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. Good morning. Is it signed okay? Okay. We'll leave it just where it is. During the last week, I went to visit someone who's close to death, who used to be a regular practitioner here at City Center. He never lived here, but he used to come very regularly. And now he has a hospital bed set up in his living room.

[01:02]

And that's where he lives. And as we were chatting in a pause, he said to me, he said, trust the moment. And then he said, I said that to him 20 years ago. Trust the moment. How do we do that when the world is in such turmoil? How do we do that when even our own process of being alive has its own turmoil and drama? This is the great question that Zen practice has the audacity to respond to.

[02:21]

It's not as if we think we will master what it is to be alive. It's more humble than that. It's more that what else makes sense for human life than to try to discover how to live it. How to live it in a way that lessens suffering and enables a kind of harmonious flourishing internally and with everyone else. Each day this week I've poured through the news on the internet on the details of what's happening in between Israel and Palestine.

[03:29]

I grew up in an area in Northern Ireland that had, actually by comparison, it was a very contained, violent period of about 30 years in a very divided community. or division of choice. Maybe it wasn't a choice. Maybe it was the force of circumstances. The division was Catholic and Protestant. And I was, I grew up Catholic, and the Catholics were the minority, and they were oppressed. I think that's a fair thing to say. Maybe others would disagree. but I'm going to say they were oppressed.

[04:37]

And after 30 years of violence, a peace treaty was signed. And 27 years later, the community of Northern Ireland, it's somewhere between a million and a half and two million, still spasming from all the violence. Trauma, domestic violence, substance abuse, lawlessness. It leaves me thinking, after this, hopefully, somewhere in the next 10 years, we will resolve what's happening in the Middle East.

[05:57]

But something in me thinks, ah, And then when it's safe for people to feel what they're feeling, how terrible that will be. Maybe we can hold it in an optimistic way as the process of healing. Somehow it made me think. It made me have no judgments about what it occurs to me is the whole thing is an enormous tragedy. I think back

[07:05]

to the late 40s, 1940s, when Israel was coming into being. And then before that, the turn of the 20th century, when certain powers that were influential on a global scale then drew up a map of the Middle East. This is going to be a country. and it's going to be called this, and this is going to be a country, and it's going to be called that. And all the empires before that asserted their influence in that area. In our tradition, in part of our liturgy, we say, all my ancient complex karma. And the I is a singular, but it's also a unifying collective.

[08:13]

All are ancient twisted karma. Ancient, I prefer the word complex. And yet, here we are. shining in the window, casting a shadow over the tatamis. Here we are in a sanctuary, in a refuge. You know, we're maybe trusting the moment is possible. You know, right now we are in the middle of a one-day sitting. And the one-day sitting is in the middle of a ten-week intensive, a dedicated time of practice.

[09:19]

And it's also, each of us is in the middle of being a person, having the life we're living. The theme for the practice period, the intensive of this time, is a combination of the genjo koan, a fascicle by the finder of Soto Zen in Japan, and the six paramitas. Paramita can be translated as perfection. So this combination of, is there a way, quite literally, to think about the dilemma, the possibilities of the life we're living, singularly and collectively?

[10:27]

Is there a way that it's skillful to think about it? Paramitas do this wonderful, almost contradictory notion. Like if you really want to see how your mind is wandering back and forth, paying attention and then getting caught up, just try to focus on the moment without wavering. Then you see how much your mind wavers. and wonders. And the six parameters is a similar proposition. If you want to see your imperfections, practice perfection. And the first three parameters are generosity, ethics,

[11:34]

or discipline, or virtue. Some combination of the three. And then the third one is patience. And together, I think of them as, as we engage them, they're loosening us up. They're loosening up our impatience. They're loosening up the fear of our scarcity, our lack of generosity. And they're loosening up the way in which, even though I think we all know better, somehow the request of practice often gets subsumed by what we want and what we don't want, and who we like and who we don't like.

[12:41]

Both the passions of what we want and don't want, and the judgments of us and them. Peace Treaty was signed in Northern Ireland. There was a group of us around the Zen Center. We tried to work on peace and reconciliation. One of the notions we put out was there is no them. There's only us. There's only us. Palestinians or Israelis. Yes, we're both. And we can watch the mind that wants to judge, that wants to separate.

[14:07]

wants to hold up one side as virtuous and the other side as barbaric. What if we think there's only us One of the very powerful things we did in Northern Ireland was we would bring people together from the so-called two sides and then ask them to share with each other how they had suffered through the troubles, which is the name for the civil unrest. And lo and behold, they discovered their suffering was very similar relatives and friends had been killed.

[15:14]

The constant threat of violence and not knowing what was safe had worn down their resilience and their healthy consciousness and state of mind. In our suffering, there's just us. And of course, our mind will be inclined towards creating a narrative. But I'd suggest to you that However, and whatever your narrative is, there's a human tragedy. There's a sea of suffering.

[16:19]

Made me think of this poem by Pablo Neruda, which he wrote. He's from Chile. And he wrote this poem at a time when there was a lot of turmoil in Chile and in other parts of South America. He called the poem Keeping Quiet. Now we will count to twelve and we will all keep still for once on the face of the earth. Let's not speak in any language. Let's stop for a second and not move our arms so much. It will be an exotic moment. Without rush, without engines, we would all be together in a sudden strangeness. Fishermen in the cold sea would not harm the whales, and the man gathering salt would not look at his hurt hands.

[17:34]

Those who prepare green wars, wars of gas, wars of fire, victories with no survivors, would put on clean clothes and walk about with their brothers in the shade, doing nothing. What I want should not be confused with total inactivity. Life is what it's about. If we were not so single-minded about keeping our lives moving and for once could do nothing. Perhaps a huge silence might interrupt this sadness of never understanding ourselves and of threatening ourselves with death. Now I'll count up to twelve. You keep quiet and I'll go. Maybe that's just a wonderful

[18:39]

poetic way to say, trust the moment. A sudden strangeness. There's a local writer, Rebecca Solnit, and she wrote a book called The Far Away Nearby. When I was visiting my friend who was dying. And he was laid out in his hospital bed with his oxygen tube in his nose. And he said that, trust the moment. And then for a moment, we both fell silent. Oh yeah, like this moment. what a one-day sitting is.

[19:45]

Moment after moment, can we trust the moment? Can we reenact an ancient pathway? It's always been the quest of humans. Can we reenact it in the context of as it's being morphed into California Zen or something. And right now, in our study of the paramitas, the imperfections. Patience.

[20:50]

Patience, we could say, is the disposition of trusting the moment. the moment as endorsing being alive in this moment. I have a dear friend who translates it as saying yes to belonging. Brother David Stendhal Rast. Can we say yes to to belonging to the Middle East? Or is something in you determined to divide it into good and bad?

[21:59]

How will we live in this world? a fuss about the Middle East as if it was the first time we'd ever done this. No, apparently the history of our planet is this is just what we're doing now and we've done many, many times. A couple of weeks ago Mark Lesser was giving the talk And he said, my therapist says to me all the time, be the change you would like to have happen. Be the change you would like to have happen in the Middle East.

[23:06]

Be the change you'd like to have happen in relationship to the parameter of perfection, of patience. There is a way in which there's a kind of a sequence that patience can take. challenge for us it may be it's the persistent challenge for us is to lessen our no no this is not what I approve of no this is not how I want it to be no I am not going to be part of this

[24:15]

Can we trust the moment? Can we study our reactivity? Can we study the patterns of our thinking, our feeling, our psychological makeup, patterns of our behaviors? not so we can sort them out and make them good instead of bad, but more can we see them as a coded message about how to live. Can we study them so thoroughly that they teach us what is important about a human life? How do we do that?

[25:23]

And in some ways, a one-day sitting is simply saying, well, let's all agree that we will follow a schedule we've made for ourselves. We'll sit. We'll do seated meditation. We'll do walking meditation. Then we will do our chanting services, then we'll have formal meals. We will have a sequence of opportunities to trust the moment. And in our notion of perfection, we will discover our imperfections, can we be patient with them?

[26:26]

When the mind wanders and then somehow we come back to awareness, can we embrace it, the return to awareness? Can we let it sink in? Can we take it to heart? Can we let it soften the reactiveness of mind? Can we let it soften the tightness in the body? Can we let it soften the way in which want and we don't want and then I think for most of us maybe all of us we find that the answer to those series of questions is sometimes sometimes I can do that

[27:53]

To some degree, I can do that. I was sitting upstairs in my office, and I have the benefit of, when I look out the window, I can see the canopy of the leafy canopy of the Japanese maple. There's a kind of a leafy canopy, and then there's all these spindly branches holding up these seemingly lighter than air canopy of leaves. And a little hummingbird was zigzagging through the branches. supporting me to trust the moment.

[29:01]

Just like the sunlight, just like the signs we hear, just like the thoughts we're thinking, just like the heartbeats, just like the breath. just us. And, you know, in the path of patience, there's what we might call endurance. You know, what we might call a willingness to say yes to whatever's happening. And then there's a kind of persistence. can we patiently return to awareness?

[30:17]

You know, there's a way in which it's a profound request. Because deep within us, in our wanting what we want and wanting what we don't want, not wanting what we don't want, There is a deep way in which we have fooled ourselves into thinking that's what will make us happy. That's what will help create a flourishing of our life, of our relationships, of our world. Patience is inviting us to explore that and discover that there's a way in which not insisting upon getting what we want can help us discover how to trust the moment.

[31:49]

Patience can help us return when we defy that notion and get caught up in some version of the world according to me and all its complications. Patience can help us. Okay. And now there's awareness. And now experience that awareness. See the hummingbird. Feel the emotion. Notice the breath. And as we do that, it's as if we're taking refuge in the moment.

[32:59]

As if we're coaching ourselves to try on the notion that getting what we want and avoiding what we don't want isn't really the answer to a human life. But more, meeting it fully, just as it is, is more fruitful in terms of living a human life. a teacher, a Japanese Zen teacher who lived here for a while after Suzuki Roshi died. He said, when we take refuge, everything is forgiven. Now we can say to ourselves, well, that's a lovely notion.

[34:06]

Or maybe you can say to yourself, so what? But when we live it, when we're in a precious moment, close to death, with an oxygen tube feeding air into our nostrils, when we're sitting on our cushion and have returned to the moment of awareness and allowing it to, that awareness, allowing it to illuminate the moment. is learned.

[35:09]

Something that goes beyond our words. It's a subtle antidote for our reactiveness. It's a subtle antidote for our distractedness, our anxieties, our distresses. Abdullah Naruda says, it would be an exotic moment without rush, without engines. We would all be together in a sudden strangeness. Can we have a patience? of disposition, of engagement in our practice that invites moments like that?

[36:17]

Can there be moments in this ferocious, turbulent world that we're living in? Can there be moments that we can take refuge, that we can cherish, that we can nurture our being and the being of others? Maybe it would be helpful to debate the pros and cons of the politics of the Middle East. Personally, I would say only if we can hold the whole gestalt of it with an extraordinary patience. Sometimes the teaching is take responsibility for it.

[37:36]

If it's only us, it's also I. Can we be deeply instructed? Can we learn the preciousness of patience and forgiveness? Can we let them be powerful transformational energies? Even when something within us seems to say,

[38:40]

forces of conflict are so powerful. Sometimes we can say to ourselves, but it looks like our whole structure of nations, our whole global economy, our geopolitics, is built around competition and the unsolvable declaration of us and them. And yet, patience offers us a different message. It offers us an invitation to not box ourselves into reactiveness.

[39:47]

It offers us an invitation to see and hear and feel in a way that connects us. Can we patiently return? Can we patiently allow it to undo our rigidity. And somehow, almost magically, nurture the lotus that grows in the muddy water. Thank you. 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.

[40:50]

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.

[41:05]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_97.35