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 morning. My name is Susan, and I'm a priest here at City Center. How many of you are here for the first time? Oh, okay. They're all on this side of the room, because it's a little easier to kind of just stay on this side. So, welcome. Welcome. And welcome back. I see familiar faces. Thank you, David, for inviting me to give the talk today.

[01:01]

Thank you very much. It's wonderful to be asked to speak because then you have to actually think about what you might know or not know, and that's a good reminder. The name of my talk, which won't give you any idea of what I'm going to talk about, is called Where Did the War Go? So right now we've come out of the constrictive nature of winter, the burrowing down, the gestation, the darkness, and we're coming into the light this beautiful, warm day. Are we ready to emerge into the light? In this process of emergence, we are supported by

[02:01]

the gentle rains, the velvet sun, and by the teachings, by the Dharma. So today I want to talk about emerging, about renewal, about beginning again. To begin again is to consider, again, the question, how do I want to live this life? And to take a look at where we are in relationship to that question and to the answer to that question. So when we do that, we often find, or at least I often find, that I can be kind of stuck or discouraged or confused. So at that moment, when the question arises and the environment of that question is fuzzy or hazy, I think it can be helpful to look at what is it that's holding us down or up or away or off?

[03:24]

What are the hurdles to renewal? So in my life, when things seem off-kilter, it's often because I have fallen off of the wagon of my commitments to lead an upright life. And this is often manifested in relationships that are painful or lost or full of resentment or fear. So I'm going to look at that one hurdle to renewal today and talk about how to possibly renew these off-kilter relationships. There are two methods I propose. There are many, but these are the two I'm going to talk about today. One is called confession, repentance, and forgiveness.

[04:27]

That seems funny, huh? And the other is called beginner's mind. So confession, repentance, and forgiveness takes us deeper and deeper into and through the wound. Last week, I realized I had made a mistake in a conversation with a friend. So I asked for a time when we could sit down and talk to try to repair the rip. Repair is an interesting word to use when you're talking about a pair of friends, right? To re-pair. So those words, that practice, confess, repent, forgive, arose for me.

[05:34]

and I was able to negotiate that path. I spoke first, and it's very scary to speak first, to begin with apologizing for one's mistakes. because it's really tempting to revert to a defensive stance, kind of an innocence of intention. I didn't intend to hurt. I didn't intend to be disrespectful. Instead of acknowledging and looking at the other and seeing that the words were felt as disrespect. Taking that first step, confessing mistakes, being vulnerable, not knowing if the apology will be accepted, not knowing if the other person's hurt will come towards you as anger.

[06:48]

In this case, this confession, was a first step in opening my own heart, first to myself, opening my heart to myself. I made a mistake. I am a human being. And then I had the experience that the other person's heart was opening as well. Now, we can't know or count on that as a condition to confession. but we can count on the possibility that confession can completely cleanse our body and mind. My teacher, Tenshin Reb Anderson, wrote a book on the precepts called Being Upright. And in it he says, practicing confession alone or with another reawakens the heart of compassion

[07:59]

and the appreciation of the other's virtues. You know that imbalance that happens when we think we're right and the other person is wrong? When we think we might be wrong, it's like a teeter-totter. It raises up the possibility that the other person has behaved more wholesomely. Maybe, you know, it's not an exact thing, but it feels. When we... sort of bow our heads. When we bow our heads when we bow, and you see our hands go up like this, so I don't do that because I do standing bows, but when you watch other people who can do a full prostration and the head goes to the mat, the hands go up like this. And you know what we're doing? We're lifting Buddha's feet above our heads. That's what we're doing. So putting our heads down, in appreciation, in humility, in confession, we lift up the relationship.

[09:06]

In this book, Being Upright, Tenshin Roshi says also, realization of the full liberating function of formal confession must entail elements of regret and remorse. So it's ironic, really, that in order to be ready for the light to shine on and through us to renew our upright stance, we need to go down into the cave of regret. We don't like to see ourselves or be seen as less than virtuous. But making room for this pain of regret is necessary for us to be reminded of and renew how we want to live our lives. I'm going to confess something.

[10:18]

I didn't know I was going to say this, but I'm not coming to the Zendo in the morning as often as I would like to be. And Every morning that I set my alarm with the intention, I set it at 4.58, which gives me just enough time to brush my teeth, wash my face, put my robes on, get over here. When I don't automatically throw my feet down next to the bed and get up with no thought, when I waver and fall back into the stupor of... comfort of sleep. That does not happen without the twinge of regret. That twinge of regret is there every time I don't do what I actually know is the wholesome thing to do. So, is that wrong?

[11:22]

There's something about the regret that's important. It's important. Actually, I'm going to tell them you're going to take my seat away. So the Tonto talked to me the other day about possibly maybe somebody else could have my seat because it's not always filled. And I don't want that to happen. So that's another feeling. That isn't exactly regret. It's like, they're not taking my seat away. And we're going to see. We're going to see how that works. I'm going to get up every morning and come to Zazhen. So in public, that helps too. It really does. Public confession, we do these ceremonies where we make promises to each other in public. So now I've just said to all of you,

[12:26]

that I'm going to be coming every day next week. And there's a video record. And there's a video record. Okay. Okay. All right. All right. Help me. Help me. Thank you. So let's get back into what I was going to talk about. Regret or remorse. So this is in this book, Being Upright, which I recommend. Reb continues to say, by regret or remorse, I mean that you feel you've made a mistake, you wish that you had not committed the action, and you sincerely intend to refrain from doing it again. He also says, and this is important, remorse is tasting the bitterness of your non-virtue. This does not mean disgust. which is too far. That's rejection, that's loathing.

[13:31]

But we go into the pain and we don't dwell there. We go into and through the realization, the bitterness of our non-virtue. We revisit the scene of the crime, he says, and deepen our own sense of responsibility. So that's a process I recommend you consider. In a situation, let's say, I'm talking about relationships now, where there's a breach, where there's a possibility, and there usually is, that that breach is somewhat based on your flaws, on your lack of uprightness, on your closed heart. So consider that in any ruptured relationship. What's my place of off-kilteredness with my own life?

[14:34]

Because the more we resist that we're human beings with our own neuroses and habits of mind, the less compassion and appreciation we feel for ourselves or others. Not wanting to be someone who makes mistakes takes us out of the human race, folks. We make mistakes all the time. Is it in Zen mind one continuous mistake? Or is it in branching? Anyway, Suzuki Roshi said, practice is one continuous mistake. So confession and repentance and now forgiveness. There's a wonderful new book, maybe not brand new, but newish by David White called Consolations, where he works beautifully, being the wonderful poet he is, with words and ways of opening them up, maybe different ways of relating to them.

[15:57]

So one of the... Small Chapters is about forgiveness. And I'll tell you a couple of the things he says. Forgiveness is a heartache and difficult to achieve because strangely, it not only refuses to eliminate the original wound, but actually draws us closer to its source. So as I said at the beginning, this process of confession, repentance, and forgiveness draws us in to the pain and through it. Not over it, not under it, not around it. And forgive, by the way, does not mean forget. Because sometimes it's helpful to remember the wounding. Sometimes it's wise. David White goes on to say, it is that wounded, branded, unforgetting part of us that eventually makes forgiveness an act of compassion rather than one of simply forgetting.

[17:13]

To forgive is to assume a larger identity than the person who was first hurt. To mature and to bring to fruition an identity that can put its arm not only around the afflicted one, but also around the memories that were seared within us by the original blow and extend our understanding to the one who first delivered it. So we don't avoid the pain. And by touching that pain again, the only way really to stand it is to get bigger. is to get big enough to hold it so that it's not searing us, so that we have a little distance from the flame of the pain, a little space around the edges of the pain. We get bigger, and our heart gets more relaxed, and we're not protecting ourselves, and we're more able to care for the other.

[18:22]

couple of months ago, I took a trip with my brother to Vietnam. And so I'm going to be 70 this summer. My brother is going to be 69. He was drafted into the army during the Vietnam War. And a few years ago, he told me that he really wanted to go back to Vietnam. And something in me said, I want to go with him. I want to be there with him. I think partly because as a woman at that time during the war, I always knew that there were a group of people and... All of these people at that time were men who had this experience of either being drafted or could be drafted, that whole, and then going or not going, an entire experience that I had no... I didn't know.

[19:47]

I didn't know what that was, and I knew I didn't know. What would it be like to be in war? What would it be like to have your life at risk every moment? How would that change one? What would that do? So partly it was my own journey, but more I was there to witness in a way that I didn't witness the first time. And when I asked my brother, well, why do you want to go? Why do you want to go back? And he said... He said, I want to make sure the people are okay. So we went back. And we were there for three weeks and visited war sites and graveyards with 200,000 graves.

[20:58]

prisons and museums. And my brother was very, very engaged with the tour guides who were all in their maybe 30s and had no experience of the war and actually were very neutral, if anything. And I listened to him engage with them and explore, explore, explore causes and conditions. causes and conditions. And I could see that over these 50 years, my brother had done a lot of work. And at one point, he said this several times in the trip, but I heard him say, I have forgiven our government for going to war. And his understanding came from causes and conditions. who the people were that were making that decisions and what they knew. And this was the way they knew.

[22:01]

They knew colonization. They knew this way. And they thought this way was right. And somehow my brother, by reading and just studying and wishing to come to some kind of forgiveness, had forgiven our government for going to war, for his experience. And so he was sharing that with the various guides we had in different parts of Vietnam. So that was really a beautiful thing to hear and watch. And then the kind of pivotal moment of the trip came when I have some friends who have gone back to Vietnam quite a bit since the 90s, since they reopened the embassy there. And they've specialized in... meeting with Vietnamese artists and then collecting them and sort of supporting the Vietnamese art world.

[23:03]

And all of the people they work with were somehow involved with the war because they're older now. And most of them were in the Viet Cong. So one day we were brought to the home of a colonel and his wife. And both of them are artists. And the colonel had been a colonel in the Viet Cong. And we were given this beautiful lunch, really, really encouraged to keep eating and eating and eating, this beautiful food. And during the lunch, the colonel didn't speak English, but his wife did, so she was doing some translating. And it turned out that the colonel and my brother, were in the same part of Vietnam at the same time. They were literally trying to kill each other.

[24:08]

So, you know, I kept looking at my brother's eyes and at the colonel, and I could see sadness, I think. But no one was talking about that. We were just being together and eating. And after lunch, we went into the living room and we put on this DVD that some people had made about how the government made mistakes with Ho Chi Minh. And it was kind of like we could have avoided the war kind of documentary we were watching. And I turned over to my right and the colonel was sitting there and my brother was on the couch over there. And the colonel pulled out his sketch pad, opened it up and was looking at my brother. you know, sketching him, capturing him on paper. And the thought occurred to me at that moment, where is the war?

[25:08]

Where is the war? If it were going to be anywhere, it would be in this room right now or in these people right now. And there was no war. Years ago, I don't know if it's still there, there was a little drawing at Green Gulch that's a picture, I think it's a Paul Reps picture maybe, where it was a cup of tea, a bowl of tea, and it says, drinking a bowl of tea, I stopped the war. And that was always very irritating to me. It's like, well, that's too passive. That's not stopping the war. But now I actually know that wars can vanish. not be forgotten, but drop away. So that's my example of confession, repentance, and forgiveness.

[26:23]

So I said I'd share another method by which we can renew. And these two methods, by the way, are completely related, and they're both equally difficult. So one isn't easier than the other. But this other method is called beginner's mind. simply letting go of fixed ideas of self and other. And in this situation, the advantage of this method is it's easier to see that everything is renewable. All relationships are renewable. Because what's in the way? fixed ideas of self and other. You've heard this quote many, many times.

[27:35]

Maybe not people who are brand new, but maybe you've heard in any way from Suzuki Roshi. In the beginner's mind, there are many possibilities. In the expert mind, there are few. And another part of that intro to Zen mind, beginner's mind, he says... If your mind is empty, you are always ready for anything. It is open to everything. The mind, without anything else in it, folks, is the mind of compassion. It's the ground. Compassion is actually the ground when nothing is in the way, when we aren't messing with it. Suzuki Roshi didn't say that, I did. When our mind is compassionate, it's boundless. So the most difficult thing is to always keep your beginner's mind. This is in the introduction to the book, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. So, another story.

[28:40]

This one is an ancient story. It might be Chinese, it might be Indian, it might be Vietnamese. I've seen it written in many different traditions. but this is a story of two monks who meet a woman. A senior monk and a junior monk were traveling together. And at one point, they came to a river with a very strong current. And as they were preparing to cross the river, they saw a very young and beautiful woman who was also trying to cross the river. The young woman asked if they could help. Could they go together to the other side? The monks looked at each other because, well, they had taken vows to not touch a woman. Then, without a word, the senior monk picked the woman up, picked her up, and carried her across the river, placing her gently on the other side, and then continued walking.

[29:51]

And, of course, the... The junior monk, can you imagine how confused he was? Like, whoa, what was that? And then scurrying after the senior monk. So he was, the junior monk was fairly destabilized by this experience. And pretty soon after he got up through being speechless and maybe an hour or so had gone by and he was trying to compose himself, he just couldn't not say anything any longer. And so he blurted out, As monks, we're not permitted to touch a woman, and how could you then carry that woman on your shoulders? And the older monk looked at him and said, Brother, I set her down on the other side of the river. Why are you still carrying her? Why are we still carrying her? causes and condition of that war we feel in ourselves when our relationships are off kilter.

[30:57]

When we're carrying around our past hurts, holding on to the resentments, we're carrying our own bundle of pain. We could put it down on the other side of the river. We could just put it down. Can you imagine taking that route with a kind of long, festering grievance with a friend who betrayed you or misled you or gossiped about you or lied? What would it be like to just let go? So as I was on my way to sleep the other night, I... I had a thought arising me about a concern I have with one of my own Dharma sisters. And as I started to kind of follow the well-worn tracks of this concern, that kind of, you know, when you have a cavity and your tongue always goes to that place, that's kind of like what this is.

[32:11]

It's like I always default to this set of grievances. this memory of a set of grievances. So I said to myself, what if I actually practiced what I've heard spoken about and what I've spoken about myself? What if I just stayed still? Sat down? and let go. So I did. And the disturbance in my mind disappeared. And I was able to go to sleep. Stay in the present. Don't want it to be different than what it is. If something is arising, if a grievance is arising, if some pain, if a well, if a familiar,

[33:15]

story is coming. Let it be there. Don't kill it. Don't abuse it. Don't try to get rid of it. Stay with it. Don't move. Watch it end. And see with the suggestion of not grabbing it again if it's possible to not reinstate that set of complaints. There's energy there when those complaints get reified, they get reinstated. There's energy there. If you don't use that energy in that way, what happens? So here's the last little story and then I have a lovely saying from Proust to end with. So I did not have a close relationship with my mother.

[34:21]

And when I turned 40, I went to a workshop where we were instructed to bring a picture of our mother at the same age that we were, and then, you know, talk to her, find out a little bit more about what her life was like at that time. And I was able to, for some reason, have more empathy at that moment for what my mother's life had been like at that time. And out of that workshop, I made a decision, which was every Mother's Day, and Mother's Day is coming up, so you could consider this as a method of working on past grievances. Every Mother's Day, I would go to the store and I would find the Mother's Day card that said, all the wonderful things about my mother that I actually never believed. What a good cook you are, how kind you were, thank you for doing this.

[35:27]

Sentimental, but like specific things that I actually had up until that point held as true that she didn't give me. So I did this every year. So she died when she was 71. So from when I was 40, so she was 60. So for 11 years, no, she wasn't 60. Anyway, I did it for a long time. I'm not going to do the math. And by the time we got to the end of her life, there was nothing in the way of me just being there with her. And in fact, I spent the last couple of weeks of her life with her completely focusing on her and not trying to convert her to my point of view, not trying to make her into a different mother. And whether the things that I thought were true about what she didn't give me were true, I don't know.

[36:28]

I don't know. But I know that holding on to them was hurting both of us. So in that case... just dropping, letting that drop away, letting that drop away. I replaced it with kind of another energy, but sometimes you can just let it drop away, and it can be kind of this neutral space. It doesn't have to turn into something wonderful and flowery. In this case, that worked for the relationship. But just letting it drop away and falling into neutrality, which, as I said before, is actually where compassion lives. where compassion is completely available, where compassion doesn't have a preference for people you like. So here's Proust.

[37:33]

In his own way, beginner's mind. He says... Then from those profound slumbers, we awake in a dawn, not knowing who we are, being nobody, newly born, ready for anything, the brain emptied of that past which was life until then. And perhaps it is more wonderful still when our landing at the waking point is abrupt and the thoughts of our sleep hidden by a cloak of oblivion, have no time to return to us gradually before sleep ceases. Then, from the black storm through which we seem to have passed, but we do not even say we, we emerge prostrate, without a thought, a we that is void of content.

[38:38]

I will read it one more time for you and Keith and everybody else who likes Proust. Okay? Then from those profound slumbers, we awake in a dawn, not knowing who we are, being nobody, newly born, ready for anything. The brain emptied of that past, which was life until then. And perhaps it is more wonderful still when our landing at the waking point is abrupt and the thoughts of our sleep, hidden by a cloak of oblivion, have no time to return to us gradually before sleep ceases. Then, from the black storm, through which we seem to have passed, but we do not even say we, we emerge prostrate, without a thought, a we that is void of content.

[40:03]

And in that void, the war is over. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[40:38]

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