This really shows me how important it is to be in community because I forgot a very important part of the traditional ritual. of our Dharma talks. And so then somebody just says, oh, the chant. So the universe is just right there for us to help us with everything we need. We do have to keep our eyes open so we can recognize that when that comes along. Hi, I haven't seen you for a while. I'm glad to see you. So how many people are new here tonight that haven't been here? Welcome. Welcome. So I'll talk a little bit about our practice period for the people that are new here.

[01:06]

We're in the ninth week of a 10-week practice period, which means that we've set aside a certain period of time where many of us, some of us living here, some of us not living here, have committed to practice together according to some particular forms and according to the schedules that our lives will allow. And we call that a practice period. And the... The theme of this particular practice period is lay practice, aligning all activity with the heart of the Buddha. And I'm up here because I was asked to be Shuso by Abbas Christina and by lay and trusted Dharma teacher, Marsha. I'm very grateful that you asked me and that you invited me to do this Dharma talk. And the Shuso's job, the Shuso... can be translated as head student or head monk, whatever you would like.

[02:10]

And the Chusot's responsibility or role is to support the teachers of the practice period and all of the participants in the practice period. And so it's an honor to be asked and I accept it as an honor and I'm doing my best to fulfill the responsibilities of Chiselle. I brought with me all kinds of ideas about how to be Chiselle. You know, like we start a new job and we think, oh, it's going to be like this and I'm going to do it like that and that's where I'll eat my lunch and that's where the bathroom is and, you know, all that kind of stuff. This was a new role for me. I haven't ever done it before. And so I had all of these ideas of how it was going to be. And then there was how it's been. So I'd like to talk with you more about it.

[03:11]

This has been an incredibly transforming time for me. And I'll say more about that in a few minutes. I just want to give a little entryway into what's going to be happening starting here. Friday evening will be an orientation to what we call Sashin. And Sashin... And Sashin is an event where the participants follow a fixed schedule. The fixed schedule has sitting, zazen, interspersed with walking meditation, which we call kinhin. And then there's less formal walking, which we do outside, usually as a group. They'll also be there scheduled to have some yoga. We'll spend time together working and eating and chanting. and listening to Dharma talks. And we can have an opportunity to talk with a teacher, a practice leader, about our practice. Some of us will be sleeping here at the temple.

[04:12]

Others will be sleeping at home, returning to the next period that they said they could show up in the Sashin. And one activity is following another. It's a concentrated time for a cultivation of awareness of continuous practice. So I want to pause here and tell you about a two-week sushin that I'm engaging in right now. And I've been engaging with the sushin in my bedroom at home. And my bedroom at home has been my zendo. We carry our zendo, we carry the temple with us. We designate certain... And we say, this is the meditation hall. This is the Zendo. That's my home. This is where Zen Center is. That's where my house is. But actually, when we look at whole, and that's also, and when we look at the wholeness of everything being interconnected, we just designated those places, right?

[05:16]

So I designated my bedroom as a Zendo. And I designated it as a Zendo. Because I realized that my world view about who and how I was going to be Chisot didn't include my being asked to meet a flattening, downright, I can't get out of bed illness. It's like, wham. It's like, oh, no. One of my first thoughts was, this cannot be happening to me. Right in a delusion. This cannot be happening to me. And my body goes, no, I'm not really sick. I can't be really sick. But I was. And I started to fight with the sickness. The thoughts came to me were, excuse me, I have other things I need to do now.

[06:17]

Another thought was, maybe I'm not really sick. No, I'm not so sick. I can go to the Zendo. This is not surprising because when you know the causes and the conditioning of my life, it gives rise to those kinds of thoughts that when I say I'm going to do something and I have an idea about how I should do it or what the other person thinks I should do, I show up regardless of the circumstances. has led to so much pain and suffering in my life. And so I was meeting that again. You were asked to be Shiso. Shisos are in the Zendo, regardless of the circumstances. And so I started to get sick. It was a couple of Sundays ago. And Monday morning, I was in the Zendo. And then I went home and I slept most of the day. And then Tuesday morning, I went to the Zendo. And then Wednesday morning, there was my body said,

[07:19]

No. No. You cannot go to the zendo. I need attention. This body needs attention. So I didn't at first start off offering myself a sashin in what I then started to call the sickness cave. I started off with fighting with the reality of what was happening. I didn't want it to be so. I wasn't sure it was so. I didn't have confidence in my assessing, was I really sick or not? It wasn't a part of my training when I was a young person. So I always questioned, was I really sick? And if I really was sick, maybe somebody else was sicker than I, and they're in the Zendo, and what kind of a wuss am I? Those are all of the thoughts that were going on for me. And so I got to be with him. Some of you have heard my way-seeking mind talk about having to be good, the very goodest girl in the world, whatever that means.

[08:26]

And if I'm not really sick, maybe I'm not really good. It's convoluted. It's very convoluted. And our conditioning gets very convoluted and becomes almost concretized. At least it feels that way. And have it of the mind-body. And then when we give ourselves an opportunity to examine what is actually happening here, what's going on here, we can begin to discern that what's happening here is mental blips of energy that are secreted from the mind that we call thoughts. There's no substance to the thoughts. They're not real. They're simply energy blips. And some of those thoughts aren't even our own. We inherited them from our parents and their parents and many generations back, too far for us to untangle.

[09:36]

And some of them we've inherited from our culture, all men, all women, all heterosexuals, all gay people, all whatever. And then we try to measure up to those ideals of our culture. And if we don't measure up, then we often look at, what do I have to do to improve myself to be good, to be a better person? And so that was coming up big time for me as I examined this in myself. And what was so interesting to me is I do a lot of teaching about engaging with thoughts and feelings and body sensations. And so it was really quite a whammy for me to realize I have a lot of work to do in this area. I've been practicing this for a long time, but I haven't been practicing this in the face of so much fear.

[10:38]

So much fear that I... would be judged by others as I was judging myself. So it was quite surprising and totally out of my world view that instead what I had been met with is such love and such support and caring that at first that was a bit overwhelming and hard to even believe. I was telling Christina earlier today, I was reading something about something called mirror neurons. I don't know a whole lot about it, but because of the work I do, I study a lot of the neuroscience, so I ran across this. And mirror neurons, as I understand it from the science, are those neurons that get activated after we're born, when we're with somebody who is with us, how they are with us.

[11:44]

is mirrored by a neuron that transmit information to other neurons that mirror what we have experienced. So if what we have experienced is abuse, there are mirror neurons that can be activated because we were exposed to that. It doesn't necessarily mean that we've been an abuser. but there are the mirror neurons that are living in our brain because we were exposed to that. In the same way, if we're nurtured and we're loved, there are mirror neurons that know how to pick up nurturing and loving. And we're able to express that back out because it's in our earliest conditioning, way pre-verbal. If we do not have mirror neurons... that show us what love is and what support is, then sometimes we can't even recognize it.

[12:51]

And so I didn't quite recognize, is this really love? Is this true? How do I know for sure? Is this genuine or is this one of those Buddhist things? You know, we're going to express loving kindness. But it kept happening over and over and over again. And I began to... It isn't even that I began to. It's that the body was so vulnerable, so open, because there was no other way to be. I couldn't continue with the habit patterns in the same way. It's too painful. It's like... I felt like I was being visited by these fiery dragons. You know, the ones that you see in books that breathe out. It's a great big fire. Because I'm still a little not well, I was going to roar. Maybe I'll try it.

[13:54]

Maybe you'll help me. It's just a roar of a big fire-breathing dragon that you feel is burning you. Is that the best you can do? I'm sick and I think, no comparing mine though, but let's try it again. The fire-breathing dragon. Like that. So that was pretty scary, you can imagine. And it took a while for me to realize those are fire-breathing dragons in my mind. They're nowhere. I checked everywhere in my apartment. They weren't there. And it was then that I could stop fighting with them because when I tried to fight them, I tried to conquer them or get rid of them or change them, they just got stronger because I was feeding their ferocity, right?

[15:03]

But when I stopped that and said, I see you, You're an illusion. You're part of the conditioning of my lifetime. But you're not real. And you've been driving me for such a long time. Maybe you need a rest. And after a while, this did not, you know, I did not charm the dragon, believe me. But after a while, the dragon didn't come so often. And then one time when it came, I remembered the story of Mara. I don't know how many of you know about Mara and the Buddha. The story goes that when the Buddha sat down, he vowed to sit down until he could understand from where suffering arose. What is reality? Excuse me, you guys. He vowed to sit down until he understood from where suffering arose.

[16:16]

And as he did so, this being, I'll say being, I'm going to talk about this very loosely, Mara came. And Mara very loosely could be thinking of as a seductor, a seductress. Oh, come with me, let's dance. Or let's play some games on the computer. Or, come with me, I've got cookies and sweet tea. When Mara comes to me, it has to do with cookies. And so he vowed, I am sitting here until I understand from where suffering arises. And I began to see the dragons and the thoughts as Mara. Mara seducing me. to not pay attention to reality, to live in the habit patterns of the mind.

[17:18]

And then the whole body-mind said, no. No. I'm not going to turn anything away. I'm going to be in the middle of everything. And this is when my sashin started. And I remember... I remember Catherine Stark, who is a Zen priest and a chaplain, I think it's been two or three years ago, gave a Dharma talk. And in it, she talked about Zen hospice precepts. And I was so taken with what she said that I wrote them down. And so I found them. Here's what they are. Welcome everything. Push nothing away. Bring your whole self to experiencing.

[18:21]

Don't wait. Find a place to rest in the middle of things. Cultivate don't know mind. So I chose these precepts as the precepts of my sushin in the sickness cave. I was pretty sick, coughing, coughing, coughing. Every flu symptom you've ever had in your life, I had it. And then it would go away, and then I'd have a reinvigoration of it. And I would have these thoughts, I'll feel better tomorrow. And I'd talk to Christine, and she'd say, how do you know that? How are you feeling right now? It's so helpful to have a practice leader, to have a teacher who reminds you to stay in the present moment. And so a couple of times I showed up because I still had these thoughts, these drivers.

[19:26]

They don't just disappear. You have to keep practicing them, with them, and noticing your reactivity and not do what they tell you to do. That's how we create new habit patterns in the brain. You have to actually meet the painfulness. of the drivers that lead to reactivity. You have to stay with them. And as you do that, you interrupt the reactivity, and new ways of being begin to emerge. But sometimes I would forget that. So I came here. I came here on a Saturday class. And Christina looks at me, and she said, I think you don't look well. I said... I'm okay. I'm okay. And then Marcia peers around Christina and they said, we think you should go home and take care of yourself. Christina says, we think you should go home and take care of yourself. And I looked at the people that were in the class and they were all looking at me with some, at least I just, you know, we make up stories.

[20:32]

So I figured they were all loving me too. If we make up stories, we might even make up ones that feel good. So I figured everybody was supporting me to go home and take care of myself. And I needed that because this is a new behavior for me. I have a chronic illness that I've had for over 20 years. This is a brand new behavior. I'm so touched by the transformation that is expressing itself to me. as I do not pay attention to the thoughts that keep me going no matter what. So shame came and went. Critical thoughts came and went. Public humiliation came and went because nothing stays. Sometimes we don't know that because it feels so painful and it feels like,

[21:34]

This is going to be permanent. I'll always be stuck here. But as we study ourselves, we realize everything is impermanent. Everything is empty. Everything happens when everything comes together. And then it dissolves when those elements that came together dissolve. So there's actually no self. There's no part of me that I can point to and say, this is Lee. I am Lee. I'm the one that shows up for everything. I am Lee. I get sick a lot. It's just identification with something that isn't true or real because everything's always changing. So that became so, like I had all these insights coming and coming, and then it got a little, very exciting, very exciting. So I had to kind of calm myself down because I was like looking for the next painful thing. Because now I knew I had a sheen in which I was actually sitting in the middle of so much pain in my life.

[22:43]

And I saw that there was transformation happening. So it's kind of a charge, I have to say. A little bit still in a bliss bubble about it. So... oh my goodness, page one. So let's see, where will I go now instead of the other? What I found very important was to check in with my intention. What was my intention? Because many of you have probably heard that everything rests on the tip of intention. It's something we talk a lot about in our practice, but you don't have to be in our practice to know that When we can get in touch with our innermost request, pay attention to there's this life I have. How do I wish to express my life in the midst of possibilities?

[23:48]

And then when I get in touch with that, how do I intend to do it? So, so many of us haven't learned that we can actually pay attention to our authentic self. We don't have to listen to anybody else's ideas about who we are. We don't even have to listen to our own ideas about who we are. When we sit and we are concentrated and we get quiet, everything reveals itself. I want to read to you, I'm going to, I guess I had to be invited to do some more Dharma talks to do these other pages. But I do want to read to you a favorite quote I have from Bob Dylan. Because, well, when I was a young person, he was like my favorite poet and songwriter and musician, and I just adored him. And why did I want to read him? Let me see why. So Dylan suffered a lot.

[25:02]

Oftentimes people who are poets and musicians express their suffering through their creativity. And to fully express himself and to claim a larger part of himself, he had to give up his ideas of what a musician is. He had an already, like I had this idea about what a shi-so is. He had an idea about what a musician is. And he had to get in touch with his intention. If he wanted to stay playing music, then he had to claim a larger part of himself. And so I want to read this to you. Let's see, where did I mark it? So he was very enamored with Mike Seeger, who was a folk singer that was adored by many of us in the 60s. And he was adored by Dylan.

[26:05]

So he wrote, what I had to work at, Mike already had in his genes, in his genetic makeup. Before he was even born, this music had to be in his blood. Nobody could just learn this stuff, and it dawned on me that I might have to change my inner thought patterns. That I would have to start believing in possibilities that I wouldn't have allowed before. That I had been closing my creativity down to a very narrow, controllable scale. That things had become too familiar and I might have to disorient myself. Which is what happened for me when I was completely disoriented when I got so sick. that I couldn't do my usual habit patterns. It's a very wonderful thing to be disoriented because then there's the seeing, ah, now what?

[27:10]

Reading more of what he wrote. I know I was doing things right, was on the right road, was getting all the knowledge immediately and firsthand, memorizing words and melodies and changes, but now I saw... that it could take me the rest of my life to make practical use of that knowledge. And Mike didn't have to do that. He was just right there. He was too good. And you can't be too good, not in this world anyway. In order to be as good as that, you just have to be him. And nobody else could be him. the thought occurred to me that maybe I'd have to write my own folk songs, ones that Mike didn't know. That was a startling thought. Up until then, I'd gone some places and thought I knew my way around, and then it struck me that I had never been there before.

[28:14]

You open a door to a dark room, and you think you know what's there, where everything is arranged, but you really don't know. until you step inside. I can't say I'd seen any performances that were like spiritual experiences until I went to Lomax's loft. I pondered it. I wasn't ready to act on any of it, but knew somehow, though, that if I wanted to stay playing music that I would have to claim a larger part of myself. I would have to overlook a lot of things. a lot of things that might even need attention, but that was all right. There were things that I probably felt totally powerless over anyway. I had the map, could even draw it freehand if I had to. Now I knew I'd have to throw it away. Not today, not tonight.

[29:19]

Sometime soon, though. I have found this so very touching in my life. It's a part of what underlies my not wanting to prepare Dharma talks. Like I'll prepare something and then I don't want to really look at it because it's a map and then I walk in and the territory is different. And I want to create with you how we are with each other. And it's... And so I understand his writing. I feel resonant with him. And I wanted to share that with you because it's so meaningful to me. Can I read you one more quote? We tolerate one. I know people don't like when we read, but I'm just so, and I'm going to take advantage of it. So where is it that I wanted to read you? Let's see.

[30:22]

One, two. I didn't write it? Oh, this is by Eleanor Roosevelt. Some of you weren't born when Eleanor Roosevelt was First Lady, but she was revered by many of us who were Democrats or Socialists or Communists. Everybody in those categories usually adored Eleanor Roosevelt. And I adored her because she was plain speak. And she was a very active First Lady. And she wrote this book, the book called You Learn by Living, Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life. And she had a chapter titled The Right to Be an Individual. And she considers that it's our moral responsibility, it's a moral responsibility of living to look at what we believe and and to fully inhabit our inner life as the foundation of integrity, our inner life, to examine that.

[31:30]

And more than that, of what it means to be human. She feels it's our moral responsibility to examine what it means to be human. And she writes, it's your life, but only if you make it so. The standards by which you live must be your own standards, your own values, your own convictions in regard to what is right or wrong, what is true or false, what is important and what is trivial. When you adopt the standards and values of someone else or a community or a pressure group, you surrender your integrity. your own integrity. You become, to the extent of your surrender, less of a human being. This goes in very deep, very deep for many of us women who were brought up in the 40s and 50s to follow along with what the community expected of us.

[32:42]

And we didn't even know who we were. Many of us didn't even know we were human beings. We were appendages of others. Not for all of us, but that was the culture in which I was raised. So she's been a heroine for me when I read this. And so I think we may have around five or ten minutes for questions, because this time I can actually see my clock. Last time when I was asked, what did my clock say? I said it was 11.23 when it was 8-23. I'm going to read you one more thing. It's this poem that I read last time. I read this every single day, at least once, when I was in the sickness cave. It's so helpful to me to have these inspirational words, written words, spoken words.

[33:42]

It's inspirational to me to see people who have so much more practice and see how they are being. You know, that's so much more important. How are they actually being? So here's the poem I read a few times. I go among trees and sit still. All my stirring becomes quiet around me like circles on water. My tasks lie in their places where I left them. asleep like cattle. Then what I am afraid of comes. I live for a while in its sight. What I fear in it leaves it, and the fear of it leaves me. It sings, and I hear its song. This was written by Wendell Berry, and it's in a book called Sabbaths that was written in 1987.

[34:49]

You know, when you're an old person, you have all of these books that you read when you were younger that you can pull from if your memory will allow you to remember. So those are the things I wanted to say to you. And now I'd like to hear what you might want to say to me if you have questions or comments. I think we've got time for maybe two questions. Yeah, Chris. This transformation you described, this sort of purification process that's played in. It's not very magical. It's not magical at all. It's not magical at all? No. It's a mystery. It's a mystery. But it's not magical. At least my experience has nothing special, actually. Did you... Do you feel your practice was encouraging us to happen? How did you allow this? Did you have any volitional sort of quality in getting us to come forward?

[35:55]

Well, I have over 20 years of practice. So it isn't like, you know, there wasn't anything under me. And what happens with most of us, it certainly happened for me, I want to have, I want to purify my mind of these thoughts that lead to suffering and I want it right now. But I haven't found that it's worked that way for me. I've had times where, you know, periods of, oh, I have some deep wisdom came up. So it comes up for a while and then I forget. This was an intense retreat. And Christina brought something up to me this morning that I think has such merit. She had been a physical therapist. She was saying sometimes that our bodies are very vulnerable. And I'm going to translate it the way I translated it as I listened to her. We're not able to defend or do our habit patterns like we used to.

[36:55]

We're very vulnerable. And so one of the benefits of illness, at least this illness, this time for me, was I just simply did not have the energy of to do my habit patterns. So it was easy. It was easier to face all the fear and the pain and see it as consequences of causes and conditionings. I didn't cause that. I'm free of those for this moment. Everything is important. Has that been enough response for right now? Well, for right now, more questions are done. Okay. Sure. So there is somebody else over here, I sunraise their hand, or is there somebody that usually doesn't speak in public that wants to take a risk? Jump off the 100-foot pole. I did.

[37:57]

If I didn't look, I'm still intact. You can jump off the 100-foot pole. I'll catch you if it looks like you're going to hurt yourself. I encourage you any more. Maybe it's better to be quiet. We share it over here. Yes. I'm a brave soul. What? I'm a brave soul. Oh. And I would just say I think it was very nice to share something very simple that we all experience. You know, maybe not exactly in that same way, but the talk is to inspire and we hear something that is familiar and we can apply it to our lives, it's very helpful. And so I think I found your talk very meaningful for me and hopefully, I think, for other people here. Thank you for telling us how this was for you. And it does sound really simple. And it's really difficult to do.

[39:00]

Yes. I think. What happens is it sounds so very simple. So we think there's something wrong with us. If we want to avoid the pain, I mean, that's human. Or if we're not able to have these deep insights, patience, patience. Even if I call them deep insights, I didn't want to go to the word deep because that kind of shows like strata. Insight is insight. It comes when it comes. And... And so to inspire us, I think it's important to tell people our stories about how we're practicing with real events in our lives because this is common to all human beings across time, across culture, across everything. This is what it is to be a human being. So, oh, I see. You have your hand. You have your hand. What should I do? All right, just those two. So I saw your hand first.

[40:03]

I wonder if you think the fact that you got sick was sort of a gift? For sure. For sure. At this time, in these conditions, I mean, I couldn't think of a better medicine for me than to be asked to do something that I had these notions about that I was going to do perfectly well. and not be able to show up. It's like, I taught a workshop on Sunday. I was sick. I taught a workshop in January. I had several sicknesses during this first quarter of the year. And it's like, no. And I need to be careful to not pick up these habit patterns that have been drivers of my life because I like this better. It's not just that I like it better. It's a better way to live. It's more congruent with the authentic self.

[41:08]

Thank you for asking that. Is that enough? Thank you. And then you, your hands? Yeah. I was just wondering, when you were reading about Nira, is that what you're called, Nira? I mean, M-I-R-R-O-R, I don't know a whole lot. In fact, I just skimmed the article. Don't have the details. I just wondered if you mentioned imprinting that may be relative to genetics or culture or socialization. But I'm also wondering, since we have aspects of memory, if you came across something that some people call a photographic memory, or we can remember people, or sometimes our conscious mind might have some sense of learning. I was wondering, you were talking about these patterns and perhaps with these aspects of different feeling, whether they're abuse or joy or sorrow or suffering or ecstasy. And I'm wondering if I touched on something where the neurons may actually have never of not just this imprint, yet a feeling, but specific people.

[42:18]

Relative to feelings. I'm really not prepared to answer a scientific. In fact, in some ways, I wasn't sure it was even wise to bring up the various neurons because I really want to focus on the practice. But it would be I enjoy these kinds of discussions maybe another time. It's a great question. I'm just not prepared to answer. It's just fascinating. Yeah. So thank you for asking. I think we need to stop now. 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.

[43:18]

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