Good morning, everybody. I would like to introduce today's speaker, Karen Sondheim. Karen has been practicing at the Berkeley Zen Center over three decades. And to my not so humble view, expresses the essence of our practice here, which is having a very, very busy life in the world as a librarian at San Francisco Public Library. Nancy Su, who is a co-head chitin here, and in the midst of all of her busy activities, she still finds time to teach classes here. She was Shuso, our head student, a number of years ago, and she was given a green rakasu by Sojin Roshi as an example of her lay entrustment essence, which is teaching the Dharma to all of us. She comes from Philadelphia and is an East Coast Jew like myself. A plaza for her expression.

[01:04]

And yet, she's been in California long enough to have softened some of that. It's a blend of the two coasts right here in Little Way, in our temple. So thank you, Karen. Thank you, Ross. Today I thought I would talk about our three treasures. As some of you may know, our three treasures are Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. And I wanted to talk about something I feel very passionate about that I find moving to me. Because I've been thinking lately that I've been looking at what about our practice is comforting or consoling. So every day we take refuge in Buddha and Dharma and Sangha.

[02:15]

So for those of you who might be a little new, in a literal sense, Buddha is our teacher. Buddha was a human being, just like us, who realized enlightenment. And Dharma is his teaching, the truth of his teaching. And Sangha is us, the practitioners, the people who walk this path. And I'm finding As Ross said, I have been practicing for many, many years, practicing Zazen, and my practice as a young person, I came here when I was 21, and I'm going to be 55 in a few weeks, so my practice has changed over the years as to what feels important Buddha was very clear in what his teaching was.

[03:25]

He said, I teach one thing and one thing only, the cause and the end of suffering. And he gave us a path, the eightfold path, so that we could all realize this ourselves. And one part of the path was meditation, zazen. So we really work with our minds. So this is really different from some Judeo-Christian religions. We're not looking to be saved or really looking for salvation, but we're working with our minds as they are right now in this moment. When I was a younger person, I thought that the end of suffering meant not having attachments. And we still talk about not having attachments, but I find as I get older my attachments grow deeper and deeper. And I think that's a good thing.

[04:30]

It's being more engaged with the world and with other people than I was able to be when I was a younger person. But it also means that I find myself seeking comfort more from our practice. So the first refuge is, I take refuge in Buddha. And so as I said, we say this every day at the end of Sashin, every night. And the way we say it is the way I particularly enjoy it, which is, I take refuge in Buddha. May all living beings embody the great way, resolving to awaken." So Buddha was a living person and we get inspiration from his life.

[05:34]

I remember my very first interest in Buddhism was sparked when I was seven years old. came from a family background where anger was kind of the default emotion. There was a lot of drinking and a lot of rage. So I really grew up having to cope with fear on a kind of moment by moment basis. I didn't know what was coming around the next corner. So When I was seven years old, we went to the World's Fair in New York City. I think that must have been 1962 or something. And I had never been exposed to anything Asian. So at that time, I remember going to the Japanese pavilion, which I think was mostly a restaurant. But they had these Buddha statues there.

[06:38]

And I felt a very strong connection and yearning and that was the first moment where I thought something else was possible. That it was possible to be at peace. And so eventually I came here. I had kind of intermittent experiences trying to meditate as a teen and finding it impossible. much too difficult at the time but I came here and I practiced sitting zazen and I practiced working with my breath and coming back to the breath over and over again and I began to feel little bits of little bits of Buddha kind of taking seed.

[07:44]

But when we take refuge in Buddha, what we're really saying is that, that is me. I am able to awaken as a person right now, no matter what I'm feeling is possible. Now last week here, last Sunday, we had a Beginner's Sashim. And so most of the people here had not, who came, there were about 15 people, they had very open minds, and asked some really interesting questions. And one question that somebody asked was, how do I know when I've woken up? And I thought, I've never heard that question before but it was so genuine and so sincere and I didn't want to explain that because you can never explain what that is but I basically said at the time, you'll know it.

[08:55]

But I thought about her question since then and of course You can answer the question in a certain way and say, well, there is no you to wake up. That was one of the Buddhist teachings, that we don't have a solid self. So there's really no I to grasp on to that sensation of, oh yes, I've now woken up. But I didn't think that that was really so helpful to say that. I think it's the most important is that every time we return to our breath, that that is waking up in that moment. It might only be a nanosecond. You might not even realize it. Probably it may go by so fast and we're on to the next train of thought that we don't think that we ever have, but we have.

[10:02]

Dogen talked about practice as enlightenment. Dogen was the 13th century Soto Zen founder in Japan. A lot of our practice is based on his teachings. But really this, he really taught that you can't separate practice from enlightenment. That really, when we're sitting with ourselves, no matter what the sensation is, whether we like it or don't like it, whether we'd like to be somewhere else, whether we're feeling something we don't want to feel, in that moment, returning to the breath for just A brief second is an awakening.

[11:09]

I remember when I was... I went through a period where I sat some long retreats and I experienced panic attacks frequently during long periods of meditation because there would be gaps between thoughts. And I found that returning to the breath, those spaces that might have started with nanoseconds became wider and wider. And my response to that for a period of time was fear. That spaciousness was very uncomfortable to be in.

[12:18]

And I must say it probably took six or seven years of working with that to realize that I wasn't going to go crazy. That was actually what I feared. I want to read just quickly a couple of verses from a poem that was written by our third ancestor in what I believe was the 7th century about working with the mind. This poem is actually called Faith in Mind or Trust in Mind. So the first I'm just going to read one verse, but two translations of the verse. So this translation says, it's not difficult to discover your Buddha mind, but just don't try to search for it.

[13:21]

Cease accepting and rejecting possible places where you think it can be found and it will appear before you. And one other translation is, The perfect way knows no difficulties except that it refuses to make preference. When only freed from love and hate, it reveals itself fully and without disguise. So faith in Buddhist practice is different. We're not really having faith about how the future is going to turn out, but it's more about having faith in the present moment.

[14:29]

So the second treasure is taking refuge in Dharma. And the way we say it is, may all living beings deeply enter the sutras, wisdom like an ocean. So Dharma is the teachings of the Buddha. But when we talk about taking refuge in Dharma, we're not talking about intellectual understanding. The word is entering. So we're understanding with our guts, not our intellect. So we're observing the truth as it manifests inside of us. So Buddha taught about three truths. Truth of impermanence, that things arise and they pass away and that nothing stays the same.

[15:40]

The truth of suffering, that as human beings we are our nature really is to suffer to want things to stay the same or to want things to change usually involves a dissatisfaction with what we have right now and then the truth of not having a self so What I like about this is the description of wisdom being like an ocean. Because the ocean contains everything. And it doesn't have a particular form. It takes the form of the land around it and the bottom of the sea. And taking refuge in Sangha.

[16:50]

Sangha is really us. And we do this all the time, the way we bow to each other. Our awareness that we are actually, that our practice is dependent on each other. That we're not on a private road to enlightenment. At the end of Dogen's life, he practiced the refuges. On his last day of life, he practiced just the three treasures. I'd like to ask if there are any questions at this point or comments. Why should you be free from love and what are the three treasures?

[17:55]

What was the first question? Why should we be free from love? No, we're not free from love. Actually, I think what I said very early on was that my attachments are deeper and that that's a good thing. The three treasures are Buddha, Dharma and Sangha and In a literal sense, Buddha was the original teacher, a human being who lived many years ago and who realized enlightenment. But really for us, it's practicing as Buddha ourselves. Dharma is the second treasure, which is the teaching, what the Buddha actually taught. And then Sangha is the community, the community of followers initially, but really it's our congregation here and it's also really in the world.

[19:03]

I mean, I as a lay person, as Ross mentioned, practice out in the world. I have a very consuming job. For me, the Sangha is really everyone. Everyone I encounter is Sangha. Susan? I was really interested when you talked about how as you sat you got longer gaps between thoughts and that was fearful for you at one point. How did you get from it being fearful to not being fearful? Well, do you want to know the real story? As I said, I was doing some Vipassana retreats and in Vipassana practice it's a bit different from Zen because you really just sit all day long.

[20:08]

You don't do a lot of jobs and dishwashing and cleaning and cooking and serving and all those kinds of things. You really pretty much sit from very early in the morning to late at night. So, there would be... I would notice that the gaps got wider and wider in between thoughts. And... How did you notice that? How did I have a thought? You know, when the thought came, the thought was, oh, it's been a long time since I had a thought. Well, a long time is probably not a long time. I'm not talking hours. I'm talking maybe, you know, a minute or two. But they would start to get wider and wider. And at first, I started to panic at a certain point because it seemed that the thoughts stopped of themselves.

[21:18]

wanted to generate them because they were protective. They felt like a usual way that my mind operates. But they wouldn't get started. And I got afraid that I couldn't think. That I would never think again. And that I might walk across the street in front of a truck because I had lost my brain. I really confused thinking with other things that the brain does. So, I started to have all these fears about what was going to happen to me if I stopped thinking. And here, Dogen says over and over again, think non-thinking. I thought it was dangerous. However, it did happen at a certain point that thinking stopped and I started to panic. So at this time I was doing a retreat with Jack Kornfield and I actually went to him and told him that I was really afraid I was going to lose my mind and what was I going to do about it.

[22:34]

And he swore, he promised he would take full responsibility for losing his mind. And that it was not going to happen. And since he was a psychologist at one point, you know, I thought, maybe, you know, he's taken a few courses, he probably can identify mental instability. So, I actually decided to believe him, that I wasn't going to lose my mind. And actually, it came back. First of all, the thoughts came back, the kind of neurotic kind of thinking. But, I was completely able to do whatever I needed to do. that thinking about things I realized wasn't as necessary as I thought. You know, I was still able to follow directions. I could still have a reasonable conversation with someone. Does that answer your question?

[23:38]

Yeah, that helps. It's some reassurance that it was really okay. Yeah, part of why I brought this poem called Trust in Mind is because that is literally what the issue was. Trust in Mind. And really, it's about trusting that we have Buddha Mind. Originally, I mean, before you make your comments and leave comments, I wanted to ask you what it means. You said something about, I can't remember your exact words, and I wish I could. You made a free statement about we should sit as Buddha or something. And I have no idea what that means. And I would like you to maybe elaborate a little bit. But about the business about fear, that you would have no thoughts, it seems to me that itself is a thought.

[24:40]

Yes. Well, by the time I was thinking about having no thought, I was definitely thinking. But the point is that I realized that I had experienced non-thinking, and I had a love-hate relationship with that. I realized it was very significant, but I also realized that it scared me to death. So that was thinking. I'm thinking thoughts about the fear of non-thinking. So yes. But at the instant you were non-thinking you weren't having fear? No. It was an after effect. What did you mean when you said you were supposed to sit as Buddha? Well we're really sitting the same way the Buddha sat back when he sat under that Bodhi tree for seven days.

[25:45]

I had no idea. He was battling demons. He had visits by Mara. Mara represents all those things that trouble us. Threats, desires, distractions. So really our practice is not any different. Maybe the word Buddha sounds idealistic and big and almost like mythological. But really it's very mundane. So us sitting here is really no different. Well, what would be in a mundane example? Instead of saying sitting is Buddha, how could you say it in a mundane word, leaving out the word Buddha? Sit down. Watch your breath. When thoughts arise, let them go and come back to your breath. I don't think he did anything different. Thank you.

[26:46]

You're welcome. with Jake. Thank you for your talk, Karen. You said that more and more you relate to everyone beyond the gate as Sangha. Have you found that people outside the gate relate to you differently now that you relate to them that way? I think they perceive me as someone who's not going to treat them badly, or... You know, what I'm thinking of when you say that is my workplace, because I deal, I work near Civic Center in San Francisco, and I work in the library, which is really probably the biggest homeless shelter in San Francisco. And so we're dealing with people who live in that neighborhood, lots of drug use, all sorts of substance abuse, homeless, poverty, a lot of mental illness.

[27:48]

So, I don't know if I'm having an impact or not, but I do my best to remain engaged with them. Now, librarians are not trained to really work with this population. We were trained to provide reference services, you know, database searching and finding somebody a book. But you know, most of what I deal with, 90% of it is what I just described before. It's really social work. So it involves being respectful, no matter what they need. But of course, at the same time, you have to use a lot of skillful means because people, they also have to uphold standards of behavior. So actually, sometimes I feel like a security guard rather than a bodhisattva.

[28:49]

Not that they can't be the same, but I have to really be very firm a lot of the time. So it's an interesting exploration how to practice kindness and really set the line at the same time and know when to do what. Dean. I'm curious about, and I'm making an assumption here, please correct me if I'm making an incorrect one, but how have you dealt with resentments you've had? You were hired to be a librarian to find books and do research and what you're doing is taking care of people and their problems, so I'm curious about your you know, resentments that have come up over the years and how that's changed, which I'm assuming it has. It's still, it's hard. You know, when I start to talk about a refuge, it makes me think of different kinds of refuge.

[29:57]

A lot of people think that librarians, their whole life is a refuge because you're behind. You know, you're working with books and you're kind of quiet and all that. And I have to say, when I started out, I really thought a library would be a refuge. And it really isn't. And one specific point, you know, I manage the Cormel Gay and Lesbian Center, which is a whole research center of San Francisco Public Library, and we have a room there. And the room was unstaffed for years. And what it really became was a homeless shelter. There's a bunch of research books in there, but essentially it became a shelter. And my predecessor just couldn't bear to go in there. It was so painful. But I've decided that I'm going to go in there and make it what it is supposed to be.

[30:59]

And so I'm I set up a computer in there and I work in there as much as I can, but I'm always having to push myself to go out there and really face what's in the room. It's very hard. I mean, so you asked about resentments. You know, I feel anger sometimes. There's really hardly anything I can do. There's, you know, legally, the library is a public place. Has the resentment shifted over time? Does it, when you feel it coming up, does it last a little bit less now than it used to? Or have you seen the longer you've practiced that the resentments have changed? Yeah, they have changed. I would say a bit less. Not that it doesn't arise, it arises, but usually I try not to think about it too much and just keep moving along.

[32:12]

Andrea? Karen, thank you for being willing to show yourself today. I hear a couple of paradoxes in what you're presenting and I wanted to ask you about one of them. The line in Trust and Mind I think you're talking about when love and hate are both absent, everything is clear and undisguised. Could you explain your understanding of that and your feeling as you have matured and your life has deepened that your attachments are stronger and it's important that they be so? I want to make sure I understand your question. Making love and hate absent yet saying they're stronger? We are very connected to other people and the older I get, the stronger I feel my connections are to others and the more attached I am to them.

[33:19]

When I was younger, I misunderstood, I think, what detachment was about. We talk a lot about detachment in Buddhism. And it makes it appear as though we don't want to be attached so strongly. but I think it's... there's a very self-oriented kind of attachment and then there's a less of a self attachment. So I would say that through practice I find myself actually less important than I used to.

[34:30]

Go ahead. Were you going to say something? Go ahead. Well, I find that I'm less important. My feelings are strong, but I'm less important. And so, I try to love less selfishly. And when hate comes up, I try to understand the other person. Is that enough for the moment? Yeah, I was going to say, it sounds like what you're saying, that as time has gone, the strength of your compassion and care has really deep and enormously, and so that you come from that place, and so there's great love, there's great feeling behind it, but it's not something that, you're not looking for something, you're not coming out of yourself from that place, it's coming from a wider, less personal place, even though feelings are very much about specific circumstances and individuals.

[35:53]

Yes, and when we talk about the gaps and the spaciousness, There's something about relating to that, learning to relate to that, that's part of the myself becoming less in the forefront. I just wanted to ask Sojin Roshi, would you have a comment about that or anything? You know, where is our freedom within our attachment? That's the point. Because we're always attached to something, and we make a decision of some kind, or we don't make a decision, but we find our freedom within our attachment rather than trying to get rid of attachment. So that whatever situation we enter into, How do we find our freedom within that?

[36:59]

So we turn this off. The attachment of non-attachment. I think Linda had her hand up. Oh yeah, that's true. Every time somebody says something, it adds some wrinkle to what I wanted to say. But first preface is, have you thought of writing a book about your library life? Because just the way that you, or I should say a book, that might be too scary, but a column, or you know, the way you described it in the simplicity of the way you set it forth today about what a librarian is trained for and what it actually is, That could be a really wonderful piece of writing. Sojan actually asked me to write a memoir a few years ago.

[37:59]

That sounds irresistible. That's because he's had to listen to my story. I had to listen to her story. Anyway, there's something really great in those stories, which I've also listened to a few times, and they don't stay the same, but that's not what I raised my hand for. I mean, it is, but I sneaked it in. love and attachment, it's a lot to do with our choosing words that will touch off the right thing in people. The words are really delicate on this matter. I myself prefer to reserve love, the word love, for something that is kind of positive, like awakening or enlightenment, but what I wanted get to finally is that interesting thing that you described about the panic that arose when you actually got free of thinking, which is something we aspire to do in the practice.

[39:12]

And when you explained what was so scary about it, it wasn't quite what I was expecting, so I wanted to add what I was expecting and what I'm scared of. You said it raised the fear that you'd lose your mind. In me, I use all my thinking and all my life's karmic patterns to stave off something that's very, very scary and threatening. And if I stop, then I feel so scared of both what might happen to me and what I might do. Yeah. First of all, I feel not that I would just lose my mind, but that I would do very bad things, and second of all, that I would get destroyed by momentary forces. And I have never mentioned to anybody here, or to anybody, I don't think, this persistent fantasy that I have in the Zendo, which is, I'm sitting here like this, you know, and I have this fantasy, like a recurring dream, that somebody's going to come in the door with a gun and start shooting.

[40:25]

And then I start thinking about, well would I just duck under the ton or would I tackle the person and be a hero or would I, or you know, would I try to, anyway, that's how scared I am. Well I think we're very similar. I mean that's, I just said it in a short sentence, losing my mind, but I think your description, you know, this fear you might do something terrible, I mean that's a kind of mistrust of your own mind and having all these this thinking going on, it's like a shield. But I think it's an illusion. I don't think it's really protecting you. It feels like it is, but I don't think it really is. And I don't think you'd do anything really terrible. Isn't there an idea that you're burning your karmas off while you're sitting still having those kinds of samsaras? Yes.

[41:27]

And you're just sitting still and you're not acting on it when no one else is coming in the door and shooting a gun. So in a way it's, you're waking up inside of that and suffering right there in that moment by letting it pass. Diane had her hand up. I don't know what... Give us about three minutes. Okay. Diane? Just back to your going deeper with your attachments. I'm wondering if you have an experience in that where by doing things more maybe wholeheartedly, there's also this letting go that's available. So, like, when you do something so wholeheartedly, you can also just let it go easier. Do you find that or not really? Yes. I think that When we resist, when we hold back from who we're engaged with or what we're engaged with, there's a certain kind of attachment left because we're left wanting.

[42:36]

We're holding back, but we're also wanting. What you're describing as wholehearted practice or full engagement, I think, leaves us satisfied. Is that what you mean? Ed? Yeah, I wanted to thank you, Karen. That was a wonderful talk. And I also felt a lot of nurturance at the end of Sishin when we take our refuges. Partly because I was glad I made it through another Sishin. But the other part was, I've also been sort of puzzled by it. And I've wondered, why am I taking refuge from? And even though it felt good, I was curious, given the sort of a discussion we've been having, it feels like, is it about trust?

[43:46]

caring for ourselves, but I'm just curious about your thoughts about that. I don't think we're actually taking refuge from anything. I think we're taking refuge within something. For example, taking refuge in Buddha is really accepting this present moment just as it is, and having faith that it's true and that you can do it. The last thing, you know, we don't escape from our lives, yet we also Also my sense is though that when we're taking refuge, we're also trusting the Buddha and all the ancestors and all the practitioners around us.

[45:04]

We're trusting their kindness and compassion and we're letting ourselves, we're opening ourselves to that. So we're trusting our own kindness? Our own? I mean, that's where we start. We have to start with our own kindness. And also know the kindness of others. I think Ross has his... Is it time to stop? It appears so. Okay, well, I'll be respectful of people's time. There's time to talk outside. This is a subject that I must say I've been mulling over and found hard to articulate. And I'm really happy that it sparked some things in people that we can continue talking about it. So thank you for coming.

[46:05]

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