Good morning. I'd like to introduce our speaker for today, Geri Oliva. Geri is in her third decade of Zen Buddhist practice and is also a practicing physician in San Francisco, a wife and mother of two children, and when she's not fully engaged in her meditation practice and study of Dharma, she also enjoys kayaking and gardening the scrolls throughout our temple grounds. So whenever you look up and see some Buddhist expression on a scroll, we can thank Jerry for that. I am so happy to be back here, and you will hear about that, I guess, as part of my talk today.

[01:16]

It's like I've forgotten to be nervous because I just feel so happy to be here. So what I'm going to talk about today is how does a Zen Buddhist understand and practice compassion? Three or four, I actually had this thought, this came up for me about three or four months ago, just spontaneously in meditation. It came up at a time when my husband had had almost a year of repeated illnesses. Everything, every system, heart, knees, stomach, whatever. In fact, for a period of almost a year, he wasn't really well during any of that time. And at the same time, my 92-year-old mother was having episodes of illness like neurovirus, arthritis, all the things of old age, sickness and old age.

[02:25]

I found myself spending a lot of time in hospitals and doctor's offices and really becoming increasingly a caretaker. First, I have an overlap with my time when I was head student here during the last practice period. So I also had increasing responsibilities taking care of BCC as well. And so I began to wonder, how do I hold all this? I've taken the Bodhisattva vows, I've had years of practice, but I don't seem to have a handle on what's the most skillful way to fulfill my vow to practice compassion with all beings, including myself. it began to feel like the conventional knee, the knee that walks around here and stumbles and gets sick, that conventional knee was starting to feel depleted.

[03:27]

And previously during practice, you know, with the use of practice, I had felt, you know, if I kept my practice solid, I wouldn't lose my energy. I felt a great deal of resilience in practice and joy in practice and didn't feel that depletion, that energy depletion that seemed to be part of my life. And this was all somewhere around December of last year. And during the interim between my intention to explore compassion and signing up for this talk, my husband had experienced an eight-week hospitalization, which actually is still going on, that included four weeks in the intensive care unit, several near-death experiences, and so I really, this really

[04:29]

provided a great practice opportunity and a laboratory to practice and understand what do we mean by compassion? How do we practice compassion in the face of this? I had remembered I was looking for a Zen story because I love Zen stories and I wanted to find a Zen story that would kind of hold this for me and I Interestingly enough, I remembered a story that Sojin had told a number of years ago about Dongshan and his mother. But actually, I never could quite find that story. But in looking, I found another story. I found my story. So that's what I'd like to share as well as, you know, some ways in which I I look at this in ways in which the story and my experience has kind of given me this field of practice and this at least understanding for myself of how I practice compassion.

[05:45]

So let me just say, for those of you who are not regulars, Deng Xiang is recognized by a number of names. Yangtze of Tungshan, where he practiced in the mountain cave called Tungshan. And in Japanese, he's our ancestor, Tozan Myokai. He's considered to be the co-founder of Sodo Zen, the Sodo Zen school of Buddhism. He was a Chinese monk who worked in the 9th century, which we look upon as the golden age of Zen. There are lots of stories about Tungshan. that we actually rely on for the kind of basic teachings of Soto Zen, most famously his five ranks that talk about the stages that one traverses in the way to enlightenment or realization. So this story, again for the people who care, is case 94 in the Book of Serenity and it's called Dongshan is Unwell.

[06:52]

When Dongshan was unwell, a monk asked You are an ill teacher. Is there anyone who does not get ill? Denshan said, there is. The monk said, does the one who is ill, does the one who is not ill look after you? The monk said, does the one who is not ill look after you? Dongshan said, I have the opportunity to look after him. The monk said, how is it when you look after him? Dongshan said, then I don't see that he has any illness. At the time of this dialogue, Deng Xian was very ill and close to death, so this was one of the considered kind of a last opportunity that this monk had to talk with him and to get his final thoughts about how it is.

[08:04]

Although the dialogue speaks of illness, the way the monk frames the question, it really points to something more universal. We could be talking about any kind of suffering. Is there anyone who doesn't experience sickness, old age, and death? Is there anyone who doesn't experience greed, hate, and ignorance? Is there anyone who doesn't suffer? Danshan, not surprisingly, answered, yes, there is. Doesn't this monk know the Four Noble Truths and that there is a path to end all suffering? Well, very likely. So in pursuing this, the monk wants to push the master to talk more about a deeper teaching. So he asks, does the one who is not ill take care of you? This is a question that one could look at in the conventional sense. In other words, doesn't somebody who is not ill take care of somebody who is ill?

[09:07]

Wouldn't that be the natural conventional way of looking at this thing? But this view of a conventional sick one and a well one is kind of this conventional place of duality. There is sickness and there is wellness. And there are two separate beings experience sickness and wellness. So there's one separate from the other and this is really the realm of duality and the question is, you know, is the monk really caught in duality? Is he really asking the conventional question or does he really understand and is he really asking the master to, he's saying it to prod the master to talk about what he really wants to hear about. I don't know. Maybe he was. So Damshan quickly makes it clear that he's not talking about the conventional world. He's talking about the realm of the universal or the absolute. By answering, I have an opportunity of looking after him.

[10:09]

This is the most interesting part of the story to me. Who is the I? And who is the I looking after? Damshan is pointing to something beyond, seems to me, to be pointing to something beyond the ego. He seems to be talking about the I of Zen, the I of no-self. The activity of someone who is awake to how it really is. This kind of I exists in the realm of interdependency. which, and I was coming across something in Thich Nhat Hanh, which refers, the realm which he calls interbeing, where all beings continuously interact, are connected, arise, and cease together in each moment. In this place, there is sickness, old age, and death, and there's no sickness, old age, and death.

[11:15]

There's equanimity, tranquility, and realization of how it really is in this place. So in this place, how do we look after the one who is well? It seems to me what he's talking about here is practice. That we practice in this place of this I. We practice in this place to take care of the one who is well. To cultivate the one who is well. To be with the one who is well. to be with our wellness, to be with all wellness. In the commentary of this case, Winestrong says, this is where everyday practice empowers you when you're dying. So this is about how do we hold suffering? How do we hold dying in this place? How do we be with it? How do we be with it? I take the opportunity of taking care of him.

[12:19]

I take the opportunity of taking care of the well one. So when I asked, when I read this story, I was asking myself, is Dangshan practicing compassion towards his own illness? Or is he practicing compassion for the suffering of all beings? Is he instructing the monk about the practice of compassion? And what does this have to do with my original question? What is compassion? What is compassion-passion? With passion, what is passion? And somehow, in this soup of this compassionate taking care of the one who is well, what about dispassion? Where do all these concepts come? So, at one point, some time ago I asked a teacher, about the meaning of compassion and we looked at a dictionary and I recently looked up these words again so I could kind of get a sense of, you know, what the conventional meanings are but also how we as practitioners kind of hold this passion and compassion.

[13:37]

So the literal definition of compassion or the literal definition of passion is overtaken by emotions as distinguished from reason. Intense feelings such as anger, hatred, and desire. It sounds a lot like suffering. It is a lot like suffering when you think about it. When I first started thinking about this, I realized part of my problem with trying to be compassionate was this idea that I had some sort of negative thing going on about passion. That passion is something that runs away with you. And so how could you be with that passion of all those emotions and those intense emotions and all of that suffering? So then, what is compassion? It's not really empathy or sympathy. It's really being with passion, being with suffering. But there's a further definition that carries a little bit further that's interesting.

[14:47]

I never realized Webster had a Zen streak. But what he says is, together with the desire to alleviate the stress. Wow! He had something there. And so we can find wisdom in Webster. Thich Nhat Hanh talks about compassion as the ability to remove suffering and transform it. If we deeply see into the nature of inter-being that all beings inter-are, then we can have compassion, and that transforms the situation. So, in that state, we can be with suffering, being with how it is, understanding that this happens because that happens, understanding the interconnectedness or the interbeing of all beings, or all things.

[15:53]

And practice in that place of being with that suffering, we can also be with the one who's not suffering. So, that's interesting. I mean, what does it feel like exercising this kind of compassion? Is it joining the suffering? Is it an emotional, does it require some kind of emotional connectedness? It didn't seem so to me, so I really thought of it as practicing. How do I practice Dao Zen and be with the suffering of all beings? That doesn't feel like merging with the suffering. It doesn't feel like some overlap between me and the suffering in some way. What does it feel like? So that's why I was interested in dispassion. And dispassion is without passion.

[17:00]

So how do you practice compassion with dispassion? Is there a way to do that? And it felt to me like, you know, there was something called dispassionate compassion. In other words, I can be with suffering. I'm not caught in the suffering. And through being with suffering, through companioning the suffering, through accepting it and not being averse to it, being with it, but not diving into the sea of emotions with it, not filled with the hatred and the fear and the anger and the suffering, but being in it, yet being in it, in the soup of it, but still with composure. And that feels to me like what Zen compassion is. This isn't an abstract thing for me. So during my husband's illness for the last eight weeks, I spent many, many hours in the hospital, sometimes 12 hours a day in the hospital.

[18:11]

He was in an intensive care unit for four of those weeks. And very often during that time, he was actively suffering in one way or another. He was actively, I can't say that he was suffering. He was feeling pain. He was feeling intense discomfort. He couldn't breathe. He was struggling to breathe. He was weak. He could barely move. He had nausea. He couldn't eat. He was afraid. He had delusions from being in the intensive care unit. He was sad. He seemed like he was suffering. It seemed like he was being battered by all of this. In that setting, there were doctors and nurses running in and bells ringing and medications being changed. And being a doctor, I was kind of afraid to go home because I thought that they would kill him.

[19:12]

He actually said, don't let them kill me. He would write notes. I agreed. You know, some things happened that were really scary. They were really scary. Wrong medications, not recognizing a condition. So I really felt like I had to be in that space. I couldn't leave. As much as I might have needed for my own self to leave, I couldn't leave. So I was in a kind of a shock. I almost found myself in kind of a shock state. So how does a practitioner of many years deal with that? Well, you sit there and breathe and do Zazen is what you do for 12 hours a day. You can't do anything else. I mean, you can pay attention to what's going on and get up and do something, but really to be able to abide in that suffering, to be able to abide in that space for all those hours, there is no other way. There's no place to go. You know, you can't really run away from it. And he couldn't really run away from it.

[20:17]

I mean, he was intubated for a good part of the time. He was attached to every kind of tube. He was stuck in that space of pain, of fear, of craziness. And I was there next to him, feeling like I needed to be in that place. I needed to be in that place with him. It was interesting to certain family members, for example, and friends who were not practitioners. And they had to deal with how could they be with suffering. Some people would try to tell jokes. It was kind of sad because they were kind of lame jokes, but they were really trying. I knew they loved him and I knew they wanted to help him, but they would tell a joke. Other people, if one person was so terrified, she would come in, a family member who would come in and walk up to him and grab onto him and look at him and say, you're going to be okay, you're going to be okay, and then run out.

[21:30]

It's better to know, really. So, you know, some people couldn't help but cry. You know, they just were caught in the emotion. It was scary. It was sad. So, again, how do you stay with that? And somewhere in there, a surgeon came. I wasn't there when Sojan came, and I went back and asked Paul what, you know, what happened. He said, well, he taught me how to breathe. Paul's not a practitioner. He's taught me how to breathe, and we breathed for 30 minutes. And he said, and it was the most wonderful thing. So, there was a clue.

[22:33]

And I felt like in a sense that had been really what I was doing, what I was learning to do. That's all I could do. All I could do was just sit and breathe with him and be in that space. And what I learned about it in terms of this how do I be compassionate is I had to be in a place Not with the partner who was terrified of what was going on, not with the place of the person who was my own illness of wanting to hold on to him, being afraid of losing him, being afraid of what might happen. being attached to whether he ate, being attached to how it was going, being attached that it was going to get better. I couldn't be that because that really wasn't what was called for. And certainly everyone else was doing that around me, so I didn't really need to do that kind of compassion.

[23:46]

So my kind of compassion had to be, how do I stay for hours? How do I stay in this place? Where there is life and death, where there is suffering and no suffering, how do I stay there and whatever is there is okay? How is it okay? Where is that okay place? Where is that place of no suffering in the midst of suffering? It was, I guess, I think it really took everything I had because it meant really being paying attention. It meant paying attention to breath in and out, in and out, hour after hour. Once I noticed that, once I would let go of that, I would get into be leaning into the side of compassion without dispassion.

[24:53]

I went into the suffering. And it felt like it wasn't doing, it wasn't helping the person, the part of Paul that was the well person. The part of Paul that was well. He would come in and out of consciousness at different points and be lucid and not lucid. And at one point he actually talked about his own experience. So I was having an experience that I wasn't sure was. It felt to me like I was in this place with him, this soup of life and death and suffering and non-suffering. But I had no way to really know, was he experiencing a similar thing? Did he feel in this place? Or was he unconscious? Was he conscious of suffering? What? So that he would come out of it periodically and say something. Um, and, and at one point he came out of it and said, um, it's so odd.

[26:01]

I felt I was in this place and I was just in this place and I would see this light and it would be peaceful and light and I would be happy. Um, and as soon as I felt like I went to grab for that, it would go away. Isn't that practice? So Paul was in a place of practice himself. He was in a place of trying to be there because he had no choice. He had no choice. He could not leave. There was no place to go. And there really is no place to go with suffering anyway. We kind of all know that. Where do I go? What do I do with my suffering? So maybe it's good, you know, what we do here is we practice sitting on the cushion, we practice sitting with pain during Sashin, we practice, we learn about how to sit with whatever is, whatever comes up. But a person who doesn't have that, it feels to me like if they don't learn that sometime in that suffering place, that that's the end of their story.

[27:14]

You know, their story is suffering. They don't ever get to this place of being able to be with suffering and without suffering with the well person. They don't learn how to take the opportunity to care for him, to care for the one who's not suffering. So at this point, I have to say also that what was really wonderful, at one point when I finally started to feel kind of overwhelmed and depleted, I put out a call to Berkley Zen Center. Help! And people responded. And they responded in the way that practitioners respond, by their presence, by their dispassionate compassion, their ability

[28:22]

I didn't feel okay leaving Paul with people who didn't have that perspective. Because I felt that it would take him into the place of suffering. If they went with him and stayed in the suffering, then it would all be about suffering. It would all be about the ill person. That he wouldn't see that there was another person. and that for him to get well somehow, he had to experience that there was a well person, that there was a place of wellness and light. And so people came and, you know, somebody sewed while they were sitting there, somebody read a book, people just sat. Sometimes people read him a story while he slept. And he really responded to that and he said, you know, wow, these people came and there was something different, you know, they just, you know, I didn't have to entertain them, you know, like a sick person always has to make well people feel okay.

[29:25]

Thank you for coming. Oh no, much better. You know, I'm much better. I don't really feel that bad. It's fine. It's fine. No, you're not bothering me. You know, that kind of thing. You end up taking care of the person who's coming to help you. But he didn't have to take care of the Berkley Zen Center people. And they came and they stayed and they went. Sojin came and stayed and went, and other people here, too numerous really, I don't want to, but I have this tremendous gratitude about that, that they were able to do that same thing, it seemed to me. That they were all able to practice, to be with the suffering, but to be in a place, but to be taking care of the one who is well. So I think I've kind of, at least for the present for me, that's my practice of compassion.

[30:28]

So we have time for questions, I think, a little bit. Yes, Charles? How's your husband today? Today, my husband is in rehab and he can walk around the hall with a walker and get himself back and forth to the toilet and eat. He's very weak still, because he was in bed and flat on his back for like six weeks. So he's having to kind of start all over again in terms of being well. Yes, Nancy? When you saw that there was the wrong medication and things like that, make me angry hearing you describe it. I just, I'm trying to imagine how you were dealing with these individuals. Well, it was interesting. Knowing how hospitals operate, I know that it's not really a good idea to get too angry.

[31:38]

The reality of their work, especially in the intensive care unit, is dealing with these critically ill, dying people, with emergencies happening all over the place, with people with multiple problems. So I understand how it is for them. On the other hand, don't you dare hurt Paul. So what I had to do was practice the same thing kind of with them, in a way, of reminding them of pointing things out, of trying to kind of be proactive in a kind of a compassionate way with them. Well, you know, you may not have read the chart. It's a big chart. There's a lot of notes. I just want to make sure you know about this. At one point, though, you know, I got upset. And I decided, well, I wasn't going to get really angry with the doctor, so I practiced with a nurse. I said, can I tell you how upset I am?

[32:46]

And I want to just get my upsetness over here so that when the doctor comes, I can be composed and dispassionately angry. And she was great. She said, yeah, go ahead. Anything more? And I cried. And I told her how upset I was about these mistakes, this one period of mistakes. There was a couple days on a weekend, which is always the time, the worst time. You have to be there all the time on weekends. That's when everything really falls apart on weekends. So you have to really be the person's case manager, if you will. In fact, I thought maybe I might go into business. I'm for hire, you know. Anybody has a relative that's in the hospital on the weekend. You need someone with some professional expertise to be in there as an advocate. So I practiced with this person and then the doctor came in and so I was able to say I'm really concerned and I'm really upset that it seems that there are these mistakes that have been made that are dangerous mistakes and I'm feeling I'm feeling like I don't have enough information, I'm not getting enough information, and so I really want to let you know what's going on and make sure that we can have an arrangement where these things don't happen anymore.

[33:57]

But I was able to say that after I'd cried with the nurse. You know, it's not that you can't feel. I mean, you have to feel emotion. It's not like you can't. I mean, if I felt like I had to cry around Paul, I felt it was better. I mean, it's okay to cry with a patient. It's not that it's not okay. But I felt like, depending upon who the person is, I mean, if they see a lot of, if they're terrified that they're going to die and everybody around them is crying, it's not terribly helpful, you know. So it's better to feel yourself going to cry and say, I need to go to the bathroom. You know, go cry and then compose yourself and then be able to come back. And I think it's the same way with talking to the doctors and the nurses. It's kind of, it's best to do things in a kind of a composed way. You know, feel the anger. Just like we are, you know, when we're in Zazen, you know, feel the anger. Feel whatever you feel. But then be with it for a while and then try and figure out what the skillful means are to proceed. Judy? Well, just what you're talking about, it sounds to me as if when you do things that way, you're having some compassion for the doctor and the nurse, too.

[35:05]

And you know that they don't want to make mistakes. So if you were to have instead been accusatory and angry toward them as if you were, you know, their intention, everything would be way off. But you were able, by what you're describing, to, you know, when you say to the nurse, can I, can you help me with this? Because, and she knows exactly what you're talking about then, and she's, yeah, I can do that. So she does. And then when you're able to talk to the doctor, you're, I mean, when you do talk to the doctor, you're able to say, and, and the doctor I bet, you know, is saying, I don't want these mistakes to happen. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and you know, the doctor means well, most of the time. I mean, you know, there are always in every profession, there are people who are more compassionate and more, you know, we're able to function at a different level.

[36:07]

None of them want to hurt somebody. None of them want to hurt somebody. Yeah. And I, you know, at one point I would, I was a little afraid of trying to get too involved. Are you doing that yet? I wondered how much I could say to people. because they don't, because I'm not an internist and I'm certainly not a cardiac, you know, intensive care person, so I'm not going to be competing with them on knowledge of certain things, but there are certain basic things that you do know. But I found that if I actually, they actually appreciate, I think after a while I just cultivated having a nice, having a relationship with them and then so that I could ask questions that would point to something and say, well, you may not have had a chance, the chart is so thick. It's true. You know, how, these are not computerized records, they're pages of scribbles.

[37:13]

And how could somebody coming on at a night shift be, you know, there really is a place to be compassionate. That person has to take tremendous responsibility and yet they don't have the tools they need sometimes to be able to do that. So it was like, well, maybe you might want to read or check that lab value or, you know, some kind of thing like that. And that actually, most of them actually thanked me. They said, you know, it's so hard to keep up with things. The chart's so confusing and these patients are so complicated. Thank you for pointing that out to me. So I think it's possible to do that. Yeah. Peter. I'm the doctor again. raised a question for me about, is there some way to communicate, maybe you did, maybe the way you described it, I didn't really get a clear picture of what was happening, but something about communicating that passion in that moment, or whatever it is that's so real,

[38:28]

how really urgent and how important this is to you. It's something that I constantly am wondering about. Do I really have to diffuse something in myself? And yes, sometimes I do, before I can really speak about it with somebody in a way that I'm comfortable with. A question about do I really have to diffuse something, or can I find a way to bring that in a way that is experienced as kindness. I think it's a kind of an edge place. I remember in my younger years I was a lot more emotive. And I worked for the health department in San Francisco where there was a lot of things to get angry about in terms of what was going on. But I remember

[39:37]

You know, if you're too emotive, people see you as kind of a wacko. You know, you're always angry. No one wants to see you. You know, you walk in and no one wants to see you. So, I remember my supervisor there years ago said, controlled rage. You know, if you can actually be angry, you know, but not lost in the sea of anger. So, how do we do that? You know, what place do we do that? But to be able to say with some degree of force, you know, I am really angry, but you're not, but you're still present. You're still breathing and you're still present. I mean, that's what it felt like to me. You're still attending to the person who's well. Yeah, you're still attending to the, you don't forget the person who's well. So you're really angry and you feel that it's important to, I mean, there was a place where I was really angry about the fact that a medication that had had a really bad side effect

[40:38]

was still on the list of medications and had been given again. Wow, that's a terrible, it wasn't a mortal thing, but it was a serious thing. I said, how can this happen? I asked the question, how can this happen? you know, with a strong degree of, you know, urgency. How could this happen? I didn't say, how could you do that? I think if I had said, why did you do that terrible thing, you know, but how could this happen? So the person could then also look and think, how could it happen? Catherine. Absolutely. It was really fascinating. He had a biofeedback thing going on because he had, at one point, his lungs were non-functional.

[41:52]

He was on the maximum dose of oxygen. And in order to keep his oxygen concentration up enough, he had to be calm. The minute he got agitated, it would go down. And he had the machine next to his bed. So he had the little sensor on his finger and he would watch the oxygen. And he would say, oh, I've got to breathe, I've got to breathe. And when he would calm down with his breathing, he would see the oxygen level go up. It was fascinating. I think we have to get one for Zen students. We could all put our little thing. They actually have it for medical residents. They have some kind of thing like that, a computerized thing where you have a biofeedback thing that's computerized and you can actually put your finger in something and it either monitors your blood pressure, heart rate, you go there when you're feeling agitated and you kind of bring it down. But I think it really was, he had a laboratory to work in. And he's still, he's doing it a lot.

[42:53]

He does it a lot. Every time he has to get ready to do anything, because it takes a lot of energy for him to get up and to walk now, because he's so weak, he uses much more energy than other people do. He constantly says, I've got to, oops, I forgot to breathe, I've got to sit down and breathe. So he's really, yeah. Yeah, he learned kind of how to take care of something, but in this case it was finding the one who's well again. Yes? I wanted to thank you very much for giving your talk, and I'm a new person here, and I'm just so surprised how often the talks just in my life. For the first time, I was in an ICU room last Friday, and I sat next to someone who was practically dead and held their hand, and it was a friend of mine's boyfriend, so I wasn't really connected to him, but I felt that it was a real privilege to be able to be there, and I think before I'd come to the Venn Center, I never would have been able to do that.

[44:08]

to sit with that person. So it was really amazing. Yeah, so you experienced that. And what you could bring just by your presence and your calm presence. But it was nothing compared to what you went through, but it was one afternoon. That's great. Are we? Yes. We are done. I just want to say that this thing about taking care of the one who's well is just so mind-bending and amazing, isn't it? Thank you so much for sharing. Who's doing that then? No, not the cis person. Yeah, it pushes you past something.

[45:10]

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. the focus yeah and and it makes them I'm sure that having you know I know I hate when I'm sick to have somebody like doting over me leave me alone well I mean if you're in pain or you're in discomfort sometimes it's intrusive for somebody to get into your pain you know that's not that's not what helps yeah okay

[45:49]

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