Good morning, everyone. And as Matt, our acting Eno, just said, I too would like to welcome you to today's talk. My name is Nancy Petrin, and I am currently the head of practice here at City Center. My pronouns are she, her. I'm going to switch here to gallery view. So I am looking at all of you and not at me. And this morning, I would like to welcome everyone. I would like to welcome, as I scroll through the screen, to take a look around and see who's here. I'd like to welcome all of you, all minds, all bodies, all colors, all abilities, everyone.

[01:15]

It's wonderful to be here with you in this way. All these squares with names, many, many of those. So welcome this morning. I am white-bodied. I am white-identified. Because of that, I have lived a life of a certain level of privilege, and everything I say today is a part of that, is conditioned by that. I hope my intention is... to not harm actually in what I share of the Dharma. And I guess by saying that, I want to invite any feedback that you might have from my talk today. And we are not engaging in question and answer, unfortunately, at the end of this talk, because as Matt mentioned, we're participating, many of us,

[02:30]

many of you in a one-day sitting today. And in the spirit of going deep, turning inward, and really holding silence for ourselves, for each other, as is tradition when we're here in the temple, we won't have a Q&A today. So I just put my email in The chat window, if you have any feedback that you're not able to bring up at question and answer, you're more than welcome. You're invited. I invite you to engage with me in that way. And it may take a couple of days for me to get back to you. So yes, either knowingly or not knowingly, You have joined a one-day sitting.

[03:31]

The sitting for today is closed for participation, but if you're interested in joining a one-day sitting, the next one is October 3rd, and they happen monthly. We come together in this way of turning inward, of taking up the practice in a more, maybe I'll say, wholehearted way. once a month in this way. So the SAT began this morning at 5.50 and we'll go through the evening and this Dharma talk is a part of the sitting. So one day sittings allow us the opportunity to deepen our daily practice, to sit down, right in the midst of our life, which is what we do each time we sit down on the cushion, the chair, wherever we might sit for meditation, to slow down.

[04:42]

In the one day sitting, we're actually supported by the schedule to really slow down and to allow our life to speak to us in a different way to speak to the entirety of what life is for each of us moment after moment and to interrupt our normal as pablo neruda calls it single-mindedness to keep our lives moving This is a line of a poem that I've heard many times that jumped out at me in a different way recently. Our single-mindedness to keep our lives moving. The poem is called Keeping Silent, and I won't read the whole thing, but part of it goes like this.

[05:50]

If we were not so single-minded, about keeping our lives moving and for once could do nothing. Perhaps a huge silence might interrupt this sadness of never understanding ourselves and of threatening ourselves with death. Perhaps the earth can teach us as when everything seems dead and later proves to be alive. What I want should not be confused with total inactivity. So today, many of us are taking up this day of zazen practice, meditation practice, and looking at, turning towards, and questioning this single-minded impulse.

[06:54]

to keep our lives moving. We, I think none of us when I say we, are living in an exceptional time. For myself, I find that it's easy to slip into overwhelm, dismay, fear, Perhaps you feel these things in your body, as I call them up. Maybe even moments of paralysis. The heat, this heat of divisive rhetoric, divisive speech, and thinly veiled threats of violence. It is turning up. I think a lot of us sense that this is not just about one day, this is not just about the upcoming elections.

[08:02]

That for true change, for transformative change, real change to happen, we are going to be in this for a while. At the same time holding This vision, I think a vision that each of us shares differently, but a vision for a more beautiful world. And I feel as though we're going to be in this for the long haul. So during these coming months, and what I'm going to call our journey together. Each of us may read things or see things, hear things, feel and learn things that we are not going to like.

[09:13]

And we may experience anger, defensiveness, We may feel attacked. Or perhaps we might feel sweepingly lumped together with people who are not like us. So Zen practice. Zen practice. I have heard and I believe ask us to look at what is here, what is here in each moment. Practice is not separate from life. Practice is the entirety, the wholeness of life.

[10:16]

It's not something special that happens in the monastery, or at the temple, or during a sesheen, or a one-day sitting. Rather, moment after moment, what is here? What is just this? So in this commitment, in this willingness to turn toward over and over to turn toward what is right here. I believe this is what our teacher Shohaku Okamura Roshi says, is when karma becomes our vow. A constant reorienting towards, alignment, opening to,

[11:23]

Calling up curiosity. Being willing to transform. Our bodies have a form of knowledge that is different from our cognitive brains, says Resma Menachem. in his book, My Grandmother's Hands. Our bodies have a form of knowledge that is different from our cognitive brains. This knowledge is typically experienced as a felt sense of expansion or constriction, ease or pain, energy, numbness often this knowledge is stored in our bodies as wordless stories about what is safe and what is dangerous the body is where we hope fear and react where we release and constrict and where we reflexively rest and

[12:56]

fight, flee, or freeze. If we want to wake up to and change the status quo of our habituated reflexive patterns, we must begin with bodies. I feel as though he is speaking to all of us who are committed to living an awake life, who have found something or who sense something in this zazen practice. Our experience of our body is exactly the place where we study, where we have the opportunity to explore, to experience this single-minded impulse to keep our lives moving.

[14:06]

The Zazen instruction that I received at Green Gulch Farm Zen Center 25 years ago is the same Zazen that I practice now. beginning with an awareness of the body, settling in the body in an upright, alert posture, noting when a thought arises, and with kindness and softening, returning to the body, returning to the felt experience. dropping the story and tuning in to see what is there. The expansion or constriction, ease or pain, energy and numbness to stay with just this, just this experience.

[15:24]

I think of the words of Reverend Angel Kyoto Williams, who recently taught here at City Center. Her teachings are very easy to access, and I would encourage anyone who's curious to look her up. She was encouraging, she was actually tasking us, everyone in her workshop, with Abbas Fu Schrader, to do our labor. And for me, zazen is labor. Yes, there is an ease and expansiveness at moments, but to set aside a whole day, a gorgeous, beautiful day, to devote to sitting practice, In a way, this is labor. So I don't think that this is easy.

[16:33]

And I do think that we need encouragement from each other. Encouragement to really see all that is there. So during today's one day sitting, I'm refreshing my vow to look at what Zazen, as Paul Haller often says, requests of me. Perhaps you too would like to take the opportunity of this morning, of today, to do this, whether you're sitting formally or not. But to take up this moment to... see this gift, I would call it, of practicing Zazen in this lifetime, during these months, during this time, and taking it up in a fresh way.

[17:39]

I'd like to frame Zazen now as an opportunity so As I go through this next part of this Dharma talk, perhaps you just want to really tune into, if you haven't already, the felt experience of the words and see if there's something that resonates for you or if there's something that you respond to. So zazen as an opportunity, an opportunity to interrupt, to interrupt. patterns, to interrupt habits, to interrupt inherited beliefs, the opportunity to feel into, to feel into the silence before the thought, often called

[18:51]

the unborn nature of awareness, the opportunity to cultivate deep listening under the thought, under the story, questioning my belief of myself, questioning my belief of others, questioning, separation. The opportunity to arouse curiosity, curiosity of just this, or perhaps a slight questioning with curiosity. What is this? The opportunity to call up kindness and warmth.

[19:54]

To allow judging mind to relax. Perhaps noticing fear. The opportunity to cultivate patience. Patience staying with and staying with. just this. The opportunity of returning over and over. Returning to this bodhisattva vow to awaken with all beings. The opportunity to take something difficult, perhaps some feedback you've received. And bring this into your Zazen. Holding this, turning this, allowing it to be a part as well.

[21:01]

Holding in vast openness, or what some call not knowing. The opportunity to unearth, maybe even uproot deeply embedded patterns by just being with and shining the light of awareness there. This is radical. The unrooting, uprooting, unearthing. the opportunity to call up warmth and loving kindness and expand, knowing that this too is there in every moment. And letting the small story of our life, letting it go, loosening our grip.

[22:11]

Perhaps in this letting go, we notice that we're able to actually let something else in. So perhaps your zazen is very different than this, very different than what I've just described. I'm not asking you to agree or disagree. I'm just suggesting that perhaps zazen is an opportunity. a way of meeting each moment of life and seeing what my words might awaken in you. What is your vow and what are you working with these days? I know that often we come to meditation, many of us come to meditation hoping

[23:16]

we will become a new and improved version of ourselves. And I think pretty quickly we realize that all of these parts that we struggle with in ourselves, that this is where we're actually pointed right back to. So, you know, I think that this is over and over again, you know, These layers and layers and layers of what is revealed to us about ourselves. The very places that we're hoping to escape from. We realize actually that in Zazen that all of this is welcome. And this may not be such great news. I'm noticing lately my limited view of myself really creates a fragility, a guardedness.

[24:31]

It doesn't really support true curiosity. I... was struck again by a teaching of Thich Nhat Hanh's, which many of you may be familiar with. Thich Nhat Hanh is now 93 years old, and he is a Vietnamese Zen master, Zen teacher. And he was... asylum for 40 years and after having a stroke returned to Vietnam actually returned to his home country where he had become a monk I think at age 16 but for many many years he lived in plum village in France and would receive many letters from refugees

[25:36]

from people living in horrible, horrible situations. And he said it was so difficult to receive these letters and to read them, but he felt that he really was committed to turning towards this, to really being with these people who are suffering so much. And he said... This is back in 1993. He wrote this poem and the poem is called, Call Me. Call me by my true name.

[26:44]

You may have thought that my Zoom froze for a moment, but it didn't. Call me by my true name. Don't say that I will depart tomorrow. Even today, I am still arriving. Look deeply. Every second I am arriving to be a bud on a spring branch, to be a tiny bird with still fragile wings, learning to sing in my new nest, to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower, to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone. I still arrive in order to laugh and to cry, to fear, and hope. The rhythm of my heart is the birth and death of all that is alive.

[27:52]

I am a mayfly metamorphosizing on the surface of the river, and I am the bird that swoops down to swallow the mayfly. I am a frog swimming happily in the clear water the pond, and I am the grass snake that silently feeds itself on the frog. I am the child in Rwanda, all skin and bones, my legs as thin as bamboo sticks, and I am the arms merchant selling deadly weapons to Uganda. I am the 12-year-old girl refugee on a small boat. who throws herself into the ocean after being raped by a sea pirate. I am also the pirate, my heart not yet capable of seeing and loving.

[28:54]

I am a member of the government with plenty of power in my hands, and I am the man who has to pay his debt of blood to my people dying slowly in a forced labor camp. My joy is like spring, so warm it makes flowers bloom all over the earth. My pain is like a river of tears, so vast it fills the four oceans. Please call me by my true names so I can hear all my cries. and laughter at once so I can see that my joy and pain are one. Please call me by my true names so I can wake up and the door of my heart could be left open, the door of compassion.

[30:00]

So Thich Nhat Hanh wrote this poem after receiving a letter about the 12-year-old girl who had thrown herself in the ocean after being raped by a sea pirate. And he points out something so beautiful that if we immediately want to punish and kill that sea pirate, that we aren't understanding. that part of ourselves. We are not understanding the causes and conditions of that person's life. So until we really understand the farthest reaches of these causes and conditions of our own causes and conditions, we won't truly be able to open

[31:07]

that door of compassion and leave it open. The rhythm of my heart is the birth and death of all that is alive. So I'm recently really appreciating the truth of my limited view and this limited view of who I am, the story I prefer, it becomes very evident to me when I feel a certain defensiveness arise, a guardedness arise. And that happens when this story, my story of myself is challenged in some way.

[32:10]

This story of me being a good person or, but I'm trying so hard, you know. And this fragility, it doesn't support the resilience that I so long for. So many of us are, I've heard in the air, you know, kind of keeps crossing my radar, this term feedback. And there was a training that we did not that long ago here at Zen Center that continues for many of us to engage in what we learned in that training of feedback.

[33:21]

And it was part of a right use of power training. So, you know, the invitation to invite feedback. There's a certain kind of feedback that we're engaging with in Zazen. And this is in feedback that we're inviting, that we are consciously inviting from each other is the feedback that I'm referring to in this training. And the realization that we cannot see our fullness, we cannot see ourselves alone, without each other.

[34:23]

We simply aren't going to awaken to our fullness on our own. We awaken together. So, To see the patterns of my single-minded life, I'm inviting feedback. I know many people are. And if you're interested in this, I'll give you a little acronym because acronyms are always very helpful. You can tuck them in your pocket and pull them out when you need them. The acronym is COIN, and this is around giving feedback. So the C of COIN is connect. The O is observation. The I is impact.

[35:29]

And the N, I doubt this as I see it, I think this is true. are next steps, but I think there's something else there. So the importance of connecting before we give feedback. I just got a message in the chat from my dear friend, Victoria Austin, saying that yes, it is next steps. So thank you, Vicki. Thank you for the feedback. So the C, connection. You know, how am I connected to you, authentically, truly? What is my connection as I consider giving you this feedback? What is it that I truly appreciate about you, that I truly appreciate about our connection? So starting, grounding in that.

[36:35]

And then the observation. I would actually say even before the C, if you are going to be giving someone feedback, to actually ask their permission. Would you like some feedback? May I give you some feedback? Are you open to some feedback? And maybe as I say this, you think, I have been receiving feedback my entire life. No thank you. I don't want any more feedback. is a wonderful boundary. Perhaps you just want to start out by inviting feedback from specific people, you know, people who give you really nice feedback. But look at who is it that you're inviting in to give you feedback, you know? Are they gonna hold up this story with you, you know? Are they gonna help you see yourself more fully? So the O, observation, connection. C, O, observation.

[37:39]

What happened? What are the facts of what happened? And can I simply state the fact? I heard you say this. I saw you do this. When you did this. So the fact of what happened. And then the next part, keeping it very personal. and letting that person know how that action impacted you. And then the next steps. So the impact. When I heard you say this, it was very difficult for me. This is how I felt. When you did this, it made me so angry, you know? the impact. And then the next steps.

[38:40]

What would you think about? Or again, it's in a connecting kind of way. This is what I would suggest as next steps. You know, so this offering of feedback actually is an investment in a relationship. Perhaps Something comes up for you and you think it would be really good to give that person feedback. And you think, I actually am not willing to make that kind of investment in that relationship. So again, that's a clear boundary. You know, I often in koan stories, when teachers start to teach koan stories, I find myself closing down. And yet I want to appreciate koans.

[39:44]

I want to study koans. I'm not quite there yet. There are very specific koans that I'm interested in, and I think, is that enough? Probably not. But in the koans, it is an exchange. It is an exchange between teacher and student, often, or between two Dharma friends. And in a way, this is feedback, right? This is being so open to another's feedback that you are deeply transformed. So I also have heard over the years this encouragement in Zen to completely be ourselves. Completely. be ourselves. And I do feel that this is work of a lifetime. I do feel as though this is what we are doing in Zazen, a turning towards our completeness, a willingness to be with our completeness.

[40:49]

So now I think more than ever, it's so important to completely be ourselves and to speak to be ourselves and to speak up and then to see what comes back. You know, to be willing to be brave enough to speak up, to speak from a place that perhaps you feel is ignorant or you don't know enough or you don't know exactly the right thing to do. So again, can we completely be ourselves and with this curiosity, of what is gonna come back to us as feedback. Perhaps you'll ask for feedback and you won't get any. I think that's really, that's a lot of feedback right there. So then to be able to take that up and look at that.

[41:53]

And then there's the receiving of feedback. How is it when someone comes to you and says, may I give you a little feedback? What happens in your body right then? It's so informative. It's so informative. And then what happens as you're hearing this feedback? I just got some yesterday in the form of an email. And I was like, oh, oh, oh. Oh, I got to see how I took up that feedback, how I received immediately my first experience of receiving that feedback. And then staying with it. Then putting it down. Then going back to it. It was very different the second time I read it, actually. Seeing my defensiveness.

[42:58]

But, but, but. you know, immediately wanting to defend and then allowing myself to see what was under that, you know, where was the fear? What was I guarding? And I would say with really, you know, with feedback, it stays alive for so long. If you've ever received feedback and then, you know, and then you hear some truth in it And then maybe a couple of years later, it's like, oh, you hear even more truth. It stays alive. It can stay alive in this way. So noticing in the body what it is to receive feedback and what it is to call in curiosity to engage it. You know, again, everything that I expressed as an opportunity

[44:01]

of zazen is an opportunity in feedback, the interruption of patterns, inherited beliefs, guardedness, to drop into deep listening. What was under that story of feedback? What is my body feeling? Being kind, to ourselves, bringing in a warmth, compassion, a patience of staying with the experience, not abandoning that feeling, not blaming and shaming, but staying with. Someone said to me the other day, well, they gave you that feedback, but are they looking at what's coming up for them? And I said, well, Of course, that thought did cross my mind and that's not my work.

[45:05]

You know, that's not my work. That is their work. So I cannot see myself without you. I cannot awaken in this lifetime with all beings, which is my vow. I cannot do that without you. So I guess my hope is to deepen my relationships, to see myself more fully, to celebrate the aliveness there. So as we end this time together, again I am going to miss

[46:31]

the opportunity of not engaging in question and answer. And I see the resistance there for me, you know. And then I question, is that resistance my resistance to turning back towards the wall, to putting everything down and just following the schedule today? And as we close our computers, perhaps we don't rush off to the next thing. Maybe we allow ourselves to slow down for just a moment and drop into the experience of just this, this moment, to forget everything I said in the Dharma talk. It was so many words.

[47:31]

And allow ourselves to turn inward to the silence. The silence without the thought. The unborn nature of awareness. So thank you very much. Thank you for being here this morning. May you have a wonderful day. And if you want to sit down on your cushion or in your chair or in the midst of your activity during the day and just drop into what is here in this moment, you will know that all of us who are sitting this one day sitting will be asking ourselves perhaps the same thing. So we're in it together. We're in it for the long haul.

[48:34]

I believe the chant is in the chat and we can close by chanting together. May our intention equally extend to every being and place with a true merit of Buddha's way beings are numberless I vow to save them delusions are inexhaustible I vow to end them Dharma gates are boundless I vow to enter them Buddha's way is unsurpassable.

[49:42]

I vow to become it. Thank you very much for coming. Again, because we're having the one day sitting today, we'll say goodbye in a... a quieter manner. I just want to say for the participants participating in the one day sitting, the next period of Zazen will begin at 1125 and we are switching Zoom rooms so you can find the other Zoom room that we'll be using for the rest of the day in the schedule that was sent out. And thank you.

[50:34]

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