This podcast is offered by San Francisco Zen Center on the web at sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good evening, everyone. Good to see you and lovely to be here. Thank you to the Tonto, Tim Wicks for the invitation, Abbott David, Thank you for your leadership and guidance. Thank you as well to my teacher, Rick Sloan, along with many, many teachers, too many to name. And thank you all for being here. Is there anybody here for the first time or who hasn't been here in a while? Excellent. A few. Welcome. Good to see you. I would encourage everyone, not just newcomers, please feel free to ask questions.

[01:03]

I'm going to try to leave some time for questions at the end, but feel free to stop anyone who thinks they might know something as we mill about afterwards. I think sometimes in our attempt to not be pushy, sometimes we can be a little distant. So please feel free to help us bridge that gap if it is there. So my name is Dan Gudgel. I'm one of the resident priests here at San Francisco Zen Center. I've been a resident here for a little more than four years now. And in that time, I have spent at least a little bit of time at all three of our temples here, Green Gulch and at Tassajara. And these days, I actually live and work here in the city. living here at City Center, and working in our administrative area, which supports and helps all of San Francisco Zen Center.

[02:04]

I also am very lucky to sit with a Branching Streams Sangha, Mountain Source Sangha, one of the many small, independent sanghas in this lineage. And I also have the pleasure of... working a great deal with the online sangha here. Hello to everyone online, whether you're watching this live or in recorded form sometime later. I really count myself very lucky to get to engage in practice with so many people in so many different modes and ways of being. So thank you, everyone. It really is a great... to learn and be taught to sit with and talk to so many people. So in the course of a Dharma discussion a few months ago, a Sangha friend used the phrase, love your enemies.

[03:13]

And I would say generally, I'm pretty much all about I do think it's really sort of at the core of the Buddhist view and motivational energy. I think love is a great model and a great way to express something essential about this practice. However, a few months ago, when this friend in the Dharma brought up this phrase, love your enemies, this response popped immediately into my mind, you have no enemies. So I've been mulling over and sitting with and sort of examining this idea ever since then. Do I even really think that? What does it mean?

[04:15]

Is it just something that sounds nice? And what I have come around to is you have no enemies. Basically, what I'm saying with this talk is that if you think of someone as an enemy, if you set up this enemy relationship, you limit your responses to the person who you have labeled as an enemy. You close your heart to them. in a certain way. And it appears to me that doing that perpetuates suffering for everyone. It's a shared, collective, and unnecessary additional suffering. Shinryu Suzuki, the beloved founder of these temples, said,

[05:17]

In the beginner's mind, there are many possibilities, but in the expert's mind, there are few. And I think what I'm trying to point out is how we have, in this current modern American culture, we seem to have become real experts at identifying enemies. So that really is the heart of this talk. pretty much going to spend the rest of these pages coming back to this same point from different angles. And I will keep saying, you have no enemies. So first, I do think I need to address this sort of plain, factual meaning here. There is a dictionary definition of enemy. And certainly there are people who would point to that definition and point to people and say, these people meet this definition for me.

[06:25]

And to those linguistic literalists, I would say that you're right on the facts of it. There is a word in the English language, enemy. And it has a fairly well-established definition. And we use it quite a lot. But what I want to talk about is why I think calling someone or something your enemy is actually more harmful than helpful. I think believing that word is limiting. And enemy is a particularly powerful word. I'm intentionally avoiding the sort of Dictionary definition, because I think the feeling and the intent of the word as we use it today is really what I am most interested in. The word is sort of secondary to what is the state of your heart when you bring in this concept of enemies.

[07:40]

So I think of a... I think of an enemy as someone who is not only opposed to what I'm doing, but opposed to me continuing to live my life in the way that I have been living it. There is a strong military connotation to the word for me, and a sort of implied license to respond with physical violence. And of course... we seem to use the word much more widely these days than that. I think if we got down to it, probably wouldn't even really fully agree on some elements of that definition. And there's a piece in here that is about the limits of language, and I'm not going to... I'm not going to go into great detail on this because I feel like I bring up this topic every time I talk, but essentially I understand language as we use it to be a series of placeholders and metaphors that we stack together as sort of convenient stand-ins for the actual reality of things.

[09:06]

And this... human language that we use is essential for how we function as human beings in this world. And I also see and think that anytime we believe that a limited word or concept really fully represents or takes the place of something or someone else, we're going to get into trouble. I once asked Fu Schrader, former abbot of the Green Gulch Farm, if maybe language wasn't just the whole problem. And she said, it's not the whole problem, but it doesn't really help very much. So I do want to be clear that I'm not advocating for banning words or policing language. Again, I think the word is not really the important part.

[10:12]

It's the feeling in our hearts as we use these concepts. And I also see that our human freedom includes the freedom to look critically at our actions and their outcomes and to decide what we want to do going forward. So for the purposes of this talk, I'm just inviting you all to look with me at this idea of enemy and see what comes out of it for you. Your concept of enemy will still be waiting for you at the door. You're welcome to pick it back up at the end if you would like. But I personally think that we have no enemies. So to the people who might dismiss what I'm saying as naive pacifism in this modern world, I also want to be clear that I really do think all beings should be protected from violence and from harm.

[11:24]

And I do believe in the right to defend oneself. I can even imagine occasional cause for... protective or preventative violence in service of the greater good. And undeniably there are now, and there have been in history, people and groups who have done and believed terrible things. And terrible things continue to happen now. And I am not saying that some mental or linguistic trick will disarm militaries or... change the minds of nations or even of individuals. But when we confront people as enemies, we don't leave much room for connecting with their humanity. I do see that we need to be objectively aware of the conditions of the world to avoid danger.

[12:29]

to minimize the opportunities for causing harm. But are we really serious about peace with someone if we're calling them an enemy? Or are we really just concerned with winning? We have all caused harm, and we have all been harmed, and we all want a better future. you have no enemies. So people involved in conflicts understandably may form some pretty firm and fixed ideas about their enemies. There is perhaps long history and certainly deep emotion

[13:33]

And once this feeling and idea of having enemies, of other human beings being our enemies, once we've let that idea into our hearts, then the people who are near our enemies are probably also our enemies. And anyone who might be aiding or supporting our enemies become our enemies as well. Sometimes it's enough just to not be actively working against my enemy for me to start to consider someone an enemy. And it's this kind of thinking that I think eventually makes indiscriminate violence possible. And there is enormous danger and violence and hatred and anger. and grief in this world.

[14:35]

I see it in conflicts in the Middle East. I see it in the racial and colonial history of the United States. There are generations of death and harm built up already. So saying, I have no enemies, does not protect from bullets or bombs, and is not an adequate response to violence. murder, and other forms of harm. But how can we really contemplate living beside someone we call an enemy? Could we invite an enemy into our home? Could we hear or accept any of the views or requests of an enemy? It seems that our default attitude is that if someone is our enemy, they must be wrong, they must be wicked, and they must not be appeased.

[15:41]

And saying, this is my enemy, does not leave any room to acknowledge that those humans also love their children and want them to thrive. We seem to think that enemies don't deserve our care or respect or that it's not worthwhile to get to know them or find out what they think or why they believe what they do. And when everyone is on edge against their enemies, watching every action for some hint of offense or danger, how I respond may affect generations to come. every moment turns into a flashpoint. Using this word enemy appears to me as a shorthand, a box that we stuff more complicated things into so that we can make easier calculations.

[16:58]

In some ways it's like the pixels on a screen that represent the real depth of the world. And we seem to accept much lower resolution in how we abstract groups of human beings than we ever would in our TV screens. We can reduce millions of individuals to a single point, enemy or friend. Yet would any of us accept a TV screen that only had one pixel, black or white, on or off? I think we need to let the world be complicated and messy, to love people we don't agree with, to create safe space around danger without compounding that danger. We aggregate and we generalize and we summarize the lives of other groups, sometimes millions or billions of people together.

[18:04]

And then we set ourselves up in opposition to them But each one of those people are as complicated as we are. There's a cost in human misery for that generalizing. There are children over there on the enemy's side, whichever side that may be for you. And those children's lives are still as wide open and full of possibility as yours was when you were a child. as the lives of the children around you are now. And how would your life have been different if, when you were a child, your parents, your grandparents, had been able to make peace with their enemies? There will never be a better moment to make peace than right now.

[19:06]

you have no enemies. And yet it seems that we've become very free with our use of the word enemy. In the United States at the moment, it seems that people who disagree politically are enemies. Someone who irritates us at work might be an enemy. Rival sports teams are enemies. Diseases are the enemy. Inflation is the enemy. Friends can become frenemies. Time, money, poverty, big oil, big government, plastic, the weather. How many things have we heard called the enemy? How many things have we ourselves called the enemy? Using this idea, in this way affects our brains what we expect and what we think is possible i know i am much more likely to default to certain ways of thinking about people or objects or concepts if i have labeled it labeled it as an enemy so if someone with a different political view is an enemy

[20:35]

then their continued belief in that view I can take as an attack. I may dismiss them as not even holding their beliefs in good faith, but just standing their ground despite me. My enemies are not worth listening to. Their children, their associates, their neighbors can all be painted with this same brush, since an enemy's friend is assumed to be an enemy as well. My enemies are aiming for absolute victory over me and destruction of me as their enemy. And so they cannot be trusted. Compromise and even discussion with an enemy are suspect and should be avoided. And so when this concept is expanded as far as it has been,

[21:38]

in our modern discussion when we splash this idea of enemy around so liberally suddenly maybe it's okay to beat up the supporter of another sports team after all they are the enemy maybe it's okay to beat them up in the parking lot in front of their kids to send a message to the next generation If a co-worker is an enemy, it's probably my duty to tell everyone how terrible my enemy is so that they can protect themselves against this danger. It doesn't even matter if my side of the story is all of the truth, because it's okay to bend the truth in the service of protecting everyone else from an enemy. And all of these responses perpetuate the harm rather than interrupting it.

[22:42]

If you think of someone as an enemy, you limit your responses and you close your heart to them. But really you have no enemies. In other words, you should not want to destroy anyone Again, you have no enemies. So now I'll sort of spin this for the scholars in the room. No eyes, no ears, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind, no enemies.

[23:57]

I don't think the Heart Sutra was intended to be an exhaustive list. I think anything that I can think, any concept that comes into my mind, I can put no before it and it fits very comfortably in that list in the Heart Sutra. This is the emptiness teaching. what we experience and think of as discrete objects and events in the world is actually an indistinguishable, all-at-once mass of emergent, present-moment conditions. You have no enemies because when you look closely for them, the boundaries between you, your enemy, and the relationship between the two of you dissolve. But remember as well that Nagarjuna pulled us back from the nihilism of total non-existence.

[25:16]

This Zen Buddhism is part of the middle way in between the extremes of existence and non-existence. So our stories of reality are not reality. And our experiences are also not, not reality. It doesn't really exist, but that doesn't mean we can pretend like it's not happening. The world may not be as it seems, but still the suffering is very real to us living beings, and the harm can and should be cared for. this experience of suffering is still happening inside this system that we're all also part of. So we are part of that suffering. So there is a tension between these two truths, the ultimate and the conventional reality.

[26:24]

And I found it very helpful for loosening my clinging to the idea of enemies. to try to hold these two truths simultaneously. And one of the best ways, I think, to study this mystery is in Zazen. Seated meditation, engaging the whole body and mind, can put us in contact with things as it is. The ultimate truth is not going to fit inside my mind, but the body and mind together can sort of feel it. So talk to a teacher, sit zazen, get comfortable with emptiness. Continue meditating, and one by one you will meet all of the enemies that you don't have.

[27:31]

You have no enemies. So I find these varied ways of looking at this topic helpful. But my fundamental test for Dharma is always, how does this help me live my life in a more balanced, beneficial, and harmless way. Shakyamuni Buddha seems to have endorsed this view as well, saying that people should try out the teachings for themselves and only keep what is beneficial and tends to move them towards awakening. So when I'm pondering a Dharma topic, or engaging with a Dharma teaching, I try to see how does this apply to my everyday activity?

[28:40]

So I thought I would tell a story of an experience I had a few years ago. I lived at the Tassajara Monastery for about three years, and worked in the kitchen most of the time that I was there. And at one point, I was having a really... difficult time with another member of the kitchen crew. We didn't seem to be able to have any neutral interactions. It was just tense and grumpy from the moment we met each other in the kitchen. I was in a managerial role, and so I was tasked with giving direction. And when I did, it just never... never seemed to go well with this one person. We tried to talk it out and that did not go well. We tried to talk out why talking it out had not gone well and that did not go well.

[29:44]

We got some help talking about it. That did not go particularly well. And I noticed that I was getting really tense as soon as that person walked into the room or as soon as I saw them anywhere in Tassajara. And a little first opening happened when I noticed my own response that I was so ready for conflict to come up as soon as I saw this person. And when I noticed that was happening for me, I considered maybe something similar was happening for this other person. Maybe, just maybe, not everything that they were doing was intended to make me angry or offend me. Opening up that little bit of space made it possible for me to see a number of other ways that we were actually quite similar.

[30:54]

At the heart of it, I think both of us were just trying to defend ourselves from perceived threats. And eventually, the relationship did begin to improve and finally healed. And now I'm honestly delighted when I run into that person. And I get the impression they are also happy to see me. We even have been able to talk about how difficult it was and what a pleasure it is that it is not as difficult. Other possibilities emerged. when we were no longer immediately meeting each other as enemies. And within the context of Tassajara Valley as well, I think the two of us healing our relationship was also enormously beneficial for the community as a whole. Time and energy that had been needed to take care of this difficult relationship could be used elsewhere.

[31:57]

And other people were no longer getting... that dose of anger and tension that was spilling out from the two of us. I think inevitably, when there's that sort of conflict, it affects everyone who's in contact with it. It's difficult not to take sides in a way. And so for me, there's a really compounded joy in not only no longer having the dread of running into that person, but to have turned it around into actually being happy to see them and glad to see them thriving. So what would it be like if you had no enemies? There may be billions of people who you do not agree with,

[33:00]

and do not understand. Many, many people even who are perpetuating harm and need to stop or need to be stopped. You still have to deal with those people somehow to speak up, to tell the truth, to shine a light on the harm that's being done. even to decide when there might be a moment for some action. And what if even those people, all of them, like us, have arrived at this moment due to complicated, improbable causes and conditions that stretch all the way back long before our ancestors? What if we all just have to figure it out from this moment forward?

[34:01]

Can you feel what that might be like? You have no enemies. You have no enemies. You have no enemies. 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 sfcc.org and click giving. May we all fully enjoy the Dharma.

[35:00]

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