Letting Go in a Sea of Troubles

The following is a Preceptor’s Talk given by Elizabeth Jiei Cole on March 15, 2026 at the Zen Center of Los Angeles.

So the theme of this talk is “letting go in a sea of troubles.” And in one way, one of the Buddha’s first teachings was that we’re always in a sea of troubles. But we’re particularly in a sea of troubles right now. I think it’s hard to ignore and ought not to be ignored.

This theme of letting go is very pronounced in Zen practice: let go of false self, let go of sense of an “other,” let go of things that cannot be contained, let go of false notions and concepts. It was particularly striking to me when I was a young Zen student, and what strikes me now is that I really did not come to Zen having read a lot of books or anything of the sort. I was a Quaker and believed in egalitarian relationships. So the whole idea of being intimidated by a teacher, I just didn’t have that, for better or for worse. 

But hearing all of this letting go, I decided to tell Maezumi Roshi about one of my favorite jokes at the time, which you can probably relate to. It may be a particularly American kind of joke.

I said: once upon a time, there was this man. It didn’t have to be a man, it could have been a woman, but it’s more likely to be a man, perhaps. He just had to do everything to prove himself. He just had to do the things that nobody else did, and so he decided to tackle the Himalayas’ most difficult peak by himself. He had all his gear, he trained completely. He let the Sherpas help him up to sort of the last moment. But finally he was on his own, and he’s got his piton in the face of the rock and so forth. And then he realizes it’s slipping and he’s hanging off the edge of this pinnacle by himself, and the piton is sliding. And although he never in a million years believed in God in any form, that was his moment. And so he looks up in despair and says, “Is anybody there?” And astonishingly, the clouds started to part and they were roiling. The mountains started to shake and a huge voice starts echoing through the mountains. “YEEESSSS.”

And the man yells, “Will you help me?”
And the voice says, “YEEEEESSSSS.”
So the man says, “What should I do?”
And the voice says, “JUST LET GOOOOOO.”

The man thinks for a moment and then he cries out, “Is anyone else up there?”

Maezumi Roshi laughed and laughed. And then he says, “So, is that a Christian story?”
I said, “No, Roshi, it’s just a joke.”
“Oh,” he says. “Too bad.”

But at any rate, it’s always struck me, what are we actually letting go of? And what is it that’s coming up, at least up for me, in terms of what I’m letting go of? I need to keep being reminded to let go in these particular times. And first of all, I think it’s really useful to acknowledge something of the breadth and depth of the problem we’re in. These are long karmic tides that are making themselves known. The environment has been exploited, the warning signs badly ignored in favor of greed and ignorance. And so now we have species disappearing, the climate changing in ways that make it more and more difficult for our fellow creatures and our fellow human beings to live in.

Now it’s beginning to affect us closer and closer. The flood waters are now at our doorstep, and even so it’s very hard to really take it in. The long, long simmering hatreds, anti-Semitic hatreds, racial hatreds, all of those things, all of the things you might want to ignore. It’s a backlash of those tides against the things that we have tried to do to ameliorate those troubles. Something is coming home to roost, you could say. So greed, anger, and ignorance seem especially virulent.

So, the first thing is to acknowledge that. At least sit with that for just a moment. And notice right now, how does that show up in your body? Whew. Maybe your stomach tightens. Let that go. Breathe into it. My toes often curl up like I’m clutching the earth. Notice. Let go. My heart is pounding. And then, coming back, looking around, being here.

The next step for me—and this is very important—is to come to the realization again that I have never been in control. I may feel particularly out of control right now, and there’s some justification for that. But in fact, the illusion that we’re in control is just that: an illusion. As anyone knows who has suddenly been going along in their life and a car comes smashing in, and then what? Suddenly you’re in the hospital. Maybe you’re on your way to work. And the world you thought was in order is not in order. The person you were counting on to be your spouse or your partner suddenly disappears. We’re not in control, no.

(You might well be saying, what other good news do you have to impart this morning?) 

But there are at least two ways of dealing with this. One is of course that we work very hard at maintaining the illusion that we can keep an eye on things and keep things under control. I certainly do. There are people who might even think I’m a control freak. But there is a freedom in recognizing that we’re not in control, too.

Photo by Gleb Gusachenko

When I was relatively new to this practice, my first teacher was Robert Aitken Roshi, and he was more of a social activist in his inclinations than a lot of Zen teachers, at least at that time. And so I assumed that was just normative. And I ran into people both here at the Zen Center at that time and also people who came to a sitting group that I was helping coordinate at All Saints, who were very certain that we shouldn’t be involved in social activism in any way because according to the Buddhist teaching, we shouldn’t be interfering with other people’s karma. If people were poor, they were poor as a result of whatever karma they had accumulated before, and that if they were on the streets, they were there for a reason. They were working through the karma from what they’d been before. And whatever we had, we were enjoying whatever karma we had. And this was not an uncommon teaching, both here and in other countries.

And I was quite stunned by this idea, being a thoroughgoing activist at the time, and I took it to Aitken Roshi and he said, “Yeah, but that ignores the fact that we, too, are part of each other’s karma. We are presented with the opportunity to take in, to bear witness.” He didn’t use that language, but to respond to the moment at hand, the person at hand, the need at hand, with some degree of hopefully humility and openness, so that we’re not simply making a project of everybody else, but nonetheless, we are in it. We are not simply observers watching other people’s karma going by as if it is so well deserved. It’s not like that at all. We’re in it. 

In what sense is there freedom in recognizing that we’re not in control?

This seemed like a silly thing at the time, but I was quite shocked when I became president of our local homeowners association and more than I had been before, I was waking up early, anxious, and having unfortunate dreams — scary dreams of being on a ship, in charge of this 17th or 18th century ship going across the ocean with water pouring over the sides and so forth.

And as I looked at it—that being one of the great advantages of practice: you do get used to stopping and looking at things—I realized that I was getting confused between what I could do and what I was assuming responsibility for that I couldn’t do. So, you know, I could pay attention to the needs at hand and meet the vendors, the ever present plumbers in our case. I could coordinate things with my board, I could suggest that we might want to look at the long term consequences of certain things. What I could not do and cannot do is predict how every other owner might respond, what the buildings would be like in 10 years, and on and on. And then the realization,  “Oh. I can let go of those things.” And it was amazing. Amazing how just making that distinction over and over again, just really saying, what is mine to do? What can I do? What is not mine to do? This is huge for anxiety. 

I was first introduced to this actually a long time ago. My husband tended to be much more anxious than I and he would get anxious over things that I thought were astonishing. He’d get anxious because the answering machine broke, and it’s like, how would I know how to fix it? We’ll read the directions, and if we can’t figure it out, we’ll ask a neighbor to help us. This is not anything to be anxious about.

But then when he was going in for surgery for prostate cancer, astonishingly, he wasn’t anxious at all. And I said, “I don’t want to put any ideas into your head, but I’m really surprised you’re not anxious.”
And he looked at me in complete calm and said, “Why should I be anxious? I’m not responsible. If I were the surgeon or the anesthesiologist I might be anxious. But all I have to do is lie there. They just do their thing.”  And I thought, what a wonderful distinction to be making. 

So that letting go of what we’re not in control of takes some discernment. Because I think we might say, in that case, the news is just too awful and a lot of it I’m not in control of, so I just won’t pay any attention. It’s just too painful. It just makes me mad. It just makes me upset and I know quite a few people who are actually doing that. Like, “I just decided I’m not going to watch the news at all.” And I understand that. I even understand that with a certain sympathy, but I don’t buy it. My own sense of discernment is that we still are human beings. We still are people who maybe have the power to vote. We are still people who speak to other people and try to understand what’s going on as best we can. We have our intelligence, we have our creativity, we have to make connections. We do the things that we’re responsible for doing, and we keep our eyes and ears open. We keep our sense of being connected to the pulse of things alive. 

But for me, I also am very aware of not letting myself get into what is now called doom scrolling; not getting into the habit of just, “Oh my God, it’s awful!” And then I’ll read this person’s version of how awful it is, and that person’s version of how awful, and the next person’s. We simply cannot afford to do that. It’s perfectly understandable, but no. As Roshi Egyoku used to say— and I found this very helpful: use all the ingredients at hand: your intelligence, your experience, people that you know who actually might have some credibility. For me, that’s very important. 

I used to work for the American Friends Service Committee, Quaker Organization, and I had a fair bit of contact with people in public media during that time. And one of the things that I learned, much to my distress, was that a great deal of media—even before there were people who made their business in disinformation and so forth—tends to be geared to bad news. That’s what sells and that’s what’s considered news.

So every once in a while I would be trying to get media attention, saying for example, “We’re doing this kind of conflict resolution work in newly integrated schools and it seems to be really working helpfully.” And people would say, “That’s very nice, Betty. I’m glad you’re doing that. But that is not news.”
I’d say, “What would be news?”
“Well, if you were to take this to the school board and they were to refuse to listen to you and you would refuse to leave, and then they would drag you kicking and screaming from the room, that would be news.” 

Would it make a good case for conflict resolution? Maybe not, but it would be news. So, learning that—as distressing as it was—I decided I feel strongly about this: I needed to also look for sources of information that are not geared that way. For instance, the Christian Science Monitor or Yes Magazine. I needed to be aware of what positive, important things are happening in the community that might not be getting the attention they really deserve, because it’s not just to make me feel better, it’s to get a better, stronger, broader sense of what reality is happening. 

One of the things that’s very striking to me, in the midst of the times we’re in, is that just as the wounds are getting more glaring and awful, people are discovering that we cannot just imagine that business as usual will take care of itself. They’re coming forward and connecting with their neighbors in different ways. They’re delivering food somewhat secretively to people in need who are in danger, and they are discovering their ability to respond in ways that they didn’t imagine they would have to. And it’s important for us to know: that’s what we can do, as human beings engaged in this business of bearing witness. We can show up.

So again, just take a moment to be quiet, maybe shut your eyes. What is coming up for you at the moment? Is there a part you have to offer in these times? Skills, perspectives, connections? Maybe you don’t know right at this moment. Maybe nothing’s coming up right at this moment, but it might be something to leave some space to explore.

The other thing that I’ve noticed in terms of letting go and the need to let go is that especially under stress, there are these sort of conditioned scripts. Anybody who’s done zazen very much will certainly know some of them. When I first started sitting, one thing that came up a lot was, “Oh my God, how long have we been sitting here? Whose idea was this, anyway? This is a very bad idea.” And then the other one that would come up a lot was, “I think I’m experiencing a little bit of enlightenment. What would that look like? Who can I tell about this? There must be somebody that I could instruct on this.” All of those kinds of things. The picture I had was of somebody who was trying to grow something from a seed and kept taking the seed out of the ground all the time to say, “Is it sprouting then? Is it sprouting yet? Is it sprouting yet?” And then being astonished that it didn’t really thrive under those conditions. But I’m a very goal-oriented person, and if you are a very goal-oriented person, there are certain occupational hazards in being a Zen student. On the one hand, self-discipline and energy and all that might really help you. On the other hand, constantly looking for results is probably not the best.

So, the instruction we often hear is, “let go of the story, let go of the script.” We used to say more often, “kill the self.” I don’t say “kill the self” very often anymore. But maybe just to recognize when those scripts and that persona are getting in the way, when they’re keeping you from really settling into the moment at hand, and clarifying. Those habitual things can be pretty isolating in ways that we might not expect. 

I come from a strong “helper bee” background. My mother had polio before I was born, and by the time I was pretty young, she did need a fair bit of help. And being a good mother’s daughter, being helpful was pretty strongly emphasized.

And there are certain neurotic impulses you’ll probably have, whether or not you’re into Zen practice or not. So make good use of them, but on the other hand, notice when they really are in the way. For instance, for me, sometimes I just notice: okay, I take on more than I need to, and more yet. And then I go, “Why am I the only one doing all the work around here? Why do I have to be the one?” Does that sound familiar? “Well,” I realize, “Nobody asked you. Nope, that was you. Let go.” Who’s to blame here? That’s another one. “Who’s to blame” or “I’m just not good enough. I’m really terrible at this.” That’s a good one. “If I were better at this,” or, “if they did things differently.” All of those scripts.

There are two things that are true, whether or not there’s high tension or not, but in these times, the tendency to look for a way out is very strong and very natural. Nothing is more human than saying at this moment, under these circumstances, “Get me outta here.” And so, the news that there isn’t an “out of here” is not good news. So learning to sit and settle in underneath that chatter and see through it, you’re not really killing it. But can you set it aside? Can you see through it? Can you laugh at it even a little? “Oh, you again” And not take that as the ultimate reality of who you or anybody else is. Can we do that? It’s really useful, because it just wears you out and chances are it even might be wearing other people around you out too.

So, in this moment in time, one of the things that’s really helpful to remember is that not only are you in some kind of high stress mode, but all of the people around you are too, whether they know it or not, whether or not they’re better at covering it up than you are or not. Grief often masquerades as anger. Think of that. Some losses have happened gradually enough that it’s somewhat easy to forget the loss, but our bodies and minds and hearts actually do feel them, if we let them.

When I was little, even in Phoenix, Arizona, in the suburbs, there were more butterflies. In the 1990s, when my husband and I first started birdwatching, there were more birds. That was only 35 years ago. For me, and admittedly, this has come from a place of a certain kind of privilege, I did imagine that I could count on things keeping on getting better, that the moral arc of the universe was such that our efforts would keep making things better.

But I don’t know. I don’t know. There’s grief.

Besides really letting go of the pretense that we know, or the pretense that we don’t feel these things—the other thing is to let go into spacious sweetness. We need to give ourselves and each other an extra dose of grace. That includes the people who are not as on top of things as we would like and the people who are not as serene as we would like; people not as calm as we would like, people who push our buttons. Take a deep breath and give each other and ourselves some grace. Letting go of the othering.

Many years ago I dropped out of college and went to San Francisco. It was a thing to do at the time. And I found myself unexpectedly very alone and very cold in the San Francisco fog. And one day I was on a bus and I was sitting relatively close to the front of the bus and the strangest thing happened and I cannot in any way account for this, but this is what happened. I was watching the people coming in and stopping to put their fares in the farebox, and suddenly, somehow perspective shifted and I was inside the person looking out at the bus, instead of in the bus looking at the person. It wasn’t just imagining. It was like, literally, at that moment I saw and felt and intuited: this was a whole universe. This person’s universe was a whole universe, and their life was exactly as mine was. It was just seconds, moments. And I didn’t see the whole life, but I just knew that boundless hugeness, it is our life. And then it was gone and it shifted back and I was looking at them and around the bus, but it’s never left me.

All of these people that we are othering, all these other people that seem so completely incomprehensible to us and utterly blameworthy are carrying universes exactly as we are, with their own reasons, their own conditions based in part on how they were raised, and their own blindness. We human beings have our troubles. We are subject to terrible misunderstandings and greed and hatreds. So the thing for me is, it’s not that if you only understood, you wouldn’t be able to hold anybody accountable for anything. I don’t think that’s true. But it’s never the last word about who any of us is.

So, in these times, there an inclination as human beings to create our own sense of belonging by saying our tribe is very different than that one over there, we are very different from that. We are human beings, we do that anyway, but we also now have a whole complex of organizations and spokespeople and trendsetters and media and so forth, working that perspective all the time. We need to be on guard, because you can be sure that we are going to be encouraged to do as much of othering as will be of some benefit to someone for some reason.

How do you resist that without resisting? How do you resist in general without resisting? It seems to me that very often we identify most intensely with those things that we’re being attacked for and have to defend ourselves about. So, seeing that, we really probably ought not to be attacking people for the things that we want to attack them for. Even if they richly deserve it, attacking them does not have the intended effect. If somebody comes at me saying, “You ni–ger loving, damn liberal!” You can be sure I’m not going, “Oh, you have a point there.” Do you see what I mean? Nobody ever changes on account of a well-aimed attack, at least not in my experience.

Some of you may know this story and take it for granted, but it’s a helpful one for me. There’s this story about the person who was undoubtedly my first teacher, at least in spiritual terms, which is Jesus. And there’s this great story where Jesus comes across a group of men who are about ready to stone a woman who was caught in adultery. She certainly deserved to be stoned, by their lights. She was caught red-handed, as it were, in adultery, after all. And Jesus comes on the scene and he stops and he draws in the sand. Just imagine that sort of everybody’s now stopped going, “what is he doing?” And this woman is in terror, encircled by these men. What is this guy doing? He draws in the sand, and then he looks up and says, “Let the one of you who is without sin throw the first stone.” Just imagine you’re one of those people. “Oh wait, it’s just coming back to me. Oh, that sin. Ooh.” And one by one they sort of disappear. And then he turns to the woman. “Alright.” So, did he turn things around? They’ve definitely turned things around. It stopped. People weren’t fully held accountable, but the mirror is turned. The mirror is turned. There’s shift.

I tend to be a pretty judgmental person, and I remember at one point I felt very guilty about different things I had done and not done, mostly in terms of practice. And I said to Maezumi Roshi, “It would be easier for me if you would just get mad at me.”
He said, “Oh, why is that?”
I said, “Because I deserve it. I waste this opportunity, I waste that opportunity, I don’t show up, I don’t—whatever.”
And to my surprise, he said, “Of course you deserve it. But that’s not all you deserve.”

So remember, that’s not all we deserve. Not all we deserve.

And so finally we get to this: letting go of that kind of distraction that just keeps us always on the move and paying attention to something else except for how astonishing it is that we are where we are: the people we’re with in this moment, with this opportunity, with this practice, with these choices. With this health, with these bodies. Just shut your eyes for a second. Again, take a deep breath and imagine a different story just for a moment. Imagine the story just a few years ago, where we couldn’t be in this same room and how glad you’d be if we could just be together. Imagine you are someplace else in the world or under different circumstances. If you were a woman, you would definitely not be giving this talk, nor would you see other women leading. If you were gay, you would hide it for all your worth. Imagine the places you might be, where the hope of having an education was not possible. Imagine being in one of the many places being bombed. Imagine being in a place where you’re afraid to come to your front door for fear that an agent might see you.

Now open your eyes and look around.
Amazing, amazing.

So.
Give thanks and show up. 

Elizabeth Jiei Cole 
Jiei has been part of the Zen Center of Los Angeles sangha since 1981, with much of her training taking place at Yokoji Zen Mountain Center in the 1980’s and 90’s with Maezumi Roshi.  Her first teacher was Robert Aitken Roshi, for whom Zen was deeply expressed in social engagement as well as in koan and temple life. This was a fitting match for Jiei’s own lifelong search for ways to “walk the talk” of Jesus in Christian communities, first as a Quaker and still as an active member of All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena.  As this talk reveals, working for the American Friends Service Committee in peace and nonviolent action training for almost a decade and with students at Westridge School for Girls both academically and in community engagement, have been key contexts for her Zen practice. She is also an artist, singer and one of our regular tenzos.