This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfzz.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good evening, everybody. Is the sound on? Can you hear me? Can everybody hear? Well, I'm happy to be here.

[01:15]

I like Tassajara. I enjoy it. And tonight I'm lucky. I get a chance to talk to you a little bit. I guess the Tante was not here, right? He's still away. He always reminds me whenever I talk here that One must be brief. He always underscores this point with me. He's very careful. He says evenings at Tazahara are short. The hard-working early rising Zen students need their rest. So one should make sure to use few words. So I'm going to try to do that tonight. I'm here this week with my old friends Gary Friedman and Jack Himmelstein.

[02:18]

Not that they're old, but they're old friends. And many other friends from the Center for Understanding in Conflict, which is a community dedicated to bringing peace to conflict. All kinds of conflict, any kind of conflict. through deep understanding. This is not easy work. I think any normal person would try as hard as they could to avoid conflict if they could in any way. Avoid it, they would avoid it. Who wouldn't do that? Change the subject. Think about something else. find a workaround of some kind. And this is normal. This is what we usually do. And often we get away with it up to a point until finally it becomes impossible to avoid the battles.

[03:26]

But the people in this community are different in the community around the Center for Understanding and Conflict. For these people, Dealing with conflict every day is their work. That's what they do. It's their work and their personal commitment and maybe also their path. So I've been working with Jack and Gary and the community for some time now. I don't know, maybe more than 10 years. And we've been trying to see if there's a way somehow that the practice of zazen and simple, honest presence and the way of living and understanding that comes from that presence could be helpful somehow in this work. That's the hope. And mostly it's been good for me because I've learned a lot that I otherwise would not have known about.

[04:32]

And we've done lots of trainings over the years, short ones, long ones, And this is the first time we've been to Tassajara with this work. Did you ever think, how come there's conflict anyway? Why is it that there's always conflict? Where does conflict come from? Maybe you could think that conflict is a mistake, a failure, something that happens from time to time, but some kind of breakdown, a breakdown in communications. Mostly, I think, we imagine that conflict is like that. But I think that conflict is normal and entirely unavoidable. Maybe as soon as there's two peoples, there's conflict.

[05:36]

Maybe you don't even need two. Maybe one would be enough. for there to be conflict. Maybe it's just a body, there's a body there. Something rather than nothing is there. Anything at all. And there's already conflict. So I've been really interested in this work and this question of conflict and a few years ago inspired by this work, I wrote a serial poem, a long serial poem called Conflict. And here's one of the poems in the series. The, or the, T-H-E, the is one. One implies more on

[06:41]

The letters, humps, in our language, so terribly convincing. Married, they could be so alone. Who can help us with our human problems? I think there's something like 63 or 65 poems in that series. So the thing that we're working with this week is power. So maybe that's the source of conflict. Power. We all want power. Or at least, if we don't want power, we don't want somebody else to have power over us. So when others seem to be exercising power over us, especially when it's unfair, we resist.

[07:53]

Our power rises up and then there's conflict. And one has to admit, don't we all have to admit, that one way or another, all people, even good, peaceful people, Tassahara Zen students. All people are interested in power. We want it for noble reasons. We want it for selfish reasons. We don't want it. We would like to avoid it. But we always want to have at least enough power so people can't overpower us. Right? Right? But why? Why would we want power that way? It seems like such a lot of trouble, doesn't it? Especially when you consider all the things that happen. In any way, why should any of us care that someone has power over us, even if the power is thwarting or dictating our lives?

[09:06]

Why would we care about that? Well, these seem like pretty stupid questions. Of course we care about that. Of course we want a certain amount of power, enough power to be able to get what we want and get what we need. Of course we want freedom and autonomy. Who doesn't? Of course we all want the power to be who we are, to make our own choices and decisions Obviously, everyone wants this kind of basic power, at least. But I'm asking, like, but even that, why? Why do we want those things? And why are we so passionate about them? Why does it so often feel like, and sometimes it actually is,

[10:10]

a life and death matter and why do we look out at the world we're living in which sometimes feels like one long unending battle between contending forces in the world at large but also in our communities and our families how come This is everywhere. So who seeks power over whom? Who's winning this unending battle? And who's losing? And what are we trying to win? And what are we trying to avoid losing? It's possible. that power and all our feelings about power are based on upside-down, erroneous assumptions.

[11:21]

It's possible we just haven't yet looked deeply enough. Actually, the problem of power is central to what the Buddha taught. After his awakening, the Buddha's first teaching was the Four Noble Truths. The first truth, all conditioned existence has the nature of suffering. Another way we could put this is, as soon as there's one thing, there's already conflict. There's already power. And so there's power abuse and pain. because we mistake we deeply and tragically mistake the way things are that's why that happens we project things to be otherwise than they are and we believe completely in these projections we affirm them we protect them we defend them but they are projections so it can't work and in the end

[12:43]

We always lose all our power. The classical way of putting this is the second truth of the Four Noble Truths. The cause of suffering is ignorance. Ignorance of who and what we are. And the third truth is that this ignorance can be reversed and we can have some real relief finally. And the fourth, there is a path that will bring us this relief. There is a practice. So those four truths are pretty much what the Buddha taught in the beginning, in the middle and at the end. Later Buddhist teachings, like the Heart Sutra, speak more deeply and more directly about the cause of sufferings.

[13:49]

All dharmas are empty, the Heart Sutra teaches. Things are not fixed. Everything is fluid, fleeting, evanescent, boundless, connected. All defensible positions are just that. Positions. Positions shift and dissolve. They aren't anything in themselves and there's nothing behind them. You and me are positions not entities. There can't be any me or my or your position. We think so, but it's an illusion. Positions simply shift and no one owns them.

[15:00]

I open my mouth and I say, I, me, But then you open your mouth and you also say, I, me. I, me is a position. It isn't anywhere. It isn't anything. No one owns my house. No one owns my body. No one owns the earth upon which all life depends. Things are designations and not fixed realities. They are connected, they're not separate. And this is what the Heart Sutra teaches us so profoundly in its full one-page text. This is the Heart Sutra's explanation of ignorance, the cause of suffering. and I think we all actually know this already we all understand that we have nothing so there's nothing to defend nothing to protect and nothing to give up we all know it but we forgot

[16:30]

We forgot because from the beginning of our lives, the beginning of our having language, of our being socialized, we've been deeply, deeply conditioned to defend and protect ourselves when in the end we can't defend and protect anything because we're going to lose everything anyway, no matter what, a lot sooner than we think. And the purpose of the Buddhist path is to help us reverse this age-old conditioning embedded deep, deep, deep within the human heart help us to remember who and what we are remind us that we don't have to be fooled and compelled by all the usual old stories no matter how convincing they may seem Because behind them, there's a big, big, big space.

[17:42]

We all are always letting go. We all will let go. And right now we're letting go. Each and every moment. Because one moment gives way to another moment. and we have to let go of this moment for the next moment to appear and we can safely let go of the great burden of our smallness and we can take joy in anyone's joy and we can feel sorrow for anyone's sorrow We really don't have to be so focused on me and you and our unending battle with one another. The ultimate power is beyond power.

[18:55]

It's not my power or your power or the government's power it's the awesome power of life itself truth itself it's the power we all have to embrace what is no matter what it is no matter who it looks like is winning or losing to embrace what's happening with full heart and full confidence. Then it can look like we're winning. It can look like we're losing. It really doesn't matter. It's okay. Because we know there is no winning and losing. There's only what happens.

[20:00]

This teaching is really the truth. And it's the truth that we can all find for ourselves on our cushions. We can find it in our breath. We can find it in our body. We can find it in silence. We can find it in time itself. It's the truth the Buddha discovered sitting under the Bodhi tree. So it's the Buddha's truth, not an ordinary person's truth. But it won't do for us to say, well, we are ordinary people, we're not Buddhas, so this truth doesn't really matter that much to us. It's not a truth for us. But we can't say that.

[21:09]

It won't do. That won't do. Because we ourselves are also Buddhas. We're ordinary people, but also we're Buddhas. And so we have to take up the challenge to be Buddhas, even though maybe we'll never get there. And isn't this the most wonderful of all human dreams? that there could be peace that we could understand and love one another that we actually don't have to keep on and on and on acting on our defensiveness and our aggressions so we cannot excuse ourselves We all know we have to do better than this.

[22:13]

And that's why the Buddha's fourth noble truth is the path. The truth of the path. There is a path. And all of us as human beings have the responsibility to take up the path of peace beyond conflict through deep appreciation and understanding of conflict. when we get up from our chairs and cushions and we go forth from our monasteries each one of us is going to have to assume our position we all have a position to assume we all have to engage with others and with the entire disaster that is our human world there's no escape No doubt, sometimes we're going to feel defensive or aggressive when our old conditioning is activated.

[23:24]

And so our path is going to be to learn how to cope with those feelings honestly and to understand them. We can't deny them when they're there. We'll all have to practice the craft of awareness we'll all have to learn how to make space inside for reflection and especially for forgiveness you have to work on forgiveness every single day every day of your life forgiving yourself forgiving others so you do have to do all those things but you don't have to fall back on your conditioning. And we don't have to let our rough feelings justify unkindness and aggression and embattlement.

[24:31]

Understanding who we are. Understanding who others are. Understanding each one of us, our complete uniqueness. and also our sameness with everyone else. We can face life head-on with all the conflicts that come. And we can actually find peace. And we can make peace. Anyway, this is our big hope. and it's our commitment. And I know that everyone in this room shares this commitment. Thank you.

[25:38]

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, visit sfcc.org and click Giving.

[25:58]

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