surpassed and trading and perfect is ready even a hundred thousand million help us having it to see and listen to to remember and accept I vow to taste the truth of God, to talk its other's words, and answer not, and training and perfect karma. In Israel, we have met with, even in a hundred thousand million, help us, guiding it to see and listen to, to remember and accept, to taste the truth of the Tata's words, an unsurpassed and intriguing and perfect karma.

[03:57]

It is where He met with even a hundred thousand million Dalvas, having it to see and listen to, to remember and accept. Welcome everyone. It's wonderful to be out here at Green Gulch Front. This is the first time I've spoken here. I've been coming here for a couple of decades. My name is Gengyoku Tim Wicks, and I live at San Francisco Zen Center's city center over in the city, and I currently serve as Tanto or Head of Practice.

[04:58]

I'd like to thank Lauren Bouye for inviting me in the name of the Tanto, Timo, to give this talk today. And thanks to Abbot Jiryu, who's away today, for allowing me to hold the Dharma seats. And as always, I'd like to thank my teacher, Rinzo Ed Satterson, for his incredible kindness and bottomless, it seems like, patience with me in my imperfect practice. of you here for the first time today that's a lot of you welcome a warm welcome to you thanks for coming today so I'd like to talk a little about something that I've been working with recently and since you don't really know me that well I'll sprinkle in a little bit of biographical information so that you can get to know me a little bit better

[05:59]

We always live in vital times where there's a lot going on. That's the nature of being a human being on planet Earth. But in cycles, there are heightened periods of calamity and turmoil. And we're certainly living in such a time at the moment. I won't go through the litany of events that we find ourselves in the midst of right now. You know what they are. I'd rather like to focus on what happens when we look around and the response that we have to upheaval and how to work with it by focusing on what's called virya in Sanskrit, which means energy. I recently found out about a phenomenon that's occurring for a lot of people in reaction to what the world's been going through. In talking with people, I began to notice a feeling of overwhelm leading for some people to feelings of frustration and helplessness.

[07:08]

There's a recognition of the problems we face but there's also a feeling of immobility and really not knowing what to do about things. There's no question that some of this is a holdover from COVID but there seems to be an added feeling of isolation as though people with this response to the world or alone in their feelings, a sort of added isolation. And as it turns out, there's a name for this phenomenon, and it's called hyper-normalization. Hyper-normalization is a term that was coined by a Soviet scholar to explain what people were experiencing as the Soviet Union was collapsing in the early 1990s. There was an awareness at the time in the Soviet Union of the crumbling of institutions and the appearance of a new class of people who were engaged in growing corruption.

[08:13]

And this was accompanied for average Soviets. This was accompanied with a feeling of immobility and not knowing what to do about it. It was the normalization of cultural and institutional disintegration. When I first came to San Francisco Zen Center in 2001, I'd been practicing with a teacher trained in Theravadan Buddhism. Theravadan Buddhism is different from our Zen practice in that we have what's called the Bodhisattva ideal. In Theravadan Buddhism, the training is geared towards the enlightenment of the individual. The Bodhisattva ideal is geared towards the awakening of all beings together. There's a focus in our Mahayana practice on the connection between all things. In Zen, our central practice is Zazen.

[09:16]

Many of you sat that this morning. Seated meditation. Za means seated and Zen means concentrated meditation. In it, we are expanding our awareness. We begin with the breath, the body. Our physical posture is prescribed by Ehei Dogen, our 13th century founder in Japan, in the document Fukan Zazengi. But he goes on in that document to describe the mind's role in meditation. Excuse me. Cease to practice based on intellectual understanding, says Dogen. Pursuing words and following after speech. and learn the backward step that turns your light inwardly to illuminate yourself. Body and mind of themselves will drop away and your original face will manifest. If you want to attain suchness, you should practice suchness without delay."

[10:24]

So the mind is in the body. Awakening is perceived in both the body and the mind. Much of our existence is perceived in the mind. Our actions are begun in the mind. The appropriate response to the life that we live is cultivated in the mind. Our school is often referred to as the mind-only school. In the Dhammapada, our beloved early Buddhist poem, which begins in Dichotomies. It says, quote, All experience is preceded by mind, led by mind, made by mind. Speak or act with a corrupted mind and suffering follows, as the wagon wheel follows the hoof of the ox. All experience is preceded by mind, led by mind, made by mind. Speak or act with a peaceful mind

[11:29]

and happiness follows like a never-departing shadow. Our mind is how we respond to the world and how our mind is is being cultivated in our Zazen practice. Dogen says that to study the Buddha way is to study the self and what we're studying when we study the self is the impermanence and interconnection of the self. How everything is influenced by everything else and how it all changes through time. My alarm clock from my drinking water. Thanks for helping me. So as I mentioned, my first practice was with a Theravadan teacher who had a focus on Vipassana. or insight meditation.

[12:30]

I started coming to Zen Center because there was a meeting for people who were in recovery for substance abuse. I'd been in recovery for a couple of years and the meeting which is still held at City Center on Mondays is called Meditation in Recovery. But I didn't like Zen Center very much when I first came. preferred the Vipassana practice where all the ceremony of the Eastern cultures the practice came from had been dropped. I didn't like all the robes and the bowing and the altars and the ceremony at Zen Sena. But slowly over time it began to feel more applicable to my life and as my Zazen practice deepened, I was able to begin investigating what was behind my years of addiction when I'd brought utter ruin to my life.

[13:36]

I grew up in London. That's why I've got a little bit of a strange accent. My father was American and my mother was British. My mother had cancer and died when I was eight. My father was an alcoholic. And since I was a little boy, I had suffered from depression. When I got into recovery, I was able, for the first time in my life, to begin to address the underlying depression and anxiety that was being treated, however inefficiently, by alcohol abuse. It's important to be careful when investigating depression in meditation. It's critical to do it with a teacher. and I was both in therapy and practicing with a teacher. One of the main discoveries that I made regarding depression was that it's not permanent. There's a feeling when one is depressed that this is a permanent state.

[14:40]

Zazen taught me to look very closely at the energy of depression. I was taught to relax around the various feelings that make up depression. to see things as they are and not push them away. The sense of dread that accompanies it, the terrible shame that is a central characteristic of depression, was constantly changing. Intense and seemingly permanent one minute nearly gone the next. I was taught to rest during the moments that it was less intense, gathering strength for when it was intense again. gathering strength and memory, building up the memory for when it was very intense, the memory that it was not permanent and that a break was on the way. This is the study of the impermanence of the self. And there can be an element of depression in hyper-normalization, a kind of sadness and loss of interest in the rapidly changing world we find ourselves in.

[15:55]

a loss of energy. Impermanence is not the only thing that we're studying when we're sitting Zazen. We're also studying silence. Silence is what we create together when we sit as a group. Silence has a fabric, a structure that is almost tangible. Sitting anywhere at Tassajara City Center or here at Green Gulch You quickly see that there's really no such thing as perfect silence. The rustle of clothing is integrated into your experience. The closing of a car door, a bird is singing. All of this becomes a part of the energy of sitting in silence. Silence becomes charged with the energy of life. The Vipassana practice was geared toward personal well-being, developing insight into the individual.

[17:02]

Sitting zazen is sitting with other people. It's the practice of interconnectedness. Once I came to Zen, I quickly saw that the focus was on group sitting and that focus provided an extra element to the experience of meditation. We sit facing the wall with our eyes open. We're encouraged to expand our attention to include the rest of the room and the others who we are sitting with. When someone comes to sit next to you, you're aware of them doing so and you bow to them. The silence of meditation is charged somehow with an energy, an energy that is made up of a group of living beings being together. This energy of life is undeniable. It's a joyful energy. In our Buddhist practice we cultivate energy.

[18:07]

In Sanskrit it's called virya which means energy but also effort, diligence and courage. It has the same indic root as vitality or vigor. This is developed to encourage ethical decision making organizing thoughts and intentions in a way that motivates awakening. This practice is what leads to bodhicitta, which is the mind of awakening. The cultivation of courage is a vital characteristic of the perfection of virya. There's the courage needed when facing physical harm of some kind. There's the courage needed when faced with events that occur in any life, the loss of a loved one, a job loss, or job change, even moving to a new environment. And then there's the everyday courage that is needed to address the basic fears of being a human being, many of which are subconscious and we're unaware of them.

[19:16]

These are the risks of simply being alive, the risk of embarrassment, humiliation. failure and loss. All of us, no matter how confident or privileged we are, are subject to these fears. And some of us are more susceptible to them than others. Courage in Buddhism is based in trust. Trust in Buddha as the teacher who attained enlightenment and gave teachings that direct us towards non-suffering. Teachings that analyze suffering and the root of suffering and point us to the road to the end of that suffering. Trust in the Buddha's teaching, the Dharma, that all phenomena are connected in some way, that everything is subject to change and that there is the potential for all beings

[20:25]

to achieve awakening together. We cultivate this trust in the Dharma through investigation. Dogen is constantly telling us to investigate, investigate, investigate. In the Kalama Sutra, the Buddha said for us to investigate for ourselves, to not be taken in by the words of others, but to see for ourselves what the truth is. And in his final words, as many of you know, before his death, he said, be a light unto yourself. Ultimately, trust in the Dharma means trust in yourself and in your practice. Finally, courage is built with trust in the Sangha, the fellowship of practitioners. Trust in Sangha is built by being consistently in Sangha. spending time with your fellow flawed practitioners, practicing imperfectly with imperfect people.

[21:30]

It's through this support that courage to go deeper in the nurturing of energy is gained, and the perfection of virya is attained. Dogen admonishes us to, in quotes, attain suchness, practice suchness without delay, in quotes. Suchness, used interchangeably with thusness, is in Sanskrit taphata, and it refers to the understanding of the ultimate nature of reality, of how all phenomena in its essence is free from thoughts and concepts without karmic conditioning. Seeing everything as it is. Things, as Suzuki Roshi said, as it is. Living in a world that seems to be falling apart can result in a sense of groundlessness and can lead to feelings of helplessness, malaise, frustration and loneliness.

[22:35]

Our practice helps us to be aware when these states begin, to see the experience as it is, accepting it without judgment or shame, for it's then that countermeasures can be taken. In Sanskrit the word satana means volition, intention or directionality. It is a mental factor that directs the mind in a specific direction towards, dare I say, a goal. I say this because we're practicing the no-gaining mind of Zen. Practice without goals, just sitting. But our ideal is the ideal of the bodhisattva. And there is in this ideal what is sometimes referred to as the bodhisattva paradox. This is a reference to the energy that directs the bodhisattva in training towards bodhicitta, the mind of enlightenment.

[23:41]

This while practicing no gaining. No gaining mind does not mean being passive or not caring about what it is that you're doing. The energy of practice asks us to care deeply. In fact, by studying the self, compassion for others naturally occurs as we look at ourselves in depth. When we do, we can't help but come to see how it is that others are and how it is that suffering is a universal experience. This creates the energy of motivation which directs our practice. The deeper our compassion becomes, the less self-centered becomes the goal because we become more connected to others. And finally, in closing, there is in hyper-normalization a feeling of fatigue and exhaustion.

[24:43]

The poet David White is friends with brother David Stendlerast, a Benedictine monk and friend of San Francisco Zen Center. In an essay, White explains how he asks Schendelrast to speak about exhaustion and Brother Schendelrast says that the antidote to exhaustion is not rest, but wholeheartedness. A reintegration of what it is that energizes you. For White, it was the life of a poet White had been working in the non-profit sector and had become demoralized and burned out. This seems counterintuitive at first. Surely exhaustion is treated by rest, not by putting extra energy into something. But this is what our practice asks us to do. To be engaged with everything we do. From sitting still and facing the wall, to walking, to holding a cup of tea,

[25:49]

to doing calligraphy. During all our waking life we're being asked to watch closely pay full attention to how everything is connected and how it all changes. So we find ourselves in a mess every now and then. This will change as it always does. I'm reminded by being in close proximity to my fellow practitioners to pay attention to my response to the world as I see others doing. And this, in turn, will give me the courage to proceed and let the practice lead the way to the appropriate response to the suffering that I see in the world. And I'm going to end with a poem. It's a very short poem. And I'm going to read it twice. And it's a poem by David White. And it's called Enough. Enough.

[26:51]

These few words are enough. If not these words, this breath. If not this breath, this sitting here. This opening to the life we have refused again and again. Until now. Until now. Once again. Enough. These few words are enough. If not these words, this breath. If not this breath, this sitting here. This opening to the life we have refused again and again. Until now. Until now. Thank you all very much. And now we go directly into Q&A. So, do people, yes, people get a microphone. So if you'd like to put your hand up if you have a question, and Eno will bring the microphone to you.

[27:56]

And just say I appreciate, thank you for your talk. I'm trying to remember what I got excited about oh yeah you know in my reading right now I was reminded of energy and enthusiasm and I recalled something that my old teacher said which was yeah if you are exhausted after giving you're not giving purely wholeheartedly and so that's a really nice dynamic to focus on. Yeah, if you're saying, oh it was so hard and it took me this long and I did this and then you kind of collapse in the corner after giving your meal or whatever it was, then that's maybe to be examined.

[29:13]

And so I appreciate that reminder and just kind of hearkening back to my old teacher's teaching. Thank you so much. Beautiful, yeah. Thank you very much for that. Yeah, generosity is the doorway to joy. Yeah. And I forget that all the time. else who is experiencing a lot of suffering just about whatever's going on in the world what's like the best thing we can do in that moment to I guess bring the suffering down if we can well I'm going to give you a classic Zen answer to that it depends so it depends on what it is that they're suffering around depends on what your relationship is with them

[30:16]

and it depends on what's possible sometimes it's not possible to help other people in which case in my experience usually the best thing to do is to just be with them just be with them it's possible to be with people and be completely silent and just be a presence and then it's really important also to look after yourself and make sure that you are not suffering sort of co-dependently in a response to how it is that they're acting. So hoping to, not trying to change that, but to be with them in whatever way is most helpful. To love people.

[31:18]

To just love people. If you can express that love in any way, that's great. Sometimes it's not appropriate or possible to do that. But to just really make contact with the love that you feel for that person. That's a start. There's another question in the back there. Thanks for your talk. How do you know if you're practicing? Other people will tell you. It's best not to rely on yourself.

[32:23]

But that's the beauty of places like Green Gulch, because people will tell you when you're not practicing. Or you need to practice a little more. But yeah, being in community, that's the way it is that you tell whether or not you're practicing. And feeling a sense of connection, a sense of presence and connection with the world and whatever it is that's happening in your life, ringing the bell. sitting zazen, eating dinner. Are you present? Are you paying attention? Are you paying attention to what it is that's going on? That is a good sign to me of whether or not I'm practicing, as if I'm paying attention. Thank you so much for the talk.

[33:44]

The thing that's resonated with me a lot about this term, hyper-normalization, I hadn't heard that before, but I've been feeling it a lot. And I've been trying to figure out what can I do. And I'm sure a lot of people have been thinking of that. What should I be doing in this moment? And I recently read something by Les Kaye, who is a student of Suzuki Roshi. I think he started the Mountain View Zen Center. But he talked about when you're thinking about how to respond to injustice doing so with a peaceful mind will help ensure that you don't create more pain in the world and so I've been thinking about that a lot about how to respond in this moment but also how to do so with a peaceful mind and having a bit of a tough time doing that and thinking about just so I'm just curious if you had any thoughts on that just how to respond to this situation and how to also do so with a peaceful mind well before I heard the term hyper normalization a couple of months ago I was having all these experiences like you just described you've been having of immobilization and some depression and not really knowing what to do and malaise and what the practice taught me to do whenever it is that I find myself in difficult situations first of all

[35:12]

is to be kind being kind is a doorway just like generosity is a doorway to joy being kind is a spiritual doorway to being connected with other people and that's an easy thing to do if I can just remember to do it and that's a good place to start is to be kind in all areas of my life if possible And this practice, sitting zazen, being in sangha with people, will show me the direction that I need to go in. It will show me what it is that I need to do, whether or not I need to go to a demonstration or make contact with other people who are doing certain things. All of that will become apparent to me as I practice kindness and the rest of this practice. Thank you so much.

[36:15]

There's a question down here, Diane. Okay, whoever you'd like to go to. Yes, yes, okay, good. Thank you so much for your talk. So my question is when looking, you know, facing all the suffering that is in our world right now feels like you could drown in it and then you take action, how can you tell when the action you're taking is a distraction and a turning away from the suffering versus action that's turning towards it and being with it? Through experience. Sometimes we do things that are distractions. We take spiritual bypasses because it's very painful to be alive, even in times when there's not much going on, which is almost never. But it's difficult to be alive and it's okay to do things that are a distraction, if you only do them for a little while, they will appear as distractions to you as you deepen your practice and as you deepen whatever effort it is that you're embarking on to try and help the world.

[37:29]

It will become clear to you, it's really important to practice with other people, to not do this stuff on your own. Other people will help you to find your way to what's authentic and true. Thank you. Would you say there was one? There was one in the front. There's one all the way in the back. They're all over. Thank you, Tim. I'm glad to be here today for your first Gringold's talk. I wanted to talk a little bit about suffering also as a form, well, I would almost want to say liberation. That's what brought me to practice was my suffering. I guess I had a gaining mind, and you speak about the paradox of the gaining mind, but continuing to be there to sit for liberation.

[38:41]

So could you talk a little bit about these ideas that I'm mentioning? Yeah, well, the Buddha said that just to be alive means to suffer. So it's a part of the whole picture. We say that we're trying to end suffering, but suffering continues. It's just simply a part of being alive. My own suffering as a drug addict and alcoholic is what brought me to this incredible practice 25 years ago. And so I'm actually grateful for the wisdom that suffering provides. It's not something that we need to go and look for or cultivate suffering. but it has this other beautiful side to it that leads us in the proper direction.

[39:51]

I'm also the sewing teacher at City Center, we make our own robes and our robes are made from several panels which are made up of short pieces and long pieces and the long pieces are the wisdom panels and the short pieces are the delusion or the suffering panels and we sew them together because we realize that suffering and wisdom are all a part of awakening we're not trying to get rid of all the suffering or we're not trying to have a pure place that's completely without suffering although a lot of the writing and a lot of the doctrine says we're trying to end suffering Not usually what happens, at least not in my experience anyway. Maybe I'm not practicing properly. So yeah, we see the benefit and the wisdom that there is in suffering. Thank you.

[40:52]

Thank you. Thank you for your talk. You mentioned about Vipassana meditation. I just wanted to understand, how is it different from this meditation? I have done that, but I wanted to know more about, is it different from the experience level or learning? I shouldn't really comment, because my Vipassana practice was like the first two years, and so I'm not an expert. by any means as far as what the experience is. My first Zen teacher said when I asked him if I could continue some mindfulness practices, he said that Vipassana is included in Zen. And that I was skeptical about and I'm still a little skeptical about it.

[42:00]

What he meant by that is the training that you get in Vipassana, the training of scanning the body, that is something that is a part of investigating that, this investigation that we're asked to make by Dogen and by many other Zen practitioners. The main difference is the ideals So the ideal is the ideal of the Arhat for Theravadan Buddhism. The lone monk who is trying to achieve enlightenment. Whereas for us, it's the Bodhisattva ideal where we work towards enlightenment, we work towards awakening, but we agree to forego entering nirvana until all beings can become awakened together. So that's the sort of doctrinaire difference right there. But as far as the actual experience was concerned it felt like Vipassana led very naturally into Zen practice.

[43:11]

I hope that's helpful. Thank you for your discussion this morning, Tim. And I was surprised by kind of the opening comment in terms of, you know, findings in Buddhism because you came for the meditation and recovery. And I went to my first meditation and recovery retreat here at Green Girls about a month ago. And I thought, for me at least, there was a poignancy to the potent you choose to close in, which is opening up and saying yes to something you've refused for so long. And I don't know if that leads to any additional thoughts, but I just mainly want to say thank you for your discussion on recovery.

[44:18]

Thank you. There's one more down here. Oh, OK. Great. Thank you. I appreciated your comments on courage, and also that sometimes we find ourselves in a mess And my question had to do with what you said about at the base level, there's something that doesn't have karmic consequences. And I'm struggling with the resonance and consequences of past actions. And so I'm curious about those topics of courage and karma. Courage and karma. Did you just say just a little bit more? everything you said made sense to me except the piece about at some base level there is no karmic consequence and I'd love elucidation on that I'll try well I was referring to the absolute when Dogen says practice thusness as soon as you can he's asking us to enter into

[45:36]

the Absolute, which is beyond karmic consequences. We live in a relative world, where we have to deal with the consequences of our karmic behavior. And so, that takes up a lot of time. For me, the Absolute is really something more that I read about, it's not really something so much that I experience, You get little glimpses of awakening every now and then. So I don't know if that begins to answer your question. We can talk more about it afterwards at T. Thank you. Okay. What's your name? Alex. Alex, thank you. In front you say, we have time for more. Thank you for your talk.

[46:40]

I have a couple questions from the folks online. And sorry, online folks. There's a number of questions, so I'm just going to read two. So one question is, can you talk a bit more about how to handle the grief and feeling of hopelessness right now? And the second question is, Thank you for the talk and how can we be kind to ICE agents? That's a tough one. That's a tough one. But it is possible to be kind to those who maybe are not expressing kindness. And I try to I try to make contact with the fear that is usually in place around people who are not able to be kind.

[47:49]

There's usually a lot of fear and it's usually pretty easy to make contact with that fear. I remember when 9-11 happened, the question came up in my Vipassana group whether or not it was possible to have compassion for the hijackers. And to me, from a long line of left-wing politics, I could understand it was possible for me to have compassion towards the hijackers. But it wasn't possible for me at that time to have compassion towards George Bush and the military-industrial complex, which I knew was going to bomb what turned out to be Afghanistan and Iraq and in the Middle East. And what happened as I was... going over that thought of how difficult that was to have compassion for the military-industrial complex. I started seeing George Bush on the news as like a really scared human being.

[48:53]

Really, really terrified. And that made it eventually possible to have some compassion. try to make contact, if it's possible, with that sense of fear that there is. People who are trying to get rid of people and disappear people and put people into camps are filled with fear, and it's possible to make some contact with them. And the first question, what was the first question? The other question was, can you talk a bit more about how to handle the grief and feeling of hopelessness right now? There's such a thing as it's called grief work. Grief therapists talk about it all the time.

[49:55]

To do grief work thoroughly, to really feel your feelings around grief and what it is that is so painful and disturbing. That's really what our Zen practice asks us to do, is to feel things completely. And what happens when you do that is that the feelings change. And as the feelings change, more energy comes. And as more energy comes, the hopelessness begins to be treated. That's my experience anyway. Settle the time we have? We have time for one more. Tim will be here and have tea outside for further conversation as well. Is there another question? Yes. Thank you, Tim.

[51:10]

I keep thinking about something you mentioned about the suffering not ending, and then I was thinking about wondering if the Buddha imagined being enlightened, or the end of suffering, like what's it like to, is there value in imagining Is there value in imagining a life beyond suffering? Beyond suffering, yeah, free of suffering. It seems like it implies that, but there's also, I believe what you're saying, that there's a sense that, or I haven't seen, or maybe both are true. I don't know, I wondered if you could speak to the imagination of the end of suffering. Yeah, I think it's really important. It's critical to be creative and to imagine the end of suffering.

[52:19]

My own experience, as I said, is not that all suffering has ended, but all suffering has changed. So all the suffering that I've had in my life has changed. The deep grief, the depression, the the worry, the disgust, the fear, all of it has changed. And that's really what it is that we're spending time on, is being present with what it is that is happening in our lives. And that includes the suffering and allowing the suffering to actually live and to have its life, to come into being, and to then exhaust itself because everything does, everything disintegrates, including suffering. Thank you. Thank you. That will be our last.

[53:29]

Okay. Tension equally extends to every being at each place. With the true merit of the perilous way. Beings are endless. I know how to save them. Delusions are inexhaustible. I vow to render them. Dharma gates are boundless, I vow to render them. Word's way is unsurpassable, I vow to become it.

[54:34]

Beings are boundless, I vow to save them. Delusions are unstoppable. I vow to end them. Dharma is boundless. I vow to enter them. Through the earth's way is unsurpassable. I vow to become it. Things are numberless. Delusions are insustable. I vow to end them. Dharma is harmless. I vow to enter them. Buddha's way is insurcastable.

[55:35]

I vow to become it. your own enthusiasm and energy.

[56:57]

I'd like to thank the people who came for Zazen instruction today. I think they were the ones who raised their hands for the first time being here. And just say to the group that every week on Sunday we offer Zazen instruction at 8

[57:15]

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