2047 Felspar Street San Diego, California 92109-3551 858-273-3444

ZCSD NEWSLETTER — June, 2004

2047 Felspar Street  San Diego, California 92109-3551  858-273-3444

“Failing to grasp the importance of forgiveness is always part of any failing relationship and a factor in our anxieties, depressions, and illnesses---in all our troubles. Our failure to know joy is a direct reflection of our inability to forgive.”

Joko

June Sesshin

The center will be closed for sesshin from Monday, June 22 through Saturday, June 26. The last daisan before sesshin will be on Saturday, June 19. Daisan will resume on Tuesday, June 29.

Elizabeth and Ezra Away

Ezra and Elizabeth will be away the first two weeks in June.

Practice Period

Practice period will take place during the month of July. Along with the regular schedule, there will be sitting (with daisan available) on Sunday mornings from 9-11. There will also be a zazenkai (all day sitting) on Saturday and Sunday, July 24-25. Practice period will end on Saturday, July 31. Further details and a sign-up will be in the July newsletter, which will be mailed the third week in June.

SCHEDULE

Dawn SittingWeekdays, Mon. – Fri. 6-7 am

Tues. EveningTwo Sittings, 6:30 – 8:00 pm

Wed. EveningTwo Sittings, 6:30 – 7:40 pmPractice seminar follows

(until about 8:20 pm)

Thurs. EveningTwo Sittings, 6:30 – 8:00 pm

Sat. Morning8:30 amWork practice

8:45 amIntroductory workshop for newcomers

Follow-up instruction for those who have

attended introduction

9:00 am-NoonThree sittings; Dharma talk

Please park at least 2 or 3 blocks from the Center

and

Please be considerate of our neighbors.

Page 2

Forgiveness

What does it mean to forgive?

Forgiveness is often tainted with the ideal that there should be some form of magnanimous acceptance of others even though they did us wrong. This understanding of forgiveness is not what a forgiveness practice is about. Forgiveness is about practicing with and healing resentment, the resentment that blocks our desire to live from our True Nature. Forgiveness is about loosening our hold on the one thing we most want to hold onto---the suffering of resentment.

In forgiveness we practice seeing through our own emotional reactions. Genuine forgiveness has to entail first, experiencing our own pain, and then the pain of the person to be forgiven. From this understanding the barriers—the illusion of separation —between another and ourselves can be dissolved.

Who in your life don't you want to forgive? Think of someone toward whom you feel anger, bitterness, or resentment. Keep this person in mind as you read this, to make your understanding of forgiveness practice more than intellectual.

When you bring this person to mind, how does it feel? Holding onto resentment often has the feeling of an unsettled account—“So-and-so has hurt me and therefore, they somehow owe me.” The human mind has so many strange twists that as we cling to the hard, bitter feeling that someone owes us, at the same time we also may feel the need to pay this person back. As resentment festers, the attitude of “I'll show them!” takes over and hardens us. We shore up our hardened heart with the sense of false power and righteousness that arises with resentment.

Genuine forgiveness has three stages. The first is simply acknowledging how unwilling we are to forgive another. We let ourselves experience the degree to which we prefer to hold onto our resentment, anger, and bitterness, even when we see how it closes us to living a genuine life. By bringing awareness to how we resist forgiveness, it enables us to experience resistance for what it is. We have to experience in the body how our unwillingness to forgive feels. Staying with the physical experience of resistance allows a sense of spaciousness to gradually develop, within which the tight fist of our resentment can be loosened. We can't move on to the second stage of forgiveness until we've entered into and experienced the depth to which we’re unwilling to forgive,.

The second stage is bringing awareness to the emotional reactivity toward the person we resent: to experience it with an open mind. As we visualize the person we resent, we notice what reacting emotions arise. Is it anger, resentment? Is it bitterness, fear, or grief? Whatever arises, we just experience it within the body itself. If we get lost in thoughts, memories, or especially justifications, we keep coming back to what we feel in the body. Where is the tightness, the contraction? What’s the texture of the feeling? We stay with the awareness of our physical-emotional reactions as long as it takes to reside in them, until at some point we no longer need to push them away.

Let’s say we’ve been criticized repeatedly by someone. When we bring the person to mind, we first feel the anger and resentment rising. Next we listen to and label our thoughts: “Why do you always have to put me down?”, “You're such a negative person,” “No one deserves to put up with this.” Then we move away from thinking and blaming into locating the resentment in the body. We feel the tightness in the mouth, the heaviness in the shoulders, the ache in the heart, the rigidity of the muscles. Staying with the physical experience, we ask, “What is this?”---- striving to avoid getting hooked into thoughts of self-justification and blame. We come back again and again to the physical reality of the moment. At this point we’re not even entertaining thoughts of forgiveness—we're just bringing awareness to our distress without trying to push it away. Once we can rest like this in the bodily experience, we’re ready for the third stage.

The third stage of a forgiveness practice is to say words of forgiveness. It’s important to realize that saying these words has nothing to do with condoning the actions of another. It’s about forgiving the person, not what he did. It means seeing that he only acted from his own pain. And the way we do this isn’t by looking for the other’s pain, but by attending to our own. Once we’ve attended to our own, we’re more open to truly seeing the other’s. Trying to open to the other’s pain before passing through the first two stages of forgiveness practice—clearly seeing our resistance and resting in our experience of it—won’t work;then we’re just adding cosmetic mental constructs over our suppressed feelings.

Only after we’ve experienced how our own emotional reactivity stands in the way of real forgiveness can we truly understand that the other person was just mechanically acting in the only way he could—out of beliefs and conditioning. We can then say, for example, the words: “I forgive you. I forgive you for whatever you may have done from which I experienced pain. I forgive you because I know that what you did came from your own pain.” In saying words like these, we are not trying to change our feelings; the words are more like wedding vows, where they actually crystallize the openness of heart that we are already experiencing.

In practicing forgiveness, it is possible to move from living in our own isolated pain—which usually manifests as anger and resentment—to experiencing the universal pain that we all share. We realize this experientially when we’re able to see that we’re not essentially different from those we’ve been so quick to judge. Experiencing the truth of the shared pain of humanity frees us to move into the universal heart—the essential fact of our basic connectedness. We no longer view the world through the lenses of “us” versus “them.” We no longer perceive the other as an enemy. We no longer seek revenge for what we regarded as wrongdoing.

To enter into the process of forgiveness at this level, where the illusion of separation between self and other begins to dissolve, is a profoundly transformative practice. It’s also challenging, partly because entering into our own pain is never easy. It is rare that the transformation of resentment could occur in just one or two sittings. If the resentment is deep, it could even take months. Yet, as we feel the folly of our upside-down way of thinking, and as the consequences of our unwillingness to open really hit us, we’ll be more motivated to begin the essential work of forgiveness.

Edited from At Home In the Muddy Water by Ezra Bayda

(See book for a more detailed guided forgiveness meditation)

Sesshin Application Follows on Page 4

APPLICATION FOR SESSHIN

ZEN CENTER of SAN DIEGO • 2047 Felspar St. • San Diego, CA 92109 • 858-273-3444

Please print clearly to avoid delay in processing your application, and please fill out this form completely.

Name ______Age ______Gender _____

Address ______City ______State ____ Zip ______

Home phone ______Work phone ______

Emergency contact (name) ______(phone) ______

(must be blood relative or spouse)

e-mail______(ZCSD has no e-mail address, but volunteers may contact you by e-mail).

Circle the sesshin for which you are applying:

Please note: Applications cannot be considered unless a check for sesshin fees is included

DateMemberNon-memberMail-in Date

June 21-26 5-day 150.00 175.00 April 21

Aug 16-21 5-day 150.00 175.00 June 16

Oct 8-11 3-day 90.00 105.00 Aug 8

Nov 11-14 3-day E+E 90.00 105.00 Sept 11

Dec 26-31 5-day 150.00 175.00 Sept 26

Have you ever attended sesshins with Joko or Elizabeth/Ezra? ___Yes ___ No

This will be my ___1st ___ 2nd ___ 3rd ___+ sesshin at ZCSD

Date/location/teacher of your most recent sesshin ______

Mail in form no earlier than the mail-in date above, marked: Attention Sesshin Coordinator. The postmark will be entered as the application date. Please wait to make air reservations until your application has been confirmed. We will notify you as soon as decisions have been made. If you haven’t heard from us exactly one month before the sesshin begins, please call the Center.

Arrive by 6:30 pm the first night.** Last day will end about 3:00 pm. A light snack will be available the first evening.

**Newcomers please arrive early for orientation. Orientation begins at 4:30 pm

Work Skills (circle): cooking, shopping prior to sesshin, electrical, carpentry, painting, computer, gardening, flower arranging, jobs prior to sesshin, other: ______

Physical conditions limiting participation:______

I agree to maintain a daily sitting practice from the time of this application through the sesshin. I will participate in the entire schedule, including interviews, sittings, meals, work, and any assigned tasks. I will be on time for all activities. I understand that my physical, mental, and emotional well-being are my own responsibility. Zen practice is not a substitute for therapy. I am capable of undertaking the rigors of a sesshin at this time. I am seeking medical or therapeutic treatment for any condition(s) I have, and have revealed all pertinent information on this form. I will sign a waiver releasing ZCSD from accident and injury liability.

______

SignatureLegibly printed name

ALL BLANKS ON APPLICATION FILLED IN?___ Yes___ NoPrintable E-MAIL v 01/04