This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. First of all, I would like to express my profound, profound appreciation and gratitude to the guest students that are here for the very first time, to the returning guest students, to the continuing Zen students, to the staff, the head of the garden, the head of the shop, the head of the kitchen, the head of the guest, Department, the Sheikah.

[01:03]

Help me out. Excuse me? The work leader, the dining room reader, the Eno, right here. Who else? Treasurer. Cabin crew. Cabin crew. The office. Yeah, please. Bag lunch. Yes, yes, please. I want to have them all listed and expressed. The bathhouse. The bakers. The stage drivers. The director, yes, definitely. Excuse me? The abiding... teacher the tanto and the guests welcome everybody and thank you for being here because each single one of you by doing what you're doing in exactly your very own way because that's the only way you can do it

[02:32]

supporting this place so I would like you to actually look who's sitting beside you and who who is supporting this place for however long it is just you're all a team whether you know it or not we all contribute to this place being able to continue So that is quite amazing actually and I feel incredibly grateful. So thank you very much. You know, we talk here about that, you know, the practice period. You have to earn a practice period. have to do certain things to be accepted for a practice period.

[03:37]

But you could also look at the summer as actually being an advanced practice period. And that's why I mention the new guest students first, because they jump in, sit in the zendo in the morning for an hour, what? And then work? and then sit again in the evening. The people who have done it before have already become familiar with it. The tanto, in some ways, we all need courage, but I think there's also something of having... a knowledge of yourself and acquired a way of taking care of yourself that has grown out of doing it over and over and for the new guest students this is an immense immense challenge besides all the work they're doing so I want to really appreciate that and you all are in a summer practice period in the winter your practice is kind of

[04:57]

internal and not that visible. In the summer it's completely visible for everybody to see. It's outward. You have all these things you have to do and we get immensely challenged because we have created habits, we have trained ourselves with habits that give us the illusion that we have some control over our life. We can manage it. We can avoid certain things and get other things that we want, and then summer comes along. So in the winter, that's challenged in its own particular way. In the summer, it's challenged in a different way. But you continuously get confronted with you planned it so well, And boom, something else is happening. In the kitchen, did I mention the kitchen, Chef?

[06:02]

Did I forget you? Okay. This cooking, with making the beds, we had a flat tire that just survived till we were here. It could have been we were stranded for a while on the road. So those habits get challenged, and Jane Hirschfeld wrote a wonderful poem about habit, and I'm going to read it to you. So it's called Habit. The shoes put on each time left first, then right. The morning potion's teapot of sweetness stirred always for seven circlings, no fewer, no more, into the cracked blue cup, touching the pocket for wallet, for keys, before closing the door.

[07:11]

How did we come to believe these small rituals promise that we are today the selves we yesterday knew, Tomorrow will be. How intimate and unthinking the way the toothbrush is shaken dry after use. The part we wash first in the bath. Which habits we learned from others and which are ours alone we may never know. Unbearable to acknowledge how much they are themselves our faded life. Open the traveling suitcase. There the beloved red sweater, bright tangle of necklace, earrings of amber, each confirming, I choose these, I. But habit is different. It chooses. And we, its good horses, opening our mouth at even the sight of the pit.

[08:19]

Shall I read it once more? No. So these habits get challenged. How we also get challenged by seeing over and over how when they get challenged, the fears behind them that we felt... The insecurities, the fears come forward, and it becomes harder to practice. We also get challenged by getting tired. In the winter, the weather is very cold sometimes. That's a big challenge. In the summer, it gets very hot. That's a big challenge. You do a lot of physical work, so you get tired. When we get tired, our defense mechanisms get weakened and we become more defended, try to protect ourselves differently.

[09:30]

So how can we, what helps us to not get discouraged and to help each other to continue to practice and make our best effort and forgive ourselves and forgive others when they are a little confused and get a little maybe sharp? And how can we apologize when that happens to us? Because we all have a need for collaboration. We have a need for working together harmoniously, a need for feeling enough seen and met and understood a need for feeling safe and the need to be able to take care of ourselves, our body.

[10:33]

So, would you like to be spoken to kindly? Would you like to be treated with consideration and respect? Would you like to be listened to when you have something to say? What is your answer to this question? Do you know? Who says yes? Can you raise your hands? Now look around. Each one of us would like that. So we forget that and we think because somebody was stressed out and a little sharp or short, I have a right then to kind of retaliate or be short back or cut them out or ignore them.

[11:45]

That need, those needs go, there are other needs too, but those needs go through all cultures, through all histories we've had. They're basic human needs. And so we can actually, if we want to practice those, we can also find out what is considerate to you. What is considered in Japan is probably different than what is considered in Germany or in Switzerland, where I'm from, or in other cultures. And so we assume, we make judgments about how people behave, particularly when they're from another culture, on what that would mean in our own culture. And you learn, actually, in... about another culture only when you start living in another culture.

[12:55]

Because it's unconscious. It's just the way one behaves. It's just so. So we can find out. We can say... So my sister, for example, she lives in New Zealand. She realized after a while that she couldn't use the word problem when she wanted to solve problems. What for us is a problem, to solve it, if she approached a Kiwi, a New Zealander, with her neighbor, with saying, oh, we have a problem with the creek that, you know, borders our properties and makes a swamp at the bottom, kind of doesn't drain. When she uses the word problem for the New Zealander, that means I've tried everything and... and nothing has worked, and now the next thing is we go to the lawyer. But it took her a long time to realize that, because in Switzerland, you call it a problem, it's a small thing, you can find a solution.

[14:00]

The lawyer is nowhere in sight. So these differences, when we don't, for example, when we deal with somebody who is from another culture, if we don't check... When there is friction, is it a cultural difference? We take it personally. There's no other way we could take it if we don't see it's actually cultural. So I would encourage you, because you all want to be spoken to kindly. You all would like to be considered and respectfully treated. And you all would like to feel safe. You all would like to feel heard or be listened to deeply when you say something that matters to you. And to feel met enough. The word enough is very important. It's not perfectly.

[15:01]

Enough is actually all we need. Just enough. Can we start telling each other when that is not happening? Can we, or ask each other, how, you know, when I express appreciation, maybe I express appreciation in a way that for the other doesn't register as appreciation. So what makes me feel appreciated? So you could, in the crew, you could actually ask each other, what makes you feel appreciated? And it would be interesting to see that maybe it's things that you never thought of, that that particular thing would make that person, that particular person feel appreciated. When you know it, it's maybe very easy to give it. So that's what I've been thinking about. And I know...

[16:03]

You've worked very hard. You're short-staffed. And it's now almost nine. So if you have questions, I'm happy to answer a few questions. And maybe you can go to bed earlier. And me too. Yes? I have a question about, I've heard this phrase, practice edge. so often at that center and a practice opportunity. Yes. And I'm wondering how you can discern when is something actually a practice opportunity, or when is a boundary needed, or when is it something that I struggle with appropriate response when something is actually too much, and how to meet that. I think the first thing is when it is too much you say this is too much that already gives acknowledges how it feels to you and creates a space in which you then can start have time to think is this about a boundary or is this

[17:32]

How could this be a practice? Could it be a practice opportunity for me? And would something need to change a little, or is it just too much right now? But just to have the right to say, right now this feels too much to me, is already creating a boundary, actually, or reaffirming a boundary you're having. Does that resonate? And that gives the author actually very valuable information. And generally, people are willing to back off a little when we say, this is too much, without accusing anybody that they're doing it. Or you can step back. So, for example, if somebody gets too close to you,

[18:33]

and you feel not so comfortable, experiment with just stepping back a little. Just make a little more space so that you then can listen rather than shutting down and kind of hoping, stop soon, and can I get away from here? Which we do. We become like deer in a headlight. And we move out of the way a little bit. like back then. Well, I really want you to take good care of your bodies because they're being, you're moving, you're doing, you're lifting, you're chopping, you're digging, you're scrubbing, you're

[19:39]

So one way that I learned from Charlotte Selver was if you can tune into the energy level that you have at any given time and then try to match your movements to that energy level, which may mean you move a fraction slower. It's often not very much, but just a fraction slower with you. harmonize your movements with the energy level that's available to you, what happens is while you expend energy, you receive energy from what you're doing. We tend to tighten up and push through when we feel like there's so much to do, which depletes us completely. So Norman Fisher, the teacher who lived at Green Gulch for a long time and has now everyday Zen Sangha, he used to walk like a snail through Green Gulch, like Hin Hin style when he was going from his house to the kitchen, you know.

[20:46]

And he would say, the more I have to do, the slower I move and the more I get done. And it was true. So you can play with that a little bit. Or when you lift something, you can actually give yourself a moment to start feeling how much energy... How heavy is this? And if you do that slowly, actually your whole body starts helping you lift this thing. Everything in your body lines up and joins in to lift that and you will use the ground under you. When you just do this, you do it only with your arms and you stress yourself out. So these are two little tricks that you might play around with. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click Giving.

[21:55]

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