Spiritual Friendship & Dharma Friends

This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good evening. Good evening and welcome. And welcome to everyone online, now and in the future. It's really wonderful to be here with so many friends new and not yet met. What I'm hoping to speak about tonight is spiritual friendship. But before that I would like to thank my teacher, Tenzin David Zimmerman and Tato Tim for inviting me to give this talk and tell you just a little bit about myself. My name is Ellen. I am a resident priest here at City Center at the moment and my work practice is outreach coordinator and volunteer coordinator. So I spend a lot of time outside in various community partnerships providing services and helping volunteers connect with volunteer opportunities to enhance their practice. And I spend a lot of time in here too sitting so it's a nice balance. And then I just said disclaimer that I hope that something that I have to say tonight will be of use to you in your practice that will be encouraging and if there's nothing useful or something that's not useful please just let it flow away and take its place somewhere else. Sangha relationships are a very important part of Buddhist life of course. And when I speak of Sangha I'm thinking not only of residential Sangha or only of the times when one is in residence. I'm thinking more widely of the Buddhist community wherever one finds oneself. And I'm also particularly interested in spiritual friendship because it's been something that's been very important to me in my life and especially in the later Buddhist part of my life. And some of my spiritual friends have been, most of them have been fellow Buddhists, but some have not and it's been interesting to me how people on a spiritual path often have a wonderful ability to support each other and help each other stay on the path and be accountable and also enjoy being on the path. So that's what prompted me to think about speaking about this this evening. And of course it's not always straightforward. There are difficulties of course and joining any spiritual community whether residentially or not is not always straightforward. There are always questions of belonging and are you two Buddhists not Buddhist enough and all those questions. So beginning I want to just remind ourselves that we are a community of a vow. We start every day with our vows and our refuges specifically I take refuge in Buddha. I take refuge in Dharma. I take refuge in Sangha. And it's always interesting to see different communities interpretation of Buddha Dharma Sangha and I have one this evening that's a tick-knock Han. I take refuge in Buddha the one who shows me the way in this life. I take refuge in Dharma the way of understanding and love. I take refuge in Sangha the community that lives in harmony and awareness. Those are pretty big words both harmony and awareness. So just a little outline of what I'm intending to talk about tonight refuge taking refuge in Sangha. Why take refuge in Sangha? What is Sangha? What's the definition of Sangha for you? What are the qualities of a friend? How do we show up for our friends? What's the role of what are the roles of faith and trust in friendship and community? And what are some supports for our path and for spiritual friendship? Zazen, precepts, vows. How do we remain accountable? What are the formal and informal ways that we can do this? And most of all encouragement for us to be on the path and support each other in that way. So first Zena's relational Sangha life is relationships. Dharma friends, spiritual friends also known as Kalyana Mitra are a great gift of Buddhist life. Dharma friendships and community are intertwined and these friendships are a great treasure of Buddhist life. I try to meet them completely. Sometimes I succeed and sometimes I don't. When we take refuge in Sangha, the basis of our relationships is these vows and these many other vows that we take. And flowing from them the precepts, we need this strong support for Sangha relationships because they are challenging and they are important and we put so much of ourselves into them. And to be able to respond appropriately, continuously, we really benefit from having this framework, the heartfelt vows and the precepts which are flow from them and are a little more specific and we can still make them our own. So I have a comment on community from Ariel Stone. We become fully Buddhist not in isolation but through participation in communities that preserve what we have inherited, interpret it in light of current realities and help shape what Buddhism will become. A Buddhist community is a community based on vow, a group of people bound together not because they always agree but because they accept meaningful obligations to one another as individuals and the community and to a shared Buddhist future. Vows ask us to show up, to listen, to wrestle with difficult questions, to care for one another and to take responsibility for the health of the community itself. In this sense, community is more than a place where Buddhist life happens. It is the living framework through which meaning is created, tested, renewed, and carried forward. So for me, one interpretation of that is when I say to myself, well Zen Center should do, and I just remind myself, I'm Zen Center, you're Zen Center, we're Zen Center. We, the community, wherever we are, we are Zen Center. We are Zen Center so to try to turn it that way and really think about the larger community and my role in it. And a word from Suzuki Roshi. If you want to live in the Buddhist way, you should follow some rules, just living however you like is not the way. There must be some rules if you want to live in the true sense of the word, in relationship with others, and in relationship with the you who has been living in the past and who will live tomorrow. Zen is not just personal practice and our enlightenment is not just personal attainment. It is when we find our position in this moment and when we live accordingly with other beings, you should have various enlightenments, you should have various experiences, and you should put more emphasis on relationships between people. In this way, we should practice back and forth according to the position in which we find ourselves. This is the outline of our practice. If enlightenment were just collecting personal experiences, it would not help at all. The point is to find your position moment after moment and to live with people moment after moment according to the place and the circumstances. I really like this phrase Dharma position although I'm not sure I have a completely full understanding of it. I remember first hearing it and I don't know, I had kind of a physical idea of being on a trampese or some sort of physical position. That's part of my experience with living in Buddhism is I really like this idea of Dharma position because it really speaks to causes and condition, time and space, relationships with people because Dharma position is my personal Dharma position is constantly changing and I can't make an appropriate response unless I take that into account. And that's not easy to do. Doing that helps me widen my aperture of before I make a decision. And considering entering Dharma relationships, I have some thoughts from Dainan Katagiri. He says, Dogen Zenji suggested to us that first we have right faith. Right faith is not waiting until we understand something and then doing it. Faith is to do something even though our consciousness tells us we don't have faith and even though we don't know what right faith is. To have faith is to do something. To do something is to live but to live by ourselves and still know human life in a broad way is pretty hard because each of us already has our own territory, preconceptions, egoistic sense, heredity and characteristics. So it is pretty hard to know human life from a universal perspective. We have to get out of this small well in which we find ourselves. We always feel comfortable there but even if it is only once we have to get out and for that we need guidance. Just show your life. Just be there. Here I am. Even though you don't bring any religious terms or spirit, you just show your life. Always. Here I am. That is enough but can you stand up in here I am in the completely naked nature of a human being? It is very difficult and I appreciate that our great teachers of the past, present, and acknowledge the difficulty of really showing up for oneself and therefore being able to show up for others. How do we show up? What helps us show up? What way do we show up? We show up with appreciation in the sense of, I love this word, to appreciate our life, to appreciate what is happening. Coming from the medical background we say a mass was appreciated in lower left quadrant. So it is you see it. You see it. What are you seeing? I appreciate what is here today and I also value it. So in both senses of the word, I love that word. With respect, we had a wonderful Dharma talk on respect from Jan Willis. With unconditional positive regard, which is another word for love, with constancy, with commitment, and with composure. Not always easy all of those. So how do we cultivate these important qualities? Through our experiences in Sangha, through Zazen, through working with the precepts. So many thoughts on Zazen, but here's one that I like again from Dainan category. Dogen Zenji emphasizes that Zazen is not a means to an end, but that Zazen is Jijuyu Samadhi. J means self, Jyu means receive, U means use, and Samadhi means oneness. And of course there are multiple interpretations one could give to that word. This is his. That is why Samadhi is translated as right acceptance. This means you receive your life and simultaneously the whole universe. For you should trust in you because you are you, but simultaneously you are already an enlightened person. We are beings embossed by the universe whether we trust this or not. It is completely beyond trusting or not. So again the importance of our conditioned self being our self, and at the same time holding it lightly, how do we hold ourselves accountable in this difficult, fascinating, and rewarding work of Sanga relationships and Dharma friendships. I think one of the most important aspects of benefits, of pleasures, of a spiritual friendship is this holding each other accountable in a very direct and yet gentle way creating in a sense a safe space between us where we can go and give and receive information about how we are seeing ourselves and how we perceive the other. How are we doing being in alignment with the precepts? How are we keeping our vows? It is really a wonderful, supportive space to be in. Buddha spoke of excellent friends and I really love that term for a spiritual friend and excellent friend and how excellent friends contribute to Sanga harmony and cohesion. And the Mita Sutta speaks of qualities of an excellent friend, someone who shares time, energy, or possessions even when it's difficult, steps up to help or makes personal sacrifices for your well-being, patiently stays by your side through pain, grief, or hardship, and trusts you enough to share deep personal vulnerabilities. Safely guards your confidences and private struggles, remains loyal and supportive when hard times or disaster strike, treats you with respect and equality even when you are struggling. And again, this is a time to think about the precepts which can really give us a wonderful, flexible and yet firm framework for how we approach our spiritual path. And that's why we renew the precepts every month as we will be doing next week as we do every month. And often we have small groups during that time where we discuss one of the precepts. They're just a wonderful framework for Sanga life and Sanga friendships. Supposedly a student asked Suzuki Roshi if he kept an eye on his students to see if they were following the precepts. And his response was, I don't pay any attention to whether you are following the precepts or not. I just notice how you are with one another. So a little more on accountability because it is important and it's not always easy. And this is from Reb from his book on the precepts. With whom do you set up standards of practice in your daily life? The ancestors warned us not to set up standards of our own. Without support, how do you know that you're not just practicing according to your dispositions and going along with your prejudices? In order to practice the precepts, we all need someone in our lives to whom we are accountable. Someone who we have asked to give us feedback on our practice. Someone to guide us in finding a balance in the midst of our likes and dislikes. So Dharma friends can offer us trust, genuine engagement and a few words on trust. You know we spoke about faith a little bit earlier and I meant to say at that time, when we're speaking of faith in that sense, it's not blind faith. It's more, it's almost courage of yes, I don't fully understand this, yet I know in a deep way of knowing that this is right, I'm in alignment and I can proceed. And that's also true for trust. It's not absolute blind trust. It's a knowing with the body and mind together that this, I am in alignment with this and this is safe for me right now. So these words are from Daijaku Kinst and her book on her beautiful book Trust Realization and the Self in Soto Zen. Sangha relationships viewed through the lens of supportive and transforming aspects based in growing honesty, intimacy and trust, aim at the realization of the teachings. In any Sangha or teaching relationship there is also the inevitability of misunderstandings, misperceptions and distortions. This can be an opportunity for real learning as the students are disentangled from romantic notions about each other and are able to meet intimately, eye to eye. This kind of genuine meeting not dependent on characteristics or conditions fosters a trust that is also not dependent on circumstances. Mutual respect and caring are essential to the intimacy that develops between Dharma friends. The basis of this respect and caring is found in the practice in mutual devotion to Buddha's way. Trust is the only foundation on which this kind of relationship can be built. This trust begins with respectful, mutual regard, evolves through various experiences of honest encounter. This requires honesty, familiarity with the feel of one's own wisdom and I really want to repeat that familiarity with the feel of one's own wisdom. This is how we show up for ourselves to ourselves. We appreciate our own wisdom and the ability to stand in one's clarity or confusion while remaining open to others. It is the expression of self-trust and is closely related to the maturity described by self-psychologists. This makes possible full engagement, full engagement with all aspects of the practice, particularly the sangha and the teacher-student relationships. In this way, trust and the self are transformed and can be fully expressed in all dimensions of practice. That's a lot to take on and it requires an openness to ourselves and to others. It requires, as we all know, the ability to ask, what is this right now, right here, to understand that just this is it and again, what is this? Which allows us to be open to questions, questions rather than answers, genuine curiosity rather than wanting or providing advice. When we ask an open question, we've not yet found an answer and this leaves the mind free, unobstructed and ready for adventure and yet there is nothing ignorant or vague about this openness because questioning actively engages the movement and fluidity of life. Our task as practitioners is to bring the teachings to life in a personal way. No one can tell us how to do it. This is the practitioner's koan, the open question and this is from Elizabeth Mattis Namjell who wrote a book called The Power of an Open Question. And finally, some words from Annie Dillard. The need to live with others is not conditional nor can one abrogate it. We are all affected by one another and there is no such thing as a perfectly ethical life. There is only us. There was no but us. There was no one to send nor a clean hand or a pure heart on the face of the earth nor in the earth but only us. A generation comforting ourselves with the notion that we have come at an awkward time that our innocent ancestors are all dead as if innocence had ever been and our children are busy and troubled and we ourselves unfit not yet ready. Having each of us chosen wrongly made a false start, failed, yielded to impulse and the tangled comfort of pleasure and grown exhausted unable to seek the thread weak and involved. But there is no one but us. There never has been. And my final encouragement is for us to let joy arise and be welcomed as we come into alignment with our vows within Sangha with our Dharma friends, our spiritual friends, our practice leaders, and our teachers. I take refuge in Buddha. I take refuge in Dharma. I take refuge in Sangha. And I thank you for your kind attention. And I welcome your questions. We have lots of time for questions. Or perhaps I have explained everything. Questions online? Uh-oh. Can you say something about your maybe a personal situation where you had a friendship, Dharma friendship, and how it challenged you or particularly supported you in your practice and what you discovered in that process? Yes. So I have a Dharma friend who has a way of expressing things that I found really difficult to hear. And I knew that this person had a kind heart and did not intend for this to land the way it did. And I needed to really wait until the moment that both of us were in an intimacy that was open enough and grounded enough that I could say this in that way with a pretty good understanding that they could hear it. And that worked. And we decided to work together to figure out a better way for them to express this thought. So is that what you're looking for? Too vague? Not looking for anything. I just want to hear your personal experience. Yeah. I've had Dharma friends just call me up, call me out. It's great. And depending on who it is, you know, someone I have a really long... Actually, one of my best Dharma friends is a rabbi. And she's not shy. So I've been part of that culture as well. So I'm also not shy. So she's pretty able to call me out and say, I don't think that's what you want to be doing. Let's think about that. Where is that going to take you? And I can hear that because that's the kind of relationship I have. So I guess part of this is every Dharma friendship is not the same. You know, I have other, you know, my quote unquote Dharma friendship with you, which is a little different because you're my teacher, but I have learned to over many years, as you know, to wait and not respond. And that's very effective because it can take, you know, I've just learned that it's better to wait and let it sit and settle sometimes for days. So every relationship, it's always worth it. It's always worth it. It's always worth it. Thank you. Thank you. And thank you for your encouragement. Yeah, I'm also, thank you for your talk. This is really important. I'm also really interested in your experience, your personal experience, but this time with accountability and trust. Well, for me, it takes a lot of looking at myself before I I have to see what's going on with myself before I ask anybody else to be accountable. And that's my being accountable to myself. And, you know, I think that's why Zazen is so important because it can take a lot of being with what's going on with myself to think about how I'm showing up for myself and others before I ask anyone else to be accountable. And we are asked to do a lot of holding each other accountable specifically in residential living. And it