Today is March 2, 2025 and this ta show is going to be about staying grounded, staying grounded through the winds of change. I and whatever happens in whatever situation we find ourselves in, even when it feels like a tornado, by the way, winds of change. It's not just a saying. It's a title of a popular song in the 1980s that was by a German rock band called The Scorpions. And the song was about a moment in in history when there was this enormous, enormous shift in the world. Was the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the former Soviet Union.
I grew up during the Cold War, and I have vivid memories of the at the time, the ever present threat of nuclear war.
So I also remember the joy and sense of optimism that was felt when the wall came down, but there was also this fear of the unknown, what happened next with such a pivotal moment, and right now, it kind of feels like we're in another such moment.
As humans, we have this tendency to to get swept up by whatever we're feeling in our reactions to conditions and to change and and it's something that I was reminded of when I returned to Rochester after a couple weeks stay in Mexico. The trip included a seven day seshin, and of course, while I was in seshin, I didn't use my cell phone. With one exception, I needed to use it for Google Translate. But even even outside of sesshin, my phone wasn't of much use, because often the Wi Fi signal wasn't very strong. Cellular the same. So even if I wanted to go online and see what was happening, I really couldn't beyond responding to some important emails or texts that came through. So I wasn't online very much. And and on top of that, because of my limited Spanish speaking abilities, especially when it's spoken at a natural pace, I couldn't take in what other people around me were saying or talking about I couldn't overhear anything, even if I wanted to.
And as a consequence, for a couple weeks, I didn't know what was happening in the world beyond, really my immediate experience, and it was wonderful. Was wonderful to to unplug and just take in this sense world, how. Of Mexico. And really the only thing that could pull me away from what I was experiencing was thoughts, feelings
and on the return trip, things changed very quickly. When we landed in the Atlanta airport, I could overhear people, you know, suddenly people were speaking English, and I could overhear people complaining about this and that
there's something about air travel and having to wait on A long line that triggers a lot of discontent. And at the airport, of course, there were TV monitors everywhere, as is typical in airports these days, and they were displaying the latest news. And I learned that a lot had happened while I was away, major changes were being made to the federal government. Jobs were being cut, services were being cut, funding was being cut. I and it seems there's a shift underway, even in the world order. There are a lot of people who are really happy and thrilled to see what's happening. And yet, in my casual conversations with people, including those who are happy to see this change, I noticed that stress levels have risen. So the stress has nothing to do with political leanings. It has to do with change, rapid change, at that least, that's my reading of it. So
uh, there can be also the fear of losing your job, maybe, maybe you've lost it already, and you're having to find a new one, or losing your health care, or the services that you've come to rely on, especially if you're a veteran, have a disability or transgender, can also be A fear of a growing atmosphere of intolerance and bigotry, so much is swirling around in this wind.
And you know, even if it doesn't impact you directly, at least not right now. There's that basic fear of change that we humans tend to have. Change happens whether we want it or not, and it's never on our timetable.
The present and the future can seem really uncertain right now, and depending maybe on how old you are in your life experience, it may feel more uncertain than ever, but actually that's how things are all the time. Nothing is ever certain, except, as Roshi often reminds us, except for the fact that sooner or later, each one of us is going to die, we just don't know the timing. That's the uncertain part.
So we can ask what you know? What is? It about this, this period, this juncture, that feels different from any other, isn't isn't it all flux. Isn't change constant. Isn't everything, just part of the cycle of causes and effects.
To get some perspective on this, I'm going to use a hidden brain podcast it's titled, afraid of the wrong things, and it aired several years ago on january 26 2021 when another trigger of change was occupying the minds of many of us, and that was the COVID 19 pandemic. This episode gets into the disconnect between our fears, which we can spend a lot of time and energy dwelling on our fears in the actual the actual dangers that we face in our everyday lives, and we won't have time to cover the entire transcript. It's rather long, and it gets into a lot of complexity in how humans assess risk, but we'll, we'll get into it just enough to get some perspective on change from a scientific vantage point. The host, Shankar vedantam, starts off by recounting the plot of a film that you'll all probably recognize immediately, and if you're old enough, maybe you'll recall your own reaction to it at The time of its release. So Shankar says, in 1975 a young Steven Spielberg scared the living daylights out of millions of people with JAWS a great white shark terrorized a New England beach town as one victim became two, and then three and then four people responded, first with denial, then fear, and finally, outright hysteria. And then Shankar goes on to describe his own reaction to the film. He says, After watching the movie, I remember being scared to even stick my toe in the ocean, and even today, when I go to the beach, I can't help but peer out at the water and ask myself, is that a dorsal fin.
When that movie came out, I was I was too, too young to watch it in the movie theater, but I did see it a few years later, when it was aired on TV. I Yeah, and I too, remember the fear of sharks that it struck in me at the time, especially since my family, when I was young, spent so much time on the water. We would often on weekends, go out on the boat and go fishing. And when we weren't out on the boat, we were at the beach, which was a short walking distance down the street from my house on the south shore of Staten Island. But was I really at risk of being attacked by a shark? No, I was actually more at risk of. Stepping on one of the 1000s of hypodermic needles that washed up on the shore.
Shankar then says sharks kill maybe five or six people a year, and that's worldwide. Meanwhile, humans kill about 100 million sharks a year. If anything, it's the sharks who should be making horror movies about us.
So there's, there's no logical reason to see ourselves at risk of a shark attack, but it's not reason that guides our perception. In this case, it's our emotions and our feelings, and that's why, when it comes to sharks, chances are, when you hear the soundtrack to the film Jaws, you feel a little uneasy,
even if you've never been bitten by One. So to look into this phenomenon. Shankar's guest was a psychologist from the University of Oregon named Paul Slovic. And Paul Slovic conducted studies on the mismatch between how people think about danger or risk and the actual risk that they face.
Paul says, what we find is that our sense of risk is influenced by the direct experiences we have, and also by the indirect experiences we have through media, such as film or the news, that's Very powerful in influencing us. So in other words, our sense of danger, of risk, the things that generate fear in us come from not just firsthand experiences, but by but the feelings that we latch onto in reaction to everything we read here and watch. It doesn't matter if it's true or real even, and the more intense or dramatic it is, the more likely we're going to dwell in it.
Paul goes on, we originally thought that people were analyzing risk doing some form of calculating in their minds about what the probability of something bad happening would be and how serious that would be, and perhaps even multiplying the severity of The outcome by the probability to get some sort of expectation of harm. As we started to study this, we found that basically we can do those calculations, but it's certainly easier to rely on our feelings. It's easy to do. It feels natural, and it usually gets us where we want, except when it fails. And there are certain ways that our feelings deceive us. I uh.
So then, on the one hand, our feelings are are useful, and they help us in situations such as when we get the sense that it would be danger, dangerous to walk across the street into oncoming traffic. That's a situation where. Or it's wise to pay attention to your feeling in that moment, so the feeling is a good guide in knowing how to best respond. But he's saying that they're not always reliable, and that's the case when our feelings are tied to mental constructs. Good example would be if you imagine, say, public speaking or flying on an airplane to be absolutely terrifying, then you're probably going to be churning that Over, imagining yourself in that situation before you're even standing in front of an audience or stepping onto a plane, working yourself up, this feeling of dread, and it can be so strong that it prevents us from doing what we actually want to do.
And speaking of that as a Zen teacher, one of the things I've I've noticed, and I've seen over the past couple years is that some people have a lot of fear that has to do with seshin. Maybe you've never done one before, and you're afraid that it will be physically or emotionally painful, or maybe you have done one or more before, and based on your experience, you're afraid to do another. So you basically become trapped, paralyzed by catastrophizing, and you deny yourself the real possibility, the real possibility of a transformative experience. Seshin has been an important part of Zen practice for hundreds and hundreds of years, there's a reason for that trust that it's a precious opportunity to fully absorb yourself in your practice.
And yet, a bunch of thoughts and feelings can hold you back.
Can you really say what it's going to be like ahead of time? Of course, not every sesshin is different because you're different.
Everything's changing. Everyone is changing, moment by moment. We can't rely on our feelings, by the way, it's not just clinging to fear that or some other kind of negative what we see as a negative emotion. It's not it's not just that that holds us back. There's this counterpart of clinging to happiness. It's called the happiness trap. There's a book about it, and that's being trapped by constantly trying to avoid negative emotions, negative feelings, which paradoxically leads to more unhappiness. So it turns out, the harder you try to be happy, the less happy you are. I As if it's even possible for there to be some kind of permanent state of happiness or any other emotion, everything, chi. Changes Everything passes. The
problem is, is the clinging part, not that we experience the range of of human emotions, but that we cling to certain ones. That's where the trap is.
When we lock on we're setting ourselves up to suffer. You. We're unable to see clearly. We're unable to flow with the change that is constant.
What we're seeing instead is an idea, a concept, a category or classification,
cutting ourselves off from experiencing the moment as it is right now, which will change in The podcast, Shanker goes on to say when risks produce a feeling of fear or dread, our capacity to think analytically is impaired. This is why we worry about getting attacked by sharks rather than the more likely prospect of getting in a car crash on the way to the beach. Our feelings about risk are rarely shaped by data or by the data alone. Our feelings are shaped by stories, images and by the consensus of our groups. And so when he says our groups, he's referring to the social groups or communities that we identify with and participate in.
In this day and age, one of the primary ways we stay connected to our groups is by keeping our cell phone on hand or other device. I say this as I'm using an iPad to read the transcript of definitely. I recently read that the average person either sends or receives 40 text messages a day. That's just text. If you add emails and social media notifications, that's a lot of messages on a daily basis. If you're the average person, you
but we've got this practice that gives us the opportunity, the choice to redirect our attention to this moment, to our body right now. That's a choice we can all make. You
when I was in Mexico, you could say it really wasn't a choice, in the sense that the technology wasn't working for me, and that made it easier, which is, by the way, how it is during seshin as well. When we do seshin And we we put aside our technology and our daily business so we can give ourselves fully to our practice. So yeah, it's maybe the ear you. In those circumstances. It's harder to do in everyday life, but the choice is still there. We can work at it. We can practice and get better at it.
We Why dwell in feelings and thoughts about things that are beyond our control? Is that helping anyone? Is it helping you?
Is it helping to relieve suffering? No, but it's probably making you miserable. I It
doesn't mean we can or should sit back and be passive and give in to injustice or abuse or wrongdoing, just just the opposite. To be present is to see clearly, to see what's here, to see what needs to be done. And in ways that are of service, true service, to a living suffering, our own and others. If we're lost in worries about what's going to happen next. We're running through our complaints, ruminating,
wallowing in despair and
about things that are beyond our control, then we're not seeing clearly. We're stuck in our head and stuck in a state of inaction. We
in our introductory workshops, we often bring out this small reproduction of Rodin's famous sculpture, the thinker and he's all hunched over, kind of gnarly, leaning on a tightly closed fist, constricted, contorted, and that's what it feels like to be caught up and immobilized by feelings and thoughts and
as the podcast goes on, Shankar and Paul discuss the different kinds of risk that we face. For example, there are the ones that are immediate, as in a tiger lurking in the bushes behind you the risks that are accumulating. An example of that would be shown in the difference between smoking one cigarette right now and smoking 1000s of them over the course of time, there's an accumulating risk there. And then the third kind is exponential, or rapid risk, and the example of that he uses is the pandemic.
Paul says governments all over the world were slow to appreciate what was going to happen when their summers of COVID 19 cases began to grow exponentially in. Uh, not everywhere, but the majority of nations were slow to react, because the numbers were small, increasing slightly, and it didn't look all that bad, but by the time we really start to take it seriously, it's out of control. And then he goes on to describe how our sense of control plays a big part in how we perceive risk or potential danger. And he gives that example of driving a car. He says the driver feels that they are comp that they are controlling the risk. The driver feels that they are controlling the risk because they're controlling the speed and other aspects. They don't realize all the elements of the situations that are not under their control, like the conditions road hazards, or what other drivers are going to do. And it's true, driving a car is one of the most, riskiest things many of us do on a daily basis. Doesn't feel like that, though, because it's a routine activity, and we choose to do it, and it feels like we're in control. That's the feeling we have with our hands on the wheel, and it's a good example of how we can't always trust what we feel. Then Paul says, there's no gatekeeper that leads us to analyze information that conveys feels us. We just take it for what it is, and the brain lets these feelings in and we react to them. We don't vet our feelings the way we vet arguments. And this, this goes way back as something that was very adaptive a long time ago. So what he's saying here is that the human brain, a long time ago, was hardwired to be much better, more accurate in responding to up close, immediate risk, and less so accumulating or exponential. And this served early humans really well, because that was the main kind of risk that they faced, the tiger lurking in the bushes. But it's a lot more complex for us modern humans, then this podcast gets into a whole lot of complexity that we don't have time for this morning. But I want to turn to what all this means for practice, that we can't trust our feelings, and also what it means for living in uncertain times when it feels like perhaps, that there's a risk of losing everything we've come to take for granted, to seeing it all unravel. How do you maintain awareness of the present moment, of being rooted here in the midst of so much change? I
We don't have to stick our head in the sand and ignore what's happening, distract ourselves or become numb to it. We also don't have to travel to another country or change our conditions. What's needed is something you've heard before. Stay with your practice. Put your trust in it.
It's kind of like seshin, when at times it can feel that like you're being tossed around by emotions. Anakin. Troll jostled this way and that.
And of course, it doesn't stay that way. It does pass it changes, and it's actually through that experience when we have it in seshin that we really learn how to weather the storm, and we learn how to get better at it, the more zazen we do daily, sitting as well you
a city, number number of times, bodhidroshi asking this Question, what are you going to put your trust in? What are you going to put your trust in? Are you going to put your trust in feelings and thoughts? Really? How's that working for you?
Our go to reaction for a lot of us is to do just that. When we don't like how things are we dwell in our complaints. We tell ourselves what's happening is bad. This isn't right. We want it to be different. We want to be happy, not sad or anxious or fearful. We want other people in the whole world to fall in line with how we want it. We
but this is not our practice. Our practice is not to fix or control anything. Our practice is not to avoid difficulties or uncertainties, swallow in despair.
None of us knows how things will turn out. Predicting the future is also not our job. There is one thing though that we can do you
and that is simply to give ourselves to our practice, to do the work and trust that it really is the one thing Zazen is, the one thing that will enable us to see more clearly,
to think and speak and act from a mind of stable awareness.
