Sunday, December 14, 2025

I forgot that part, sorry to interrupt you. Okay.

Anyway, here I am at Chapin Mill, and not in this particular house, but in the main building. That's where we hold sesshin, eight or more each year, and most seven days in length.

Anyway, it's over the course of the winter months that snow tends to accumulate on the rooftops here. And there can be as much as eight or more inches of hard packed snow. But when the sun comes out, the temperature rises and naturally the snow starts to melt. And the first thing you notice is the dripping water. And that dripping can go on for many days. But if you were to look at the rooftop, it doesn't look like anything has changed. It's still completely covered with snow. But then, all of a sudden, in one fell swoop, it all comes crashing down. Whish! Fump! And the roof is totally bare.

But in order for that to happen, the snow had to have been melting, little by little, continuously. That's not the only way that it comes falling off the roof. Sometimes it happens a lot more discreetly, not in some kind of dramatic event like that. Sometimes it just steadily melts, melts, little by little, evaporates. And then it's gone. Only to be covered by more snow at the next passing weather event. But one way or another, the roof ends up being completely exposed and invariably gets covered up again. It's an ongoing process of arising and disappearing.

And it's a metaphor for the way Zen practice works. Whatever your practice is, whether it's a breath practice, or a koan, or shikantaza, you need to work at it continuously through all conditions. And it's always changing. Sometimes you are lost in thought. Sometimes everything is clear. There isn't an end point. It doesn't work on a preferred timetable. Certainly not on yours or mine. No amount of planning or seeking results makes a difference.

Actually, clinging to any such thought, feeling, future expectation, or a past experience, no matter the content of it, it only fuels separation and creates tension in the body and mind. And it can be quite painful because when we do this to some degree or another, we're cutting ourselves off from life. We're opposing things as they are. We're not in the world. We're in thoughts.

As simple as practice itself might be, the simple returning your attention to it, it's not necessarily easy. Recently, a sangha member told me that she's been struggling with her reactions to the daily news cycle. And if you happen to read the news this morning, or really any morning, there's a lot to feel distressed about, isn't there? Mass shootings, acts of violence motivated by hatred, war, the effects of climate change and on and on. And on top of that, there's just the everyday difficulties that we face in life. Maybe you recently lost a loved one. Maybe you got laid off from your job. Maybe a relationship ended.

Anyway, this sangha member said she was feeling conflicted over doing zazen. She said it made her feel like she was turning away from suffering, rather than doing something about it. And she was also questioning the basic teaching that says practice is about becoming more one with life as it is, not how we want it to be, not rejecting or opposing anything, and also not grasping for it to be different. This didn't make any sense to her.

And this is a misunderstanding that a lot of people make. Looking outward at what's going on in the world, judging it as bad or good, depending on where you stand, and holding on to thoughts about it. In her case, she was drowning in anger and anxiety, hopelessness and dread. And a lot of us do this habitually. It's what brings us to practice. And without the persistent, continuous turning the mind to the present moment, to what's right here, to what you're experiencing directly, you don't stand much of a chance to free yourself from intrusive and toxic thoughts.

That said, the weather conditions are always changing. There's a saying here in Western New York that goes like this: if you don't like the weather, wait five minutes, it will change. This applies not just to the fluctuating weather patterns that we do experience here in the Great Lakes region, but also to the conditions of our mind. Everything passes. No thought, feeling or sensation is static, nor are we. We ourselves are flux. It's not something that's happening outside of us or around us or to us, it is us.

Sooner or later, one of us will die. The only uncertainty is the timing. So what we're doing in this practice is cultivating intimacy with our living and with our dying, with change. And it includes intimacy with suffering. Your suffering and my suffering. They're not two. So we're not turning away. We're turning towards. And when we do see things clearly as they are, this is what enables us to be in the world, to act in the world skillfully, and with compassion, without a trace of self-interest or self-partiality. It's really radical work that we're doing.

Now, some might say, well, none of this really matters. All beings are Buddha from the very beginning. Why does a Buddha need to work at becoming a Buddha? Why bother putting in the effort? And by effort, I am referring to zazen, this gentle directing and redirecting your attention to your practice, while sitting, while walking, in activity, over and over.

Well, we need only turn to the example of Shakyamuni Buddha, whose enlightenment was celebrated this past week on December 8th by Buddhists all around the world. The story of his enlightenment can come across as otherworldly, as a feat of mythical proportions. But actually, it cannot be reduced to myth or legend, nor can his experience be dismissed. His story is actually a very human story. It's our story. It's our aspiration to wake up, to uproot delusion, not just for ourselves, but for all sentient beings.

And each time that we sit down and do zazen, we are fulfilling that promise. Maybe I'm preaching to the choir here. Each moment we turn our attention back to our practice, we're fulfilling that promise. Zen Master Dogen said that practice, zazen, isn't a means to an end. Zazen itself is embodied enlightened awareness.

So if the story of the Buddha's awakening isn't enough, of course, there's countless other ancestors and practitioners and teachers we can turn to for inspiration, those who have walked this path and serve as a guiding light. And there's one such person that has a Santa Barbara connection. Her name is Flora Courtois. A few decades ago, she led the Santa Barbara sitting group, which was tied to the Zen Center of Los Angeles, the center that she helped found as a student of Maezumi Roshi.

And her story is recorded in a little book. The introduction is authored by Yasutani Roshi, who some of you may know has ties to the Rochester Zen Center. He was the teacher of Roshi Philip Kapleau, who founded our center in 1966. Anyway, in the introduction to this little book, Yasutani Roshi describes how he first met Flora in the late 1960s. And that was some 25 years after she had what he confirmed to be an enlightenment experience, which simply means that she experienced for herself what the Buddha had experienced. This one mind encompasses all.

This word, enlightenment, I don't like to use it. It's actually quite problematic, because it carries a lot of baggage for people, mental baggage. That's because there's a tendency to objectify it, to make it into a thing, a very special place that is far removed from the ground we sit and walk on. And along this line of thought, there's also this notion that, well, it's all beings without number, except for me. Self-doubt, self-judgment. Actually, the Buddha himself encountered self-doubt.

Anyway, in Yasutani Roshi's remarks about Flora's experience, he points out that each and every one of us is capable of having the experience that Flora did and the Buddha did. The thing that holds people back is inadequate faith and effort, inadequate faith and inadequate effort.

It brings to mind the three essentials of Zen: great faith, great doubt, and great determination, also sometimes called great effort. So faith, it's just faith in our true nature, the true nature that we equally share. It includes our true nature and everyone else's. The faith in the real possibility of waking up to it. And then doubt, not in the sense of self-doubt, but great doubt, the profound sense of delving into the great matter. The dis-ease of not knowing what this life is about. Who am I? What am I doing here? Ordinarily, we distract ourselves from these existential questions. But Zen practice invites us to dive right in, to get curious, and to wonder, what is this?

That leads us to determination, the effort to resolve, the commitment to resolve that profound doubt, which of course involves the effort of zazen. And also faith in the process of looking inward. Faith in the process itself, not in some imagined outcome. The poet Khalil Gibran said, "Doubt is a pain too lonely to know that faith is his twin brother."

As for Flora, although we don't have time to cover her story in full, and I'd love to have some time left over for discussion, I do want to share a couple of excerpts from the book. She starts off by describing her experience as a child, which demonstrates the kind of intimacy and wonder that we can cultivate through Zen. She begins:

"When and where does this story begin? It's difficult to say. Even now, I remember the feeling as a small child that all things about me, the people, the animals, trees and flowers, my dolls, my plate and spoon, all participated with me in one vivid reality. It was a family joke that I had to be spoken to several times to get my attention. So absorbed did I often become in listening and watching and playing. Often I felt in magic communion with other living things. Some of my earliest memories are of rescuing drowning insects from a small pond, of escorting small spiders from the house so they would not be killed, of lying on my stomach in a neighboring field, rapidly absorbed in the busy life of the tiny creatures under the giant blades of grass."

That's what we adults are trying to get back to. For most of us, once we arrive at adolescence, things change. Flora herself describes how she became overly self-conscious, struggled with self-esteem, and was fixated on comparing herself to her peers. But then, at the age of 16, she had a pivotal experience. She says she was having minor surgery that involved ether, which was at the time commonly used for general anesthesia. And at some point, she had what she described as a vision. She envisioned an authoritative voice telling her that all things will be resolved.

If you haven't read her book, by the way, I highly recommend it. But anyway, this voice was so convincing to her that it sparked her faith that there is something, something that is beyond ordinary consciousness. It just needs to be uncovered. And in the months and years that followed, she was consumed by doubt. Great doubt. She described it as a growing sense of doubt about reality itself.

But for those of us who live a relatively comfortable life, which Flora herself seemed to, as well, you might not feel that sense of great doubt or gravity in investigating the great matter. In fact, practice might feel more often than not, rather boring, actually, kind of blah. And yet here you are. You can trust that you would not be here at the sitting this morning if you didn't have faith and doubt.

The rest of Flora's story includes her intellectual pursuits, going down the rabbit hole of looking for answers outside herself in philosophy books, university professors, religious leaders, and other kinds of experts. Her story also involved a dark night. She grew depressed and withdrew socially. She stopped taking care of herself and ended up in the college infirmary.

But then one day when she was home from school during a break, this is what she says happened: "Alone in my room sitting quietly on the edge of my bed, gazing at a small desk, not thinking of anything at all. In a moment too short to measure, the universe turned on its axis and my search was over."

Just like that. Turned on its axis, not because she was trying to get somewhere or change something or make something happen. But in that moment she wasn't lost in thought nor was she going to battle with her thoughts. She was just sitting there, just sitting, just looking.

In the Dao De Jing, Lao Tzu said, "What is of all things most yielding can overwhelm that which is of all things most hard." At the time Flora didn't have a terminology to understand what she had experienced. She came to describe it as having open vision. But inevitably this wonderful experience she had faded and she found herself tangled up in thoughts all over again. She hadn't yet been exposed to Zen practice. So she didn't have a way of integrating her experience, her awareness into her daily life, which requires zazen, daily practice. Fortunately eventually she did find the path and practice became the foundation of her life.

In the closing words of her enlightenment story, this is what she says: "To be re-enlightened at every moment, forever requires eternal vigilance. How could it be otherwise? To continue to practice such awareness at every moment is implicit to the very nature of enlightenment. Thus practice is reality, reality is practice. This was the indispensable pillar that had been missing from my life. Now like a slowly rising tide, quietly, less dramatically, the timeless vision returns. The infinite possibilities for joyful awareness open at every moment. To this I now vow to give all my attention."

May each of us make this the same vow. This moment by moment, just giving our attention to this. To seeing what's here. To seeing what's needed. And just giving ourselves to it. Well I've said enough. So why don't I stop here and open it up to you all.

**Question:** Thank you Dhara, that was wonderful. All right, thank you for the talk. It felt personally I found it really timely and definitely resonated with me. So thank you for that. Maybe this is a simple question, but simple questions are good. You in your talk talked about how my suffering is your suffering. How an individual suffering is everyone's suffering. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit more about what that means to you. And how do you see that?

**Dhara Kowal:** Yeah. You know, everyone's fighting a hard battle. Have you heard that saying before? Yeah. It's so easy for us when we're caught up in ourselves, in our own suffering, to forget or not notice the suffering of others. However, we come from different life circumstances. We experience different conditions. But at the root of it all, the one form of suffering that we distinctly share is the delusion of duality. And that's what this practice is about, uprooting it.

**Question:** I'm sorry. I'm over here. That may have answered my question, my kind of question, which came up in your talk a lot. It was around duality that we're so conditioned. So with your example at the very beginning of the snow falling off the roof, also juxtaposed with the ebb and flow of practice. I've found my own experience to have those open vision moments of seeing the world in a universal oneness way. It's fleeting because I get so caught up and I need to shovel this snow so I can get out of my house, you know, kind of thing. And I need to go to work so I can have the money to support the family to eat the food. Those day to day reality, reality. And it constantly confronts, you know, the more real reality, the oneness. And it does, I think you just answered the question that comes down to that delusion of duality.

**Dhara Kowal:** Yeah, not until we quiet the mind. Not until we allow thoughts to settle. Can we really experience what lies underneath thoughts? What lies underneath duality. And that's why practice does need to be regular, needs to be continuous. And it requires determination, discipline, effort.

**Question:** This is Allison. I might be a disembodied voice. I really appreciated how you connected faith and doubt and determination. It really feels like a gift for you to say that, to like not over index on one because sometimes you can get stuck in a silo. And that moment, so thank you for taking time to speak on those things. You mentioned right before you spoke on that you mentioned that Buddha had specifically self, some self doubt. I'm wondering if you might just expand on that.

**Dhara Kowal:** Yeah, it's in the Buddha's enlightenment story. You know, he's confronted with all these different things coming at him. And at one point, there's a voice telling him that he's not worthy. And self-doubt is, for my own experience and from working with students, it seems to be a major hindrance for a lot of people. Beating ourselves up. Comparing ourselves to others. And yeah, that's duality. It's also duality to feel an elevated sense of self, as in to be really prideful and pat yourself on the back. Some people have trouble with that. That's duality too.

So yeah, how fortunate are we to have a practice and a sangha to practice with and to have that mutual support in this vital work. And it's needed more than ever. And about this interconnection between faith and doubt, getting caught up in the self doubt, not the big doubt, but the self doubt, that's also part of the process. You know, just like it's just like getting caught up in any kind of thought. We have to work with it. It's the terrain of practice. And we gotta trust that.

**Question:** Thank you for your presentation this morning. So I was listening to you talk about Flora and her practice, her time in zazen was really important for her and that sitting group was kind of fundamental to her practice. And I missed Erin's question. So apologies if this is a duplicate, but how do you think about and keep practice in mind when you're not on the cushion when you're not here in sangha sitting quietly with other people. It's so conducive to equanimity and the opportunity to follow our breath, follow our thoughts. But when we get wrapped up in life off the cushion, how do you think about and keep your mind and your breath in the place where you think it needs to be?

**Dhara Kowal:** You know what's most important off the mat or off the chair, however you're sitting. What's most important is being one with whatever you're doing. So when you're driving a car, you're just driving. When you're washing your hands, just that. And it's in the simple activities where it's easier, right, and it's a real missed opportunity if we don't try to have that awareness when we're doing simple things. The routine things we do every day like brushing our teeth, making the bed, preparing food and so forth.

And it comes down to a micro second, right, that moment you turn the knob on the door. The moment you take a sip of tea. Every micro second, just show up for it. Now, when you're doing more intellectual stuff, maybe working on the computer, writing, reading, we can feel heady. That's just how it is. You don't have to make it different than what it is. Just be one with that.

You know, if you have a practice like concentrating on the breath or a koan, what I often recommend to people with concentration practices is to sort of put it down while you're in activity. Attention actually can feel split. Imagine cutting a carrot and pondering a koan at the same time or just focusing on your breath while you're doing it, right, you might cut your hand. So it's better just to be one with what you're doing in those moments. And somehow it all flows together. It's fine. Everything changes. Thank you.

**Question:** So I have something that's on the coattails of what Allison brought up that I was thinking about a lot too. Faith and doubt, when you said these siblings, so to speak, were two sides of the same coin, I think, how you look at it. And it's interesting because as I was feeling into that when you spoke to it because there was energy around it for me, I noticed that when I'm holding doubt, which is far more frequent than when I'm holding faith, that there's a weight to it. It seems so much more real to myself and it has this capacity to take me over in a way. It feels almost like it's in the room. And yet, when I touch into faith, it has this buoyancy to it and a lightness in terms of not only its weight, but also like literally like a light in the room. And yet, it simultaneously feels so elusive so that if the mind comes in at all for any moment, it's kind of, you know, doubt weighs a lot more, even being in it a long time. But it's fascinating. So I too appreciate you bringing that connection up because I haven't practiced or used it as a practice that when I'm in doubt, that faith is right there. It just kind of leaves the room. And when I'm in faith, it feels so much more fleeting than when I'm in doubt. So thank you for bringing that up because that's something different for me to work with and I just wanted to point that out and feel free to, you know, expand upon that if you wish to, but yeah, I really had not made that connection before.

**Dhara Kowal:** You could think of them as dance partners. Yeah. They're always together. Yeah. Thank you. Oh, thank you.

**Question:** Thank you very much for sharing that, how I engage in that. I see it as a calibration, a calibration practice. When I sit, it's an opportunity to settle. And in that settling, there is an opening to the moment, to this moment. And whatever unfolds within this moment becomes the ground to be. And this ground to be includes me and all of this, which is also me. Right now, my conversation, my communication with you. And then the other is on suffering. I've begun to make a distinction. Actually, this very moment listening to you, the distinction came between suffering and self-harm. That my understanding of suffering is when I'm engaged in the discipline, whether it's martial arts, dance, piano, zazen, it doesn't matter. That there is this period of awkwardness, disconnect, conflict, friction, that the continuation of that practice helps to resolve. And so that's what my understanding of suffering, embracing suffering. So when I'm sitting, back pain or whatever it is, mental distraction. It's re-engagement, so there's a friction, there's a conflict, that through the continuation of the practice, it begins to resolve. So anyway, that's what you're talking about.

**Dhara Kowal:** Yeah, it takes care of itself. You know, we just have one job, and that is to tend to our attention. That's all. The rest is not our business. It takes care of itself. Things sort themselves out.

**Question:** Sorry, I won't double-dipping on a comment. That's very reminiscent of I was in a phase where I was reading a lot of Thich Nhat Hanh, and I started to notice that no matter what the title of the book, that seemed to be his message, whether it was at work or in a relationship, whatever it was. I started to notice, like, well, you're just saying the same thing in every book, in a kind of a different way. So you're reminding me of that.

**Dhara Kowal:** That's one of the challenges of being a Zen teacher. You have to come up with as many ways as possible of saying the same thing. But it lands differently, doesn't it? Because you're not the same person you were yesterday or a second ago. Everything's constantly in flux. So it's kind of mysterious, the way it works. We can go through a period where we just don't get it. And then all of a sudden, we get it.

Anybody online, I know Anton, I think you're still there. Feel free to chime in.

**Question:** Yeah, I just want to maybe add a little bit on what Erin and Allison were trying to point at. Kind of like doubt and trust or belief or faith. What I'm thinking is that it's usually you start to recognize motions, internal motions of what mind is doing. It's kind of like more of the mind's job to kind of like compare, discern, introduce, you know, logic into things and recognize. And there's also this other motion, which is, I think your soul's or heart's motion, which is like to offer, to share. And I think they're always in this dance state. So the mind is kind of like, okay, this is not as good. What soul is like, okay, I'm here. Here I am. It's always this very beautiful dance, I think. And thank you for bringing this into this space, effort and doubt, which I think is also very connected to curiosity.

**Dhara Kowal:** Yeah, it's not we're not trying to figure things out. We're not trying to fix ourselves or others or the world. You know, this sense of doubt is wonder. That's exactly what it is. Curiosity, wonder. Not to get an answer. For its own sake, just to immerse ourselves in the mystery. In the question, what is this? Who am I? Just stay right there in that not knowing. Just like a child who literally doesn't know and sees everything for the first time. Well, go ahead. One more, Bill.

**Question:** Yeah, one last one with Bill here. We just read something on Bernie Glassman, who's connected. Is he connected with Rochester?

**Dhara Kowal:** No, he's not.

**Question:** I'm talking about suffering. The thing that's always intrigued me is his visit to Auschwitz, one of the camps. They sat there. They did their meditation there. If anything is going to cause doubt, it's sitting on the place where thousands of people needlessly were executed. And he doesn't just sit with feeling doubt. That's an explosive point. You seek it out. And when you think about all of our students, it's very intellectual, but to actually be sitting on the tracks, that's a different thing altogether. That's emphasizing suffering. I don't, do you have to agree?

**Dhara Kowal:** Yeah. I have visited Auschwitz and Birkenau a number of times. And I've sat there. Yeah, there's certainly when it's tangible, you know, in our face. Right in front of us. Right, it takes on a whole other level. But you don't have to seek out places like that. It's, I think it's valuable to expose yourself to it. But it all goes back to this, just doing this simple practice. Because whether you want it to or not, or whether you're trying or not, any amount of sitting you do is going to make you open. Wide open to suffering.

It might not be something as big as the Holocaust, but, you know, in the grocery store. You know, you're standing next to somebody waiting in line to check out. And just talking to somebody, a random stranger who's clearly having a bad day. And being there for them. There's so many opportunities for us to notice. What's happening? What's going on around us? And to be of service in the life that we're living.

You know, and as getting back to the Holocaust, while it's really important to learn from history, spending time thinking about it, wallowing in it, isn't really helpful right now. This moment. So you always want to bring it back to this.

Thank you. Thank you, Dhara. I'm going to do some homework here.