioner. Everything, everything is practiced. Everything is right there. Beata Chapman, who became a student of hers toward the end of Darlene's life, writes beautifully in her recollection and story about Darlene.

[33:11]

She says, capturing Darlene's with words is like trying to put the ocean in a thimble. This is a woman who was, you couldn't pin her down, right? You couldn't pin her down. So I kind of like what we say about our Zen experience. You try to explain it in words and it's immediately gone. It's something else altogether. And that, I think, was the spirit of Darlene. For me, I think the things that I carry with me Well, there's so much. But the things that kind of surface, thinking about her and trying to convey her teachings to others, is that she was first and foremost an ardent practitioner, and she never stopped being a practitioner. She never let herself become elevated by virtue of ordination or Dharma transmission. The numerous articles, the success that she encountered with all of her books and whatnot, she never let that interfere.

[34:13]

She was always a practitioner. And she shared her practice with us in very, very intimate ways, talking about how You know, if somebody had made her angry and she wanted to plot this elaborate experience of revenge, how she would, you know, think about it in great detail. It would be like a massive, gorgeous domino design. And then she would never, ever flick to start the first domino in motion. That was Val, right? So, but that's the sort of thing. I think, you know, as I continue my practice and I think about, like, for instance, all these beautiful statuaries, this beautiful Buddha on the altar, you know, very inspirational, very aspirational. But these are all people who fully accomplish their Buddha nature and we're seeing them as fully accomplished.

[35:16]

Darlene allowed me and others to see her Buddha nature as she was accomplishing it, which was equally inspirational and equally aspirational. And I think for somebody like me, a mere human in the muck of life, that's important. That's important for me to see. That I can identify with. That I can really see. Can I ever be this person? I don't know. But I can certainly try to embody... people like Darlene. The other thing that I think about her is just what an incredibly dedicated teacher she was. And, you know, all these sanghas that she led, the numerous articles, books that she wrote, the schedule that she kept. And this was true up to the very last month of her life when her body just couldn't take it. But, you know, she, two months before she died, she was having a practice period and leading a chusso ceremony, right? And three weeks before she died, she gave me and another person Dharma transmission.

[36:21]

So all the way to the very end, great spirit manifesting Dharma. This particular picture, which I took out in the courtyard after we had been doing some form training, I think one day, I called Authentic Gate. And... That's what she became for me, an authentic Dharma-gate to understand, to enter into the doors of my life through the overlay of practice more deeply in a way that really benefited me and helped me to transform my suffering. The way she did that for herself and she modeled that for other people to do. And I think that behind all of that, as is at the essence of our Buddhist practice, You know, this true opportunity, this true invitation to be alive for it all. Despite existential suffering, despite great physical suffering, that's what she was.

[37:30]

And that's what she invited us to be. And I hope that in this compiling of her core teachings that all of you will be equally touched and find a way in your own lives whatever they are, whatever circumstances, to truly be alive for it all. Thank you kindly. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. 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 Domo.

[38:14]

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