Unsurpassed, penetrating, and perfect karma is rarely met with even a hundred thousand million kalpas. Having it to see and listen to, to remember and accept, I vow to taste the truth of the Tatarta's words. Good morning. Good morning. Can you hear me okay? Yes. I was just remembering. During practice period, we had skit night. And orphans, every now and then skits would be someone demonstrating how a soldier sat down, which is complex.

[01:11]

And I just realized it's complex for me. So this is my first time giving a talk in Zendo. My voice is a little weak, but my energy is good. I want to talk about stepping over thresholds or various thresholds that we encounter. Tsukiroshi said the most important point, and he was always saying the most important point, is to accept yourself and stand on your two feet.

[02:24]

five or six years ago. My friend, teacher Roshi Joan Halifax, wrote a book called Standing at the Edge. And she five edge states, which are both our greatest challenges and our greatest opportunities. So Jishitra lays as altruism, empathy, integrity, respect, and engagement.

[03:54]

And I see this as what Suzuki Rishi spoke of this, standing on your own two feet. These are liminal states. Thresholds, literally. And Roshi Joan points out that we always grow from our hedge. Things are always moving, pressing forward or retracting from that hedge. So these ages are our problems and our opportunities.

[05:17]

And as Sotterner said, our problems are our opportunities. But it's understandable that we think of them as problems. because we don't know exactly how to engage with them. In recent weeks, I've been speaking with the BCC BIPOC group. After two years of many communities, one sangha program, They're proposing to lead a study group based on a new book, which is... Home is Here by Lian Chut.

[06:42]

who's a teacher of access to Zen in Oakland. And she's a disciple of Blanche Hartman in her lineage. And she's in her lineage. And she has a quite varied background. So this book is her returning to basic Buddhism as the toolkit for looking at our issues, to look at the Four Noble Truths, to look at the UFO path.

[07:46]

I think this is a wonderful book. Very readable, very accessible. And I think it'll start studying maybe in October. And I really give it my full support. It's not just It's not just about racism or diversity. It's about our collective lives. And in a sense, it relies on what I've been teaching over the last 10 years. Let's see if I can do this, but that's funny.

[08:58]

There are lots of ways of looking at our circumstances, lots of toolkits and systems. But I tend to return to basic Buddhism. The Four Noble Truths began as an Indian medical model. You have disease or illness. You have the cause of illness. You have what health would look like, and then you have what the path you're curing is.

[10:17]

And those are the four known truths. And that path is the Eightfold Path. I'm not going to get into that a whole lot today because it's complicated. And there's different ways of framing the Eightfold Path. as a Vietnamese-American adoptee. I'm an immigrant, cisgender female, gender non-conformist, lesbian, Soto Zen priest, and in the late mid-years of agronautical life,

[11:37]

I'm often located by others as in ways that I don't always present or behave. So people believe different things that they see in me. I'm often asked as I'm entering the washroom. Don't you know this is the women's room? Perhaps it could be because of the nonconformity of my shaved head as a priest, but likely it's because I have become nonconforming in the ways I've carried myself forward most of my life in gender and in other socially prescribed fashions.

[12:54]

So, she says, if one is not willing to see the location that other people perceive, you're likely to get stuck there. So this question of location is very important. She emphasizes this throughout the book. Where am I located? How do others locate me? How do I locate myself? And this has a dimension of social location as described in the work of a woman named Cedar Barstow.

[14:11]

and it also has a location in place. Where do I live? In one of our articles, we talk about living in this unceded Ohlone territory. That's the place where we give. They didn't give this to us. presumptively. We took claim to it. But there were people here hundreds or more years ago. So in this book, there's an emphasis

[15:17]

on location, which fits very well with the idea of standing at the edge or standing on our own feet, which brings to mind the well-known Zen koan of how do you step forward from the top of a 100-foot pole. How do I do that? Now there's a conundrum here for me because for the last six months I can't stand and maybe I will again, maybe I won't.

[16:24]

But still, standing is metaphorical. How is one upright where one lives? So, should put sentences on social location. Where do we live? Who are our ancestors? In each moment We are located in lineage, in the ancestry by others, by ourselves, by sight, by perception, by differentiation, by discrimination, by institutions, by policies, by government,

[17:51]

by systems of oppression, by homophobia, by gender phobia, by white supremacy, by racism, by erasure, by invisible isolation. by exclusion, by inclusion, by equity, with love, with hatred, with fear, with anxiety, with care, with tenderness, with joy, in community, in being in the world, in time, in space, in emptiness and in homes.

[19:03]

When you have a location and you know where you are, You're standing on your own two feet. You respect yourself and those around you and the place, the very place you're standing. Look around Nintendo and consider how wonderfully respected and taken care of this space is. Every day, we clean it and we take care of it. And it's been that way ever since I came here 40 years ago.

[20:17]

I used to think about moving someplace. I wanted to live in the Northwest because it speaks to me. And then for a while, I set that idea aside. I think it was reading a book by Gary Snyder called The Practice of the Wild, in which he speaks about inhabiting his part of the ecosystem in Northern California. And I realized, that's right. That's where I am. And I don't need to be any place else.

[21:31]

It's nice to go other places, but not necessary. I had another lesson in location. from a Native American novelist and poet, Elizabeth Cook Lynn. And I was at a writing workshop with her. She was Lakota Sioux and really fierce. And one day at this writing workshop, brought out two maps. A map of where Indigenous populations were in the 19th century, and a map of where they were today.

[22:42]

And with the exception of some forced migrations, they were all in the same places. They were all located where they had been settled, where the place was familiar, where they knew the ground, and they knew their seats, and they knew the landmarks. That was really powerful to me. Another example happened in the spring of 1968. That spring I took part in the occupation of Columbia University. And we lived in the president's office for a week.

[23:48]

And we got arrested, beaten and arrested. But the first building that was taken was the classroom building. I think there's somebody here who is there with me. Paul, were you there? Yes, sir. Yeah. The first night, the African American students asked the white students to leave. We never really understood why. It took four years for them to share their thinking.

[24:51]

Now the African-American students at that time came from the segregated South. They weren't urbanized and their community was all they had to rely on. And so when they took over this building, they felt responsible for it. And so they organized how to clean up, how to get food, how to take care of the building, how to respect the place. Whereas some of us coming from the white urban population, didn't know how to do that.

[26:07]

So they invited us to leave and take our own buildings, which we did. This was an eye-opening and heartbreaking experience for many of us. Because we never got this. And we saw that they had something they could rely on that was missing for us. and we could understand it. For the African-American students, the issues of social location and personal location were one.

[27:22]

For people like myself, there was some self-respect that I lacked. And I think that that came to me when I arrived here. I wanted to close with a haiku by Isa, very famous.

[28:28]

This dewdrop world is a dewdrop world, and yet And yet, we experience the difficulties of our world and we know that we have tools for transcending it. but it hurts too. And we have to find ways to bear this, to really stand at the edge and step forward. So I think I've been a little short, but

[29:34]

I want to open up to questions and reflections. So yes, there's time to do that. Lori? Getting back to Joan's edge states a little, can you just flesh out, I mean, there are problems and there are opportunities, but when you list them, they sound like virtues to some extent. How, I mean, how, could you say something about why... Well, I think she views them as virtues, but... Altruism. All of those can't be overdone. You know, you can have excessive altruism.

[30:42]

You can have false compassion. All those in their negative positions are traps. Kind of like they have a shadow side. Yes, exactly. Is there anyone online also? I can't see. Is there anyone online that wants to say this one? There is not. Is there a hand or your actual hand? I see. No, I'm not seeing anyone. Axe has a question.

[31:45]

Okay. Good morning, Azan. Thank you for your time. As I was listening, I was wondering. this dynamic that comes up in my friendships, both spiritual ones and not spiritual ones, I'm not sure that that even is anymore, where I'll experience their frustration at the hatred in the world, and I'll get a little overwhelmed by it, and I guess I have this question, is how do we hold our own and each other's feelings given the reality of hatred, bigotry, oppression. I think the best thing we can do is to accept the wholeness of someone's feelings, whether we like it or not.

[32:52]

You know, I think this was consistent. while teaching of students was include everything. But, and yet, and yet. Thank you. Anyone out there in Zoom land? Okay. Could you speak a little bit more about what uprightness means? What what? Upright. You spoke a little bit about upright and standing, but it's more of an attitude and how you're working with it, how you used to work with it, how we all can work with it.

[33:54]

Well, we work with it from the inside out. You know, when Sojin gave Zaz an instruction, he spoke about the body, the breath, and the mind. And all those have to be in alignment. But the fundamental alignment is to meet everything with openness. So, what I've learned to do, I mean, it's a bit of a convention. Sometimes I would have to hook aside with people and it would be difficult.

[35:00]

And, you know, I would think, oh, God, who's coming in the door? And then I learned to prepare myself to ask myself How do I want to meet this person? How do I want my body and mind to be aligned? And what might I like them to feel, to take away? It seems to be a much better man. That's really great advice. Thank you. Coincidentally, I was talking with someone earlier this morning about that very thing.

[36:06]

How do I want to present myself and what can I do to bring the best out in others with where my attitude and uprightness happens to be? Thank you again for that. Thank you, Ozone. What you just said and this interchange with Ross just reminds me of what I've heard you express as that one way to approach the bodhisattva vow is to save all beings of my mind. Right. And so my question is would you Speak to the word my in the context of that. I'd rather speak to the word my.

[37:07]

M-M-Y, yes. No, my. You said mind, right? You said my. No, I'm of one mind with you on the my. Okay, we resolved that. You are a being of my mind right now. And I am a being of yours. And our mind extends between us. And when we really look closely It extends between all of us. So mind is good mind.

[38:10]

It's one mind. And it is a minor differentiation and a minor all-inclusion. Oh, what is that? It flew out. Anyway, does that answer your question? The last time I was in a zendo, I was contemplating the loss of my son and his drowning and feeling, it came back in the poem you gave, the and yet.

[39:15]

And obviously with all the teachings, when we're facing the great losses and the pains of this human existence, the teachings, for me, the teachings have held me in a way that maybe is why I'm able to still be here. And yet. I didn't recognize you. I know. Yeah. I'm different. I know. Now I do. Yeah. Yeah. And I've been feeling you over the last weeks, you know, feeling your journey back at the Temple on the East Coast and wondering in the brushes with death and with loss and What are some of the things that have occurred to you in new ways as you've been moving through this stage of your journey? The intimacy of the permanence. How close it is.

[40:21]

You know that. Things happen that we never would want. It's really heartbreaking. But I follow everything you write. I asked myself in the Zen Go there, where is he now? And the one I thought was, where isn't he? He's like, the mind can't quite still, but it's the feeling of connection. It's like he's everything. But here we are, and his body is so attached, and the attachment is part of the process. And my family has that.

[41:23]

You know, for several months, I was someplace else. And I have no memory. But they had to endure that. I'm glad I don't remember. It's so good to see you. How's the rest of your family? They're wonderful. They just had a big ceremony honoring the indigenous elders who brought the Japanese monks to that land, so yesterday. was a ceremony. The chapel has called us through the loss of our son. That's where it's named ceremony. It's a moral ceremony. So we are very much rooted and grounded there. And there's no better place to be moving through these things. We need community that you spoke of.

[42:26]

That's a place. Yeah. You've got two people online. Do you want to take one more? Karen was first. Oh, who? Karen. Okay, so. Hi, Hozan. I'll be brief. Thank you for giving this talk, particularly about practice with location. I can't really hear you. Oh, can you hear me now? Sort of. Yeah, sort of. Oh, dear. Well, I just wanted to thank you for your topic of location. As I confront a big move, I am very interested in how I will practice with a big change in location and how I will sort of honor the unceded land I'll be in.

[43:26]

So I appreciate the topic and for you giving the talk. Thank you. Thank you. Hi. Standing at the edge is frightening. That's why it's the edge. Could you say something about fear? I think it's a condition of life. And we can't get rid of it. But we can develop our confidence in standing on our own two feet and develop our sense of balance.

[44:34]

That's what we can do. Thank you. Hi, Ian. Hello, Hosan. It's so great to see you. You spoke about problems as opportunities, which is wonderful to consider. And I wonder if you might just say a little more about how the problems in our world now are opportunities. Well, We have an election coming up, which is an opportunity. We have all kinds of crises in the world, to me, which are opportunities. If we miss those chances, then people suffer.

[45:45]

We should take care of our world one step at a time, one breath at a time. Thank you. And your last word. Thank you. Thank you, Hosan. Wonderful to see you there on your seat. You spoke at the beginning about you know, basic Buddhism, the Four Noble Truths, and this sort of medical model, the cause of suffering, the cure. It makes me think of that koan, sickness and medicine heal each other or balance each other. And there's a line in that, if I remember correctly, that says the whole world is medicine. And can you say something about how our understanding in our tradition is that The cure is not just one thing.

[46:50]

The medicine is each thing we meet. We have to transform it. It's an alchemical process. In order for medicine, we have to put ourselves into it. It's not medicine unless we make it so. thank you thank you all

[47:29]

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