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 evening. How does this sound? Sounds a little echoey to me. Does it seem okay to you? How's that now? Okay. My office overlooks, on the next floor, overlooks the courtyard.

[01:02]

Usually when I'm sitting there, thinking of what to talk about, I can hear... people at dinner and they're sitting there chatting and talking. And tonight it was completely silent. So I thought, oh, everybody's gone away for Thanksgiving. There'll probably be just about half a dozen of us here in the Buddha Hall. So, and of course I made that up. But then I thought about what I would do for the half dozen of us. So maybe we can think of ourselves as a half dozen people and feel less intimidated by the crowd. This morning I received

[02:11]

an email, a Thanksgiving email from a dear friend and mentor for many, many years, actually many, many decades, Brother David Standelrust. And here's what he wrote. Dear relatives and friends, as we celebrate Thanksgiving Day, I'd like to send you a present. Present is lines composed by my admired friend, Miri Agnes Zatkins. And here's what Miri Agnes Zatkins had to say. I rise each morning to meet a procession of bearers of good tidings. Good even when they're difficult. Good because uplifting whenever I rise to the occasion.

[03:14]

Good because shared. And then back to Brother David. I find it helpful to read this short reminder every morning. It helps me to go into the new day with confidence. Even though I know most of what I will encounter will indeed be bad news. Every day, I find new proof that even bad news can be uplift, can raise my aliveness to a higher level if I rise to the challenge they present to my imagination, to my creativity, to my courage. But what does it mean to share, what does it mean that our difficulties are good because shared.

[04:17]

We, the human family, have reached a point at which our challenges that we are confronting can only be overcome if we all work together. Daily, our bad news makes it obvious. And that is good. because it demands cooperation. If I rise to the challenge of my daily life, I contribute my share to overcoming division worldwide. Here, once again, the saying proves valid. Think globally. Act locally. We can study and face the big issues, the biggest being division, separation from our authentic self, from one another, from the center that holds us.

[05:23]

We can start by saying nothing that divides, by doing all we can to heal divisions wherever we meet them. May your Thanksgiving celebration this year be first and foremost a healing of relationships. Our world needs it. And then there's a little picture of Brother David blowing soap bubbles. Blowing soap bubbles and thinking of you with love. Your Brother David. over the weeks of this practice period, I've been talking about the six paramitas and how they have an extraordinary attribute to them, I find.

[06:39]

In some ways, they're quite concrete. They address our attitude and our disposition, our behaviors, and they offer a way to be skillful with them. And generosity, virtuous conduct, patience. And the three of those... loosen, enliven our being. And then the next three, the energy of commitment, resolve. The way of allowing ourselves to just be part of everything.

[07:42]

Absorption. And then The last one, wisdom. And the danger of creating formulations and then reading commentaries on them and then attending to talks like this. The danger is that we allow it to be a mental process. And in some ways, it's much more an emotional process. And in some ways, it's deeper than emotion. It taps into something...

[08:45]

fundamental to our being. When I think of, when I read this this morning, and then I've read it a couple of times during the day, I thought, you know, I had the good fortune for many years that Brother David and I would teach together at Tassara. And Brother David's basic teaching is gratitude. theoretically, I think, is a wonderful practice. I think if we think of attending to the moment, and we think of it as a virtuous thing I should do, and then internally, it's in contrast to what bubbles up for us

[09:55]

from the depths of our being. And bubbles up in a way that seems to be competing for our attention with the virtue of the six parameters, for instance. Or, for instance, gratitude. And though I've never said this to Brother David directly, I've thought, Well, this is a wonderful notion, gratitude. But given the world we're living in, given the impulses of our own psychology and personality, and given how we're relating to each other, Someone asked, I read, someone asked Suzuki Roshi, he said, how do you assess how we're doing with our practice?

[11:07]

And he said, I watch how you relate to each other. First time I read that, I was quite intrigued by that. Watch how you relate to each other. And this notion of gratitude as a disposition, as a way to enter the world, enter our relationships, to enter ourselves, When I first heard Brother David bring it up, I thought, it's a little bit of a stretch. Shakyamuni, after all, said, the first thing I want to address is suffering.

[12:14]

And actually, that's the fundamental of all the things I want to address. As Linda Gallien was saying a couple of weeks ago, He made a wonderful quote. For those of you who didn't hear it, let me repeat it. He said, and Chakyamuni said, there's 80 kinds of suffering and 79 of them I don't address. And I address the 80th one. But that one... is foundational for all the other 79. How do we get at what's fundamentally beating our hearts, breathing our bodies, generating

[13:26]

perspectives of the world, generating our emotional response to the world, to each other, to ourselves. And does gratitude play a role? Over time, I've come to think Thinking of awareness as an act of appreciation. Thinking of absorption as an act of savoring. There are ways in which we can create within ourselves an accessibility to the fundamental point of practice. come to think the practice of gratitude is a wonderful way to access that fundamental point.

[14:42]

And a wonderful teaching, as Brother David says, if I rise to the challenge they present to my imagination, to my creativity, to my courage, that raises up my aliveness. And each day, I can find new proof of that process. When I read this today, I think I thought of a comment by Yunmin, a famous teacher of about 1,200 years ago. And he said, every day is a good day. And of course, we all know, in some ways, every day is not a good day. Currently, I think many of us are heartbroken about what's going on in the Middle East.

[15:50]

of innocent people is part of causing the suffering of innocent people is part of the strategy of the war that's going on. What is it to rise up from that heartbroken place to find an aspect of gratefulness. And maybe it's as Brother David says. And what does it mean that our difficulties are good because shared? we, the human family, have reached a point where our challenges we are confronting can only be overcome if all of us work together.

[17:16]

Daily, our bad news makes this obvious. And that's good. That we need to work together. We need to remind ourselves of our shared humanity. So when I thought there was going to be about half a dozen people here, I thought at this point, the half dozen of us would break into dyads and... discuss what does it take for you to meet and be uplifted in relationship to yourself, in relationship to your relationships, and in relationship to the world at large.

[18:27]

So maybe there only is half a dozen of us here. So we'll break into dyads. And you can just pair up with someone nearby. And if you would sit and face them as best you can. And if you're just sitting on the bench, you can just sort of turn around. We have one single. Oh. Yeah. So there's... So here, I... Let me offer you... Excuse me.

[19:45]

Let me offer you some structure. So one person will speak for three minutes. And maybe, Lauren, if you could bring... Why don't you bring it over here and you can devote yourself to talking. One person will speak for three minutes. I'll repeat the question again. And the other person will just listen. And when you're just the listener, the more thoroughly you listen, the more encouraged the person who's speaking the more encouraged they feel to speak their truth, to speak from their heart. So listening is a great gift we can give somebody.

[20:48]

So then one person will speak for three minutes and then I'll ring the bell. And at that point, just finish your sentence and then close your eyes for both people. Close your eyes for And just feel what's going on. Feel your state of mind. Feel the flow of thought, whether it ceases or whether it continues. Feel your body. And then after about 20 seconds, I'll ring the bell and you change rules. And then second person will get to speak for three minutes. And then I'll ring the bell again. And then you can just ask each other, what did you learn from this? Okay. You can decide who's going first. Okay. Decide who's going first.

[21:53]

Okay. Everybody got the concept? I am going to repeat the question. I just wanted to make sure everybody got the concept. Okay. So here's the question. What does it take for you to meet and be uplifted in relation to the bad news? What does it take for you to meet and be uplifted in relation to the bad news. The bad news can be about our world in general, can be about your own relationships, can be about yourself. What does it take to find within that the resource to have it be a teaching, have it be an instruction, however you find it.

[23:04]

to be uplifted, okay? No. It's time for marriage to him for a while, you know? He is not perfect, he [...] is not perfect,

[24:07]

We will stay, we will stay, we'll [...] stay, If it was him, he got it. He [...] got it. And it's very nice.

[25:31]

Next. [...] Just close your eyes for a moment so you can tune into what state of body, what state of mind, what state of emotions are reverberating through you.

[26:32]

And then you can switch roles and the person who is listening can now do the talking. What does it take for you to meet and be uplifted in relationship to bad news? ... [...]

[29:13]

Thank you. So you can finish your thought. And again, if you just close your eyes and notice. Notice and experience what your being is now. Then you can, for just a couple of minutes, you can go back and forth and just ask each other, what did you learn from doing that, from listening and speaking?

[30:45]

You can just go back and forth. Thank you.

[32:04]

Thank you. Thank you. You know what I'm saying? [...] And now you can ask each other, how will you practice what you've learned?

[33:15]

How will you practice what you've learned? Yeah.

[34:30]

Yeah. ... [...] I was speaking, I was speaking like, you know, [...]

[35:37]

well maybe you could thank your partner for going through that process with you we're finished but you can thank your partner and tell them what you're grateful for and how you appreciate what they offered you And then if you could just... You can have it back.

[37:07]

Before I just get carried away. even by bad news, personally, interpersonally, socially, socially meaning the relationship of the human family and its relationship to all the other families of being. on the eve of a day of thanksgiving. A remarkable day. Even though it seems that what inspired it had all sorts of problems to it.

[38:21]

It was a very problematic, of how the newly arrived were relating to the indigenous people. And yet, thanksgiving, eating with others in a generous, heartfelt, I think of this uplifting as the bodhisattva vow. While you were talking to each other, I remembered a couple of days ago,

[39:22]

just across the street, I saw someone just all caught up in their own anger. And they were arguing with somebody even though they were the only person there. And then they were punching somebody even though they were the only person there. The fragility the vulnerability of our humanness, the seemingly innumerable ways we can get stuck, caught up, become discouraged, become frustrated and angry. despondent.

[40:26]

And then in a few moments just talking to one person who maybe we don't even know very well and something can be uplifted. Some way in which we find Yes, I will. And can we keep it close to our hearts like a precious being? Can we put our hands together innumerable beings, endless number of beings, and yet I resolve to support them all.

[41:38]

Where does that come from in the midst of our humanness, in the midst of the bad news? For more information, please visit sfcc.org and click Giving. May we all fully enjoy the Dharma.

[42:22]

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