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. Before I open my book, I want to just give you a little maybe gift, that I received this week regarding this talk. It's been a very busy time around here. Those of you who live here know that. Those of you who don't live here hopefully have at least seen the various communications about celebrations we've been doing about Zen Center being 50 years old. And... For my life, that has meant approximately one nonstop month, including all weekends, all weekdays, here, Tassajara, back, very, very full.

[01:15]

I woke up on Monday morning after having returned from Tassajara, where I was co-leading a retreat down there. I woke up. And I bet many of you have shared this feeling, which was, I have too much to do. It is not possible to do the things I need to do in the time that I have. One thing being this talk, which I had had exactly zero time to put my attention to or to study for. So the thought came to my mind, triage. You know, this is a time to decide what not to do. It's a good skill to apply. And the first thing that arose in my mind to let go of was the talk. And when I said that to myself, there was a big sigh of relief. I settled into my body. It felt like things were opening.

[02:20]

I was relieved. My shoulders went down. So I called poor Rosalie Monday morning, and I said, Rosalie, I can't give the talk. And she said, OK. It's a little late, and it might be difficult to replace it. And if I can't find a replacement, would you be willing to do it anyway? And I said, OK, thinking maybe there'd still be an out. But starting to tighten up again around the possibility that I would be giving the dog. And then sometime in the afternoon, and I share this with you because it just tickles me that this came up for me. And I really ascribe it to practice. The reason, the conditions that cause this thought to come up for me is practice. I was sitting in my office.

[03:21]

maybe feeling slightly badly about putting Rosalie in that situation. And the thought arose. So triage is letting go of one thing, reprioritizing. The thing that I could actually let go of, which would be the most helpful, would be the stress about the talk. Just drop the stress. It fell away. It just disappeared. Poof! You know, like thoughts do in Zazen? Poof! And the possibility of doing this talk and not stressing about it gave me the same space in my life as not doing the talk. So I called Rosalie and said, I'll do the talk. It was such a gift. It was such a gift, which I hope will

[04:23]

continue to arise for me from time to time when my life is tight. And I offer it to you as a possibility when your life is tight and you can't quite seem to see how you can address all the things that you really want to address. Drop the stress. And, of course, ironically, the stress for me was coming from the concern that I would make a mistake in giving the talk? And guess what the talk is about? Mistakes. I was trying to protect myself somehow from making a mistake, whereas what I want to talk to you about is actually how to practice with the mistakes we make. So that's the preamble to this talk called Shame, regret, and forgiveness.

[05:25]

A wise Buddhist, ancient sage, ancient Buddhist sage named Shanti Deva said, one law serves to summarize the whole of the way of the great vehicle. The protection of all beings is accomplished through the examination of one's mistakes. I like that because it's not just about turning inward and looking at one's mistakes, but there's a quality in it, in that activity, that protects all beings. Earlier this last year, my son, who turns 43 today, So it's my day of birth of him. He was having a difficult time, and I made myself available to him in many different ways. But I couldn't get in there and do what I would call cauterize his pain.

[06:44]

A mother wants to do that. A being wants to do that for another being. cauterize the pain of the other person. Not possible. And in me, in that process, I was aware of this strong arising of a feeling of regret or something stronger, maybe shame, about my mothering, the mistakes I made as a mother. which seemed, when I looked at what was happening in my son's life, to be part of the conditions for his difficulty, for the difficulty he was having in addressing his difficulties. I could see my participation in some of his what I would call maybe weaknesses or blind spots or something. And as part of this arising in me, I really wanted to say to my son, I'm sorry.

[07:54]

I wanted to get together with him. I wanted to, and I offered several times, this is what I want for my birthday present. I want a dinner with you where you will then tell me all the things I did wrong. I bet a few of you have wanted to do this, right? And I thought this was a very good offering. But I wanted him to castigate me. Because at some level, I wanted the pain of my mistakes to go away. I wanted to be relieved. I wanted to be so deeply forgiven that it would be as if it never happened. My son, in his wisdom, has not taken me up on that dinner. Occasionally, he gives me a moment where he says something to me which I feel is from, is an acknowledgement of pain in his life due to ways we had of relating when he was young.

[09:09]

He told me in this last year, we had a phone conversation with And I said something like, I understand. And he said, no, you don't. He said, you never valued family above work. His difficulty was around that kind of balance in his own life. And he said that to me, and I felt that that was true. felt that was true. And there was no animosity in his voice. It wasn't a highly charged conversation. It just sunk into some kind of place that felt true and balanced and an acknowledgement. The light was shown on something. It didn't feel to me like this imaginary dinner would feel.

[10:16]

It was more painful. What's the practice here with mistakes or that deep, painful feeling that can be as deep as the word shame? And in a minute, I'm going to talk about two different words that I've been using to try to open this up for myself. Shame and regret. And I see them as different. I see them as different. And by the way, as I was preparing this talk and wanting to tell you about my, what I felt were my mistakes as a mother, I wanted to say, as a young mother, because I didn't want you to think so badly of me.

[11:27]

I wanted you to start to forgive me. And if it happened because of my youth, then that would be, I'd have a footing in there. I'd have more of a chance of controlling your response to me. These are the kind of things that arise when we start to look at our mistakes. It's very painful. It can be very painful. And it We don't want people to think poorly of us, so we hide them from others and from ourselves. As if we don't all make mistakes. So the difference between shame and regret. Is there a way to acknowledge the mistakes without feeling the need to do something, to get rid of the mistake?

[12:42]

To be with it, to be with the mistake. It's painful. It's painful. And these kind of, what I've described as some of my strategies around turning towards this painful place, you may recognize too. trying to mitigate the mistake by putting a qualifier on it. I was a young mother. Trying to get someone to completely take it away by completely forgiving us. Is that possible? I think it is, but it's not easy. One of the differences between the realm of shame... and the importance of regret. So by looking at shame for a moment, I don't want to indicate that we shouldn't feel badly to some extent about having not met our own ethical values in some way.

[13:51]

That little bit of unease in the Abhidharma Kosha which is a Buddhist text which goes through very, very detailed listing of qualities of mind, and there are categories of wholesome and unwholesome. And one of the wholesome qualities, it's called shame and fear of blame, but I'm going to say regret, remorse. That's a wholesome quality. That's a civilized quality. That's a way of staying upright with ourselves by allowing that arising of some discomfort, some being-offness that we can feel in our bodies from an action or a thought or words that have been part of our life. Shame, the way I'm using it,

[14:58]

is shame that I wasn't perfect. Regret is the action was not according to my own values. I'm going to tell a story. When I started this podcast, process of investigating mistakes, I asked a few people for their stories about mistakes. And this person told me a story about what happened to them at Tassajara. I call it the tofu story. So this person was down in Tassajara and working in the kitchen. And just as one of the kitchen crew, and his job was chopping up cubes of tofu that day. So he chopped up a big hotel pan full of tofu for the next day's meal.

[16:05]

And he carried the tofu into the walk. He put it down, opened the door to the walk-in, walked into the walk-in, and dropped the entire pan of tofu on the floor of the walk-in. And the floor is pretty dirty. We try our best, but people go in with their shoes. It's pretty dirty. This person was so terrified of being seen as someone who made a mistake that he picked up the tofu and put it back in the pan and put it on the shelf and went back to his cabin. Paralyzed with shame. Paralyzed with shame. Because it was not okay with this person to be a person who made mistakes. So... sleepless night, waking up the next day with the intention of going and talking to the head cook and confessing.

[17:11]

So he went up. Something happened. Oh, there it is. I dropped the tofu on the floor and I put it back in the pan. And the Tenzo, the head cook, just looked at him and said, okay, well, let's spritz it off and we can serve it after we wash it. That never would have occurred to the person, the man who was paralyzed with shame. Couldn't respond appropriately. Couldn't do some very simple calculation of what might be done. And the head cook... did not further shame this person, did not play into that realm, and just very simply saw this person. I don't know exactly what the Tenzo saw, but I would say maybe saw his own realm of mistakes and felt very connected to this person who dropped the tofu, coming from this awareness of

[18:25]

of our own humanness and relating to others in that way is so helpful. So the shame that this person had was so strong, they just wanted the mistake to go away. And guess what? It's impossible. The mistake doesn't go away. What happens is our the way we hold the mistake, are relating to the mistake, dropping the stress around the mistake, not ignoring it, however, not ignoring it. And this is the practice of equanimity, finding the middle between over-involvement and ignorance and ignoring it. ignoring something. Over-involvement in terms of the realm of shame.

[19:27]

And that over-involvement has in it a reification of self. I am so ashamed about what I did. I am a bad person. Locking that in, squeezing that down, tightening that up, reifies the idea of me as a a sole operator. This is all my fault. Too much. Over here, what too much might be is we all make mistakes. Everybody was involved. I'll just move on. Everything's okay. That's too little. That's going into, you know, I'm not a solid person anyway.

[20:31]

Who made the mistake? You can really use Zen practice in this way. You know, I'm not here. It's not me. It's all of us. All the way over on this side. So in the middle is something a little less comfortable that takes attention, stability, kindness, wisdom. The wisdom aspect of it, I would say, is the sense that when there is an action, it's supported by all the causes and condition before it, after it, at the time of the action. The whole world supports everything. Everything supports everything. This is an interconnected... This is the basic wisdom that Buddhism offers us.

[21:34]

We're not soul operators. We're in this together. Conditions arise. Our responsibility is to pay attention. And I would say... to be aware of what our own ethical code is. I understand that when Zen Center first started, and Blanche would know more about this than me, but there was great interest in seated meditation practice. People wanted to sit Zazen, which was quite... I'm sure, encouraging to Suzuki Roshi and quite different from the culture he came from in Japan, where only maybe the priests who had been trained to lead their temples had the deep zazen experience and then they sort of sat for their whole community and people would support that practice.

[22:38]

But here, everybody wanted to sit. Oh, David Chadwick's here too. He'd know. And then, at some point along the way, the necessity of, or the, I don't know how it arose, but the interest in studying ethical conduct came up right alongside of Zazen. So this precept study that's offered here, the opportunity to look as a grown-up, maybe, look at How do I want to live my life? What feels resonant here with conduct issues? And that opportunity, that study opportunity is offered and then also an opportunity to stand up in front of people and make those vows. This is how I want to live my life. So this offering...

[23:46]

goes hand in hand with Zazen. And in this ethical conduct, these are the guidelines. These are the yardsticks by which we know whether we're off. And we embody them. We take them in and see for ourselves. You know, the issue, for instance, of a disciple of Buddha does not kill. What does that mean about eating meat? You can spend your entire life contemplating that guideline. And you can fall on many sides of that issue, all of them valid, as long as you've done as thorough an investigation of your relationship to that as you can imagine. Just thoroughly investigate that. That's the request. And then look at the circumstances which are part of that arising for you and put a little bit of a stick in the ground and see what happens.

[24:55]

See how close or far you are from that. Develop your ability to notice when you're off of your own guidelines. I just talked about something I totally didn't have in my paper, so looking back at my paper again. Just for a second, some words I wrote down about regret. To me, I'm using the word regret. I'm not saying that's exactly the right word. There's also a word called remorse, and remorse means to bite again, that little bit bitter taste. I would say I'm using it because there's a feeling, a kinder feeling around regret.

[26:01]

And it's appropriate for past unwholesome actions, regret. It has a coolness that perhaps helps us redirect our attention to our actions. It's not so searing and so paralyzing like shame is that we can't even look. It opens the door, it sheds some light so that we can see. So that's a kindness. Having a way of looking that is less harsh is a way of relating with compassion, with kindness to our life. The wisdom teachings... can encourage us to diminish the shame and help transform it into regret. That's what we're looking at. If there is shame arising, how can that be transformed?

[27:07]

So one wisdom teaching is to encourage us to recognize the person who did that action no longer is present. Am I the mother, the young mother? who made those decisions with my son? Where is she? She's in this room. I invited her to come to this talk. Maybe she's sitting right there. And I would say to her, you too were a baby. What would you say to the person who made that error in your younger life? What would you say to that person right now?

[28:10]

Would you be able to hold that person the way that person didn't hold her own child? Hold in terms of understanding and compassion. Would you do that? Could you do that? That's the way. that the wisdom teaches can help us. That person is not gone, but that person is also not solid. That person can be brought into this room right now and forgiven and loved. All the things that that person didn't do can be done for that person right now. Part of the conditions of that situation probably had something to do with that person not feeling supported, I would say. Let's support that person right now. Let's support her.

[29:10]

Let's heal the situation in the present. Let's do all the things that the precepts help us to understand. Let's use the precepts the activity that breached the precepts. And maybe even let's treat shame itself, as it arises, as a being, as a being to be kind to. to not ignore. It raps rather hard on the window. It's pretty loud. Don't ask it to quiet down. Listen to the screams of shame.

[30:16]

Can you be stable? Can I be stable? And allow that in. not ignore it, not turn away, and not overindulge. Overindulging in shame, I would say, can be seen as a form of laziness. In the same way, my teacher said to me a long time ago, something that I think about quite a bit, he said, overwork is just another kind of laziness. And I would say in that same way, over supporting shame is a way to try to control it. If we're turning up the heat ourselves, that's control. That's an attempt to control the pain.

[31:20]

Make it hotter. Right? You may recognize this as a strategy. Make it hotter. This happens to me quite a bit. There's a lot of material here. And I'm going to skip to the part which is I've been looking at this how to practice with mistakes for about six months now and wanting to get further into the practices around forgiveness. And so this is just a beginning thinking about forgiveness. Forgiveness of the actions that were the result of the karmic conditions that arose in this life stream and

[32:30]

and forgiveness of others. This is coming up also because as part of the 50th anniversary weekend, which we celebrated, Richard Baker was invited, Baker Roshi was invited to come back for the first time on the Dharma seat and give some talks and be part of the process. In my mind, it would have been impossible to celebrate 50 years of Zen Center without him here because so much of the benefits that we enjoy in terms of the place and many, many other things were from his inspiration and his leadership. So what is forgiveness? How does that work? I'm looking at it, and I know other people in the community are looking at it. But I'm going to tell you a story. I'm going to leave you with a story at the end, which is a pretty dramatic story that has in it the possibility for us to consider that we could actually forgive something very, very difficult, either of our own actions or someone else's.

[33:46]

This is a story that I heard when it first was related on the radio, and then it's also... written down in Tenshin Roshi's book called Being Upright. There once was a man, this is a true story, named Michael Weiser. He was a cantor, which in the Jewish tradition is the person who leads the chants and leads the prayer. And he and his wife, Julie, had, I don't know how many children, but they had a couple of children at least, and had been living in Chicago. an opportunity came up for him to move to Lincoln, Nebraska. And the family took this opportunity partly because they felt that maybe out of the urban setting there would be less of an anti-Semitic experience for them. So they moved to Lincoln, Nebraska.

[34:48]

As it turned out, the Grand Dragon, of the white knights of the Ku Klux Klan, Larry Trapp, lived in Lincoln, Nebraska. And when he found out that they were there, his ongoing hate mail and harassment campaign got focused completely on the Weissers. So just for a second, imagine that was you. The Weissers received these violent threats, male, other modes of harassment for a while, and they were angry and afraid and alarmed. However, after some time, the cantor had a change of heart because his faith had taught him

[35:56]

to love his enemies. And before I go on with the story, I ask you to consider, when you hear the end of the story, what is your faith? What does your faith tell you about enemies and friends and how to be with them? So this Mr. Weiser... rabbi weiser wanted to put his faith into practice which is another step what is it and the vow to put it into practice and he and his wife contacted larry by phone in a friendly way they had found out that he was diabetic and he was constrained to a wheelchair they offered to go buy him groceries and he was very angry at first, but they kept at it. They kept at it.

[36:59]

They did not reject him. They did not want to make him go away. And eventually he relented and let them buy him groceries. And then they said, we want to have dinner with you. And at first he said no, and then he said yes. And they went to his home with pictures of Hitler all over the walls. And at that dinner, face to face, Larry started to tell them the causes and conditions of his life, where his father had said to him to hate anything that wasn't just like him. Larry softened. Gradually, he admitted he couldn't resist the wisers anymore. And he withdrew from the Ku Klux Klan.

[38:01]

He wrote letters to all kinds of groups of people that he had maligned apologizing. And he eventually became terminally ill. He moved in with the Wizers and converted to Judaism. This actually happened. This happened. This can happen. This is possible. if the wisers can work with Larry this way, can we work with our Larry? Can we work with the mistakes that we made that harmed others, the most painful mistakes? Can we? Thank you. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click Giving.

[39:19]

May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[39:22]

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