So in fact, yesterday I was up in Sacramento and I was celebrating the birthday of my long time very best friend. And sometime in the afternoon she and I were talking a little bit about a question that I've had about how to best support Sojin Roshi during these years. 50 years of being, is this kind of loud? Yeah, it's a little loud. Is it? Thanks. 50 years of Being engaged in so many different aspects of maintaining our temple is a long time of consistent practice and I've been thinking about ways that I could support him and be of some help as he's, it's different to do the same job after you've been doing it 50 years than what it is when you're 50 years younger. Anyway, we had that conversation and about an hour or so later I got an email on my iPhone, please call me, much to my surprise from Sojin Roshi.

[01:07]

And I called him back and he said, I have a terrible cold. Would you do the talk tomorrow? And knowing that I wouldn't be home until quite late and not have my usual long period of time to study and prepare. I hesitated. And then I called him back and said yes. So here I am. You never know what it is that the answer to your question is going to be. And that's kind of the topic of the talk actually. And as I was thinking about this, you know, these talks I think are maybe at their best, or our Zen talks, because they come really out of our experience. I'm going to talk about what's really been on my mind for the last period of time.

[02:11]

It's not done yet. It's not thoroughly digested. It's a work in progress. It's impromptu. It's of this particular moment sitting here in front of you with the things that have been on my mind. And it's one facet of the topic of radical acceptance. I realized radical acceptance in some ways is a distilled version of Mahayana Four Noble Truths. I thought they could actually be Three Noble Truths. That there is suffering inherent in the human condition. And that, geez, I just lost number two. No, no, no, it's different. It's its own twist, you know, it's this kind of emptiness twist. But the solution to it, oh, number two of this three is things are what they are.

[03:20]

things just are what they are. And the anecdote or the medicine is to thoroughly accept that. So that's what I'm going to talk about. The problem, if you will, the suffering is how we resist things as they are. We want them a certain way. When I was lay ordained a long time ago, when I really didn't have much idea about what this particular practice was, I wrote a poem. I don't write poems very often. This one just appeared out of nowhere. And it has more meaning for me now than when I wrote it. It goes, rock and air, this mountain seat. has no place for this burning boat to reach.

[04:26]

No place for this burning boat to reach. I think that's what this is about. We all find that we have circumstances that we don't like very much. It's the basic unsatisfactoriness of life. What we want You know, what we want that we don't get, basically. It's not the way we like it. And sometimes they stick with us for a while. I've spent many a long Theravadan retreat, 30 days, more than once, recounting over and over again some slight that I had had We probably have all had that experience in Sashin or just in our own minds with a friend, a boss, a co-worker, something that didn't go our way or we didn't feel was right.

[05:31]

A breakup, something like that. And usually those get resolved over time. They don't stick and we move on. Something else replaces that want. Something else grabs our attention. But occasionally there are really big ones. And what I mean by big ones is it really comes to the core of the way that we've constructed our lives. And that might be something that you've experienced in your life. Maybe it's the unexpected breakup of a marriage. or the loss of a home to a fire. In my case recently, and part of what is kind of cracking this topic open for me in a deeper level, is kind of trivial in a certain way, but it's something that's affected a number of us in this room, I think, which is the way in which the world has changed.

[06:43]

I constructed my life very carefully to avoid the insecurities that my parents faced financially and for the security of their home. I did that by getting a profession where I knew I could take care of myself and embed myself in the middle class. It's different now, isn't it? So, as I look for a new home, I find that being here, in a way, is not as easy as I thought it was going to be. And being able to retire and have the kind of life had hoped for and maybe by some constructs am entitled to, if you will, class entitlement, but also I've done good work with my life.

[07:58]

I've been frugal. Anyway, on and on. It's a storyline. The point is there was a self that was constructed very solidly around that and now that's not true for no fault of Well, we can't say that, but let's just say now it's not true. And when I realized the barrier, you know, the safety net, but also a certain kind of impermeability between me and the rest of human existence has dissolved. A kind of invulnerability has dissolved in a profound way. And that's obviously painful. And I'll say there have been a few nights in the middle of the night where it's been anxiety producing. And in other ways, it's so fresh.

[09:05]

It's so alive. It's so real. And that's the kind of interesting place that I've been working at. So when these kinds of circumstances come into our lives, whether it's something relatively small that will pass, like a slight break up, the loss of a job, not one that's gonna mean you can't pay your mortgage, but you know, those kinds of changes, Usually we experience it in the body. We experience it as a physical sensation, a tightness, a constriction, an overwhelming sensation of anxiety, fear, anger, compulsion, but it's a physical sensation first. And one of the first places to live or open to it is to be really willing to bear

[10:11]

the discomfort of that disquiet. To be willing to really completely settle and be present to it in the body. Being in the body, the mind can quiet. The storylines become clearer as storylines. Storylines of who I am in this situation. what my attachment, if you will, to it is, how I construct myself around it. And it becomes more and more subtle over time, I think. You'll open more deeply. The level of willingness I have now is quite different than the level of willingness I had 16 years ago when both of my parents died back to back and I was in transitions and job and living place. That was a completely different kind of experience for me than what this is.

[11:17]

But the insight into my place in the world, if you will, my complete, grounded, rightful place in the world is quite different. This past time period, like I said, I've had some times of being really quite over the top and more neurotic than I thought I was still capable of being. It's been very humbling. And as my Dharma sister, Lori Sanaki, said to me, she said, well, under the right conditions, anything is possible. We never escaped that day. So one of the beauties about being under the right conditions no matter what, anything being possible under the right conditions, is that it's a natural part of living.

[12:29]

It's a natural part of being in the flow of the unfolding of things. of being a part of all the causes and conditions that come together in a person's life at any moment. And that's natural. Natural, organic. It's real. And that's a very whole and wholesome and grounded place to be. That rock and air is not That mountain seed isn't some dharma idea. It's how to live your life. It's the ground that you stand on when the ground is always moving. So many of you here know the story of Kisotagami. You know the story of Kisotagami and the mustard seed?

[13:31]

She was a lay woman. not a particularly privileged person who was given to an arranged marriage that was a very unhappy arranged marriage. She herself was not a particularly comely or desirable person and at some point she had a son and having a son changed her life not only because of being a mother and how transformative that can be for many women, but also because it gave her some status and ease within her family structure. And then that child died and she couldn't accept it. She couldn't believe it. She wailed and sobbed and carried her child around going to all of her neighbors in the village that she lived in, begging people for the medicine to cure her.

[14:38]

There must be something to bring my child back to life. And all that came to her was mockery for her stupidity of not seeing that this child was dead in her arms. And someone taking pity on her suggested that she go talk to the Buddha. And the Buddha said to her, I have the medicine for you, but first I need a mustard seed. Now mustard seed is the cheapest of spices in India. Every house has it. He says, go and find a home where you can get me a mustard seed, but do it from a home where there has not been loss. Well, you know what happens in the story then. She knocks on every door and everyone says, yes, we have mustard seeds, you can have them, but of course, someone here has died.

[15:41]

And in that recognition, she had a transformation. She understood her life is part of the human web of the natural coming and going of things. Now I want to say in that too, it's natural for us to feel profound feelings. A few years ago, my Dharma sister Sue O and I were walking up in Tilden Park when an albino whip snake captured a little baby mouse and was going to swallow it, suffocate, you know, choke it and swallow it. And the mother kept coming out onto the trail, screaming. An instinctual cry. I don't think she cared that she wouldn't have status anymore and she didn't have an idea about that child and who that child and what his life would be.

[16:54]

It was an instinctual response. And that too is completely human. It's completely mammalian to have that kind of suffering. It's part of how we are who we are and how we make our relationships in the world. Everything arises and everything passes away. Everything is turned in the wheel of living and dying. Everything is turned in the wheel of change. I think we feel it most when we have a profound loss of a loved one, particularly a child, particularly suddenly or under tragic or unexpected or violent effects as we all here have experienced in recent months. Or in our own bodies, the diagnosis of a sudden catastrophic illness

[17:56]

or a decline in our ability and our recognition that we don't go on forever and we don't continue in the same form. Radical acceptance is the, I think it is the emptiness teachings of the Mahayana school. To see that everything changes and is shaped by causes and conditions outside of our control. not just a product of our volitional action or karma, and that these causes and conditions are neutral. They don't have a moral valence. They're not personal. They're not divine for us or intended to get us. I'm not touching on karma in this talk, so I'll just say it's not that that doesn't have a role. It's not what I'm focusing on. And I want to give you a couple of examples, again, out of my own life.

[19:04]

You know, we can all think of the randomness of violent acts, of bombs dropping, or your house being in the way of the Oakland fire flames. I walk dogs at the pound. That's how I spend my time. and I recently got trained to walk the Red Dot dogs. The Red Dot dogs are the toughest dogs in the pound, the ones who have more problematic behavior. And when I was trained, the volunteer coordinator said, I noticed someone hadn't been walked, and she said, that's because that dog's gonna be euthanized soon. I hadn't, in the year I've been at the pound, It's a shelter, it's a public shelter, you know, they take everyone. Euthanasia rate is very low and I haven't been involved with that. I walked her anyway, you know, and I found her to be a really remarkably smart, sensitive, easiest dog on a leash I've walked there.

[20:18]

Very responsive. And when I went back to ask why, and I saw her walk in and out of the kennel, I could see why. That for her, being a dog around other dogs in a closed space brought out her most aggressive behavior around other dogs, being in the pound. and not being able to be adopted into a single dog family that knew how to work with a dog like that was a death sentence. And if she had wound up in some other situation, under some other conditions, this perfectly joyful, sweet, lovely dog would still be here. Causes and conditions.

[21:21]

wrong place, wrong time, wrong set of circumstances. It's like some of us have personalities or skills that make us successful in life and some of us not so much. And it's not a matter of value. It's not a matter of value. Everything is of equal value. Some just fit in more with what works, in society and others less. We do, of course, have our own causes and conditions, that kind of tendency we have to look backwards sometimes at, oh, my mistakes, my life wouldn't be like this if only I hadn't. If when I had passionately and idealistically locked up the rental house I lived in in Albany for 10 years and my landlord offered to sell it to me below market, I'd be retired now and not able to give you this talk.

[22:38]

But I was who I was. passionately I had for years, wanting to go back and finish up something that I felt like I needed to. That's who I was at the time. I can't have regrets about that. I can't. I can't regret who I am. It is what made sense at the time. We do have our own causes and conditions in our own lives. We also have a certain form and life force with which we work. A certain form, we're male or female. We're of a certain racial background. We grow up in certain circumstances. We have certain dispositions. The Buddha himself said, there are certain things you can't change that are outside of karma.

[23:40]

And some of it is your disposition. One huge opening for me was a little over a year ago. I found information about my birth mother who had died. Never met her, she never wanted to do that. I knew some facts about her and my birth father, but I actually didn't know so much about her other than what I could infer. Found one of her good friends who had a copy of a biography her husband had written about her that had many, many pictures and a few stories. The pictures were indistinguishable for me. If you look in my photo albums and you look at hers, the only difference is the dress, a little bit the haircut, but not even that so much. Really quite stunning. And I knew from the expression on her face and a little bit of the story that a lot of my problems and personality I got from her, actually.

[24:43]

And there was something about that that was marvelously freeing. It's not a fatal flaw. You know, it's not something I did wrong that I should be able to correct. It's the way it is. A red rose is a red rose. You know? A daisy is a daisy. Not good, not bad. It is what it is. So, it's human to suffer dissatisfaction with things as they are. It's as natural as a mouse crying for its offspring. It is the source of compassion and I would say it is a source of impersonal joy to really understand and accept the wheel of life that we live on. What happens is that anxiety gives way to calm.

[25:48]

Helplessness gives way to stability. Outrage gives way to clarity and action. We radically accept who we are in our life. We radically accept ourselves. I think we become more intimately in touch with our inmost request. That yearning for the truth of great satisfaction in our lives, and we have confidence in it because we know who we are. We have confidence in it to lead us. even under the most radically difficult situations. I'm thinking of the lovely article Oliver Sacks wrote in the opinion section of the Times about two weeks ago. I'm also thinking of all the people whose lives I get to touch over the last years before their death, and for how all of them, or almost all of them,

[26:57]

there's some increasing burden of illness and disability that rob them of being the person, doing the activities, having the ease and activities and independence that they used to have. And yet, so many of them find a way to continue to be themselves, their core, their very essence. What is your essence? What is it that defines your life and gives it meaning? I think this was Buddha's enlightenment, actually. How causes and conditions impersonally create this moment and how our perception is the coming together and passing away of our own sense perceptions of it. And to see it as that for what it is,

[27:59]

supported by the whole world, you know. He touched the ground. I, together with all beings, wake up. I just want to say a word of what radical acceptance is not. It's not an acquiescence. It's not an acquiescence to circumstance. It's not an acceptance of what is unjust, cruel, or harmful. It is seeing conditions and circumstances which arise and the humanity of it, the humanity, the suffering, the naturalness of it, and it's out of that clarity to find a place to act, to not make it personable, but to respond to the wholesome energy of your inmost request to action. rock and air, this mountain seat, this burning boat has no shore to reach.

[29:16]

Thank you very much for listening. And we have some time for your experiences and thoughts and reactions. before we go out for tea and cookies. Thank you. Thank you so much for letting us see your path. It's always really beautiful to see you because you're so open and you share so much about who you are. I find myself in that. that question to kind of be on the heels of everything that I think and do. What will you do? Who are you? What will you do? You frame so nicely both ends of radical acceptance that it is seeing, just seeing, this is what's around me and this is who I am, but also saying, no, not this.

[30:34]

I was having a conversation with somebody yesterday about how do we jumpstart the conversation about social justice in tech. And the question she asked me, she said, what do you think happened to social justice? Which she decried as a term, right? She said, that's just so leftist bourgeoisie. And it was like, okay, whatever. But the idea was, The idea was, how do we awaken people to the possibility of how we participate in each other's lives? Of who are we in community and how do we support each other in being here now? And you framed that for me so, so, with such beauty and with such grace. I am so grateful to get to know who you are. And I'm always here. Always. Thank you, Jeff. Thank you for your friendship. And for your ongoing effort, your sincere examination with your life and how you bring that to other people, your internal questions or questions back to them.

[31:47]

Peter. Thank you for a really interesting talk. I wondered if you could say a little bit more about radical acceptance Great question. I focused on what I was trying to point to anyway about the experience of the mouse and loss being wholesome and normal and complete by itself.

[32:59]

Nothing to be done about that. That just is what it is. Grief just is what it is. It's a human experience. The wanting just is what it is. It's a part of being a human being to aspire, to, I would say, I have an exam, to have desires. Even to have things that you don't need but you want. Getting caught up on needing to have it and have it a certain way is where we suffer. But the experience of just wanting, no. Accepting wanting, I think, is the issue. And accepting not being able to have is the issue. Yeah. Ross. Thank you. I think my favorite talk of yours overall

[34:02]

So, Rose is a Rose, and a Ross is a Ross. And I'll leave that to my grandmother, Rose. But when people want Ross to be a Ralph, or Andrea to be an Annette, how do you reflect on your own life, and where do you sit? in such a way that you can naturally express something that meets the needs of others while still maintaining your own point of view, your own integrity, your own history. Complicated question in a way. It has a couple of aspects that I hear in it. You know, if Ross has a question about whether he should be a Ralph, You know, is there something in that person's wanting me to be a Ralph that's instructive for me?

[35:14]

Is there some information I may not be seeing that's being reflected to me? That's the first aspect that I look at. If I'm completely comfortable with being a Ross, if I know, or an Andrea, I know myself really well, I know the places where I tend to mess up and get in the way, and I accept them. That doesn't tend to bother people so much or it just is what it is and it doesn't bother me. It doesn't raise the question because I know, you know, I'll always be irritating that way to certain kinds of people because it just is. Yeah, Walter. joyful mind before or after this radical acceptance?

[36:18]

Neither. More. What's your experience? I'm asking you the question. I'm wanting to understand more about where your question is coming from. I'm asking you a question. Joyful Mind, in my experience, is grace. Before or after? It's available anytime. But it's probably more accessible as one accepts one's life more. Yes, please. I want to say or ask something.

[37:24]

What I've seen in my own life that's What I want to say is that the acceptance you seem to be talking about is not an action. It's not something like, this is okay with me now. It's a letting go of what you had grabbed onto before. It's not something you can really do so much as relax from. That's a wonderful way of putting it, to relax from.

[38:26]

I think it's a deep accepting of yourself. and circumstances. Yeah. So, Andrea, you left us in the tale of the mouse and the snake. A key point, and I want to say that the little mouse, that you guys saved the little mouse and he grew up to be a healthier snake. That's a really important point. is that there aren't happy endings. For the mouse. And also... They're endangered species, so they probably have a happier ending in the short term. There's no Just because I've done everything right, it's going to turn out okay.

[39:35]

This movie was not made in Hollywood. Please. And it seems to me that accepting how things actually are can take away from that identity and also take away from that striving. Which in a way, when I think about the things that I strive for, I want to strive for them. So I'm wondering if you could just speak about that. That's an interesting question. I think when I was talking about the sense of yearning one has, that it's a wholesome kind of striving, if you will.

[40:44]

It's a striving without an egotistical effort, that one needs to have a particular outcome that I don't need to have a particular outcome that I have in mind in order to be okay in my life. It's an absence of that. But what it is, is following something for its own good, for your own call and relationship to it, for your own life force draw to it. It's like when we're young, we do things we love to do. I love to play softball. There's nothing that made me happier than throwing a softball when I was a teenager. I didn't do that because I was good. I didn't do that for anything other than it just was what made me happy. So if we can live our lives, if we're fortunate enough to be able to live our lives drawn

[41:51]

from that to that life force, and we're out of time. I can't tell you another story about one of my patients who just exemplifies that to the fullest, but there's clearly striving, but it's not attached to needing something for her life to be okay. Thank you all very much for your attention.

[42:14]

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