of the San Francisco Zen Center. This will actually be the last Wednesday talk of our winter practice period. And I want to let everyone know that there will not be a talk in this time slot for the next two Wednesdays. And our speaker tonight is Kim Hart, Kogan Kim Hart. And Kim is our head student for the winter practice period. This is her training practice period as she becomes a teacher. And without further ado, I will offer the opening verse. And we will begin. Penetrating and perfect Dharma. is rarely met with even an hundred thousand million Galbas.

[01:02]

Having it to see and listen to, to remember and accept, I vow to taste the truth of the Tathagata's words. Good evening. I don't know if I've been made co-host and if... Ah, there we are. Good evening, everybody. It's wonderful to be here with you again. And thank you to Ian O'Brien for the eloquent introduction. I do beg your indulgence. As he pointed out, I am in training. So my second ever talk, and I'm delighted to be sharing this momentous occasion with all... 62 of you. Wonderful. I would like to thank, or I would thank, the Tanto, Head of Practice, Horan Nancy Petron, for inviting me to give this talk this evening.

[02:15]

And also a deep bow of gratitude to my teacher, Ryushin Zendo Paul Heller, who has been guiding me warmly and generously along the path for over a decade now. as well as Kiku Kristina Lenhia, who is sharing the responsibility of leading this practice period. And between the two of them, I feel very swaddled and taken care of in the warm arms of compassion and care. Thank you both very much. After my last talk, I was so relieved it was over. And I said to my husband, I don't know what I'm going to talk about next. And he was like, oh, you're okay. You can just sit for 45 minutes and say you're going to talk on emptiness and then just sit in silence. I was like, he understands Zen, but somehow I didn't think that would be entirely helpful.

[03:16]

So tonight I am going to talk about how, regardless of where you are in the world, regardless of where any of us are in the world, we have a common language and how that language, expresses itself and how it can be a Dharma gate. I considered calling the talk, I saw a lovely talk by one of our fellow Zen practitioners, Erin, the other day, and she came up with this expression, which I'm delighted by, the human condition. Maybe this will be called the human condition, or the alternative title for this talk is the sound of the rain needs no translation. When I first started practicing, I was in South Africa many years ago in the late 80s, early 90s. And I came upon Zen. And I remember there being so many particularities, so many small little details to learn.

[04:20]

Enter the Zendo with your left foot. Go to the Tan, knowing what a Tan is. Bow in a very particular way. Turn clockwise. Bow again. Sit on your Zafu, not a cushion, a Zafu, a black meditation cushion, and then turn clockwise again. And then how you sit and the posture. There were so many little details. And I spent ages learning them all so that I could feel a part of this new group that I'd started sitting with. And eventually, you know, I got the hang of it and started enjoying myself. And then the time came to leave South Africa. And I was going over to England. And I knew that I wanted to continue practicing Zen and software Zen specifically. And I was really nervous. I was like, well, I'm in a different country. It's going to be different. I'm going to have to learn all these kind of rules and these ways of doing things again. Are they going to enter with their left foot? Are they going to bow the same way?

[05:22]

Well, I was delighted to discover that it was identical. And then when I went to Italy, it was the same again. The charts were the same. that all the forms that I'd spent so long learning were all the same. The language that we were sharing was the same language, from South Africa to British English to Italian, all different languages and different cultures. But there was something that was so connected, such a deep sense of community for me and warmth in this common language of the Soto Zen forms. And it got me thinking about where else we have common language. What else do we as human beings share that we have in common? I considered nodding the head or shaking the head. And I was like, yeah, that's probably common. And then I went to Japan, and I discovered that that's not common at all. It means nothing over there. I'd shake my head. It meant nothing. You had to do this.

[06:23]

Nope. So that was interesting. I was like, okay, so even some body language that I'd considered common universal, it simply isn't. But then one time, I was in Venice. I was at a bar in Italy, places where you get coffee and croissants in the morning, also called bars, and I was standing there to write about tourists as you tend to be in Venice. People speaking these different languages, having their own experience and sharing this wonderful city. And the woman standing next to me, she just dropped like a stone. She fainted clean out. And everybody around her, five, six or seven people, all rushed to her aid. Everybody rushed to her aid. One person picked her legs up. The other person was asking for a wet towel. Somebody else had their hands on her forehead, checking that she was okay. Everybody was a fluster and a flutter, all in their own languages. And I realized that we all fall in the same language. I noticed this about a week.

[07:28]

a week or so ago, gosh, I can't believe it's been such a short time, so dramatic, when President Zelensky was speaking, he was addressing the United Nations, and his translator was translating for him. And his voice was breaking up. And I was almost moved to tears. I didn't need to even hear the words that he was saying to understand what was being communicated, the desperation, the need for help, the pleading. And later on that same day, I saw another video of Russian soldiers. I read the subtitles along the bottom of the screen, but I didn't need to. They were talking about how they had been abandoned in Ukraine They had no food and they had no water. They had nowhere to sleep.

[08:30]

They were cold. And they were suffering as well. And I didn't need to read those subtitles. I could tell that they were suffering. And I was like, well, what does Buddhism have to say about this? And I think I'd like to share with you one of the most famous stories I'm sure many of you are familiar with. is the story of the mustard seeds. A woman was looking after her young child. He got bitten by a snake. Fatally. And she grabbed him in her arms and she was absolutely, absolutely mad with grief. Grief was tearing her apart and she was running through the village. Please, please help me. Save my son. She didn't even want to believe that her child had died, and she was desperately pleading for somebody to help her to save her son. And one of the villagers said, well, maybe you should go and speak to the Buddha.

[09:38]

Maybe he can help you. So she raced to the Buddha, please, please help me. Please help me to save my son. And he was like, I can do that. But you need to go to... every house in the village and you need to collect a mustard seed. She was overjoyed. She was like, okay, I can do that. And he was like, but wait, I need you to collect mustard seeds that come from houses that have not experienced death. So she set out on her desperate mission and went to all the houses in the village and in every house that she went to. They willingly gave her mustard seeds, pressing them into her hands, saying, we wish you well. And she was like, but wait, has your home experienced death? And they were like, yes, our home has experienced death.

[10:38]

She learned that death is everywhere. Everybody suffers death, and it's not her personal experience. It's not only her personal tragedy. It really is part of the human condition. Somehow we think that we shouldn't suffer. We're told it by advertising all the time. But suffering is entirely natural. It is part of life. Pain is a part of our life. That is difficult. But it exists. And it's okay to feel the pain. that we're in. Blue Cliff Record, case number 43, Dongshan's cold and heat. I'll read it to you. A monk said to Dongshan, cold and heat descend upon us. How can we avoid them?

[11:41]

Dongshan said, well, why don't you go where there is no cold or heat? The monk said, Where is the place where there is no cold or heat? Dongshan said, when it is cold, let it be so cold that it kills you. And when it is hot, let it be so hot that it kills you. Now, this is a koan, a subject that Rinzai Zen students use to enter more deeply to understand the mystery of being. Soto Zen practitioners will also We'll also study koans, but it is something that is more traditionally within the Rinzai tradition. What Buddha is saying here is that, well, I can take away your suffering, but that's going to take away the very essence of what it means to be a human being, to your humanity. Life is woven.

[12:45]

The woof is experience, and the weft is in suffering. And there's a distinction. There's a distinction to be made between pain and suffering. You know, we all understand pain. It has a physical basis. Undeniable. There is pain. But suffering is our reaction to the truth of facing old age, sickness and death. And... Pain, well, it's there. As I said, it's undeniable. But the trickiness is with suffering is that it gets caught up with the notion of our misunderstanding around interdependence. So there's not just suffering, but it's me who's suffering. This is my suffering, and I'm the one who's hurting.

[13:48]

And this makes it so much more difficult. When the monk was asking his question, he was asking the question for all of us. How can we face our suffering? How can we face the pain of life and the suffering that the pain of life causes? Actually, viewing suffering is what impelled Siddhartha, the Buddha, in a quest for his quest to understand the meaning of life. He was protected from everything that was difficult by his father. He was very rich. He was a prince. And his father kept him within the confines of a very indulged, palatial lifestyle. And he never had to face anything that was difficult. And he was never exposed to any kind of suffering. And eventually, as a young man, He was like, I really want to go out.

[14:53]

Let me go out beyond the walls of this palace. His father really did not want him to go. But he insisted and he went out with a servant one day beyond the walls of the palace. And the first thing he saw was a man who was hunched over, walking with a cane in obvious difficulty. And he was shocked. Old man. And he was faced with aging. And he was like, is that going to happen to me? Am I going to get old? And the servants were like, well, yes, it happens to everybody. And I would add, if you're lucky. And then he saw somebody who was sick. And he saw somebody who was dead. He saw a dead body. And he was so shocked by the revelations of the tragedy of life. He also saw Sadhu, a holy man, who seemed to be very tranquilly walking along despite all of the old age sickness and death that was happening around him.

[16:06]

And at that moment, the Buddha aspired to understand the truth of our life and the truth of suffering. And he knew that it could not be found in luxury. He had never even been exposed to it within his luxurious lifestyle. And so he knew that he needed to go out and explore the truth of this. He did a lot of different kinds of meditations. He had a lot of ascetic practices. He fasted. But eventually, after sitting for many years under the Bodhi tree, as I'm sure many of you know, he came to realization of the truth of the nature of things. is that all things are conditioned. Everything is conditioned and everything changes. The tree is dependent on the sun for its life in order to exist.

[17:08]

The tree is dependent on water in order to exist. If the sun ceases to exist, the water ceases to exist, the tree does not exist. Everything is conditioned and everything changes. And a lot of our suffering is caused because we resist this fundamental truth. We want things to say the same. We resist the very nature of our own decay. Even language does not support the truth of the nature of things, the truth of the conditioned nature of things. I got given a name when I was born, as though somehow my cells don't all die every eight years and get reborn. There's some illusion that there's some consistency. Even the fact that we have nouns, we name things as though they are things, as though they have some hard and fast reality, when they don't. Ryushin, my teacher, told me a delightful story of when he was talking to Katagiri Roshi.

[18:13]

and it was a beautiful rainy day, and they looked out the window, and Ryushin said, oh, it's raining. And Katagiri Roshi was packed up laughing. He was like, what's raining? What do you mean it is raining? What's raining? Just raining. Just raining. There's no it is raining. So even language doesn't support truth of the nature of things. You know, we lose our lives. Suzuki Roshi said, Our life is like getting into a ship that goes off into the ocean that's going to sink. But even though we know it's going to end, it doesn't stop us thoroughly enjoying our favorite song. You know, the fact that everything is conditioned and constantly changes actually offers us the possibility of harnessing that change. to create the conditions to support our happiness.

[19:16]

And this is the wonderful turn right here. The fact that everything is conditioned and it changes constantly offers us the possibility of harnessing that change to create the conditions for our own happiness. I could cut my finger and I could stare at it and will it to get better. It might, it might not. But I can create the conditions to support its healing. I could get an alcohol swab and clean it, get a Band-Aid, place a Band-Aid on, and then I'm creating the conditions within an ever-changing world to support the healing of my finger, which will then heal better and faster. So every human being has the potential to be at peace with themselves and with the universe. And we can look at the four noble truths. This is what Buddha realized underneath the Bodhi tree, the truth of suffering.

[20:24]

He speaks as well about the causes of the suffering, the path that leads out of the suffering, and then gives us the Noble Eightfold Path. But I want to pause us, because I know for myself, I'm like suffering, there's a way out, I'm going straight for the way out. But wait. Let's settle a little bit. Let's look at dukkha. The truth of suffering. Everything is transitory. Life is unsatisfactory. I think it's a very helpful practice to learn to stay with the suffering that we're presented with in our lives. It's a delightfully pithy fridge magnet that I have, which I adore because it captures this message so well. You may have heard it before. Life is not waiting for the storm to pass.

[21:27]

It is learning to dance in the rain. So how do we learn to dance in the rain? Well, it's one of our key words we've had this whole practice period, santi. Patience. Refuge. Patience. Inclusiveness. Kiku Christina Len here related the story, well, this definition of patience by Thich Nhat Hanh when he was talking about patience is inclusiveness. That whatever is coming up in our lives, can we include it? Can we give it space? Or are we trying to move away constantly? Are we trying to get to the path away? When I first started sitting Zazen, it was pretty blissful. I enjoyed it. But then life happened and I started going through some really tough times.

[22:33]

And I had a lot of years of sitting with anxiety. And... It was pretty extreme anxiety. It was bad. And I remember thinking, you know, meditation is supposed to be good for anxiety. But let me tell you something, friends. Meditation is to anxiety what putting somebody in an elevator is who suffers from claustrophobia. I mean, if you're sitting with anxiety, if you've got anxiety and you sit meditation, It's all gonna come up. It's gonna be right there. But I was very courageous and I would sit with this anxiety and I was like, okay, I'm gonna make space for this anxiety. I'll be like, okay, I'm gonna grieve. I'm gonna do some calming breaths because that will reduce the anxiety and make the anxiety go away.

[23:37]

So we'll just do calming breaths to send the anxiety And it took me a while to realize, oh, actually, I was trying to get rid of the anxiety. That wasn't me welcoming the anxiety in. This is me, like, subtly wanting to get rid of it, not wanting to be with it. So then I'm like, okay, I need to bear witness. This is another expression we have. You need bear witness to what's going on. So I'll be like, okay, I'm going to bear witness to this anxiety, and I feel it. And I tend to feel it really down in my... sort of in my gut, in my sort of digestive, like the para kind of area. And I remember bearing witness on it, and I almost had a vision in my mind of being at a party, and I'd be up on the, I'd be on like the second floor, looking down at the first floor. For my European friends, that's the first floor, looking down at the ground floor. And I would be observing the... the tension and the stress and the anxiety.

[24:41]

I'd be observing it. I'd be watching it. I'd be bearing witness to it. Still, somehow, I was realizing that I wasn't still pushing it away. I was like, make sure that it keeps its distance. Went on like this for a long time until eventually my reserves of keeping it at bay just were not working. It just wasn't working. The anxiety never went. It never shifted for years. Until eventually, during a session at Tassahara, I literally said the words, I can't anymore. I just give up. Come in and do your worst. Just come in and do your worst. And I invited the anxiety in. And it was not pleasant. But it was okay. Because I had created the space, like Thich Nhat Hanh suggests, allowed for this inclusivity to say, come in. I'm going to make friends with you. You can come in.

[25:42]

It took me a long time to realize what it really meant to invite something in. Now, I have a caveat here, and it's an important one. This might not be always the wisest path forward if you have strong trauma or post-traumatic stress disorder. I highly encourage The reading of the book Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness, Kiku Christina Lentier has mentioned it a few times. And within that book, written by David Treleban, there are some wonderful techniques for how to navigate inviting your trauma in. Because it can be very counterproductive to invite your trauma or your stress in if it's actually too big. So there are various techniques that you can use to gently mitigate that and allow it to come in more slowly and managing to keep your body, to allow your body to be a safe space to contain and have the inclusive attitude towards the difficulty and the discomfort and the suffering.

[27:01]

So that's the caveat. David Treleiman's book on trauma-sensitive mindfulness, very, very helpful. for navigating just this sort of thing. So the thing is really to learn this particular technique of expanding somehow, making your heart bigger, making your horror bigger, somehow expanding to allow for the discomfort. My cats. unfortunately killed a mouse and they left it in my bathroom and I couldn't find it for the longest time. And the bathroom smelled really bad. The little bathroom and it smelled really bad. And that's kind of a comparison I want to make because if you're in a small room with discomfort, it can be really overpowering. But when I found that dead mouse and I managed to take it outside and put it in the garden, it didn't bother me quite so much anymore.

[28:06]

There was a big enough space. And as you learn to practice with this, with the patience and generosity towards yourself, you can open up your heart bigger and bigger, contain your own discomfort, your own suffering and your own pain. You can actually open it up bigger and bigger. You can expand and you can contain and hold the pain of the world. And that's a great service. That's a great service. when it's not something that's happening to us, like anxiety, it's something that we're self-generating, ruminative thinking, some kind of self-punishment. I remember when I lived in Venice, I had two beautiful little kittens.

[29:12]

And their mother had been killed when they were born and they needed a home. And so I offered them a home and I was delighted. And they lived with me for three years and I was very, very happy. We're a very happy little kitty family. But then I came to the realization that I wanted to come to America and do residential monastic Zen training. I couldn't bring my cats with me. They couldn't come with me. So I found a wonderful home for them with my friend in France. She's got a beautiful, huge farm and she loves cats and it's all good. And I flew them over. I had to pay for somebody else to fly with me so that they could be in the cabin with me and the man next to me with my other cats. And we flew all the way over to France. And then I acclimatized them by living with them there at this house for three months, doing everything I possibly could so that They would be okay.

[30:14]

And then from there I came over to the USA. But I spoke to Lindsay and she said to me that Puma, who's the little white one, sits outside my door every day. She just sits outside the door of the room that I had. And she just cries. And she doesn't. go in the house. She goes and sleeps by herself out by the sheep. And I feel awful about this. So what do we do about that? Well, we can make space for it. But there's an additional step here. And it's the step of forgiveness. Now, forgiveness is a tricky word. Forgiveness is a tricky word because it implies a me and a you, or a me and a me.

[31:15]

Where I'm forgiving you or I'm forgiving myself. It implies some notion of debt of gratitude and absolution of guilt. And we have to work within the conventions of language. So within the conventions of language, I'm going to say the word forgiving. But really, what I mean... to practice an extension of patience and compassion. To bring warmth and kindness to a perpetual and reactive pattern. To bring warmth and kindness to a perpetual and reactive pattern. To forgive. And if I can forgive myself for something that I did that I think is terrible or that's caused pain intentionally, unintentionally, we cause pain, I cause pain all the time unintentionally, all the time.

[32:21]

Maybe I can forgive other people too because I can see they, you know, we're doing our best here. I'm not so good at empathy. I'm slightly on the spectrum. So I need all the help I can get and I have to forgive myself. Forgive other people. Suffering can solidify into calcification, strangulation, if we let it. It can make us hard and it can make us tight. but it can also soften us. It can be the very seed of compassion that allows us to soften, to open our hearts, but to ourselves, to the people around us. In this way, it's a gift.

[33:25]

My husband jokes, the gift that keeps on giving. When I was very young, went to school, my first day of school, very first day, Well, in South Africa, you go and you would get a school uniform. All the schools, we all wore school uniforms. And on the list of what we needed for our uniform was a white hat. And my mom took me to the store where we buy the uniform for the school. And I had my little list. And still today, I'm very particular to checking all things on a list. And I said to the lady, I want the white hat. She's like, oh, no, miss, you know, they don't wear the white hat. They've got it on the list, but they haven't worn it for years. Nobody wears the white hat. And I'm like, it says it on the list. I want the white hat. I want the white hat. So she was like, fine. My mother knew I was stubborn. I got the white hat. And I went to school the next day wearing this white hat with metal elastic, every piece of myself.

[34:26]

And I was the only person there with the white hat. Nobody else had one on. I wasn't bothered. I remember sitting in the classroom, and as an introductory kind of game, I guess, The teacher was asking different people in the class to name something of a particular color in the class. So like, hey, Johnny, can you point out something that's blue? And Johnny would point out something that was blue. And then she looked to me and she said, can you point out something that is white? And I was looking desperately around the class. I had my white hat on my head, so I couldn't see it. And eventually I couldn't. And she laughed and she pointed out my white hat. And I felt the whole classroom feeling with me that moment of embarrassment, mortification, the fact that she kind of pointed that out to me. It felt like kind of a mean thing that she'd done because I couldn't see the head. It was on my head.

[35:26]

But the thing was that I felt this kindness, this warmth. To this day, I remember that feeling from all those kids, you know. So the significance of these teachings for me really is that they reframe suffering. When I'm feeling discomfort, when I'm feeling anxiety, whatever it is that I'm actually feeling, I consider what it has to offer, what it can teach me, how the suffering in itself is the key to how to work with it. how to work through it. It's the very juiciness of our life, the very richness of our life. Like I said, I'm not naturally empathetic, but these teachings, they help me to relate to people. When someone's angry, I try and remember, are they suffering?

[36:28]

What's happening here? Let me try and understand. Helps me to relate. So I'm doing my very best. It reminds me that so is everybody. And the very famous and well-known image of the lotus coming out of the mud. Well, that's the teaching right there. You know, the lotus is this beautiful flower, but it only survives and thrives in mud. The mud of our suffering, the very messiness of our human life. This is where the teachings are. This is where the beauty is. This is where the softness and the kindness. This is where it resides. This is how I've learned tenderness, is through understanding feeling mortified and feeling embarrassed and feeling pain. Reminds me that I can take refuge in my own heart. There's nothing to fear because suffering is in itself its own gift and teaches us how to relieve ourselves of it.

[37:32]

Dogen says, To study the Buddha way is to study the self. Study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be actualized by myriad things. When actualized by myriad things, your body and mind, as well as the bodies and minds of others, drop away. No trace of enlightenment remains, and this no trace continues endlessly. I'm going to read that again for those of you who are less familiar with it because it is so magical. It speaks about how we learn about ourselves firstly. And then we learn about how we can remember our interdependence, the non-self. Both of these exist. They exist simultaneously. And in recognizing that both, we can be liberated. To study the Buddha way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self.

[38:33]

To forget the self is to be actualized by myriad things. When actualized by myriad things, your body and mind, as well as the bodies and minds of others, drop away. No trace of enlightenment remains. And this no trace continues endlessly. Our is certain to come, and we must forgive graciously. Thank you, everybody, very much. equally extend to every being and place with the true marriage of buddha's way these are numberless i vow to save them delusions are inexhaustible

[39:52]

I vow to end them. Dharma gates are boundless. I vow to enter them. Buddha's way is unsurpassable. I vow to become it. Thank you all very much. We do have about five minutes in case anybody I'd like to bring forth a question or comment. You may raise your Zoom hand and we will help you unmute. go to bed five minutes early.

[41:24]

Sure. So then, thank you. We can allow you all to unmute at this time and say goodnight. Thanks, Kim. Well done. Thank you. [...] Thank you very much. Good night, everyone. Much love, Kim. Good night. Thank you, Kim. That was wonderful. Thank you. Thank you. Great topic, Kim. Thank you so much. Thank you, Kim. Food for thought. Thank you, Kim. Thank you and good night. Thank you. Thanks, Susan.

[42:28]

Thanks, Brian. Wonderful as always. Oh, yeah. You're welcome. My talks have done that too. So much clarity. No one has anything to say. it's the email.

[42:56]

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