This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good morning. And good morning to you folks that I cannot see on Zoom. Greetings, Abbot Jirio. And how many folks here are you here for the first time? Never been here before. Welcome. So I'd like to begin this morning by recounting to you a brief interchange between Suzuki Roshi and a student.

[01:24]

Not me, someone else. And Suzuki Roshi, for those of you who may not know, he is the founder of San Francisco Zen Center. and the lineage founder of myself and Jiryu and many other teachers. Even though Green Gulch came about as a Zen place after he died. So when he gave a Dharma talk, I think he always, if not always, usually ended by bowing and saying, thank you very much. Of course, we felt, thank you very much.

[02:30]

But that's how he ended. Oh, I think always. Not sure. Also, like we're going to do here, at the end of speaking for a while, he would take questions and respond to them. And one time, toward the end of the talk, just before, thank you very much, he said something. I don't remember exactly what it was, but something like, I'm so glad you are all here. You are my friends. Something like that. And during the question and answer period, a person raised their hand and said, Suzuki Roshi, I've only been coming for a few months.

[03:37]

I don't really know you. I don't think we've ever spoken together. So why do you say, I'm your friend? That's a very straightforward kind of question, asking what's on his mind. The person did. And Suzuki Roshi responded by saying, I suffer and you suffer. We're friends. I'm not actually sure of the pronouns. It may have been, you suffer and I suffer, and so we're friends. So I feel this is a wonderful way of speaking about, of introducing the first noble truth, the noble truth of suffering.

[04:39]

In Sanskrit, it's dukkha, D-U-K-H-A, dukkha, which is usually translated as suffering, and that's the way Suzuki Roshi was using it at the time, although suffering is, I want to talk about what dukkha means a little bit later. But one of the things about I suffer, and maybe there are many teachings in you suffer and I suffer and so we're friends. There are. There's a lot about the path in that very simple response. And it wasn't some rehearsed response. That was what came out of him. But one thing we can say for sure is that what he did not say was, I suffer and you suffer, period.

[05:45]

Thank goodness. Instead, it was I suffer and you suffer, and then there's something else. There's some possibly ameliorating factor. There's something there, something additional besides that simple human truth. that things don't go the way we want them to, always. The way he expressed that then was, and so were friends. That was how he was expressing the further, what can be said further, in addition to, I suffer and you suffer. That might be of some use. So inspired by that interchange, that's my topic for today, that's my subject, is dukkha, suffering, and our Buddhist, what I understand to be some aspects of our Buddhist response to suffering.

[06:59]

So that's what I want to talk about. But I thought I should do a little introductory, say something, introducing myself a little bit for those of you for whom this is the first time you've come, but also for others. It's been a while since I've given a talk here and a couple of years, I think. And then also, I lived here for many years. I lived here, lived at Green Gulch. My wife, Linda, and I lived here for 30 years, more than 30 years. So even if someone hadn't attended a talk that I gave, they knew me because I was around. But we moved about a year ago, July, we moved to Healdsburg, up to Enso Village in Healdsburg. where we are happily ensconced.

[08:13]

So you may not know who I am. And just to be clear, me neither. But I'll say some things anyway. I'll say some things anyway. So, yeah, so... One of the texts that we chant, recite here, usually I think once a week, it used to be once a week, maybe, I don't know if it's the same frequency, is a poem by a Chinese Zen teacher who lived in the, I believe, 8th century. Sekito Kisen is his name in Japanese, even though he was a Chinese person. And he wrote a poem called The Merging of Difference and Unity, which is a very wonderful, deep, deep, deep teaching about the nature of reality and therefore orienting us by talking about how things are that orients us in our life.

[09:28]

But I'm not going to talk about The difference, I mean, the merging of difference in reality, the merging of difference in unity, that's too big a topic for me for today. But I want to quote one of the couplets. I believe that traditional Chinese literary form was, the form was verse couplets. And this is a couplet in that text. that comes almost at the very end. He says, progress is not a matter of near or far. But if you are confused, mountains and rivers block the way. So he's talking about how we develop, how we maybe how we enter practice and how we develop practice, our Zen practice, our Zen way.

[10:38]

And he's saying what it isn't first. It's not near or far. It's not something measure. It doesn't have to do with measurement. Oh, I'm close. I'm very far away. I'm 20% closer. I'm 90% closer. It doesn't have to do with that kind of as it were, step-by-step measurement. Or another version of that, for those of you who perhaps are residents and do a fair amount of zazen, you're probably familiar with thoughts like, that was a terrible period of zazen. Much rarer is, oh, that was a wonderful period of zazen. That has nothing to do with it. That has nothing to do with our way. That's what Sekito is saying, and I agree. Progress is not a matter of far or near, but if you are confused, mountains and rivers block the way.

[11:45]

And the reason I want to bring that up is that that confused and mountains and rivers block the way was very much the way I felt when I was a young person When I first came to Zen practice, I was 20 years old. So to be confused, I was definitely confused. And confusion is like mental, like cognitive or thinking. The emotional part of that, I would say is I was confused and dismayed. Confusedly dismayed. Dismayedly confused. You get the picture. Inside and outside.

[12:50]

If I looked inside, I was not a happy camper. I felt badly, depressed, upset, something like that, mostly. With, you know, with a sense of confusion. And if I looked outside, there were only too many, too many, too many people instances, examples of terrible things outside, terrible ways that mostly I'm thinking of terrible ways people treated other people. Sometimes governments treated other people or their own people. Anyway, you get the picture. Maybe we feel like, oh yeah, I know what you're talking about there from the current perspective.

[13:58]

Our current political crisis. Terrible things. How could this be? What sense can I make out of it? Was how I felt. So indeed, the way was blocked. Any way was blocked. Any way settled sense of who I was or settled sense within myself from which to move forward did not exist. I didn't see it. What was on offer So I'm a New Yorker, born and raised.

[15:03]

And along with some millions of other people, I was children of people who came to the United States from Eastern Europe, Jewish, within, you know, when they were kids. So what was on offer was, that seemed to be what people were indicating as the path to a good life, to a satisfied life, was money and things. That was it. If you got a lot of money and a lot of things, then you, you know, like happiness was axiomatically connected to those things. And I mentioned the Holocaust because my parents, you know, came to the United States before the Second World War, but nevertheless, it may be a generational thing.

[16:22]

from the Holocaust as one contributing factor. Anyway, materialism. And I could, I could, but I won't mention various hilarious ways that that manifested itself. Well, I mentioned one. Sorry. When I was bar mitzvahed. You know, there was a celebration and there was a cameraman who took pictures. And one of the pictures that I remember, a moving picture. And at that time, you know, this was moving pictures were high tech, you know. So really high tech was you take a moving picture, then you stop it. And then the person changes and then you start it again. So it looks magical that they, you know, the change that has occurred. So I was there with my... bow tie or I think it was a bow tie.

[17:25]

And then he stopped the camera and then people inserted $20 bills in various crevices of my suit. And then the camera started again. It was like, oh, I'm rich. I'm so happy. This is what it is to be a man. To get lots of $20 bills. But it wasn't. So that's when... I think I didn't mention this earlier. I was going to say earlier that... Did I say this? Tell me if I said it. That the abbreviated version of my own entry into practice was suffering plus suffering. fortuitous accident. Did I say that? Okay.

[18:26]

I meant to say that earlier. Suffering plus fortuitous accident is the four-word version of how I came to practice. And I was just describing the suffering part of it. So that's when I, so out of that out of the feeling that I had, dismayed and confused, that was when, by accident, I found Zen practice. So this is entering practice through the great gate of dukkha, through the great gate of suffering. That was how I entered, which is respectable. And in fact, our founder, founder, founder, Shakyamuni Buddha, that's how he entered practice in the story, the mythic story of Shakyamuni Buddha's life.

[19:34]

Of course, we don't know what happened to this person, the head of the Shakyamuni clan 2,500 years ago, but there is a traditional story, and so I understand it as myth. as not something literally historically true, but meaningfully true. Meaningfully true, not just about this person, but meaningfully true for me, for you. It's our story, a version of our story. And in the story of Shakyamuni Buddha, you may know, he grew up According to the story, he grew up with no suffering. He was in a palace, and he always got what he wanted, and very delicious food, and everybody around him was young and beautiful. So he was always kind of partying, having a great time, except when he was playing polo or whatever, et cetera.

[20:40]

He was having a wonderful time. But he knew something. It wasn't quite right. It was some kind of problem. He didn't know what it was. And according to the story then, what he then saw was an old, for the first time in his life, he went to the city. He snuck out and went to the city and saw an old person, a sick person, an old person, and a funeral procession. Sickness, old age, and death. And he was stunned. How could this be? How could this terrible, these terrible things occur? That's when he started to practice. That's when he entered through the gate of dukkha, through the gate of suffering. What is it? What can I do about it? Same for me.

[21:42]

So very, very briefly, in 1967, In the summer of 1967, I was in Alabama doing civil rights related work. I was 20. And when I came back to New York City, I took a job related to the civil rights work. And the fellow who I was replacing, he was really a cool guy, really nice fellow, Jeff. I was in contact with him 10 or so years ago. Anyway, Jeff was leaving to go to California, Northern California, to a place called Tassajara that I had never heard of. And not only that, but he told me that there was a...

[22:45]

that there was a true Zen master where he was going. And that sounded really, wow, that sounded far out. and something I was very interested in. And a year later, in the fall of 1968, I had my thumb out on the east side of the Lincoln Tunnel and hitchhiked to California in three days with people who I later found out. I understood they really drove fast and they drove 24 hours a day. Later, I understood that they were speed freaks. which I didn't know at the time.

[23:55]

So three days later, I was in San Francisco, and two weeks after that, I was living in the housing around Sokoji Temple, which is where Suzuki Roshi was before we moved to Page Street. So that was the fall of 1968, and really, I was in the Again, I want to get to my topic here eventually, but I want to end this part, this introductory part. So that was maybe 50, 60 years ago. And pretty much that my life followed from that. Just one other thing I want to say. So I came to San Francisco Zen Center in the fall of 1968, and Suzuki Roshi died in December of 1971, just around three years later.

[25:05]

So my first three years of practice were Suzuki Roshi's last three years of life. And I wasn't particularly close to Suzuki Roshi. My lineage teacher, Sojin, Mel Weitzman, he and some other people were close with Suzuki Roshi, but I wasn't. Nevertheless, it would be a big understatement to say that that time with him, what he said and how he was, it would be a big understatement to say that that was very helpful to me. That would be the understatement. It was very, very, very, very helpful to me.

[26:07]

Very supportive and encouraging. And that's what we need. Support. and encouragement. Support is like the basis. Like I said earlier, I didn't know how to move forward in my life. You need support to move forward. You need some place to be, and then from there you move forward. I don't mean a literal, physical place. I mean a place within oneself, an understanding, an orientation. a feeling for how things are. You need support and then encouragement. Yes, you can do it. That's encouragement.

[27:10]

Which, you know, encourage means giving courage. And if somebody gives us courage, that's really, really good. That's really helpful. That gives us the courage to do that, to move forward. And I'm a big etymological person. I like etymologies and stuff. So C-O-U-R, right? That's the encourage. That's the courage part, right? So That comes from, I think, I'm an etymological person, but I may be making up this etymology, I'm not sure. That comes from a French word, I believe, COEUR, which means heart. So when you encourage someone, you give them heart. I was heartened.

[28:16]

by what Suzuki Roshi had to say. So... So that's what I would like to speak about, is... Suffering and heartening news, hopefully something heartening about what our response to suffering is, can be. So I mentioned that the Sanskrit word dukkha is the word that we translate as suffering.

[29:50]

A little bit more about dukkha. Etymologically, dukkha comes from a word that means, surprisingly, broken axle. What it refers to is, with two wheels, you have an axle that goes in between the two wheels. And if it's all working well, the axle works and you roll along smoothly. So dukkha means that instead of the axle being between the two wheels, it's sort of off balance. It goes in some way off balance. And if you picture it, if you have two wheels with an axle-off balance, then it's very, very bumpy. Things don't go well. Sometimes they do. But I think we're all familiar with that they don't go well.

[31:00]

They don't go smoothly. What should happen doesn't happen. We're disappointed. There's an English Zen teacher who put it one way that I thought was very simple and straightforward. He said, unwelcome things happen to us. And then there's the vice versa. Welcome things don't happen to us. So, what can we do? What can we do about this?

[32:00]

How do we respond to it? What's ameliorating? What's healing? Of course, oh, I'll take a step back. So our practice is, the purpose of our practice is to help us in this supportive and encouraging way in the life that we have. in this life that we have, in this life that I have, in this life that you have. And I emphasize that because our practice is not about getting a better life.

[33:08]

It is, but it's not a, you know, on the laundry detergent it says new and improved. Our practice is not about new and improved life that we're going to get. And this was a surprise. It took me a while, about 20 or 30 years to get this clear. I thought the purpose of practice was you do whatever they tell you to do, and then you really work at it hard, and then you get enlightened, and then after that, You know, new and improved life. No problems. You always get parking spaces when you need them in San Francisco because you're enlightened. Like that. So we think that. But that's not the way practice is.

[34:11]

It's about how we find parking spaces and in no parking spaces, which sounds, it doesn't make sense, but that's what it is. It's how we find true life within our problems. So here's a couple of Zen stories that this made me think of. One was a Zen teacher named Tozan, also also a teacher in our lineage, a student of his said to him, when heat comes, when it's really hot, and when cold comes, when it's really cold, how can I evade them? That was his question. And Tozan, kind of tricky,

[35:13]

said, well, why don't you go where there is no hot or cold? And the student said, where is there no hot and cold? Yeah, that's the grass that's greener on the other side of the fence. That's the new and improved life that I've been looking for. Tell me where it is. And to his great disappointment, perhaps, Tozan said, when the heat comes, let the heat kill you. when the cold comes, let the cold kill you. It's like, thanks a lot. I don't think he meant it literally. I mean, literally, it would be like, well, that's no help. I was hoping to remain alive for this next phase. But he didn't mean it literally. But what he meant was, There is no place where there is no hot and cold.

[36:14]

And you're wasting your time looking for it. There is no place of new and improved life. You take care of this life that you have now, here. And one more I'll mention is Dogen, who in his instructions for doing zazen, it's called the fukan zazengi, Dogen says, very clearly, he says, he asks a question. It's a rhetorical question. He says, why go off to the dusty realms of other lands and leave the seat that exists in your own home? He's talking to Zen students. He's talking to people who are followers of the way or thinking about following the way. And he's saying, he phrases it as a question. but it's a rhetorical question. He doesn't really mean, why are you going off to these other places?

[37:18]

He's saying, don't go off. Don't go off to these. They're just dusty realms. They're just fake. It won't do you any good. Why go off to the dusty realms of other lands and leave the seat that exists in your own home? You have a seat here. You have awakening here. In the midst of confused dismayedness, there is awakening. That's where you go. That's deep. That's called letting it kill you. You go deep into here instead of imagining. It doesn't really mean why go off. What he really meant to say is, why do you imagine there is a place to go off to? Like in the first one, where there is no hot and cold. Why do you imagine there's a place to go off to where you're gonna find your inmost desire?

[38:18]

Your inmost desire is here. We work from it here. I don't know how my time is. Can someone tell me the time? 10.59. Oh, okay, good. Let's see if I can remember. There was one more story that I wanted to mention. Oh, yes. Here's another one. Similar, not exactly the same. Bye-bye, kitchen. Thank you very much. That isn't the story. The story is Banke. It's one of my favorites. And the student said, Banke... So let's see, Dogen was 13th century, Tozan was 8th century, maybe, something like that, and Banke was maybe 16th century.

[39:24]

So we're traveling the centuries here. So a student of Banke said, I've been practicing assiduously for many, many years, great master, but wild thoughts continuously arise in my mind. How can I get rid of them? It's not exactly the same as no hot, no cold, but related, similar. Wild thoughts. You know, it's hard to know. That was, what, a thousand years ago? It's hard to know exactly what he meant by wild thoughts. Maybe there were wild thoughts like, hey, I'm going to go on a great horse ride later. Hard to know what he was thinking in 16th century Japan, what wild thoughts were. Maybe sex, maybe food, you know, the usual suspects for wild thoughts. But, you know, maybe we're modernizing it too much.

[40:26]

Anyway, wild thoughts continuously arise in my mind. How can I get rid of them? How can I have a new and improved life without wild thoughts? And, Banke said, to think of getting rid of wild thoughts. is a wild thought. That's why that doesn't work, the new and improved version. Because to think that there's a new and improved version, or even to imagine that you've gotten it, is the unimproved version way of thinking about things. If you get what I'm saying there. Can't work. So here's a couple things that I believe are from our practice that help. One is, I'll tell you their names and then I'll tell you a bit more about it.

[41:32]

One is turning towards suffering and the other is adding Buddha to it. So turning towards suffering is, what I mean is, doesn't sound like that would help. It sounds like that would make things worse. I mean, I'm supposed to be aware of all of this stuff that I don't like, that's painful to me. Oh, there was an important proviso that I want to mention, actually, that's just occurring to me now, which is So I'm talking about when we're having difficulties, when we're having problems, when we're disturbed and upset because things are not going well. So the proviso is, first of all, if you can make them go well, do that. Do that.

[42:35]

You know, practice is not about some continuous and always... Oh, yes, I'm just accepting my life, you know, even though my hand is in a vice and killing me. I'm just accepting the tremendous pain that I'm feeling. No, no, no, no, no. Get your hand out of the vice. And you can take that metaphor in many, many, many different situations. And one way that I was thinking of it, actually, was I'm very concerned to... that's putting it extremely mildly with our United States government and how things have been done and the tremendous harm and cruelty that has been perpetrated. So first of all, do something about it, which I am trying to do and I would encourage you all to do.

[43:39]

If there's a problem, And if you break your arm and there's an orthopedic surgeon nearby, go see the orthopedic surgeon and get a cast, and then it gets fixed, and then your arm is okay. So the proviso to all of this is, of course, that's what we should do. But sometimes the suffering that we feel, the confusion that we feel, the upset, the distress, the pain that we feel is not that kind of thing. A big example, of course, is loss, which it's true what I've heard for decades, which is when you get older, loss becomes really real when your friends die. Of course, your parents having died, when there's big loss, it's not exactly amenable to fix it.

[44:48]

You can't fix it. It's unfixable in that way. So if we can do something about a difficulty, then we should do it. But there are many different kinds of difficulties, loss being one example, where that doesn't Quite do it. It either doesn't work completely or it doesn't, either it doesn't work at all or it doesn't work completely. So when we turn towards suffering, I don't mean being engulfed in our difficulties. When we turn toward anger, I don't mean get angrier. when we turn toward jealousy and anger and sadness and painful feeling.

[45:49]

I don't mean increasing those things. But nevertheless, we're with them. This is called Zazen. Zazen. So there's, again, going back to the mythic story of Shakyamuni Buddha, it's a treasure chest of teachings. So in the mythic story of Shakyamuni Buddha, he meditated for seven days and seven nights, and on the morning of the eighth day, the morning star rose, and he was completely awakened. He understood the nature of human life. and how to operate well within it. But, the night before that, according to the story, Mara, who is the one who throws you off the path, Mara presented various challenges to him.

[46:59]

And it's by virtue of his having moved through those challenges that this great awakening happened. So the first challenge was hordes Mara sent hordes of demons and frightful creatures and hateful beings at Shakyamuni. And what he did was nothing. He just sat. I'd say nothing. He was practicing zazen. So that must have been the right answer because Mara was not successful in sending these great hordes of nasty people, nasty creatures at him. So then he tried the other. Oh, I'll send really beautiful, seductive creatures and see if that can knock him off his seat.

[48:04]

So they came parading out and Shakyamuni Buddha did nothing. Just sat there. So I understand this, again, mythically. I don't think there really were hordes of demons or seductive creatures. What I understand is Inside Shakyamuni Buddha, inside me, inside you, is hate, anger, desire, all sorts of things, running around, [...] running around. This is called samsara. This is called our human life. When we practice zazen, we do not try to get rid of them.

[49:04]

to get the new improved life. That's that mistake I was talking about a minute ago. We don't try to get rid of that stuff. We kind of allow it. However, the opposite of get rid of it is we're imprisoned by it, we're grabbed by it, we're caught by it. That's what Suzuki Rishi used to say. Don't be caught by things. What did he mean? He meant this. Don't let that frame of mind or that anger or why did they say that or I hate them or I want more chocolate ice cream. Don't let whatever it is be the boss. You're the boss. That's zazen. Zazen is, it's called think not thinking. The essential art of zazen is all of that stuff happens just the way it usually does. But you're not caught by it.

[50:06]

I am not caught by it. That's the encouragement. How do you not be caught by it? Don't be caught by it. There isn't some how. Practice not being caught by it. By your own stuff. Whatever it might be. And if you practice it, then... then you're less caught by it. Or maybe I should say less frequently caught by it. And that's very helpful. It's not exactly the end of suffering in the new improved life version, but it's like the end of suffering. It's the end of it because you're not caught by it anymore. So, It's very difficult to not be caught.

[51:08]

As you may have noticed in your own life, it's very difficult not to be caught by our... The simplest thing is grasping an aversion, not to be caught by our grasping an aversive mind, but grasping an aversion is just the tip of the iceberg. There's all sorts of things. that we're caught by many, many, many, many, many things. We're usually caught. But even if we can sometimes not be quite so caught, that's a big deal, even though it's very modest. It's a big deal. Because if we can be not so caught, what that means is then we're generous. There's generosity then, possible. the great Buddhist virtues, generosity, patience. These things are possible. But not if we're like that.

[52:17]

So that's number one, is turning towards suffering. The second thing I wanted to say was adding Buddha to it. So... Another short story here from my own life was that I studied and practiced with Sojin, Mel Weitzman, who's no longer alive, who was a teacher for me, an important teacher for me. And we would meet and we would study together various things. And mostly I was very sleepy most of the time. I was getting too little sleep, and I worked. Anyway, it was very hard. But we would meet once a week, I think, once every other week. From his great generosity, he would study with me. So one time, you know, we met, and he said, well, how are you?

[53:25]

So I said, wobbly. And, you know, usually when somebody says, how are you, you say, fine, how are you? You know, in other words, you lie. Or, you know, sometimes you lie. Often you're lying, but, you know, it's being, you know, you don't want to get into it. You know, how are you? Well, have you got a couple hours? It's usually the most honest response. You know, how am I? Oh, my God. Just take a long time to say anything true. But in this case, I trusted Mel, so I told him the truth. Wobbly. What does wobbly mean? It meant doubting, doubting myself. That is similar to confused. It was, you know, probably 30 years later than the confused I was talking about earlier, but that's what it was.

[54:30]

Wobbly, like what do I do and how do I behave? That same feeling. And he said, just like Suzuki Roshi said, I suffer, you suffer, and so we're friends. He said, oh, wobbly, you are wobbly Buddha. So one thing I want to say right away is, He didn't mean that I was some special person called Buddha. That I was like a Buddha. He didn't mean that. He sort of meant it. But he didn't mean it as though I were someone special. He meant, yes, there's the world of wobbly. There's the world of karma. There's the world of hot and cold. There's the world of feeling good and feeling bad. There's the world of...

[55:32]

I like it, I don't like it. And then there's another world that's right here with that world. It's not a separate world. It's called Buddha. Oh, you're a wobbly Buddha. And that's a world that we can, I don't know how to say it, cultivate, discover, It's like, don't forget Buddha. When you're wobbly, don't forget Buddha. When you're anxious, don't forget Buddha. When you're depressed, don't forget Buddha. Buddha is not something somebody else. That's you. The Buddha in you. So that was really, that was helpful. That was very helpful and encouraging. and clarifying.

[56:34]

That's one of the fundamental Buddhist teachings, is the Buddha is right here. Guess where it is? In you. No place else. And don't forget it. But we forget it. So this world of trouble, anxious, depressed, upset, jealous, etc. This very small world, wobbly. Buddha is a very, very big world. The big world and the small world is here, in this world, here. The big view and the small view are here. We don't have to go somewhere else to get the big view. It's not far away. So I'll close by saying, then I think we'll have time for questions.

[57:45]

I'll close by quoting Suzuki Roshi. And just a couple of sentences that I thought was in a lecture. close to the time of his death. I thought it was like 19, you know, sometime in 1970 that he gave, 71, that he gave this talk and said what I'm about to say. But it turns out it wasn't. It was like even a couple of years earlier. Maybe he had been sick, but not the sickness that eventually took his life. So Suzuki Roshi said... if I struggle when I am dying, that is, no, excuse me, if I suffer when I am dying, that is suffering Buddha. And there is no confusion in it.

[58:48]

Maybe everyone struggles with some physical agony or some spiritual agony, but that is not a problem. So I'm not sure if I got it across, but that's what I've been trying to say. That's what I've been trying to talk about. I'll say it again. If I suffer when I am dying, that is suffering Buddha. And there is no confusion in it. Maybe everyone struggles with physical agony or spiritual agony.

[59:55]

But that is not a problem. Yeah. Understandably, we say, what do you mean? It's not a problem. It seems like a giant problem. I think what he meant is, I think he meant it is a problem and it's not a problem. We have our human life. This is the life we have. And this life is both our own particular specific karmic life and at the same time big life beyond our karma, beside our karma. So it doesn't take away the difficulty.

[61:05]

He's not promising that the difficulty is removed. But it does help us in our difficulties. Thank you. Do we do question and answer now for a while? It's 11.20 now. We have to end. Darn it. Will you be at the picnic table? I will definitely be at the tea. I'm saying darn it only because I knew I could really start going and then I just keep on talking. Trying to limit it, but I didn't. Okay, so let's end. We chant at the end.

[62:08]

Is that correct? 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.

[62:41]

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