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, everyone. Good to see all of you who are here in the... Buddha Hall this morning and welcome to all of you who are in your homes tuning in. And I know it's not morning for everyone out there. My name is Tova Green. I'm a resident priest here at City Center. My pronouns are she, her. And I You know, you may have been expecting a different speaker this morning.

[01:01]

Sarah Tashkar was scheduled to be the speaker, and yesterday she let the Tonto know that she wasn't feeling well, and the Tonto asked me if I would give the talk today. Thank you, Anna, for the invitation, and thank you, Abbot David, for leading this practice period. for all the ways you're supporting the Sangha, both of you. I also want to thank my teacher, Agent Linda Cutts, who has been inspiring me for 25 years and supporting me. So often when I think about what topic... To share in a Dharma talk, I think about what is most alive for me in the moment. And paradoxically, what's most alive for me today is turning towards death.

[02:12]

That's the title of my talk. It's partly the time of year. No... Leaves are falling in the courtyard and everywhere around the city and elsewhere. This week will end with our celebration of Sujiki, where we open our hearts, we turn towards and invite those hungry ghosts we think of as not only people in our city who are literally hungry, but the hungry ghosts that we may be in touch with in ourselves, the ways we're maybe not feeling nourished, and the spirits of those who have passed on.

[03:17]

And it's also a memorial service. And then a few days later is Dia de los Muertos, Day of the Dead. And it's a liminal time of year, a time of transition. And I really appreciate the way you, David, have explored that quality of liminality, where it's a transitional state where things are changing. And I mean... And somehow for me around this time of year, the boundary between life and death seems more fragile, maybe thinner. Also for me this past week, I've felt really discombobulated. That's not a word I use very often, but someone helped me identify what I was feeling. I'm dealing with the rift in a friendship that... one of my closest friendships.

[04:19]

On Wednesday, my computer wouldn't open and I was trying to host a Zoom meeting with a group of people. I lost my keys twice yesterday. Luckily, I found them. My birthday is coming up and that's always, as I age, you know, I'm very grateful to have another birthday. but I'm very aware of my aging, and also I'm going to be giving or hosting or holding the space for the memorial service of a student who died, a student I was working with for over a year. I'm doing that tomorrow, so death is definitely on my mind. Perhaps you too have been feeling... some of the transitional quality of this time, the elections coming up, all the ways in which we're aware of the climate crisis, walking in the city and seeing the suffering of people who are living in tents or don't even have tents.

[05:40]

It's a difficult time. in general, and people are still getting COVID. So I thought I would, I am a lover of poetry, for those of you who don't know me, and I will weave a few poems into my talk today. So I wanted to start with one poem by Jane Hirshfield, who's a poet in Marin. She was a Zen student in her early 20s. This is called In a Room with Five People, Six Griefs. In a room with five people, six griefs, some you will hear of, some not. Let the room hold them, their fears, their anger. Let there be walls and windows, a ceiling.

[06:41]

A door through which time changer of everything can enter. So I imagine in this room with more than five people, we have many griefs, many more than six griefs. And some of us may be holding multiple griefs. And this room, this spacious room can hold our griefs. I think many have entered this, many do enter the doors of San Francisco San Center at a time when they are feeling grief or loss and seek a place where it's okay to have those feelings. They can be welcomed here, just as we welcome the hungry ghosts at Tsuchigi. So, Turning toward death also for me includes talking about a koan that keeps coming up for me.

[07:57]

And this practice period is focusing, for those of you who may not know this, we're focusing on koans, exploring koans from the Blue Cliff Record and commentaries on them by Suzuki Roshi, our founder. The koan I'd like to talk about is from the Blue Cliff Record, but I don't think it's one we'll be studying this practice period. The other thing that happened this morning, for those of you who weren't here, we had a residence meeting, and usually there's a time to explore a particular topic, and today we were invited to share koans that have meaning for us. Some of them are koans that are in koan collections, and some of them are koans that are life questions that we practice with and hold in our hearts. So I wanted to include a koan in my talk today.

[09:03]

And the one that I'm sharing is from the 55th case in the Blue Cliff Record. And it's called Dao Wu's Condolence Call. Dao Wu was a teacher who lived from 769 to 835. And he was a disciple of Yaoshan or Yakusan Igen, who's one of the ancestors whose names we chant. And this is a conversation between Dao Wu and his student. Sometimes the students aren't named, but this one was named Chen Yuan. I hope I pronounced it correctly. So Dao Wu and his student went to a house to make a condolence call. And the student, Yuan, hit the coffin and said, Alive or dead?

[10:09]

And Wu said, I won't say alive, and I won't say dead. Then the student again said, why won't you say? And Da Wu simply said, I won't say. So they made the condolence call, and they were heading back to the monastery. And partway back, student Chen Wan, again, he said to Dao Wu, tell me right away, teacher. If you don't tell me, I'll hit you. And Dao Wu said, you may hit me, but I won't say. You know, and... Many of us may have questions about what happens after we die.

[11:12]

Are we alive? Are we dead? What does it mean? So you might be able to empathize with a student who was so frustrated that he actually did hit his teacher. And in the commentary, there's more to the story. After being hit, Dao Wu said to his student, you should go away for a while. He said, I fear that if the monastery's director finds out, he won't like it. He'll make trouble for you. So he secretly sent the student away. And then years later, it was after Dao Wu had died, the student, Jin Wan, came to a small temple.

[12:12]

where he heard a worker reciting the 25th chapter of the Lotus Sutra. And in that chapter, which is about Kuan Yin, the Bodhisattva of Great Compassion, it says, I'm not sure whose translation this is, but it's quoted in the Blue Clip Record. To those who would attain salvation, as appears to a monk, to expound the Dharma for them. So something about Quan Yin being able to save people by expounding the Dharma for them. And suddenly, Qin Wan was greatly enlightened. He said, at that time, I was wrongly suspicious of my late teacher.

[13:16]

How was I to know that this affair isn't in words and phrases? So for me, that means, you know, sometimes it's just not possible to put words to an experience. or to explain something with words. So what happens after we die, alive or dead? It's something I'm really curious about. And I don't think we can really know until the time comes. And then what do we know? Where are we? Who are we? Are we? Many questions. Curiosity comes up. for me around this koan. And I really think it was a compassionate answer of Dao Wuz to say, I won't say alive or dead.

[14:21]

You have to understand this for yourself in your own way. So I'd like to talk about my own... journey towards learning about death and dying, although, you know, it's a never-ending process and question. I wasn't always so interested in it as I am now. To say a little about what led me here and then to talk about working with, I worked with a student over the last year and a half, the one whose memorial service is tomorrow. And some of the ways in which I worked with her or she worked with me, I learned so much from her. Because I don't think we often hear these stories. And there was another woman whose friend asked me to talk with her about her impending death.

[15:25]

And both of these women were really teachers for me. share those stories as well. And, um, so, uh, even though, you know, I, I didn't have that much experience with death and dying, uh, early in my life. Um, and it wasn't until I was actually a Tassajara than, that my, when my father died, he lived to be 93. And five years later, my mother died. My sisters are still living. And yet there was something, I think I was, I became really, I began to turn towards death when I was living at Green Gulch Farm.

[16:34]

I went to Green Gulch after being at Tassajara for a little over four years and left after I was head student. My teacher, Linda Ruth, asked me to move to Green Gulch to complete my priest training with her in the same temple where she was living. And one of the things she asked me to do that first year, I was her assistant for two years, The first year, she asked me if I would help to compile some material around death and dying from a Zen perspective. And she was inspired partly by seeing such a document that had been put together by a synagogue. And as far as we knew, there wasn't anything like that. I began researching, and one of the things I did was talk with someone at Zen Hospice Project.

[17:42]

And I was invited to talk with someone who was training volunteers, Zen Hospice Project, which is now called Zen Caregiving. because the hospice closed. There was a hospice down the street, but they, for quite a while, had already been training volunteer caregivers who volunteered both at the hospice across the street and at Laguna Honda Hospital, a large public hospital. And the person who was training volunteers at that time was named Eric Poche. And I went to talk with him to get a sense of his thoughts about what happens when people die and what are some of the Buddhist ways of approaching it.

[18:46]

I also spoke with some of the Zen Center people who had helped found Zen Hospice Project. And Martha De Barros was one of them. And learned more about the ways in which people die that You know, there's a lot of questioning about whether there is such a thing as a good death. We think we want to die a certain way, but it might not happen that way. And so I began also gathering some of the Buddhist texts that have to do with death and dying. And eventually we put together this booklet. It was reissued. been re-edited in this format. It's called When Blossoms Fall. And it's available online now as well as through the Zen Center Bookstore. So that project, through that project, interviewing some of the Zen Hospice Project founders and Eric Poche,

[19:58]

I decided to do this in hospice caregiving training, and I did that while I was living at Green Gulch, and I volunteered at Laguna Honda Hospital one afternoon a week. My day off from Green Gulch, I would drive into the city, and it was a five-hour shift. The beginning of the shift was check-in with other volunteers. about what had happened on the prior shift, and we would meditate together, and sometimes Eric would give some teaching. Then we would work on the ward, and at the end, there would be another meeting with the next shift. And Eric Poche had this amazing ability to just sit with people who were dying. He was very centered and calm, and he taught us to sit down Bring a chair.

[20:59]

Be at the level, eye level with the person if they're in bed. Listen and see what that patient needs. And it might just be you're sitting there. It might be a conversation. It might be feeding them at mealtime. There was a beautiful garden outside the hospice ward. It might be... wheeling someone out in their wheelchair and sitting with them in the garden. That hospice ward was an open ward, so there was a sense of community. There was a men's side and a women's side. And they celebrated birthdays. My first shift, I was amazed. There were balloons. There was cake. All of this was taken to the bed of someone who was near death and We celebrated that person's birthday. All the holidays were celebrated.

[22:02]

And the idea was people were living until they were dying, and there was a lot of joy along with the grief. It was an amazing experience for me. And at the end of that year, when I was finishing my training with Linda Ruth, Eric Foshé invited me to join the staff of Gen Ha. of Zen Hospice and help help and supervise volunteers. So I moved back to City Center. I had lived here before I went to Tassajara, and I worked for Zen Hospice Project for a year. And then during that year, I decided I wanted to work with patients and their family members directly. And I have a master's degree in social work, but I hadn't been working as a social worker for a while. And my social work school had a class in contemplative social work.

[23:02]

It was a six-month training, most of which was done remotely. My school was in Massachusetts, Smith College School for Social Work. So there was... a four-day in-person gathering at the beginning and then another one at the end. And in the meantime, we met monthly in small groups. And that gave me the confidence to apply for a social work job. And I wasn't sure, given all the years I'd been at Zen Center and also I had been doing activist work when I first moved to the Bay Area, I didn't know if I would be considered. I was fortunate. The person who later became my supervisor was a Buddhist herself and thought my experience of training at Tassajara and my being a priest would be an asset in doing social work with hospice.

[24:12]

And I was hired and I worked for Hospice by the Bay that does home visiting hospice care. I worked there for three years and I learned so much and really enjoyed the work. I also visited Zen Hospice and Maitri, another residential hospice in San Francisco, and Coming Home Hospice. There were three. So then I was invited to return to working for Zen Center. and became the director and various other positions. So I still feel that affinity for working with people who are dying. I'll talk about these two people I worked with. The first, who's...

[25:17]

memorial service is tomorrow. Her first name is Barbara. She had taken a class with Abbot David during, and this was during the pandemic. It was a class on working with depression and anxiety, and he referred her to me. And the very first time we met, which was on Zoom, She told me about her chronic illness, which had to do with her lungs and difficulty breathing. And she wanted to choose the time of her death. She had a death doula that was just beginning to learn about death doulas. And she wanted to choose a time when the death doula... her husband and her adult daughter would be there with her. And she asked if I would be there. She wanted a Buddhist priest to be there.

[26:19]

And I said I didn't know. I didn't know her. I thought we needed to get to know each other. And I didn't know how I felt about being with someone who was choosing the time of their death. You know, the precept of not harming, I was struggling with that. Was that applicable? in that situation. And so she agreed to meet, and we met every two weeks for several months, and at that point she was interested in studying the precepts. So we began studying the precepts together. She had been doing pretty well health-wise, but gradually her health began to... What happened was she kept needing more and more oxygen. She was having more and more trouble breathing. And she wanted to sew a rakasu, but she didn't quite have the energy.

[27:20]

And I was going to be doing a layordaining several students, and she didn't feel she could come to a ceremony. She hadn't been going outside for quite a while. So I helped her sew. Actually, I went to the sewing room and talked with Tim Wicks, our sewing teacher, and he gave me parts of different rakasus that hadn't been completed. And one part was... The Raksu face, I'm not wearing a Raksu nose, I can't show you, but that had already been sewn. And then another piece was for the frame. So I sewed most of the rest of the Raksu. Barbara put some stitches in it. For the first time, I went to her house.

[28:22]

We had been meeting by Zoom. I went to her house with the Raksu so she could put stitches in it and met her husband. And we started talking about doing a ceremony at her home. which we did, and her husband and daughter and her death doula all came, and it was a beautiful ceremony. And part of her Dharma name was Luminous Ocean, and she really loved that name, Miyokai. So that was in December, and over the course of this year, her health decreased and she went on hospice care. And she was still thinking about choosing the time of her death, but her life still was too precious.

[29:31]

She wasn't ready. And she wanted to finish a quilt she was making for her daughter. She had wonderful design skills and loved sewing. So finally, her breathing was getting harder and harder. And she was working with a hospice nurse around her pain medication. And she decided to... just trust the process of dying naturally with support from the hospice nurse. And she died at home. Before she died, we talked about what ceremonies she might want to have. I gave her a copy of When Blossoms Fall. She learned about all the different ceremonies, the ceremony at the time of death.

[30:33]

bathing the body, cremation ceremony, memorial service. And it happened that she died when I was not in the city. I was in Seattle visiting family. But the day... Before she died, I knew she was close to death. But, you know, we'd never know exactly what the time's going to be. I got a call from her the day before she died. And she could barely talk. And she just wanted to tell me she loved me. And I told her I loved her. And then I went to the airport the next morning and There was a message from her death doula that she had died the night before.

[31:34]

And I couldn't get there in time to be there for helping to bathe the body. But her death doula and I spoke while I was in the airport in Seattle and went through all the steps. And she was able to guide Barbara's husband and daughter. And together they bathed the body. And when I got back, I went. to their home in Oakland, and we did a ceremony with Barbara's body in the room before the morticians came and took the body to the, well, they kept it for a few days. Anyway, we were able to, say goodbye to Barbara, and talk to her before her body was taken.

[32:38]

And then the family asked me to do a cremation ceremony, and tomorrow, which we did, and tomorrow will be the memorial, which mostly her daughter has put together. So that... Barbara, one of the things she said was that it was very hard to find people who were comfortable talking about death and dying. Most of her friends didn't want to talk about it. It was hard for her husband because of his grief. Her daughter would come and take her out, and they would go to gardens, but it was also hard for her daughter. And... She could talk with her death doula, who was also an acupuncturist, and visited her at home. And, of course, the hospice staff.

[33:39]

But I think that's true for many people who are dying. And it was true for this. I'll just briefly talk about the other person. I'll just refer to her as Mary. She lived in San Antonio, Texas. And one of her friends, one of her very close friends, called me and asked me if I would talk with her. She wasn't Buddhist, but she was having a difficult time. She had cancer that was quite advanced, and I agreed to talk with her. And the first time we spoke again by Zoom, she was dealing with a lot of anger because her only son, was engaged to be married, and he and his fiancée had planned the wedding for several months ahead, and she didn't know if she would be alive at that time, and he wouldn't change the time of the wedding.

[34:45]

So it wasn't what I expected she would be concerned about, but it was what she was concerned about, and we started talking about ways of... dealing with anger, and agreed to meet with her again. And then we actually met for every two weeks and for several months. She did live to be present at her son's wedding. But the second time we met, I thought it might be helpful for her to learn about the five remembrances, Some of you may be familiar with the five remembrances. I am of the nature to grow old. There is no way to escape growing old. I am of the nature to have ill health.

[35:47]

There is no way to escape having ill health. I am of the nature to die. There is no way to escape death. All that is dear to me and everyone I love are of the nature to change. There is no way to escape being separated from them. My actions are my only true belongings. I cannot escape the consequences of my actions. My actions are the ground on which I stand. That really resonated with her. And... And I asked her how she wanted to be remembered after she died. And she said she wanted to be remembered as someone who was kind. She had been working most of her life as a psychiatrist and had a love for her patients. She wanted to be remembered as someone who was kind, but she was dealing with all this rage.

[36:49]

So that's what we worked with. Every time we met at the end, she would ask me to read the five remembrances, although she had a copy of them. She wanted to hear them. So she did change her attitude towards her son and particularly her daughter-in-law. And there was a lot of healing that happened in those relationships before she died. So I think meeting with those two wonderful teachers for me has made me more open to wanting to be present with people when they die, before they die. And I am hoping that as I eventually transition

[37:55]

living at Enso Village there will be many opportunities to work with people who are facing death and I hope I'll be able to participate with them in some way so I would like to share one more poem and I had two, but I think I'll only share one, which is one that I wrote. Someone gave me a bunch of tulips not that long ago, and one thing I learned is that cut tulips keep growing, the stems keep growing,

[38:57]

And that's what inspired this poem. It's called If You Want. If you want to prepare for dying, clip the stems of a dozen pink tulips. Put them in water in front of a window. Watch as they open, more translucent each day as petals pale, furl. Show delicate veins, like the thinning skin of my arms, the crinkly wrinkles of my face. Initially upright, the stems elongate and bend. Petals wither and drop, revealing golden pistils and stamen, a parting gift from dying flowers. I'm taken by the last petals, barely hanging on, then letting go, as if breathing their last breaths.

[40:13]

Thank you so much for your kind attention. This morning, We had a residence meeting in which many people shared experiences of being close to loved ones who are aging and also shared personal koans, some of which having to do with learning from people who have died, being with death. that this talk will somehow help those of you who are dealing with grief and loss and for all of us to realize that our lives are precious and time is precious and to enjoy the beauty of this autumn and liminal

[41:26]

that we're heading into and to appreciate the joy that's there in the midst of grief and loss. Thank you very much. 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.

[42:08]

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