I vow to taste the truth of the Tathagata's words. Good morning. Our speaker this morning is Lori Sanaki. She's a practice leader here at Berkeley Zen Center. She doesn't need an introduction for most of you, although you might not know that she's learning to play the accordion. Morning. I wanted to talk today about relationships. I was thinking, what do Zen people believe in? It's hard to say what Zen people believe in exactly. I mean, we're Buddhists, so we can believe in all the things that Buddhists can believe in. In Buddhism you don't have to believe in anything but there's a lot of things you can believe in like taking refuge in the Three Treasures and the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path.

[01:15]

There's many, many things you can believe in. Zen is a meditation school so one of the things we are likely to believe in is the Buddhist teaching that about calming and insight, the power of calming the mind and giving us an ability to see reality more clearly. Well, what do Zen people believe in? And I thought, well, Zen people believe in relationships. We believe in the liberating potential of our encounters with each other. Like when you read Zen literature it's all just these stories of encounters and there's like a little pointer, the thing is called a pointer where it says, look at this amazing liberating encounter and then it tells the story of the encounter and then there's commentary and in the commentary is more stories of more encounters.

[02:23]

So... I was going to read a few things that they say about what these encounters can do or can be like. These are just a few little gems taken from the Zen literature. All people occupy the essential crossing point. Each tower is like a mile-high wall. An encounter can be like a raging fire fanned by the wind, like a rushing torrent crossing a sword edge. One touch of the philosopher's stone turns iron into gold. Encounters render us speechless, completely exposed. Illumination and function are simultaneous. Wrapping up and opening out are equally expressed. Barriers are broken. Hinges are smashed. It's like breaking off one of the black dragon's horns.

[03:36]

It's like cutting a skein of thread when one strand is cut, all are cut. Bring out your own family jewels and respond everywhere, high and low, before and after. Someone may appear and overturn the ocean, kick over the polar mountain, scatter the white clouds with shouts, break up space. Strip off the blinders, unload the baggage. This is the season of great peace. Where you can't open your mouth, a tongueless man can speak. Where you lift your feet without rising, a legless man can walk. It's necessary to have the ruthless ability to snap a wooden pillar in two. So, I kind of wanted to beseech the forbearance of the ancestors because what I really wanted to talk about was our relationships with each other, our ordinary relationships with each other.

[04:42]

Some things I've noticed or what it seems like to me and then it may seem different to you and maybe we can talk about that. So what I've noticed is that it seems like we want to be accepted for who we are, we want to be seen and appreciated and not just, you know, really met and appreciated for who we are. And we also, in a relationship, we would like the other person to change to meet our needs. So, it's like there's already a problem, right? Because we can't offer the other person the thing we want most for ourselves. And the way we ... sometimes the way we get around that is we get involved in right and wrong, good and bad, so it's like you accept me because I'm good and you need to change because you're bad or wrong or something, so it's sort of like that whole dynamic starts the whole ball rolling.

[05:55]

And ... So I just wanted to talk about, I think that we really have to do both. I think that we have to accept each other and appreciate each other for who we are. And I think we also have to be willing to change to meet the other person's needs. And then because it really doesn't work if one person's doing all the accepting and all the changing, you have to also be somebody who is hard to accept. and you have to be willing to ask the other person to change. And I think each of these things has its own kind of middle way. So I just wanted to sort of work my way through this and see where we end up. So what about accepting the other person for who they are

[06:56]

This is sort of like, I was thinking this is baseball season, right? So this is like getting to first base. It's like really hard to get to first base, but still you're only at first base, you know? So, and how do we want it? We want to accept the other person in the way that we want to be. We want to appreciate the other person in the way that we want to be appreciated. So, we want to be, we want to see the other person with Buddha's eye basically. It's what you have to do, see the other person with Buddha's eye which is like a jeweler's eye. Buddha's eye is a jeweler's eye. Buddha sees the jewel of each person. And Buddha sees how each person is not really there but is just a codependent arising of many things coming together at that moment. Again, Buddha doesn't just see that, but Buddha appreciates that. Buddha honors that, reveres that.

[07:59]

So... It's not easy to do that. There's a... Another little slogan, because I think that what makes it hard for us to accept the other person, well it's just hard, it's just hard. It's hard to accept what's happening for what it is, just as what's happening. And so we get involved in sort of the right and wrong thing. Somebody says, when true and false or right and wrong appear, cut them off with a sharp sword and bury them both in one pit. You will not only put an end to a lifetime's unfinished business, you will cause the breeze to be pure throughout the land for a thousand ages.

[09:06]

So it's not only that you end your own There's a Buddhist teacher, Stephen Levine, who I haven't heard anything from in years, but he was around. I don't know what he's doing now, but he once said that to finish your business with another person is to finish the business of relationship as business. So to finish thinking of the relationship as some kind of business transaction where there's gain and loss and all that. So we accept and then I think that the place where the middle way comes in is that so we tend to the inclination the human inclination is to go for you're wrong and I'm right. So then when you hear me say accept the other person you might think okay then they're right and I'm wrong.

[10:12]

You like zoom past the midpoint, oops, zoom right past the midpoint and end up over on the other side where, okay, then they must be, if they're right, then I must be wrong. If I have to accept them, then I must be wrong. So the trick is to not accept them as right or wrong, but just as how they're unfolding right now, how they're coming to be right now, however that is. and try to appreciate, try to bring forth appreciation for that somehow, if you can. So then, so that's getting to first base, maybe. And then, what's this thing about changing to meet the other person's needs? In some ways, that seems like the hardest thing, although I'm not sure it is. What's the problem?

[11:13]

Why not? You have no self, so just change. If the other person wants you to be another way, what about it? Well, it's hard in the first place, but I also think that where I went with this when I was thinking about it Has something to do with well is there anything that you you wouldn't change or is there anything that the person doesn't? Can't ask you to change or or it's not reasonable to ask you to change or something and so where I went with that Is this idea of like each of us having a mission or some missions or a variety of missions at different times that change but so let's say you get to have a mission and And if the person is asking you to change in such a way that it goes against your mission then you have to say no. And I've been thinking about this because I've been talking a lot to my friend and our Dharma sister Annette Herskovitz.

[12:17]

I don't know how many people know her but she has been working for a long time and I would say she's not here today but I have her permission to talk about her. that you could say her mission is to promote peace between Muslims and Jews or between Israelis and Palestinians. And that's a mission that's been given to her by her history, her own experience in her life as an orphan, a Holocaust orphan, and also by her inclination, her feeling of being moved to do that. And it's also been given to her by Muslims and Jews. If Muslims and Jews weren't in conflict, this wouldn't be her mission, right? So she gets her mission from the people who the mission's about. And I think that's true for all of us. Our mission is not, it's like that's where the sort of mixing thing happens.

[13:19]

It's like it's something that comes from inside of us, but it's also something that's given to us by the other people or the other person. So one thing she's been doing lately is showing this movie, this movie about the Paris Mosque where a Muslim mosque sheltered Jewish children during World War II and saved a whole bunch of people, not just children but mostly children, I mean a lot of people. she shows the movie and she wants to show the movie at more and more places to promote a sense that there's a history between Muslims and Jews of cooperation and peace. So she shows the movie and then afterward people come up to her, mostly Muslims and Jews come up to her afterward and they say, thank you very much for your presentation. And then they say,

[14:20]

I want to share my pain with you," because around this very issue they have a lot of pain. So the first one's good with her mission, they're appreciating her for her mission. The second one's good for her mission, she wants to hear people's pain on both sides. But then often they say, and would you take my side? Because I'm right and the other person's wrong. I've suffered and I've been mistreated and the other person's bad. So right away, now they're actually pulling her off of her mission. It's a funny thing, the people who give you your mission can be the same people who are pulling you off of your mission. And they also, even in pulling you off, they're showing you where it is, so they're helping you with that way too. They're showing you where your mission is, so you can feel how they're pulling you off and then you see where it is. You see the edge of it there. So ... but oftentimes the other person doesn't want you to change in a way that does violate your mission, they just want you to ... you know ... be more present or show up more completely or something, so what's the problem?

[15:43]

We can do that. We can respond to the other person wanting us to change. It's really okay. So then what about being somebody who's hard to accept? This seems kind of easy at first glance but actually you have to accept yourself as someone who's hard to accept and that's kind of hard actually. You know, for example, in my situation, I'm married to Alan. He's hard to get along with. I'm easy to get along with, right? Right? Isn't that right? Well, no, unfortunately, it's not true. I'm hard to deal with. I'm a hard person to accept. I do things, inconsiderate things, thoughtless things, stupid things, mean things.

[16:46]

blaming things, so I need to accept myself that he's actually working. To live with me, he's actually working, and I need to accept that, that he's doing that, and appreciate that, and accept myself that I'm someone who's hard to accept. And then what about how we ask the other person to change? How do we do that? I actually, to me this is the hardest one. It's hard to find that middle place where ... I mean it seems like what I tend to do is ... I go to, you know, blame and insist and threaten and bribe and, you know, try to get them to do something different in these various ways or I just clam up completely.

[18:16]

So I think that's kind of like where the middle way is. You resist the urge to get super intense about it and make your case, make an incredible case for why the other person should change in this way and all the good reasons and how you're right and they're wrong. But then if you resist that, the tendency is, well then forget it and just clam up. So, how do we find that midpoint where, you know, this bugs me, so if it doesn't violate your mission or your neurology or something, you know,

[19:20]

I think sometimes, I guess that's the other thing besides your mission that you get to have, is you get to have some neurology, like maybe you just can't. Like if an introvert's married to an extrovert, there's going to be a lot of compromising. It's like the introvert's going to go to more parties than they want to, the extrovert's probably going to go to fewer parties than they want to, and they're probably going to spend some time not together doing the thing that they like to do. so this bugs me so if it doesn't violate your mission and if it fits with your if you can do if you can do it could you please change how do you do that while you're still you know having the jeweler's eye on the person I don't know how we get to the liberating kind of encounters with each other.

[20:47]

But I think we have to finish our business. We have to finish with relationships as business. That's all I had prepared to say and I'd really like to hear how it sounded to you and what you have to say. Thank you. Charlie, then Sue. And how the, you know, the betting average is very bad with this.

[22:01]

Unintended consequences ensue from that sort of policy. And then I brought it down to Buddhism teaches we're going to change anyway, so Yeah, well I'm going to leave aside the regime change because I don't really think that when people do that they haven't done the first two or the first three. So you don't get to the fourth base until you've done the first three, right? You've got to ask people to change because it's honest.

[23:10]

You reveal yourself when you tell them what you want them to do differently. That's what I think anyway. Sue? I really appreciate your talk. I'm very moved by it. I'm very grateful that I am in one where someone is willing to work with me and appreciate me. It's been a fortunate experience. It's not easy. And it takes courage to say, to ask for change. To see what God has for you. And with humility. you need to do this. I'm not only talking about just like love relationships or partnerships.

[24:59]

I mean good friends, sisters and brothers, Dharma sisters and brothers. I think this applies to all kinds of peer, you know. We should be close to each other. We should meet each other. I shouldn't say should, but... I think so, yeah. Sometimes maybe you don't need to say to a person, It gives that person a little bit of room also to craft a response along with you.

[26:04]

Right and to say what bugs you as just this bugs me and not like I'm right or you know I'm right to have this bug me it's just like you're sort of confessing I can't quite I see you as Buddha 99% you're a jewel but there's this one thing I confess to you I can't see that yet. I just can't explain it. How can you do that? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I agree. Jerry and then Tamar. We've always done it, and every time we do it, and you know, that kind of thing.

[27:11]

So we're kind of freezing them in a behavior or in a view. But if we could open somehow to the fact that they're not that. Right, and another thing is... It's because they may not be that. Do you know what I mean? They aren't that. They are definitely not that. They are not who you think they are. That's for sure. That's just for sure. As long as you hold on to that, this is who you are, and it's not okay. And you got that thing there and you keep seeing them through that, you never take that away. And also you don't see how this is coming, this thing that's happening is a codependent arising that's coming together and you are part of the conditions for that coming together. Which doesn't mean that you are causing it, and it may be that you are actually doing everything you can possibly do and there's just so many other conditions for it to come together that way, that it's still coming together that way. But generally speaking, I think we don't see that we're one of the conditions that's holding the thing in place in the way that we don't like.

[28:18]

Ethan? Tamar? And I'm thinking of this experience I had with a teacher who, not someone here, actually someone on the East Coast, had, you know, was very warm and very helpful to me and very supportive, but also had a very bad temper and was very controlling. So as long as I encountered this person in a teaching situation, they were wonderful, but whenever we had to work on something practical, they were, you know, very angry and very controlling. And there was a point when I found myself able to accept that my teacher had this angry, controlling side to him. And that was very freeing because I found I could also accept myself, more of myself. But, you know, things actually ended up in a very bad place. So it was sort of like, I understood one, but I didn't understand two.

[29:28]

I needed to understand that given that he was angry and controlling, I had to accept that there was only so close I could be to him. Whereas I understood it as, oh, now that I've accepted it, now we should be even more close. So I, you know, I think it's so important. Some people we are not meant to know. Yeah, because when you accept them for who they are, you might find out that you're someone different than who you thought you were. That's where I went with that. Okay, if this is who you are, then I'm back over here. Actually, I'm not right there. Now that I see who you are, I'm going to be back over here. And that's okay. You accept yourself and the other person still, right? Yeah. You can't do it as a strategy, really. You can't use it as a strategy. Nothing is a strategy. You can't use anything as a strategy.

[30:28]

That's the thing. Linda, did you? Yeah. You started out with those gems from the old stories, you know? This isn't exactly a question that's not much of a comment, but I was thinking how those examples in that familiar old sort of Chinese-y, Zen language that It's so cool and fun and evocative. But so different from the language we use. So, you know, break the horn of the dragon and blind the dragon. And the kind of conversation that we used to relate in here today is so California. I know. But I like, that really calls to me, that language in those books, it really calls to me. wondering in the basic sense of the word, you know? Like, maybe we have the impression that they really weren't that interested in the niceties, in the kind of minutiae of our personal relationships and working on our partners, you know.

[31:42]

We kind of think they weren't that interested in that. But, I don't know. And we see, we're really interested in that. I do kind of feel like we need to sort of clean this thing up that we're sort of mired in and then we can take this leap. I kind of have that feeling, but that's just a narrative. Maybe we're taking the leap right now, you and me right now, and if only we wanted to say, I'm going to wrench off your black dragon horn or something. We could just start doing that. But somehow I have this other idea that we sort of like need to settle something with each other and make a calm place and then we can leave. Make that leap. Yeah. No, I appreciate that. Mark? Well, yeah, it may not just be one thing, you know.

[32:53]

I think that I've gone through a period where, I mean, it's not as concrete as what Annette went through, but where I kind of have a feeling of people trying to pull me off something, pulling me off something. that's actually helping me know what that something is, you know, and maybe that's just me. I do feel that part of, for me, seeing other people, part of seeing the jewel, part of the jeweler's eye is to see that that person wasn't put here to be who I want them to be. The person, you know, not to get too woo-wa about it, but they were put here to do something or many things or a whole bunch of things or they're doing something, they're doing a whole bunch of things that the universe wants them to do or they wouldn't be doing. They're getting a tremendous amount of support from causes and conditions to do the very thing that they're doing and who am I to say it shouldn't be that, you know?

[34:05]

And so you can take it as that is just all causes and conditions coming together. So that like the fact that Charlie's sitting this way with his head tilted to the side, that's his mission right now, you know? And I need to decide if I want to say anything about that, you know? Or it could also be that, you know, what were you really, you get to have something you were put here to do. You get to have some things you are here to do. And you get to help figure out what those things are. And we get to help you figure out what they are. So something like that. Judy? This, I don't mean to suggest that you can't see it, but I have become interested in the writing of Byron Katie. And one of the things... Who was that? Byron Katie. Uh-huh. And she's writing out of her own awakening.

[35:10]

And we think that's true. Now, believe me, I'm not offering Mrs. Panacea because I've certainly run into lots of situations that I find really problematic. I won't go into details, but you know, people in groups that I'm in who are difficult people, and predictably so, and so forth, and I don't find any obvious solution to them. But some of the things she gives as examples, I think, are very It's not the thing that is going on, it's one's idea about the thing. Just to give you an example, one person gave an example of being in Mexico with her family during the Christmas vacation and they were seeking a restaurant. And she said, I couldn't imagine a better place to be.

[36:52]

That's my family right now. I mean, and just enjoyed it. And really enjoyed it. Wasn't, you know, doing a head trip or something. And it, one could immediately see how instead, you could have been saying, this is not what I came all the way to Mexico for, and it's Christmas, and you know, I want it to be the way I want it to be, and this is such a drag, and if only they had gotten up earlier, or whatever. There's so many things. The thing is, I, I think, I don't know. I actually don't know because I think the intimacy is actually where you say, like, where were the husband and son? Why weren't they saying, stop dragging us all over to these different places? You know what I mean? I mean, I don't know Lori, but I don't need to say that. I don't need to talk about that story, but I just think you, you have to reveal yourself. You have to reveal your, partial, irritable, unaccepting self to the other person.

[37:56]

I really, I think so, anyway. Kate? There's a classic marriage counselor's story about what happens when you don't. This couple, I've never forgotten it, this couple had been married 15 or 20 years. And apparently the entire time at the dining table, he'd been doing something that drove her nuts. I don't know what. What is it about the dining table? Excuse me, but it's so true. But she had been brought in to be submissive and dutiful and she never said anything about it for all of these years. And it was driving her crazier and crazier and finally she never said anything to him. Finally one night she leaped up from the table, threw down her napkin and said, that does it, I'm not ever spending another night under this roof. And the marriage counselor's point is that it's really basically her fault, you know, because she went all these years without taking responsibility of saying what she needed.

[39:00]

Yeah. Right on. Don't do it. Don't waste too much more time if you've been keeping it in that long, you know. Find, create some setting where you can slip it out there. If you set yourself up with someone who never minds anything, you know, start to, start to create a little place there for you to move out from that if you can. Jake? Soup? I know.

[40:01]

Go ahead. No one else has got their hand up. I was thinking about the flipping the corn off the bowl and how hard it is. And you feel the person's love, you really do. Yeah. But, I mean, maybe that's... And maybe that's why that language is good because you should bring yourself to that encounter with the courage it would take you to rip off the black dragon's horn.

[41:05]

Yeah. And when they do it, it's taking courage for them to do it and the whole thing, yeah. Well, it could be done, eh? I guess we're done. Thank you very much. Are we doing the thing where we can talk some more after? Yeah. In the back of the... Okay. Okay, well, I can talk. Anybody... We can talk more. Thank you.

[41:29]

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