Good evening everyone and good evening again with a mic on it is um oddly loud in here but glad that you all can be here i'm always curious to see who is maybe here at the temple for the first time one two three four five six it seems like it's always someone's first time and i'm really glad that you can be with us here this evening at beginner's mind temple It might not come as a surprise to make this statement, but we are all some form of an organism that was forged in some sort of Petri dish that made us us.

[01:18]

The society, the family, the birth order, the gender, the times in which we lived. things that happened in our formative years. We are an organism that's growing, and we are always adapting and changing. In fact, the cells in your stomach lining change completely every two weeks. You get a new stomach lining, believe it or not. We are an organism that's changing. And wherever we go, we are being influenced. And what we do and what we entertain, we energize. And so in the Buddhist studies, I've heard of the three poisons before. Greed, hate, and delusion. I generally accept that I probably shouldn't be greedy, hateful, or delusional.

[02:23]

And you probably feel the same way. And yet... What do I do on a regular basis that as an organism allows me to not be greedy, hateful, and delusional? And if I am exhibiting those qualities, how much harm am I really doing? What is the impact, really, if I am greedy, hateful, or delusional? Now you could look at the opposite of those things and talk about generosity, love, and wisdom. Typically in Buddhism, when we look at things that are character traits that we would not like to embody, we typically look at what are the actions that would be maybe the antidote or the opposite of that. Generosity, love, and wisdom. Because

[03:26]

As an organism, I am influenced by what I do, where I put my mind, and given the default, I will slip into those things in little micro ways. And this building and these monasteries that we find where people come to work on the spiritual path, if you will, provide the structure for me and for you and for anyone wanting to step into that scaffolding to help with that support, it supports us to actually look at things like greed, hate, and delusion. And to actually have something that can allow us to evolve into a different future, if you will. And why was that so necessary? that I as an organism, as a being on this planet evolve into some different future.

[04:28]

Because we know about the past and we know about suffering and we don't want to repeat it. Because we realize where things go when I am behaving poorly. And over time, how that ripples out to the world. But we rarely solve the mind with the mind. In any spiritual path, we usually drop into the body. And we usually find something to support us, some scaffolding to do the work. How do I address my greed, my ego, my want for possessions, for power? When I was a kid, my mom used to say this whenever me and my sister would be in a big fight and we'd be upset with each other and really exhibiting a lot of othering, if you will, that other person.

[05:40]

And she would say, if both of you were a country, lots of people would be suffering. If both of you were a country, lots of people would be suffering. and taking that to the macro level in regards to what it is that I am doing on a daily basis. Because I don't know about you, but today I feel kind of small and a little bit helpless in the face of the fact that 80 years ago, it was the anniversary of the only times that we dropped nuclear weapons on other human beings and destroyed life. August 6th, 1945, August 9th, 1945. Next month, I'm going to be going to celebrate my mom's 80th birthday. And oftentimes I think about that as the celebration of the end of this war. She's been alive just about as long as the end of World War II.

[06:49]

And also I think about it as a sobering marker For that's how long it's been since we first used nuclear weapons on fellow human beings. If both of you were a country, lots of people would suffer. And so when I look at my greed, hate, and delusion, I look at how I am a little microcosm of this world, setting my boundaries with the people around me, my family, my loved ones, my coworkers. And I'm setting them with an imperfect mind. I'm setting them sometimes with greed for my ego. I'm setting them sometimes with othering

[07:52]

which ends up in hate. I'm upset with you and I need to protect myself from you. And I set a boundary. What type of world would I create if I were a country? If I have delusion, I might even think that I need boundaries that I don't. or I might set them in the wrong place. The cartography, if you will, cartographers, of course, do maps. And I think about, you look at the map in 1980 of the world and the map in 1990, 2000, and all the little things that change. And you see how the maps change and how the boundaries change, how the borders get redrawn. Districts and counties, countries. As we draw these lines, that we think are fair and just? And what is the map of my life and how I'm drawing the boundaries and how I'm working with my own greed, hate and delusion?

[09:00]

What type of world would I create if I were a country? The lesser of two evils paradox is what presents when you think about the grief, the horror and the sadness of what happened. on August 6, 1945. Because if we can think that out of fear, we need to do something horrible so that something worse might not happen, we can end up justifying anything. If we are steeped and motivated by our fears, it is very, very difficult to have the clarity for where I should set boundaries and for what I should be doing in regard to what the moment is asking for. And a lot of what was used to justify what happened was the lesser of two evils paradox.

[10:06]

If we do this now, this horrible thing, fewer people will suffer. James Baldwin once said, One of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain. One of the reasons people cling to their hate so stubbornly is because they sense once hate is gone, they'll be forced to deal with pain. The other ring, those people, it's easy. to make a flat plane and to turn something into rubble when you are not connected to those people. That's where hate ends up going. This is a sense that someone else is different than me.

[11:09]

Where in my life do I other? Do I feel like those people? Oftentimes in our life, we don't feel like, I hope that person dies violently, but This person over here that I really despise, I wouldn't mind it if they got humiliated at work, or if they tripped and fell and dropped all their stuff. All the little otherings that we have of that other person. And then where that ends up, down the road. Because we are connected. And the mentality that there is a separation leads down the road for my injustice to spill out in little micro ways that impact that other person, that other person, that person. One of my favorite quotes, and I don't even know who said this, around othering is this.

[12:19]

If not for this rock lamented the shadow, I could be in the sun. If not for this rock lamented the shadow, I could be in the sun. Looking at my life and doing an inventory where I am avaricious, where I am greedy. Realizing that when I other people, and when I feel that those people deserve justice, and those other people don't deserve my open hand or my open heart, we all know what this is like. Whenever you have someone that just kind of annoys you, And you really don't think that they really treat other people that well. And I might be nice to them as an adult, but I'm not nice to them the way that I am to my really good friend.

[13:30]

I don't have that open-hearted stance to them the way that I have to my friend. They don't quite deserve it. And I am internally being the judge of... what the universe should be doling out in regard to karma, and this person deserves to not have, you know, this open-hearted stance. And so these monasteries that we have here have all sorts of structures within them, forms within them, if you will, of how we have some scaffolding that can help us sustain some taller growths, that can help us do the work because it can be very difficult by ourselves to work our way out of our karmic net and on a real-time basis be interacting with people and to be setting those boundaries over and over again in ways that are not based upon our fears or our delusions

[14:37]

It's been 80 years, and there's only been one time where nuclear weapons were used in armed conflict. And it started today, 80 years ago. And the potential of this has left us under a cloud ever since then, certainly of armaments, certainly of our destructive power to each other. But that was the end of the story. That was the end of a long chain of decisions. That was the end of a war that had many, many beginnings. What I can do, I feel kind of helpless on a day like this, where I just largely feel full of grief and feel sadness. Sadness for the potential of what human beings can do to each other. Grief for what happened at that time and what has happened so many times since then to other individuals. And knowing that probably the most powerful thing that I can do on a day like today is to look at my greed, hate, and delusion.

[15:57]

And to try to figure out where my heart is steeled toward those other people, that other person. Who do I not notice? Who do I not care about? Who do I skip over? If I see a little bit of my delusion, but the setting isn't right, am I open to it? You ever have that experience where you're kind of wrong about something publicly, but the setting really isn't right to maybe fully admit it? You know, maybe if you're with your best friend and You were talking beside the fire and they pointed out some sort of delusion that you had or some blind spot. And you go, oh, yeah, thanks for pointing. Okay, I can kind of see that. Yeah, that's a little embarrassing. Have you ever been in a public space, maybe with someone that you didn't feel deserved to be right? And came across...

[17:03]

Have you ever defended maybe something that you've already said, even though you know that maybe by this point in time, you've come to see that the thing that you were defending really wasn't maybe the best thing. Maybe it wasn't as logical, but now you're caught defending it, you know, and you're just like stuck in pure ego. And every word that you say is just a way to keep ego from being punctured. Maybe this is foreign to all of you, but I've done this before. And it's embarrassing internally. But in there, you come to this touch place of the pain of my ego. The pain of... of the fact that i really hold on to reputation i hold on to um this illusion that this will cause me less suffering the illusion that this will cause me less suffering that if i can just sustain this argument and get out of this public sphere to someplace safe and make a few erudite comments that people will be happy with me

[18:18]

And knowing full well that that's the pain of my ego. That's even when we notice it. But what do we do to actually solicit and understand our blind spots? To actually work with our delusions. Because we all have power. We think of people that run big companies and big countries as having power. And those people need to not be working through delusion, right? Because they're going to hurt a lot of people. How many people do I come in contact with? How many people do I influence? How many people, when I am not at my best and I'm working out of ego, do I harm? There's a really interesting study that you can look up that has to do with one degree of separation. And what they did was they studied over a long period of time, about 30 years, and they studied, I think it was about 15,000 people.

[19:26]

And they mapped them with life choices, gaining weight, losing weight, starting to smoke, stopping smoking, going on a diet, going back to school, taking graduate classes, whatever it is. And they mapped the degree of separation, and up to five degrees of separation, there was still a noticeable statistical difference in regard to someone taking up an exercise routine, someone stopping smoking, someone starting to use drugs. And one or two degrees of separation, there was actually a very scary influence of like, You know, in my friend group, you know, there's up to, I think it was like 17% influence that somebody in that friend group will take up a very similar habit if I take it up. And if I stop it, the same sort of thing. And that's just the people around us. We get put in positions all the time of influence.

[20:30]

If I am not looking at my greed, hate, and delusion, being open to the othering that I'm doing. There's people that we just skip through. Until you think about it, you don't realize it. And I don't realize it until I think about it. There's the people that are my friends. There's the people that are kind of interesting. Then there's a whole bunch of other people. And then there's the people that kind of annoy me. And what is it To realize that my preferences have a lot to do with my othering. And to really take an inventory of myself and to realize. I don't give that open hearted stance. Unless I'm actually intending to for a lot of people.

[21:34]

I used to work at this place where there was a person that I always seem to run into whenever I didn't have time. And I was just like, oh, they always show up whenever I don't have time. Why is that? And one day I ran into them. I didn't have time once again. And there they were. And I had to talk to them about something. So I talked to them really briefly for 30 seconds. Did the... rudimentary conversation that I went around the corner back to my tasks you know but I ran into and around the corner this person that I love to talk to and all of a sudden I felt different in my body I felt like oh I have all this yeah I kind of want to talk to them I want to have this conversation you know and noticing that on a micro level, sometimes even not noticing it, that I am acting out my othering, acting out my preferences, acting out how it is that I'm interacting and treating other people.

[22:40]

When we talk about greed, what is it that's lacking? What is it that's lacking? If I'm trying to acquire status, goods, reputation, what's lacking? What is not satisfied? Years ago, I had a life coach and she had me put this little blank credit card with kind of like a sticker on it and put it in my sock drawer. And just to look at it every day, once a day. And it said, when is not enough enough? When is not enough enough? In regard to lack and adding, when can I recognize my feeling of lack, of needing to add to acquire enough?

[23:53]

And then to just kind of touch it and say, that's enough. Yep. I feel a lack. That's enough. Cause that's getting in touch in here with me and where I have the feeling of needing more. Sometimes I joke that in Buddhism, we fully support cookie time. If you like cookies, maybe that first cookie, it's cookie time. But somewhere before cookie 13, it quit being cookie time. And if you've ever been in a room with people where you're telling jokes and laughing and having fun, someone says something funny, someone else says something even funnier, someone says something even funnier, and it's just really fun to keep saying funny things, and then someone else tries to say something even funnier, and it's not funny. When someone else tries to say, and it's not funny, it's like we're trying to keep a hold of that moment.

[25:00]

We don't want cookie time to be over. But it's past. That moment is gone. We're holding on to it. When is not enough enough? Where do I feel lack? Because when I get in touch with what I feel, then I start to be able to realize that I might in many ways go to war with myself. And this is where we start with treating other people outside of our greed, hate, and delusion is noticing the internal way in which I am holding my sense of lack, that greed, And then becoming aware of it I can very much turn that laser inward and Not actually hold it in a good way, but just let the awareness cut me up People can even other themselves Of creating an internal voice that is

[26:23]

the antithesis of what is supportive to an organism to thrive. Could I raise a child from age zero to age five with my internal voice and have it be a healthy human being? Does that work? Is that a healthy organism? How do I hold myself when I realize that I've made a mistake, that I've done something that I don't approve of, Maybe I've done it many times. How do I, how have I learned to hold that? Do I hold it the way that I would hold it if I was teaching a four year old to ride a bicycle and they were upset that they couldn't ride their bike and everybody else could. I mean, I wouldn't go over the four year old and go, what are you doing? All the other kids can ride their bike. You keep falling off of it. When are you going to get your stuff together and be a normal four-year-old?

[27:25]

Now, let's ride the bike. Have you ever talked to yourself that way in your head? Do you ever take on a tone or maybe outside of words? Sometimes I invite people to think of the soundtrack of their life. If you are reviewing the movie of your life and you're talking about the soundtrack, what is that like? What does that feel like? The topography of the soundtrack that goes on inside. Is this something that's supportive? Something that's healthy? Something that helps you thrive as an organism? If we're going to war with ourselves, it's very difficult not to have that spill out into our other relationships. Here in the monastery, we create these structures... to support taller growths, because it's very difficult to work on these things by ourselves and sheer willpower.

[28:27]

And when A.H. Dogen, the founder or maybe re-founder of this school of Zen, was getting near death, he could have done a lot of things in his last two weeks of being the abbot. I mean, after all, he had written a lot of stuff, and people, you know, had a lot of respect for him. But the last two weeks of A.H. Dogen's life, he was sick, he was dying, and he spent it going around in circles, around a pole in his room. And on that pole, he carved Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha, the triple treasure. I take refuge in Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. And that was the lesson that he left as he went around the last two weeks of his life in his room, circling that pillar. And realizing that this is where we take refuge.

[29:36]

And the support systems that are there for us with the Sangha, with the practice, are things that can help us sustain taller growths, things we could not do by ourselves, mirrors that can be held up to us that we never could have fashioned to get a reflection. And so I'm really glad that all of you came to the monastery tonight, to this place that is designed for humans to come and to examine this one mystery that is this life I've been given. Because what can I do on a day that is so filled with sadness? I can start working on myself and the internal war and the little micro exchanges I have with other people.

[30:43]

and my awareness for my delusions and getting in touch with the pain of my greed and the sense of lack and my habit of othering those other people, even othering myself. We have seen society when the structures fall apart, when people do not have stability, where they do not have equanimity, a place to center, a place to grow, when they are not raised by their parents, when they are not afforded education, and when there is nothing but strife and turmoil. We see what happens to humanity. And we are so fortunate to not have war on our soil today. And we also have to be reverent that we wouldn't have this soil if there wasn't war before. And we have to realize that the wars that I have within are going to spill out. And I don't know how far and how many degrees of separation they will spill out.

[31:49]

And to realize that that pain of being a human being is universal. And as one of my favorite writers Murakami wrote, pain is inevitable, suffering is optional. And we have pain for being a human being, but how we hold that discomfort, the context with which we learn to hold what is uncomfortable, has a lot to do with how we will suffer. And retelling the story of what happened at Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6th and August 9th, 1945, is important. So we can remember what happens with greed, hate, and delusion at the end of the story. This is what happens when two countries fight, as my mom said.

[32:56]

And these things remind us that we are not separate. That we are separate. able to influence so many people by how we work with this mystery that we've been given. If this is your first time to come here, please come back. This is a place for everyone. You do not have to call yourself a Buddhist. We want you to come here and to explore your mystery as far as who you are. And if you want to talk to somebody about Buddhism, look up any of us with these robes on and ask us about it. but the doors are open and we don't have any rule for you to enter. And we don't have an expectation for you. And as the Dalai Lama once said, when asked, shouldn't everybody be a Buddhist? He said, if people have a spiritual path that's working for them, that's what they should stick with. We don't know what's best for you. But we know what has been working in this tradition, in this school, and that's why we put this monastery together, to sustain taller growths, so that we can be here as a Sangha and support each other.

[34:08]

And we can really realize the refuge that Ehe Dogen realized at the end of his life, and why, as an example, he didn't go and give a bunch of Dharma talks, he just went in a circle around that pillar, saying, I take refuge in Buddha, I take refuge in Dharma, I take refuge in Sangha. If not for this rock, lamented the shadow, I could be in the sun. Thank you for coming and joining us tonight on this heavy day. I hope that you will come back with us. I hope that you will keep examining your mystery and you will keep holding up a mirror for the rest of us for what it is you've learned. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center.

[35:11]

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. For more information, please visit sfzc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[35:34]

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