Good morning. Good morning. As the Master was sitting in front of his house beating a drum and crying following the death of his only child, his students approached and said, Master, if it's all an illusion, why are you crying? And the Master replied, Yes, it's all an illusion, but at times such as this, it's a very sad illusion. So we have all been called on again and again

[01:06]

to witness the capacity in this human heart for hatred. Hatred based in a profound isolation from an enlightened vision of reality, a vision of what the Buddha called the true reality. In true reality, all of us are connected, we are interdependent, and we are devoted to caring for one another. Seeing that reality is what makes a human being whole and even sacred for a time. So I knew that I was going to be talking about a true reality today. That's what we're always talking about. And true reality has to do with seeing this very world and everything in it with eyes of compassion and wisdom, as the Buddha did.

[02:09]

And it's not so easy to see with those eyes when people we love, now being called soft targets, are being slaughtered by their fellow humans with monstrous weapons and hate-filled beliefs indicative of utter madness. So I wasn't sure how to enter this talk today because I wanted to celebrate Pride Day on behalf of all of those who worked so hard for us to have the right to exist. Not only to exist, but to fearlessly love those who we love, to raise our children, to have jobs, to run for public office. play professional sports. So I think there's maybe been enough written and spoken and so on about civil rights and about the laws of this nation, which have yet to catch up with the founding proclamations of liberty and justice for all.

[03:32]

Those are words that I was taught as a child. And I was taught to recite them with pride. And I can remember that I was proud to be an American when I was a child. I truly was. So I thought today I would talk about pride. Pride is an old English word that means excessive self-esteem. And that's certainly not the way we're using that word when we talk about gay pride or black pride. Pride, in that case, refers to feelings of deep pleasure and dignity when sharing one's social identity openly with others. So when I reflected on the various identities that each of us bears,

[04:39]

as in my case, aging, a white, female, American, registered Democrat, Buddhist priest, lesbian, abbess. I am really struck by the way that each of those identities separates me into parts, as in not whole. And then I began to reflect on the notion of being proud of those various parts. You know, how did that feel? And what I realized was that I'm proud of some of them and not so proud of others. You know, kind of like a mosaic of pride and shame. At the moment, I am somewhat deeply conflicted about two of my particular parts, one being American and the other privileged white female. And both of these are continuously being supported at a very great cost to others.

[05:44]

And then I thought about all those other people in all those other categories. For example, I thought about men and Christians and Jews and Muslims, and I thought about Republicans and black people and Asian Americans and Native Americans and children. I thought about all of them. And I could feel proud of them. Not all of them. But I could feel proud of those who have developed their moral character. You know, who are honest and non-violent, who are generous, patient, compassionate, and wise, regardless of their categories. Those who have become whole who are not separated, who are not broken into parts. So once I understood that moral character was the common ground for being proud, not of myself or my categories, but of others, I am proud of you when you are kind and respectful and generous.

[07:06]

as I hope you are also proud of me." So the reason I'm bringing all of this up is that this notion of self-love, of self-esteem, of self-pride, and of just plain old self, is what the Buddha taught to be the very wellspring of hatred. Hatred meaning seeing others as outside, as separate, and as dangerously different from you. I don't like you because you are not like me. So when pride is used in reference to oneself, there comes along with that a tendency to make that self into a solid. I think it's interesting if... you know, you take a moment to reflect as you're introducing yourself to someone or they're introducing themselves to you, how quickly we begin to use markers to identify ourselves by our financial, social, sexual status.

[08:20]

When a monk said to his Zen master, pointing to a cat sleeping in the corner of a room, I call that a cat. What do you call it?" The Master said, you call it a cat. So I did come here today to celebrate gay pride in the spirit of being truly proud of the courageous people who stood together and said, enough. Stop it. Stop hating. Stop hating those who are different than you. And my Dharma brother, Nyo Lehi, who's the abbot of the Hartford Street Center in the Castro District of San Francisco, and also a Sanskrit scholar, told me the other day that the Buddhist word for non-harming, ahimsa, means to not hate. To not hate.

[09:27]

And not hating is something that we all can and must learn to do. But it takes time, and it takes practice, and it takes some courage, and most of all, it takes a great deal of patience. So this last winter, I was living at Tassajara for three months, leading the practice period there, the ango. Anggo means peaceful abiding. And I was there with 65 students, and it was... Remarkable thing to do. I highly recommend Ongo. So I was talking about the 16 Bodhisattva precepts, and among them, there are 10 prohibitory precepts, including a disciple of Buddha does not kill, a disciple of Buddha does not slander, a disciple of Buddha does not harbor ill will, a disciple of Buddha does not hate.

[10:31]

So in support of my study, I was reading a number of books, and one of them is a rather controversial book written by a professor by the name of Brian Victoria called Zen at War, which I consider to be essential reading for any of you who are engaging in this conversation that we modern Buddhists are having with one another about our tradition. I think particularly when it comes to using the tradition to justify violence of any kind. So I think it's also essential to read criticisms of Ryan Victoria's book and decide for yourselves what you think about the material that he's gathered there. Some of it's quite damning to the Buddhist establishment during the Second World War. So when I say it's essential, I don't mean for your becoming well-informed, but actually for the practice and deep realization of humility.

[11:44]

The Buddha taught in the Diamond Sutra that it's only by humility that we shall be liberated, in particular from ourselves, our solid selves, especially the ones of us that believe that that we and our friends are in any way better than others. My country, my religion, my family, my property, my race, my beliefs, right or wrong. These are the foundations of terrorism. So one morning, while we were all eating breakfast in the zendo, I remembered a dream that I'd had many years ago. And in the dream, I was standing in a meadow, very much like the meadows around where I used to live in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, high Rocky Mountain meadow. And as I was standing there,

[12:52]

there was a cave in front of me and a large brown grizzly bear came out of the cave, standing on its hind legs with its claws extended, walking toward me. And probably because it was my dream, I wasn't afraid. So as the bear approached, I noticed that it had a large festering splinter in its paw. So I put my hand out and the bear put its paw in my hand, and I quickly pulled out the splinter, after which the bear did that great thing grizzly bears do of bellowing in my face. I think it was a kind of thank you, you know, I'm not sure, but... And then she went back onto all fours and ambled back to her cave. So as I was remembering that dream during Orioki breakfast down at Tassajara, it became very clear to me that I had become quite angry while reading this book, Zen at War.

[14:01]

There's a particular kind of anger that I'm familiar with in myself and maybe some of you are as well. It's called righteous anger. So it took a bit of work for me to conclude that that bear was me when I'm angry, and that my anger has an obvious source, and that is terrible pain, terrible sadness, heartbroken and alone in a dark cave of the separate self. One of the six realms that the Buddha taught that we humans pass through again and again throughout our lives, and often throughout the day, is called the hell realm. And the beings in hell, like this bear, are characterized by anger as they are being relentlessly tormented in all varieties of ways. We even use the name bear baiting for that, right?

[15:08]

Tormenting the bear. So I think it's important for us to notice that when anger arises that it's covering up some deep pain, you know. You hurt me and I hate you. So after breakfast, still down at Tassajara, I gave a lecture on not harboring ill will, which includes much of what I'm going to say next. And in that lecture I recounted another story about my experience of allowing my long repressed anger and underlying pain to show. And it happened during a staff meeting at Tassajara. It was after our abbot had resigned and we were all kind of, not kind of, grief-stricken and a little bit dazed about what we were going to do with our beloved community without the teacher. So at that time I was living as a monk at Dasahara, it was back in the 1980s.

[16:15]

And so as we were sitting there, one of the teachers came into the room and said she would like to place the name of Dan White on the altar in the zendo. And I'm wondering, probably many of you don't know who Dan White is. Some of you might. You do, some of you do. Anyway, briefly, Dan White was a supervisor in San Francisco in 1978 who entered City Hall with a gun after he'd resigned his position as supervisor and then changed his mind. And the mayor at the time, George Moscone, refused to reinstate him. So he became quite hurt and quite angry. So Dan White killed the mayor, who was a very good man, And then he went down the hall and he killed Harvey Milk, who was also a very good man, and probably the first openly gay elected official in the history of the world.

[17:19]

So there were riots, gay riots. Not so many people were hurt, but there was a lot of fires set and a lot of crying. And I remember at the time, as I was sensing the danger of my own anger rising up, that I stuffed it away with the other intolerable pains that I had already suffered in my very young life. Assassinations and warfare, all the things you know and I know that are becoming history. As a further note to the tragedy, Dan White was acquitted of first-degree murder on what became called the Twinkie Defense. He had been eating sugary junk food, and his attorney said that he had become temporarily insane and therefore had killed these people. And so he was given voluntary manslaughter charge and spent five years in prison. And a few years later is when he killed himself.

[18:26]

He got out of prison and he went into his garage and turned on his car, leaving behind two little children and his wife. and a lot of very unhappy people on all sides of this anger and hatred. No one was celebrating anything. So when this teacher asked to put Dan White's name on the altar, the she-bear came out of her cave, and I knew she wasn't going to stop. I was so angry. So I put my head down in my lap, and I covered my head with my hands, and I just held on for what I imagined to be dear life. And the amazing thing was that this practice of sitting in the flames, another name for zazen, allowed me to experience the power of physical containment of my overwhelmingly emotional response to what was happening.

[19:35]

I think all of you in this room have sat in flames, are now sitting in flames. You know what I'm talking about. And you too, perhaps, didn't move or make a sound. You sat there. Just like the Buddha who sat under the Bodhi tree as he experienced the excruciating assault by Mara's vast army of pained and angry hell beings. I think I wasn't curled up for more than a few minutes. And finally I was able to sit up again and open my eyes and look around at my friends who were looking at me with a great deal of concern. But what they didn't know is that was probably one of the best things that ever happened to me in my entire life. Because the bomb had gone off. My long-suppressed anger had imploded, allowing me to see this incandescent light that I'd been trapping inside of my body for many, many years.

[20:42]

There wasn't any sound. There was no image. There were no concepts. Just light. Cold, white light. It didn't hurt anybody. It didn't hurt me. Completely harmless. There was no outcome to my rage-filled anger. And nobody even knew that it had happened. All they knew that I was curled up like a south bug. So I'm telling this story because the experience of such intense anger within the safe container of our practice is what enabled me not to be afraid of myself anymore. I had learned to hold still by sitting zazen. day after day for many years, I could hold still. I could be quiet. And I could wait as long as necessary for the waves of strong feelings to pass.

[21:48]

So this is the practice of patience. Shanti. And it's also what I mean by not harboring ill will, you know, by not giving hatred a place to hide inside of ourselves. and to not scare others away from knowing who we are, how we feel, and how they might offer us support. I've often heard residents here at the Zen Center say that they're afraid that they're going to be thrown out if they tell the seniors, the practice leaders, what's going on inside of them. So they hide their feelings, their behaviors. And what I tell them is, well, please don't think that all of us aren't afraid of that. Afraid of being thrown out, you know, out of our jobs, out of our marriages, our houses, out of our bodies, out of our minds.

[22:50]

Or just simply afraid. We're all afraid. But even so, there is help. There is a kind of help, a human help. that can be offered to us if we'll come outside of our caves, if we'll allow ourselves to extend and show our wounds to others, to receive their offer of encouragement and support to come out of the dark places where we hide. Because much like the bear, if we don't thoroughly know, experience and trust ourselves with our own anger, lust and stupidity, then we truly are dangerous. We will not only make victims of others, the ones we declare to be the cause of our pain, but we will make victims of ourselves. So this experience that we know as anger is like a flashing light on the dashboard, you know.

[23:54]

It's telling us to pull over. Stop. and wait and ask ourselves, what is the practice when I'm feeling angry? What is the practice for anger? So that moment of self-reflection makes a great deal of difference. In fact, a huge difference. A difference between reactivity and responsibility. In extreme cases, it's the difference between life and death. I sat with some men at San Quentin a year ago as part of the Buddha Dharma Sangha, which is the name of their Buddhist group, sitting group over there. I often think of them when I drive by that horrible structure. I don't know if any of you have been near it, but there's a medieval iron gate with spikes that you enter through. It doesn't move, it's just antique, but they keep it there for the fear factor.

[24:58]

So anyway, most of these men who I met when they were teenage boys had killed someone out of anger. And each of them said the name of the person they'd killed and how long they'd been in prison. And most of them were in their 50s or 60s at the time I met them. Very polite, very kind to one another, very kind to us. And they were probably very likely to spend the rest of their lives together at San Quentin. if they were lucky, because it's one of the better places, apparently, to be incarcerated. So these were mature, thoughtful adults who had missed the one chance for a different outcome to their lives. A hair's breadth deviation will fail to accord with their proper attunement. Upali the barber asked the world-honored one, suppose a bodhisattva breaks a precept out of desire, another does so out of hatred, and still another does so out of ignorance.

[26:05]

World-honored one, which one of the three offenses is the most serious? The Buddha said, if a bodhisattva continues to break precepts out of desire, for kapas as numerous as the sands of the Ganges, his offense is still minor. If a bodhisattva breaks precepts out of hatred even just once, his offense is very serious. Why? Because a bodhisattva who breaks precepts out of desire still holds sentient beings in her embrace. Whereas a bodhisattva who breaks precepts out of hatred forsakes sentient beings altogether. A bodhisattva should not be afraid of the passions which help her hold sentient beings in her embrace. but she should fear the passions which can cause her to forsake sentient beings. Desire is hard to give up, but is a subtle fault. Hatred is easy to give up, but is a very serious fault.

[27:08]

Ignorance is difficult to give up and is a very serious fault. As Tenjin Roshi points out in his book on the Bodhisattva Precepts called Being Upright, Our Zen community has a lot of regulations about sexuality, but much fewer about anger. Mirroring our society at large in which depictions of cruelty and violence make excellent family movie going, whereas explicit scenes of human sexuality have been and continue to be subject to censor. The great comedian Lenny Bruce was imprisoned for obscenity in 1961 as he... bravely pointed out the fundamental hypocrisy of a society in which actual guns are given as Christmas gifts, whereas encouraging the use of condoms by teenagers creates a public outcry. So I also want to recommend to you that you check out Lenny Bruce if you don't know him.

[28:12]

He's a fantastic comedian and wonderful and sacrificed himself for our good, for our benefit. for decency, by using obscenity, of all things. Words, not actions. Also, there's Rod Serling, John Cage, and the ageist George Burns. All of them filled our airwaves for a time with public displays of sanity, of kindness and humor. For the bodhisattva, passions such as lust and anger are actually considered to be fields of blessings that you walk through, following the middle way and the path of awakening. For those who've taken the bodhisattva vow, there's an ongoing challenge to acknowledge anger as it arises and then to discover quickly what actions you can take that might transform that anger into beneficial response, which is not so easy.

[29:16]

So easy. So I really found it interesting that this word prohibitory, the prohibitory precepts, in Latin means to hold it in front of you. Hold it in front of you. Not in back of you. Don't banish your feelings. Hold them in front of you. So you can see them. You can take responsibility for them. Yes, this is my anger. This is my... dishonesty. This is my speaking ill of others. It's mine. It's mine. By not hiding our impulses in the dark recesses of a cave, we can bring them out into the light, you know, the rainbow light of self-awareness, of not hating. And then as we witness in this world terrible injustice and cruelty in the light of not hating,

[30:18]

it will be possible to illuminate in us an appropriate response. Patience is the antidote to anger and is also a primary condition for enlightenment, shantiparamita, the perfection of patience. And it doesn't mean to just tolerate your pain, the way that a dog tolerates fleas, but actually to experience expand your capacity to experience what you're feeling without running away from it or wallowing in it. Just more space inside. When we practice patience, when we're sitting upright, breathing and reminding ourselves to relax, the pathway of anger, of harmful anger, is completely blocked. Admitting and feeling our own pain enables us to listen more carefully and deeply to the suffering of others.

[31:21]

So I'm going to end this morning with a story about the most renowned of all listeners in the Buddhist tradition, Avalokiteshvara, meaning the Regarder of the Cries of the World, in Japanese kanon, Chinese konyin, and here she is, right here beside me. bare-breasted, ready to move, ready to get up. She has one leg forward because she's ready to take action, to save or help others. Avalokitesvara first appears among the Mahayana Bodhisattvas as a prominent figure in the Lotus Sutra in the guise of a male. And yet, in the Sutra itself, the Buddha tells us that Avalokitesvara can appear in any form as needed, even as a Buddha. or a Brahmin, as a god or a king, or as a commoner, an elder, a youth or a maiden, as a dragon, or as a Garuda that eats dragons, as a human, or anything else one might need.

[32:28]

There are many stories about Kuan Yin, such as the one I'm going to tell you from the complete tale of Kuan Yin and the Southern Seas. Kuan Yin had vowed to never rest until she had freed all sentient beings from the cycle of birth and death. Despite strenuous effort, she realized that there were still many unhappy beings yet to be saved. After struggling to comprehend the needs of so many, her head split into eleven pieces. The Buddha Amitabha, upon seeing her plight, gave her eleven new heads to help her keep her vow. With her new heads, she was now able to hear all the cries and to comprehend them. But as she reached out to all those in need, her two arms shattered. Once again, Amitabha came to her rescue and bestowed upon her a thousand new arms. And since then, Kuan Yin has never taken a break. Yunnan asked Da Wu, what does the Bodhisattva of Great Compassion do with so many hands and eyes?

[33:37]

Da Wu said, it's like someone reaching back for the pillow at night. Yunnan said, I understand. Da Wu said, how do you understand? Yunnan said, all over the body is hands and eyes. Da Wu said, well, you've said a lot there, but you got only 80%. Yunnan said, well, what about you, elder brother? And Da Wu said, throughout the body is hands and eyes. So I've always thought of Wanyin as the Sangha treasure. You know, the many hands and eyes, day and night, that respond to cries from those who are in need, out of our bottomless vows. And so I thank all of you for being that, the Sangha treasure, the community, like-heartedness. And I also thank you for joining us today for this mosaic of celebration and sorrow, for our dear brothers and sisters and non-

[34:42]

binary family members who are across the bay marching and across the nation walking together and who are all so deserving of our love, our respect, and our comfort. Thank you very much. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our programs are made possible by the donations we receive. Please help us to continue to realize and actualize the practice of giving by offering your financial support. For more information, visit sfzc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[35:29]

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