This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good morning. Good morning. So here's the advice that one-time poet laureate William Stafford gave to young poets. Lower your standards. So I've been wondering all week what to talk about. Usually something comes up that gets me thinking about the big picture. Who am I? Where are we? What are we doing here? What does it mean that I'm going to die? Things like that.

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birth and death. And then I think about things the Buddha said about those big picture items and put together some thoughts that run about 30 or 40 minutes in order to give a lecture. But this week I found myself thinking about littler things, kind of everyday, ordinary aspects of my life, such as gardening in my front yard, friendships, my house full of stuff and how it got there, the two cats, the dog, my daughter, Sabrina, who, by the way, for those of you who are not following her on Facebook, has become a devotee of the Women's National Basketball Association, the WNBA. So I know that this is an aside, but anyway, I have to tell you that I went to a game down in Los Angeles, and I saw Brittany Griner.

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Who knows who Brittany Griner is? Okay. Brittany Griner is six feet, nine inches tall, and she's an amazing athlete. And I understand why my daughter is... Great fan of the WNBA. One coach from an opposing team was asked by her players, you know, how do we deal with Brittany Griner? And the coach said, ignore her. So that advice led me to ask myself, and now all of you, you know, what is it that we might like to ignore, you know? that otherwise could get in our way in knocking our shots away and knocking us down with its giant wingspan. So I certainly have thought many times that it's the little things that are getting in the way, for me, of the big things.

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All those little things that if I could just get into some kind of perfect order, you know, would no longer be a problem, kind of idealized perfect order, and then I could be relaxed, peaceful, and like the legendary Zen monk, floating like a cloud. You know, having few possessions, few ambitions, and no family ties. Some of you, I hear audibly sigh. perpetual warm bath. And then on Wednesday of this week, I got a message from my daughter that a very dear friend of ours, Ethel Siderman, had died. Does anyone here know Ethel Siderman? Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'm sorry for the rest of you. I really am, because she was a doozy, amazing human being, much loved by many of us

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who didn't know her, had the privilege of knowing her, meeting her. So on Friday, I attended a memorial service for her at World of Shalom in San Rafael, and another dear friend of ours, Rabbi Stacy Friedman, conducted the service for Ethel. The room was packed. There were over 400 people there. And at one point, Stacy asked all of us, how many of you here thought that Ethel was your best friend? And all hands went up. And then she said, how many of you got a card or email or a text at that moment in your life when you were sad or something was to be celebrated with just the right words from Ethel? And all hands went up. These are small things for sure, you know. Simple, kind words of support, encouragement, compassion, sympathy. And then the rabbi asked, How many of you did she call Bubla?

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Or my darling? At all hands. Apparently, Ethel's daughter knew exactly the time of her mother's death because when she found her, she was in her bed wearing her Curious George T-shirt. The New York Times was open next to her, and her cell phone was in her hand. marking the time of her passing by the last unanswered message. There was no sign of pain or struggle. She'd just gone to sleep, as she often did when I went to visit her up in her home in Fairfax. Beat one of her best friends after all. I think we were all a little disappointed. Really? Okay. I guess I can share. These are small things, you know, for sure. Being remembered and smiled at, being hugged, being teased, and frequently being chastised for not getting all the little things done that one could get done if one, each one, only tried just a little bit harder.

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For her, for Ethel, that meant small things like educating all of the children, you know, and feeding and housing homeless, comforting and protecting immigrants, prisoners, and battered women. I really, I loved Ethel, how many of us did. And I loved what she stood for and what she stood against, and how unafraid she was to speak to power on behalf of those who didn't have any. And I loved her hats. Her father had been a hatter in New York. her sparkly outfits and her raunchy sense of humor. She really likes sex and she reminded us all the time that we needed a partner, any partner, didn't matter. Her first question was always, how's your love like? Darling, how's your love like?

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Zen doesn't say too much about our love life or about childcare or not too much about home gardening or pets or homelessness, except to recommend it, homelessness. But still, Zen does say a lot about how to meet the world where such things appear and how to develop our capacity to see the world of small things, to care for small things, and to help our neighbors when they get caught up in those great big questions like, who am I, where am I, what am I supposed to be doing with my life, and what does it mean that I'm going to die, and that all my loved ones, too, will pass away. So there are good reasons for us to be afraid, and I think, therefore, we must, truly must, open our hearts to one another now while we are all still here together, and while we can't.

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even as we are faced with this oversized opponent who seems to be blocking our way. Our fear. Fear of loss. For the Buddha, that opponent was called Mara the evil one, the master of illusion. And once the Buddha came to realize that Mara, unlike Brittany Griner, was a figment of his imagination, not only that, was his imagination. Mara vanished as quickly as he'd come. And then the Buddha noticed as if for the first time how everything he could ever need or want was arriving right there before his eyes and in his hands and in his ears and on his skin as textures, sounds, colors Master Dogen said a number of centuries later while making the same observation as the Buddha had made, to carry yourself forward and experience the myriad things is delusion.

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That myriad things come forth and realize themselves is awakening. To carry yourself forward and experience the myriad things is delusion. That myriad things come forth and realize themselves is awakening. So from the one point of view, the mistaken point of view, it's all a matter of acquisition. What can I get? From the other point of view, the enlightened point of view, it's all a miraculous gift. Once the Buddha had turned the lights of his own imagination around the other way, from deceptive thinking to awakening, he taught two things. to those of us still left behind in the dark. He taught suffering and its cause and he taught the end of suffering and its cause. And he called those the four noble truths.

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Truths, universal truths that would be freely given to all that had touched that place in their own hearts where pain seems to reside. Suffering the first noble truth is not so easy to understand. I think sometimes people imagine that Buddha meant that life is only suffering. But I think we all know it's a lot more than that. But that's not what he meant. He meant that the base of our life, you know, at the truth of our life, there are some undeniable realities that we frequently prefer to deny. Especially that big one. Whatever is born is going to die. Or as Dogen put it, in attachment, blossoms fall. In aversion, weeds spread. By ignoring that big one that's standing there at the center of the court, we enter into one of Mara's many enchantments.

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A world of dreams driven by our fears. and by our relentless hunger, greed, hate, and delusion. Mara's world, the Buddha taught, consists of four upside-down views, which to us humans seem quite normal, you know, quite obvious. Not upside-down at all. This is the way things are. The first of them, the first upside-down view, is of a singularity, an isolate called The self, me. The second is that there are desirable and permanent objects out there to be acquired and possessed by me. You know, all my stuff. And the third, that acquiring an abundance of the right stuff will make me truly happy.

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And the fourth is that our belief, our belief that this pattern of acquisition will result in a long, safe, and happy life for me. If only. If only it all works out the way I want. When I was down at Tassajara this last summer, earlier this summer, I sat in on a panel of some really amazing people who are part of organizations, non-profit organizations. One was a for-profit medical professional organization. And each one of them identified themselves as a Buddhist and described the work they were doing inside of their organizations. They were all leaders. One was a healthcare professional who talked about mindfulness and joy. Another was an investment consultant who spoke about generosity.

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The third was a green builder and affordable housing specialist who talked on behalf of people, plants, and animals of the earth. The investment consultant told a story about a client of his who had asked him to double his money in five years. so that he would have sufficient funds to cover his needs through his retirement. So having succeeded in doubling the man's money in under five years, they met again, and the man said, actually, I need you to double it again. And the consultant then told him, if you don't see that you have enough money right now, you will never see that. And you will never be able to rest. So rather than promising to increase his holdings, he advised the man to start giving a percentage of his wealth away through charitable donations. So within a year, this man returned and had transformed himself away from miserliness and toward this engagement with the abundant resources of his life.

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And much of what he was happy about was his plans to give all of it away. Miserly, by the way, comes from the same root word as misery. So this is exactly what the Buddha recommended as well. He said that we must turn these upside-down views of ourselves and the world back around inside our heads, which is where they reside. And when we do, we'll find that there is no isolated, independent entity sitting here all by herself. There are no permanent objects that I can acquire to carry around with me wherever I go. There can never be long-lasting happiness through the acquisition of those objects. And lastly, that the entire enterprise through which we create ourselves, this dream world, is done by a technique commonly called shocking, and that there has no inherent solidity whatsoever.

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You're laughing because you know what I mean. There is no fundamental to rely on. And there's only that on which we can rely. The fundamental truth is that the big things, such as where am I, who am I, and how should I live, are made up of thousands of little things that each of us actually does, thinks, and sees. throughout the waking hours of our everyday life. If we move too fast, we miss them, or so it seems. If we don't take time to sit quietly, stand or walk slowly and peacefully, then we end our days each day exhausted and still dreaming of what else we might have done instead of this. The word Buddha means awake. And then I wonder what it means for each of us to be awake.

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What does that mean? Are we awake? Awake to what? What are we seeing right now? What are we hearing right now? How does it feel to be sitting on these cushions or in those red folded chairs? Are you comfortable? There's a story of a Zen monk who, when he arose from bed each morning, would say his own name to himself out loud. And then he'd answer, yes? And then he'd say, are you awake? So the Buddha didn't tell us exactly what it means to be awake, although he did indicate poetically it had something to do with his realization of non-separation of the self and the universe, the non-dual nature of reality, something that he realized when he looked up at the morning star.

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However, he did tell us to ask ourselves that question again and again, you know, are you awake? Am I awake? What does that mean? And he told us that we should face the world of objects with curiosity and open-mindedness to turn over in our own awareness any and all such thoughts about that world that had grown stiff or solid through kind of mindless repetition. I hate fog. I don't like blue cheese. Small dogs bother me. Not really. None of those. Anyway. But I have my own things that I don't like. I'm just not gonna tell you what they are right now. None of you, I assure you.

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None of you. So someone said to me long ago, Zen isn't about what you're going to get, it's about what you're going to lose. And so I was thinking, what is it we really have to lose? What could we do well without? And I think primarily it's the false images that we carry about ourselves and our loved ones. Images that fail to reflect the true virtue within each and every one of you. And we also, we really have to lose our habit of acquisitiveness both as individuals and as nations. Unless we think we have enough right now, we will never think we have enough. And we will consume all of the resources of our beloved planet. For sure. I really loved hearing that Ethel had on her Curious George t-shirt when she died.

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I think it was the perfect emblem for a life of courage. humor and grandmotherly wisdom. I would like to think that we could all be a little bit more like Ethel, you know, really into being ourselves completely, outrageously, and to let others know just who that is, to fearlessly speak our minds, to share our love and our misery, and to give comfort and sustenance to any and all who need it, whether they deserve it or not. Like Pope Francis said, you know, who am I to judge? And if it's not the Pope, I don't know who it is. And I think Ethel would have said very wisely that by caring for those small things, by educating the children, feeding the housing the homeless, protecting and comforting the immigrant, the prisoner, and the battered women, that the big things will take care of themselves.

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why we're here, who we are, and what it means to die in the context of a full and happy life, as she did. So I'm going to end with a somewhat long poem. It's not actually a poem. It's more like a, I don't know what it is. You can tell me later. It's by George Bilger. I'm not sure how to pronounce his name either, but I've stolen this from someone at Spirit Rock. So... they don't mind, but it's called Unwise Purchases. They sit around the house not doing much of anything, the boxed set of the complete works of Verdi unopened, the complete Proust unread, the French cut silk shirts which hang like expensive ghosts in a closet and make me look exactly like the kind of middle-aged man who would wear a French cut silk shirt.

[23:11]

The reflector telescope I thought would unlock the mysteries of the heavens, but which I only used once or twice to try to find something heavenly in the windows of the high-rise down the road, and which now stares disconsolately at the ceiling when it could be examining the crab nebula. The 30-day course in Spanish whose text I never opened, whose dozen cassette tapes remain unplayed, save for tape one, where I never learned whether the suave American conversing with the sultry-sounding desk clerk at a Madrid hotel about the possibility of obtaining a room actually managed to check in. I'd like to think that one thing led to another between them, and that by tape six or so, they're happily married, and raising a bilingual child in Seville, or terrible. But I'll never know. I'll never know.

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Suddenly I realize I have constructed the perfect home for a sexy Spanish-speaking astronomer who reads Proust while listening to Italian arias. And I wonder if somewhere in this teeming city there lives a woman with, say, a fencing foil gathering dust in the corner. Near her unused easel, a rainbow of oil paints drying in their tubes. On the table were the violin she bought on the wimp lies entombed in the permanent darkness of its locked case next to the abandoned chess set. A woman who has always dreamed of becoming, the kind of woman, the man I've always dreamed of becoming, has always dreamed of meeting. And while the two of them discuss star clusters and Cezanne, while they fence delicately in Castilian Spanish to the strains of Rigoletto, She and I will stand in the steamy kitchen, fixing up a little risotto, enjoying a modest Cabernet, while talking over a day so ordinary as to seem miraculous.

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Well, thank you very much, and please enjoy this ordinary day. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our programs are made possible by the donations we receive. Please help us to continue to realize and actualize the practice of giving by offering your financial support. For more information, visit sfzc.org and click giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

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