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, bodhisattvas. Since there's so much adversity going on in the world and in our causes and conditions of our lives right now. I'm hearing a lot and seeing a lot. I was just wondering if we could take a couple minutes to do a little exercise. And in this exercise, we would sit, wait a second, I have a clock with a timer function. We would sit for a minute, a one-minute period of zazen. during which we think we allow something to come to the surface, one word that expresses adversity.

[01:09]

And then we'll have three bells by David the Doan. It's David, right? I can't see your backlit. And then on the third bell, it's like one, two, three, just out with it, say the word. Okay? And that way, maybe with this many people in the world, in the room, we can come up with a representative collection of the issues that face people in the world. Okay? Shall we do that? So I'll time us, and then when I put my hands in gasho, just one, two, three. Word. Okay? Here it goes. Thank you.

[03:26]

So, this is the main skill that I'd like to talk about. It's the skill of turning towards adversity. So to talk about it, I have to mention that there is such a thing in the world as avoidance. You probably don't have as much experience with it as I do. So luckily, we have a practice and a community of practitioners that gives us the support to understand avoidance and its complications. But let's just take a few minutes to establish what avoidance is and what the mood of it is and what the consequences are.

[04:33]

Because it has a full range from not so consequential to extremely consequential in our life. The Buddha actually helped us understand what avoidance is, how it creates suffering, and how to work with that suffering to relieve the pain of our lives. So, as I understand avoidance, and I've been looking at it a lot recently, at least the way it arises in me. My mind, you know, I don't think that I actually have these thoughts. I don't sit there and think these thoughts deliberately, but I'm more talking about the assumptions that seem to underline my thinking process. And somehow, my mind actually thinks that I can prevent

[05:38]

the feeling of dissonance and difference between what I don't like now and my desires. That I actually want a lot of things to happen in my life, like freedom from pain, like enjoyment, and for things that I like to arise and for things that I don't like not to arise. And I don't know if you're familiar with those feelings or not. But I seem to spend a lot of my life at least starting from the assumption that I can get what I want and avoid what I don't want. Or that if I get what I want, that it will last. Or... you know, if I don't get what I want or if I get what I don't want, that that won't last and that something else will happen soon.

[06:39]

And in the meantime, I seem to handle the feelings of dissonance and disappointment a lot of the times by turning away from them so that I don't have to face them. At least that's where I start from. Then after 40 years of practice, this is my 40th year of practice and my 30th year of ordination. And practice is a lot like puppy training, you know, in that one's face gets brought close to the hated thing again and again. And one learns different habits in relation to that. And so what I find, the behaviors that this assumption goes with are that I separate or avert myself from that which I don't want or that I distract myself from it in some way or that I put off facing it or that I conceal it.

[07:56]

for instance, between myself and another person. Like if somebody says something that I don't like repeatedly, I often put off talking with them about it. So there are various ways that this comes up. So one way is that I hide it sometimes. I hide it from myself or the other person. Like, oh, that's okay. Or I distract us from it by handling easier issues, like, would you like pizza? Or I separate myself, like, oh, let's see, should I spend time with this person? Oh, maybe not. Okay? So I'm saying these things not because I want to hold them up in some special way but because I think that this this is where we start from this is where a lot of us start from maybe you're wiser than I am and don't do this but these are the activities that my mind seems to assume will actually help

[09:27]

in situations that are difficult. And those activities don't actually help, I found out, through practice, through sitting with what actually does arise when I do these things. I found out that these behaviors don't actually help. And I've learned to understand when I find myself saying, oh, that's okay, or let's have pizza, or when I find myself avoiding someone instead of speaking with them, I've learned to recognize that as, oh, maybe this is avoidance. Maybe there's something I don't like in this situation. Maybe there's something painful and difficult in this situation. I wonder what that might be. And I think over the 40 years of practice that that might actually be one of the most useful skills that I've learned is to recognize that there's actually a Dharma gate there instead of the other things that I assume about that situation.

[10:41]

So I was looking online about avoidance and I saw something called a work avoidance report card. And so this person has developed this. The idea is that work is a heinous task and that everybody wants to avoid it. So this person says, paper shuffling, C. Composition of to-do list, A. Coffee retrieval, B. Doing internet research. Quote, research, end quote. A, updated profile. Chit-chat participation. A, good gossip. Gave good gossip. Okay. Leisurely lunch break.

[11:49]

Email and I am diligence. Aimless roaming. Rewriting to-do list in Excel. And promising tomorrow. Okay, so I think the assumption under that is that work is, the underlying feeling under that is that work is something to be resented. In other words, that there's abiding bad feelings that come about through the imposition of these tasks by some very large other. And that's the assumption under that. And so that's why we find it funny because some of us do have these feelings about work. And it brings up something that's interesting about avoidance to me is that it institutionalizes a feeling of ill will.

[12:51]

So avoidance gives a temporary relief because it separates us from the painful activity. But it also tends to build a habit of turning away from an activity. And there's an underlying feeling of dissonance that doesn't get resolved. And actually, when the issue is that something that needs to be resolved, it can create something deep within us that's very unwholesome. So maybe that's enough about the pain of avoidance. Looking at it on the Internet was one thing, but also remembering it in my own body is another thing. So I've been working...

[13:55]

with healing a series of very large injuries. And so physically I've found that when I avoid moving, that overall my symptoms get worse. There's a temporary relief of the symptoms and then over time they just get worse and they turn into worse conditions that then there's more to deal with. And I think this is reality. This is how things actually are. This is how the body is. To work with the symptoms of the back pain, I have to look at the conditions and address them one by one. So... It's a poem about a psychological avoidance that opened up an old wound.

[15:09]

Was it her words or sunken eyes that led me to think of words disguised? I don't want to rock the boat, she said. not once, but twice, as we spoke of disagreement among her fellow doctors on the ward. I prefer to let things ride, she pressed the group in a shy aside, which led me to wonder more about her choice of metaphor. Years before, she fled her country, traded war for open sea, a raft, a log, a boat, a dare, a hope for safety anywhere. Here for once, no cliché, no mere façon de parler, but today on a hospital ward, the old terror came ashore.

[16:25]

Reminds me of... In my own family, in my own birth family, my parents and relatives were all Holocaust survivors. And we used to not be allowed to talk about it at home. So there was a long-standing... strategy of avoidance for this suffering. If we talked about it at home, there would be a blow up. So it was extremely unpleasant. So no one was ever allowed to talk about it. And I think this is very common in families and situations where there's trauma. And so I grew up this way. I grew up trying to be in the American mainstream culture and trying to avoid that family pain.

[17:34]

So when I, at Tassajara, to enter the monastery, there's a practice called Tangariya. Tangariya is when you sit for five days to enter the monastery. And at the time that I did that practice, it was five to ten. And they would tell you when it was done. And during that time, again and again, the word oppression wrote itself on the wall in front of me in letters of fire. And I kept saying to myself, oh, no, this is not about me. What are you talking about, oppression? Oppression? Nah. Nah. Oppression. Nah. So I didn't think that that word actually applied to me. I had actually convinced myself that I was immune from oppression, that I was an American and in this new culture, and that I was immune from the pain of my family.

[18:41]

But then over time, during the sitting practice, where reality arises again and again, breath after breath, I began to realize, oh, maybe this does have something to do with me. So the habit of avoidance can be very strong. So five days of sitting, and by the end of the five days, I realized, oh, oh, yeah, ooh, hmm, oppression, yes, I think that might have something to do with me and my life. And so actually, for many, many years, I've been looking into the consequences of this oppression in my life, not just the ways in which it plays that role. that trauma plays itself out in my own life, but in how I then bequeathed it to others during my long period of avoidance, how that affect the culture of everyone around me, and how facing it also affects the culture of everyone around me.

[19:50]

So this is kind of a serious example. But we avoid many things in our lives and some of them are not so apparently serious. But avoidance has personal effects. It has interpersonal effects. Because a person who avoids their own pain avoids painful situations often as well. It has institutional effects because A person who avoids pain and suffering tends to avoid conflict and not understand its value. And it has cultural effect in that that person also tolerates oppression and behaviors that damage the respect of other people. So I found it extremely valuable to turn towards the major sources of conflict and pain in my life.

[20:52]

And the thing that's wonderful about sitting is that it gives you the wherewithal to do that. You develop a body that's wide enough, deep enough, and upright enough to hold anything, to hold it long enough to digest your reactions and begin to develop a response that's actually intimate instead of avoidant. And that's the beauty of this practice. That's what I hope we can share. So there are various ways that practice works with this, and one is through wisdom. Wisdom is embodied by Manjushri Bodhisattva, who sits on the altar of every zendo. Manjushri holds a scroll, which means perfect wisdom, and also holds a lotus, which means from the muddy water comes something beautiful. That's wisdom. The wisdom is that whatever situation we're in,

[21:54]

it's fundamentally empty of what we think about it, and it's actually quite full of everything that we don't know about it. So that's wisdom. Wisdom means that in the cycle of avoidance and suffering that it causes, we can find the chain of causes and conditions in our own bodies and mind and that of others we come into contact. And we can actually address the pain at any place in that cycle. So for instance, let's say we're in a situation with somebody else where we do everyday activity and something about what the other person does triggers us. like the person comes late again and again. They say they're going to be home at 5.30, and we prepare dinner, and they come late again and again.

[23:04]

Or, I don't know, something else like that. Anything. Put in your own circumstance. through wisdom, we can actually see what's happening instead of dwelling in our own reactions to it. So we can start a sentence with, instead of, when you disrespect me, we can start a sentence with, when you come late for dinner. Does that make sense? That's closer to what's actually occurring, is the person's coming late for dinner. What we do with it is that we impute... disrespect. So we can stop it right there. Or we can stop it at the anxiety phase. For instance, they're coming late for dinner. It's going to burn. So we can stop it at the anxiety phase by recognizing, oh, I'm getting worried about dinner burning every day.

[24:06]

Why don't I change my menu ideas? So there's various places where we can work with it if we can stay close to what is. And I'm talking about, I'm deliberately choosing really simple examples that have to do with the material world, like dinner. But it comes up in a variety of different ways. Another place, for instance, in the chain is that... the anxiety about dinner, we tend to link it with the actions of the partner and then we avoid the partner. Does that make sense? So we can stop it right there. Or when we haven't noticed our anxiety and we give the partner the cold shoulder, they tend to give the cold shoulder back to us. We can take care of it there, any place in the chain. That's wisdom, or the effect of wisdom.

[25:11]

We can also practice with compassion. Compassion is embodied by Avalokiteshvara, who has a thousand hands and a thousand eyes. So, for instance, we can attend, we can practice attention, compassionate concern for the subject of observation, like our anxiety. We can be with our anxiety and hold it gently, like a mother holds a fretful child. You know how when you hold a fretful child, if you hold the child with hard, scary arms, the child gets more fretful. Have you ever experienced that? But if you hold a fretful child with soft, attentive arms, sometimes the child will even calm down. So that's compassion. Nurit Baruch, someone I practiced with at Tassajara, once wrote a stanza.

[26:13]

I don't know if you were there at that time or if you were there, Blanche, but in my ocean arms you are a boat. So it was for her child. You can also, if the person speaks and is older than a baby, you can reflect their concerns. So for instance, if the partner is avoiding you because of the cold shoulder, you can say something like, I'm feeling odd. When we're not talking to each other, I'm feeling a little bit odd, but I notice that you're acting as if you feel a little bit odd. And maybe the partner will say, no, I'm not feeling odd. And you might say something like, and partner, I mean someone with whom we have intimacy. It doesn't have to be a significant other. You can say, but what I'm noticing is that we used to talk to each other at 5.30 or 6.

[27:22]

Is this a good time to talk about this? The person will say no. Maybe we should talk about it at a different time. Later, the person might bring it up. You wanted to talk about this? We can reflect the concern. Or we can give cues so that they can bring out their concerns. That's another way to be compassionate. The cues might be something as simple as, okay, what is it? You know, I really want to know. Or it might just be sitting next to them and being silent. So those are ways to practice concern, compassionate concern. and compassion, and friendliness, instead of objectifying the person with whom we have the issue. And the thing that, one of the other beauties of practice is that it gives us plenty of support.

[28:25]

So for instance, there's people who have been on the path before. So when I think about... It's kind of hard for me personally to speak about things like oppression in my family. But there are several people who I know and have had the example of their bringing out those concerns. And some of those people are in this room. So for instance, Blanche is in the room. And Yvonne is in the room. And so Blanche and Yvonne are... women who I've known for 40 years. And Yvonne, you taught me about right speech when I first came to SEN Center. And Blanche has taught me about acceptance in a variety of ways. And so these are people who have, teachers who have transmitted things to me generation to generation.

[29:30]

And then there's also people with whom I have practiced for a long time. So it's a horizontal transmission, like Leanne or Judith, Mary, Jay, David, Chris. So I could name many of the people in this room. So we have a horizontal transmission. understanding with each other that it's okay to look at things instead of to avoid them. Now, how do these supports, how does wisdom, how does practice, how does compassion help resolve the pain of avoidance? Well, it gives us a sense of intimacy instead of alienation or separation. strengthens the community culture and gives a feeling of safety in the environment, which helps us settle down.

[30:33]

That's actually one of the conditions for concentration, is that the environment would feel safe. And we can create a safe environment for ourselves and other people to be able to settle with their own suffering. It gives feelings of empowerment and control. So a lot of times Buddhists don't talk about control is a good thing. But I'm actually holding it up, a feeling of empowerment and control as something wholesome we can build in our lives. So it develops a culture of creative dissonance. Again, people often, Zen Center's kind of traditionally been a conflict-averse society. because we have an assumption that everyone should be practicing the same way and that there should be this thing that we think of as harmony.

[31:33]

And that actually has to develop as we come into a situation of greater diversity. We have to understand that there's going to be dissonance and that the dissonance is the source of life and creativity for us, not killing, you know, not harm. It shows the path of healing of trauma. So, for instance, last weekend, last Sunday, Mary and I were taking a walk up the hill. And this is something that we used to do about, I don't remember, 20 years ago, 15 years ago? It was a long time ago. And then I got big, important positions at Zen Center and Sunday mornings... I would have to sleep instead of taking a walk. And we used to do this at 7.30 on Sunday mornings. And then a couple years ago, I was in a couple of big accidents.

[32:39]

And last Sunday, I got up, it was 7.30, and I said, oh, wow, let's take a walk with Mary. Maybe I should take a walk with Mary. I don't know if I can go up the hill, I said to myself. So I went over to Mary's, I knocked on the door, and she said, oh yeah, let's do it. We got to a certain point on the hill, and I couldn't go on. And so my tendency was to go back down the hill. And Mary said, I'll help you. And so Mary's support allowed me to turn towards that pain instead of avoiding that pain. And to actually start And we made it up the hill and around the loop that we used to do. And if I can keep doing that, I will be strong enough to walk up that hill without getting ill. So it shows the path of healing.

[33:43]

It embodies the precepts, not just negatively but positively. and it also develops a culture of peace. I don't know, if you want to talk, if you want to know more about working with avoidance, I could just mention a few books I've been studying for about, for many years, and some for more than others. Let's just look at some of the communication texts. There are so many of them to turn away from a practice of avoidance towards a practice of participation, creative participation. So the whole culture of NVC, nonviolent communication. So in this community, you can ask Tanya, who's been studying NVC for a while. There's other people who have been studying it.

[34:46]

There's a book called Difficult Conversations, How to Discuss What Matters Most. Guess what it's about? There's a book that I practiced with. When I went to be Tanto, the head of practice at Tassajara, on the way there, I noticed myself stopping at restaurants to go to the bathroom very frequently on my drive. towards Tassajara and I realized that I was anxious when that happened and I asked myself, what's going on? And it turned out that I was anxious that when I got to Tassajara and was the person in charge and living with 60 people, that I might hurt them because I wasn't confident that my skill was high enough to take care of all the situations that might arise. And so when I realized the source of my anxiety, I stopped off at a bookstore and found this book called People Skills by Robert Bolton.

[35:57]

I highly recommend it. It has information from parent effectiveness training as well as NVC and modern psychology. It's a pretty interesting book. It's actually a business book, but one of the most interesting things about it is that It explores 12 risky approaches to conflict that people often take. At the time, I didn't know I was doing any of them, but after I read the chapter and found out what those things were, I realized that I was doing 11 out of 12 on a regular basis. So since that day, which was, when did I become Tonto? 1998. So since that day, I've actually been working to increase my ability to notice when I participated in risky types of communication with myself or other people and then to choose other ways to communicate that actually work better.

[37:02]

Another book is called Crucial Conversations. So there's lots of books and there's lots of people who are working with these skills now. I also want to mention another book that I find very useful because often when we have anxiety and avoidance, it's because somebody's crossed our boundaries and we're scared to get angry or we don't know what to do with our anger. So I want to recommend a book called Where to Draw the Line, How to Set Healthy Boundaries Every Day. It's actually Buddhist practice too. I remember someone, Ed Brown told this story when he was in the kitchen at Tassajara that someone was stealing food at night. And I can't remember whether it was Ed or somebody else. Somebody came in to steal food and whoever it was was sitting on top of the refrigerator in full lotus watching.

[38:05]

And the teacher at that time said, Put the lock on the door. Take the lock off your mind, which is a teaching about boundaries, healthy boundaries. So anyway, and of course, in the sutras, there are many, many places where the Buddha talks about turning towards suffering instead of avoiding it. And actually, that's one of the main features of of the Buddhist path, of the Buddha's path. And if you really want a wonderful sutra about this, you can look at the sutra about the conflict at Kosambi, which is mentioned in Thich Nhat Hanh's Old Path White Clouds, a biography of the Buddha. But also the practices in that sutra

[39:08]

are drawn out in a book called Being Peace and Touching Peace, those books. So if you want to read about those practices, please do. And let's practice them with each other because they're very important practices about turning towards the sources of conflict and understanding compassionately the concerns that underlie it, facing them with wisdom. I want to end with a poem by Tupac Shakur. Okay? And it's called Ambition Over Adversity. It's not a long poem, so I'll read it a couple times. Take one's adversity. Learn from their misfortune. Learn from their pain. Believe in something.

[40:11]

Believe in yourself. Turn adversity into ambition. Now, blossom into wealth. That's a poem. You read it again? Okay. Take one's adversity. Learn from their misfortune. Learn from their pain. Believe in something. Believe in yourself. Turn adversity into ambition. Now, blossom into wealth. Thank you very much for your attention, and may we heal and help ourselves. and all beings with our difficulty and with our difference. Thank you so much. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center.

[41:17]

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 Dorma.

[41:37]

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