There we go. Thank you. What did you do? Well, there's two buttons. There's mute. This was on mute. Oh, I see, because it said on, so I decided that... Never mind. Never mind. I heard that... that at Eheji, Dido Taikinsan, who is the head of the Soto Shu education project here, he said that for the first year when you're there, if you're asked whether or not you did something you were supposed to do, you could only say yes or no. You don't get to say, well, I would have, but Ralph didn't do da-da-da-da, so then I couldn't, or I broke my leg, so just yes or no. That's really hard. Now, I want to talk about complaining.

[01:03]

I guess it's, you know, you don't get to complain at all, at least not out loud. I guess it helps you to see you're complaining. But first I would really like to chant the Tara chant. I think some of you... know it, maybe a lot of you know it. I'm not so great at carrying a tune, but I'll do it. I mean, it just started. Whoever knows it, please, please join in. And then as you hear it, you can join it. It's very, very simple. Tara is a female manifestation of a Buddha, and it's a nice image to evoke. And also I've been thinking, about Meili and her second teacher was Maureen Stewart and Maureen Stewart used to begin the day and throughout the day at various points there would be chanting in the zendo and evokes great energy.

[02:08]

She didn't chant a women's chant but the same idea. So here goes. OM TARE TU TARE TU RE SVAHA [...] OM TARE TU TARE TU Om Tare Tuttare Ture Svaha Om Tare Tuttare Ture Svaha OM TARE TUT TARE TURE SVAHA OM TARE TUT TARE TURE SVAHA OM TARE TUT TARE TURE SVAHA

[03:22]

Om Tare Tu Tare Tu Re Svaha [...] Om Tare Tu Tare Tu She's here. Of course, she always was. The other thing I want to let you know is that at noon service, we're going to chant a list of female ancestors, which is a work in process.

[04:30]

It's not one that I think it makes sense to suggest that the Sangha chant yet in any regular kind of a way, but there's a lot of research being done about finding Zen Ancestors. So this includes some of the Acharyas that we often chant here in the morning, but it also includes Chinese and Japanese and Western Zen Ancestors. And this list is something that, you know who Sally Tisdale is? At any rate, she's part of the Dharma Reign Sangha in Portland, but she's also an author. She's a wonderful writer. So she sent it to Linda Ruth Cutts and Mel gave some of us a copy. Linda Ruth sent it to Mel. So it was basically a long letter to Linda Ruth. say, talking about the various women that she had found so far and then asking for more input and so on.

[05:43]

And I think she also sent it to, or Linda Ruth sent it to Grace, as Grace has been working on this very hard. So this is, it's very much a work in progress, but I thought we might as well chant what we know and that's in a way what the Acharyas represent. So we'll do that, we'll chant the Makahanya and then there'll be a short, I'm telling you this, there'll be a short transitional part of the echo and then we'll chant these women ancestors and then there'll be a closing part of the echo that will all be written down and given to you and the director and I, we've talked about this. Do not concern yourself. You'll be sitting right there. Right. No, actually I will not be sitting right there. It's all right.

[06:44]

It's really important, I think, to remember about ceremonies that they're not performances and you really want to prepare and do it beautifully and do it well, but it's not, and it's not a performance. So it's with what heart you do it is more important. So I want to talk about complaining. I've thought for years, and some of you probably heard me talk about this, that there is a Dharma talk here somewhere. And what is it about complaining? It's so wondrously addictive and delightful, but it's also so human and so necessary. So what is this? I was thinking about it, I've been thinking about it in lots of different ways, but

[07:48]

The five stages of death and dying, you've heard about Elizabeth Kubler-Ross' work, that there are these five stages and it's usually denial, anger, bargaining, grief and acceptance. And you don't go 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. If you've been around somebody, somebody close to you dies, you know that you go through these kinds of stages too. It's not only the person who's actually dying, it's those who are involved. And so you may go 1, 3, 3, 2, 5, 5, 5, 1, 1, 1, 3, whatever, you know. And the anger stage could be described as complaining, you know, railing against the universe. You know, why my sister? Why does my sister have to die? Why does my mother have to die? Why do I have to die? This is an unacceptable system. And so on, that's the kind of thing that comes up.

[08:53]

It's one of the things, that one sort of thing that comes up. And so this kind of complaining is a very natural process. And it is part of the process of, I think, often it's part of the process of getting to acceptance of whatever it is in our lives. Or complaining about pain in your knees and zazen. You know, sometimes you can simply breathe it out and sit with it and let your legs do painful zazen. But sometimes you have to go through a stage of having a temper tantrum about it. And I think, I don't know if it's Kornfield or somebody, one of the, or Jack Goldstein, one of the big time Vipassana teachers in one of the books, maybe it's in A Path with Heart, I don't know, I haven't read it actually, but somebody in a lecture read about working, a part about working with pain. And that's one of the things he said, I felt so relieved.

[09:55]

that sometimes is my process, that I have to have a temper tantrum, maybe about pain or simply about Sashin, you know, somewhere in the second or third day, I have to fall apart and say to myself, I can't do this, I hate this, it's the stupidest thing I ever did in my life, and so on, you know, and then I can go on. So I don't think that complaining is just bad and don't do it. I think we have to include it. I decided to go ahead and talk about it, finally. I've been talking about talking about it for probably about five years.

[10:58]

Anyway, I was... I don't know. I guess it was on... I don't know. Anyway, recently I was, was I talking to you about this? I don't remember. Anyway, I just remember complaining about talking about Palestine. I was thinking about what am I going to lecture about in Vallejo on Saturday and feeling like I have to talk about what is just shredding my heart. but also really resenting it. I gave that lecture. I've given that lecture more than once. I gave that lecture about Bosnia. I have given that lecture about Palestine. I have given that lecture. I don't know what else to say. And I said it already. People are going to get bored or they're going to resent it.

[12:00]

They're going to resent being made to feel sad in this beautiful, amazing weather that we're having and this exuberant time of year. How could you talk about death and dying and bodies rotting in the streets? And I noticed myself complain, that I was complaining about it. And I thought, I can talk about complaining about it. And about complaining. And how human it is. And then the third kind of strand here is this book. I went to a reading that Norman Fisher did of his new book. It's called Opening to You, Zen-inspired translations of the Psalms. I don't know if any of you are familiar with it. I'm not, I wasn't raised in the Judeo-Christian tradition at all and so I'm not very familiar, I'm not familiar really at all with the Psalms.

[13:12]

You know, I guess what is it, 23rd Psalm, the Lord is my shepherd, I mean maybe that one but that's probably about it. And I've read some of them and they're quite They're quite interesting. But what I want to bring out right now is what Norman said initially inspired him. He said, as a kid, he recited them, but it was in Hebrew, so he didn't really know what they meant. And then he went to a Buddhist-Christian dialogue a few years ago at Gethsemane Monastery in Kentucky, where Thomas Merton was. the monks there invited the other people to go to services with them, to attend the, you know, they do, they call it offices and they do really, really early in the morning and then every few hours and what one of the major things that they do then is recite the Psalms. So he heard it

[14:13]

in English, and of course there was some lovely, wonderful language. However, what really got his attention was this kind of language. Let burning coals fall upon them, let them be cast into the fire, into deep pits, that they rise not up again. And there's many passages like that. So that's complaining. And what is that? And he's, he worked with it and he, you could see there was a little impulse to kind of soften it or explain it, but he tried very hard not to go too far down that road. I mean, for example, he translated sinner as heedless ones.

[15:15]

Which is actually, I think, kind of wonderful. And he translated God, usually, as you. So that opening to you. Because you is a word that always connotes a relationship. You know, he or she or they or whatever. You could be kind of, you don't have to be involved. But when there's a you, that's you and me. That's us. So that was the word that he used. I haven't read them all, so I think he uses God sometimes, but mostly he uses the word you, because it's quite ambiguous. But he tried not to just deny that this kind of language is in there, this crush my enemies. smite those who have harmed me."

[16:18]

And I asked him about it at the reading last Wednesday because I think this making other is, well I know this, right, this is the second noble truth, this is at the heart of our difficulties, both our smaller individual difficulties and worldwide difficulties, this separating oneself and putting a label on our experience. And we have to do that in order to live. it hurts, and when we really get entangled in it and believe in it, and believe that there really is a separation, that's when great difficulties arise. And I don't think that, I mean, Buddhists don't have some corner on virtue. We have plenty of difficult history, and Zen has plenty of difficult history.

[17:24]

There's a book called Zen at War, for example. But I wondered about this language in the Psalms, sort of like, were people who glorify the Psalms somehow glorifying this kind of attitude, or endorsing it in some way? And he said that that's exactly what he asked at the monastery. And that he got a lot of different answers, none of which were completely satisfying. And that's part of what really motivated him to go into this study. And then he said, you know, it's still, it is a question. He never came to some resolution that kind of made it go away or made it okay. It's not okay. But what's the point?

[18:28]

With these people at Gethsemane and lots of Christians and Hebrews, people who, Jews around the world, who study, read the Psalms, there's lots of people that are very good-hearted and sincere practitioners, and they're not doing this in order to get somebody or harm somebody. So what is this? What's the point of this? This very human complaining. And I think that's part of the point. That it's very human. And if we deny that part of ourselves, I think we deny it at our peril. that we have to include it. It's complaining.

[19:35]

It's maybe kind of almost hardwired into us. It's also true that it is the Dharma. Everything is the Dharma and so complaining has to be the Dharma too. It's not like the Dharma is just sweetness and light or just the emptiness side. It's not simply this universal truth that we're all connected and everything changes and nothing has substantial self and everything is equal and so nothing really matters. Well, that's nice. And that's true. That is completely true. However, there is also the relative world, the samsaric world, sometimes called the Saha world, this world where this altar actually feels quite solid, right?

[20:43]

And that's where we live. And they're not two and one is not better than the other. I think that's a major teaching of Dogon which is otherwise known as get over it. So we think that liberation is something really special and separate from our day-to-day experience, separate from complaining, but it's not. Complaining sometimes can be useful. It shows us ourselves. I suppose you could say that about this language in the Psalms, that shows us that part of ourselves. And I think that was one of the responses that Norman got, that there is this bitterness and anger in human experience. There is this desire to lash out at those who've hurt us.

[21:47]

we are like this. It's also true sometimes we, if we can let ourselves complain, I'm not talking about acting it out, by the way. I think in a way I'm talking exactly about allowing it to arise inside yourself so that you don't have to act it out. So, at any rate, if you can let it arise organically, So I'm not talking about telling yourself a story, and you know in your body the difference. One does. And if you can let that tape run organically on its own, often at the end of it you really learn something about yourself. One of my major complaint tapes is about, I am a younger sibling. And I will always be a younger sibling. Even if my sister dies, I'm still going to be a younger sibling. And I have younger sibling stuff.

[22:52]

I have the stuff of kind of not enough and what about me? And when I am in some difficult place and I find myself complaining, if I can be quiet and simply let that tape run, There it is, at the end of it. Something like, you know, what about me? When am I going to get my share? Something like that. You know, very basic, childish stuff. but also completely human. There's nothing, I told my analyst years ago, I would get down to some sort of bedrock thing that was going on, and it was always a cliche. And I said to her, could I do something more interesting? But she looked at me and she said, well, there's a reason why there are cliches. And when we can get to that, and I'm not talking about everybody should go into analysis, but just when you can allow yourself to be who you are, you find out you're not very special, you're just another human being.

[24:10]

And so I think that complaining, allowing that humanity is in there, needs to be included. And I want to talk about it from this perspective, but I want to just in case also say that complaining is addictive and very seductive, and it's easy to kind of wallow in it, and that's not useful. And our effort is to let it come up and then let it go. But you know this. So I'm talking about today another side. So I'm not going to go on and on about that. I'm not giving that talk today. I think complaining too sometimes is an escape valve.

[25:10]

You know, like on a pressure cooker. Is there anybody here who does not know how a pressure cooker works? I think people don't use them so much anymore. Okay, well, if the pressure builds up too much, there's a little escape nozzle thing on the top that's held in place with a gasket, a rubber gasket, and if it really gets too much, then the gasket blows and all the pressure releases very quickly. It happened at Tassajara once. This is a complete digression, but I love this story. It was during Tangario, five days where the people that are new sit as a way of entering, leaving one life and entering another. They just sit for five days with just a half hour break after meals and no bells, no nothing. They're just sitting and most usually the other people there are working during the day more. So they're not in the Zen Do all that much.

[26:12]

So maybe the third day of Tongariro and the people are up there completely quiet and in their own pressure cooker, I think. Well, somebody in the kitchen in a big, big, huge pressure cooker, like, you know, three or four gallons, maybe five gallon pressure cooker, was making, cooking soybeans. And the pressure had built up and something, some problem was there. And those, there's these big stoves, you know, and they have a huge hood over them, big metal hood that sticks out pretty far, well over the tops of the burners. Well, the pressure blew and all these soybeans shot up and hit that hood. It sounded like a machine gun. So that's my image of pressure blowing. I think I went up and told them because it actually sounded kind of scary.

[27:15]

If you knew what happened, it was funny, but it really did sound like a machine gun. That's what happens. And we need it sometimes so that we need to be able to complain so that we don't inflict whatever on other people. I have a relevant example which is a good friend of mine. I experience as kind of difficult person that nobody here, you don't know this person, kind of explodes like thunder. The thing is that it's also over right away unless you respond immediately. If you react to these explosions, it's like a firecracker.

[28:15]

If you react to that, then you are off to the races with this person and you are fighting and it can escalate and it's not a pretty sight. I have been both places with this person. And I know that if I just can let that blow by, then things are fine and it's easy to get along with this person and work things out. But that's just the way they are and you just have to let it blow. Well, every so often, every six months or so, I get really I just sort of lose it and I get pissed off and I say, not to that person, but to somebody else or to myself, it's kind of like, why do I have to handle this person? Why do I have to deal with this? Why do I have to take my energy and sort of hold myself back and say, wait, just wait, don't react. Why do I have to do this? And then I often think,

[29:18]

Well, people have to handle me too. But I need that. I need that pressure release. Every so often, I just need to do that. And then I can have a relationship with this person. I need to let myself... If I didn't let myself complain, then I probably would... I would really get into a power struggle with this person and we couldn't really have a friendship. or at least it would be most unpleasant. So another piece of complaining there's a woman named Naomi Newman. She's with the Traveling Jewish Theater. And I don't know if she still does this, but there's a monologue that she used to do at any rate called Snake Woman, or One Woman Show, really.

[30:23]

And she had different characters that she would do. And one of them was kind of a Jewish matriarch. And she would, the scene would open and she would be sitting there shelling peas or doing something. And she'd kind of put it aside and she'd say, First, you complain. Oy, what they did to women in the Bible. And she'd gone, and I don't know enough about it to say, but she had this, she had a litany. And then, you get to work. And you start digging, and you dig a little here, and you dig a little there, and then there's, you find a rock, and you sort of dig around, and you fall down, get up. One word, fall down, get up. And then you keep digging, and you work, and so on, and then, you know, something good happens. So, I just really appreciate that image.

[31:27]

One, first you complain, then you get to work, and fall down, get up. And I think it's okay to have a little other round of complaining when you fall down as long as you also get up. And my experience of This is my personal experience, but I don't think that this is at all unusual. My personal experience in terms of Palestine and Israel is that complaining. For years and years I said, I can't stand it. It feels to me like a family fight, a family feud over land.

[32:28]

And I just feel helpless, and I wish they'd figure it out. And I don't think there's anything I can do, and I just, I wish they'd stop inflicting it on me. And kind of like a plague on both their houses. The hell with them. They're crazy, all of them. And I think that's not quite good enough. But I think that's, I mean, that's just, that was where I was. And I certainly don't have any answers now, but my vow is to get to work. My vow is to dig. My vow is to actually allow myself to feel how much it hurts and to begin to understand the pieces of it to the extent I can.

[33:42]

You know, to Let myself feel how frightening it must be to be an Israeli now. To be afraid to go to a movie or out to a meal or to let your kids go to school. I'm still complaining about people in the settlements. I guess I'm not, it's hard. I could kind of understand how Threatened they must feel. I guess I could have some understanding. I don't approve of it. But I think, I wonder. I wonder. I don't know. I don't think any of us could presume to know what it's really like. But I just wonder.

[34:43]

I've heard that more than half of the Israelis feel clear that they have to get out of the occupied territories and break down the settlements. So that if I were somebody living in a settlement, I would just wonder how much would be guilt, just feeling wrong. And when we feel like we're doing something wrong, when we've hurt somebody, when we feel guilty, a very human reaction is to hate the person that made you feel guilty. You know, if we forget that you're taking care of that feeling guilty yourself, it's very easy to just blame the other person. So I just wonder how much of that is operating. But at any rate, to let myself know that and to stop turning away from it, and to let myself know To the extent I can know what it feels like to be a Palestinian now, to be in your house and you're afraid to open the curtain and look out for fear of getting shot in the head.

[35:57]

Or to have a body lying in your, or a person dying, lying in your house and you can't, they can't get through an ambulance. Or to have your house smashed by bulldozers. There'd be those old women that you've probably seen on TV, this old lady with this wonderful gnarled hand with a key and saying, this is the key to our house, this is our deed. That we were kicked out, we can't, but we want to go back and to remember. You know, for a lot of us, we live in this house, and then we live in that house, and we live in some other house. For, you know, 10 years is a long time for a lot of people in this country, but these are people who are farmers. They have roots in these places that go back centuries, and they are those places. So what must that be like, you know?

[37:02]

And for a lot of Jews, it's also true, you know, in some way they are Palestine, they are Jerusalem. So what does it mean? So this digging, that's practice, right? This digging, this allowing oneself to be present for one's experience, and our experience includes what's going on there. Our experience is not just Berkeley. It includes Berkeley, and it includes the spring, and it includes the birds. But it also includes Palestine. And somehow somebody's going to have to be, or maybe more than one somebody, somebody's going to have to be a hero here and I don't know, I don't see any on the horizon.

[38:09]

I guess in a way I was, I have a closing kind of question down here on these notes, it says, what is liberation? And I was just, you know, it's not like there's some magic here and that's exactly practice, right? You don't, you let go of results. You just sit down and pay attention. and keep coming back even when it's difficult. When your mind wanders or difficult emotion arises, whatever, you just keep coming back to your physical experience, your breath and your body. And if you start crying, fine, but if you start crying and telling yourself a story about the crying, no, just crying. Just crying, no matter how interesting the story is. So I don't know what else to do except to be as present as I can be for what's going on in my world.

[39:26]

allow some appropriate response to arise. I haven't found one, if any, exists yet. I haven't heard of a demonstration that is attractive to me. I don't want to go to a demonstration where Israeli flags get ripped to shreds. So I don't know. But I have tremendous faith in this practice. So I have tremendous faith that an appropriate response will arise. And I think that's liberation, accepting that. So it's a little bit after 11, but we could, and we will have this afternoon, we'll have tea and discussion, but maybe we could take a couple of questions if there's something now or if somebody, Jen?

[40:56]

I'm glad that you finally gave the talk. And I have a question about the full moon ceremony where the doshi says do not permit fault finding. What can you say about that in relation to allowing the complaining to come up even if you don't voice it? Well, I think that it's part of admitting that we're human. It's not something, I mean, that's that other lecture about how addictive it is and so on, or the distinction that I made between allowing something to arise organically and just kind of getting the ego out of the way, and when we're telling ourselves some story in our head, which is, we do it all the time, but it's never useful.

[41:58]

And that fault finding is that, I think is one example of that. Yeah? Regarding women ancestors, I was wondering is there some obligation or some way to disseminate information besides what's going on? Is there some website that we can keep up with? I don't know of a website. I don't know if she has anything on there, if Grace does. I don't know if a copy of Sally Teasdale's letter to Linda Ruth got put with the women's stuff in the library, but it certainly could.

[43:03]

It's not very much detail. You know, there's lots of books and stuff. She has like a bibliography and so on with a letter, most of it you're already familiar with. One of the, Susan Murcott's The First Buddhist Women and so on. But I don't know. We could ask Grace. If there is a website, Grace knows about it. I bet. There are various websites, but I was just wondering as far as Linda Ruth sent this to Mel, and I have it in mind to call her and say, hey, put me on your list or whatever, because she's been working with this for quite a while. Just to make it clear, Mary, the names which we will call following the Japanese Satsutra are of our women ancestors.

[44:10]

Well, they're getting closer. Some of them are Rinzai and some of them are Soto. But they're all women. Oh, yes. They're all women and some of them are, you know, Theravadan, I guess you would say. Acharya type people. But the others are Zen, or at least in that kind of lineage, because there was a while before something coalesced that you would call Zen, but in that neighborhood. And she has in her letter, there's a short bio of each one, but it's like three lines sometimes. Yeah, Catherine, let's make this one the last one. Beings are numberless.

[44:59]

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