and unsurpassed penetrating and perfect this morning to speak with us. Doshin Dan Gudgel has been practicing in the lineage of Sunryu Suzuki since 2006, which is where I met Dan. He was introduced to the Mountain Source Sangha in Marin County.

[09:31]

And when I was living out in Marin, I sat with Dan and his sangha for the better part of a year. And I heard many of his and that's why I invited him. to come this morning. After many years of neighborhood householder practice with teachers and members of Mountain Source, Dan entered residential practice with San Francisco Zen Center in 2019, first at Green Gulch Farm and then at Mountain Center. In December 2019, Dan was ordained as a priest by Shinko Rick Stone, I'm sorry, Rick Sloan During three years at Tasselhara, Dan practiced primarily in the kitchen, first as a crew member in the Phukaten, and then as Tenzo during 2020. Informed by both residential, monastic Zen, and parish church Zen, Dan's current practice is focused around activating the teachings in everyday life and imbuing everyday life with the spirit of ceremony.

[10:36]

Dan currently serves as director of Thank you. Thank you for that lovely introduction and thank you for the invitation to be here. As Peter said, I am visiting today from San Francisco Zen Center and was here for the whole morning program. I really got this feeling like I was in the house of a beloved aunt or uncle. I could tell together, and yet we're still choosing to do things in our own ways. It's really wonderful, really wonderful. Is anyone other than me here for the first time? Well, welcome.

[11:38]

We're all in this together. Beginner's mind spirit is really a rich and wonderful thing. I must say I'm really enjoying the experience of not really knowing how things work or how they're going to go. It's a lovely way to let go of my ideas of how things might be and just let whatever's happening happen. So when I'm thinking about giving a talk, I usually start from what is it that I don't care myself? What's going on in this mind-body system? And lately I have been feeling a bit overwhelmed, a bit powerless. I'm noticing that the public discourse and the

[12:39]

to be encouraging me to aggregate people into groups and then to make assumptions and judgments about those groups. So in response, I've been trying to stay really close to the teachings of interconnection and to an intention to see and experience other beings as individuals and not as groups. So I'm going to talk for a little while about that come at it from a number of different angles. And I do expect some discussion and questions. So we'll have an opportunity, I hope, to maybe share a little bit about how we're all meeting this moment. So the other day, as I was thinking about notes for this talk, I had this thought, oh, this talk is basically saying, love one another.

[13:47]

And then I immediately had this thought, oh, is that too naive? Is that too simplistic? And that experience of whether it is appropriate to preach about love got me to double down on the fact that yes, indeed it is. loving our fellow beings is always appropriate. How many times in how many ways do we have to hear this same message from many different traditions? The Dalai Lama saying, my religion is love. Gandhi saying, where there is love, there is life. Jesus saying, love each other just as much as I have loved you. So as I'm talking, whatever I might be making. Really what I'm saying is love one another. Really, truly, deeply love one another.

[14:49]

What I'm hoping for myself over time is to really cultivate a capacity to love even people who I think are doing harmful. I think that love will actually make me more effective at responding. to those harmful things and to people who I think from my perspective are doing harm. So fundamentally, I think problems in the United States is a cultural blindness to interdependence. I certainly in my in my upbringing in this country have been fed and for many years accepted this idea that none involved freedom. That if I was not directly physically affected by something, it wasn't part of me, it wasn't part of my world.

[15:52]

This idea that physical distance is karmic insulation of some kind. So I think the modern world is being poisoned by individualism and by these monumental, monolithic ideas of self. In other words, as a nation, as a culture, even often as individuals, as if the suffering of other living beings doesn't affect us. But that is just wrong. The Buddhist perspective, from the evidence of my own eyes and body, suffering anywhere is suffering everywhere. If my foot is injured, should my lungs ignore that injury? Since the foot is not the lung, that doesn't really make much sense or get me very far.

[16:53]

Without the foot, the whole body is in trouble. Without the lung, is in trouble. The entire system is affected by all parts of the system. And it seems our individual ability to take action, to have an effect in the world, stops at our fingertips in this apparent boundary of our bodies. We can project our voices and something of our presence through writing, through modern electronic means. But at the core, we can only really take action where we are, where our bodies are. So Buddhism calls us to be intentional and careful with what we do. Sometimes it's appropriate to take our bodies to a location, to have action, to take effect in that place.

[17:59]

maybe going to a protest, going to a meeting, taking our physical ability to act out into an intentional space in the world. But whether we are doing that or not, we should always be mindful of how this opportunity we have for volitional action, how we How we choose to use this wondrous and temporary opportunity to be in a body and to have some direction over what that body does. So thought becomes word. Word becomes action. Action becomes character. Every single thing that we do matters and ripples out into the world. This thing that we now together might not seem all that active, but the effects of gathering together and focusing our intention on the suffering of the world and how to alleviate that suffering is one of the necessary steps in continuing to have that effect.

[19:26]

We have in the Zen world this bodhisattva vow, this vow to stay in the world of suffering until everyone can step out of that suffering together. And one big part of that is making opportunities for practice like this. Opening temples, starting sitting groups, giving people Dharma books, talking to people about the teachings. Those are important parts of creating this opportunity for people to step out of suffering with us. But also included in that are the foundational needs. This is really, I think, Maslow's hierarchy of needs, for those who are familiar with that. If people don't have safety and stability, how are they supposed to find peace and truth if they sit down quietly, even for a moment?

[20:42]

So I think it's really very appropriate as a piece of this practice to also pay attention to the fundamental conditions of the beings in the world around us. The practice This formal practice, the instruction, the teachings, are also deeply important. They need to be preserved. They need to be maintained. If all of us got up from this place and just started building houses and giving away food, that would have some wonderful positive effects. But if we did it exclusively, then this practice would not be available. for people who have the space and the ease and the opportunity for that practice. So there has to be some balance. In Buddhist circles, the image of Indra's net is used with some frequency.

[21:54]

often hear this explained as a vast net, and at each crossing point of the strands of that net there is a jewel, and those jewels reflect all of the other jewels. And often this is presented as a metaphor for us as living beings. Thus, in our own multifaceted jeweled being, reflecting the rest of the world, reflecting all of the other beings, and thereby being connected and present for each other. And lately, a more compelling part of that image for me has been the threads that connect those jewels. I imagined This image came to me by imagining how I myself pull in certain directions.

[23:02]

There are certain things that I do or think or believe that cause me to lean in a certain direction. And because I am connected to all of these other nodes on the net, they are all being pulled a little bit by how I am pulling. If we're pulling in different directions, we are creating a lot of tension and pain. And if we're pulling in similar directions, there can be movement and change. I don't think we even necessarily need to be pulling in exactly the same direction, but If we could at least try to guide it a little bit, that may be a gentler way to live. Not only are each of us a node in Indra's net, but if we zoom in on our personal nodes, we are also made up of our own vast interior Indra's net.

[24:15]

Our experiences, our beliefs, the things that have happened to us, the things we have inherited from family, from culture, these are all nodes on each of our own nets. And those nodes themselves can be pulling in different directions. And I think one of the practices is the space and the opportunity to notice what's going on in here and to help it harmonize with itself a little bit. I know I have many views and opinions formed by my own background. Some of them don't even agree with each other within this one being. And I was raised in

[25:19]

Ohio in the industrial, formerly staunchly Union, Akron, Cleveland area. And so I can see connections within my own being to and to people and places that are now geographically quite distant. And because of some of those connections, I find it impossible to generally group and demonize people who I don't agree with, but who come from very similar experiences to myself. Those people who I am even here right now, starting to put into a group, into a category, those people are as complicated as I am.

[26:28]

And this othering, this categorization that I so easily engage in as a human being is a way to explore this messy humanness of other beings, to dismiss the complex suffering of another being by labeling them as enemy or uneducated or . And it's really illuminating to me how much I bristle and resist being categorized at the same time that I'm very willing to do that to other beings. That's a signal. a sign that something is not quite in alignment. So this focusing on a single node, zooming in and finding it to be more complex, also works in a similar way if we zoom it back out.

[27:41]

we might, as human beings, conventionally sort of draw some boundary around a portion of Indra's net, around a collection of nodes, and say that that locality, or that is cultural group, or political affiliation, or any of the thousands of other ways that we might group people into categories. And the fact that we can continue these boundaries endlessly, I think is really highlighting the fact that there is no reality to them. There is no inherent truth to these boundaries. All of our divisions and our boundaries and our groupings are going to fall apart. We really investigate them closely. And so the last piece of this image of Indra's net that has been really with me lately, to think about the space that this net is occupying.

[29:06]

Where is Indra's net? What is its context? I think when I first heard this image used, I imagined sort of static crystal structure endless endless rows of nodes in all directions sort of stretching off but essentially static and in place but I've realized that Indra's net is actually itself in motion and in fact I think Indra's net is in freefall. And we as nodes in the net feel this rush of the freefall. This, I think, is the passage of time. This is this present moment, this passage of the present moment from past into future.

[30:14]

We experience this motion as a frightening thing, often. And because we feel ourselves to be in free fall, this endless, uncontrolled motion, I think we as humans panic a little bit in the face of that. And so the nodes on Indra's net are contracting and expanding. pushing other beings and other ways of being, pushing some away, drawing others closer, trying to create some safety, trying to put someone else in the way to make ourselves safer, or trying to push ourselves further away from the fall. But what that miss is,

[31:19]

that though Indra's net is in freefall, there is no ground for us to hit. It will always be in freefall. We as beings are always in this constant motion through time. So if we release our tight grasp on this idea of self, this idea of preserving our small view. If we look at the bigger picture, then the net can unfurl. Pulling sometimes together, we can actually glide through the air as it falls. We will be forever falling into the future. Why would we create additional suffering for ourselves in that process?

[32:24]

So these principles of kindness and care I think are actually part of the vernacular in the United States, though maybe we don't realize that there is a crossover here. And so I think it feels appropriate to me to lens on this idea of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That pursuit of happiness is not a guarantee of happiness. it is presented to us as a guarantee of the ability to make some honest effort towards happiness. I hope to have time to come back a little to whether there really is that fair opportunity to pursue happiness in the United States.

[33:39]

First, what are we talking about in happiness? From the Zen Buddhist point of view, maybe one place to access happiness is through seeing the true nature of things and then according with that reality. If I stop struggling against the basic facts of existence, I do remove a really significant source of my own suffering. If I stop saying, this can't be happening, I don't want this to be happening, I deserve something better, then that does open up a little more space for me to meet whatever is happening and to have a little more agency in the next moment. That doesn't necessarily mean it will be a pleasant experience, but at least has removed the unnecessary suffering and confusion.

[34:48]

Of course, interdependence and knowledge that the world is really more like interest makes all of this a little more complicated. We can have all of the opinions and judgments that we want, but we are still enmeshed in a system. And it appears to me that there are a lot of efforts afoot at the moment. Changes in policies, changes in functioning of government. It looks from my perspective like many of these things are being done in intentionally cruel ways.

[35:52]

find myself experiencing, it feels like a sort of spitefulness is arousing in me other unkind responses that I am very suspect of, but feel coming up quite strongly sometimes. And I think the of Some of these spiteful and, from my perspective, harmful actions really go back to the root of modern selfishness in the United States. I really do think that people who are causing harm are themselves wounded and suffering. There is a suffering around fear of safety and fear of future opportunity that drives cruel and reactionary choices.

[36:59]

The small self may get a little dose of reassurance from some of these cruel actions. There's a little whisper on doing something mean or harmful. There's a little whisper in there to the perception of self that says, yes, you are here, you are in charge of yourself and of your world. These choices, these actions that are being taken, are just going to perpetuate the cycle of harm and create future opportunities for the small self to reassert its self-appointed importance. My great fear in this particular moment in the United States, I have a lot of fear and concern for people in down power positions right now.

[38:16]

And even greater than fear that the current climate of meanness and cruelty will become normal and that all of us will begin to be involved. So I've been asking myself this question. What would it look like if each human being actually just took meticulously good care of the people that they actually encountered with their own bodies? Where is there room for harm in that? That's not happening. And so there must be some disconnect here. But if every human being on this planet just took good care of the people in their physical surroundings,

[39:19]

Where does there remain a problem? It's in these groupings and these categorizations and these generalizations that we create the opportunity for deep harm. And this sense of self, this protection of the idea that I have of myself, I really think is another of the pillars, the root causes of the widespread suffering in this world. The San Francisco Bay Area, before the arrival of European colonizers, was a land that was beyond my ability to actually imagine it.

[40:43]

I have read descriptions of what this part of the world was like and it's difficult for me to believe how rich and thriving it was. Early Spanish arrivals actually complained about how boring the hunting and fishing were because it was so plentiful. And that abundance was confiscated and surveyed, extracted, and complex living systems that perpetuated and sustained themselves for thousands of years were sold for products and buildings that require constant maintenance. The buildings, these glorious wetlands that thrived on the tides and the sunlight, these buildings

[41:49]

require constant shipments of minerals and lumber from all around the world just to keep them from falling down. This self-focused way of being in the world is incredibly short-sighted. It's not good for our descendants. It's not even good for us here and now. But the sense of self, the self's drive to protect and preserve itself, is really very strong. And so we have to engage with it actively and continually. The Ohlone people who lived in the great abundance of the San Francisco Peninsula, had a social system that actively discouraged remembering the dead.

[42:55]

Having great possessions was unseemly, and the names of ancestors were never spoken once they had died. Communal harmony and health was the main marker of success. those points really seem to me to meet very directly this modern desire for the self to endure. That Ohlone way of living was stable and functioning, perhaps for many thousands of years. before a single generation of self-focused property ownership, murder, and disease put an end to it.

[43:59]

This, I got to it first mentality, which I think is at the heart of property ownership and capitalism, is deeply flawed. uses a measurement of gross national happiness rather than gross national product to assess what's going on in their country. But I think even that might be the human self. I think perhaps a measurement of gross ecosystem health. or perhaps gross future possibility might be a better indicator of health and society.

[45:07]

So I think these are some of the directions that we need to investigate in our position on Indra's net. Which ways are we pulling? Are we Are we trying to pull everything in towards us? Are we trying to push some things away? Are we coordinating with those around us to try to push or pull in any particular direction? So fundamentally, I think we need to start with compassion and curiosity and cooperation. Compassion for ourselves, I think, is the foundational starting point. I am a human being in a human body. That body is often controlled by the human mind.

[46:08]

And so I have an ongoing series of very human experiences, emotional reactions, fear, anger. And when I have one of those human experiences, to meet that with the kind of compassion that I would meet the experiences of a young child, to me, has been really helpful to say, well, you're having a really human experience right now. It's okay. That gives me a little more space to extend that compassion. out to others. And then we have to be curious about others. We have to be willing to get to know why people are doing things. It's very easy for me to make assumptions and judgments about why people are doing things.

[47:15]

And yet again and again, I find when I speak to people who about their motivations and their foundational beliefs, there's not as much distance as I thought. Somewhere in between we often diverge greatly, but most human beings love their children and want them to thrive. Most human beings believe that other human beings generally should be healthy and safe. So to compassionately and curiously get to know other beings, get to see some of the real truth, some of the underpinnings of the situations that we're in, has to be where we start.

[48:25]

safety, then the lessons of this practice just naturally begin to step forward. Did you want to save some time for questions? Yes. Thank you. I'm just going to say love. I'm going to bring us back to love. Always, always love. If people resist our help, let them at least feel our love. Thank you. We will have some time for questions in the room, online, and after the official program has wrapped up, I'll also be around if anyone wants to chat about anything. Can we chat before the questions or after? After. After, great. You can call on people in here or online.

[49:28]

Excellent. Well, the room is open for questions then. If you're on Zoom, raising your Zoom hand might help me notice you, but raising a physical hand probably will work as well. Actually, I see Ken already has a hand up, so please feel free. Are you able to unmute? Looks like they may not have the . We're unmuted there for a moment. Now again, hopefully. Yes, we can hear you. Go for it. Hello. My name is Katie. Thank you so much for your talking, coming all the way over the bridge or whatever.

[50:36]

I think about a challenge that I think a lot of us are facing with being intimate with harm and cruelty. A group of us have gotten together. It's not an official busy school group. It gave ourselves the names and action and practice. Very simple, not too ambitious group where we're trying to support each other and engaging with the present moment through our practice. And I Being trained as a social scientist, I know that politics, culture, society don't have their own being. They're all made up through the net. And they also have a reality.

[51:37]

Same as the self-hazard. And sometimes you need to get intimate with the harm, the categories, the... And I think a lot of us, in order to be able to know how to respond effectively. I just wondered if you had any thoughts on that. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Thank you. Thank you for the question. I think, you know, sort of fundamentally, there's a limit to how much guidance I think I can sort of from the teaching seat because it always depends. This is one of the great frustrations, I think, of Zen and Buddhism. The answer is almost always, well, it depends. I think you're right.

[52:41]

I think it is necessary to become intimate with what is actually happening with the harms that are being done, with the choices that are being made, to the extent that each individual is able to do that. Different people have different capacities and different experiences. So while encouraging engagement, we really need to recognize that each individual also needs to take really good and meticulous care of themselves. In the process of becoming intimate with the harms and the choices that we might not agree with, before choosing any particular action,

[53:47]

we really would do well to try to understand as much about the root causes as possible. My instinct when I see certain kinds of harm or certain expressions is to meet that. with a very equally angry response or something that kind of mirrors whatever I'm seeing or experiencing. And that's usually probably not going to help as much as the curious investigation, the place for physical action. And I think You know, somebody like myself, a white, racialized, male-bodied person, in the current climate, I think it's really incumbent on me to have the capacity to put my physical body in places and situations that make it clear what I believe in or stand for.

[55:14]

But I need to be doing that with love and out of love, hope that people who are causing harm will feel that love. I don't think it helps so much to be doing that out of a purely out of obstructionism or rage, though I might feel those things, but try not to let them run the show. Thank you. Yeah. We have a question here in the room. Thank you, Dan, so much for your talk. My name is Judy. You know, a lot of times as you were speaking, my mind's eye kept flashing to the kitchen. Sometimes, you know, when things seem, I don't know, like I'm taking myself too seriously around something, you know, sometimes that line between the sheets, between the sheets, but instead of between the sheets, it would be in the kitchen.

[56:35]

And so I was wondering your experience, particularly when you were at Tenzo, How did you navigate potential harm or active harm conflict in the kitchen? Oh, great. Rich question. The Tenzo, for anyone who might be new to that word, is the manager of the Zen kitchen. So the person usually making the making the menus and sort of leading the group. I would, I think myself personally, the first things that my mind is going to is all of the help I got from the people I was in.

[57:41]

There can be a real collaborative spirit in a kitchen where people trust each other and are wholeheartedly practicing together. And so when the great conflict arose in the kitchen, as they often did, in the first flush, I often felt really overwhelmed and like I had no idea what to do. I would start just one little moment at a time. Usually first by just trying to check in with my body and get at least one breath in before I started to react. And the couple of situations that are occurring to me were mostly kind of interpersonal.

[58:47]

conflicts that people would have in the kitchen. Those might be about how to do a particular kitchen task, or those might be of those people. And in those cases, we would generally find a way, maybe not right then, but at some point, as soon as possible afterwards for the three of us to have a conversation, the two people who are having a conflict and myself as a sort of guide for that conversation. And it always did seem like getting down, there was the story of the conflict and it was never actually about the story of the conflict. It was about how people believed themselves to be being seen, how the different people felt comfortable being spoken to or speaking to each other.

[60:04]

And there always seemed to be a deeper motivation. under the conflict, a larger and older story of some kind, that if we engaged openly and curiously with the situation that was happening, we would maybe be able to get to something else. It didn't always work. But I also think just generally prioritizing the human relationship above the activity also was helpful. In the kitchen, the meal has to be out at this time.

[61:05]

And so there's a sort of, there's an impulse to just let bad stuff keep happening until we get the task done. I never found that all that helpful either. Let the task go. Serve a simpler meal. Send out plain rice and take really good care of the human relationship. That human relationship is more important than whether the soup is properly spiced. Well, thank you all so much for the warm welcome. And again, if anybody wants to chat afterwards, I'll be around. And if anyone online has unanswered questions, you can probably track me down either through Berkeley Zen or through San Francisco Zen Center.

[62:14]

Thank you all so much. Amen. with our Zazen instructor, Sue Osher.

[65:19]

If you've been coming around for a while and are interested in learning about membership and practice opportunities, you could also speak with Sue Osher. Let's see. Tomorrow afternoon, BCC will hold our annual JISO ceremony. This ceremony is offered to help the process of grieving. Judy Fleischman here if you have any questions. Linda Hess will give away Seeking Mind Talk this Monday morning in the online Zenda. This Thursday evening, Ellen Webb will continue a month-long in-person class on the Shinshin Mingpong. And next Saturday, the 15th, BCC will be holding a one-day sitting. I think there's likely spaces still available. Please consider to BCC to support our practice.

[66:23]

There's a donation box on the table by the bulletin board in the courtyard, or you can visit our website and click on the generosity tab. I need two people to help clean tea cups after our informal tea and cookies outside. I have two volunteers. Oh, thank you very much. Thanks, Jeff. Okay. I wanted to say something very briefly about Saturday Program. It's a rare opportunity for us to practice and train together. It is not available in many practice places. I think it was very precious to Sojin Roshi and to Hozan Roshi. And I would just encourage you, if you feel able to come and help and participate so this program is available to new and future students.

[67:28]

So thank you very much. Please maintain silence until you're off the Zendo porch. We can leave the windows open. There's a meeting after.

[67:48]

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