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. Good evening, everyone. Well, I'd like to begin just by welcoming you all here. And I especially want to thank all of you who live and work. at Tassajara for the innumerable labors that make this such an incredible refuge for people from all over the world. So thank you so much for taking care of Tassajara. I first came here as a guest student in 1975, and then in 1977 came to live here and practice here. And I was asked to teach kids for one year when families were invited to come down.

[01:00]

And what I remember most about that is building a relief map of this area out of papier-mâché and also running outside when it started to snow one day. Lee, you were here then, weren't you? Didn't you work in the preschool there? Oh, okay. Yeah. So that inspired me later to get my teaching credential. And I'd been teaching third grade for 25 years. And it also enabled me to come here every summer to Tassajara. And for about 10 years, I would come down and relieve the guest cooks as they went on vacation. And so this was also a really important place for my daughter, Nova. She kind of grew up here with the Meyerhoff kids. And I remember when she was about eight, Paul Heller stopped her on the path and said, Hey, Nella, how's it going? And she said, Well, you know, so little time, so much to complain about.

[02:04]

So I've been teaching third grade for about 25 years, and there's a wonderful movement now to bring mindfulness practices into classrooms. And so it's been really wonderful for me to continue to... integrate my Buddhist practice into my teaching. And I teach also teachers in Oakland to make mindfulness a part of their classrooms. So, you know, we don't proselytize in Buddhism or recruit people, but it's been a wonderful practice to introduce some mindfulness techniques to children to give them a sense of the beauty of stillness and silence in small doses. Sometimes when my class is really rambunctious, I'll just close my eyes or, you know, lower my eyes in a Zazen-ish kind of way. And, you know, they'll notice and quiet down. I remember one time I'm looking down, following my breath, and I hear Hannah say, be quiet, everybody.

[03:12]

Laura's in her secret happy place. So my students give me far more than I give them, I can assure you. In the Dhammapada, the Buddha taught, the thought manifests as the word. The word manifests as the deed. The deed develops into habit and the habit hardens into character. So watch the thought and its ways with care and let it spring from love born out of concern for all beings. For a while now I've been studying about... research that supports the benefits of meditation practice. And when we live the bodhisattva vow, we take up this deep intention to live for the benefit of all beings. And so it's been fascinating for me to study some of the research that supports the wisdom and efficacy of this vow.

[04:16]

So I'd like to talk tonight about some of this research and how it might encourage us in our practice. I'm a little sheepish about talking about this after spending a couple of afternoons at the airport Marriott in a conference about brain science and then studying this on my own, because it's quite a complicated topic, and I really understand only a little. But the little that I do understand has been very helpful to me, and I hope you find it as interesting as I have. Since my day job is teaching third grade, of course, I'm interested in how the brain works and in how to help kids learn and how we continue to learn as adults. And there's a lot of good news about the brain. You know, it was thought for a long time that the adult brain doesn't change, that we're stuck with what we've got. But with studies through MRIs, magnetic resonance imaging, We've learned quite a bit about the enormous plasticity of the brain.

[05:21]

And it turns out that we're just not stuck with the brain that we're born with, but can actually affect the health and wealth of the brain, just as Buddha taught. There have been as many as 1,200 studies of meditation since 1931. And today with our... you know, more elegant technology scientists and meditators and clinicians are conducting studies to learn more about brain states that underlie wholesome and unwholesome states of mind. There's recent research by Cliff Saren at the University of California, Davis, Francisco Varela, co-founder of Mind and Life Institute, and very interesting research by Richard Davidson at Harvard, And they've worked with Tibetan monks under the auspices of the Dalai Lama, who's very interested in science and very interested in bringing these two disciplines together.

[06:23]

And, you know, he's got such a curious, lively mind. And so maybe some of you have read the wonderful work of Mathieu Ricard, who's a French geneticist who has a Ph.D. in genetics but is now a monk living in Nepal. fluent in Tibetan and an unordained Tibetan monk. And their research with long-term meditators underlies and highlights the neuroplasticity of the brain and the positive long-term effects of meditation on our ability to pay attention, on our attitude, on wellness, you know, tracking these things over time with long-term meditators In citing this research, Sharon Begley states, Davidson's research supports an idea that Buddhist meditation adepts have long maintained, that the mental training that lies at the core of meditative practice can alter the brain and the mind in an enduring way, strengthening connections from the thoughtful prefrontal lobes to the fear and anxiety-generating amygdala.

[07:39]

So shifting patterns in the brain through meditation. And also shifting activity in the prefrontal cortex from the discontented right side to the eudaimonic left side. Now I had to look up eudaimonic. And eudaimonic means... Eudaimonic describes a system of ethics that evaluates the morality of actions... and I love this, in terms of the capacity to produce happiness. So, a system of ethics that evaluates the morality of actions in terms of their capacity to produce happiness, which is what our precepts are. They have the capacity to produce happiness in human beings. Connections among neurons can be physically modified through mental training just as biceps can be modified through physical training. The trained mind or brain is physically different from the untrained one, Davidson says.

[08:47]

And he also says, the message I take from my own work is that I have a choice in how I react, that who I am depends on the choices that I make, and that who I am is therefore my responsibility. Or, as the Buddha said, the thought manifests as the word. The word manifests as the deed. The deed develops into habit. And habit hardens into character. So watch the thought and its ways with care and let it spring from love out of concern for all living beings. So in Zen practice, we don't sit for any particular... with any particular goal in mind. We don't sit to become better people or to lop off huge parts of ourselves that we don't approve of. We just sit.

[09:49]

But that doesn't mean that nothing's happening when we sit day after day, year after year, following our breath. The fact that we sit with no attainment in mind, it doesn't mean that nothing's happening. So let's just sit for a moment together here in the Tassajara Zendo, our temporary Zendo that was built 34 years ago, and just follow our breath. A lot of what's been learned about the brain comes from studies of people with particular types of brain injuries.

[10:54]

And people with certain injuries can compensate for those injuries by enlisting other areas of the brain. And this is why, of course, people who've lost their sight can develop exquisite sensitivity in their hearing and touch. And as I learned about this stuff, I just marveled that meditators thousands of years ago intuited some of these truths about our brains and our minds. We've all heard we are what we eat, but we could also say we are what we think, we are what we say, we are what we do. So here's a few examples of that. They found that taxi drivers in London... who need to memorize enormous areas of a very complicated and twisted city, huge numbers of twisting, turning streets. And they develop a larger hippocampus, the place in the brain responsible for making visual-spatial memories.

[12:01]

So that part of their brain is far more developed than yours or mine. Another example is that traumatic experiences can cause physical lesions in the brain that affect future language and future behavior. And then in research on the brain and happiness, they found that as people become more happy, the left frontal region of the brain becomes more active. And another area that I'm especially interested in is the area of recovery and addiction. And, you know, in addiction... the addiction actually hijacks the pleasure centers of the brain. So when someone who's predisposed towards an addiction engages in addictive activities or substance abuse, there's a dopamine release into the system. And that addictive person, wanting to feel that pleasurable feeling over and over again,

[13:09]

returns to that behavior with lessening results, which means that then they have to increase that behavior not to get the euphoric, some addicts describe it as a spiritual experience, that high that they get. But, you know, over time that addiction no longer gives that kind of pleasure, but just to rise up to the level of normal, the person needs to engage in that addictive behavior. And so in order to end an addiction, I'll turn back to the Buddha, because an addict in embarking in recovery needs to learn a new way of thinking, a new way of speaking, and a totally new way of behaving. And part of that new behavior for the recovering addict or alcoholic is to return to the past and clean up old business, unfinished business, you know, financial misdeeds, making amends to people, one is harmed.

[14:14]

And that also causes a dopamine response in the brain. That satisfaction of taking care of our lives, of clearing up the wreckage of the past, also has a very satisfying biochemical response in the brain. And another key component of recovery is one recovering person reaching their hand out to another. And in these studies on the pleasure centers of the brain, generosity and altruism also cause a dopamine response in the brain. So there are a lot of other studies coming out right now about the evolutionary wisdom of altruism. So, you know, it might make you wonder if somebody could get addicted to compassion, but that's probably not a bad thing. So just as the Buddha taught, our thoughts and experiences actually sculpt our brains, literally sculpt our brains. And we can move towards greater happiness and wisdom using and cultivating our own brains.

[15:17]

I used to think that happiness was just for suckers, you know, people who weren't really paying attention. And so I was really primed for Zen practice. And when I got here and they said, life is suffering, I said, yes, I know. And so it wasn't until later that I paid attention to the other part of that, which is that Yes, life has suffering, but we can also act in such a way to decrease our human suffering. And I'm especially interested in our self-created suffering, you know, this deliberate manufacture of misery that we do with our own minds. I attended a ceremony led by our friend at the Berkeley Zen Center, Lori Sanaki, and I just ran into Lori and her husband, Alan, at Jamesburg, And in the ceremony, someone said to her, I read a newspaper article that said that Buddhists tend to be happier than other people. Is that your experience? She was silent for a moment, and then she said, we're always the last to know.

[16:19]

I love that. Our brain is about three pounds of tofu-like tissue containing one trillion cells, including one billion neurons. reminds me of looking up at the Tassajara sky last night. So neurons receive signals from other neurons and in turn send signals to other neurons. Each neural signal is information that your nervous system moves around your body in much the same way that your heart pumps blood around your body. And all that information is what we call the mind. So the mind includes... signals that regulate the stress response, that trigger, you know, our memories of how to ride a bicycle, daily activities like walking, you know, the kind of automatic activities that we do. And also our personal habits, our tendencies, our habitual thoughts, our dreams, and our values.

[17:26]

You know, all of these are part of this complex system called the mind. So our brain is this physical organ. But our mind is the complex interdependency between our mind, body, and the whole world. Really, the brain is just a small part of that system. Our brain interacts with other systems in the body, you know, the nervous system, and with the world. So we might say our mind includes the brain, the body, the natural world, our interrelationships with people around us, human culture... Our brain is nestled in a larger network of biological and cultural causes and conditions. Neurons can make lasting circuits, strengthening their connections to each other because of mental activity. So this reflects the Buddhist teaching that our habitual thoughts determine our actions, which determine our character ultimately.

[18:29]

And our human brain is so marvelously developed. It's thought to be the most complicated thing in nature. You know, I have my third graders pick something to teach the rest of the class. And this year, Bella taught us about the brain. And it was so wonderful to see this third grader. She was wearing a little yellow taffeta skirt and a sequined top and this little cap that looked like a braid. And I want kids to know about the brain, and I want them to know that you're not stuck with the brain you're born with. Because I'll even have third graders who say, oh, I'm not good at math, or I can't read. And they need to know about this neuroplasticity. So our brain is so incredible. Bella could tell you that. But it's also the seat of our suffering, as the Buddha taught. So we use this brain... to create wonderful things, and we've developed language.

[19:34]

Philip Whelan told me once that human language was developed to give people the capacity to complain. So little time, so much to complain about. But, you know, we also use this brain to nurse grudges, to hold on to resentments for years, to imagine horrible things that might happen, to get upset when things don't turn out our way, you know, to grasp at, in a selfish way, things in this world, to anticipate negative experiences that never happened, or replay negative experiences from the past that happened a really long time ago. So we use our own brains to manufacture a lot of our misery. And if this brain causes so much suffering, the Buddha taught that it could also find a release from suffering. And I remember when my daughter was about eight years old, Nova, I was tucking her in at night, and she looked up at me and she said, Mom, why are people born to suffer and die?

[20:41]

And of course, I just, I mean, that just touched me, and I was taken aback that she would ask me that. And I said to her, you know, honey, this is a question people have been asking. themselves ever since there have been people. And she looked up at me and she said, you know, Mom, that really doesn't help very much. The Buddha taught that we can find greater equanimity and that we can ease the suffering that we cause to self and others. And this is called the Noble Eightfold Path. You know, I love all these Buddhist lists. He really set it out for us. He taught about suffering and an end to suffering. And by following the Noble Eightfold Path, which I won't go into tonight, but that is our prescription for happiness. And our precepts, of course, are part of that. So these ancient teachings are just as vital and helpful today as they were when the Buddha first shared them with us.

[21:49]

And... One of the curiosities of brain research that I just find fascinating is that our brains have a negative bias. And our brains automatically scan for, rehearse, remember, process, hold on to, react to, look for negative experiences more than positive ones. And they think, again, this is an evolutionary... phenomenon that our ancestors on the Great Plains were looking for danger in order to survive. But, of course, we've continued this in ways we don't really need to anymore. Our brain automatically does this, and one researcher called the brain Velcro for negative experiences and Teflon for positive ones. So, you know, we cling to those negative experiences. We savor them.

[22:52]

We turn them over in our minds, you know. And the good experiences tend to just wash off our backs, you know. So without training and working with ourselves, because of this negative bias, our own subjective experience of being ourselves can be rather bleak, you know, if we dwell unconsciously in that realm of negativity that just comes with our brain. The Buddha taught that thought manifests as the word. The word manifests as the deed. The deed develops into habit. So watch the thought and its ways with care. But how do we practice with this? You know, how do we work with the mind to turn towards greater wisdom and happiness? And I think there's many answers to this question as there are people in this room. And Buddha had a lot of good ideas about this. But here are a few practical things that we can do that are kind of based on this brain science that looks at this negative bias of the brain.

[24:01]

One thing we can do is that when we encounter something beautiful, we can cherish it. And this can just be simple things like the smell of an orange or the silhouette of a tree against the sky or the Tassajara starry, starry night. to just stand in awe when we see something beautiful and just cherish it, you know, embrace it. Positive things are happening all around us, but because of the brain's negative bias, sometimes we don't even notice those things. You know, we're busy scanning for loss and grief and anger and remorse, and don't necessarily notice and cherish those positive things that happen every day. So another way towards this is to just savor that positive experience.

[25:02]

And they found that the longer something's held in attention, the more neurons fire in our brain and wire together to create a lasting memory. I came across this phrase over and over again in studying this, that neurons that fire together wire together. Neurologists love to say that. We can train ourselves to savor these positive experiences, to actually stop and notice them, and to stay with this positive image and hold it within us rather than skittering off to the next thing. And embrace these positive experiences in our mind just as we do with the negative ones, you know. when we focus on the rewards of a positive experience, our brain releases dopamine into our system. And so this is a self-perpetuating cycle that we can train our brains to do.

[26:04]

If we have a positive interaction with someone, we can remember other times when we felt included and loved. And this is the oxytocin response that is our bonding, our human bonding response, biochemically, that gives us a deeper sense of connection with one another. So this is a practical way, with a little scientific twist, to experience the truth of our interconnectedness with all beings. And then to feel the warmth of an exchange with someone else or of a beautiful image we've encountered and just let it soak into our being and just like the warmth of the sun and become a part of us and replay that image over and over again. Positive experiences can soothe and relax and transform negative experiences.

[27:06]

And this is why when you go through a difficult time or have a traumatic experience, to talk... with a friend about it transforms that negative experience and links it with the positive one. Another very important part of recovery from addiction is one recovering addict just talking and sharing and identifying with another. Now this countering of negative and positive images might sound dualistic, but we can apply the same teaching to the difficult passages in our lives. You know, in our practice, we don't turn away or cut ourselves off from those difficult events in our life. We turn towards them with an open heart. And I think if you think of some of the difficult times in your life, there were incredible jewels within those difficult times and opportunities for wisdom and compassion and interconnectedness.

[28:10]

Because it is at those times that we turn towards other people and ask for help, you know. And that's the beauty of our sangha as well. Theodore Ruthke, one of our great American poets, said, In a dark time, the eye begins to see. In a dark time, the eye begins to see. So in the retreat we're having this weekend, a women's retreat, We've been focusing on loving-kindness, the metta sutta. And this wonderful chant that we chant here in this room now and then encourages us to turn towards loving-kindness, to open our hearts to one another, to be there for one another. And we were just reading today that that's the way the Dalai Lama starts his day, is with an intention.

[29:11]

for the well-being of everyone in the world. And we can start our day that way as well. We chant, may all beings be happy, may they be joyous and live in safety. And just saying this out loud, you know, is an antidote to the kind of negative bias that our mind might be attracted to. So I invite you to say that with me now. May all beings be happy. May they be joyous and live in safety. May I be happy. May I be joyous and live in safety. Calling that phrase to mind is a kind of mind training. It is a kind of antidote to the self-created suffering in our own minds.

[30:15]

So I think we have a few minutes for if anyone has a question or comment before we stop. Yes. I appreciate your time. And one of the things that I just... is in Zen we have this concept, practice, and we say practice, everything is practice in life. Or we practice in life. And I've had some positive training in getting up my Buddhist practices. And it seems like you're going to have, on a personal level, there's a lot of movement and growth in my Buddhist practice. reflecting on that time to speak about the brain changing. And I can see that there's such a huge difference in the way that my mind responds to my life and the circumstances that arise.

[31:27]

And in that time, the Eightfold Path was like a real big part of my practice, something that I reflected on constantly and integrated into my daily life. And then when I got to Zen practice, I never heard of it again. In years, I haven't heard, but maybe a few times. So, you know, we talk about like the Bodhisattva vows, and you have these vows that you're doing, these chants, these sutras that you chant. And I do believe, like you said, that has some impact in some way. And then I also fear that maybe on that level, on the personal level, like, we focus so much on no attainment that it could be a lot of deep meditators that are spiritual, you know, meditation-wise, mature and personal, you know. And I just reflect on that for myself, just seeing that, you know, over the past seven years of practicing Zen and saying that, you know, I really,

[32:36]

like my own practice, I have to incorporate some of those original Buddhist teachings, which is what we kind of turn away from because we don't want to get taught in a dualistic thinking and, you know, try to improve anything. You know, it's almost like we're afraid to improve anything, but then we'll get caught in a dualistic thinking, which is a dualistic thought. Well, it seems to me that that itself is a kind of trap, you know, to avoid... to avoid attainment in an active kind of way. But I'm surprised that you haven't heard much about the Eightfold Path, you know, the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path in your practice of Zen, because we certainly, we do study and take those up. Are you doing practice periods here at Tassajara? Yeah. Study hall. Study hall. But I think... I think, I know what you mean, that there can be this kind of no attainment, no goal.

[33:43]

But as I say, it doesn't mean that nothing's happening. And I don't think that it's against the rules in Zen to actively turn our mind in a certain direction. And I think of the words of Robert Thurman, who's a Tibetan teacher, who said that... You know, we have this radical dharmic freedom that rather than just responding instinctively when presented with a choice, we turn in the appropriate direction. And so to my mind, whatever flavor of Buddhism you're practicing, to me that would be a wonderful practice, to have that intention in mind. And I think... our zazen practice definitely gives us that space, that moment of freedom, rather than reacting impulsively. And when we sit following our breath, that is what we're practicing, that type of freedom.

[34:49]

Does that help? Thank you. Yes? and smoke flowers, smelling an orange and whatnot. Through the studies that you've had, how do you see hyperconnectivity, particularly with cell phones, which trigger the same pleasure centers and dopamine in people's brain, especially when you're doing things like walking to the mailbox or waiting in line, where we tend to have those more positive That is a wonderful question. And, you know, as a teacher of children, it's something I'm really concerned about.

[35:51]

I wonder how young people will develop an inner life, you know, given this constant connectivity. And I just got back from Paris where people have cell phones, but they don't walk around talking on them all the time. And you don't see people in cafes texting somebody they're not with while they're with someone else. you know, are sitting alone with their laptops and they talk to each other. They gather after work on the wooden bridges over the sand and they talk and laugh and make music. And I really hope that once we get over our infatuation with these toys that we can take time because I think what that causes is a tremendous amount of stress to be constantly on in that way. And we don't even know the biochemical results of that activity. So I think all we can do as individuals is model something else.

[36:54]

I like to think of Thich Nhat Hanh and people who have practiced with him, that even in New York City he walks very slowly on the sidewalk. And that just must cause heads to turn. You know, so all each of us can do is manifest our practice. And this is the bodhisattva vow of living for the benefit of all beings, is to the best of our ability, attending to our thought, word, and deed, and having faith that it does make a difference. You know, that what we think, what we do, how we interact with other people, it does make a difference. That's our faith. So thank you very much. 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.

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For more information, visit sfcc.org and click Giving.

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