I feel rather a little bit shy to mention that there seems to be a problem in the world. And the problem that I had in mind is that there seems to be suffering. We humans seem to suffer quite a bit and also other animals and plants seem to suffer. And we even We even seem to do things to each other which make things harder.

[01:06]

We do things to ourselves and others which make things harder. Another way of introducing this is that I've met many people who tell me that they feel this way, that they experience pain and suffering, that they experience anxiety and fear and shame and regret. And another way to put this is that many... meditators, many people who practice Zen sitting, when they sit still and quiet for some time, when they stop moving and wiggling around, most of them discover that they're uncomfortable

[02:31]

Most of them discover this suffering I'm talking about. the initiatory practice, the practice which initiates us into the experience of suffering. Maybe I shouldn't say the, but for us in Zen, perhaps the prototypic initiatory practice is to just sit still. And if we just sit still, Even while we're walking around, if we're just present and not rushing ahead of ourselves, or lurking behind ourselves, but right up present with ourselves, we naturally discover, it seems most people naturally discover, something's off, something's very painful.

[03:58]

And this is an insight into truth. This insight is called insight into the first noble truth that the Buddha taught, the truth that there is suffering. some popularizations of this insight have come down now as life is suffering. I think, I'm not sure, but I think in this extremely popular book called by Scott Peck, what's it called? The Road Less Traveled. I think at the beginning of that book he says that the Buddha taught that life is suffering.

[05:03]

And so more people are reading his version of what the Buddha taught than the Dalai Lama's. Anyway, the Buddha didn't teach that life is suffering. The Buddha taught that there is a truth that there is suffering. It is a fact that we have to deal with. And it is a truth. If you can face this truth, working with facing up to that truth, uprightly facing that truth of suffering, will set you free from suffering. That's not the first truth. The first truth is just the truth of suffering. Not even there is suffering. Not that there isn't suffering or is suffering, but just the truth of suffering.

[06:06]

What is suffering is the question. Does it exist or not exist? Anyway, it definitely appears. We experience it. That's the first truth. And this truth will be revealed to anybody who sits still long enough. If we then sit still with this truth, the truth of suffering, another truth will be revealed to us. If we sit still, gently, uprightly, harmoniously, quietly sit still, and sit still means not wiggling around, not messing with this truth, gently, quietly facing it. Another truth will dawn upon us, which is called the second truth.

[07:12]

The second truth is that this suffering has an origination. It arises. It arises from conditions. When we first see it, we see a little bit of the conditions. But the root condition, the fundamental condition from which this suffering arises is the belief for human beings, the belief that

[08:18]

we exist inherently as a self. That we exist as separate selves from all the rest of the world. That we exist separate from other humans, other animals, and plants, and the mountains, and the skies, and the ocean, that we actually exist separately and independently. That belief is the root cause of this suffering. I would say that this, in a sense, Belief is the root of all affliction.

[09:21]

The belief itself is not exactly an affliction. It's just a way of understanding. However, all affliction arises from this. I wouldn't say that necessarily the affliction of the pain from being cold or the pain from breaking a leg arises from that. But the pain from being cold is not really an affliction in a sense. It's actually feedback to us that we should get warm. A broken leg, the pain from a broken leg is not really an affliction. It's helpful information. BUT ACTUALLY NOW THAT I TALK, THE AFFLICTION WE GET FROM BELIEVING IN SELF IS ALSO HELP FROM INFORMATION. IT TELLS US SOMETHING IS WRONG WITH THE WAY YOU UNDERSTAND THE WORLD. Once we believe in this independent little unit, this separate vehicle, this little boat out in the ocean of our experience, that belief naturally leads us to be concerned for this independent self, to cherish it, to attach to it, to cling to it.

[11:03]

Once we believe it truly exists by itself, we can't help but attach to it. And this attachment then causes a constriction, a tightening in our naturally flowing, vastly open, interconnected life. And this is the pain, this constriction, this squelching, this tightening, this isolation of our life through our understanding. And then all the things we feel connected to, that surround us, we feel are threatening us. All the things which support us and breathe life into us we feel threatened by, we feel anxious about.

[12:09]

If we continue to sit still in the middle of awareness of this truth of the origins of our suffering, we start to understand more and more the story of how this suffering arises. When we see the full story of how the suffering dependently co-arises through our understanding of our self-existence, when we see the dependent co-arising of our suffering in conjunction with belief in self and self-attachment, When we see that, we see the truth in the suffering. We see the suffering in such a way that we see the Buddha in the suffering.

[13:26]

We see that because of our Buddha nature, Because of our constantly changing, interdependent nature, we suffer when we try to limit and constrict that nature. Realizing this true nature, which suffers when it's constricted by false belief, we are liberated from suffering. We realize the third truth. which is that suffering, this kind of suffering, has an end. It can completely drop away. And when that drops away, we also become free and relaxed in the midst of other kinds of suffering, like the suffering from heat and cold and various kinds of physical illness. we just experience those pains without self-concern.

[14:39]

If we then continue to sit still with the third truth, sit still in the realization of the end of suffering, we realize that there is a path that was traveled that we may not even have noticed we traveled, but there was a path that was traveled to realize this freedom from suffering. We realize the truth that there is a path, that there is a practice by which this realization arises. If we then continue to sit quietly with the realization of the fourth truth of the path, we then realize the path together with all beings, which we now understand breathe life into us every moment.

[15:45]

We continue the practice which led us to the realization. Before we sit still, we are like this little boat in the ocean getting tossed about by circumstances, constantly frustrated and anxious. When we sit still in this boat, we start to realize that this is the case. And as we continue to sit still in the realization of this rough trip we're having in the midst of circumstances, we finally realize that there is no boat that has to be held onto at all.

[16:53]

It's not that there's no boat, it's just that you don't have to hold onto it. It's not that there isn't a self, it's just that it's not something that you need to hold onto. because it's not a permanent, self-existing boat. There's no boat without you, there's no boat without the water, there's no boat without the sky, and so on. By sitting in this little boat and experiencing what it's like and not running away from the consequences and the story of that boat and the suffering that arises there, we naturally let go of the boat. And then everything that previously pushed us around, threatened us, and hurt us, buoys us up and gives us life, illuminates our true nature.

[17:57]

Rather than, before we understand our true nature, everything challenges our conception of our self. So that the Zen master Dogen wrote a poem about this. Windless, waveless, no wind, no waves. in the midnight water, an abandoned boat swamped in moonlight. If we hold to the boat, even the moonlight hurts.

[19:12]

When the boat is abandoned, The boat is swamped in the light of all things. I'd like to focus in on one phase of this process today. And that is, I guess, the phase of after having some glimpse of the second truth, namely that Not only is there suffering, but suffering has a condition, and the condition is self-clinging.

[20:19]

You might be able to do this kind of practice I'm going to be talking about even before realization of the second truth. It might be sufficient if you realize that there's suffering and that you hear that in the Buddha tradition the path of freedom from suffering is through study of the self. you might be able to go directly from experiencing suffering to studying the self. But anyway, the path of awakening, the path of freedom from suffering, is through studying the self, because the misconception of self is the root of suffering. So by turning around and looking at the fundamental delusion, we start the path of awakening from the delusion of independent selfhood. So how do you study the self in such a way that you could be liberated from your belief in your independence?

[21:43]

and realize your inner dependence. There's many ways. But one way we talk about it is that the way to study the self is to settle the self on the self. to become intimate with the self. One of the main ways of becoming intimate with the self and becoming aware of the self, the self which you, whatever it is, including the self that you think is independent, One of the main ways to meditate on this and become intimate with this, what you think the self is, is to constantly think about the welfare of others.

[22:51]

To constantly think about and hope for and work for the welfare of others. This is one of the best ways to become aware of your limited idea of yourself and to become aware that you really believe in that limited idea. Some people might think, oh, I'm a Buddhist, so actually I don't believe that I'm separate from other people. That's a delusion. I believe that I'm interconnected with everyone. Well, fine. Let's check it out. Give me your money. All of it. And your clothes, please.

[23:59]

Is there any resistance there? Where is the resistance? Where do you... Some people might be willing to do that, but maybe they wouldn't be willing to, for example, say, now the next thing to do is now you have to join the Ku Klux Klan. It's the next thing to do. That might be too much. Or you might have to resign from the Ku Klux Klan. By various ways we might be able to find out that there's something, that someplace that you, something you can't do for the welfare of others. And therefore you find your selfishness. The more you work, the more we work, the more I work for the welfare of others, the more I become aware of my selfishness. If you never try to do anything for people, you might not feel selfish at all.

[25:13]

But if you really think about the vow of doing your utmost for the welfare of others, then you might feel quite soon that you're not living up to that, and that the reason that you're not is just self-concern. abandoning this self, letting go of the self, we have to, we must, we can't let go of ourself before we're willing to admit how thoroughly we're invested in it. Well, I'm sure I'm willing to let go of the self, but don't ask me to tell you beforehand how much I cherish it.

[26:23]

Don't make me admit how I am prior to letting go of that. But it turns out that if I'm not willing to admit it, what reason do I have for not admitting it other than the fact that I'm holding on to it? Some other people would like to know about all our imperfections, all of our stinginess, all of our selfishness. They'd like to know about the finest detail of all of our selfishness. Not everybody does, but some people would be happy to hear about it. They would think it would be quite interesting. And some of those people are not just people that are kind of like wanting to like see how bad you are, but rather want to understand and help you understand what you think you are. Intimacy with your idea of yourself is necessary in order to really let go of yourself.

[27:42]

Intimacy with your delusion about yourself is necessary in order to let go of your delusion about yourself. And intimacy means intimacy with yourself by yourself and intimacy with yourself with another. It means confessing your selfishness to yourself and to another. It means admitting your selfishness inwardly and outwardly. You may say, I might say, well, I notice I know I'm selfish. Fine, that's good. That's very good for me to know that. I need to know that about myself, that I'm selfish, deeply selfish. I know that I have a belief in my independent existence. And other people too who meditate know that they have a deep, deep, deep, visceral, cellular, genetic belief in independent existence of their self.

[29:02]

They know that. But you know it even more when you start to tell somebody else. It brings up other aspects of it. In fact, I can't know the full extent of my selfishness all by myself. I need others to fully understand how selfish I am. Others do help us understand the full extent of our selfishness. When we understand the full extent of our selfishness through the help of others, we will become free of our selfishness. The process, the practice of admitting

[30:12]

of seeing and admitting to oneself and with others how selfish we are. That process of seeing and admitting is selfless. It is a selfless meditation at its completion. But even the basic motivation at the beginning of it, when you're first making the first partial admissions of your selfishness and squeaking a little bit of that and leaking a little bit of that to the press, Even the beginning also has the ingredient of selflessness in it, of freedom from self. We deceive ourselves. We deceive others. Because we're selfish, we want to do whatever is possible to promote our self.

[31:16]

And oftentimes having other people think well of us seems to promote our self-interest. If people think well of us, that might be nice for the self. So we tend to present ourselves in a way that we appear to be what other people will appreciate and support and be nice to and give various kinds of positive materials to and feelings to. It is deeply, deeply, deeply built into our tissue to present ourselves in such a way that others will give us what promotes our personal existence. Even, it is deeply in us to do that even if we would misrepresent ourselves and be something which we are not.

[32:25]

And in fact, in order to present ourselves in the best possible or even exaggerate how good we are to others, we can do that more easily usually if we don't notice we're doing it. If we deceive ourselves that we're doing that, it's a little easier for us to do it. And also, it's a little harder for them to tell that we're deceiving them when we don't know we are either. Because we know that if we're deceiving people and we get caught, that might not be good for our self-interest. So if we don't even know it, we can lie in a relaxed way. So it's not that easy for us to disclose our deception to ourselves or to others. It's not that easy for us to notice that we're presenting ourselves in a way that may not be true. And it isn't that... I'm not saying that we always present ourselves in a way that's not true.

[33:41]

Not always. Because in fact we do have the capacity And we are developing the capacity to present ourselves honestly. It's just that we have a basic cellular, you know, genetic tendency to misrepresent ourselves if that's to our advantage. On the other hand, if it's to our advantage to present ourselves accurately and honestly, we will be perfectly honest if it is to our advantage. Did you do that? You do such and such a thing? Did you do that? And you think, these people will like it. You say, what can I say? Yes. I did it. I mean, I'm kind of sorry that I'm going to get all this credit for this, but I did. That was me, yeah. We will tell the truth if it's to our advantage.

[34:46]

But if it's not, there's a deep tendency to not. But we can learn that that tendency to misrepresent ourselves in order to protect ourselves is part of what is causing our basic problem in life. And therefore, make a tremendous effort. It takes tremendous effort to turn this around and little by little start squeaking out tiny little hints of how selfish we are, first to ourselves, then to others. You don't have to tell people necessarily what the selfishness is. You can just stop by telling them that you're afraid to tell them anything, that you're afraid to disclose anything about yourself because they might not like it. You can stop to disclose not how the grisly details of your selfishness, but just that you're concerned about self-approval. Start with that.

[35:50]

Then you might say, the person might not press you, might not say, well, what is it that you're concerned about whether I would approve or not? I'm not going to tell you that. I just want to tell you I am concerned. Achieving intimacy with ourselves requires intimacy with another. Achieving intimacy with ourselves requires disclosure of our selfishness. Achieving intimacy with another requires disclosure of our selfishness. And it's hard for us to disclose what we have been deceiving ourself about. It's tough. It's a tough road. But it turns out that disclosing whatever you can disclose and surviving it and experiencing the expansion of your heart and the lessening of the constriction around your life is an encouragement to tell a little more.

[36:59]

Sometimes you get in big trouble for telling, but you still feel at some point not deep level, but transcendent level, you feel more free. It's not like at the bottom of human nature there's something that's not selfish. It's rather that selfishness is at the bottom of human nature, and selfishness itself liberates itself from itself. if you can admit it. If we can admit it. And we need each other to do it. Other plants and animals are also dishonest. They also misrepresent themselves to their selfish gains. but we do it more and we do it with speech mostly.

[38:02]

They can't talk so they can't tell lies. We can. So we're the world leaders at deception and dishonesty. So we have more work of confession to do than any other kinds of animals. Buddhas are world-class confessors of selfishness. And our Buddha nature or a Buddha is someone who is completely free of selfishness by completely admitting selfishness. I read at the beginning of a book on the history of the civil rights movement, in the preface to the book, the author said something like, the purpose of writing the book was based on the conviction that the truth requires that we make a maximum effort

[39:38]

to see through the eyes of strangers, foreigners, and enemies. And I would just say it would make a maximum effort to see through the eyes of the other. But you can't see through the eyes of the other. You can only see through the eyes of yourself. So somehow those two can be put together. I saw a kind of story about that recently.

[40:40]

It's a story about a black man whose daughter was brutally raped. She was raped and then beaten and left for dead. And this black man in the story killed the men who raped and brutalized a little girl. She was 10 years old in the story. The father then killed those men. And his defense attorney asked the jury, an all-white jury, to close their eyes and visualize the story of her rape and near murder.

[41:48]

And he told the story. And they listened to the story. And as they listened to the story, of course, they all felt tremendous grief, tremendous sorrow, wrenching pain at the thought of a little girl being treated and abused in that way, being left finally lying in a river ditch for dead. They pictured that little black girl, these white people, pictured this little black girl in that way and felt, I'm sure all of them felt, great sorrow. And then the lawyer said, now imagine she's white. And maybe in that way, you could see through the eyes of the black man.

[42:57]

Or now imagine she's your daughter. then maybe your self is in the seat. From being attentive to the suffering of others and being concerned for their welfare and then at the same time admitting our selfish position, the combination of those two, admitting our selfishness in the face of others and having them tell us that we're not them. and somehow working back and forth until we experience our limitation fully. And doing this in a way that's gentle

[44:12]

so that people, yourself and others, can stay with the process and stay present to experience what it's like to take responsibility for this delusion. And in the full, soft and gentle assumption of responsibility for our delusion, the whole picture can turn and we can be liberated. I'm going into some detail here about the process, but basically it all happens if you just stay present and don't move, and do that in a way that's constantly adjusting and harmonizing with the circumstances of your experience.

[45:19]

All this will naturally unfold. You will naturally... you know, be illuminated about your selfishness. You'll naturally, your enlightened nature will naturally want to disclose this. I'm just telling you beforehand so you won't be surprised if you find yourself doing these non-human activities like telling the truth. like really admitting that we are selfish animals deep down. And what I'm talking about here is the next step in the evolution of human beings.

[46:22]

step beyond selfishness which took so long to evolve and which has problems such that we must evolve beyond selfishness. But the place we stand to go beyond selfishness is in the middle of selfishness. If we disdain standing in our limited, deluded nature to move forward will be trapped there until we do admit it. Eventually, we will admit it and we will all move beyond. But as far as I can tell, we have not yet finished this work. I'm talking this way to encourage all of us to do this very difficult work of settling the self on the self, of completely admitting our selfish nature in order to be free of it, and giving a little hint of how difficult that is.

[47:44]

I've just barely scratched the surface. But today, I really trust this path that I've been describing. I think this is very important that we do this work of becoming intimate with our delusion in order to become free of it. Okay? Did you get that feeling from me? And I sympathize with any distaste you may have for such grisly work.

[49:04]

And I even propose that it is, again, visceral that we resist it. But in not fighting that resistance, but accepting that resistance and settling into that resistance, we can overcome our our deluded nature, our deluded nature. It's very important, but of course, because it's very important, we should not take it too seriously. Otherwise it'll get too heavy. And if we do this heavy-handedly, this practice of self-study and self-admission, study of selfishness and confession of selfishness.

[50:08]

If we get too heavy about it, we'll probably just say, it's too much. I give up. I got to take two years off. I'm brutalizing myself admitting how selfish I am. And that's one of the ways people escape from doing the hard work is by doing something which seems even by going into crazy distractions as they're about to open the door and look in and see the secret. So we have to be very gentle with ourselves as we're settling in and starting to see the secret, uncover the deception. We often veer off into grand distractions at that point. So... Okay, fine, fine, okay, fine. Just be gentle with it, and then finally they'll settle down and come back, and then they're ready to look again, to peek at the big bad one that we thought no one would ask us to look at if we were crazy enough, including ourselves.

[51:12]

So we have to be gentle and kind about this process because there will be reactions against it. Okay? Don't take it too seriously, even though it's very important. Taking it too seriously is a form of laziness. It's a clever out. And everybody else will support our giving up on taking it too seriously too. Lighten up on this heavy work. Okay? I've been talking less than one hour. And my song today is one that I've used before. I'm sorry, I don't have any new songs. It's slightly apropos.

[52:16]

I hope you know it. Ready? Getting to know you. Getting to know all about you. Getting to know you. Hoping that you're like me. Haven't you noticed? Blind and dreamy. Because of all the beautiful and new things I'm learning about you day by day. Can we do that again? Getting to know you, getting to know all about you. Kidding to like you, hoping to hold you like me.

[53:24]

Haven't you noticed suddenly I'm bright and breezy because of all the wonderful and new things I'm learning about you. Is there more? Huh? There's more. It's a whole production. Can you ask a question? Yes? I don't know which one to start with. You don't know which one to start with? You were speaking about being light and gentle.

[54:27]

Exactly. And I find that sometimes hard to be not judgmental and not punishable. of that stuff that comes up. And I wondered if you could talk about any techniques in meditation that might help being able to get there and stay there. Did you say you have a hard time not being... Did you say you have a hard time being light and not judgmental with what comes up? Yes. And you wondered about how to be lighthearted and gentle with what comes up? Well, if something comes up and you feel some judgment of it, can I make a little parenthesis, which I mentioned yesterday? My experience is that particularly in this culture, women do not feel comfortable being judgmental, and men seem to be more comfortable with it.

[55:37]

Women seem to feel like there's something wrong with them being critical and judgmental. But anyway, so when judgmental feelings come up, women really are hard on themselves when they judge their friends and so on. So not only do they feel judgmental, which is a kind of a problem for both men and women, they get down on themselves for feeling that, too. So how can, when a judgmental thought comes up, how can you be gentle with yourself about the judgmental thought? Like, these people don't know how to do such and such. And in Zen practice, there's lots of things which are done in a certain way. So it's easy when you see people doing the various forms of practice to say, well, they're not doing that right, you know, blah, blah, blah. So then you feel bad about judging these dear people who are making their best effort. And men think that too sometimes when they see things like that. Yeah. Well, yeah, you can also be judgmental about yourself, but most people do it more with other people. And then they, okay, some people do it more with other people.

[56:45]

And then even when they deal with other people, they're down on themselves for doing it to other people. And then they also might be down on themselves for doing it themselves, or they might be up on themselves for doing it themselves, thinking that they deserve it, and it's good for them to be down on themselves. Various permutations. So how do you be light about it? Don't move. Just watch it. And accept that this is a normal, very normal, very common human behavior to judge critically what's happening. It's part of our It's part of our nature to do that. You cannot avoid that unless you have some kind of brain damage. I've heard of some, what do you call it, Down syndrome children who don't do that very much. You have to push them a long ways before you'll be critical of other people. They don't have that high-level discriminative abilities.

[57:49]

So we do, and those functions operate, and then we also apply them to our operation of those functions. So we have to be able to let those things happen. Yes? Yvonne Rand brought up a book several years ago that I found very valuable, enlightening up on judgmental thoughts, and that's called Taming Your Gremlin. Taming the Gremlin. It's by Carl Sagan. The gremlins, they're critical. Yes. The critical capacity of the mind. Did that speak to what you said, or do you want more about that? Oh, I suppose I just want somebody else to do it for you. Well, other people are doing it quite energetically. They're already doing it, but they can't do it for you. You can forgive them. You can forgive them for what they're doing. But you also have to forgive yourself. But not like let yourself off, but just say, just let yourself do it.

[58:52]

You know, what you're doing anyway. You are letting yourself do it. So then just be present and take responsibility for the illusion that you do this by your own power. You don't do this by your own power, you know. We didn't make ourselves into people who can do this. We didn't make ourselves into men and women who have these tremendous mental powers. We didn't do that. Now we've got these powers. It's not our fault that we have these powers. We're not making full of them. But what we can do is we can study them and become liberated from our own power. If we fight our power, if we fight the power of our mind, we become slaves to the power of our mind. Our minds are incredibly powerful, as you can see, by the state of the world. If we could accept the power and harmonize the power, if we could face the music of the power of our mind and dance with it, our minds would not realize such destruction and such harm and such cruelty.

[60:06]

So when cruel, judgmental thoughts arise, if you can face them and dance with them, they'll be neutralized. But it's hard to face powerful negative energy in your mind. It's hard to face it and dance with it. Just facing it's one thing, but then to get close enough to dance with it, or even dance at a distance, it's hard. So how do you get good at it? By practice. You try. And you're awkward when you learn that how many people here are really good at dancing with violent energy? You know? And even if you get good at dancing with one kind of violent energy, then another form of it manifests. So it's constantly challenging. We have to be willing to be awkward as we learn these new dances with all this energy. If you're not willing to be awkward... So many people had their hands raised. I don't know who was first.

[61:08]

Just three people left. Well, just to complete that thought, is this also the laziness you were talking about that is not facing the judgments in your own mind is a kind of laziness? Is that...? Not facing the judgments in your own mind is a kind of laziness? Yeah. I just want to make the connection between the laziness and the lightness. Yeah. The opposite of laziness is, in some ways, enthusiasm. Enthusiasm means to be filled with God. And to be filled with God, you have to let things that are happening sort of breathe into you. If you let what happens breathe into you, then you become enthusiastic. If you let these difficult things breathe into you, you can have enthusiasm for facing them. If you push them away, turn away from them, then you have no inspiration or aspiration.

[62:14]

You have no life to be enthusiastic with. And then you're lazy. You shrink back from facing what's happening. Yes. Yes. I just wanted to say that in my personal experience that I found that being mental is really not something that happens by itself. It's something that's like a spin-off of a greater belief system where the purpose to separate yourself from others and to separate in a positive sense as we try to look at it that we're trying to define who we are, and then promote that as a self-interest, like you said. So we don't want to hang out with people who are below us or who are going to bring us down. We want to hang out with people who are going to add to our life. And I think until we can look at that and be willing to look toward more oneness and thus defining to separate and elevate, we'll continue to judge.

[63:17]

that to try to stop judging by itself, I don't know if that's... It's more judging. To try to stop judging would be coming from the same belief system. Maybe attacking the effect rather than the cause. It would be attacking the effect rather than the cause, and it would be reiterating the effect. You'd be making the same effect again. Another success for that system. The system would get stronger every time you fight it. Systems grow on resistance to them. When I was up until about 18 or 20, I didn't judge people. And I tried... He didn't notice you were... I'm a lot less judgmental than I am now. You're less aware than you are now. What I found was that I was not judgmental that the people who were judging would find that I was insubstantial.

[64:24]

Because I wasn't making the same judgments that they were about who was righteously created and who's not. So I found... If you didn't show them that you were judging, they didn't feel like you were playing a sophisticated game. Right. Right. So, you showed them that you were judging and then they respected you more because you were playing their game. Yeah, that makes sense. But you were judging, you just weren't aware of it, you weren't showing it, you weren't expressing it to them. And a lot of, as I said, a lot of people, young people, do not express their judgments because they learn that it's dangerous. So they don't express their judgments and after a while they don't even think they are judging anymore. They deceive themselves because it's too hard to go around with their judgments and feel like you can't express them. That's too painful. It's painful enough to have them and then to feel like you can't express them is really hard. So if you don't even have them anymore it's a little easier. So you just suppress them. These little babies. You can disagree.

[65:26]

You can do that now. This is your critical faculty meeting my critical faculty. You can do that. That's okay now. You can dance with me. I'm not going to punish you for disagreeing with me. I'm not going to teach you that disagreement is not a form of love. Thank you for loving me. Thank you. Now I think you and then Linda. Yes? I think you were next, yeah. What is your name again? Yeah, you. What? Bonnie. Bonnie. I had a Doris Day talk two months ago. And I went home to New Mexico and I remember... Doris Day? What's a Doris Day? I had a secret love. Oh, yeah. And I just went always to an old, always mellow, boring channel and like really up to stuff that I get and It was on that. It helped me remember. These are already, you're going to start to remember.

[66:30]

So that's a preface to the question. Don't call me Bob Dylan because I'm going in the wings and answer, but how much personal pain can be too much of a barrier to go on this practice path? Did you say how much personal pain can be a barrier? How much is too much? How much is too much? Well, I would say that it's not so much how much is too much because I think there's an unlimited amount of personal pain. It's just a question of how much did you open up to? And I think I would say that This is not what they call it, this is not under our control how much we're opening up to, how much pain we're opening up to. I think our heart is wiser than us and it opens up to whatever pain it opens up to. And sometimes we, some intellectual aspect of ourselves says, that's too much pain, this is too much openness.

[67:34]

And then maybe the heart says, okay, okay, okay, and closes down. But I think when we open up to pain, that's as much as we're facing at the time. And if you practice patience with whatever amount of pain your heart opens up to, if you practice patience with it, and settle with it, then your heart says, well, if you can handle this, then it opens up more. And then you flutter, it flutters, and it quakes, and it doubts, and it closes, and then practice patience with that, and then if you get more subtle with that, and comfortable with that level of pain, it naturally opens more. That's one of my understandings of the story of Rumpelstiltskin. If you spin one room full of straw into gold, your reward is you get a room twice as big. If you spin that one into gold, your reward is that one twice as big as that. Your reward for dealing with pain in a patient way

[68:37]

is your heart opens more, your heart dares to open to more. When your heart's completely open, and you practice patience with that, you're finally, you know, sitting in Buddha's seat. That's where Buddha sits. And then you can see the whole picture of the origination of the suffering of the world. But it takes a long time to open, practice patience, settle, open, practice patience, settle. And lots of insights to encourage you and give you the courage to go more and more to the center of this openness to sitting in the middle of the suffering of the whole world. But that's all Buddhas are sitting in that place. Each of us has to sit in that place. And there is a point at which we open up completely. We have the ability to open up completely.

[69:41]

That's how much eventually we should open up to. That's what I think. I think Linda's next, I'm not sure. Oh, can I just tell one story before we get on to that? And that is this woman saw an advertisement for a workshop I was doing and she was attracted to the workshop. because it was about the Bodhisattva precepts and she wanted to study them. In fact, she didn't have much money and she, you know, so she just didn't know if she wanted to spend the money on it. And then somebody heard that she wanted to go to it and gave her the money for the workshop so she could travel and so on. But she still wasn't quite sure because, you know, she had to take off from work and so on. So then she looked me up on the Internet And read one of my lectures. And at the end of the lecture, I sang this song from Damn Yankees called You Gotta Have Heart, which was her favorite song.

[70:44]

When she was a kid. So she went to the workshop. Linda? These songs may have been your most out below the millennia. I wanted to say something in response to the very first question and then ask a little question. Just the first question about being hard to deal with all the negative, violent, judgmental stuff that comes up. I found it very helpful to pretty explicitly acknowledge what it is that's coming up. Like, say to myself, there's a thought about wanting... It's usually pretty violent, you know. Sometimes it's just common, ordinary self-hatred, but sometimes it's pretty violent.

[71:49]

And to just continually, like, a million times say, having that thought, And if possible, noticing what's going on in my body. That's been the most helpful thing that I ever learned how to do after being a, you know, hanging out with teachers and practitioners for decades. One of the most helpful things I learned. The helpful thing you learned is when a violent thought comes up in you, what do you do? How do you relate to it? I notice it. I mean, you said that. You just being present there with it, you face it. But kind of being more explicit about it, I notice it often with words, like having this thought. of smashing the window, having this thought of smashing this person, having this thought of doing other kind of violence, or just of hatred. The things that are the most difficult to face, to say it very explicitly.

[72:56]

To articulate the music. To myself, yeah. Because often the words, often those things live in us as words. So if I make the conscious movement also in a kind of mental note, that's better. And if I combine that with noticing what my hands and muscles are doing, that's even more helpful. Right. So it's kind of like to get it out in front of you, sort of. Yeah, it facilitates the process of being present. You can acknowledge it more fully. Yeah, otherwise I get more easily swamped by it. Yeah. So, yeah, so it may, if you sit with it, the city should bring it out in front to full expression, to full acknowledgment, full acknowledgment and full expression. It actually should reach full expression. It doesn't mean that you act out the violent thing, but that it's fully expressed as it happened, and then you can be free of it.

[74:01]

It always comes up when you sit with it, but usually we just believe it, we just go with it. Usually we just believe it, right. So this helps me to not believe it. Right. If you believe it and suppress it, then it definitely has got you. If you believe it and leave it alone, that's the start. Then believe it and bring it out and understand it, then you're liberated from it. Can I slide in a question? In your talk, a lot of it, just up until the point when you started describing your story, You seem to be setting up some ideal of unselfishness. An ideal of unselfishness? Yeah. You should be unselfish. I think what I feel is that if we're free of selfishness, if we're free of believing in this independent existence of the self,

[75:07]

That takes care of everything. Now, if you look at a person who's free of that, a lot of people will say that person looks unselfish. But there's no ideal there because you're free of, you're just free of things existing by themselves, including ideals that aren't interpenetrating with everything they aren't. So I don't want to set up an ideal, any ideals. What I want to do is become free of all ideals. And the main ideal, of course, the fundamental idea, is me. The ideal of an independently existing thing. That's the basic ideal that we hold. If you become free of that one, you may become able to become free of unselfishness, kindness, compassion, and so on. The Buddha is free of Compassion. That's Buddha's compassion. The Buddha has gone beyond wisdom. That's the Buddha's wisdom. The Buddha has gone beyond Buddha.

[76:11]

That's the Buddha's Buddha. Going beyond everything is the kind of freedom we're talking about here. Yes? I wanted to speak for a moment what you were saying, Reverend, when there was something about survival thoughts and you said we don't have to act them out. You see, the thing is we do act them out by not acknowledging them because they come out, they seep out. We're acting out in all kinds of ways that we don't know what we're doing. It's totally often unrelated. And at the very least, we They used the word project. But we fling that thought, that idea, onto someone else and see them as that violence or that inexcusable thing that we can't deal with within ourselves. At the very least, we do that, but often we'll drag our feet or we'll provoke or we'll do something out there. And so it's just so wonderful to be able to have a teacher or to have a counselor, therapist, or someone like that.

[77:17]

that you can say out, hearing yourself say something out loud. Right. And then, which is like sitting. Right. Just a different point. Yeah, and you pointed your eye when you said, hearing yourself say something. And some things are, some things we withhold or, you know, we suppress are not that bad, actually. We suppress some nice things sometimes, like we... Yeah, we suppress some nice things sometimes because we're afraid that people will, like, hurt us if we express nice things. Like, somebody might be picking on somebody, and we might say, oh, well, I like that person. I wish they'd stop that, you know? But we don't express it. You know, we don't say, why don't you leave her alone? She's my friend. We don't say that because we're afraid they'll beat us up or won't like us because we aren't joining in on the cruelty. So we have actually, we suppress a positive feeling, a compassionate, loving feeling of protection.

[78:20]

We don't express it because of our self-concern. And that positive feeling, when denied and suppressed that way, can come out in the form of us being cruel to the person too and joining in on it. Or, you know, even good things, when they're suppressed, turn into bad things. Whereas bad things, when brought out and understood, turn into... a supreme enlightenment. And the worst thing that's understood, of course, is the greatest enlightenment. So, some of you may not be able to be great Buddhists because you're not bad enough. Ha, ha, ha. Can I have a try? Yes, after her. Talking about bad enough, in those kinds of situations, rather than saying, well, why don't you stop picking on her, sometimes more is required. Most of us have been involved here in personal situations or activism where perhaps there is something like compassionate violence.

[79:37]

Sometimes when that compassionate violence is rewarded because it's effective, it has an impact on the individual. I was talking the other day to several activists against Proposition 187, and one of the ways that they managed to get some people not to vote for Proposition 187 was literally threat. they're like 12, they're likely. But sometimes that kind of threat works to stop certain situations of suffering. And then you get this sense in a violent world that that's the only thing that works, at least in the short term. I'm not saying that it is positive in the long term. I was wondering if you could address that issue. That was a little bit complicated for me, but... When compassionate violence or at least violence that poses as compassion to stop a situation of suffering yields short-term results, very valuable short-term results.

[80:52]

So you get accustomed that the only way... Okay, one thing I'd like to say is that compassion is not itself at all interested, it's not about stopping suffering. Compassion is just you acknowledge and be close and intimate with the suffering. That's all compassion is. The function of compassion is to take your seat in the middle of the suffering and practice patience there. Based on that compassion, you will have insight. Based on that insight, some action may arise from that insight, which is ultimately based on compassion. But the point, you know, Buddha doesn't go around turning people, stopping people from suffering. Buddha teaches people so that they will awaken from their delusion and be free of suffering. You cannot stop people suffering.

[81:53]

People suffer because of their understanding. If you can act in such a way as to wake people up, you can free them from suffering. Now if someone is doing something which is going to interfere with their awakening, then the Buddha will act, if possible, in such a way as to wake them up from the action, or to prevent them from the action which is going to deteriorate their understanding. But that will not immediately stop their suffering. That will stop them from doing an action based on delusion which will undermine their understanding. You cannot stop a deluded person from suffering. You can stop deluded people from actions which will contribute to the enhancement of their delusion and suffering. But that doesn't stop their suffering. There still may be suffering to beat the band. But that action, you've opposed the deluded, the action based on the delusion, you've opposed the action.

[83:01]

You didn't try to stop the suffering at that point. You posed the action which would lead to their suffering and suffering of others. Pose the action. And hopefully your opposition to it is based on insight and wisdom. So as you can see, this action is undermining their evolution towards awakening. And probably, but not necessarily, interfering or hurting someone else. Some actions in the immediate, in the short run, don't hurt anybody else. Like you could be in a room with somebody who's doing something to himself, or talking about himself, or thinking about himself in a way that's undermining his own understanding, and no one else is immediately hurt by it. you might intervene with that type of action in order to prevent the person from deteriorating in your presence, if they actually came in and asked you to help them. And if they're in your face, pretty much that's what they're asking.

[84:04]

So that's a little different, you see. And bodhisattvas do evolve to do that, even if it does hurt them personally to do that kind of thing. And if they're effective, and if their insight is correct, and they do make mistakes in trying to learn how to do this, but if they're correct, it does help the person. And that's all that counts for them. The person themselves may even hurt the bodhisattva back, right away, because they didn't evolve completely, but they learned a little bit. The point is, is it the greatest benefit to stop this action? And if it is, you do that. But you have to have insight to see that. And sometimes you're wrong, and then hopefully, if you're wrong, you have the insight to see you made a mistake and then try to do it again. So bodhisattvas are confessing errors in this attempt quite a bit. We're very sorry about that. We're not very well developed here. Sorry. Yes? What about people who don't invite you in?

[85:09]

I'm thinking about somebody like Mr. Hurwitz at Headwaters who's now He thinks he owns these trees, who is ready to cut down these trees, which seems to me the most incredible act of selfishness. Unbelievable. It's so huge that I can't in any way even relate to him, which is frightening. It's frightening to see someone who is so selfish and so powerful as such a tool for... Selfish people are powerful sometimes. So, this is very... First of all, First of all, first of all, first of all, first of all, you can't do this really if you're not relating to the person. You have to disqualify yourself if you can't, you know, you're going to probably, you might make it worse if you can't get in there and relate with them. If you sort of act from a distance, it might make them all the more angry.

[86:12]

So how can you get in close and relate and then express your feelings? So, I think it is important to find a way to relate to this person as though he weren't the evil one. If you look at him as the evil one, whether you say so or not, he says, this woman is crazy. This is a person who thinks she's right and I'm wrong. She's nuts. Whereas if you look at him as, this is my... This is my brother who's asking me to help him. And I appreciate him as a form of life on this planet. How are you going to see through his eyes? If you can see through his eyes, you can teach him Dharma. And if he sees Dharma, he will be free. But if you can't relate to him, how are you going to help him?

[87:15]

You don't want to help him, maybe. And if you don't want to help him, then, well, then you don't want to interfere with his spiritual decline. You don't want to help him? Yeah, go ahead, decline. So is it this vigil we should be praying for Hurwitz? You should be praying for the enlightenment of Hurwitz. Yes, definitely. Hurwitz might really resent, find stupidly condescending. I read an article where he said we should pray for the Buddhists who don't believe in God, and I thought, yeah, you pray for me, you know. LAUGHTER It doesn't mean that they're going to like what you do. It doesn't mean that the person will like what you do. They still may think you're crazy. The question is, in your heart, do you actually think this person's a turkey? A stupid, selfish being. You know, incapable of more.

[88:12]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_88.84