Good morning. This morning I'm going to talk about suffering and despair. You aren't surprised, are you? My fave. It takes so much getting ready.

[01:14]

So I personally like to say that everything I've learned I've learned from unbearable suffering. Suffering so great I had no choice but to penetrate to its source. And many students who practice with me who chose me for their teacher have turned their intractable physical pain and mental anguish into teachers. In fact, one of my students calls her disease lupus roshi. So these are people who have penetrated past their preferences into the source of all perception. The clear sky without clouds, the blank screen, emptiness as opposed to form, whatever you want to call it. And what they were able to realize is that their suffering comes from wanting things to be different.

[02:20]

First of all, I would like to point out that our practice is always body practice in sickness or in health. Zen is tantric. That means it's body-mind. It's about the resolute stability in our body's and the pliant, flexible qualities of the mind, which results from the resolute stability of the body. And I think the difference between some of the schools of Buddhism turns on the second noble truth. So the first noble truth, you all know, life is suffering, dukkha. And that means, dukkha means lack of ease. or misalignment, actually. Dukkha has its roots in words for axle and wheel. So our suffering means it's kind of a bumpy ride because of the misalignment between our expectations and what actually life presents us with.

[03:34]

So that's the first noble truth. And then the second one is the cause of our suffering, which is our attachment. And as human beings, we either try to get things or to get away from things. That's our basic movement. So you can go in a couple of directions around the second noble truth. You have to deal somehow with our human tendency to grasp and to avert from. And there are a couple of ways you can do this. You can choose to stop getting attached. You can rid yourself of greed, hate, and delusion and enter nirvana so there's nothing there to get attached to. That's pretty hard to do, but it's not impossible. Many people have done this. You might have to get in a few house servants to straighten the place up from time to time.

[04:39]

But that shouldn't be a stretch for that state of mind. So the world, basically, if you choose to rid yourself of all the various attributes of your humanity, that can to attach or avert. Then the world of grief, loss, love, and excitement is over for you. No problem. So another approach is to accept the consequences of being attached to people and things, which is that you will suffer. And you will suffer mightily. Your heart will be broken again and again and again as you mourn for yourself, for other people, for animals, for children, and all beings. So if we allow ourselves to get attached to care about other beings and care about the outcomes of situations, even little griefs will hurt us.

[05:49]

Like the fact that other drivers are basically oblivious to us, although we love them. Or that a friend... says something that slights you or they overlook your feelings. You know, this is a little everyday mundane stuff. Happens several times a day. But if you care, even those little things will hurt you. Not even getting into child soldiers and species genocide. We don't even have to go that far. But of course that is terrible. If you care. about other beings, you can hardly digest that. So physical and mental stability are very important if that's the route you choose to deal with clinging and aversion. We have to be stable enough for tremendous amounts of suffering, our own and other people's, to move through us.

[06:51]

Just like in zazen, our still lower body provides a stable base for a lot of turmoil higher up, just like a mountain. A mountain is as stable as the earth under it. A mountain is stable. Up at the top, that's where the weather happens. Rain and sunshine and storms and hurricanes, and that's where plants grow and rocks grow. get loose and roll down and hikers throw their chewing gum wrappers and stuff like that. A lot of turmoil up at the top, but nothing affects the base of that mountain. So this is a very good way to deal with the truth of attachment. You're basically saying, I will love deeply and feel lost, but I am stable enough to accept the consequences. So chronic pain and debilitating illness or injury can be very conducive to developing this kind of stability.

[08:02]

They're big enough to get your attention. And they're big enough to keep your attention. It's difficult with acute pain, short-term pain, the pain of a toothache or a broken arm or pain. or in the emotional realm, a disappointment, like not passing an important exam or you get into a fight with your good friend or your mate. So this is temporary stuff, acute pain or acute temporary difficulty. And with the experience of short-term illness or difficulty, There's an end in sight, there's a way out, and you know you've taken it. You know who you are. You can suspend your life for a short time, though I don't recommend suspending your life, not living it fully for any period of time, even a few hours, but we all do.

[09:14]

But with short-term pain, You can do this. You can suspend your life until your arm heals or your toothache is over or you resolve your difficulties with your loved one. You can do that. But with pain that won't go away or a permanent disability, the moment-to-moment texture of your experience is shaped by a sense that something is terribly wrong and it may be wrong forever. So I actually think this is the nature of all of our lives, disabled or not. But most people have the option of distracting themselves. People with something wrong forever have to figure it out. So if there's no way out, if there's no way to appease the ferocious and cold-hearted gods of pain and anguish, what do you do?

[10:17]

Well, aggressive people feed their gods with compulsive activity, fixing themselves, fixing their friends, fixing things. They can't bear to leave a problem unsolved or a friend unadvised. If they were still, they would have to face the basic purposelessness of all of our lives. And The further you go from this basic purposelessness, the harder it is to come to terms with the reality of our lives, which is basically that you're born, you breathe for a time, and you die. That's kind of it. You don't want to get too far from that. So more passive people feed the gods small compromises of character becoming progressively less open and better defended.

[11:22]

And people like this are more apt to be pushed around by their anguish to not be able to focus past the immediate pain. So when we look around us In our culture, there are very few, actually, who are experiencing a freedom that's not dependent on feeling good, on being comfortable, on reassuring oneself that everything is okay, on asserting preference again and again and again, being able to do that. You know, if you're very smart and you have resources, of course you assert your preferences again and again. But I think it's useful to question that tendency. So I've had many people in pain tell me that they were miserable now, but they had hoped that there would be a medical breakthrough and so on.

[12:24]

And this kept them going. You know, I don't want to question any solace that people in pain might find. But to me, hope is a questionable comfort. Precisely because it creates an idea of the future. It pulls your attention away from right now. Now, if a medical breakthrough does come along, that's gravy. You're already in your life. You're already, that happened to me. At 35, when I was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, I didn't want to take any of the medicines that were offered then because they had such a a bad effect on the liver and kidneys. And I was young. I mean, young for liver and kidneys. So I chose to go my own way. And I always said, you know, people sometimes look to me as the, you know, as the paragon of alternative treatment.

[13:31]

But I never set out for that. I never wanted to, you know, my pain was great enough that I would never just wipe anything off the table, right? I would never just say I'm only going to do alternative therapy or whatever. I said I will take a medicine that doesn't affect my liver and kidneys. And so then when I was 60 years old and the movements that I do no longer have were as effective because I was aging as well as having this disease, then all these biologic medicines came along for immune system disease, not only rheumatoid arthritis, but a muscular dystrophy and multiple sclerosis. And I said, okay, I'll try it because it met the criterion for me. And great, less pain than I had for the previous decades. So when a medical breakthrough does come and you're already in your life, it's just wonderful.

[14:39]

It's just gravy. But if you're just waiting for your life to begin at the point that a medical breakthrough comes or a new medicine, it's a shaky way out of facing your life as it is. If we live in hope, We could be living in a dream, and a dream that does not actually call out our inner resources. Does hope call up the deepest resources of a person to live the kind of life that she wants to live regardless of her illness? Does hope help sink past the restriction of the moment into the potential that must be patiently cultivated? It takes a long time to come back from a devastating illness or accident. It takes a long time. You have to call up inner resources that you didn't know were there before.

[15:42]

But hopelessness is no hangout either. Science has tracked how the absence of hope that pain will be relieved actually diminishes the brain's capacity to release endorphins. And with fewer endorphins, pain is greater. So hope, hopelessness, that dichotomy, pain, relief, suffering, delight, sick, well, anguish, joy, none of these points as a stance describe a full, wholehearted lifespan. So how do we navigate this territory? Well, the essential koan of Soto Zen is when there's nothing you can do, nothing you can do, what do you do? This is where practice comes in, where people can use their pain, use their pain, to break the loop of self-centeredness, to break out into freedom.

[16:51]

In fact, I think it's very hard to do this without an unbearable situation. Nobody comes to practice because things are going smoothly. It helps to be at the place where there's nothing you can do. And a very famous Zen koan that explores this territory is Sang Yan up a tree, case five in the Mumankam, the gateless gate. So Sang Yan said, It's as though you were up in a tree hanging from a branch with your teeth. Your hands and feet can't touch any branch. That would be a way out. Someone appears beneath the tree and asks, what is the meaning of bodhidharmas coming from the West? If you do not answer, you evade your responsibility. If you do answer, you lose your life.

[17:53]

What do you do? So I think Sang Yen's question describes what everybody's life actually is. And when we see what our life is, we engage the complications of it, the difficulties, the dilemmas, to come to terms with our life, to take up the suffering directly, not from a detached viewpoint. Sang-yen was a very smart person, and he originally had a very intellectual understanding of Zen. He had no problem understanding Buddhism. In fact, I myself have thought from time to time that any of us could sit down and invent Buddhism. If you're miserable, you try various strategies. You try getting everything you want, and you see where that goes.

[18:54]

You try avoiding everything you don't want. You see where that goes. And you finally figure out it's you. You know, it's your assumptions and desires and aversion that are the source of your suffering. You know, this is by age 15 or something. You figure this out, right? So you try to be different from how you are. you suppress the troublesome part. You say, oh, that's my problem. So you suppress that. And that doesn't work. So you sit still, reluctant to do anything. You're so afraid of causing suffering. And it turns out that that's a good thing to do. So you develop, over time, you develop a stability that enables you to look Cast your own comfort and ease into the realm of infinite connection and interdependence.

[19:56]

Any thoughtful person could do that, right? Anyway, Sang Yan had been very intellectual in his youth. Guishan was his teacher, and Guishan encouraged him to look beyond his books and notes, his understanding. He asked him, who were you before your parents were born? So Sang-yen decided to burn his notes. They always burn their notes. I guess they didn't have storage lockers in those days. Anyway, he burned his notes, and he just became a simple caretaker of a tomb, of a temple tomb. And he built a small hut near the graveyard, and he spent his days cleaning the tomb, the graveyard that he was nearby. One day while sweeping... up the fallen leaves that were on the path. His bamboo broom caught a stone and it sailed through the air and hit a stalk of bamboo with a little talk sound, talk.

[21:01]

And with that talk, he was awakened. So here was somebody who was so determined to practice. Now just think about this. What if you had devoted decades to an intellectual understanding of Buddhism? And somebody just said, who are you before your parents were born? And you realize, oh, my God, decades of wasted effort. You know, just think about that. He was so determined to practice, he just put it away. He turned away from the years that he spent accumulating knowledge and probably prestige. He was probably known, I'm just guessing here, but he probably had quite a reputation as a scholar in his understanding. So he put this away and he started in another direction and found the way he needed to work.

[22:02]

Even though it involved completely changing his plans and the direction of his life, he maintained his original commitment to awaken, to live his life fully. So people who haven't made that kind of commitment, and I'm not saying this is an easy commitment to make, people who haven't made that kind of commitment often say to me, I can't practice because it hurts when I sit. Or I'm too busy. I don't have the energy or time to add practice to my life. But the solution is not to sit through pain or to practice to the point of exhaustion. The point is to find a way to fulfill your commitment to your life, your commitment to living your life fully and to live it so wholeheartedly that you can honor and include your pain and anguish.

[23:14]

I know several Zen practitioners who have done this. One Zen practitioner that I know who has done this hurt his back just after earning his master's degree in engineering. A young man came from a family in which both physical beauty and physical capability in sports was very highly valued. several brothers. And so he hurt his back while still very young, in his 20s. He's now in his 40s. He's lived his life lying down on his back for many years. He wears special prisms that allow him to see people from the floor without, you know, moving his head around. So he's the father of three, one of them as adopted.

[24:19]

And he participates in Sashin's and he is also on the city council of the place where he lives, not in the Bay Area. So he has a full busy life, community participation. It took him a while, took him a while to figure out that he was not going to heal sufficiently to walk around upright all the time. So he decided to make a life lying down. He tells me at PTA meetings, you know, it's actually rather humorous. You know, I would guess that it's similar to being in a wheelchair, that you're not at the same height that other people are, but at least in his case, people can trip over him and then say, oh, hello. So you have to really change the way you have interactions, you know, if you're lying on the floor all the time.

[25:26]

Anyway, he's very charming. Another Zen practitioner I know did this. She was diagnosed with a brain tumor in her last year of graduate school. And the doctors... A couple of doctors recommended that she have it removed, even though it was very slow-growing, you know, eventually. Anyway, it was clear that she needed to have it removed. And so she did. And the healing period is very long. It's been over a year, and while she was... in graduate school, as I said, and she's still now working toward her master's degree one class at a time. Because it's still a tremendous effort for her to exert her cognizing brain. It's exhausting for her to cogitate, to think in a linear way like we do.

[26:30]

So she can still only do one, you know, mental process a day, say. So she lives her life in a very regulated way. If she goes to class, that's it, of course. But if she wants to go to her sangha meeting, then that has to be it for the day. So any kind of contemplating of practice or participating as a sangha does in discussion after a dharma talk is... it for the day. So at first, of course, this was a tremendous loss. But then after a while, it's just her life. It's just her life. Another Zen practitioner I know did this. After years of being a crack addict, he quit and got a job helping other addicts with their options.

[27:33]

But he was often, especially the first year or so of sobriety, he was often greatly discouraged by the karma of his former life. Unpaid bills, the hole in his employment record, the cynicism of collectors and past friends, friends from that life, the life. It took tremendous patience and forbearance and support from others, but he did it. Eventually, his drug karma wore down, and it was replaced by the small fruits of his sobriety. Truly being with his daughter at the playground, noticing the morning sky, feeling like a dragon instead of a rat. So this is very touching to me when I... When I see this bodhicitta in people, it keeps me going.

[28:35]

You know, when I see people so determined to practice, to live, or even beyond any idea of practice, to live their life fully, regardless of the circumstances, regardless of what happens, they are determined to live a full, complete life. When so many of us just Throw away our lives when we don't question the circumstances. What is in your life right now that you can use as a drill to get to the source of your perceptions? So my friend and fellow practitioner, Susan Postle, who's the head priest of the Empty Hand Zen Center in New Rochelle, New York, She describes her experience of 35 years of practicing with a chronic condition, which she says she will never find likable.

[29:39]

So I'd like to read you a little from the account that she sent me recently. So she says that... She calls this three lessons that she learned. That's one way of dividing up this experience into stages. Three lessons that she learned. The first one is the house on fire. Second one is completely held. And the third one is fundamentally okay. So she says, first there was quite naturally the wake-up call of a serious illness. This is lupus. When I was a young mother in my early 30s, signs of some autoimmune disorder had surfaced a few years earlier. Firmer diagnosis, systemic lupus, didn't happen until the early 70s.

[30:43]

Knowing that I had a potentially life-threatening, incurable illness didn't bring me to practice. I'd already devoured teachings of Gurdjieff and various people. taken refuge in the three treasures, and entered serious Tibetan Buddhist preliminary practice. But my motivation did change. Relation to time changed. Sense of urgency was strong, so I began to sit like a house on fire. So she felt some urgency, and I began to see that nobody, nobody has... Much time because the task of waking up is so tremendous. Such a huge task. The very image of the house on fire appears as one of the main teaching parables in the Lotus Sutra, as many of you know. Impermanence was in my face.

[31:47]

Aspiration and determination were ignited. So that's house on fire. Then about a dozen years later, caught in one of the periodic flares of this mysterious autoimmune malady, overwhelming waves of sorrow and despair seem to be drowning me. Because these kinds of diseases have flares, have periods in which they're worse, you can get on the wheel of encouragement and discouragement. If you're feeling good, oh, everything's cool. I finally figured out how to outsmart this disease. And then it flares up and down to despair. Instead of just living your life, again, this is basing it on very temporal things, very temporal conditions. Instead of focusing beyond, you know, good periods and flares into what do I want my life to be about?

[32:50]

You know, that's the focus beyond so that flares, unless they put you in bed as they often will, basically you live your life, you know, flair or feeling good. So she was in one of these trials, one of these low periods. By this time, I was a serious and devoted Zen student, struggling to manage a full-time job in a home for the aged, no longer married, trying to be an attentive parent for two lively teens. Sitting at the end of the day was my custom in those days. The house was quiet, the dog was walked, the kids were in bed. That night I was trying hard to use my practice in order to feel better. Didn't work. Then sharp, introspective questions arose. What do you want? What do you really want at this moment? And the answer came through loud and clear.

[33:53]

I want my mommy. I want her to hold me. In reality, my aging mother was a dementia patient in California and had not been at all available for many years. She was in the East. And then in the next instant, I felt held, completely held, cradled, comforted love. And then came the perception that this boundless, loving energy did not just appear, but had always been there. I was the one who was not always receptive and present. I was the one shut behind the doors of despair and self-pity. This illness triggered a deep cry of the heart. The willingness to admit my hunger for unconditional love, a mother's love for a sick child, somehow allowed the boundless hands and eyes of compassion to come right through.

[34:54]

So she was willing. willing to go to the bottom, willing to say, and this is something extraordinary, willing to say, my practice doesn't work. Whatever I think my practice is sitting here, breathing in and out, is not enough. It doesn't work. She had to go further, further down. So she said, being... Bathed and compassionate energy didn't make the sensation of unwellness go away, but the emotional pain lifted. I was sick and I was totally embraced. Both were true. Directly experienced both the cry and the response. I began to see that when we invoke the bodhisattva, we are actually invoking the functioning of our own bodhisattva nature. So all these things can be simultaneous. I think I have found that to be maybe the most comforting lesson of my life, is that we seem to be, you know, we're so complicated.

[36:05]

We seem to be, you know, there seem to be tracks. You know how a musician lays down, you know, tracks on a recording for... There's the guitar, the piano, the voice, the bass, so on, so on. Then when you hear the recording, you hear all this blended beautifully. But actually, the tracks, they're simultaneous, but they're separate. They don't hinder each other. And I think it's the same for us. That's how we can be so paradoxical and inconsistent. And these tracks, you can be absolutely desperate on one track and be held together. on another track. So when people in pain come and ask me for advice, they say, can I work with you for a time? I say, well, there are two things, two approaches that we're going to use. One is that you have to get rid of your pain.

[37:09]

You have to try to get rid of your pain. Alternative therapy, pain meds, physical therapy, doctors, surgery, whatever it is, work on getting rid of it. And then the second tract, which is where our work together comes in, is to develop a consciousness that's willing to live with this pain the rest of your life. To develop a consciousness that's willing. So that might sound contradictory in words, but it's not at all. They don't hinder each other at all. Developing a willingness to have the pain doesn't interfere at all with your trying to get rid of it and vice versa. These are different tracks of us. And they have their assignment and they march off to do the job. So the third aspect of her lessons, the third one,

[38:10]

which she says calls fundamentally okay. She says, this teaching has deepened over time. The experience of completeness and wholeness existing at the same time as illness has become a strong and steady thread of practice. Her illness is much worse than it was in the other two lessons. So this is... become a strong and steady thread of practice, down to the bare bones now. Of course, the emotional backlash of loss arises. Self-pity follows me around like a little dog, always ready to jump into my lap. But at this juncture, I had no choice but to practice with what arises. I don't have to like feeling sick to realize I am fundamentally okay in this moment. This body, this container has damage. Yes. What is contained by the impermanent body has no problem at all.

[39:15]

Ah, this is what I like to call bothness. Just what I was talking about, all those tracks. It's actually more than bothness, but she's only talking about two things at the time. How to allow this fact to manifest. These days, I meet a decline in functioning, which is not my preference. how to be present in the middle of this process by entering sensation rather than running from it. Body practice continues to be my doorway. So find a way to use everything in your life to deepen your wholehearted commitment to live it fully. Thank you very much.

[40:01]

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