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 evening, everyone. It is wonderful to be here. So I'm going to start with a poem by Clint Smith called Expedience. When I received the call about my uncle's death, I was sad but not surprised. You can still mourn the damage done by a storm, even if you stood on the shore and saw it coming. For a long time in my family, we had this habit of talking about things without actually talking about them. My uncle struggled for a long time with demons we couldn't see. See, there I go again, making another metaphor, describing something as a monster because I'm too scared to call it an illness. Removing a single brick can cause the entire house to crumble.

[01:00]

A small amount of gasoline floating atop the ocean can still start a fire. So that's Clint Smith's expedience. So... I've been thinking a lot about loss the last few weeks, as I know some of you have been here as well. Big losses and small ones. I had an invitation to be with another sangha on Sunday, and when I woke up, I had two clocks, one on my iPad and one on the wall, and they had two different times on them. And so my immediate thought was, I've been robbed of an hour's sleep. and this is a terrible loss, and I should be very upset about this. But what one of them said was 4 o'clock, and the other one said was 5 o'clock. And the event that I was going to was at 12 noon on one of those two clocks. So it was that sense of loss, that sense of being confused, that sense of not being sure. And, you know, it enabled me as sometimes when we think about our...

[02:02]

relationship with loss and fear, it enabled me to have a chuckle at myself. Like I went immediately to, oh, I won't be able to go now because I'm all confused and don't know what's going on. So I think that what I want to talk with us about tonight is losses and how we work with them and how we build a relationship with our responses to loss. So there are some losses that are major. And those include, you know, perhaps the loss of a family member or friend or sangha mate. They include perhaps the loss of a job. They include perhaps the loss of a career due to retirement or even worse to downsizing in the firm that you might work for, the organization. So there are losses that are huge, and then there are losses that are small. Some of the folks I've talked to in the past couple weeks were very much talking about the loss of the San Francisco 49ers in the Super Bowl, which was sort of like a foreign language to me, but I did understand that it was an important loss, and they were feeling some loss about that.

[03:13]

And then on Sunday night this past week, I had some friends together to watch the Academy Awards, which is a cultural thing in my community. And just as they got to the big three awards at the end, Xfinity popped up a nice little sign that said, we're sorry, we can no longer connect to your service. I was feeling loss. And in all of these cases, we get an opportunity to say, ah, there are little things that we lose. You know, most of us have lost a mug that we like, a favorite mug, and maybe someone borrowed it, maybe it just disappeared, who knows. But we've had these experiences, and what I would suggest that we do is rather than think of some as small losses and some as larger losses, that we think of them all as an opportunity to practice with loss. that we think of them all as an opportunity to practice. So someone from here gave a talk one time, and I wish I could remember who it was, but talked about having lost his favorite mug, and everyone scampered around trying to find it, and when they came back, he was drinking out of another mug, and it's like, well, one way or the other, I'm going to drink out of a different mug, and this way I got to have my tea warm.

[04:23]

And it's just a way of thinking about what are we really attached to and why are we attached to it. I've been thinking about it a lot, and I've had a chance to talk to a lot of people about loss and grieving and sadness in the last few weeks. I've talked to a lot of bodhisattvas and Buddhas. Many of you in this room are on Zoom, I imagine, or whatever that technology is. And so in my daily practice, one of the things I recite is the Eheikoso Hatsugamen. And I won't read the whole thing, but a few of the lines... Buddhas and ancestors of old were as we. We in the future shall be Buddhas and ancestors. Those who in past lives were not enlightened will now be enlightened. In this life, save the body which is the fruit of many lives. Before Buddhas were enlightened, they were the same as we. Enlightened people of today are exactly as those of old. Quietly explore the farthest reaches of the causes and conditions, as this is the practice of the exact transmission of a verified Buddha.

[05:26]

And so when I first came to practice, and I first came to Zen practice here, what is now 30 years ago, and spent a wonderful 18 years studying with Michael Winger and many other folks who taught seminars and classes here. So I have a deep, deep appreciation and love for the San Francisco Zen Center, where I still continue to practice every Monday night at Meditation and Recovery. So the important thing to me was that I had come from a faith tradition, well, on a very basic level, a faith tradition that talked way too much. They had lots to say about a lot of things, many of which caused me great heartache and illities. And so when I came to Zen and they said, you're going to come downstairs in this room and you're going to face the wall and no one's going to talk, I thought, perfect. This is a practice I could get to.

[06:27]

And then the other thing was we then went upstairs where someone did talk. And one of the first talks I heard was by Blanche Hartman, who was reminding us that we are all Buddhas, that we all have Buddha nature, and that Buddha, in her talk that day, Buddha meant teacher, and that we teach 24-7. by the way we live, by the way we walk in the world, by the way we encounter each other. So we have this wonderful opportunity to practice how we choose to be Buddha in the world. And yes, that includes how to deal with loss and grief and sorrow. So how to honor and embody impermanence and non-attachment while being fully present in this moment that we share together. And those seem to me to be really big challenges. But what I was told over and over again as I came on Saturdays and Wednesdays and other days in those initial 15 or 17 years was that we are all Buddha.

[07:33]

and we can very much depend on each other for guidance and for support and for some course correction when it's needed and we're open to it. So one of the things that I was thinking about in these last few weeks is that if we are the Buddhas and ancestors of now or the future, then we are the people that others will look to. When we have a significant loss in our lives, when we have significant sorrow, which often comes with fear and shutdown, how do we respond to that? How do we respond to that and what do we do with it? So I think that what became clear to me as I experienced some things over the last month, and all of you did experience some things, whatever they might be, but we had this opportunity to say, What will we do as a Sangha? What will we do as a community to deal with our loss? And so the pain of loss is terrific when we lose something, especially if we didn't have time to plan for it, if we didn't have any time for pre-grieving or preparation for the loss, whether that's a job or a place to live or a person in our lives who's very important.

[08:52]

And of course, there are many ways to deal with loss, and we're going to talk about some of those tonight. But here's one of the issues, is that the loss that some of us experienced, or all of us experienced in one way or the other, was a loss not just by death, but death by suicide. And so when that happens in a family, or a sangha, or a community, or a fellowship, what happens is the pain is surrounded by the questions that we ask ourselves. And some of you can probably relate to some of these questions that people ask each other. What really happened? Why didn't I expect it? Why didn't I intervene? Could I have done more? Could I have done less? Oh my, who else might be feeling what I'm feeling? And how can I step away from all these questions and return to compassion and return to a wisdom and compassion-based response to what's going on? For myself, I was very active in supporting years ago the Death with Dignity Bill that suggested that people have a right when they're very ill to make a decision about how they live and how and when they will die.

[10:04]

And so when it came time in my professional practice as a therapist or a teacher, when it came time for people to make a decision about dying based on spiritual, emotional, heart illness, my first thought was, you know, I think I respect a person's right to make that decision. And then as I tried to say that out loud a few times, I realized I do respect it as a right. But for me... what was happening was that I didn't like it. I didn't like that people would make that decision. And I was particularly troubled that somebody who, in the case of our friend, was in recovery, a tight fellowship of people for 28 years, and lived here for decades. And I thought, well, how can it be that a person feels so isolated and disconnected? And so I had to think about that. And I was asking myself questions and asking myself, did I do enough?

[11:07]

Was I there in the appropriate ways, etc., etc.? And then it came to me after a beautiful morning meditation at Ocean Beach, which I highly recommend. You're all welcome to come with me. I go about three days a week. The sound of the ocean just washes a lot of nonsense out of my head and heart. But I think what came to me was that I didn't need to ask those questions. And in fact... It was none of my business. You know, what happened and so forth. What was my business was to be a member of a community that was now in pain and that was now suffering and that was now in fear and that was now wondering where to look. You know, if somebody who was around for 40 years could have that experience, who else might be having an experience similar to that? And so the question began to turn rather rapidly from looking back to being fully present in this moment, to being fully present for myself and for all of you and friends in the fellowship that Jeffrey and I belong to, and really finding a way to say to people, we have to talk about this and we have to take action.

[12:16]

So there are some reactions that people have when we suffer a loss of this nature. And a lot of people have taken the opportunity of the last few weeks to talk to each other about loss. And one of the ways that we deal with loss is to become immobilized, right? We don't know what to do or what to say. And many people right now are completely immobilized by the loss of life in Palestine and in Israel and in the Ukraine and in the Sudan. and on the streets of San Francisco, for that matter. And many people are just immobilized. It's overwhelming. It's too much pain. It's how do we explain this, and how can it keep happening? On the other hand, one of the ways that people respond is to say, I'm going to get involved in some action. And so some people have responded to that same loss of life in those places by becoming deeply and actively engaged in responding, demanding peace in the Middle East and an end to genocide. And instead of being immobilized, which is a reasonable thing to have happened, some folks have gotten very, very active.

[13:27]

Excuse me. So some folks have gotten very active and engaged. And I want to say to myself and to everyone else that that's okay. That's actually a beautiful thing, as long as it's not just a distraction. So as bodhisattvas or Buddhas, we get to ask the question, why am I doing this? And how is it a benefit to myself and to others in my community and my family? So... Some people have taken it beyond that, and I was just approached by some folks today who are looking at that question of genocide. which people don't seem to be able to really get their, some people don't get their heads around. And what people are doing now is they're working with the UN and the World Health Organization and asking them to do more than simply publish a list, which they do, that lists, are you ready? 30 nations around the world that currently have data-proven evidence of government-sponsored genocide.

[14:30]

So there's lots to do. I think there's a lot to do. And one of the things that we have as a community, as a Sangha, as Buddhists, is that we have this beautiful, beautiful gift of meditation where we get to come and be in stillness and be in quiet and be in the present moment and really put away the past and not worry about the future and just be in a loving community or... alone in your room if that's the way it works. But as Suzuki Roshi said, when we arise from our Zafu or chair, we take the mind of Zazen into the rest of the world. And so Norman Fisher describes meditation, Zazen, as the reality of bliss and ease, bliss and ease. And so what a gift. What a gift if we get up from our cushions, if we get up from our chairs, and as we go into the rest of our dealings, I don't have to go to the UN, I don't have to go to Geneva, to the World Health Organization, although I'd be happy to if someone wants to sponsor the trip.

[15:35]

But I don't have to do those things. I just have to go to the next place I'm going and spread a little peace and spread a little calm. One of the ways that's worked for me over the last year is that I've stopped watching the news so much because there's so much in the news that can be frightening and sad and triggering and about which most of us realistically can't do much. But what I found that I was doing and other people I know were doing was they would listen to the news, hopefully not the whole half hour because that... could have an effect on you. But they would listen to the news as they ran through the room. And then they would go to the coffee shop or to their office or to their place of teaching or work, whatever. And they would share what they knew. And I heard someone the other day at a meeting say, I was seldom correct, but always certain. Seldom correct, but always certain. So one of the things that I'm encouraging folks that I work with as students or even clients is... don't share information if we do not know it to be factually and accurately true.

[16:37]

Because all it does is continue that sort of doom spiral that people are in now about how terrible things are and so forth and so on. Many of us in the past month and before that have decided, yeah, I want to be active too. But closer to home, there was an opportunity to be active. And we could be active by getting involved in feeding the hungry or raising money for the hungry. If we want to honor Jeffrey, that was one of the things he did for many, many decades, was be involved in feeding the hungry. And one of the things you may not know is that one in five American children will go to bed hungry tonight. one in five American children in 13 million homes that are experiencing food insecurity. So we can do any little bit that we can do, you know, helping somebody. The other day I saw a woman in the grocery store who was trying to figure out which things she could afford as she was standing in the line. And I said, if this wouldn't be rude, could I pay for your groceries today?

[17:39]

And she said... She looked around, this being 2024, she looked around for the camera because she assumed this was some sort of reality show. And I said, no, it's just something I want to do. And I can't do that all the time. And people do what they can do in terms of finances and the bravado to speak to somebody you don't know in a grocery store and ask a question. But I think more than a few of us have been mobilized in the last month also to do something about ending death by suicide as a reasonable and viable alternative. And the alternative to that is a connected, safe life. And so even if I respect the person's right and the dignity of making your choice about how long you live and how long you die, I have made a renewed commitment in the last month to be even more active. I do a lot of suicide prevention training and work and suicide interventions.

[18:40]

And I've stepped up that work because I had an opportunity to have a heart opening around, you know, it's okay to say I respect someone's decision to do that. But I think as Buddhists, we have some other things to think about in terms of who does that decision impact. And so that's one of the things I've been really thinking about. And what kind of relationship I want to have with the emotions that go with that. Loss, grief, some folks being struck silent, being immobilized and confused. How do we want to respond to that? And those are the moments when somebody takes a step back and often wants to... take care of themselves and to do that on their own. And so I think there's some opportunities for us to really express our bodhisattva vows by being engaged in small and other ways in that work. So these are serious matters and they bring up a lot of conflicted emotions, but they're not going to simply go away.

[19:43]

We cannot expect or experience a spiritual bypass as some free ticket out of grief and loss. We can come here, and I highly recommend it, of course, to sit zazen in your sangha with as many sanghas as you can. But that alone is not going to do it. And when we have a few minutes for discussion at the end, someone will explain to me probably why that is just enough and that that's okay, and we'd be happy to hear that. But in his wonderful book, Unattended Sorrow, Stephen Levine taught us that... unattended sorrow, the sorrow that we don't address and that we don't work with, grief that we don't actively engage with, degrades us and degrades our families and sanghas and communities. And what he means by degrades is it takes away our ability to say things that we need to say to each other. Practice with the words of what's actually happening inside. We know from the statistics and from work people have done with those who have attempted to die by suicide but did not, that what they say

[20:50]

is that their feeling was that no one listened to them. They were having these feelings of desperation or isolation or whatever it might be, and that they tried. In almost every case, they tried to tell someone, and they didn't feel like anybody heard them or wasn't paying attention to them. And that's a communication piece. There's no one to blame for either side of that, but it's a fact that people say, no one heard me. And so for some of us, we might recall that in our childhoods, we had... we were taught to suppress our feelings and taught to suppress what we said. You know, if your father wanted you to be a football player and you wanted to dance with the Bolshoi, having no talent in either of those two things, you were taught to man up, is what he used to say. And other people's parents wanted them to be engineers and they wanted to be artists or whatever it might be. And we were taught what things we should say and what things we shouldn't say. And when we had losses in our goals, our earner goals, compared with our family's goals, we were taught not to talk about that and not to express those emotions.

[22:01]

And some of you probably heard the expression that, for the guys in the room, the male-identified folks, that men don't cry. And so the subtle message there was that if you were crying... Maybe you weren't a man. But the other message was that don't have feelings. Don't express your feelings. Just move through. And so the gift that we learn here, hopefully in the Sangha, and in living together and practicing together and living together, is that it's vitally important that we make ourselves available to hear. the true words that someone is speaking about their feelings and about their mind states. And that we allow people, if someone wants to cry, please go ahead and cry. If someone wants to sit stoically and say, I'm okay, we let them do that. And there are, I think, three reasons that we try to create an environment for that kind of communication.

[23:02]

One is that somebody might express feelings and mind states that are exactly the same as ours, and that can be very validating. What I'm afraid of, you're afraid of. What I think could happen, or what I experienced in that meeting yesterday, you experienced that, and so it's a little bit of validation. In some cases, it might not be the same, but it might be similar. By listening carefully and by allowing a person to speak and inviting he, she, or they to speak, we get the sense that, okay, that's not exactly what I heard. And so maybe our reaction to the situation is similar, but not the same, which means, what else is possible? The most beautiful question in dialogue, what else is possible? I don't have to have my fixed views. It's possible that I heard something that wasn't actually said, or I heard something that was said, but not with the intention of making that point or hurting my feelings. And the impact is a different story.

[24:05]

But I heard it, and so maybe I can let it go. And maybe I can give the person credit that they were all in this endeavor together to move the process forward. And the third thing is that you might hear an opinion or a feeling that is so diametrically opposed to yours that you can find some other options, that you can find some other options for responding to the challenge, responding to the fear, responding to the situation that you're in. Levine warns us and says that the more we leave a person or persons alone with their grief and pain without recourse to compassion and mutual concern for each other's well-being, the more withdrawn and narcissistic we all become. When you look at research about people who choose to die by suicide, that's that isolation and that withdrawing and that narcissism is a requirement. And we'll talk about that in a second, but that it becomes a requirement.

[25:08]

If we believe in and wish to embody interconnection of all beings, then this practice that we have is rich in opportunities to do that, and rich in opportunities to take care of each other, and rich in opportunities to look backwards to see how we did, but not to stare. To look backwards, but not to turn backwards. To come back, be here, and do the next right thing. So I think a lot of folks, myself included, who maybe over the last month have said, you know, what could I have done differently? Did I do enough? And I would say to us all, take a really deep breath, write that in your journal, and turn the page. Because it's this and every day around this are perfect opportunities for us to continue to move forward, paying attention to those who are still with us and those who might come after us as we take our place as Buddhas and ancestors. And I'm going to tell you the first time that I read that about becoming an ancestor, I had just turned 70.

[26:09]

I was thinking, isn't there some other word we could use for that? But in our Buddhist practice, we know that everything changes, right? We study in practice impermanence. And this may seem obvious, especially to those of us gathered here tonight or listening in on the live stream, but So when we lose things that we think we can't live without or receive some bad news, we immediately begin to lead our lives as though, A, things were under control and the illusion that things are under control, and B, the delusion that we control them. Every time we encounter other people, other places, other situations, other joint tasks that we hope to accomplish, we find that situation that... We have behaviors that don't serve us and that maybe did at one time as we were working our way through other systems, but they don't serve us. And if we don't challenge them and question them and ask other people to help us with that, then we will just find ourselves continuing in situations.

[27:16]

So I think the questions that I like to ask myself when I find myself doing behavior of that kind is, is the work done? You know, there are some behaviors that as a little gay boy growing up in Detroit in the 50s and 60s, I had to have certain behaviors that were protective. And it's the only way I would have survived. You know, I know that to be a fact based on things that happened. But do I still have to... There was a particular group of kids that used to hang out behind these two trees. And when I would walk by or the other kid that was gay in our school, they would jump out and there would be beatings and so forth. And so I still... If I'm not careful, if I'm walking down the street and someone moves from behind a tree, I can still feel it. And it's 65 years later. So that was a useful skill to be that aware at one time. Maybe I could just give the tree a hug and move on. Maybe I don't have to be doing that anymore. So components of grief, loss, and pain.

[28:22]

that don't any longer serve my spiritual self, my heart-mind connection. Those components I can accept as my experiences of the past and the things that I held on to for protection, but now I can let them go. I can let them go. And guess what? I probably can't do it alone, but I can ask friends or teachers or colleagues to help me out with noticing when things are happening. So I think the goal is to find those ones that we're carrying around, that we don't need to carry, and let them go. And then while you're at it, let go of the shame and guilt that I have for carrying that around. So if I'm jumpy or if I do certain things or if certain people cause me certain kinds of reactions, I feel awful about that. I've been practicing now for 30 years as a Buddhist and been in a fellowship of recovery for 22 years. And so I think I shouldn't be feeling that anymore. I should be beyond that. I should be a fountain of love and acceptance and kindness. And so when I'm not, for a moment or a day, I find myself also bathed in shame and guilt.

[29:27]

And what we know for sure is that shame and guilt are not healing processes. Shame and guilt are not healing processes. Acceptance and connection are healing processes. And that's what we want to do. So many people, I think, are looking for how do we get help to do the things we need to do to change. We do our work ourselves, of course. Some of us have therapists, which is a good thing. I am one, so that wasn't a plug. But that can be a good thing. But I think in our Buddhist practice, we're really lucky because some people might come to this practice and think, you know what? When I first came, you're going to sit against the wall and not talk to anybody. I thought, that's good. I can grow from there. I can do that. And so that could be okay. And then I thought, well, this is a really singular, you know, I meditate and I have my practice. And then I found out that, nope, that's not what it was.

[30:30]

And that you all, of course, know the story, but the Buddha's cousin Ananda said to him one day, it seems to me that half the spiritual life is a good friendship. good companionship and good comradeship. And the Buddha said, nope, not so Ananda. Don't say that. And this is the entire spiritual life. And then he went on to say that when a monk has a good friend, a good companion or a good comrade, it is to be expected that they will develop and cultivate the Noble Eightfold Path. So it's not just having a friend. Friends are good, but not just having a friend. But Kalyanamita, a good spiritual friend, is somebody who says, ah, what's going on here? Bell Hooks suggested to us that we have what she called an enlightened witness, that we invite someone who we trust and care about to, would you walk this next part of my life with me a week, a weekend at Tassajara, whatever it might be, and would you be my enlightened witness? And just tell me what you see.

[31:31]

Tell me what you're experiencing in my openness to other people and my way of doing things. And so that's, I think, the real role of Kalyanamita or, thank you, Bell Hooks, enlightened witness. Seems like a terrific idea to me. So how do we move forward and what can we do as we move forward? How do we deal with my grief and your grief and our collective grief? And I think there are some ways that I would just suggest for us that make sense in our spiritual practice. First is have a plan. Have a plan. The reduction of grief, pain, and sorrow require action. All of the research tells us that. My own lived experience tells us that. Probably your lived experience tells you that. And as beautiful as our practice of zazen is... I think it will not be enough. I think we need to have a plan to deal with those emotions that are real and that are strong and that we've all felt.

[32:34]

And they include grief and sorrow and fear, but they also, you know, in this situation and many others include anger. You know, they include anger. How could this happen? And how could someone not think about the impact on the Sangha, the community? And so you have to deal with those. Because what we know in the recovery world is we call those resentments. And if you don't actively deal with them, what happens is somewhere down the road, your Uncle Henry, who you don't really like very much, says, could you please pass the mashed potatoes? And you hurl the bowl down the table. And you don't know why you did it exactly. But it's like something about what he said triggered in you some anger that's left over from something that happened in the spring of 2024. So those resentments, those emotions, those mind states, if we don't actively deal with them, if we don't actively work with our teachers and our kalyanamita and our other people in our lives that make sense to us, what we know for sure is that they will come back to bite you. And so that would be a good thing to do.

[33:38]

The second thing I would say is keep it simple in the beginning. Oftentimes we are a group that we live in love and compassion and wisdom. So we think that we're talking about moving through these emotional states and coming back to community and care for each other. So what would make sense is let's all pick Sunday afternoon at 3 to be done with this. And that's not going to happen for anybody. And so keep it simple. Think of things you can do that are negatively impacting your sleep. your ability to communicate with others, other things that are going on in your life. Think of things that are small. So have a plan that makes sense in that way, and that's another good place for your teacher or enlightened witness to say, you're trying to do too much at one time, you're just going to tucker yourself out. So then I would say the other thing that I would recommend to you is regarding processing these feelings and these emotions and these mind states is throw away your clock and your calendar.

[34:40]

Throw it away. the one that related to this. Because we all have people that will say to us, well, your sister died, so that's six months of grieving. Your spouse died, that's a year of grieving. Where I grew up, it was an Italian neighborhood, and the women in the neighborhood would wear black when someone died, and depending on the relationship, they actually had a chart that probably most of them didn't need, but how long it was for a grandmother, mother, whatever. And we all carry some of that. It's like somebody will say, she still seems sad, or they still seem angry, or he still seems confused. after that traumatic event that he suffered, and he should be over it by now. And I can tell you as a human being, as a spiritual person, as a social justice advocate, the least helpful situation thing that you can say to somebody is you should be over that. Don't let anyone tell you. Take as much time as you need to have that experience. And so for me, my action plan is very simple. And a wise man shared it with me recently.

[35:41]

He requested anonymity. But this is what he said. I was explaining the bodhisattva vows to him. And he said, what's your vow? To live and be lived for the benefit of all beings. And he said, it's very simple. He said, my vow is to be present, to be kind, and to be connected. And I thought, felt like a nice, cool, refreshing spray of water. It's like, yeah, that's a good one. That's a good one that I could, on a daily basis, those of us in recovery do something called a 10th step where we take a look at the day and say, how do we do? And if it's just three things, I can take a look at that and move forward with that. So my connection to this practice came in a sentence from Suzuki Roshi. He said, the true purpose of Zen is to see things as they are, to observe things as they are, and to let everything go as it goes. So I think all of these feelings, they're real and I'm holding them and they're based on all of my previous life experiences. And if I can genuinely and deeply practice, I can come to a time when all those things will be gone.

[36:49]

And so in her book, Pema Chodron tells us that in the face of outrageous loss, what's the primary thing that's required is outrageous courage. Outrageous courage. Thank you. Thank you very much. So I think my invitation to all of us is to do a couple of things. I've discovered a new favorite word this week. I don't know if any of you saw it on social media, but it's been bouncing around. It's called longanimity, L-O-N-G-A-N-I-M-I-T-Y. And it's patient endurance of hardships and injuries for the sake of the good. So they say it's the opposite, different than patience. Patience is, you sort of say, oh, having a bad time, but I'll get through this. Or I didn't get the job I wanted, but I'll get through this. And this longanimity is a concept that says patient endurance. So instead of saying, I lost an hour of sleep last Sunday, you say, ah, I got an extra hour at the end of the day to walk in the sunshine with my friends. Or, you know, other things that happen. So it's beginning to set our mind...

[37:51]

towards the positive rather than the negative, and not to disregard what has actually happened, but just to notice that there are other ways to encounter those truths, other ways to hold those truths, other ways to share those truths, and to invite people to share their truths with you. So, I think... Darlene Cohen said in a training that I was at and some of the others in this room, she said, our job is to reduce our own suffering and then model that behavior for others. That's our primary job in Zen, is to reduce our own suffering and to model that behavior for others. And it seems to me, as we walk forward in our grief and our sorrow, we're always trying to figure out a way to be with people who are also suffering. And so I'll just close with a few lines from a poem by Grace Cowell. It's called Let Me Come In, Friend. Let me come in where you are weeping, friend, and let me take your hand. I who have known a sorrow such as yours can understand. Let me come in.

[38:52]

I would be very still beside you in your grief. I would not bid you cease weeping, friend. Tears bring relief. Let me come in. I would only breathe a prayer and hold your hand, for I have known sorrow such as yours. and I understand. Thank you. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma talks are offered free of charge, and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, please visit sfzc.org and click giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

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