This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Greetings. Greetings. So, um, one minute. If you are new to the San Francisco Zen Center, would you please raise your hands? Greetings and we see you and welcome. Glad to have you here. So before I begin, I want to express some gratitude to a few folks I missed last time. And so first I'd like to thank Shosan Victoria Austin for her constant care and attention and encouragement in my practice years here at Zen Center.

[01:04]

And I'd also like to thank Ramon Gutierrez Valdequin for holding the doors open and welcoming me here at Zen Center. And I also want to thank my partner, Simboala Schultz, whom without this journey of priesthood would be nearly impossible. She is my everything, my Anja, my Tenzo, my just everything. And I just would not, I don't think I'd be here in a good way if it weren't for her understanding and her willingness to allow me to practice in this way, to be a home lever. and return and have a home there for me. And her door, the doors are open. So I think it's, I just wanna make sure that it's understood. She does a lot of work here at Zen Center as well. So just wanna make sure that that is known. And so when you greet her, if you could bow as deeply as you bow to me.

[02:07]

Thank you. I also like to express my appreciation for those who are in the practice period. And I've just been witnessing your willingness to face the challenges of being in sangha and being in community. And it's not an easy thing. And so I just want to thank you for moving ahead and taking one step at a time and one day at a time, asking all the questions and continuing to reflect and try and make your efforts are seen. I see your efforts. And I'm just so glad to be joined in the practice period with you. So about a couple of days ago, I realized, I said, oh, no, my talk's right after the election. And I was very nervous about that. Very nervous about that because I didn't know what state of mind I'd be in. So anyway, I still don't know what state of mind I'm in.

[03:09]

But the race is over. The presidential election race is over. And it was exhilarating and joyous and maybe not so joyous for others. And I want to acknowledge for those that it is not a joyous time to acknowledge that, that not everyone is in a joyous mood in the country. And maybe you found it exhilarating or the process inspiring. as I heard many express. But at the same time, I think we've just experienced a pervasive kind of conditioning we have in terms of enjoying competition and competing and fueling our competitive tendencies. And I just found that in myself, so I thought maybe you all might have experienced that as well.

[04:11]

So we voted and yet we still must wait in the midst of our fears and for the uncertainty as to what will become of us. So I thought I'd take a look tonight a little bit at our tendency to compete and what is deeply rooted within it since it is pervasive in our society and also probably within our communities and our sangha here at San Francisco Zen Center. And so I wanted to share another one of my poems. I shared one last time. And I wrote this way before the election, and it was an inquiry into my own competitive nature. And so I thought I might share it with you and then move along from that place. So it's called The Human Race. Life is no endurance test in which we must race like wild horses being chased from behind, barely hearing the sound of creeks running over small stones.

[05:26]

Rushing forward, we fall over jetted cliffs in an earth-pounding gallop to claim the gifts thought to be scarce. At the bottom of the canyon, The serenity we thought was lost crawls out from inside and presents itself while we are on the ground. No need to compete for the inherent gifts, exhausting ourselves in fierce competition, making less or more of our lives, blinded by the beauty of another's cloak. There is nothing more admirable There is no more admirable work than to breathe, to turn back in the middle of the race, avoiding crumbled edges along the way. You return to the creek where water rolls over stones, and then ever so lightly, you make footprints in the direction of home where your heart lives, where tea is ready and you are invited.

[06:39]

i'll read that again a little later so you know i i've been thinking about that um for myself this is an inner reflection and where am i where do i think i'm going or where do i think i am and why am i going somewhere what is what is all that about what is that movement of of getting ahead And so I know that in my conceptual mind and maybe in yours as well, there is a sense of a top and a bottom or up and down and in things and places in the world. And we might believe that some people are on top and some people are on the bottom. And we believe maybe we're on top or maybe we're on the bottom. So we work our way from this perceived bottom in a great race to the top for all the goods that life is to present to us.

[07:42]

And so I've been looking at what does that mean for me and what is it about and why does it exist? And I know that it was ingrained by living in a society in which we're taught to be number one. And so recently I was talking to one of the people that I seek counsel with, and this person is not at Zen Center. And I was telling her about being on this mountain and feeling the need to complete the climb to the top, even though I was suffering and was losing heart. And I was speaking of my role here at Shuso. as a head student here, that I was... I wanted to end my climb and come down the mountain. And I told her of my frustration and fear of experiencing myself as a loser if I did not complete my task as she saw.

[08:55]

And that I would be a failure. So... I kept explaining to her that I was losing faith and losing heart. There were a lot of fear and angst about what I was doing. Why was I doing it? Why am I here? What have I done to my life? All these questions were coming up. And so I said, you know, I need to stay. I really need to stay and continue this. And I said, I'm only three feet from the top of the mountain. And she said... And she nodded her head and she said, so after you get up to the three feet, who and where will you be then? And I, of course the word came in my mind was nowhere and nothing. And I laughed and I, somewhere in my mind I was fooling myself that I would be, you know, have achieved something, that I was a great one.

[09:59]

that I had made it and that I had made it to the top of the mountain and all was good. And I imagined that up there I would be accepted and respected and met in a way I wanted to be met by community or the way I wanted to be met at Zen Center or just in the world. I wanted to be met and received in the world as who I thought myself to be. And so I been climbing this mountain and i just thought being on top will certainly do all of that and um and i asked myself again do what you know end my greatest fears of being neglected or for that matter rejected and so um i continue climbing i've climbed this mountain joining a competition within myself to the illusionary top of sangha And yet as I climbed, I felt still alone and rejected.

[11:02]

So I, I sat with this and I reflected on, um, after having this console and, um, and of course the console reflected back to me, my Zen practice. And this is not a Zen teacher. It was very interesting. The response was that, um, I was not climbing a mountain, but rather trying to externally attend to the pain of having felt neglected or rejected in a society that erroneously thinks that there are people on the top and there are people on the bottom. And I felt myself to be and believe to be on the bottom of this. thought of this concept. And so all of my actions in my life and all my karmic action have been an attempt to get off the bottom and to survive a bottom that truly in the nature of all things does not exist. And so I thought it was an interesting correlation to correlate a competitive tendency

[12:15]

to deep feelings of rejection. And I wondered, might that resonate with some of you? And so I'm presenting it as something to look at, to look at whether or not being rejected or being the rejecter, because if you do, you're also on both sides, that we enter a path of competing and rather than facing our rejection, are hurt and pain. So it's easier to say, okay, I hurt, I have pain, I feel rejected, so maybe if I do this external thing in my life, this will erase it. I won't have to deal with it. It'll make me feel better. And it might be a quick fix for a moment. It might not be able to be sustained. So... One thing I forgot to say that the topic of this talk is the three elixirs of sangha, the three elixirs of sangha.

[13:24]

And I think they relate to this notion of rejection. So after sitting with this person that gave me counsel and was saying, there's an external I'm looking externally at my place and maybe there's no mountain and maybe I'm in the middle of the mountain maybe I'm still in the bottom of the mountain maybe I'm in the valley and maybe I'm in the ocean or maybe I'm somewhere else but I but wherever I was I was I was making it something for myself so um I said, well, how do I remain in the practice of head student with all my angst and fears and pain of rejection running stories? And how do I have an open heart when... I may feel rejected or misunderstood, ignored, put upon, wronged in some way. So I haven't felt anything. No one's done anything to me. No one has shown me anything in that way.

[14:25]

But it's a conditioning of the competitive nature that we have in our lives, in a society, in a community, or in a sangha. So it just comes up. I think for some of us in very unconscious ways, maybe how someone looks at us, someone doesn't look at us, someone doesn't say hello or someone said hello too briskly when you wanted to have a conversation or someone said you feel shut down when you're speaking and someone said I have to go somewhere. So it happens very quickly and the rejection can come up and it can go down. So in my sitting, I said, you know, we talk about Sangha as one of the treasures and Sangha as the perfect life. And we go, well, is it the perfect life? And what does that mean in the perfect life? And of course, we are very aware of the angst sometimes and the pain.

[15:29]

But I said, there's some elixirs there. There's some elixirs like medicine. That's thick like nectar. That's in part of every group or in part of every community and sangha. And I call them compassion, forgiveness and reconciliation. Compassion, forgiveness and reconciliation. Now, why are those elixirs just for sangha? I feel that you can't not fully experience any of those. any of those medicines without the mirror of Sangha, without a mirror of others, so that you can see yourself reflected back and forth, back and forth. So that's why I call them elixirs. They only can be gotten in our being together. We can go home and think about compassion. We can go home and think about forgiveness. We can actually do some practices around them. We can go home and work on reconciliation.

[16:32]

But the full experience of those elixirs, I feel I have found in Sangha. That in Sangha is where I learned about compassion, where I learned about forgiveness, and where I learned about reconciliation. And so those are the pieces that help us deal with, instead of when the rejection comes up, we find some external process or climbing or competitive tendency to ease it that we move to the elixir of sangha, which is the compassion and the forgiveness and the reconciliation. So I'm just going to briefly provide some questions around each of those tonight that you might ask yourself or you can ask yourself now. So compassion is simply a gentle response. It's a gentle response to life and to self and others.

[17:34]

A gentle response. So when things get flare up, there's a gentle response, starting with yourself. You know, the gentle response. And that's just three words you have to remember when it comes up. Whatever that is, there's a gentle response to life, to self and to others and to things. So we chant. about Avalokiteshvara. It's a beautiful chant. And when you hear that name and that word, perhaps one of the elixirs of compassion could come up for you. Avalokiteshvara bodhisattva, when deeply practicing prajnaparamita, clearly saw that all five aggregates are empty and thus relieved all suffering. I feel so strongly that the compassion that we can have in practice here in Sangha is a jewel. That's why Sangha is a jewel.

[18:37]

And when we chant that, I mean, maybe the next time when you chant Avalokiteshvara, or Kandzeon, another name, Kandzeon, Namo Bitsuyo, Bitsuu and Yo. We're not just saying words. We're espousing the compassion that we need to be together to be in community and society and the world. We must have compassion for those who may not feel so good tonight because of the election. We must understand how they feel. So also compassion would be to care deeply for living beings and to have reverence for all life. And so when we find ourselves, we can bring that to ourselves first. I feel rejected. I feel wronged. I feel I can't go on. You know, then you say, when deeply practicing Prajna, Paramita, clearly saw that all five aggregates were empty.

[19:47]

It's a beautiful chant. So, or you can ask yourself these questions. Can you accept who you are? Can you not let in another's negative impression of you? Can you not let in another's negative impression of you? Can you accept that you are still practicing loving kindness and you may not know how to express it yet? We're not there. on our way, every day, every step on our way. And we must give each other that gentle response when we're not there. When the loving kindness is not there. Gentle response. Can you continue with love when love is not returned?

[20:53]

This is the Practice of compassion. Can you continue with love when love is not returned? This has had to be my practice. It has to be. It has to be. The way I'm embodied, it must be. It must be. I must love despite any, any other's impression of who I am so that I can have a full life and be a liberated life, the life in which Buddha teaches about. Forgiveness comes from compassion. You can hardly move into forgiveness unless you have this place in which you have a gentle response, a gentle response to all that comes to you. So forgiveness, to give, to grant, allow. I give, I surrender, I let go, to give up desire or power to punish. To give, to grant, allow.

[21:56]

I give, I surrender, I let go. To give up to desire or power to punish. So forgiveness. Could it be that the person whom I feel has wronged me, done me in, these are things in your mind, killed my spirit, is also struggling with past life experience in the present moment? Could it be that I have expectations of others that they are not aware of? Am I willing to let folks off the hook? Do I need an apology before I can let go? Am I willing to not blame myself or others? These are some of the questions you might ask yourself and forget to give, to allow, to grant. Then there's reconciliation. So maybe after you have that gentle response and you give and you grant and you allow and you let people, places and things off the hook, you can go into reconciliation.

[23:13]

And the reconciliation is willingness. Just one word, willingness, one word. Is it within my will to acknowledge the interrelationship as human beings to be at one, to be at one with all living beings? Let's say living beings. This is the practice. Our practice period is called harmony with all living beings in Sangha, taking refuge in Sangha. But you have to have a willingness to reconcile. Is there a willingness to let go of what I think is real? Is there a willingness to abandon the story, rumors, gossip, opinion, ideology, perceptions, for sake of reconciliation, for our breathing together? This was a real hard one for me in practice, to let go of what my ideology is or what I believe or my opinions. And it was like the first thing, you know, that I had to deal with in my practice.

[24:17]

And I was even told, you're arrogant, you know, by one of my niche friend teachers. And I looked at her and like, no, I'm not here to talk about me. I'm talking about my roommate. She's the one that's arrogant, you know. And I'm having problems with her, you know. And I had all these ideas about who she was. And she said, you go home. You go home and you write down how she is. You write a list. So I wrote a list. I had a long list. I wrote it all down, and I looked at the list, you know, and I was supposed to chant with that, you know, chant. I looked at the list, piling on the third day, and I said, it looks a lot like me. I think I'm kind of like that, you know, very opinionated. We were a lot alike. And I said, well, this is very interesting.

[25:17]

I'm in a practice in which they're asking me to strip down everything that I believe. I mean everything that I believe. Should I trust this practice? Should I strip down everything I believe, all my opinions, all my ideology? I'm too smart for that. You know, I'm too smart. I need to hold on to something. I need to hold on to something, to believe in something. Can you exchange a belief for another belief and maybe I'll give up this one? You know, so it was very difficult. And it takes a long time, a long practice. I don't think I really embraced that until about seven years down the road, seven or eight years down the road, when I realized that those were the very things that kept me disconnected from all the people that I thought were rejecting me. I was just disconnected to them because I had my opinions and ideologies and way of being. And so is there a willingness to consider the other's experience even if I don't understand or believe?

[26:27]

Some people say, I need to understand it first before I can accept, you know, before we can go any further. And that's not necessary. What's necessary is that a willingness to consider the other's experience even if I don't understand or believe. That's it. That's a very open place to be together. Is there a willingness not to no longer judge others, not to judge others? Is there a willingness to work through misunderstanding and discrimination without hatred? What mountain are you climbing? Yeah. And what is your motivation? And what's driving you into competition? Maybe it's not rejection. Maybe you have another correlation. I would be definitely interested in hearing that.

[27:27]

We can explore this together. I don't have the answers. I'm just exploring it with you here tonight. So I asked myself too, what did this past election competition affirm for me? To stop climbing up or down mountains in my mind. And to not use my efforts at leadership, priesthood or teacherhood to erase a lifetime of rejection. That my vote not be made from the fear of being annihilated. But from the right of my having been born. That's it. From the right of my having been born. So I want to read the poem to you, and I'm just going to open it up for questions. I do have time, right? 15, great, perfect. Okay, I'm going to read the poem to you. Human Race. Life is no endurance test in which we must race like wild horses being chased from behind, barely hearing the sound of creeks running over small stones.

[28:41]

Rushing forward. we fall over jetted cliffs in an earth-pounding gallop to claim the gifts thought to be scarce. At the bottom of the canyon, the serenity we thought was lost crawls out from inside and presents itself while we are on the ground. No need to compete for the inherent gifts, exhausting ourselves in fierce competition. making less or more of our lives, blinded by the beauty of another's cloak. There is no more admirable work than to breathe, to turn back in the middle of the race, avoiding crumbled edges along the way. You return to the creek where water rolls over stones, and then ever so lightly you make footprints in the direction of home. where your heart lives, where tea is ready and you are invited.

[29:46]

Thank you. Any questions or discussion? Daigon. I want to make sure that I understand. So racism really exists, misogyny exists, homophobia really exists, and sometimes we get stabbed in the back. Is sometimes here the last part? Sometimes we get stabbed in the back. So, yeah, racism, homophobia exists, and sometimes we get stabbed in the back. Yes. So, it sounds to me, my fear is that part of what you're saying is to just sort of Okay, so your fear is I'm saying let that go.

[30:55]

First of all, I want to say that all of the work that goes on around oppression, I'm just going to use that as a of the ways in which people are discriminated against and abused and neglected in society. There are many, many ways of approaching the resolve in that arena. I have been a part of that and still am a part of that in many ways. However, which is the hard part, when you take on the practice of Buddhist teachings, you must begin with your own heart in the work. So that when you're out there doing the work, you're not out there with your woundedness.

[31:56]

You're not out there with your woundedness. That you're moving in that world, in your wellness. That you become well. And you become well with your ability to practice compassion. and your ability to forgive and your ability to reconcile so that you can be, you can show a different path. There are many, many responses to oppression. You know, many, many responses. Diversity training, you know, other protesting, which are all valid. And then there is the dharmic response. And it was really hard for me to move to the dharmic response. But now that I have I find that I'm more able and in a position, a better position, to at least address those issues in a way that I feel is a little bit different than the way I hear it. And I've always felt

[32:58]

I was bumping my head against the wall a lot when I was a social activist in that way of just kind of shouting it out. I felt like I felt very frustrated. And when I began to do my work and then now that I'm out there and if I speak on it, I feel that I can speak in about it in a very different coming from a different path and a different it's a different path. And so I'm not saying that we just let go and pretend nothing's going on. Not at all. And I thank you for asking that question because I think a lot of Buddhist teachings get misinterpreted that we're not to be connected to the world. So, Avalokiteshvara, Bodhisattva, compassion, here's the cries of the world. First. And there's an 11-headed sculpture of Kazayan and Avalokiteshvara.

[34:04]

And it's about when Avalokiteshvara or Kazayan went to bring the people who were suffering, to bring them out of samsara to the pure land, where they would be better off. There's a story that they... she was he or she or person, not a he or she really, it's shaped by who we are, came to bring them out to the peer land. And as it was happening, Avalokiteshvara turned around, or Kanzion turned around and saw that every single being that was just leaving out of samsara, new beings were taking their place. And when they turned their head and saw all those new beings, the head exploded into 11 heads of sadness and grief because it just couldn't handle all of it.

[35:05]

And so that's when you see a statue like that of 11-headed Avalokiteshvara. And in the moment of that sudden explosion and that grief and that sadness was the moment in which the Avalokiteshvara compassion became aroused by and able to go into the world. And so, that's, you must be, hear the cries of the world. That's the simple, yeah. Yes. I was wondering if you could talk about letting go of your own mists, that you use that word before. Yes. Why do you felt you used to do that? Hold on. especially in the context of feeling like you're on the bottom? Okay. So not too long ago, the question that's being asked was about my NIST, because I was a woman as a Pan-Africanist.

[36:08]

I am still those things. They're still inside me. I walk with that. And I call them my NIST being. And I... I... I began to notice somewhere in the middle of my actions that, in the deep anger that lived with me, kept me from connecting to other people. And I actually really learned really well in being here at Zen Center in which I There are a few people that look like me when I came. I felt that there was something I needed to let go of in order to connect with people, not just people that I felt look like me. And it actually helped me even look at my own blackness and how I was relating to African-Americans as my

[37:13]

my um whether or not i loved them or i just was i just favored them because they looked like me or they were like me you know so and i i feel that um it was important for me to let go of the of the ideologies and to just open up to um an emptiness that still is full an emptiness in which there's wisdom and compassion in it and so not an emptiness that's you know, annihilation or anything like that. So I felt once I let go of some of those, which was very frightening, as I was saying earlier, to let go of some of those beliefs, I was able to understand why I was even doing it. So my work and my action as a Pan-Africanist wasn't even cleaned. You know what I'm saying? It was filled with all of my anger and woundedness. And now that I'm not as wounded, I feel I have more to say and a more well story to speak on Pan-Africanism or womanness.

[38:21]

You know, I really feel now that I can speak clearly of it without the obstructions of my own pain. And I've had a lot of experiences in which I could actually hold on to that pain. You know, I was beat up for being the color I am, literally. And we did have crosses burned on our grass in my age, day and time. And I have been accosted in the streets for appearing to be a lesbian or anything like that. So I have had actual, you know, experiences in which I had to, you know, sit with because they hurt. There would be some days I would just, I remember days in my life I would walk out in the morning and by 8 o'clock I'd be crying just by the way people treated me.

[39:25]

And I couldn't live my life like that. I refused to live my life. in a place like that. I want to live my life fully and liberate it. I refuse. And this practice has helped me do that. One more question. Lauren. I just wanted to tell you that your words are they trust me in a very deep place and I think that they go beyond the language that you speak and I think It's really beautiful to see another African-American woman who's wearing her robes, who's taking the precepts, who's just living with the life of a Buddha. I just really need that. And there was something I thought I was going to say.

[40:28]

I can't remember. I just really appreciate your being here. It's meant so much that I can't tell you. Because I really feel, when you speak, I feel like I feel turned back towards myself in a way that nothing else has been able to do that. So I want to say that I appreciate you being here. And thank you for your practice, Lauren. Because I hear you're practicing. So thank you. It's your life. Thank you. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma talks are offered at no cost and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[41:28]

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