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. Is it hot in here or is it just me? Good morning, everybody. My name is Laura Burgess, and welcome to Beginner's Mind Temple. It's wonderful to see you all here today. I'd like to talk today about seeing in the dark and finding jewels in the dark. So I thought it might be appropriate to start with a story from Greek mythology, the story of Persephone and Demeter. So Persephone grew up on Mount Olympus with the immortals, and her mother was Demeter, the goddess of the harvest. Persephone was the apple of Demeter's eye, and wherever she went, Persephone was by her side.

[01:03]

When Demeter sat on her throne on Mount Olympus, Persephone was right there. And when Demeter visited the earth to go through the fields and the meadows of earth, Persephone followed her. She was very beautiful, Persephone. And I'm sure she was also very intelligent and had good leadership qualities. And... Her laughter would ring out in the halls of Mount Olympus, and everyone loved her. Even Hades, the god of the underworld, who didn't pay attention to very much, had his eye on Persephone and wanted her for his bride. But he knew that Demeter would never allow this, so he watched and he waited. And one day, when Demeter and Persephone were visiting the earth and were frolicking in the meadows with their attendant nymphs, Persephone wandered off from her mother, and Hades saw his chance, and he emerged from the underground, driving a chariot with four black horses, and seized Persephone, and turned and descended back into the underworld.

[02:15]

There was a young swineherd there in the field, and he watched in horror as his little piglets tumbled into the ground, never to be seen again. Down, down, Hades and Persephone descended into the underworld, and Hades placed Persephone on a black marble throne at his side. But she neither smiled nor laughed because she missed the earth and its light and sunshine, and she missed her mother, Demeter. She sat on her throne and she could see the dead being ferried across the river Styx to the land of the dead. and she saw the dark poplar trees and the weeping willows, but there were no birds, no flowers, no fruits in Hades, except for one. In Hades' garden, there was a pomegranate tree, and that pomegranate tree was tended lovingly by Hades' gardener. Well, meanwhile, as you can imagine up on the earth, Demeter was searching frantically for her daughter.

[03:17]

She looked everywhere. She asked everyone, have you seen her? Have you seen her? And no one had. She even asked the sun, but the sun told her, no, the clouds were covering my face on the day your daughter disappeared. So Demeter returned to the field where she'd last seen her daughter, and there was a youth there named Triptalamus. And Triptalamus told Demeter that he had seen Hades come up out of the earth in his chariot and seize Persephone and take her away, and that his young brother had lost all his little piglets. in that dark, dark place. Well, as Demeter had searched for her daughter, the earth had withered and died. But now her grief turned to fury, and she went to Zeus, the god, the king of the gods, and said, Hades has my daughter. You must return her. I will never let anything grow on earth again. And Zeus could not let the earth die, so he sent Hermes down into the underworld.

[04:20]

to tell Hades that he must release Persephone. Well, when Hermes stood in front of the throne of Hades and Persephone and told them that Persephone must be allowed to return to Mount Olympus, Persephone cried with joy and was ready to go with Hermes back to her mother. But she heard the hollow laugh of the gardener, and he was holding in his hand a pomegranate that had been cracked open. And I hope you've seen a pomegranate. Inside, it looks like jewels. Looks like rubies are inside. And three of those jeweled ruby seeds had been eaten by Persephone in a moment of forgetfulness. Now, in the land of the underworld, if you eat the food of the dead, you are condemned to stay there forever. So Persephone's heart just sank. But she was allowed to go back to visit her mother. And Zeus relented, and he said, Since you ate three seeds from the pomegranate, You must only return to the underworld for three months out of every year.

[05:22]

And during those months, the earth lies fallow as Demeter waits and longs for her daughter to return. So that's the story of Demeter and Persephone, which I think is a good story for the last days of summer as the light begins to wane. I think it's very easy when we hear the story or read the story to think about Persephone's plight. But as a mother, I got to go with Demeter. And although Persephone descends into hell, Demeter herself also is in a kind of hell while she waits for her daughter to return. And for me, this is a reminder that as parents, you know, we care for our children and then we have to release them and let them go. And they have to go into that darkness on their own. We can't follow them there. And they have to find their own way in the dark. So to think about that pomegranate, again, with the ruby fruit inside, those seeds are like jewels.

[06:34]

And I'd like to talk today about how we can find jewels in our difficulties. In our story of Buddha, when he sat under the... He said, I will not move from this spot until I attain enlightenment. And the armies of Mara visited him and showered him with arrows, but he turned them into flowers in the air. And every temptation and delusion visited him, but he laughed and dismissed them. And finally, he touched the earth, and the earth shook. And Buddha bore witness to all of our inherent... ability to wake up, to wake up in the midst of our lives. And this is our own story too. You know, each of us at times in our life has to descend into the dark. We have to step into the currents of despair. And yet there are gifts to be found there. If we go into the dark with our eyes wide open and look for jewels,

[07:39]

And, you know, even children have this sense of the dark and a kind of fascination with death. And I remember tucking my daughter, Nova, in one night, and she was eight years old, and she looked up at me and she said, Mommy, why are people born to suffer and die? And I was so, so touched by the sincerity of that question. And I said, you know, honey, this is a question people have asked themselves ever since there have been human beings. And she said to me, you know, Mom, that doesn't really help. I can remember a couple of my third graders talking to one another, and one of them said to the other one, when you die, would you rather be buried or cremated? And the other one said, I don't know, surprise me. So... I think there's wealth to be had in the darkness.

[08:42]

Machig Lobdron said, approach what you find repulsive, help the ones you think you cannot help, and go to the places that scare you. And by going to those dark places, we align ourselves with all suffering beings, with all human beings, all beings on the earth, and we can emerge from that darkness better equipped to help and serve all beings. So each of us in our human life, we have our season in hell. And it was a revelation to me that practice is not a vaccination against going to those dark places, going through dark and difficult times. This is part of our human inheritance. And when we hear this wonderful teaching, go to the places that scare you, it makes it sound like we have a choice. But Actually, whether we want to or not, we each have to go there sometimes. And since we've stepped onto the path of practice, it's so consoling to know that we are not separate from those dark places and don't have to fear them in the way we might have at one time.

[09:56]

Practice is not separate from those dark places. So we turn toward the darkness and we practice with it. And we learn not to push those difficult feelings away, not those secrets that we don't want to tell anyone. We don't have to push those away. We can turn towards this soft heart of sadness that comes with being alive. You know, friends disappoint us. Children grow up and move away. Many of us are helping our parents in illness or... or have helped midwife, if you will, our parents through death. When my own father, Terry Burgess, was dying, I got a phone call one day from one of his clients, and I had to tell this man the situation my father was in, that he was dying of lung cancer. And this man gave me the most beautiful teaching.

[11:00]

I never met him. This was a disembodied, bodhisattva talking to me on a telephone. And he said, look for the jewels. Look for the jewels. And there were beautiful jewels in that time when my brother and sister and my daughter Nova and I were attending my father. There were beautiful jewels. There was a healing forgiveness around us all and a kind of intimacy that had been previously unavailable to us. And there was humor. There was laughter. I remember leaning over my father and saying tenderly to him, Dad, would you like me to sing to you? And he looked up at me and said, No, thanks. But an amazing gift my father gave to all of us was that he totally forgave everyone in his life.

[12:02]

And he felt very deeply that he lived a full life, and he left this world with no resentment or remorse. And so, you know, I didn't realize this at the time, that as his children and as his granddaughter, he didn't leave us the burden of his unlived life to pick up and carry for him. It was amazing. And the other gift he gave us was he allowed us to help him. You know, we usually feel that helping others is a generous thing. And we forget that allowing other people to help us to open up and be vulnerable to that kind of help is a great, great blessing for them as well. So we will deal with our own illnesses and those of the people we love. And in our everyday lives, sometimes we meet with success, sometimes with failure, sometimes we feel sad or mad or incomplete. but we can stay with this soft heart instead of trying to fix it or make it better.

[13:04]

You know, this soft heart that connects us with each other. The wonderful American poet Theodore Rutke said, in a dark time, the eye begins to see. In a dark time, the eye begins to see. I heard recently of this neurobiologist, Susan Berry, and when she was an infant, she had a vision problem. problem that did not allow her to see things in three dimensions. And she was told that this would never be cured, that there was no way to retrain your eyes as an adult. But working with 3D glasses and therapists, she was able finally to see in three dimensions. And I'm on fresh air where I get all my material. Terry Gross said to her, what is... something really thrilling that you were able to see when you could finally see in three dimensions. And Susan Berry said, I guess I would have to say trees over and over again, something I see every day as I walk to work, a canopy of trees over my head.

[14:11]

How many of us pass under trees every day and never think to stop and look up? She says, the branches reaching out toward you where the different branches enclose palpable pockets of space. I sometimes find myself admiring those spaces in a tree and actually walking and immersing myself in those pockets of space. I used to see a snowfall as a flat sheet at just a little distance from me. I didn't feel I was part of the snowfall. Now, when I watch the snow coming down from the sky, Each snowflake is in its own space, and there are volumes of space between each snowflake, and each snowflake produces its own unique three-dimensional dance, and I feel immersed in the snowfall and part of it. This is a woman who does not take her vision for granted. And her story reminds me that for us too, she came out of a kind of darkness and could see in this new way.

[15:15]

And I think that's true for us when we emerge from the darkness, that we see things as if anew. We see things differently. We have a profound shift in our vision if we've paid attention. In honor of Susan Berry, I went to a park and lay down in the grass and looked up at the trees and just admired their marvelous three-dimensionality. So just as Susan Berry retrained her eyes to see in a new way, Our practice can produce a profound transformation in the way that we react to the world. Though we don't have much control over events around us, we have the power to change the way we react to them, change the way we see things. We can emerge from the dark, bearing jewels, and more prepared to help other suffering beings. So if we've suffered grief, we can speak with an open heart. with others who are grieving. And if we've recovered from addiction, we can reach out the hand to another suffering person and bring them along with us.

[16:23]

We can keep a friend company as he or she walks through their own hell and help ease the suffering of the dying. You know, in this regard, I think of our marvelous friend, Darlene Cohen, who, stricken with rheumatoid arthritis as a young woman, has turned her life over to helping others who suffer from physical or emotional pain. That became her practice. Rather than pushing it away or wishing for something else, she embraced that and helps others. Sometimes we just feel overwhelmed by the troubles of the world and we just think, what can we do? The suffering is so great. The need is so large. when we think of this troubled world. And I think in that case, we can pick one or two things that call out to us and address those things. A friend was speaking recently of hearing a call, really hearing the call of endangered elephants and spending much of her life helping them, helping preserve them and improve their living conditions.

[17:32]

So we can pick up one or two things, ways that we can help and devote ourselves to those things without reservation. And so does that our practice is just to sit still with whatever arises. Just sit down in the middle of your life and ask, what's up right now? What am I bringing to the cushion? Am I deeply able to accept the thoughts and feelings that come to me, or do I push them away and try for something else? If I approach Buddhism with the idea that it can fix me or make me better, That is a kind of outside-in kind of thinking. And I found in my own practice, as long as I used Buddhism in this mechanistic way to try to fix me or make me a better person or help me forget the parts I was ashamed of or cut off parts of myself I wasn't too happy about, feelings that I was unworthy of this practice, as long as I lived in that way, my practice was very small and stagnant.

[18:34]

So we can even approach with love and compassion the parts of ourselves that we reject, that we feel ashamed of or even find repulsive. So the antidote is to approach what you find repulsive, help the ones you cannot help, and go to the places that scare you. This is a very active, lively kind of practice. And Buddhism teaches us that In life there is joy, but there's loss. There is also loss. Suzuki Roshi would sometimes refer to life, as Dogen did, as one continuous mistake. Suzuki Roshi would say that life is like getting on a boat that is about to sail out to sea and sink. And yet he wasn't a grim man. I didn't have the pleasure of meeting Suzuki Roshi, but I've seen films of him playing with children and playing with a yo-yo, and he himself suffered great loss. great despair in his life, yet he smiled. But you may have had an experience in your life where one moment or one day or in one season, something or someone you love deeply was just whisked away from you.

[19:47]

You may have had some cherished belief that turned to ashes in your mouth. Someone leaves, someone dies, you are unjustly accused of something you didn't do. or a life you've built around a job or a relationship suddenly disappears in a puff of smoke. You know, these things happen to all of us. And the only place we can really rest completely in is in this very moment, living deeply and richly and fully right now, no matter what our difficulty, meeting each person with an open heart, bringing our wholeness to each event, and the places we're broken. We bring those to one another. And this is where we have a chance to meet joy. We can stop and look up at the trees. So the other thing I think of is when I look back, the things I considered my greatest failures have often just led me towards my truer path.

[20:52]

And the things that I most wanted that I didn't get, That's turned out to be a great blessing in many cases. So practice is just watching what arises, looking at life as it actually is. How do I react to what happens? Am I attached to certain experiences, and do I constantly and desperately try to have more of those kind of experiences while I'm rejecting and ignoring and denying other kinds of experiences? Do I allow disappointment and resentment from the past to color all my new experiences? What happens to my state of mind when someone praises me? What happens when I feel that some person has insulted me? Do I descend into a little personal hell when that happens? So if we notice how we get caught and trapped being pushed around by these kind of feelings, we might be able to be kinder and more compassionate to ourselves and in turn towards other people. So Persephone descends into the darkness and

[21:55]

In the Greek version, she's abducted, but in an earlier version, she goes there willingly. She goes there willingly out of curiosity to find out what can be learned from that place. And having tasted the food of the dead, she must return to the land of the dead now and then, even though she herself is immortal. And I can't help but think that this gives her greater compassion for suffering beings. Wherever our dark places are, they are what align us with others. They give us the ability and the heart to live for the benefit of all beings, the ability to feel what other people feel. Persephone also returns to the light. She's not condemned to hang out in hell forever, and neither are we. Neither are we, but we can make friends with that darkness and be prepared for it when it comes along, better equipped to... embrace it and find out what can be learned there.

[22:56]

And at the same time, not identifying it to the extent that our whole life is limited and defined by those dark places. So, in the grip of strong emotions when I'm feeling sad or lost or vulnerable, when I feel unjustly blamed or misunderstood, I can just stop in my tracks and feel that feeling deeply and know that I share this feeling with everyone in the world who's been there as well. I can feel my alliance with all beings. I can be grateful for whatever I'm going through because it means that I am just another suffering human being who needs help, who can ask for help, and who has help to offer others. I can feel my connection with everyone who's ever been in hell. everyone who suffered loss and sickness. I can wish that all beings be happy, that they be joyous and live in safety, and that all be free from suffering and find some comfort and ease on this difficult path we walk together.

[24:07]

By the same token, when I'm elated or full of joy, I can share that with everyone in the world and send that feeling out, not keep it, you know, trapped within myself, but send it out to the universe because we've all shared those feelings of joy as well. These connect us. So we all go down into the dark. It's inevitable. It's part of our human inheritance. It's part of our practice life as well. So I'd like to close with a poem that was given to me by my teacher, Linda Ruth Cutts, when I was going through a difficult time. And it's by a great friend of Zen Center, David White, The Well of Grief. Those who will not slip beneath the still surface on the well of grief, turning downwards through the black water to the place we cannot breathe, will never know the source from which we drink, the silent water, cold and clear, nor find in the darkness glimmering the small,

[25:16]

round coins thrown by those who wished for something else. The well of grief. So I'd like to just say a few words before I close that Zen Center is focusing on membership right now. And we want Zen Center to be available to everyone to be able to come in the store and sit zazen with us. And if you find this a place of sanctuary, a place of sustenance, especially when you're walking through difficult times, you might consider becoming a member of Zen Center. In becoming a member, it's not just an expression of your gratitude for this place or your generosity, which we so appreciate. It's also saying to yourself, I too am part of the life of this temple. This way of life is important to me, and I want it to be here for other beings, both now and for many generations in the future.

[26:20]

So I found that for people, when they become members, their relationship with Zen Center shifts from one of coming from the outside in to just being part of this inside, this wonderful Zen Center that is here for all of us. So thank you very much for sharing this time with me. I really appreciate it. 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 Dormer.

[27:13]

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