Is anyone new here today, here for the first time? Welcome. Thank you for coming. My name is Karen Sondheim, and I've been practicing here for many years. So, I spent about a week working on this talk. And I wanted to bring out what was of concern to me in the parts of practice that I really value. And so, you know, I spent a lot of time reading books and talking about certain themes.

[01:02]

And finally, yesterday afternoon, I thought, okay, you know, just let it be. It'll be what it is. And then my wife Nancy and I went out to dinner with two friends. And part of our dinner was that we were going to talk about a particular book we had just read. It's a relatively new book, and it's called On the Calculation of Volume. Has anyone read that? Nancy? Well, the premise is by the first person, and she starts waking up And it's the same day every day. November 18th.

[02:03]

So every day she wakes up, it's November 18th. Things happen. And she talks about, for me, time has crashed. But for my husband, Thomas, he's moving forward. It's a really book, but it's, you know, you have to go with it. So we had a good discussion and I decided, you know, I'm not going to obsess over the talk. I'm not going to look at it again tonight because I should get some rest and be refreshed to give this talk. So I got up. I had breakfast. I'm drinking my tea. It's around 8 o'clock. And I look at my talk, and I realize this looks like the exact talk I gave eight months ago.

[03:11]

So that was somewhat horrifying. LAUGHTER thought about Dogen's words I'm going to paraphrase his a line in his fascicle uji which means time being or being time and he says serial serial time is delusion so I encourage you to just be in this moment because that's all there. So, one thing I want to say about repetition, though, if this is going to be repetition, it's just an illusion that it's repetition.

[04:31]

Recently, Linda Roshi gave a talk, and she talked about repetition in practice. We do zazen over and over. We do service pretty much the same. We do oreoche the same way. But it's always new. I'm having a little trouble reading. My type is a little small. So starting with acknowledging that we're living in very difficult times, very violent times, and it... And times where there's a lot of hate going around that we hear daily, unfortunately.

[05:37]

And... What do we do about this? I think that most of us here probably feel unsafe. I do. And how do we live with that? A number of years ago, maybe ten years ago, I retired about nine years ago and my situation was pretty good. I have a pension from work, you know, we have a house. But then I realized, you know, all of this is just temporary. And as Buddhists, we study impermanence.

[06:40]

That's the fundamental aspect of our lives, is impermanence. We see it all the time. And we're continuously losing things. Master Dogen also said that in order to practice the most fun thing we have, that we must understand is impermanence. The fact that things continuously change, that we lose the things we cherish, and we lose things that we don't want. but these things also disappear and come back and disappear and come back. So when I was a child, I had a terror, a nightmare about the Nazis because it was the 60s and I knew a lot of

[08:03]

I knew some people who had come to the United States in concentration camps. So the whole reality of Nazism felt very alive to me. And I would tell my parents about this, and they would say, oh, Nazis are gone. We beat them. You know, the allies beat them. The world is safe now. And, you know, you don't have to worry. But, of course, you see what happened. You know, they're back. And then also when I was a teenager, the big political event was the Vietnam War. And I found myself in all these... anti-war marches, and all this camaraderie with people who were against the war, and I thought I was only about 10, so they were heroes to me, and I remember all the bumper stickers and flags, no...

[09:27]

Vietnam, bring the troops home, all that kind of stuff that got me really excited and dedicated. And then, you know, the war ended around 75. And I had this sense, we, you know, the people against the war won. Now that was probably not really, I don't know if that was really how the war, One, there are all sorts of reasons. But I thought, you know, it was me, my comrades, and all those people that had ended the war. So, gradually, as I got older, I realized these things are happening again. Iraq, just all sorts of countries that we were involved in.

[10:39]

It was the same old signs. No war in Iraq, no blood for oil. So that is extremely distressing that this... Somehow it feels I felt, what can I do? Is the world just a really awful place? So I asked one of my teachers, Steve Weintraub, I said to him, what is there to lean on? It seems like everything is just headed in this terrible direction with violence and war and greed and oil and all that kind of thing. And so he said something which surprised me, which was, you can lean on...

[11:47]

Now, the precepts are our vows. Many of you are familiar with them. Does anyone not know what I'm talking about? Okay. As Buddhists, we vow, we have certain vows, We vow to take refuge. We take refuge in Buddha and Sangha. We have three pure precepts about doing good, doing no evil. And then what we call the ten grave precepts, which are more specific. And they... originally they were somewhat, they were prohibitory, because the early monks around Buddha didn't know how to behave.

[13:00]

They had heard the teachings, but they didn't really apply it to their behavior. So the Buddha started creating guidelines, laws for behavior, which was written in the Vinaya, one of the most important Theravadan texts, the rules for monks and nuns. But we practice cave precepts. And Sojin Roshi changed the name to clear mind precepts. And those are things like do not kill, do not steal, do not lie. Don't harbor anger. So these things are kind of obvious. You know, when I started practicing, I thought, oh, that sounds like the Ten Commandments. And so we make these vows regularly.

[14:11]

We do it once a month in our full moon bodhisattva ceremony. But we do it other times also. And it starts before precepts, we have to acknowledge our karma. Karma means action. So if I talk about my karma, I'm talking about my actions. I can't read my notes at all. So... I need something up here. Talk about improminence. So we say, before we take... we say aloud together, all my ancient tangled karma...

[15:16]

From beginningless greed, hate, and delusion, born of body, speech, and mind, I now fall. So we say beginningless. It's not really what I did wrong last week or last year, although it could be. years old and my karma goes back before I was born and I can't know all my karma even in this body I don't know everything that I did but here we're acknowledging our karma back to through inconceivable time so it's very comprehensive

[16:18]

Our actions are born through body, speech, and mind. So many of us have karma that has gone through generations. Some of us have ancestors who were enslaved. Some have ancestors who were in concentration camps. Some were attacked for being immigrants. And this is continuing. Nhat Hanh wrote something beautiful that I think many of you have heard before, but it's called The Five Remembrances. They are I am of the nature old.

[17:29]

I cannot escape it. I am of the nature to get sick. I cannot escape it. I am of the nature to die. I cannot escape it. Clear and dear. to me and everyone I love are of the nature to change. I cannot escape being separated from them. I am the owner of my actions, heir to my actions, born of my actions. My actions are my only true belonging. Belongings. So here we are. What matters is our actions.

[18:30]

And actions are of body, speech, and mind. So some of these are obvious. For example, I vow not to kill is the first grave precept. That's of the body. Then there are the precepts of speech. I vow not to lie. I vow not to boast. I vow not to slander others. And then there are actions of mind. For example, I vow not to harbor ill will. Now, right now, we have a class going on on how we practice with the precepts, and a number of people have brought up harboring ill will.

[19:31]

Because it might not look like an action, but the mind is harboring ill will. So I have this habit of being on social media, and I have to say it's a little bit of an addiction. Not so much to hear what people I know, because a lot of people I know don't post much, but I'm in these groups which discuss things. So I'm in... at least five groups that are book discussions. And then I'm in groups that talk about birds and hiking in the Bay Area and jazz, all sorts of things like that.

[20:33]

And I find out some really interesting things, especially books, because I used to be a librarian, so I can't help chiming in with my opinions about books. For recommendations, I get so many great recommendations in these sites. So one of the groups I'm in is called Serious Nonfiction. So somebody posted a book, and it was called, I think that the title is Palestine, colon, 100 Years of Settler Colonialism. So it starts in the late 19th century of Zionist thought and continues through the whole, you know, Palestine and it's belonged to the British and then this happened and that happened.

[21:47]

It's a very scholarly book. It's very well-researched. It's written by a Palestinian scholar. And I just chimed in that I thought it was an excellent book, that it's well-researched. It didn't go on and on, but I thought it was a really helpful book. So, and this is... what happened has happened to me many times, which is somebody, a man, in capital letters, lies, lies, lies. Do your research, Karen Sondheim. Now, I've been through this over and over, that there's only one side of the story. So that interaction really upset me.

[22:52]

I felt my whole body clenching. And I felt, how is this situation ever going to be solved? Or maybe so many of the wars in this world have been going on for centuries. And this levels to families, family feuds to go on for centuries. Even my family has arguments to go back several generations. So how do we put an end to this cycle? The karmic cycle of revenge and blame. I mean, this guy telling me lies, lies, lies, it just felt like more blame, you know.

[24:01]

You couldn't possibly have any idea of what really happened. So, the karmic cycle. One way is through our thoughts, which is the basis of zazen, meditation practice. We first receive instruction, and it's basically very simple. Keep your attention on the breath, and when thoughts arise, let it go, come back to the breath. That's most of it. But that sounds simple, but it's not easy, because our thoughts are so compelling. we may have some angry thought arise, like this guy.

[25:13]

That stayed with me for a while. So I had angry thoughts going on and on and on about that. So I had to let it go and not paint this person as a bigot, whatever. I had him painted as a certain type. I have to let go of that idea. Plus, you know, having been raised in a Jewish community that was their Israel, And they connected the Holocaust and Israel, which they're still doing.

[26:17]

But I understand this person who yelled lies, lies, lies. This is not familial, tribal. So how do you hold both of those things? So we practice letting go of thoughts. Thoughts powered by emotions. So I had to really work with my anger towards this person. Coming back to the breath, And remembering the precept, I vow not to harbor ill will.

[27:20]

Letting go of anger, you know, karmic thoughts are habitual. That's the nature of karma, it's habit. And in zazen, we're letting go of habit. We learn to live by vow instead of living by karma. When we say, well, I did this, but I couldn't control myself, that's living by karma. So we choose to live by our vow. And people work with precepts in different ways. Often it has to do with how long they've been practicing, but often when people first hear the precepts, it sounds literal. Do not kill.

[28:33]

It is hard to have a literal understanding because it's simple to say that, But killing is not a simple thing. I agree that we shouldn't murder another human. But should we kill mosquitoes? Should we eat plants? Aren't they living? Then there's another level, which is the contextualization. which I think of often as the skillful means level of understanding the precepts. We don't want to harm people, but don't we have to sometimes? It's not absolute. For example, you know, if someone...

[29:39]

comes into your workplace with a gun and clearly intends to shoot everybody, and the gun is in your workplace, would you shoot the shooter rather than let the shooter kill everyone else? I don't know. But, you know, that's a question. It's all a matter of what's skillful. And then the third understanding is realizing that all are Buddha. Everything in life is Buddha. Each of us in this room, all the people outside the room, the plants, the animals, rocks, teacups.

[30:49]

How do we treat everything? It's the understanding that we're all connected and we're not separate beings. We depend on the clouds, the insects. All these things are part of the living world. Speaking of mosquitoes, mosquitoes contribute to plant diversity by pollinating some orchids and other wildflowers. Mosquitoes are a major food source for birds like swallows and bats, dragonflies, frogs, fish. Many wetlands would be significantly disrupted without mosquitoes.

[31:55]

So through meditation and the practice of letting go, we change our... to the world that we share with all. Harming other beings harms oneself. Slandering others separates us, creating even of a sense of safety and belonging. So the precepts are not a thing. It's not a house that could fall down. It's not just words to cling to. It's not a way to be sanctimonious or feel superior or inferior. You don't have to be perfect.

[33:06]

In fact, is perfect because perfect is just an idea, a figment of the imagination. The precepts are Buddha just like you are Buddha. Buddha and the precepts allow us to practice as Buddha. Someone said recently, we take our vows not to become Buddhists, but we take the vows to become Buddha. Buddha is the entire world. We vow over and over again regardless of results. And I'd like to close by just saying for a minute about Avalokiteshvara.

[34:10]

Avalokiteshvara is one of the most important figures in Buddhism, besides Buddha. Avalokiteshvara is known, sometimes she's female, sometimes he's male, They are they. So, Avalokiteshvara has made a vow to hear the cries of all who suffer. For kalpas, and kalpas is an inconceivable amount of time over and over hearing the cries of... And there's a story about her where she made a vow to come to the aid of all suffering beings.

[35:25]

And she did this and her head burst. There was just so much that her head burst into... thousands of pieces. But Abhi Thaba Buddha came to her rescue, came to help, and put all the pieces back together to give her 11 heads so she could continue carrying out her vow. And as many of you know, There are many images of her, but some of them have a thousand arms. And each hand has an eye in it in order to see all the beings in the world. She's been doing this since time immemorial.

[36:34]

And that encourages me to continue leaning on vow. That vow is never ending. I think I'll stop there. See if there are any comments, questions, Peter, wait for the microphone. Could you put it on gallery, please? Hi. I have a big question for what my question is throughout this entire lecture. And in the end, you provided me an answer to the question.

[37:39]

So, if we vow practices by vow, isn't that also a form of karma? Could you say something more about that? Well, there's... Karma is not all bad. At all. Karma... it's better to really think of it as wholesome and unwholesome. So, slandering someone may be unwholesome. Karma is wholesome. Part of our vow to save all beings or awaken with all beings is to help them to do good deeds.

[38:47]

And yes, that is karma, because karma has a lot to do with intention. Sometimes it's not easy to tell what's wholesome and what's not wholesome in certain situations, and intention is an important factor. Vow is our aspiration to do what is good. Does that answer any of your questions, Peter? Colleen? Thank you for your talk. I want to go back to this moment of this person who came at you with all that. judgment and one viewness. You know, you started towards what I wanted to hear, which was more about how you worked with what came up for you with that reaction and your own reactivity.

[40:01]

And you said, so you talked about the emotions that it brought up in you. And then you talked about returning to your vow, not to harbor ill will. Can you just say a little bit more? Because, you know, you can return to the vow and that's all still there. Or, you know, can you just say a little bit more? Because I feel like if we could all get a little... Think about how much more peace would be moving around in the world if we could all learn a little bit more how to hold those both, like the feelings that you very... appropriately had when you were attacked by this person, but then returning to your vow and returning to just not being knocked off your center by that. So I don't know if there's more you can say, but I would love to hear it. Well, I went around fuming for a while, and then I have to let go that harboring

[41:12]

negative feelings and anger is not going to help the situation. ...of our practice is letting go. Hozan Roshi once said, we don't come here to get something, for example, peace. or a mind without anger. We don't think we come here to let go of something. So that's our practice, is letting go. I have had this inner conflict partly because of my heritage between very opinionated people on both sides.

[42:16]

And so I have to hope for happiness for everyone because everyone is Buddha. And we take these vows over and over again because our karma comes up over and over again. So that was not the last time that this is going to happen to me. You know? Somebody's going to get angry about something I say, probably on the same subject, again and again, and then I vow again and again, just like Avalokiteshvara, endless vow. Basically, what we can do, we... Unfortunately, we can't fix it forever because karma goes on and we don't even know half, a speck of what's really going on.

[43:26]

But it's not a cure. Anna, Anna, Anya. Sorry. Thank you, Karen. This talk, I've read the book written by a Japanese monk, and he wrote one page about one episode of Buddha. When he was having a lecture, one person came to him, and he started to criticize Buddha. on and on. So he was listening. When this person's talk finished, he said, okay, I'm not going to take this because this has nothing to do with me.

[44:45]

This is yours. You have to deal with it. Please go home. I love this. Because there's something come to you and then you get anger, of course. They stick to this kind of experience too. But in thinking about it, that is attacking you by yourself. So we have to be responsible for emotion. This person has to be his. We don't have to take his problem. And I just thought this would help. Just thinking about it, whoever the person is, angry at you, but your anger is yours.

[45:47]

Maybe that might help. It does help, I think. I mean, that's his karma, his anger. So that we don't have to have a bad karma to stop not taking it. Thank you. There are a number of hands up. Who? Oh, excuse me. Is there anyone online? Yes, there is. Heather Serrantis. Hi, Heather. Your voice isn't very loud. Can people hear, Heather? Oh. Very perceptive, Karen. At least I still have my hearing. Thank you for your wonderful talk. This is maybe a follow-up to what was just... The other side that I work with on, so harboring ill will is my ultimate precept that I work with.

[47:02]

And I think so much these days about how much harm it does me to harbor the ill will. So Anya just told a story of, you know, sort of give it back if it's not yours, which is a service to both people. The greatest harm in my life has been not letting go. And I can't tell you how many times I've waited for an apology or waited for Somebody else to release me from that cycle. Sometimes I don't even remember, you know. There's such a physiological aspect of health and well-being that's disrupted by well.

[48:09]

And I just wonder if you have any thoughts or encouragement in that realm. Well, I understand. That's a very good example. When I've had long-standing problems, anger issues with somebody, I finally just can't stand the discomfort. And I... Having to forgive them, or at least let go of the anger, and often I just do it in my mind, a kind of forgiveness practice. Letting go, practice, you know, going around in our daily lives, venting about things.

[49:15]

is not healthy. I'd let go of something the other day. It actually had to do with slander. I was thinking about a conversation I had where I had a lot of preconceived ideas about someone and I was slandering them even before we talked. before we talked, I remembered, I vow not to slander. We had this amazing conversation. I was so grateful. This person spoke so beautifully. And I personally felt liberated. I mean, this practice is about liberation. And I think it's moment by moment.

[50:23]

Harboring ill will causes a lot of pain. Particularly for the person harboring it. The other person might not even know that you're angry, might not remember the conversation, hasn't thought about it in years. And here you are. That's all I can say at the moment. I hope that helps. Yes. Thank you. What's your name? Tony. Thank you for your very moving talk. Your talk almost had to move out of the room. I was feeling a little overwhelmed. And I needed to know, thank you for the teaching that Avalu Kiteshvara has a back story. She, they, them, was so overwhelmed with the cries of the world that her head had to explode in a way.

[51:29]

And then another very powerful Buddha, Amitabha, I think you mentioned, like sunlight came and put her back together. And that's how she becomes Avalokiteshvara. And now we have her up on the pedestal altar, right? I needed to hear that because I have a very close loved one that's... And I can't sleep over it because I have a part in that. And at least last night, I had a really hard time sleeping, which brings up concentration camp. You know, some of us know in this room, Bernie Glassman used to hold meditation retreats at Auschwitz, these camps, these very intense places of human misery. And you helped me reframe a little bit of that for my own self. Like, the word concentration in camp. Like they went and sat and concentrated like Avalokiteshvara and tried to hold their heads together. And I'm thinking about a bird's nest.

[52:30]

Like that's a kind of, the mama bird is tweeting and keeping her babies safe. It's like a camp and she's concentrating on their survival. It happens to be my daughter who's going through some things. So that's very helpful. And that was gonna be my question Do you think a bird's nest is a concentration camp? And I want to say when I felt like I was so overwhelmed by the subject of your talk and the sangha, the energy of the sangha in this room, that I felt like this is a positive concentration camp. And I need to hold my chair and stay there and not explode and grow. So thank you so much for your talk and for this sangha being here. I had thought about signing up for one of those retreats at Auschwitz, but I didn't think I could bear it. Somebody back in that corner.

[53:37]

Jeremiah? Hi. Thank you for your talk. And, um... Uh... I want to say that, you know, I've been coming here for five years and trying to, you know, let go of things. You know, ten years ago I started working in a place where, you know, inside a prison and thinking of it as like every day when I go to work I'm walking into a battle of imaginations. You know, like that door's there because someone... Yeah. And all these ways that we're trying to relate to each other as staff or to relate to people who are incarcerated, like these are ideas.

[54:40]

You know, and there's no agreement. It's a battle of ideas. you know, structuring people's everyday conditions. And, you know, like I was engaged in the battle because I've like always been in a battle. And coming here and trying to let go of that is like really difficult because sometimes I feel like, okay, I can let go. but they're not going to. And, you know, I feel like I have to let go, you know, before my head explodes, not because I want to. I mean, I don't want to be against anything anymore. But it just, it's hard to let go way of thinking and thinking that like, if I leave this place because I can't take it anymore,

[55:54]

I think of that as the old me that's a failure. It's a failure of witnessing. Being able to have the capacity to just witness what at least is happening. So this practice is very helpful to me, and I'm getting ready just to let go of this facility. And I'm not sure I'm doing the right thing. Remember that you have to do good for yourself also. You aren't any less of a Buddha than all the people who are in prayer. You're all Buddhas, and at some point, for your own well-being, you might have to move on to something else.

[56:58]

This brings me back to our vows. Like I was told, lean on your vow. You carry your vow everywhere. If you have to leave this job, You still continue your vow of all beings to do good. It's a good question. people's karma is involved in the situation you're describing that you can't fix it all. And I think fixing some illusion in that because it means it's kind of the illusion I had about ending all wars

[58:18]

But we chant here to end all wars, which is a good thing, because that's our intention, to end wars. We might not be, but then I go back to Avalokiteshvara, who never stops. It's probably time to end, isn't it? Thank you all for your probing and inspiring questions. I know there's so much more to talk about, but thank you so much.

[59:07]

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