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. I'd like to welcome everybody and especially those who are here for the first time today. Do we have some newcomers? Great. Well, welcome. And I hope your time here this morning will be of some help and benefit to you. And also want to welcome all those out there in the live streaming land. Thank you for joining us from afar. And I'd like to thank Zen Center for inviting me to give this talk today. And I especially want to thank Rosalie Curtis. head of practice, and my many teachers over many years who have supported me and inspired me and instilled their trust in me, and especially my Dharma Transmission teacher, Shosan Vicky Austin.

[01:18]

So I'm deeply grateful for their support. And for those who don't know me, my name is Catherine Stark, and I'm a priest. And I really began becoming attracted to Buddhism in my teen years, but I didn't really get serious about practice or study until 1990. And I was ordained as a priest in 2003 and then received Dharma Transmission in 2013. And after six years of... graduate school and clinical training. I now work as an interfaith chaplain, spiritual support counselor at Hospice by the Bay in Marin and Sonoma counties. And so my talk today revolves around the focus of awakening through service, which is a new program that Zen Center is offering here.

[02:21]

It's a year-long program. which is going to be led by myself and Jeffrey Schneider, back there in the corner. Jeffrey, you want to stand up? People can see you. And so, one, I wanted to talk about that because it is of interest to me, and I hope it is of interest to you. But also, I guess it's a bit of a shameless promotion for the program, hopefully to maybe inspire some of you to sign up for the program. So when we speak of awakening through service, what are we actually talking about? What do we mean by this? The Buddha said that in caring for ourselves, we are caring for others. And in caring for others, we are caring for ourselves. And Suzuki Roshi said, we should open our Dharma eyes.

[03:23]

and together we should help each other forever. Opening our Dharma eyes. In other words, he's telling us we should wake up. But waking up to what? So when we talk about awakening, which we talk about a lot in Buddhism, we are talking about the truth of how we actually exist. And this was the realization of the Buddha in his enlightenment experience. In his quest of trying to discover a solution for the problem of human suffering, he found that the root of this problem, if you want to call it, is our attachment to our idea of a self.

[04:26]

And he discovered that there is no inherently separate existing self. So this is expressed as the wisdom or prajna of emptiness, of self and others. The wisdom of non-self. or anatta in Sanskrit. Through a method of intensive investigation of this problem of human suffering, which in Sanskrit is, the word dukkha is used, which actually means something more like deep dissatisfaction, the Buddha came to understand the lack of inherent existence of what we usually identify and call as self. Suffering is ultimately caused by the ignorance of this truth, our belief in and our attachment to any idea of this delusive self, and the craving for its permanent existence or for its annihilation, as expounded by the Buddha in the Anattalakana Sutta,

[05:47]

the not-self characteristic discourse, which was actually his second teaching after his enlightenment experience. In this sutta he says, thus, monks, any form, feeling, perception, fabrications, consciousness, whatsoever that is past, future, or present, internal or external, blatant or subtle, common or sublime, far or near, every consciousness is to be seen as it actually is with right discernment as, this is not mine, this is not myself, this is not what I am. So the solution to the dilemma of self and clinging to me, mine, I, myself, may be found through the process of turning inwards and studying this idea of self in order to see through its delusory nature to the truth of things as they are.

[07:00]

Dogen Zenji, the 12th century Zen monk and founder of our Soto School of Zen in Japan, emphasizes this practice in his fascicle, Genjo Koan. And there's this famous quote that I'm sure many of you have heard, but I'm sure some of you haven't. He says, to study the way of enlightenment is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be actualized by myriad things. When actualized by myriad things, body and mind as well as the bodies and minds of others drop away. So in this dropping away, we come to realize our true nature, our Buddha or awakened nature. Dogen said that all beings are Buddha nature. And when we are our true authentic selves, we are supporting all beings to do likewise.

[08:13]

So this process is mutually supporting. Dogen calls this process in another one of his fascicles, jijuyu san mai, self-receiving and employing samadhi or concentration. When we express our true selves as in the samadhi of zazen, We are not only supporting and benefiting ourselves, but also everybody else. And all beings and all things are likewise supporting us. Dogen says that all things, like grass and trees, walls and pebbles, in coming forth and expressing their true selves, are supporting all things. All things are mutually supporting each other. The awakened nature of all being is mutually supportive.

[09:19]

So, as a natural response in the realization of this mutually supportive nature of all being, is the wish to give back. The desire to be of service. because it is in awakening that we recognize the mutuality of suffering. It is the compassionate response to the wisdom of awakening. We are naturally drawn to respond to the cries of the world. So how does our Buddhist practice support those of us, and maybe there's some of you here today, who are working in areas of providing service to suffering beings. Excuse me, I can drink a water. So I think the most important aspect of this, of how our

[10:33]

Buddhist practice and training can help us to provide service for others is that by addressing the problem of self and self-concerns that the experience of self can be transformed, opening us up to capacities that we would not otherwise know. Transformation of self-experience occurs when we are able to let go of self-identification with our own suffering and are able to come to an understanding of the universality of suffering. Through our own experience of suffering, we can develop empathy with others and awareness of our interconnectedness. In other words, we understand that we are not alone in our suffering. So, From my own personal experience, and I can't believe it's almost been 10 years, I was in a very serious car accident and I was almost killed.

[11:43]

And it took me about two years to recover from this accident. But while I was still in the hospital after I came out of the ICU and I was in the post-surgical unit, and I was there about two weeks, I became acutely aware of this truth of the universality of suffering. I could hear down the hallway, and I had several roommates come in and out while I was there, people crying out in pain, crying for their mothers. And I was brought in, this was a... trauma center, and I was brought in by helicopter. And where the post-surgical unit is, is on the fourth floor. And I could hear the helicopter coming in every day, several times a day.

[12:46]

And I just thought, wow, this is just like me. These people are coming in. in various states of severe trauma, just like me. And then I realized, you know, this is not just mine. This is all of ours. We all go through some form of this human condition of suffering. We all get our turn, you know, at one point or another. So... The awareness of our interconnectedness through our mutual experience of suffering is the antidote to the experience of separateness, as well as a source of compassion for others and for ourselves, and thus is transformative.

[13:47]

However, before transformation of our experience we must first become aware of what our experience actually is. So our practice helps us to discover where our edges are, where our aversion, judgments, the ego of ourself and of others, and how to respond through that investigation from a more equanimous place in relationship to these mental states. So this process expands our capacity for compassion and generosity of self. And here we enter the realm of the bodhisattva, the one who enters mindfully and compassionately into situations where people are in distress or in crisis. And in Mahayana Buddhism, which Zen is a part of, The bodhisattva is the embodiment of an enlightened and an enlightening being who lives for the benefit of others, for the benefit of all beings.

[14:58]

And the presence of a bodhisattva is a reminder of what is possible for ourselves. This quality of presence, as represented by the bodhisattva, is one of the most important aspects of service. And so what do I mean by presence? Presence implies that there is an authenticity, a genuineness in our encounters. In presence, there is concentration on listening deeply with caring empathy. We are really there for the other person. Howard Kleinbell is a pastoral care and chaplaincy educator and author. He says... Instead of worrying about what one is going to say or do next, we should focus energy on being aware of and with the person in an alive human relationship.

[16:01]

All of us have known the empty, depersonalizing feelings resulting from conversing with a person who isn't really present. as persons sense even vaguely that the therapist or the social worker or the chaplain or the nurse or the doctor or whatever service profession we may be speaking of, if they sense that even vaguely that the therapist is really trying to listen deeply and relate fully, a tiny, fragile nexus as delicate as a spider's web, will begin to connect their aloneness with the therapist's aloneness. This is the first vital strand of what will become a sturdy bridge connecting the islands of awareness of two human beings. I really like that imagery of this fragile strand becoming a strengthening bridge.

[17:06]

The quality of authentic presence can hold reverently yet lightly what is arising in the moment as it is unfolding now without distraction. Presence is an attentive awareness that is steadfast. It does not turn away. Presence is the ability to stay. In cultivating this ability to stay, we can say that presence itself is awakened mind. Pema Chodron, the teacher in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, her pith instruction for meditation emphatically expresses this idea of staying. She says the pith instruction is stay, stay, just stay. Learning to stay with ourselves in meditation is like training a dog.

[18:13]

If we train a dog by beating it, we'll end up with an obedient but very inflexible and rather terrified dog. The dog may obey when we say stay, come, roll over, sit up, but he will also be neurotic and confused. By contrast, training with kindness results in someone who is flexible and confident, who doesn't become upset when situations are unpredictable and insecure. So whenever we wander off, we gently encourage ourselves to stay and settle down. Are we experiencing restlessness? Stay. Discursive mind, stay. Our fear and loathing out of control, just stay. Achy knees, throbbing back, stay.

[19:18]

What's for lunch? Stay. What am I doing here? Stay. I can't stand this another minute. Stay. That is how to cultivate steadfastness. In the sense of staying with, the connection between presence and our practice becomes clear. Buddhist practice is training in staying with our experience, bringing attention moment by moment to whatever is arising and allowing it to come into awareness and allowing it to pass away. In this moment-to-moment awareness, past and future are let go of, and we can know our experience as it is now. We become intimate with our experience, our life, and we can identify what is not serving us in the moment and let that go.

[20:27]

So where this really becomes alive for me in my work in service as an interfaith chaplain is when I find myself in situations that are either really chaotic or that bring up really deep feelings for me. And just one example is last week we have an institution in Sonoma which is called the Sonoma Developmental Center. and I think it used to be the state hospital. And the people who are patients or residents there are severely disabled, either mentally or physically, or mostly some combination of both. And we have a few patients on hospice care in this center. Excuse me. I had a new patient, and I went to see him for the first time.

[21:39]

And I actually didn't get to have any interaction with him. He was asleep, and I think mostly because of the morphine that he was receiving. And so I wasn't able to speak with him. And he was in a room with two other gentlemen. both of whom clearly had severe disabilities. One of them was in a wheelchair, and he was asleep, and his body was severely contracted. And the other man was in a bed that was, they had created a very low bed, low to the floor, with a kind of, it wasn't a railing, but it was like a barrier, and I think this was to prevent him from falling. my assumption was that he had a history of falling out of bed, so they had created this low bed for him. And he also was very contracted.

[22:42]

And he was awake and he was looking around, but he didn't acknowledge me. And so when I walked into this room, you know, in my chaplaincy work, I never know exactly, you know, what I'm going to encounter when I step through that door. And... You know, I just, you know, seeing the state of these three people, it just really went into my heart in a very deep way. And even though I have experience in working with, you know, the developmentally disabled and it's not unfamiliar territory for me, at that moment, I really became aware of this cascade of emotions. Everything from kind of fear and anxiety to to aversion, to pity, and none of these things were going to help me be present for my patient. And this is where I bring this up to just illustrate how practice can be really helpful in that moment.

[23:51]

So in that moment, I just stopped and took a breath and acknowledged, turned towards the feelings that were coming up, and... and I was able to just drop them, let them go, know that they were there, and then I was able to turn to my patient and pay attention to him. But if I hadn't taken that moment to really be aware of my own feelings, they would have continued to be active and I wouldn't have been able to really be there for my patient So from this intimacy with our own experience, it is possible to really be genuine and authentic with others. Another pastoral care educator, David Switzer, he wrote a book called Pastoral Care Emergencies, and he discusses the relationship of genuineness to awareness.

[24:54]

He says, genuineness refers to the degree of awareness we have of our own feelings. Both our accurate hearing of the other and the accuracy and clarity of our verbal responses are affected by the degree of our self-awareness. Attention and energy given to our own self-protection and cover-up, both conscious and unconscious, take our attention and energy away from the one we want to be helping in a time of distress. So I think this is really important. I know it's really important for me in my work. And I think this is where Buddhist teachings and practice and training really have something unique to offer that other kinds of practices or trainings or religious or spiritual traditions may not have, this kind of deep attention and awareness to what our own experience of how we are, that focus on our inability to stay and be present.

[26:14]

So likewise, this quality of authenticity encourages others to be real and genuine with us. So, If we can model this authenticity and presence, we can inspire that in other people. Just as when we experience it from others, it inspires us. In present moment awareness, the emphasis is not on looking for insight into the past. Rather, the focus is on present mental and emotional states and behaviors. allowing insight to arise that can lead us to alternative ways of thinking, acting, and which may be more beneficial to ourselves and to others in the moment. So for anyone working in a service profession, an ability to be with the situation in awareness allows for a greater capacity to be more present for those with whom they are working.

[27:19]

to help that person to see their situation with greater clarity. So both the service provider and the client are more able to respond to their situation rather than react. The social worker who can be more present in the moment can more skillfully reflect what they are observing and hearing to their client. This can assist the client to see herself more clearly and how she may be affecting those around her. This awareness may lead her to begin to make changes in behavior. Through these changes in behavior, changes in thoughts and feelings may be facilitated. So, by enacting change, real change can occur. So in our practice of zazen, we are encouraged to practice, even if we don't believe it, as a Buddha.

[28:26]

Dogen said that our practice of zazen is practice realization. Zazen is the activity of a Buddha. In Bendo Wa, the wholehearted practice of the way, specifically in reference to the ritual of zazen. He says, in Buddha Dharma, practice and enlightenment are one and the same. Because it is the practice of enlightenment, a beginner's wholehearted practice of the way is exactly the totality of original enlightenment. For this reason, in conveying the essential attitude for practice, it is taught not to wait for enlightenment outside of practice. Since it is already the enlightenment of practice, enlightenment is endless.

[29:31]

Since it is the practice of enlightenment, practice is beginningless. So our practice is awakened activity. So I just kinda wanna make a little divergent, kinda go off on a little different track here to consider another way of looking at this. So if we speak, if we can speak of zazen as a ritual, We might say that those performing the ritual embody and express, through the ritual, awakened activity. That the activity of practice is the activity of an awakened being. If one understands the non-dual nature of the activity, as well as the participant, we could extrapolate ritual to all aspects of our life.

[30:36]

ritual performed as awakened mindful presence has within it the potential for healing and transformation because it is coming from awakened presence. This is sometimes referred to as enactment ritual. In zazen, the practitioner enacts the awakened state realized. The Buddhist scholar Robert Scharf in his essay on the performative model of ritual, considers this enactment aspect of ritual in terms of play. Through ritual, we rediscover a world wherein a stick is a horse, a wafer is divine flesh, a stone image is a god. In ritual, the form, content, subject, object... and self-other dichotomies are intentionally confounded, creating a transitional world that is neither inside the mind nor outside in the objective world.

[31:47]

Ritual exposes the transitional nature, the betwixt and betweenness of social reality. So a few years ago, I went to a workshop led by... It was a weekend retreat led by Rev. Anderson, one of our senior Dharma teachers at Zen Center, which the focus of this retreat was the, well, it was called Zen Ritual and Play. And he was expanding on this idea of ritual play and how it extends to all the activities of our life. So he was exploring this concept through the Mahayana teachings of emptiness. So through the practice of mindful meditation, we can become more familiar with the patterns of our mind-body processes, and we begin to understand the insubstantiality of a separate self that is unchanging.

[32:53]

Through this process, we can begin to understand the deep connection or emptiness of all things. So relying on this teaching Reb was teaching that if we understand the emptiness of all phenomena, that is, emptiness as expressed in the teachings of the Prajnaparamita, or perfect wisdom, form is emptiness, emptiness is form, which essentially means that if there is no ultimate separation between self and other, then our whole life, and everything we do becomes the ritual embodiment of awakened mind. We are then free to fully play our part in life. Our whole life becomes the ritual enactment of awakened heart and mind. When we fully understand this, we are able to be our innate awakened nature and thus fully play our part in the deep mystery of being with complete freedom.

[34:01]

from fear and unease. So it's just like, you know, I'm enacting right now a Zen teacher. And maybe if I play the part enough, I can actually embody this role. So responding from this place of wisdom and compassion, this can help us all to bring a fully engaged presence to whatever situation we may face. And thereby we have the best possibility to really be of help. And so in summary, I think we can safely say that awakening is service. And service is expressing and enacting our awakened selves. Awakened presence can engender trust on a deep level. By being with our own pain, fear, aversion, and attachment, et cetera, there is less resistance to our experiences.

[35:11]

Knowing ourselves more deeply, we can be more open to life and to others. When there is more openness between people, there is naturally more trust and a feeling of connection. When we can more freely open to our own experience, we can more freely open to the experience of others. We begin to understand that suffering is universal and shared. Understanding this as a chaplain, I can develop more trust in my ability to really be there for others and can more easily let go of expectations and outcomes. I have trust that in being open and accepting of whatever arises that the appropriate response will also arise. Presence and trust embody the sense of really being with another together and can open the door for transformation and healing in suffering.

[36:20]

Realizing that what one thought was unique and personal is also experienced by others, can cultivate a strong sense of the universality of pain and that one is not alone in one's suffering. Feeling apart from is one of the most common and most difficult things to bear in human existence. And really it's an expression of this strong attachment to our self and self-concern. The deep unhappiness and despair that is felt when one feels completely alone and separate from others is a very common thread in our human existence. From my experience as a chaplain, the deepest despair felt by my patients is often felt when a person feels a part or outside of God alone. or however a person conceives of the deep mystery of being.

[37:26]

And we can see this articulated in the biblical story of Adam and Eve, in which the consequence of eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was to be cast out of paradise and to dwell apart from God. So looking at this story in Buddhist terms, we might say, when we understand our existence from dualistic thinking, for example, as good or evil, we separate out into me and mine, us and them. We see ourselves and all existence as separate from one another and all things. We don't see our inner connection. And our inner connection is the true source of deep joy and bliss, the source of our true happiness. So I'd like to end with a poem from Tagore. The same stream of life that runs through my veins night and day, runs through the world and dances in rhythmic measures.

[38:37]

It is the same life that shoots in joy through the dust of the earth, in numberless blades of grass and breaks into tumultuous waves of leaves and flowers. It is the same life that is rocked in the ocean cradle of birth and of death in ebb and in flow. I feel my limbs are made glorious by the touch of this world of life and from the life throb of ages dancing in my blood this very moment. Thank you very much. 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 Dharma.

[39:40]

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