Acceptance

Offered to the Santa Barbara Zen Center on May 11th, 2025

Yesterday, I offered the following Dharma talk to the Santa Barbara Zen Center. Long-time readers may remember that, in a way, the Santa Barbara Zen Center (then: the Santa Barbara Zen Group) is where I started walking the path.

I was and remain grateful and humbled for the opportunity. Enjoy.

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This morning, I want to explore the meaning of the word, the extension of the concept, or the embodied practice of acceptance. It’s a big topic, and I offer these three descriptions in part to acknowledge that. I offer them, also, because of their interrelation.

Sometimes, the words we use—in this case, the word “acceptance”—serve as ways of referring to a collection of things (though I’m tempted to use the word “ideas”). “What is acceptance?” someone asks you. “Well,” you reply, “it’s kind of like this. Actually, let me tell you this story I once heard about acceptance. Oh, and this author I admire, she describes acceptance in this way.” We reach here and there in our conceptual space for this and that, because it’s challenging to sum up what acceptance is. It’s not impossible, however, and I’m confident we could accomplish it; its form would, probably, be a poem or a perplexity-inducing, Zen-style story.

Such efforts are worthwhile in their own right. Conceptual clarity is a virtue. Arguably, though, they are worth more for their influence on our actions, how we practice acceptance in our day-to-day lives with this body-heart-mind. Our relationships afford innumerable opportunities to practice acceptance, including our relationship with ourselves. When we do this, we add more to the loosely-bound field (conceptual space) I mentioned a minute ago. Thich Nhat Hanh might call this watering the seeds planted in the rich soil of our heart-mind. In time, the seeds sprout; in time, flowers bloom. The appearance of new life in the field influences how we use the word itself. Actions, speech, and thoughts that we did not see as instances of acceptance are now described as such.

Words. Things. Practice.
Actions. Flowers. Language.

Each shapes the others, and in both directions, because nothing is anything all by itself. Everything is any thing owing to the totality of conditions at some one time.

Call this my “preamble” to a story.

Our story features a young man. “Young” here means early thirties. He’s ambitious and too sure of himself and his abilities. This young man is also nearing the end of his graduate studies at a well-respected university. There’s a lot to tie off before early summer; he feels overwhelmed. In addition to that, he’s already very tired—exhausted. The preferred term these days, I think, is “burnt out.”

So, what does our young man do? He reaches out for support and in a familiar place, but not a wholesome one: the liquor store. All varieties of beer and whiskey become the means by which he continues to push himself. His behavior—his ambition—is reckless. While our young man senses this is unskillful, he persists. The rationalization, at the time, is that it’s only for a time. “This is temporary,” he assures himself, “and when all is done, this will be done, too.”

Things don’t unfold that way, however. There’s temporary relief when the young man does finish his studies and moves to another well-respected university for his first faculty appointment. The new environment gives great life; he’s energized and filled with optimism. But things change. Soon, the responsibilities of professional academic life become too much for our too ambitious, too confident—in a word, “deluded”—young man. The unskillful behavior resumes—and it’s worse.

He’s under the influence in the mornings and on the job. He begins missing work, feigning sickness (though he is sick in another, more significant way). The young man falls apart near the end of his three-year contract and resigns to hide his now self-destructive behavior. We’re long past temporary relief from stress. This is subsistence until non-existence. With some time away, stability returns.

Somehow, the young man finds employment at another well-respected university. He tells himself, “I learned my lesson. It’ll be different this time.” It’s not. In fact, things are worse than before. He misses nearly half of the first term of the appointment, due in large part to not one but two hospitalizations. The young man lasts one month into the second term before falling apart completely.

Several weeks later, he finds himself sitting with fifty other people in a large circle. He’s at a treatment facility for severe substance abuse. By all measures, the young man knows he has a problem, and has had a problem for some time. He put himself into treatment, after all; no one compelled him to do it. Yet, he can’t bring himself, when his turn comes in the large circle, to introduce himself in part by “admitting,” or “acknowledging,” or “adopting the label,” or “finding himself under the concept of”—we could use any number of expression here, because gesturing in a direction is more important than precision—an alcoholic. The words won’t come out. He knows, but he hasn’t accepted that this is part of the reality of his life right now.

In time, something shifts, and the young man accepts himself as he is, accomplishing a significant step on the road to recovery. His life continues, and in a different direction.

I’ve told this story several times; each time, it’s a little different, and for a different end. Once, I used it to explore the awesome power of attachment, craving, or thirst, from one point of view the root cause of suffering. The above story unfolded over a period of four to five years. That’s a long time for someone to persist in a direction when there are clear signs its dysfunction.

In another setting, I offered it as evidence of the unrestricted possibility of transformation. When I lived in Santa Barbara, CA, I was a student of the late and much-loved Koan Gary Janka, Sensei. Koan sprouted and flowered in the White Plum lineage of Taizan Maezumi, and I read a lot of Maezumi’s transcribed talks in those days. From a talk titled “Live the Life of Impermanence,” I still carry with me the following:

[…] in a twenty-four hour period alone we are being born and dying 6,500,000,000 times. It is so fast we cannot notice it. […] Our life comes about through causations, direct and indirect causations, and appears as conditions that are constantly changing. Having this body and mind is always the result of many, many causes, all constantly changing. When we really see this fact, right there is freedom.

That freedom, the condition of all life, necessarily, helped facilitate the young man’s turning. He’s grateful and humbled, I assure you.

Today, however, I want to use this story to explore, as I said at the outset, this something called “acceptance.”

Offering the Dharma Talk by Zoom / Photo credit: Michele Ryan

The young man in our story knew he had a problem, but there was a barrier that prevented him from sharing what he knew with other human beings.

(It’s pretty easy, I find, to share our secrets with trees, non-human animals, the stars, and the moon. In Twelve Step programs, personal inventories are shared with God and with another human being. Sometimes, it’s asked why God alone isn’t sufficient. The response, in brief, is that sharing with God is too easy. When we sit down and share face-to-face with another human being, we’re sitting down and sharing face-to-face with ourselves. The other person becomes a mirror. That is often not at all easy. But I digress.)

Our young man knew he had a problem, but he hadn’t accepted it, and that’s a rather curious condition. What is more, in time, he would be able to share his story with others, a sign, I say, that he had come to accept that which he knew about himself.

What changed, and how?

The Buddha taught that the root cause of suffering (from a point of view) is the identification of ourselves with a construction. This construction is formed from beliefs and desires, judgments and preferences, labels, a certain subset of all of the subject’s relationships, which comes together by weighing likes and dislikes, proximity and time, and more. I won’t attempt to list all its components. Sometimes, I call this construction the “great story we tell about our life.” Some part of it we know well, others less so. Others call it “the constructed self,” “the small self,” or (from a chant, the name of which I can’t recall) “ego delusion.” It doesn’t matter what we call it, however.

What does matter is that we identify with this story—we believe that it’s who and what we are—and in some way we can’t ever quite articulate, it’s separate from everything else. This last is important. Identification and separation encourage uncertainty, which in turn encourages fear, particularly in the form of anxiety.

Do things “out there”—things judged separate from me—want to help me or hurt me, and how can I tell?

Are they (collectively) or they (individually) friend or foe, and how can I be sure?

I don’t know what they are, only that they’re not me but somehow “other.”

This chain and its reactions (that is, identification, separation, uncertainty, fear, anxiety) co-create several more links, among them a craving for protection. And one way we can (and try to) protect ourselves is by hiding, endeavoring to keep secret those things we believe injurious to how others perceive, interpret, or understand the great story we tell about our lives.

I’ll stop my armchair analysis now, and simply say: it’s not wrong to think this way. It’s not wrong, it’s not unreasonable, it’s not silly, it’s not mistaken, it’s not incorrect, it’s not foolish, or anything else of similar sentiment.

[…] when you sail out in a boat to the middle of the ocean where no land is in sight, and view the four directions, the ocean looks circular, and does not look any other way. But the ocean is neither round nor square; its features are infinite in variety. It is like a palace. It is like a jewel. It only looks circular as far as you can see at that time. All things are like this.

Although there are many features in the dusty world and the world beyond conditions, you see and understand only what your eye of practice can reach.

Those are not my words, by the way; they’re Dogen Zenji’s words from Shobogenzo Genjokoan. They’re some good words.

Whatever your story is today, this week, this month, or this year, please remember it’s only a story. It reads as it does because of where you are right now, and where you are right now is constantly changing, as Maezumi reminds us. But I digress, again; let’s return to our young man.

The story with which I opened this talk is part of the young man’s great story about his life. He knows it; he identifies with it; and (at that time) it’s so dominant that he believes it’s the whole of who he is. Our young man dares not, however, accept it, for fear of how others will see him and how he must see himself, too. He believes doing so will destroy him. Poof! But as he sits and listens to those also in the circle share some and similar parts of their great stories, he observes that not happening to them. No poof! They continue on, laughing and crying, trying their level best and recommitting when things go awry. They’re still very much alive and well.

So, the young man takes a leap of faith. He tries the same himself, giving his story away through sharing it with those present and—behold!—he, too, doesn’t vanish. No poof! And why not? Simple: the young man was, as we all are, always, more than the great story he told about his life. He reconnected with that whole, all-inclusive self when he accepted the part of it in which he repeatedly abused alcohol, contributing to great suffering for himself and others.

How did that happen? He let go. In fitting Zen fashion, he accepted the reality of his life by letting go of the story he’d been telling about it.

This “letting go,” by the way, doesn’t negate the harm that arose from unskillful behavior. It doesn’t minimize the suffering co-created by unwholesome actions. Furthermore, it’s not an abdication of responsibility to try setting things straight by making amends. The story is still there, still important. Now, however, it’s in its proper place.

As I bring this talk to a close, I want to stay with this expression “proper place,” and offer two teachings that gesture in its meaning’s direction.

The first is from Dogen Zenji’s Shobogenzo Genjokoan, and some of you have heard it many, many times.

To study the Buddha way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be actualized by myriad things. When actualized by myriad things, your body and mind as well as the bodies and minds of others drop away. No trace of enlightenment remains, and this no trace continues endlessly.

Well said, and we can say it in this way, too.

To study the Buddha way is to study the great story we tell about our life, in all its chapters and verses. Studying this great story is, at the same time, letting it go. Letting go of our great story is accepting the all-inclusive reality of our life as it is. When accepting our whole self, my chapters and verses as well as the chapters and verses of others reside here and there, none dominating Buddha’s boundless field. Grasping and pushing away cease, and the resulting rest continues endlessly.

Still, that’s a lot of words. So, here’s the second teaching, which is significantly shorter. Joan Didion opens her essay “The White Album” with the simple sentence

We tell ourselves stories in order to live.

I add: and we let go of our stories to keep on living.

Upcoming Events

Enlightenment is Not the Goal! — Center of Solitude Retreat, June 7th and 8th

This summer, I’m leading a retreat at the Center of Solitude outside Belmont, NY. The retreat’s focus is exploring inquiry, service, welcoming, and other aspects of the spiritual path through the Ten Ox Herding Pictures. You can find more information here.

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How Is Your Heart?

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Bodhidharma, The First Chinese Ancestor