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. Thank you also to Tonto at City Center, Nancy Petron, for the invitation to speak today, and of course to Abbot Ed and Abbot David. who are leading this practice period for the invitation. And of course, thank you to you all. Going to gallery view. I like gallery view. All right. And it's great to see so many faces I haven't seen in a long time. And I'd like to, I know it's not the current form and I'd like, is it possible to unmute everyone? And before you do, I'd like us to say hi. You know, I think it's really hard these days to make connection.

[01:02]

And this is one way. And besides just looking at each other, I'd like you to say hi and pretend like you're in a Zoom room. You have to re-emload each other. And it probably would be most beneficial. So I apologize already for everything I'm going to say. Anne, let's take a moment. And I know that there was a big earthquake in the Aegean Sea, so it really impacted Turkey and Greece. So I'd like us to just take a moment and let that in and send out Mata and Karuna goodwill and compassion in that direction to those beings in particular. And as it's a resonating practice, really, that Ramabhar is, I also feel it coming back to you.

[02:07]

Right, thank you. And gosh, these days, did anything else happen in the last nine hour and a half that I haven't looked at the news? 2020 is one of those, isn't it? And given what's coming up on Tuesday, which I recently read, someone said, why do we call it election day when we're already voting? So it's the end of election day, right? In the sense of we're supposed to, in the United States, stop voting on that day or by the end of the day. So that's a lot right now for us to handle. And I know the practice period, is about, and my sense is that the topic was picked as some way to offer, knowing the challenges right now, to look at the classic bodhisattva archetypes. And this is from Taigen Leighton's book that you are using.

[03:17]

He says, it's the premise of this book that we can gain insight and guidance into how to engage in spiritual practice and live wholeheartedly. in accord with the light of the Bodhisattva tradition. The Bodhisattva, I'm skipping around a little, the Bodhisattvas presented in this book are considered as archetypes, fundamental modes of dominant psychic aspects of the enlightening being. Archetypes are crystallizations of components of the psyche and catalysts to self-understanding. In Western psychology, Carl Jung and his followers have studied this way in which humans externalize and project certain unconscious instinctual patterns of their own character onto others. So it's a projection of our own sense of things. And this morning, as I was thinking about, I don't wear these robes very often these days.

[04:24]

And so as I was thinking about putting these on, I was thinking about when I ordained and Blanche, my teacher, said, you know, are you ready? Part of getting ready to be ordained is one, are you ready to manage the yards of cloth? Which she said takes about five years to manage, right? And then the other thing, is are you willing to deal with the projections that will be put upon you once you put on the ropes? And also as the color of your ropes change, the projections only increase in my experience. And so of course, then when things are projected on us, we also project them, right? So this is not a one way thing for sure. And so it's great that you guys have been I'm studying the enlightened archetypes.

[05:25]

And since today is Halloween, I thought we would explore the shadow projections, right, in particular of monsters. Of course, Halloween traditionally comes from a Celtic pagan practice called Samhain, I think is how you pronounce it. And celebrants believe that the barrier between the physical world and the spirit world break down during Samhain, allowing more interaction between humans and the dissidents of the other world. And so I'm going to do a screen share here. All right, I have it all ready. I'm going to do a screen share. This is the inspiration of my talk today. Can you all see it? I like this some of you so I can know that it's working. Barbara, I can see you. So is it working? All right. When you teach a wolf to meditate, he becomes a werewolf.

[06:29]

All right. It's pretty cute, huh? So Dab actually got this on Instagram. And she follows this man named Stick. And as you can saw in there, he was born Clayton Gavin. And his chosen name now is... And I apologize for my probably messed up pronunciation. And his stage name is actually Stick Period Man. And he was part of a rap activist and author, but part of a rap group called Desprez based in Oakland a while back. And he actually has a song called Wolves. And that's partly, I think, why he has that up from an album in 2000 called Let's Get Free. Very radical. You might want to go check that out. So, and you know, werewolves are mythological animals, right? And subject to many stories in the world, usually of nightmarish stories as monsters tend to be, and always bloodthirsty and fighting.

[07:39]

And, you know, the idea is that, is there any basis for these? Because there are many myths for some version of werewolves. And so the idea is that, well, maybe they were associated with murderers, legendary murderers, or maybe how people behave at the full moon. And perhaps there's even a medical explanation, such as there is a condition discovered in 1978 that is called... Licanthropy, which lichens or lichens, I don't know how to pronounce that, are considered the medical name of, I don't know, I don't need to admit anybody. Okay. That maybe encouraged the werewolf mania. And those are lack of speech, seizures, distinct facial features, a lot of hair, difficulty breathing. and intellectual challenges. And then they had others, you know, it could be food poisoning that might be the cause, rabies or hallucinations, right?

[08:48]

So I'm bringing it up as a sense of how we project extreme, scary, evil characteristics onto things we don't understand or are afraid of. I gave a talk a while back about fear, the fear factor, fear drive as a around monsters so today today um the thing that when this um instagram post came in actually the thing that really resonated for me about it is that um what what does he become aware of when you teach a wolf to meditate he becomes aware of what does he become aware of What do we become aware of? What do we awaken to? So in my mind, there are two things that we awaken to. One, we awaken to suffering, to dukkha. As a Buddhist, in my sense of what we awaken to.

[09:50]

And then we awaken to what will we do with knowing about suffering? These are the two things I want to talk about today. And of course, These are in the four noble truths. So the first noble truth is that in life there is suffering. This needs to be accepted. And then second is understanding what brings about the causes and conditions. The causes and conditions. So when you understand those, then it actually goes into the third is what will you do with it? One is you will know that it's possible to end it. By the way, these all come with practice instructions. The first one is you investigate suffering. The second, classically, is you abandon the causes and conditions. I like to think of it as you know them clear and you practice letting them go and preventing them and cultivating more wholesome, extending wholesome, you could say.

[10:54]

And then the third is you realize it. You understand it, you understand it not just intellectually, but you live it, and then you understand it as true of every being. And then the fourth, of course, classically in the tradition is just practice, an older tradition. And then pretty much these days, we think that the, we put that the fourth noble truth is that the Eightfold Path, of course. So, and then, Since the pandemic, actually, I have been teaching a course on the Dharma being anti-racist and also on the Eightfold Path and then concurrently with a group of Asian-Americans on how to work with all the anti-Asian hatred that's come up because of the pandemic. And that's called Lotus Rising from the Mud. Anyway, so a quote that

[11:57]

has been my anchor, my new post-it note on my desk the last few months, is from Audre Lorde. And this is from her book, Chosen Poems. And it's called A Choral of Black Women Voices. Neat, excuse me, Neat, A Choral of Black Women Voices. How much of this truth can I bear to see and still live unblinded? How much of this pain can I use? I'll say it again. How much of this truth can I bear to see and still live unblinded? How much of this pain can I use? So the first part of that, I think, goes with this waking up to suffering, to dukkha. Don't forget that dukkha is also translated dis-ease, dissatisfaction, discontent. There are many other translations.

[12:59]

Stress is an even one. So we're waking up to the difficulty of life. And by waking up here, we mean that we want to investigate it, right? We don't want to turn away from it. That is our perhaps conditioned response. Now, when I've done some research this week, last 10 days or so on werewolves, which means I watch a few movies. It's a library. You can't go to the library and browse anymore. I did a few online things. So this is, you know, basically the projections, the popular projections of werewolves. And by the way, there aren't too many of them. Vampires are the more popular one. But werewolves are always getting bitten, right? This is how they become awakened, right? They do. They get bitten. And by the way, when I talk about when I went to... I did not intend to practice Zen, and then I was bitten by the Zen bug. So that happened to me, and then I morphed into this being, right?

[14:01]

Actually, a bodhisattva is also otherworldly. Bodhisattvas are not of this world, but the idea of a bodhisattva is not in popular culture. So we're bitten, and then... I think that the difficulty, by the way, I used to read some science fiction and I like this whole series called the Alpha and Omega about werewolves. And the hardest part, it seems to me, about becoming a werewolf, besides it's very physically painful, right? The transformation. And there's a sense that you can't, once it happens, you cannot morph into this werewolf, especially at the full moon. So once we're aware of that there's suffering in the world, that this is what we're awakening to, that we can no longer avoid it. There is a sense that we can't turn away from it. And so, and then it seems like the difficulty is that you wake up these werewolves into being part of a pack, right?

[15:10]

A lot of stories, they're kind of... What's the word? Individuals that are like by themselves. They're isolated, and then they become part of a pact, and that's the hard part. And so today, so you wake up to the sense that yourself is not individual. We're part of a pact. That's what I want to talk about today. And of course, the sense of non-self, which is one of the three seals of... the Dharma or the three marks of existence, right? There's dukkha, there's impermanence, and there's non-self or not-self, right? So this is from Thich Nhat Hanh from the heart of the Buddha's teachings, right? He says, the second Dharma seal is non-self.

[16:11]

Nothing has a separate existence or a separate self. Everything has to intervie with everything else. The first time I tasted peanut butter cookies, I was at Tassajara Zen Mountain Center in California. And I love them! Exclamation mark. I learned that to make... Peanut butter cookies, you mix the ingredients to prepare the batter, and then you put each cookie onto a cookie sheet using a spoon. I imagined that the moment each cookie leaves the bowl of dough and is placed onto the tray, it begins to think of itself as separate. You, the creator of the cookies, know better. And you have a lot of compassion for them. You know that they are originally all one and that even now the happiness of each cookie is still the happiness of all the other cookies.

[17:13]

But they have developed discriminative perception. Yucalpa. And suddenly they set up barriers between themselves. When you put them in the oven, they begin to talk to each other. Quote, get out of my way. I want to be in the middle. I am brown and beautiful and you are ugly. Can't you please spread a little in that direction?" We have the tendency to behave this way also, and it causes a lot of suffering. If we know how to touch our non-discriminating mind, our happiness and the happiness of others will increase manifold. We all have the capacity of living with non-discriminating wisdom, but we have to train ourselves to see In that way, to see that the flower is us, the mountain is us, our parents and our children are all us. When we see that everyone and everything belongs to the same stream of life, our suffering will vanish.

[18:20]

Non-self is not a doctrine or philosophy. It is an insight that can help us live life more deeply, suffer less, and enjoy life much more. We need to live the insight. of non-self. So how can we live the insight of non-self? So I thought I'd talk about that in a positive way, right? So these are my thoughts about what a sense of non-self in terms of positive ways. First is I as mutuality. The first one that I think about right away when I think about mutuality is generosity or dhana. Usually these days, in my experience in Western convert Buddhism, dhana is talked about as kind of like donation, right? Or I know that a lot of people see it as like service.

[19:24]

Like, what do I give for the service I'm going to receive? You know, and that's why sometimes it's like, oh... imagine in this hour, if you had paid in the olden days to go see a movie, how much would that cost? Maybe that's what you would consider donating. And I'm not saying this is bad. We're trying to make it a sense of how people can relate. And I get, you know, I, on my website, I have a sliding scale of what you could donate because people kept coming to me and say, I don't know. I don't know what this means. Can you give me some frame? Right. Because in this culture of capitalism, everything has a, you know, needs to be worth something for my money. It's an exchange in that way. Whereas when it's a mutuality, there's a sense that it's not separate, right? We're supporting each other in that. And so I also wanted to think of a practice sense of how we know mutuality. And this is off of a couple of weeks ago when I was on here listening to Tenku Ruff.

[20:27]

I'm Reverend Tenku Ruff. And the question comes up about, or my remembrance of it is about hierarchy and about leadership. So to me, mutuality also has a sense of trust and hierarchy when leadership is based on mutuality, not on self-serving individuals. An example I thought of is when I practice at Hoshinji, Saki Harada's, monastery in Obama, Japan. Hierarchy is everything in the Buddhist world, especially in Asian Buddhist world. And often it has to do with when is the day you ordain? Is the hierarchy determined? And there is some sense of that at Hoshinji, but it's also not just when you're ordained, but when do you enter that temple? And so every time we line up for anything, we have some sense of this at Tassajara and at Zen center, you know, and the zendo, of course, the seats are in hierarchy, especially during practice period.

[21:31]

But at Hoshinji, it's also like that with when you line up before you go into the hato, the Buddha hall for service, right? So everyone comes out of the zendo. Of course, we just put on our robes and then we all line up on the side, you know, in hierarchy. And then... So waiting for the road down to happen, what we all do is we all turn to each other and we all fix each other's collars. Like here, you know, because there's no mirror, right? But here I can see. But we depend on each other to fix our collars and tuck ourselves in so that we're all, like we're all as one, not so much as one, but we're all supporting each other, right? So to me, it was always a very sweet moment of just caring and tending. And even when I'm talking about, I think a little bit like we're like, you know, little monkeys, like grooming each other. And I know when I was more at Zen Center, you do not touch other people's robes, right?

[22:36]

I know that some of the priests that I have close to, you know, I have tucked Tova's Okesa. coming up the stairs as we enter from the Zendo to go listen to a talk or something. And it's because, you know, Tova and I have a relationship. And I'm sure the first time I was like, Tova, can I touch you, right? So there is a sense of mutuality in that. So there's also accountability, I think, in mutuality, right? When leadership honors accountability. And transparency is, I think, a... key part of accountability. And again, my Dharma sister who's no deceased, Janadraka, I was there for the practice period when she was Shuso. And the thing that really still resonates with me is when she's up there and she said, you know, and she was a Black Rope priest at the time.

[23:38]

And she said, we ordain to live a transparent life. We ordained to live a transparent life. And so to me, this is it. And in part, that is supported by our precepts. And as I've said throughout the pandemic in particular, that the precepts are here, right? Not that I become immoral when I practice the precepts. It's because in knowing that someone practices and practices, has taken the precepts, you know that they are safer, right? And that's a classic definition, actually, of why you take the precepts. You become safer for others. You become accountable to living your life to the precepts, and people know that. So they know that you're going to live a transparent life. You're going to be in accordance with that. There's also the I of multiplicity.

[24:41]

making for richness and layers, respect of differences. Now, of course, in the teaching, we have the sandokai, the harmony of difference and equality. But I would say, you know, when I was thinking about, well, how am I going to choose an example from my practice? And I had a really hard time thinking of one, right? I don't know. see actually in congregate Buddhism very much respect for differences. As in to honor it and to love it. Just talk about it but I don't actually see a lot of evidence of it. As if I was thinking the one place that I do know of and I was there at the first meeting when it was just a thought of East Bay Meditation Center or now called East Bay Meditation Center. This is in 1998 or 99. And EPMC pretty sure I could be wrong, was started because they, in part, because of the alphabet or the queer group, and then the people of color group decide to have some practice placed together.

[25:45]

And they're started by those, right? So already it begins with honoring difference, begins with respect and love for populations that are considered monstrous historically. Don't forget queers, you know, we were like, you know, perverts. That's where the word perverts comes from. And we were, you know, sick, right? So respect of differences. And then actually this morning, as I was preparing, I did come up with an example. So when I was at Hoshinji again, Sakeharada, He kept pretty much to himself. He was actually pretty sick by then already. He was 82, I believe, at the time. But he would come and do service once a week or so. And often he was off the side in his own little space.

[26:45]

So one time he, it was actually getting close to Founder's Day, which is huge in Japan, right? And so he was doing a service. And then, so Hoshinji is an Eheiji. temple, classically, in that lineage. So in the A.H.E. tradition, which, by the way, my lineage blanches, when you go up to the altar and you do a service, you turn right. You turn right before you go back, right? So Roshi goes up there, and when he stepped to the side to leave, he turned left. And then he walked back, and there's no, there's no like, in Japan, because you would just, Internally, we all went, huh? You know, but we would not make a sound, right? So, you know, and then we go about a day, which I was running from one thing to another. So we're at breakfast, right? And Roshi shows up. And he gives this little talk.

[27:48]

He would just give little talks. And he said that when you go to a temple, you do... the practice of that temple. When you enter a temple, and remember in the classic Buddhist tradition, you go to visit temples, right? That's part of practicing. That's part of training is to go to different temples and to practice with different masters. So when you go to a temple, you just do whatever form is at that temple because that's respecting the way of that temple, right? It isn't about like, oh, that's not right. I like this one better. This is part of entering the temple to practice fully is you do whatever is the form of the temple. Now the backstory, the backstory is, so a young man had come back because it was again, Founders Day coming up and he had been there a while and he told us that Roshi, you know, afterwards, oh, so the young man was his jisha, his attendant, right?

[28:57]

So when they go back after this, service, Roshi said to him, did I turn left? And he said, yes, you did, master. And he said, oh, and the man said that, you know, he said to Roshi, he said, oh, you know, we used to turn right all the time. And then at one point you were asked to be the head of Sojiji. So it's an honorary thing to be head of Sojiji for a year. Right? And so Dojo Roshi, Sakihirada Roshi was asked for a year. So then for that year, they all turned left. So it was in his body, right? And so very nuanced, right? So it's not so much the sense of honoring multiplicity is a sense of that it's not a tight thing. It's not about right or wrong, good or bad. It's about honoring where you're at and what you're doing.

[29:58]

which again doesn't mean that it can't change and it can't be different, but from what is the spirit of doing that? And then the last one I want to talk about is I as relational, right? As a network, right? Or, you know, like the finger is part of the hand, you could say, part of a component. And on this, I want to go to the second part of what are we awakening to, right? What will you do with it? So this, I think, addresses the second part of that Audra Lorde poem. How much of this truth can I bear to see and still live unblinded? How much of this pain can I use? How much of this pain can I use? Transformation, we like to think, is easy, right? I'm going to see light and, you know, go towards heaven. There's a different way sometimes it's talked about without a doubt in Buddhism. My experience is it's really painful.

[30:59]

Transformation, like the werewolf, breaks your bones. You fall apart and you come together again. And in fact, there is a sense that we need to fall apart. Our conditioning needs to fall apart. Really, all the ways that we perceive. Don't forget when Thich Nhat Hanh talked about non-self, it's the perceiving that's the problem. a way of conceptualizing, of understanding what the world is, right? And this is why I would say that I have, I've reframed the Four Noble Truths to be, first is, there is harm, like, just get over it, there's not that it's, just say that there is harm, there is hurt, right? And then the second is, a much more of an emphasis on the condition. So what are the causes and conditions? And the reason that I want to emphasize the conditions is that it's very much more about the structural. And the way that I like to talk about it is, imagine, so you all probably know, and I'll just say a little bit for those who don't, there's a metaphor called Indra's Gnat in the story, of course, in the Ava Tam Saka Sutra.

[32:12]

So of Indra's Gnat, and usually when we hear about Indra's Gnat, we hear that it's a gnat in which there are jewels. In the nodes and the jewels reflect each other. And so mostly it's talked about as how the jewels reflect and that we reflect each other. And there's obviously a sense of interconnectedness there. I want to really emphasize the net. The net. Because when you frame your experience, when you understand, in my sense, when I understand that my experience, is about the net and not about the jewels. Again, about the emphasis. Not that the jewels don't exist. But if we're thinking about the net, then what are the pathways of how things happen? What are the causes and conditions that makes one jewel heavier than others, one jewel bigger than the other, one jewel stressing the net?

[33:15]

And then, by the way, we've used this metaphor in the anti-racist course. one of the co-teachers, Sarah Emerson, Reverend Sarah Emerson, recently was talking about wise action and she was saying that the tools are actually where the, obviously where the net comes together and the, you know, and that is actually where the, they connect and also I'm thinking it's where the knots happen. And when we talk about our ancient twisted karma and the way we become, right, we, an individual, It comes due to causes, conditions, and our karmic pattern is what makes the knot, right? So those nodes are really the knotted part of where causes and conditions tighten up. Some of the tightness is natural. When they touch, there's a much more tightness, but it's also where, I think it helps us to see that sense of where our karma, that's what karma is, right?

[34:18]

the noddedness or one way to look at karma is where energy is nodded. All right, so then in the second, and I like this framing or I appreciate this framing of the Four Noble Truths is because if we think about the second Noble Truth is that it's causes and conditions and the condition is much more about my conditioning, right? race. And so I'm talking about the Dharma anti-racism, right? We're all conditioned to think about, to frame race, and it varies from country to country, right? Racism. And so if we're conditioned, so to me, then the third noble truth, how could it end? Or how can it be abandoned or let go? And that comes from unlearning. So if I learned this, if this was taught to me and I've internalized it, and this has become my worldview, then I can understand that I can unlearn it or relearn it.

[35:23]

So it's just much more to me positive and hopeful that this is something that I have agency. That's also part of the third noble truth, right? I have agency. Where is it that I have agency? Where is it that I have a sense that I can unknot this, that I can work with the knot to loosen it, untangle it, right? This is the agency. So yeah, the coming together in a way is coordination. You have to have some points for support, but it's also a sense then how much of it is about boundaries that are needed versus defenses. Is there flexibility? at these points of connection, or are they tight and not it? And, you know, I like to offer a little something that's not just individual.

[36:28]

So I know there's a little bit of a, just a throw out there, but I have been also the other thing I've been thinking and working with a lot is the idea of resilience, right, given these times. given it all, especially in these times. And this is from a book called Resilience by Stephen Southwick and Dennis Charney. But this is actually talking about Professor Fran Norris' out of Dartmouth. She's a specialist in community resilience, in particular in response to crises. And so she has four parts of what you would say was a structural health like to think of. When the net is healthy. And that is economic development. And economic development here needs to be varied and with equity. So it needs to have a lot of variety and it needs to be equally distributed.

[37:28]

Social capital. Of course, when I first read this, given these times, I was thinking, oh, like, I don't know my terms very well at that step. Social media. No, that's not what she's talking about. She's talking about Relationships between individual and their neighborhood. Community organization and community at large. And the ways to manifest that are she offers some citizen participation. You could say sangha participation. Emotional connection to the community's mutual concerns and shared values. And I appreciate that. It's emotional connection to the community's mutual concern and shared values. Right. It's not talk connection. It's not reaching out just to make ourselves look at. But do we actually understand this suffering? Are we actually giving voice to other suffering? Right. Are we honoring other suffering? Are we supporting others to undo their suffering?

[38:32]

And then the third in terms of social capital is receiving and giving of social support. They're basically what I just said. Information and communication is the third one. And of course, that's effective sharing of accurate information. So the part is effective sharing, which another word I would say is transparency. Are decisions made in a way that's transparent to the community? One, does a community have input in decision making? And then two, are they transparent? And by the way, transparent is not just to tell people what you think they want to hear or what you want them to hear. It's that the whole process is transparent. And I know that I've worked with centers about like, you know, scholarship program. If they're not transparent, how you make decisions, then people, it actually doesn't support clear understanding or that people are being treated equally because who administers the scholarships have their own biases.

[39:38]

And if the whole community knows clearly and those are followed, then that's the transparency and then the accountability there and then trust is built by accountability. And then community competence here is, again, meaningful intentional action. And again, the stress is my meaningful, but that's what jumps out for me. Meaningful intentional action, not, you know, surface action. Not, and of course, how do you get the meaning? What makes it meaningful? Who is it meaningful to? Not just to me, but to us, hopefully. Working together with creative and flexibility to solve problems. So again, that's from Professor Fran Norse. So, will you let Tuka, pain and suffering, transform you? And what will you do with that transformation? Will it become from anger and hatred, greed and delusion, blame?

[40:46]

Is it our revenge? Or is there a heedless decadence? It's really funny in this research I've been doing on otherworldly creature movie watching, scanning, and online, you know, These other worldlies are immortal, and it seems like what they do with their immortality is usually fight each other, well, try to turn humans or eat humans, fight each other for, you know, supremacy, and they often talk about how one is less than other. It seems like the vampire in these things are like the sane ones, and then the werewolves are animals. They have no conscious thoughts, supposedly, right? So there's this really us and them there, or else, you know, they're like, just living a decadent life or some combination of the two, right? And that's supposed to be like the utopia of immortality, right?

[41:49]

So, and of course, these stories are written by people. So there are projections of what we do with immortality, with our other worldliness. What can it be based on kindness, gentleness, love, connection, and compassion. And honestly, at first I thought, oh yeah, that's what a bodhisattva is. That's what a bodhisattva we are. Kindness, gentleness, love, connection, and compassion. And then I thought, no, no. I mean, yes, yes, and, yes, and. Because... Bodhisattvas respond to all cries of the world. We go towards monsters and other worldlies. We're part of other worldlies. We go to show the light on that.

[42:50]

We bring the light of the world to that. We shine our light on where others refuse to look. And of course on ourselves too. And then we respect that and we honor that. And then how do we make it part of our existence? Because this is part of our existence, our shadow. And so if we don't bring it to light or that we don't acknowledge it, but that doesn't mean we let it go into decadence and anger and all that. But that could be stages. How do we work through, right? How much of this pain can I use? How will I be transformed by the suffering of my own in the world? So I would say it's the negotiation between the archetypes and our life, right? Our worldly, ordinary life. The Han, and I was trying to, you know how you, the Han is the board where we hit to call you to meditate in the Zen Do.

[44:03]

You know how you see it all the time. You just can't remember exactly. So I was looking for pictures. By the way, the new website is so hard to manage for me. And I couldn't find one exactly because they're a little bit different at each of the centers. And then, of course, I looked in Blanche's book. So I'm pretty sure. And I think I hung out on the second floor. Blanche Callagraph. One of them, I think, at City Center Blanche. One of you can tell me later. Anyways, Blanche. This is the way Blanche frames it. And it's in her book, Seeds for a Boundless Life. Great is the matter of birth and death. Awe is impermanent, quickly passing. Wake up. Wake up. Each one. Don't waste this life. So how will you not waste your life? Because it doesn't just happen. You don't just wake up and then it just happens that all of a sudden we're going to be some idealized self. So it does take an intentional, meaningful effort to acknowledge and respect our shadows individually and collectively.

[45:11]

And then I think we need to choose a framework to live by and to live with others. And the world, the earth is also burning. And then hopefully I would propose to you that hopefully it's a framework. Again, that's with other and not separate. So Thich Nhat Hanh says in the same chapter, and this was in the 98, so you can put in whatever dichotomy and conflict you know of now. We should practice so that we can see Muslim as Hindus and Hindus as Muslims. We should practice so that we can see Israelis as Palestinians and Palestinians as Israelis. We should practice until we can see that each person is us, that we are not separate from others.

[46:15]

This will greatly reduce our suffering. We are like the cookies, thinking we are separate and opposing each other, when actually we are all of the same reality. We are what we perceive. We are what we perceive. This is the teaching of non-self, of interme. Thank you for your attention. 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.

[47:08]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_93.53