This podcast is offered by San Francisco Zen Center on the web at sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good morning, everyone. Good morning. My name is Kenyoku Tim Wicks, and I'm very glad to talk to our head practice for San Francisco Zen Center City Center. which is a block away. For those of you who don't know, we're undergoing a year-long renovation. You get the toilet and put the elevator in and make a nice, warm, welcoming, and shoot way so that everyone recognizes the paper line as long as this potential. So this is the second iteration of our pop-up meditation time.

[01:14]

We're sort of developing and cultivating relationships with other institutions in the neighborhood. So we've had a couple of one-day sit over at Unity Church, which is just down the street from us. on Page Street. And now this is our first one here. So thanks for bearing with us as we work out some of the kinks and wrinkles that there are to being here. I have to say that I'm very excited to be here. It's really interesting. This is a printmaking studio right here. Page Street Art Center is a non-profit. And so they have Colossians here and these incredible shows, the show of 60s lithographs from mostly music events. And downstairs there's like three other galleries with the same theme of lithographs down there.

[02:24]

So I'm actually very excited to be here. And it's really interesting because, and I'm going to have to do a capsule where my daughter talks to me about five minutes to start, but I end up repeating things. But there's a mural from 1936 in the hallway over here that was made during the WPA era. And in 1936, there was a general strike in San Francisco. Those of you who lived through big stripes, just the energy that there is reverberates long into the future. And, you know, some historians thought that some of the remnants from the general strike in 1936 is what gave a sense of openness to the beat generation. And, of course, the beat generation, which was mostly a literary... historical event gave birth, many people believe, to the counterculture generation of the 1960s, which these constructed from.

[03:37]

So there's sort of these reverberations that happen from different historical events and that's kind of what karma is. Karma, which is often misunderstood as fate, is, karma just means action. But what we're interested in as Buddhists is the reverberations after hand that happen and affect other interconnected things. I can just really feel that in this building. Not only my actual talk, right here. So I need to thank Marco Lopo, who's the abiding at City Center and who is very carefully looking after our monastery in Tassajara right now in Coffey here. They're looking after it for over a longish period of time and going to be leaving the practice period here.

[04:44]

I also would like to thank central David Zimmerman with whom I'm co-leading this day long with and as always I would like to thank my teacher Rizzo Ed Sidersen for his perhaps full hearty patience and his incredible kindness and welcome also to everyone who is joining us online So the title of this talk is The Stranger in the Mirror. And in it I'll be talking about rebirth and reincarnation. My cup is over there with my name on it. Thank you very much.

[05:47]

So, right now it's far to be alive in a human body with all the suffering that there is in the world. And it's with these large brains that we have. Thank you so much, Helen. It's with these large brains that we've had that we've developed so many ways to know about what it is that's happening across the globe. And we can find out where it is happening across the globe in just minutes of it happening. And it's also with these oversight brains that we have that we hear the cries of the world. San Francisco Zen Center is a Bodhisattva training facility. And Bodhisattva is a being who moves towards enlightenment but stays in the world of suffering till all beings can be enlightened together. To hear the cries of the world is a project of the Bodhisattva in training.

[06:59]

Hearing the cries is painful. The pain we feel when hearing the cries means we're hearing them. In the process of hearing the cries of the world, we have to remember that we're not alone and we have to look after each other. My first Buddhist teacher, who was not presenting Practitioner with the Vipassana, Thiravadu teacher, said of Buddhists that we're never bored because we're always paying attention to the miracle of what it means to be alive. Fine-tuning our ability to pick up on smaller and smaller details of what it means to be a human being. In Zen, with our faces to the wall, we were making contact with others in Zen. Someone might be kind. We're picking up on energy, the unsteen.

[08:04]

We're going deep inside the skull. That first teacher also said that we're never alone. And we're never alone because we're connected intimately to everything and everyone in the universe throughout space and time. I love doing that. The big body. We learn to connect the intimate, the internal and the honesty with the monumental and the universal. And the problem, of course, is remembering that. Last Saturday, Lisa Hoffman spoke over at the building up on Page Street about the connection we have to our teachers in our lives. She brought into the room two teachers, the first, Leela and Darlene Kahn. And she asked us all to bring our teachers into the room as well.

[09:04]

And this is something that we can do anytime. And when we do, there is an energy that is prevalent. With our imaginations, we think of our teachers and the way we relate to them. And there's a power to this prevalent. When I began working on this talk, I thought we really don't believe so much in reincarnation in our scientific age, that it was mostly a daily belief system that was a holdover from the previous times to the Buddha. As I looked more deeply into the subject, I saw that it was in fact one of the most universal cultural belief systems, as well as Eastern religions such as Hinduism and Jainism and Sikhism. based and shamanic religions. Indigenous, Australian, and some of the diverse Native American cultures believe in reincarnation.

[10:08]

And in our own tradition, there's also Abrahamic religions that believe in reincarnation. Awabites, a barely splinter group from Shia Islam, a civic duke, And the Rosicrucians, which is the 17th century religion, stars itself as an esoteric Christianity, all believe in reincarnation. The Dalai Lama very famously told Carl Sagan that if the theory of reincarnation could be disproved by science, then it would be rejected by his school. He added, of course, that it would be very hard for modern science to disprove reincarnation. Partly because of the influence of Tibetan Buddhism, the theory has gained an increase in belief in the West in recent decades. And there might even be some of you up here today who believe that people are reincarnated.

[11:12]

So what is reincarnation? It's the belief that a soul The non-physical essence of a living being begins a new life in a different body after the biological death of a previous body. Different reincarnation belief systems differ in details, but basically they agree that a hidden soul is immortal and that it maintains a state of permanence as it transmigrates to the body of another human or animal. This is the view of the Hindu religion dominant at the time of the Buddha. Modern scholars and Buddhist practitioners disagree on many points in the various theories of reincarnation, but many Buddhist scholars point to the work of American psychiatrist Ian Stevenson, who did a lot of research on children who remembered past lives as, if not validating reincarnation, at least providing new evidence that the theory

[12:20]

is far from disproved. Much attention has also been given to the many cases of near-death experiences, where people who have died have been resuscitated and witnessed some kind of continued consciousness after death. And these examples provide a window once again as the possibility of reincarnation. And it's hard to say. As Mahayana Buddhists have been saying, they argue, there is nothing that is permanent. And this would extend to the idea of a permanent stall that could be reincarnated in another party. What we understand is that due to the interconnectedness of all phenomena, there is some kind of continuum that exists. There is depth, certainly. and we are a little suspicious of ideas that are formulated more to ease our fear around that rather than having a strong connection with reality as we see it in its interconnected way.

[13:33]

But the continuum has more to do with karmic energy and reconstitution than it does with an afterlife. Charlie Kiyotken In his excellent book, Karnam describes Shakyamuni Buddha's thinking as being a middle way between a nihilist idea that at death all traces of a person disappears and an eternalist view of a permanent soul that changes physical bodies. According to the Buddha, both body and mind are subject to continual change. And so even at death, what is transferred from one life to the next is not an unchanging psychic principle, but different psychic elements all hanging together.

[14:35]

Samskarts, memories, various impressions, and so on, none of which is unchanging in itself. The Buddhist concept of rebirth, therefore, needs to be clearly delineated through ideas with which it sometimes is conflated, especially the reincarnation idea frequently associated with Hinduism, whereby one returns a different body but with the same soul. Rebirth is in many ways much more complicated than reincarnation and has to do with conditioning and complex overlay of karmic processes. For the Buddha, what is transferred from one life to the next are a series of psychic phenomena that are conditioned.

[15:38]

Everything that is conditioned is subject to change. it is caused by three existing conditions and is therefore impermanent. That even as we are alive every moment, the Buddha said, you are born each moment, decay each moment, and die each moment. We are a collection of karmic causes and conditions that make up a life where there is no intrinsic permanent self. Therefore, not running itself to be reincarnated. We investigate the self in meditation and see that we're a collection of these feelings, emotions, psychic reactions, memories, fears, and aspirations that are constantly changing, which we call the five standards or five aggregates of form, which is constantly changing, sensations, perceptions,

[16:43]

mental formations which matter and objects of mind which are thinking processes and consciousness. We are conquering dust and water that is constantly in flux, cells of the reconstitution, reconstituting throughout our life. And when we die, those elements continue into another form. In his book, What the Buddha Taught, the Taravaghi scholar Walapola Rahula of if we can understand that in this life we can continue without a permanent unchanging substance like a self or a soul why can't we understand that those forces themselves can continue without a self or a soul behind it up to the non-functioning of the body When this physical body is no more capable of functioning, energies do not die of it, but continue to take some other shape or form, which we call another life.

[17:56]

Physical and mental energies, which constitute the so-called being, have within themselves the power to take a new form and grow gradually and gather force to the full. So nearly 25 years ago, I became clean and sober. And I had been drinking and using drugs for 25 years, since I was 12 years old. To suddenly stop ingesting various chemicals is such a difficult thing to do. And in fact, with alcohol addiction, it can be failed. And afterwards, with alcohol addiction, One has a medical detox because it's such a severe change for the body. So this change was so massive in my life that it felt like I was dying. And in fact, in all areas of my life, it was as though I had been reborn.

[19:01]

That I had experienced some kind of rebirth. There were karmic energies transmitted from one life to the next. The comet is just volitional action, as I explained before, which produces energy. If I get angry, energy is produced and effects that which it makes contact with. I carry many characteristics. my previous life with me into my life of surprise. The psychiatrist that I went to in rehab, when he heard my story of how I was treating my childhood depression with drugs and alcohol, he said that I had been self-medicating. And the conditions that I was inefficiently treated with drugs and alcohol were still alive in me after my rebirth as a cleanly sober person.

[20:12]

So I had to find new more efficient ways to live a life of stable mental health. And so I did, but I still carried with me certain karmic conditioning into my new life. And this has been reborn with a series of karmic overlays from my thoughts. Again, more recently, nearly two years ago, the long-term relationship I was in suddenly and without any warning ended, resulting in a kind of trauma that left me shaking to the core. As I began to recover, I noticed, and this after about six months, that there was a stranger in the mirror. It was very disconcerting. I didn't recognize who it was who was looking back at me. I had certainly lost weight, and there was no question that I was looking older.

[21:12]

But there was something else that was startlingly different. Something interior. I was a different person. There were a few characteristics that were similar to the old person, but mostly I had changed. Just a few remnants were left. It was fascinating. I had been reborn and I was never going back. My father was depressed. Psychotherapy and antidepressants were not yet fully a part of his generation's healthcare landscape. And we don't know what, of course, is genetic and what is environmental, but I feel pretty confident that one way or another parts of my father would be born in me. We spent a lot of fun wanting to be like our parents, and yet at some point, a few years ago, I just started saying hello to my father when I looked in the mirror because in many ways I was the same as him.

[22:19]

He had been reborn in some ways in me. Not exactly the same but eerily similar in many ways with a similar energy. Buddhism and Zen in particular can attract many of us who are introverts Some of us want to calm and untangle the problems of metaphysics on our own. The external world and other people are a distraction from our more important internal journey, and dealing with them is an irritation. We need time alone. Buddhism regards the kind of insight being in this way as inferior because it rejects one of the three tools of Buddhist doctrine, which is Sangha. we are in right here, right now. Even if this is your first time here, for at least an hour or so, you are in a sangha with us.

[23:22]

It is in relationship that we can best understand the karmic overlays and interactions of our cause to see how it is that we are reborn in the present. It's in relationship with others that we cultivate loving kindness or metta. While investigating itself in Sankha, we laboriously uncover our own suffering, seeing that it is made up of a bunch of changing phenomena. We see we are not trapped in our various experiences. They aren't permanent. This allows us to relax around anger and shame and go deeper. As we come to know the characteristics that make up the person you call me, we begin to see similar characteristics in others. Early in this practice, I began to uncover this immense sense of shame that I had previously been on forever.

[24:37]

Meditation and talking about it with my teacher made clear to me that this was a holdover from previous life. I had shamed from when I was a child in parts, because for various reasons my parents were not able to touch me in a loving way. And I found in Sangha that this is very common. As I looked closely at the character of that shaman, I saw that there was another type of profound regret that was even deeper. And this was very interesting to me. I couldn't tell from where it came. Once I heard about the phenomenon of intergenerational trauma, however, some days seemed to make sense. There's an energetic transference from one generation to the next. We can detect that which is dramatic like trauma. What happens for whole people can be transmitted through generations. Shame or sometimes we call its sort of less dramatic version, low self-esteem and remorse are all openings for our investigation as in practice.

[25:56]

They're there for a reason. Like detectives, we follow the feeling. There was something both foreign and familiar about the collections of feelings that seem to come from another life for me. From what my family can tell, we've used these apps, you know, like ancestor.com that help me trace the past. It looks like my family, the Jewish side of it anyway, came from somewhere in Central Europe in the 19th century. Why were Jews moving from Central Europe in the 19th century? There were pogroms there. Jews were being beaten and murdered for their heritage. They were being terrorized. These experiences leave a powerful residue on people and energy, a vibration is created that can be tossed onto succeeding generations. Coming to know the different kinds of shame and remorse that there were for me to experience, I began to notice how many other people

[27:07]

have a series of similar internal experiences. We sometimes call it low self-esteem and it is so prevalent in our culture that when I first started to notice that in others it seemed overwhelming. Buddhism asked us to cultivate loving kindness in Sangha and it's easier to do in Sangha because that is where we most easily come up against barriers like shame and low self-esteem. apply our practice of loving kindness. And it's in the Sangha that we break these barriers down. I was never very good at cultivating compassion. My first practice was, as I mentioned, Theravadana, Vipassana. And Manta practice is like the big thing there. And I was always a little frustrated that I wasn't very good at cultivating Manta practice. but it was possible for me to learn to love, even the most difficult santa members.

[28:09]

When we cultivate loving kindness, the natural karmic result is compassion. It just appears, but we have to try loving first. As bodhisattvas in training, we practice non-harming, and we're asked to cultivate deep compassion both for others and, very importantly, for ourselves. This compassion helps us in our inquiry regarding harm, how we have been harmed, but also how we have harmed others. We've all harmed, although many of us have been harmed more than we have harmed, and we have a tendency to focus on that, it's important to investigate the harm that we cause others. As a street white male, who has lived a privileged life, I have many opportunities to look closely at how the group that I'm part of has harmed.

[29:12]

Often it is simply through ignorance that I harmed, being privileged untrained, to accept certain conditions that I think were granted. I have a sense of general safety in the world that only straight white cisgendered males get to experience. The sense of entitlement my group has maintains the status quo that harms those who are not part of the privileged group. As a Bodhisattva in training, it's necessary for me to listen to those who are helping to counter my ignorance. So when I'm told by people of color, women, and those who've been marginalized by the heteronormative power structures, I have to listen. This process is not to shame myself or focus on how bad I am or my group is, but simply to make contact with what it is like to harm. This allows me to connect with another's experience.

[30:19]

It is a form of passing energy from one being to another. Harming is energy. There is an exchange between the person harmed and the person harmed. our meditation practice, trains us to perceive this energy, for it is part of the collection of experiences we call being alive. As Boghisattvas in training, we're charged with understanding of causing and receiving harm. These are the bigger ways I have harmed and then they're all the smaller, the times my ignorance has led me to harm someone close to me. When that happens, when I hurt someone close to me and I'm made aware of it by them, usually, there's first of all a sense of defensiveness.

[31:24]

I don't want to harm anyone, a few of us do. This is usually followed by an experience of openness. I am, once again, and this is due to the practice, someone who is harmed. I am reborn as someone who's harmed someone else. And then this is usually followed by my experience of being someone who has been harmed. Even with all of my privilege, I have been harmed. So what was that like? As a Jew, I know what prejudice feels like to be looked down upon, to dehumanize. This is very valuable information when I'm talking to someone else. Looking at this exchange of energy, of harming and being harmed, the layer of my past actions and how it is that I try to live a life of not harming is called Buddhist practice.

[32:28]

When I was an active alcoholic, there was a consistent sense of emptiness. In recovery, we call it a hole you're trying to fill with alcohol. It is a narrow life that focuses only on the next dream. Our practice is the practice of seeing how complex our interconnectedness is and allowing ourselves to be reborn as a whole. living people that includes all sides of our humanity. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma Talks are offered free of charge, and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, please visit sfcc.org and click giving. May we all fully enjoy the Dharma.

[33:32]

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