This podcast is offered by San Francisco's Zen Center on the web at sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good morning. Surprised to see a little bit of sun peeking through. I thought it was going to be a solid storm all weekend, but here we are with a little bit of light and a little bit of moisture, and hopefully there will be more. I just want to express gratitude first to Rosalie for inviting me to speak here today. It's been a little while, and it's nice to be here with all of you again in this way. It's also a little terrifying. And I also want to do a shout-out to my teacher, Tia, who happens to be in town, and just express my deep gratitude for her love, her patience, her encouragement, and patience. I want to emphasize patience. He's very patient with me.

[01:00]

I'm a slow student. For those of you who are new to Zen Center or don't know me, my name is David Zimmerman, and I've been a resident here at Zen Center for going on 15 years. And I am a Zen priest, and I currently serve as the program director for Zen Center. I'm working off some karma, apparently, in some way. So... I'm always very curious to see, and this is a question that we've been asking a lot here at Zen Center, is who's new here today? Who's here for the first time? Wonderful. Great. Welcome, everybody. I often think of the first time that I walked in the door and what it took, in some cases, to get me here. So part, a little bit of confusion, lots of encouragement, seeking something to alleviate some sense of, perhaps, suffering. So for those of you who are new to Zen Center and new to Zen, the form of meditation that we practice here is called Zazen, the aim of which is just sitting, just sitting.

[02:08]

So it's Zazen is doing nothing. It's to simply sit still and quietly and to come to rest as the awareness that we already are and to openly and directly reflect the reality of life just as it is. And this means allowing everything to manifest, to abide, and to pass away in its own time and place and space, and without our usual habitual interference and manipulation. Okay? So, of course, doing this is a lot more difficult than we would imagine. And for many of us, and particularly for myself, the busy mind has a tendency to get in the way and wants to carry me away from this moment, wants to do anything other than to simply come to stillness and simply rest as awareness.

[03:16]

Um... During a practice discussion that I had once with Miyogan Steve Stuckey, our former abbot who died just a little bit over a year ago, I asked him the question, what is zazen? What is zazen? And he responded, clear seeing and not moving. Clear seeing and not moving. And his response was pointing to the fundamental practices in meditation of vipassana and shamatha, which usually are translated as cultivating a deep insight through focused attention and calm abiding, simply resting here in this moment. And I understood, Myogen, to be saying that zazen is simply abiding as an open heart. but doesn't turn away or reject what we observe or experience.

[04:25]

I've been thinking about this practice of clear seeing and not turning away in light of the recent shootings that happened just across the street about a month ago, in which four young men were murdered in their car as they were sitting at the intersection. And their deaths were unwarranted and pointless and heartbreaking. And even if we didn't know these men, we can sense in our bones and in our flesh the fragility and value and sanctity of their life. And know at some level that these men could have been us. Indeed, they are us. A number of Zen Center residents, including myself, attended a vigil a few nights after the shootings, which started at the African American Community Center and then made its way over here to the corner.

[05:46]

And what I remember most vividly during that vigil, which included a number of talks by family members, expressions by family members, as well as local ministers, and I think there was also maybe some politicians involved. What I remember most vividly was the expression of grief displayed by some of the women And I imagine these women were the mothers and the girlfriends and perhaps sisters of the young men who had died. And I remember how these women gave themselves over completely to their despair. How they allowed their whole bodies and beings to be wracked with grief. I saw them wailing and trembling. and collapsing in the street, barely able to be held up by those around them.

[06:54]

Theirs was an undeniably physical reaction to the emotional pain of having the world torn asunder by an untimely loss. It's obvious how these women and the friends and family of the men who died, and the neighbors in the vicinity, including us at Zen Center, here at City Center, would be deeply traumatized by such an act of horrific violence. And I know from talking with a number of residents here at Zen Center that a number of us are still feeling impacted by this event and are struggling with how to hold this traumatic event from a place of practice. Feeling all that we are feeling with some measure of presence, courage, kindness, and resilience.

[08:04]

Recently, I read a book by the Buddhist psychotherapist Mark Epstein, which is called The Trauma of Everyday Life. And in this book, Epstein says the following about trauma. Trauma forces one into an experience of the impersonal, random, incontinent nature of reality. But it forces one violently and against one's will. The rush to normalize after a traumatic event can itself be traumatic. Denial of our pain is traumatic. Denial of our pain is traumatic. The most important thing is not that one may be in despair, but one's attitude or relationship towards one's despair. Through one's basic attentiveness, one's despair can declare itself and tell its story.

[09:11]

One enters a profound dialogue with it. This dialogue can in time help one experience and learn to tolerate the unbearable embeddedness of being, of which we are all apart. What remained with me after the vigil that night was the question, what can Buddhist practice, and particularly Zen, offer us in times of great despair and sorrow and trauma? And what does it mean to learn to tolerate the unbearable embeddedness of being, much less to have what Epstein calls a profound dialogue with our suffering? There were a number of Christian ministers who were at the vigil who spoke,

[10:15]

and at the end led the group that was there in prayer. And in Christianity, and I was brought up Christian, I was brought up Mennonite with some Methodist and brethren thrown in. So I have a background in hearing the prayers. And prayer is often expressed as a form of dialogue with Jesus or God in which you ask them to help you bear faith in some meaningful way, whatever suffering or difficulty that you are experiencing. So you give yourself over to Jesus, who will suffer on your behalf. And he is willing to hold you, Christians are told, willing to hold you and guide you and console you, and in doing so, help alleviate your despair. Now, given that there is no deity in Buddhism in which we categorically rely on, the Buddha is not a deity.

[11:24]

The Buddha is simply a human being who woke up to his own nature and the nature of reality. He's not a god. We don't worship him. We learn from his practice. Given that there is no deity in Buddhism, what then is there in Zen practice? that might similarly carry us, bear us, and allow us to hold ourselves up and upright during times of suffering. Even those times when we are so wracked with grief that we collapse onto the ground in complete despair and hopelessness. So how is it that zazen, our practice of just sitting, might help us to bear the unbearable?

[12:25]

And you might ask yourself, how does clearly seeing and not moving address our trauma and loss in whatever measure that we're experiencing it in the moment? with some degree of relief, resolution, and perhaps even transformation. Where is the compassionate response, the intimate engagement, the expression of interconnectedness and kindness in clear seeing and not moving? Maybe some of you have read about the recent fire in the mission, in which one person died, and I think six were injured, and 54 people were displaced, including a number of businesses as well.

[13:35]

And apparently there was a six-year-old man biking by. His name was Zach Crockett. And he was riding by on his bike, and he noticed a crowd standing around watching this fire. And they were all standing there with their cell phones up, capturing the fire as it was happening. And in doing so, they were actually ignoring the people who were bleeding and traumatized and in distraught in front of them. And Crockett was so disgusted by what he saw that he went home And he started a crowdfunding site in order to raise, initially it was a small amount, but now it's $150,000 to be able to help those affected by this inferno. And he's almost reached that in just a few days.

[14:36]

This story brought to mind a quote that I recently read by Mary Oliver, the poet. She said, attention without empathy is merely a report. An openness is necessary if attention is to matter. Again, attention without empathy is merely a report. An openness is necessary if attention is to matter. there can be a tendency sometimes, particularly for those who are new to Zen, to mistakenly think that awareness is nothing but a cold, factual report, merely a video recording of what's going on, and that we should refrain in some way from truly feeling and deeply experiencing any of the feelings and emotions that come up for us

[15:49]

on the cushion, or in our life. But Zen is really about becoming deeply intimate and in relationship with the reality before us and, if you will, in us. And doing so in such a way that it's skillful and open. And that a compassionate response can arise in the moment, just like it did for Crockett. So that no matter how traumatic a situation, there is a space given for a loving response to arise in its own time. In a certain sense, we are encountering numerous traumas every day of our life.

[16:50]

Although these traumas aren't generally as dramatic as a fire or the death of a loved one. Epstein, in his book that I mentioned earlier, makes the case that Buddhism is essentially a practice of recovering from trauma. And what is the trauma that we're recovering from? The Buddha spoke of trauma as if it were a fire. He said, bhikkhus, or monks, all is burning, burning with the fires of greed, hate, and delusion. Sometimes it's called desire, aversion, and delusion. Everything is burning with impermanence, pain, and bliss. Our lives are burning because we grasp or cling to that which is pleasant.

[17:59]

Or we resist and push away that which is unpleasant. Or we simply ignore or numb ourselves to what is immediately in front of us. the fundamental trauma of being human is part and parcel to the reality that all conditioned things are impermanent. And that there is no inherent abiding self. And that our suffering arises in direct proportion to how we relate to these two other marks of existence. And so as a means to address the trauma of our life, the Buddha taught two things. And he said, I only teach two things. I teach suffering and the relief of suffering, or the end of suffering.

[19:05]

How suffering arises and how it can be resolved. And his formulation of this can be found in the Four Noble Truths, and then the Four Foundations of Mindfulness. So I'm not going to go into those today, but if you have an opportunity, one of the first things you might want to study when you first come to Buddhist practice is those particular teachings. I want to offer the woman who's coughing some water if that would help. You sure? Yeah? Okay. Let me know if you change your mind. It's still here. So what is trauma asking of us? What is trauma asking of us? Both apparently the mundane traumas of everyday life, those slight irritations, for example, dripping faucets, just a little small thing, you know?

[20:15]

Oh, I have to fix that later, bummer, it's annoying, you know? or the petty grievances of when someone cuts in front of us when we're standing in the grocery line. And then there are the large traumas, the traumas of someone dying that we love, or receiving a cancer diagnosis, or rape, or overt racism, or war, or environmental devastation. are huge and overwhelming in so many ways. So what is it to look at and study the innumerable ways in which we deeply resist what life brings us? To study where we grasp, cling, contract, or push away from others and from life,

[21:16]

because we feel overwhelmed in some way by how it is so much bigger than our small sense of self, this small self that we continually try to cling to and polish and defend in some way. And furthermore, can you entertain the possibility of transformation, of trauma? Can you entertain that this transformation happens when we fully enter into it and go through it with a willingness to be undefended? To be undefended. Looking back over the 24 years of my practice, I can see now that I came to Zen

[22:18]

wanting in some way to find a way to heal the trauma of my childhood. I'm sure many of you might have similar stories and reasons for being here. I wanted to find a way to be able to reestablish a relational way of meeting and being in the world. A relational way. And I was looking, perhaps unconsciously, to essentially reparent myself. And this is maybe somewhat popular psychotherapy language, to reparent ourselves in some way, to become the parents that our parents weren't for us, to provide that which they weren't able to provide for whatever reason. No blaming. It's just who they were and how they were. And in some days, it wasn't enough for us.

[23:21]

So I wanted to learn to be the presence that my father and mother weren't for me. And threads of this narrative include an alcoholic father who one night when I was five threatened to kill my mother with a knife and how she the next morning fled the home leaving behind her two sons, my brother and I. And as a result, my brother and I were placed into children's homes and foster homes for a number of years and eventually also became latchkey kids once we returned to our father's house. And then later, my father got remarried. There was a second divorce, more displacement. And even later, I was ostracized by my family and by some people at school when I came out as gay.

[24:25]

So all these traumas in my life, all these ways in which suffering arose out of thinking life was going to be one way and it turned out to be another way, thinking that people and things would be there for me when I needed them, and to find out that they weren't there in the way that I needed them. So I was trying to figure out how to best relate to the circumstances and the people who contributed to these circumstances in a way that I wasn't dragged down. I wasn't brought down or suffocated by the circumstances. I think that much of our world history stems from the unfelt and undigested trauma.

[25:30]

And much of it is inherited from our families and our communities around us. But what is most insidious and self-perpetuating is the pain and trauma created by our perceiving ourselves as separate and forsaken beings who aren't worthy of our own self-love and kindness. So perhaps one of the first ways of addressing our suffering is recognizing that we are not alone in our suffering. There is importance in seeing this clearly, for it's actually the beginning of touching a deeper foundation on which to base our lives. And in times of great despair, we tend to perceive ourselves as isolated, separate, disconnected, and deeply alone, as if we are the only one who is or has ever experienced this type or particular depth of suffering.

[26:44]

To this particular point, Epstein quotes another therapist named Robert Stolerol. Emotional trauma shatters our absolutisms and certainties. It creates a catastrophic loss of innocence that permanently alters one's sense of being in the world. It creates a chasm in which a deep sense of estrangement and solitude takes form. So many of you might recall, if you've been around Zen Center for a little bit or been practicing Buddhism, the story of Kisaka Tami, who was one of the female disciplines of the Buddhas, disciples of the Buddhas. And how she came to the Buddha initially when her infant son had died. And she begged the Buddha to bring him back to life. And the Buddha instructed that he would do so only once that she had collected a mustard seed for many a household that had not been touched by death.

[27:59]

However, having gone to every household, carrying the lifeless body of her son, and making inquiries, and being told at each home that she visited, we too have been touched by death. Kisa Kotomi finally realized the commonality of death and the truth that all conditioned things pass. Because each and every one of us eventually suffers this fate, she understood that she was not alone in her experience. Not alone and bearing the unbearable. And only then was she finally able to bury her son and move on in her life and to eventually ordain with the Buddha. I think this is why Zen emphasizes sitting together with others.

[29:09]

Because practicing in Sangha constantly reminds us that we are not separate. To be together in Sangha is to remember that we are all one body, all the same sensate, feeling, and conditioned Buddha body. When I imagine Kisakottami carrying the lifeless body of her child through the streets in search of a remedy for death, A line from the metasutta, which we chant here, also known as the loving-kindness meditation, comes to mind. And the particular translation that I want to use is, like a caring mother holding and guarding the life of her only child, so with a boundless heart, hold yourself in all beings. This meta-practice of holding everyone with an attentiveness and a boundless heart evokes to me, or brings to mind for me, the work of the psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott.

[30:31]

And Winnicott is someone that Epstein and many other Buddhist psychotherapists have a tendency to refer to in their writings. And Winnicott considered that the way in which a mother and for these purposes we'll say a good enough mother, or parent holds a child is essential or prerequisite to the child's basic development, as it offers a sense of safety and security, a sense of being taken care of and loved. And this lays the groundwork for the child's fundamental sense of basic trust. And so when a baby is held in a loving way, apparently it feels the same way that it felt to be in the womb. Embraced, nurtured, as belonging to something greater, reliable, and sustaining.

[31:37]

And so when a child is sufficiently held. There's this feeling of continuity between the experience of being in the room and being held outside the room. And this holding experience becomes integrated into the depths of consciousness of the child. And what rises out of it is this feeling of trust. A child's basic sense of trust begins with the relationship to mother and then extends outward into the world and to the universe around us. And it's in this way that a relational home or an internal refuge is established for the child, to which they can return to whenever they need. It's always there in some way, regardless of the circumstances. And this basic trust is a kind of confidence in the natural goodness of reality, of things as it is, of life as it is.

[32:53]

And it's trusting that our natural state of being, what we call our Buddha nature, is wishing for our best. And it wants our best to unfold. that it wants us to know the basic capacity to awaken and to be able to express that awakening fully. So what we're doing when we're sitting in zazen, in meditation, is that we're re-establishing this basic trust in the fullness of our belonging to life. Even if a part of us by which we have defined ourselves and suddenly removed and taken away unexpectedly. Zazen is a kind of surrender.

[33:57]

It's a kind of renunciation. And renunciation is often thought up as a giving up. But it's more accurately a willingness to experience things as they are and not as we want them to be. And it's here that we discover true freedom, the deep, quiet joy that has always been present in you, even in the midst of your suffering. So now, suppose we regard our attention and meditation practice as a kind of loving, holding environment. And suppose we weren't trying to get anywhere, or be anyone particular, or improve ourselves in any way in our practice. Instead, we were just simply holding ourselves with a deeply loving attention.

[35:08]

One that allows us to stop, to rest, to release, and to allow. We can be held in stillness. We can be held deeply in spaciousness, unmoving, just held by life. And when we do this, in this place we come in contact with our aloneness, with our particular expression of this larger beingness. We come in contact with the unbearable embeddedness of being. And then breath after breath, we drop the self, we drop the clinging, and expand and come back to rest in this larger embrace, this larger okayness by which we are held.

[36:18]

And in doing so, we come back to our natural wholeness and perfection. Nothing is missing. Nothing is left out. Everything is included. So here's a final quote from Epstein. The most important thing we can do about suffering is to acknowledge it. Simply acknowledging it while seeming like a mirror of adjustment is actually huge. Trauma is a part of our definition of being human. It is inextricably woven into the fabric of our lives. No one can escape it. Acknowledging it, having a realistic view, one that sees things as they are, brings us closer to the incomprehensible reality of our own deaths and impermanence. The only way out of life is through death.

[37:22]

So in a certain sense, zazen is a dialogue with our suffering. It's to be in conversation with our whole tender being and what it means to be human and alive in this moment. But it's a dialogue mostly without words, occasionally dropping in an inquiry of some sort. But mostly it's simply listening, deep listening with complete attempt in this to our moment-by-moment experience, as well as our relationship to our experience, seeing how we relate to what's arising. So we listen and perhaps acknowledge, just as a loving mother acknowledges a child in distress.

[38:31]

Yes, dear one, I know This is painful, or joyful, or boring, or slightly irritating. Whatever it is, I acknowledge your pain and dissatisfaction with the way things are. I'm with you and I love you. I will hold you as awareness. And together we will find a way to be with this experience as long as we need. Until it, too, passes. So the Buddha's approach was not about transforming ourselves in some radical way, to become feelingless, emotionless, and unmoved soldiers or reporters.

[39:34]

but rather the Buddhist approach was to help us, encourage us, to simply learn how to be kind to ourselves, to simply learn how to hold ourselves in the same way that a loving, responsive parent holds a child with care. This holding in this way is enough being in this way, being who you are, exactly as you are, is enough. And it's enough for it tells us that our small, wounded, ordinary human self, in all its primitive agony, is precious too. So in Zazen,

[40:38]

We aim to sit unmoving, but not unmoved. And I would suggest the empathetic or loving attention is our Zen practice. Our kind, non-judgmental awareness is the holding environment or container that's originally enacted between a mother and a child. or a parent and a child, or a guardian or a child, or anyone who is there with you in any moment that you need. And this holding establishes a trust in our capacity to be in accord with what is. And we can offer it to ourselves, and we can offer it to everyone around us, And indeed, it is the only truly healing path for the trauma of being human.

[41:45]

I'll just end with one quote from Dogen. Just as parents care for their children, you should bear in mind the whole universe. you very much.

[42:34]

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