to remember and accept. I vow to taste the truth of the Tathagata's words. Good morning. Good morning. It's really good to see you all here this morning. And welcome. Welcome. So glad you're here. Is there anyone here for the first time? Welcome, special welcome to all of you. So I'd like to offer my gratitude to the BCC Sangha, and the leadership of the Sangha, and all my teachers, especially Sojin Roshi, but I've had many teachers, and many of you are also my teachers in ways you may recognize or not.

[01:19]

So thank you. And my intention, as always, but it feels particularly so today, is just to encourage you in your practice. And thank you to Greg for inspiring me to encourage you in your practice. And always. So it's been a bit of a week. You know, I said that and I said it kind of lightly because how can you even begin to talk about it, but I can feel it immediately. in my life, behind my eyes, in my belly. I'm always glad to see all of you but at this time it feels particularly precious to be here together in this space, sharing space together.

[02:21]

And it feels like In one sense, everything's changed over the past week. Or maybe things are changing or maybe they're not. It's hard to tell what will stick and what won't. But I think what we can say is that there's a lot of uncertainty. maybe even some worry about instability but definitely uncertainty. So that's what I want to talk about this week is practicing with uncertainty. And how we can see uncertainty, how we can hold uncertainty and impermanence and change as a field of practice. As a field of practice. that we can hold and holds us and we can hold together.

[03:30]

So I was really encouraged during the morning service. The chanting was so strong and beautiful. The word encourage comes from the French, cour, literally from the heart. So I wanted to start with the Heart Sutra this morning, because I was particularly moved by how vigorous the chanting was during the Heart Sutra this morning. No eyes, no ears, no nose, no tongues. Because the Heart Sutra for Sodo Zen is kind of our school song. Again, Greg's joke. The Soto School, yeah. The temples and monasteries everywhere.

[04:30]

It's pretty much everywhere chanted like every day. So what is it about like eradicating everything apparently that is so important? So here we are vigorously affirming that there is no fixed inherent, ultimate existence to anything that we might try to grab onto. So we could talk about emptiness and that's often how it's translated. I really like Thich Nhat Hanh's translation of interbeing or interdependence. It's saying the same thing, it's just depending on how you look at it. There's no thing there, whatever description you want to have of the present moment or what's happening or of the various furniture of the universe.

[05:32]

Is this a lectern? A piece of wood? A table? What was it before? After? So this fluid nature of all things and all concepts can be really unsettling once you actually start feeling it for yourself. But it also means that everything is workable. Everything is workable. Once Suzuki Roshi was asked by a student who said something like, Buddhism is really hard for me to understand. Can you just explain it simply and in a few words? And he said, everything changes. So it's a mark of all existence.

[06:35]

And the three marks are traditionally impermanence, no fixed self, and suffering. But on the flip side of that, depending on how we relate with it, It's not that the stuff happening has to change. It will change, but it doesn't have to change in specific ways that we think would be better for all beings. But it's how we relate to it. How are we in relationship? And this is the end of suffering, that specific thing, how we relate to it. What's called the second arrow, the first one, is the one that hits you, and the second one is the one that you stick in yourself by thinking it should be otherwise. So that's the one we can really work with, that's what practice offers us. So the Heart Sutra kind of comes to this crescendo, with nothing to attain, like no eyes, no ears, no nose, on and on and on.

[07:44]

With nothing to attain, a bodhisattva relies on Prajnaparamita and the mind is no hindrance. Without hindrance there is no fear. Far beyond all inverted views one realizes nirvana. One finds freedom from suffering. So this Prajnaparamita is the perfection of wisdom, the wisdom of emptiness. Not just our everyday seeing that this lectern was once sunshine and earth and a tiny seed and then eventually it was a tree and then it was some lumber and then it was made into this beautiful sand here. And eventually it may become something else. Certainly well.

[08:44]

So not just on that level but on a deeper level of seeing to realize how that touches us. And it says, therefore proclaim the Prajnaparamita because to really experience this is to find liberation. And actually from that place of liberation. The Buddha did not stay in just enjoying his awakening. He chose to come back into the world to teach, to share how to live together, how to be together. He knew it wasn't an easy thing that he had done to realize that and he worried no one could understand it. But he was sure that some people could So he went out into the world and he just spent the rest of his life, 45 years, traveling from place to place, sharing what had allowed him to find the freedom that he sought in the midst of anything, everything, and to transform the world around him.

[10:04]

Thank you, Shakyamu Buddha. Because this practice he proclaimed from the very beginning is available to anyone. And so many people woke up through his teachings in his own lifetime. So whether we have an inkling, or a faith, or a little taste now and then, or the full measure, it's always happening all the time. These two things are always together. The suffering and the freedom. So how can we hold both of those together in a way that sustains us, in a way that nourishes us, so we don't fall into whatever various states of mind each of us is particularly subject to in those hard moments. So, what I want to talk about is how Sojanawus used to say, how?

[11:10]

How do you practice? How do you do it? How do you manifest it? So how do we relate with impermanence and uncertainty in such a way that we can support all life and along the way realize some taste of our freedom from suffering by doing this? So, I think I'm not maybe alone in this, but I was not my best self this past week. Really struggling a lot. Reading a lot of news and various things and trying to understand and sort things out and settle that way. But it left me quite distracted.

[12:11]

and unsettled in my body, unsettled in my mind. And I knew I was going to give this talk, so that was initially a bit of a challenge. But as always, giving a talk is deeply encouraging and supportive for me because it pulls me out of myself and it prompts me to engage with what's most alive for me, what I'm practicing with, and what I think might be supportive to other people. And for me, that brings out a lot of my best, because I'm less caught in my own stuff. It still took a while, and it also took setting aside some time to just just let what I hadn't been letting come up be there.

[13:16]

And it was intense. And I realized how much my own karma, my own conditioning, my own life was shaping the particular way that I experienced this. And it also helped me realize that all of that is also the ground from which I have whatever I have to share with others because it's what I know so deeply. So our work with our own suffering and the world's suffering is really the ground of awakening not just for ourselves but for others. Hong Xie says, the field of boundless emptiness is what exists from the very beginning.

[14:34]

You must purify, cure, grind down or brush away all the tendencies you have fabricated into apparent habits. Then you can reside in the clear circle of greatness. And I remember when I first read this it was such a revelation to me because here it was the connection between practice and awakening. Between karma and emptiness. Nice little sandwich right there. The field of boundless emptiness. I often think of like the universe before it was even the universe before anything. It's just boundless emptiness. There's no differentiation. There's no stuff. And it is what exists from the very beginning. Another way to say it is we are all literally stardust.

[15:39]

We're more complicated than most current stars, but there's nothing. It's just still rolling on, still transforming, still evolving. And then the practice piece, purify, cure, grind down, brush away, all the tendencies, all our little movements this way or that, that we have fabricated, that we've solidified into parent habits, into our karma, into action, into action. So when we meet it in this way, then we can reside in the clear circle of brightness. Then we can know things as they are. The Buddha said, he talked about what's now called the five remembrances. He said that everyone, women and men,

[16:46]

lay people and ordained sangha should all reflect on these regularly. The fifth one is, my actions are my only true belongings. They are the ground upon which I stand. Our actions are our karma. So because of interdependence, because of the web of connection between all of us, between all of our actions. Our being and our karma, our actions, are completely interrogan with everyone else's and with the whole world. So that can feel sticky, like, well, I can't do anything then, I'm hindered, but it also means that the movement of anyone or anything in a positive and beneficial direction also radiates. So we are also little points of light.

[17:51]

Each one of us that touches other people has a wide range in capacity, farther than we will ever, ever know. Over the years of staying put for so long at Tassajara Monastery, people will come by each summer and periodically you would hear a small, tiny thing that you had done that really changed someone's life. Or you might hear that someone came down because their friend told you about you. Which, you know, is just so mysterious to me. And often people would say, you did this or that. And I'm like, I absolutely do not remember that. I'm really so glad that was helpful to you. Did I say that? I don't know. But it's not so much about what we say, really.

[18:57]

It's about how we feel to other people, the presence that we have with other people. And that's what they remember. And I think moments of kindness that another person may not even know that they were doing that it landed for you can be little touchstones in our life. So here's some practices I have found helpful and continue to find helpful. For the Bodhisattva ceremony and in many temples and monasteries the first thing in the morning is all my ancient tangled karma. from beginningless greed, hate and delusion born through body, speech and mind I now fully avow and I practiced with that for a long time just all my ancient twisted karma I now fully avow and what does that even mean and for me it means to sit or stand upright with all my stuff you know

[20:16]

the whole of me, not just the parts that I want people to see that I think are acceptable, but all of me. Can I be upright with that? I think that's why the practice of confession is so powerful because it's not so, you know, it's like, can we see it? First of all, can we see ourselves? Then can we stand to have other people see us? So just to be real. is deeply freeing. Just to be able to hang out with this and it's a wonderful effect that makes us so much more generous with other people. Because we've learned to have patience with ourselves and kindness with ourselves. Tolerance. Perseverance. And just getting a sense for, yeah, change is hard.

[21:18]

You don't just wake up one morning and do it. But when we look back over time, we see how much has changed. So that leads me to the second one, which is really notice what you're paying attention to. and choose where you give your attention. Because, well, there's a lot fighting for our attention right now. Very skillfully so. But more than that, what we give our attention to grows. It gets stronger. And you see it in all kinds of little ways. Just something that you noticed something, all of a sudden it's everywhere. And our minds, as they evolve for survival, pay a lot of attention to what's dangerous, what's threatening, what could be a problem.

[22:33]

Just inherently, they're going to go there to try to keep you safe. things that nourish us and sustain us we can take those for granted. So gratitude practice, appreciation practice is just really powerful and it's really important. It really encouraged me to do that more when I found out that they've done a bunch of studies actually on gratitude practice. And it's really powerful in working with depression because it's like our habits of mind. Those are habits of body, our habits of mind, habits of speech. They're all acts of body, speech, and mind. So we can actually train our minds to pay attention to what's good and hang out with people who tend to do that.

[23:43]

or talk about that. Choose your movies and your books well. Feeling good, nurturing well-being, not so much the potato chip version, but the deeper version. is kind of a radical revolutionary act now. Just to have well-being and to share whatever well-being you have with other people. You know, to share joy. Greg and I taught a class last fall on the Brahma Vaharas, the divine abodes of love, compassion, shared joy and equanimity.

[24:46]

And they're kind of sequential. Which makes sense because when we can evoke love and the variance of compassion in the face of suffering and shared joy when there's joy and to share in another's joy, we have to the ground for equanimity. So keeping as much ground beneath your seat and feet as you can is really... You know, when I get down to my stuff and I move through it, it's like, oh yeah, this is familiar, I remember this, and now I remember what's next. which is some nourishment, some nourishment for body, mind, and spirit. So along with that, nurture your relationships, the ones that particularly matter to you.

[26:02]

That might be some people that you are not regularly in contact with, but that are very dear to you. It's really nice to reach out. I know a lot of people did that at the start of the pandemic. Now things are busier, but think about what's most important to you. What really matters. What at the end of a day or a week or a year. Be really glad that you did. That you made the space for that. who you made space for, how you made space for. What are the most important things? Breathing, stopping once in a while, just pausing. That can be a habit too.

[27:03]

I notice that I just don't like being on devices much. It just doesn't interact with my body and my eyes and my mind so well, although I need to use them, of course. But when I step outside and feel the air and look at the sky and the trees and start to move my body, it's a whole other world. It's like, oh, right. Right. So I started really trying to interrupt that train of whatever it is, tightness, so that I can get going in. It doesn't have to be long, but just to interrupt it. Once I've interrupted it's like, okay, now I can see what I was missing in this thing I was trying so hard to work on. And I can come at it a little fresher.

[28:07]

So these mind and body refreshments. I had this kind of crazy thought that if you have a fitness tracker, you could track your mental and emotional nourishment through little alerts. I guess they have some that remind you to stand up periodically. You stand up once an hour. You could leave yourself little notes around the house. You could leave them for someone else. I wanted to share a quote from Sarah Kenzior. They said this at the women's this fall. She's an expert on authoritarianism and totalitarian states and is such a beautiful, whole human being and an amazing writer.

[29:21]

She was asked about hope. She wanted to talk about inspiration. She said, inspiration is everywhere. I'm grateful for acts of kindness by people who refuse to capitulate to cruelty. I'm glad there are still people who spurn conformism and value creativity, who create thoughtful art and work to protect nature and civic life. They aren't famous, but they're all around you. And I love that this was what she chose to focus on in terms of how to deal with the current situation. Here's someone who's an expert in all of this. What she wanted to talk about was kindness, creativity, being there for each other, relationships, and to see it not writ large, not heroic, but that it's all around you all the time.

[30:32]

Related with that is treating everyone and everything, including yourself, with care and respect. It's such a profound thing to do and we have so many practices within Berkeley Zen Center and Zen generally of bowing and meals offering. But there may be creative ways that you could come up with to show respect and kindness to other people. who's a capital defense attorney in Louisiana, home of Angola Prison, where she goes regularly for her work, has a quote on her refrigerator that says, Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief.

[31:47]

Do justly now. Love mercy now. Walk humbly now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it. And I think this work is not one thing, but it's the work that each of us knows in our heart, somewhere deep, whether we can see it clearly or not, that we have to do in this life. Our kindness, love, waking up, whatever it is, creativity. Suzuki Roshi said, you just sit down, and then when you take a step, that step is the way, and then you take another step.

[32:53]

The way is in the walking, not in the goal. You have to find yourself at each step. And Sara Kenziura again said, we're heading into dark times. This was in 2017, by the way. She saw this coming. It's disturbing. Anyway, we're heading into dark times, and you need to be your own light. Do not accept brutality and cruelty as normal, even if it is sanctioned. Protect the vulnerable and encourage the afraid. If you are brave, stand up for others. If you cannot be brave, and it is often hard to be brave, be kind. But most of all, never lose sight of who you are and what you value. So I'd like to end by just reading May Lee Scott's Metta prayer that we chant one morning a week.

[34:08]

Metta is love or love and kindness. This is also called a peace prayer. And it's very similar to the Metta Sutta, which is the love and kindness. Sutra or a meditation on living beings. And it says, May I be well, loving and peaceful. May all beings be well, loving and peaceful. May I be at ease in my body, feeling the ground beneath my seat and feet, letting my back be long and straight, enjoying breath as it rises and falls and rises. May I know and be intimate with body-mind whatever its feeling or mood, calm or agitated, tired or energetic, irritated or friendly.

[35:20]

Breathing in and out, in and out, aware moment by moment of the risings and passings. May I be attentive and gentle toward my own discomfort and suffering. May I be attentive and grateful for my own joy and well-being. May I move toward others freely and with openness. May I receive others with sympathy and understanding. May I move toward the suffering of others with peaceful and attentive confidence. May I recall the bodhisattva of compassion, her one thousand hands, her instant readiness for action, each hand with an eye in it, the instinctive knowing what to do.

[36:30]

May I continually cultivate the ground of peace for myself and others and persist, mindful and dedicated to this work, independent of results. May I know that my peace and the world's peace are not separate. That our peace in the world is a result of our work for justice. May all beings be well, happy, and peaceful. Do we have a little time for questions? Or comments? Thank you very much for that very encouraging talk. The quote from the refrigerator, don't be overwhelmed with the world's grief.

[37:34]

That's Bryan Stevenson, Equal Justice Initiative, EJI.org. Check it out. Yes, I totally... I'm just saying this to plug that. Great, because it turns out he did not actually write that. It is often, you can find it online, it is often referenced as being from the Talmud, but it appears to be a conglomerate of different passages from Micah, and it appears in a much more recent book that's a commentary. The internet. But anyway, it's old. Talmud, the world's grief, yeah. And now all those. Anyone else? Thank you for the talk.

[38:38]

Would you please each say your name before you begin speaking? My name is Deb. Nice to meet you here. I have I have found your talk to bring up in me I think more crisis than I realized I was holding. Where the hard things that I've created that are apparent habits to sustain myself or that's the excuse might mean like leaning into apple cake right leaning into another hot bath leaning into my beautiful wooded neighborhood and feeling grateful for frankly my privilege and or the joys or the peace the safety relative safety that come with privilege and

[39:46]

there's never been a time that feels more urgent for good works. And I can see the importance of practicing long enough to be able to move through the world with an awareness of the ground beneath my seat and feet and aware of my breath rising and falling so I can be really present so that my hands' eyes can see, can have an instinctual mind what to do. But for every two or three hours I spend birding and feeling a little joy, a little bit of joy for a moment, that I feel very aware of what feels like, it's just crystallized for me, anticipatory survivor's guilt. And those three hours, I was not present for someone else.

[40:56]

So I know I need my oxygen mask, but I'm really struggling with how much of me time right now away from the news or ignoring it is okay. So I'm struggling with the idea of practice and taking time out, even though I know there's some basic amount that I need to do in order to be present. Thanks for bridging. anywhere you seek it. Thank you. Well, first I would say a couple of things. One is that I'm going to mangle this quote from Suzuki Roshi and he said, you know, I'll put it in these terms, you know, saving the world is so important that the first thing you should do is sit down. You know, it's like be grounded. something I didn't read. So, I don't know if you're on the listserv.

[41:59]

Yes, okay, so on the listserv, Karen has a board president, thank you Karen, leading us. She sent out an email with various updates, and one of it was about the elders council, and she said, their most emphatic message they have received is, go slow, do not hurry. Do not make decisions in reaction to feelings of uncertainty. So when you know what the right thing is to do, do it. I was at Tassajara on 9-11 in 2001, which was very surreal because we gathered in work circle and there was a work circle announcement and they didn't know much at that time. and we were in shock, and some people were in immediate tears because they had family there and friends.

[43:03]

And then there was no request for that, but we all went back to work, pretty much, except for one or two people and things they really needed to take care of. It was like, well, what are we gonna do? which is why I really focused on just daily life practices that are sustaining. Because from here, you know, I don't know what to do from this seat. I don't know what particularly, I don't know what you should do or what should be done, but I think many of us are alert to what are the opportunities? What can I contribute? And I haven't gone through the Soberanas fire, which was two and a half months at Tassajara, which just like, usually fires kind of come and go relatively quickly, just going on for two and a half months. It's like, you gotta pace yourself. You know, pandemic, you gotta pace yourself.

[44:07]

This isn't, you know. So we don't make a budget by saying, this is how much I need. that I know I need, so I'm going to budget that and spend all of it. You know, if you have good budget management, you always know that there are unanticipated needs. You put a cushion in, you put it in ahead of time. It's partly why at this time I really emphasize take good care of yourself, be grounded, move through the feelings, get as many good habits in place as you can so that We're all resourcing and we have some to share. We have some to give out. We're not depleted when we're trying to make those decisions and rushing into something. Because often the things aren't big things. Somebody may be doing big things and we can help. There's a lot of help. Anyone else?

[45:15]

Michael online has a question. Hi, Michael. This is more of a comment or reaction than a question. I loved your quote that you shared before that was attributed to the Talmud. And it reminded me of a quote from a friend of mine who's an Episcopal priest who often said, the world now is too dangerous and too beautiful. for anything but love. Thank you for sharing all of this. Thank you. When you mentioned that I had said that before, I was like, I don't know how much of this I've said before that you've all heard. These are my standbys. This is my playlist. So please forgive me any repetition and I'll just trust that Maybe it's not amiss to repeat something once in a while.

[46:20]

Susan. Thank you very much for this. Thank you very much for this extremely relevant, cogent talk and encouraging. And I want to also say thank you to the question about privilege, because I do think that's, for me, that's also a big issue of how do I live with the amount of privilege I have, thinking, well, I'm doing these helpful things in the world, but what about the people in Gaza? And I just want to say my own, response to that with myself is sometimes to try to just remember, start where you are. And I do have a lot of privilege and I do have a lot of safety, but I can share that as best I can by using it in ways that are helpful.

[47:26]

But I think it's really good to acknowledge it and not to forget the privilege that we have. and to see that in a larger context, how few of us have this much privilege. And I also want to say a quote that's often said, I think, by various teachers. I know Norman Fisher said this the first time I heard it. There's two parts to Zen practice. There's sitting down and there's getting up. And so I think your talk really addresses that, and that's important. We have to have a sitting down, whether it's an example or a birdwatcher, we have to have sitting down too. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, I think not all of us, but many of us in this room have a lot of privilege. And it's, you know, you can think about how you might like to share that, what you might use that for.

[48:30]

Some of us are less likely to be threatened or attacked than others. Can we use our voices? Where does it feel okay to use our body, either in activity or in protest? What has our education offered us that we could share? Could we write? There are many possibilities. What I've been kind of tailoring my reading toward is What are people doing? What's going on? What kind of things are happening? You know, what are people thinking about in the world? Which I find just really encouraging and most people are being like, yeah, I had to take some time off to get grounded here so I would have something to say and something to offer. Okay. Good. We had time on the mark. We had 12 minutes. Okay. Surely. Thanks, Linda.

[49:33]

Listening to your talk and everyone's questions and comments reminded me of a little anecdote I read in Banke teaching. He's talking about a temple attendant who has to go to some sort of sketchy part of town that's known for samurai to kind of test their sorts on people wandering the streets. And all the monks are a concern for him. He's like, I'll be okay. So he goes, and sure enough, the samurai crosses paths with him and turns and says, hey, you bumped into me. He's getting his sword ready. And this attendant said, no, I didn't even touch you. And then when he tells the story later, he says he doesn't know why, but he just got down and did three prostrations. And that kind of freaked the samurai out. He was like, oh, you're weird. Like, you can go. And then he safely gets back to the temple. And the story struck me really deeply as a trans person in our country right now and the uncertainty of the kinds of violence and hatred I might run into.

[50:44]

And I'm wondering if you have anything to say about this story or any other thoughts you'd like to share. Well, when you were telling the story, I was thinking, yeah, let's celebrate weird. Bless Berkeley. Oh my god. Want to fly a freak flag? There's parades for you. But to your other point, stay close with people you trust and seek them out, seek out support.

[51:55]

ask for support let people know what they can do I think many people are willing to support and don't know how I mentioned to you the other morning if I can speak up or do anything and I thought afterwards I don't know that I would recognize what to do and when nor do I know how to find out But if anyone has, you know, if you want to share anything or want to say, this thing is coming up, if you're up for it or the sangha's up for it or, you know, put it out there. But personally, I would not recommend walking on streets where there are samurai or proud boys or Oath Keepers, you know. Bye.

[52:59]

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