Some time ago I was asked to suggest some days when I could give a talk here. And one of the days I suggested... You know not so well? Can you hear me better now? No? Can you hear me better now? How is that now? Once upon a time, can you hear that? I was asked, how's it going? If I could give a... One of the days I suggested was today. And the person who invited me said, oh, that day is Arbor Day. Today is Arbor Day at Green Gulch Farm. And the person said, so if you give a talk on that day, would you please talk about something to do with Arbor Day?

[01:08]

Something like, talk about trees, please. Arbor Day at Green Gulch. Tree Day. And we've been celebrating Harbor Day for about 33 years here. Of course, every day that we're here we celebrate the trees. Sometimes it gets sick and then we have this very painful thing of what to do with sick trees because we have trees around our houses and so sometimes people feel they have to cut them down. community crisis to cut down these great beings. It's a difficult world sometimes.

[02:14]

So the Latin word arbor means tree. The English word arbor means more something like a shady alcove formed by or climbing plants over a wooden frame. We have both kinds of arbors here at Green Gulch. And a while ago, I asked the person who I think is... our current reigning queen of trees, Sukhi Parmelee. I asked her if there's anything she wanted me to say about Arbor Day and she said no. And then later she came and said, yeah, would you say something about trees? The bodhisattva, the enlightening being,

[03:30]

who was on the path to becoming the great Indian sage, Shakyamuni Buddha, one day he was ready to sit under a tree. And according to some legends, he said, I'm going to sit under this tree and I'm not going to move until the way is realized. until the Buddha way is realized. And he sat under the tree. And again, according to some legends, tremendous, frightening appearances came before him. And the Buddha sat under the tree and faced fear with friendliness.

[04:44]

He and the tree sat together unmoving and faced fear with friendliness. And at that place, under that tree, our tradition says that this human being, on behalf of all beings, attained the Buddha Way. That this human being discovered Dharma of dependent co-arising. This being sat still under the tree and discovered beauty. But before he discovered and the truth, which is beauty, he faced fear together with the tree. He didn't face it by himself.

[05:56]

He accomplished together with all beings. So here is a paradigm for us to sit under a tree together and with the help of others and helping others we attain the Buddha way. Then we can face the fear that comes. The fear which is the angel of beauty. If you can be friendly to fear, the truth will reveal herself to you. If you move and run away from fear, you're running away from the truth. When I was younger,

[07:10]

One of my favorite cartoons that I saw at the movie theater was a cartoon which I think was called Hernando the Bull. It's an American story about a Spanish bull, a bull who lived in Spain once upon a time. And this little bull basically was to sit quietly under a cork tree smelling flowers. I always kind of liked that myself, except I didn't in Minnesota. We did have flowers, though, and I did like to sit under trees quietly. And the other bulls like to run around and butt each other.

[08:19]

I didn't like to do that. However, in my case, although I did like to sit under the tree, I also like to butt heads with the So I was kind of a mixture between Fernando and the other bulls. But actually, I've spent more time sitting quietly smelling flowers than butting heads with other bulls and cows. One day, Fernando, going to sit under his tree, he sat on a flower inadvertently. The flower had a bee on it. So he sat on the bee, and the bee stung him. He felt pain and jumped and ran around kind of violently.

[09:30]

tearing up the field around the tree. And some people saw him and thought he would make a good fighting bull for the bullfights. So they took him to Madrid and put him in the bullring. But he wouldn't fight. He just sat there smelling the flowers the ladies threw at him. So they took him back to his and he spent the rest of his time sitting there. So he was kind of a bovine Buddha. I always liked that story. I still do. We just finished recently an intensive here at Green Gulch, a three-week intensive.

[10:51]

Some of you came on Sundays during the intensive. It's over now and we're about to start another practice period here. And at the end of the intensive came up to me and said, I had a really wonderful experience during this period of intense practice. And I think he said something like, I think I'm going to put aside my practice and really get down to the real thing." And I said, you mean studying the self? The The path of the Buddha, the Buddha way, is the path of helping others.

[11:54]

You could say other improvement. The path of unenlightened beings is the path of helping the self, the path of self-improvement. The path of sentient beings is the path of self-improvement. The path of Buddha is helping others. Learning the path of Buddha is learning to help others. Learning to help others is learning yourself. Helping others requires learning yourself, studying yourself. Studying yourself requires helping others.

[13:02]

Helping others, studying yourself is the Buddha way. And you learn this by sitting under a tree facing fear with friendliness. Sometimes the trees are cut into rectangular pieces and made into a roof. Like this room has a roof of trees. This room is an arbor. We sit here. We help each other sit still and face fear with friendliness. Part of studying self, some of the issues that come up when you study yourself are issues of fear and self-improvement. The way of self-improvement is the way of fear.

[14:08]

The way of Buddha is studying the person who is into self-improvement. So the self-improvement is there, but that's not the point. The point is to study self-improvement. and to study the fear that comes with concern with self-improvement. So studying the self makes possible helping others, makes possible the Buddha way. And studying the self involves studying issues of self-improvement, issues of fear, and issues of violence. Because because of fear, we're afraid of being violent. And what is it that we're afraid of, by the way? We're afraid of beauty.

[15:09]

We're afraid of dependent co-arising, which is beauty. We're afraid of the one thing that the Buddhas realize, we have a tendency to ignore the beauty and the truth. Because when we see it, we're somewhat afraid of it, or very afraid of it. And then again, when we're afraid, we're at risk of being violent, and we don't want to be violent. The Buddha way is the path of nonviolence. But nonviolence is realized by friendliness, fear, and the violence which arises from it. We see beauty and we tend to want to cover it, get a hold of it, project something onto it so we can have it or control it.

[16:24]

Because it's frightening to us. If we're friendly to the fear, we can be with beauty. We can be with dependent co-arising. We can live with it. We can realize it. We can realize it. The path of nonviolence requires studying the self, requires learning about violence. We might wish to study ourselves and not have violence as be one of the issues, but inward and outer violence do come sometimes. So when the truth of beauty, when the beauty of truth comes, we tend to be afraid.

[17:30]

And then when violence comes, of course, we also tend to be afraid. In both cases, with the help of the trees and all Buddhas, we need to learn to sit quietly and face the fear with friendliness. open to the fear with friendliness. And if they're open to the violence with friendliness, open to our messing with the truth and obscuring the truth, violating the truth, open to that, to not obscuring the truth and not violating the truth. Violence, nonviolence.

[18:40]

Nonviolence arises from friendliness towards violence. The Buddha sitting under the Bodhi tree When violence appeared before him, and violence did appear before him, according to the legend, violence appeared before him, and he met the violence with friendliness, and the violence calmed down. But he didn't do it by himself. He did it with the tree. He did it with the earth. All beings be the Buddha. All beings are offering us support to face the fear that will come to us when we sit still. If we sit still and the fear comes and we move, the movement may be violent.

[19:54]

The move may be a movement because we're moving out of fear. We have this job to do. What is it? Study the self. If we wish to help others, we need to study the self. We are concerned with helping ourselves. We are concerned with improving ourselves. Buddha is friendly towards self-improvement tendencies. Buddha does not look down on self-improvement tendencies. They're allowed to live under the tree. You know, there's a term that you're familiar with called home improvement, right?

[21:15]

And there's a Home Depot, right? For home improvements. And I thought, well, they don't have Self Depot, but really we do have lots of Self Depots. We have Home Magazine and we also have Self Magazine. Self Improvement Magazine, Self Improvement Depots. This is the realm of beings. It's the same realm as Buddha's, except Buddha's don't indulge in home improvement or self-improvement. They indulge in studying and learning about self-improvement. And they find self-improvement is based on fear. And they study it with friendliness and kindness. They watched the self-improving motive scurrying about full of fear. I have a pimple.

[22:17]

It's, you know, it's frightening walking along and suddenly you fall over, you know, you lose your balance and fall down. It's frightening. Things are changing. We lose our balance. Things are changing. In the midst of change, fear arises. What's the Buddha way? Study that. Learn about that. Be friendly to that. And even though we fall, we can fall in friendliness and beauty. together. So we go and we sit in the presence of trees, under a wooden roof, under green branches.

[23:59]

We sit still. We do sometimes practice sitting still. And as we sit still, With the trees, the world around us calms down. And what is afraid of us comes and lives in our presence. we sit still and the world calms down and sees us sitting still. And that in the world that's afraid of us comes to us and lives in our presence. And what is in us that it's afraid of leaves us.

[25:11]

And the fear of us leaves them. And they sing to us, and we hear their song. When we sit still and the world calms down around us, what we are hearing comes to us. and lives in our presence, lives in the presence of our stillness. And what we're afraid of in our guests leaves them. And our fear of them leaves us. And then we can hear them singing. And if we continue this way, we will see the truth that the Buddhas discover.

[26:32]

The beauty which the Buddha discovered the beauty which the Buddha dared to look at without moving, which is always before us. But because we're afraid of it, we obscure it. We're still afraid of it, and if we face the fear with friendliness, the obscuration drops away and we can see. But the way we see is not with our own eyes. The way we see is by practicing together, sitting together under a tree. Once again, a lot of people, almost everyone, is into self-help.

[27:48]

I haven't looked at the New York Times review of books lately, but in the past when I've looked at there, under the non-fiction, self-help books are often bestsellers. But even the fiction books, some people read in order to help themselves. Self-health is self-concern, self-cherishing, self-improvement. They're part of our life together. They're part of the way of fear and violence. But the Buddha way is not to get rid of them. The Buddha way is to learn about them, to study them with friendliness. When we study, when we learn about the self-help, the self-improvement impulses, we will see the beauty of them.

[29:04]

And this will help others. One time somebody told me a story. I don't know how it came up, but it could have come up because I was talking about practicing friendliness. Maybe I was talking about practicing loving-kindness. And the way love is sometimes taught in some ancient Buddhist texts, the way to learn how to practice loving-kindness is to start by practicing loving-kindness towards yourself. And then after you learn how to sincerely wish yourself well and be friendly to yourself, wish yourself who's into self-improvement well and be friendly to yourself who's into self-improvement, really be friendly to yourself, then you can be friendly to others.

[30:13]

And finally, you can even be friendly to the people helping themselves at your expense, people who have tried to help themselves by hurting you. And this person told me that one time they were practicing, trying to learn loving-kindness by practicing loving-kindness. And a Buddhist teacher told him, That's not Buddhism. Buddhism is not about helping yourself. Buddhism is about helping others. I agree. That's what it's about. That you're trying to help are usually just like you. And they're into self-help. That's why they need help. They're into self-improvement. That's why they need help. And you have to be friendly in order to be friendly to these other people who are, you know, into the same stuff you're into.

[31:32]

So being friendly to yourself isn't the point, but it's necessary. But you can't skip yourself. And you don't. You do try to help yourself. You do try to improve yourself. So just be honest. Be very nice to that. Be friendly to that. And then you can be friendly to other people who maybe seem even more into that than you. And they think, of course, you're more into it than they are. I don't know actually who's into it most, but it's shocking to see whoever's doing it. Because, you know, again, when we're into it, we're frightened and dangerous. When we're into self-improvement, we're scared.

[32:38]

When we're scared, we think, well, if I'd prove myself, maybe I'd be safe. just make myself a little bit better and then, and then, yeah, then nothing would change and I'd be safe forever. If I was like super, like totally improved. Love me and support me? What the Buddha saw was that everybody loves you and supports you. And the way to see that everybody loves you and supports you is to study yourself who thinks that not everybody loves you and supports you. Human beings actually come to me and tell me that they think not everybody loves and supports them. Isn't that amazing? That some people think that not everybody loves and supports them? Some people even come and tell me that not everybody loves and supports them.

[33:41]

This is what human beings can dream up. Nobody loves me or somebody doesn't love me. The Buddha did not see that. The Bodhisattva did not wake up to, not everybody loves me. You've all already seen that. That's not a big deal. The Buddha woke up to, everybody loves me and I love everybody. And That little story, among the trees and sitting still, it's kind of my rendition of a poem by Wendell Berry, who is really a wonderful guy, but he triumphantly said one time at a talk I heard him give in Bristol, England, I don't love everybody. And he got cheers. But I think the reason why I would cheer for him is because he's being honest.

[34:48]

that he didn't feel like he loved everybody, and he didn't feel like everybody loved him, and he didn't like that way of talking. I would say that his not liking that way of talking is his way of loving all beings. That's his way, which you might think is not love. The Buddha said that cruelty is not But we have to study cruelty in order to understand that nonviolence is reality. But it's not easy to study cruelty because we often get frightened and want to turn away from cruelty when we see it. It's not easy to study a force which is intended against us It's not easy to study.

[35:52]

But the Buddha studied forces which seemed to be against him and realized that there's no such thing as forces. But we must sit upright and quiet and face the appearance of forces against us in order to realize the beauty that no forces are against anything. This feeling of opposition is part of the path to realizing cooperation. So I know I've been basically saying kind of the same thing over and over. I realize that. I know it sounds like that.

[36:57]

Thanks for supporting me to do this. I vow, I promise, I commit myself, I commit my life to helping others. I commit my life to studying the self, myself. I commit my life to being aware of any tendencies in myself towards self-improvement. I commit myself to be aware of my self-improving tendencies and the fear that lives with them. And I commit myself to be still with the fear that arises, to be aware of the fear and be still with it.

[38:07]

This is a path I feel good about committing myself to. I think it's the path that the founder of the tradition was committed to. I think he demonstrated over and over to be friendly to fear and violence. And he demonstrated over and over a non-violent way of being with fear and violence. I commit myself to this. How about you? Do you wish to avoid being aware of self-improvement and self-helping and fear and violence? Or do you wish to commit yourself to the path of friendliness as the path of helping others and the path of the Buddha? Do you have any argument against my suggestion and my vow?

[39:12]

If you do, we have question and answer coming up. And you're welcome to come and fully express yourself if you have any thing you'd like to express. And I vow to meet you sitting upright under the tree with friendliness. I've been sitting at Zen Center for more than 40 years. Here for 50, or more, if I can keep sitting. Or even I'm willing to lie down here if I can't sit. And while I've been sitting here,

[40:15]

beings who are afraid of me have come to live with me. They've lived in my presence even though they were afraid of me because I sat still and they thought, well, maybe he's frightened. He seems to be sitting still so maybe I could come over and be kind of close to him. He might lash out at any moment, but he seems to be sitting quite still and relaxed. So I come a little closer and a little closer. And then they sat and they lived in my presence. And what in me they were afraid of left me and their fear of me left them. But it sometimes took years. And I sat here and what I was afraid of has been coming to me for more.

[41:20]

And it has lived in my presence while I sat here quietly, not moving. The fear has arisen in me and I sat with it and what I was afraid of and the fear left. But it didn't leave by running away. It left by daily practice of facing fear with friendliness, with stillness, with relaxation and playfulness. This is my suggestion of the path of nonviolence. and fearlessness of the Buddhas, the path of helping others. I pray that all of us will make a vow to face fear and violence with friendliness and realize the way of the Buddha.

[42:37]

And I invite your feedback if you think I'm not sitting still enough or being friendly enough or open enough to the fear and violence of this world and to the self-improvement campaigns of this world. Sometimes when I'm sitting still as a as a way to allow my fears to arise, I start singing. I see trees of green, red roses too. They bloom for me and bloom for you. And I think to myself, What a wonderful world.

[43:47]

Icy skies of blue and clouds of white. Bright blessed day. Dark sacred day. I think to myself. What a wonderful world. The colors of the rainbow so pretty in the sky are also on the faces of the people walking by. I see friends shaking hands. How do you do? They're really saying, I love you. I see children crying, I watch them grow. They learn much more than I'll ever know. And I think to myself, what a wonderful world. Yeah, I think to myself, what a wonderful world.

[44:56]

They are in tension. Do you have the microphone? OK. Please come. Please come. Please, sit down. Hi. the fear of beauty. And I wondered, is that the fear of perfection or attaining perfection? Or what did you mean by fear of beauty? By fear of beauty, I mean fear of the truth. Fear of the truth that everything's changing. Fear of the truth that we're all interdependent. Fear of the truth that you can't control other people or yourself because everybody's in on your control activity. So the actual way that we're working together, we're actually afraid of, because, you know, we feel... Yeah, we have a tendency to be afraid of beauty.

[46:22]

We have a tendency to be afraid of the truth, because it, for example, it refutes our sense of... of independence... our sense of having control over things. So then we get afraid of what will happen to us if we actually open to how we're all working together. But it's actually basically very beautiful. It's just that we have a tendency to try to obscure it so we can have a sense of coping with it. That's what I mean. Any question about that? You say a sense of, we try to obscure... We try to obscure our relationship because our relationship is so ungraspable. And we can't control our relationship. And our actual relationship refutes a lot of our ideas of who we are.

[47:27]

And also we project ideas of who we are and what other things are on other beings so we have a sense of getting control of them. It's this cycle of being afraid of not being in control, then trying to make things controllable, then be afraid we'll lose control, then continue to project ways to control upon the situation. But we can't actually control the situation of our relationship. And we're afraid of that and then try to make our situation controllable. But then we obscure the truth and the beauty of our life. And then also because we become more and more afraid, it doesn't take away the fear. It actually pushes it away and makes it more difficult for us to be friendly to it. So then we're prone to violence and cruelty because we're afraid. And the fear leads to the violence because?

[48:35]

Well, when you're afraid of somebody, you might, you know, you push them away or brutally try to stop them because you think they're going to hurt you. Okay, thank you. You might. Or you might brutally try to hurt yourself if you thought yourself was going to hurt yourself. So violence can be against ourselves or against others. And when we're afraid of ourselves, afraid of others, we're at risk of being violent. Thanks. You're welcome. Thank you. Please come. Please come up. Yes. Would you be willing to hold this? Yes. I have anxiety, and I'm reducing my anxiety medication.

[49:37]

This is sort of a mundane question. Okay. You have anxiety. I have anxiety. I'm reducing my anxiety medication, and what that means is I'm constantly afraid. And I don't know what the fear is not, you know, see a spider, afraid of spider. It's fear, just fear. Yeah. I don't know how to embrace that. I don't know. I know that on the medication I was, it wasn't there. Yeah, okay. But I don't want to live that way. I don't want to run away from it. But not running away from it is really hard. It's hard. Almost everybody finds it hard not to run away from anxiety. So... That's our normal human situation is anxiety and having a hard time being friendly to it. And some people feel like, well, if I would take some medication, well, actually, you're taking some medication, so now the level of your anxiety is such that you're willing to consider the possibility of not running away.

[50:57]

Mm-hmm. If your anxiety rate is even higher, you might say, okay, forget it, I'm just going to run away. Or take medications to turn it down. So this is a normal human dilemma of like, you know that certain situations, if you go into, you might become more anxious. If you go, well, if someone needs you, you might go. But if nobody needs me, maybe I won't go there. That's okay. In certain situations you feel like, this situation is so, I'm so afraid, I have to try to get away from it. Okay, this is part of our, this is part of our life. This is the Buddha way, the way that the Buddhist follows, the way that the beings on the path to Buddhahood is a way of facing fear. And you're now confronted with fear and anxiety, and now you're trying to figure out a way to be friendly with it.

[51:58]

But it's very difficult. I mean, basically, it is the basic difficulty of life. And so this is your struggle. And now we have... In ancient times, they probably had some kinds of medications, too. Probably some kind of herbs or something that they discovered to help with anxiety. But I think human beings have been using alcohol and other kinds of medications for a long time. Like in the old days, warriors usually got totally drunk before battles. This is a normal thing to do, just completely get smashed. That British square, that Napoleon couldn't crash, all those guys were totally drunk, except the officers who were behind the lines. Some of them were somewhat sober. Like the Duke of Wellington maybe wasn't drunk. But the soldiers in the front line were generally completely smashed. Otherwise the fear was too strong for most of them.

[53:04]

They would have run. And if they ran, they'd get shot by their officer. They could not back away. And they couldn't go forward. And so they took this medication called alcohol. So it's a normal thing from long history of human beings Having medications to reduce anxiety, we've taken them. But the Buddha way is to gradually wean ourselves from these medications and learn other ways of coping with fear, because fear is the angel of the truth. And if we can be open to the angel of fear, then we're open to the truth. the Buddha was attacked by fears too. But by long cultivation, to be steady and quiet and still and friendly with a huge array of fears.

[54:08]

So this is our path. And you get to now look in your heart and see if you want to walk the path of learning with us all who are trying with you how to be upright and quiet and still with anxiety. And we don't necessarily say you cannot take any medication. You can take medication. I would say, don't take so much that you can't feel any fear. That's an overdose. But if you still feel it, you've got something to work on. And you may feel like, okay, I feel anxiety, but I'm actually pretty friendly with it. And I'm happy that I'm friendly with it. There's some fearlessness here. I'm not running away from it. And you say, well, turn down the medication a little bit more. You turn it down and say, oh, it's more frightening. I need to learn to be friendly with that.

[55:09]

And turn it down some more. And finally, you may find you don't need any because you have enough skill now to face the anxiety without the support of the medication, the support of the doctors and pharmacists and everybody, health insurance. Everybody's helping you deal with this anxiety. But this is the curriculum of the Buddha way. The thing we're studying is the self. And until the self is comfortable with fear, the fear will keep coming to tell us to do our work of facing it. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you for your courageous question. Yes. And yes, somebody else is coming? Please come. Hi. Happy New Year. Hi, Maria. Did you want to ask me something?

[56:11]

No. Did you want to ask me something? Yeah. Okay. When you were talking about how we are, it was these two things that stuck, that we're learning to help, we're learning how to help. We're learning how to help. It's not so clear. We haven't completely mastered how to help yet. There's something to learn here. And the other gentleman ahead, that we are afraid of beauty, which seems like a contradiction, but indeed it is. It's true, in my experience. Yeah, mine too. And what particularly came to mind is, in my life, there's a young boy, there's a student of mine, I think he's about seven or eight, and his father is dying. Any moment now. And... us teachers are very afraid to acknowledge that.

[57:14]

This little boy's other teachers are afraid to acknowledge that it's... So I think most of us pretend that it's not happening. That's another example of beauty. Somebody's dying, and they're actually beautiful, beautifully dying, and we can't stand to look at it. And dying... Stop the beauty so you look away from the whole situation. But the beauty is being forced upon us. And so that's why we want to get away. So when people are dying in some ways, their beauty is clearer than ever. Yeah. So that's why everybody runs away. Not everybody, but that's why people tend to run away. The radiance of this situation where you cannot any longer say, nothing's changing, everything's okay. It's the same person as yesterday. I can't, yeah. So be gentle, you know, and be friendly with the people who are running away from the beauty of the dying.

[58:19]

Who are trying to get away from it. Because you know it's normal. It's normal among children. It seems like the kids are doing better than the adults. Well, in that case, the adults are the children. are more adult but later they may become more like childlike as they grow older which is part of gotta be work on it now because sometimes when you get older you have a harder time being adult and facing the fear and you're becoming so that's why we don't waste any time to learn this skill But also be patient with yourself and others who want to run away from this beauty of change and the changing beauty and the beautiful angels of fear. The fearful angels.

[59:22]

Rilke says, beauty is a terror, the beginning of a terror. We can just barely stand. It's the beginning of it. in the beginning of it. We can barely stand it, and that's an angel. The fear isn't the blue beauty. The fear is the angel, is the messenger of the beauty. The messenger's coming and saying, can you welcome me? If you can welcome me, but if you're afraid of me, you ain't seen nothing yet. I'm just an angel. But if you can open to me and not be violent with me, then the big girl will come, the one you've been wanting. But you have to stop fighting fear in order to welcome

[60:29]

have to stop fighting death and birth and fear. And when we do, the truth will reveal itself. But it's not easy to face fear in a friendly way. It's not easy. We need to help up the trees. We need to come into a place and sit under the trees with other people under the trees. They'll help us be friendly. We'll help them be friendly. And then together, we can do this amazing thing of facing fear with friendliness. We can do that, but not by our own power. We need the help of everybody. So here we are helping each other. See? Here we are talking about this awesome topic. We'd rather be, some of us, watching something else, but still we're watching, contemplating fear right now.

[61:37]

And to, doesn't it? To be actually facing it. I sometimes feel anxiety, but when I get close to it, I feel much better. like that mafia slogan, keep your family close, but keep your enemies closer. Thank you. You're welcome. Is it Sophia? Sophie. Sophie. You're Sophie. Thank you. You're welcome. I'm being friendly. Right now. Great, good for you. That's the way of Sophie. Thank you. I had a question about earlier, you said self-improvement is basically about fear. Yeah, it's basically about fear and fear depends on that they turn on each other.

[62:42]

We're afraid, we think self-improvement will make us less afraid. And then when we get into self-improvement, we feel more afraid. So they grow on each other. I think this is correct in your view that you feel like you need to improve yourself. You're not accepting the perfection of who you are right now. And there's some judgment in there. Yeah. I don't know. There might not be judgment. But I guess there's some judgment. You think you're X. That's your judgment. and you don't accept X, and you're not accepting X, you feel uneasy, and you think, well, maybe if I improved X a little bit, I could accept it and be at ease with it and be happy. So let's just improve me a little bit, and then I'll be okay. Rather than some other approach like, well, I'm going to do this thing called brushing my teeth, but I'm not going to improve myself. in the same situation after brushing, but I think people would like me to brush, so I'll brush so that I'll have teeth so I can talk to them about the teaching.

[63:48]

But I'm not going to really be better after I brush my teeth. It's not improved. I'm not going to be less afraid. So I'm going to face my fear before brushing. And then I'm not into improving myself. Now, on the other hand, it's hard not to feel good when you go to the dentist and they say, you're taking good care of your teeth. You said, is this true, you have to know yourself? Study yourself, yeah. How do you study? Is it more noticing? Study yourself and yourself as a person. The person you are is a particular person at a particular time. That's the kind of self you are. You're not an independent self, but you're a unique being right now. A once-in-a-lifetime Sophie right now. This is it. This is your Sophie. Just for today, though. Just for this moment. Now we have a new one. So you study this, you learn about this. And this person might be a person who is involved with judgment pretty much every moment.

[64:57]

According to Buddha's psychology, Every moment, our mind is making a judgment about what's going on. And there's three basic kinds of judgments, positive, negative, and neutral, or painful, pleasant, and can't tell which. Our mind is constantly judging. It's a normal thing in each moment. It's recommended that we be mindful and study that judgment process. Get rid of it, because trying to get rid of it is being enslaved by your judgments. But to study your judgments, you're not enslaved by them anymore. You're a servant of yourself, not a slave. You voluntarily are choosing to be kind to yourself and be kind to others. So judgment's part of the world we're devoted to care for. We're not trying to get rid of the world. We're trying to care for it and realize fearlessness, nonviolence, and peace. But we have to be friendly.

[66:00]

Peace. So we're not supposed to get rid of those things, just... We're not supposed to get rid of anything. We're supposed to take care of everything. We're not supposed to get rid of anybody. We're supposed to love everybody. Not supposed to, but I mean, that's the Buddha way, is to love all beings, to care for all beings, to be devoted to helping all beings. That's the Buddha way. But in order to help all beings, that requires studying yourself. And the way you study yourself, the primary way you study yourself, is by trying to help others. But that includes, while you're trying to help others, be aware that you're judging them and that you're afraid of them. And that you're trying to run away from them and your fear of them. So then studying yourself involves, wait a minute, sit still under a tree. Calm down. Let the fear come. Stay calm. Be calm with it.

[67:01]

Let the fear come. This is studying yourself. And then notice that if you let the fear come, you become free of the fear, and that helps the thing that's afraid of you. It becomes free of fear too, so you're helping it by... So this is how you're studying yourself. And judgments and values and Emotions are swirling around, all around us, all the time. We're not trying to push anything away. We're not trying to pull anything on. We're just here upright and still, not leaning into what's happening, welcoming it all. which is very hard for us to welcome fear and welcome disease and pain. It's hard. And fear is in some ways the most difficult, painful thing to welcome. It's the basic. The basic pain is anxiety. The other ones are very important too, but they're... Like violence is very painful too, but it's not fear.

[68:07]

It's a derivative of fear. But Not to say it's not important. Be friendly to fear. Buddha is friendly to fear. Buddha is friendly to violence. And he converts fear into fearlessness. And she converts violence into nonviolence by being friendly with it. And she took a long time to learn how to do that. So we also practice patience with our Limits of our ability to be still and friendly with fear. Our fear, other people's fear. Our fear of them, their fear of us, our fear of their fear of us, and so on. I think Ram Dass said, have tea with your neuroses. Yeah, right. Having a roast with tea.

[69:11]

Thanks, Sophie. You're welcome. Yeah. Eliyahu. Eliyahu. My Hebrew name, Elijah. Elijah. So I've done my last three retreats with a man who trained in the Zen. Adyashanti, and he, in one of his talks, gave this analogy to self-improvement. He said, imagine that you are the ship called the Titanic, and you've just hit the iceberg. And then, at that moment, it would be perfect to have all the deck chairs aligned. I mean, most of us we could see that that wasn't the most crucial task.

[70:15]

Most of us, really most of us? Well, some people, I'm a psychotherapist, some of my clients would rearrange the deck chairs at that moment. I mean, it's called obsessive compulsive, but anyway. Some of your clients would start adjusting the deck chairs, right? Yes, that's the way they would bind their anxieties. They would get the deck chairs perfect. And some of them would say, get their, what do you call it, their video games out. I think my grandson would get his video game out. So? Yeah, right. So? So we should be friendly. ways of coping with disaster. Yes. So my main way of smiling at fear is to do inquiry. So the whole idea would be to...

[71:18]

the enemy or befriend the fear or befriend the fearful thought. So when I, even this moment, ask, are you, presumably, Reb Anderson, separate from me, Eliyahu, I get a no. See, I get that those are just one swirl of energy. And so then, like, When I'm in that place, I don't even know how to help you. You suddenly become not another. I guess it's helpful if I don't . I don't seem to have a desire to punch you. It seems maybe I'm just being helpful by being. I think that place that you found is what's helpful. So if you live in that place, others see you. They don't necessarily know the place, but they see you. And the place, that's the place where we are together, not really fixing on our ideas of each other.

[72:27]

And that place is what helps us all. See, and then because my Jewish mother comes in always, I could always say, like, oh, you could have shaved a little bit more today. You know, but see... I don't think that that's helpful to you. Well, she's welcome now. Please come. I'm kind of cold, so I hope it won't shake too much. Okay, you want something to put on? Well, I have poison oak, and that's why I'm... Oh, I thought you had poison oak. Yeah. I have a question about helping as well, and it's a big mess. So I guess when I'm helped, it usually doesn't help. When I'm helped, it usually doesn't help.

[73:29]

Usually what people call being or helping me is giving me something that I want. And the times that I feel and basically I hear someone like you talking about fear, when I can have focus on those things in myself exactly the way I am that I am unable to accept and being able to accept them by looking at them. So my question about helping is that I guess if that's what helps, then What do I do for others? Because I think my compulsion is to give them what they want, and their compulsion is to have... Right there, okay? So when you feel the impulse or the compulsion to help them, if you want to study that in yourself first, don't skip over that and let that push you into doing something. Turn around and study, oh, I feel this impulse to help this person. And I'm going to be friendly to that impulse.

[74:34]

But friendly doesn't mean I'm going to do it. It just means I'm going to be aware. Oh, I have this impulse. One time this woman came and told me about this person she was afraid of in this community. And she was afraid to go into the study hall and be where this person was. And I felt in myself this impulse to go with her into the study hall so she wouldn't be so afraid. But I didn't think... That's just the impulse that arose in me when I was talking to her. And I told her I had this impulse. And she said, yeah, I can see that you have that, but I don't want you to do that. But that was because I looked at myself. So if you feel the impulse, it will help them if you know that you have that impulse. Sometimes you tell them, but sometimes you don't. Sometimes you just know, I feel this impulse. In psychotherapy, they call that countertransference. This person is transferring to you that you're going to take care of their life for them.

[75:37]

You feel that while doing other people's job for them isn't helpful. But being aware that you have the impulse to do their job for them, that awareness will help them. I guess it comes from my most recent example of this is I broke up with my girlfriend about a week ago. The difficulty was that she had no way of seeing that this was a good idea. She had little inklings and that kind of thing, but Basically, I was very codependent. I was doing this impulse to rescue her the whole time. And I tried and I tried and I tried, but still the act of kind of throwing up my hands and saying, look, I've got to do the thing and let you start looking at your fears because I'm so good at giving you what you want. I felt like that was going to plunge her into despair.

[76:39]

So I guess I'm just articulating the difficulty of balancing those two things. To say that, I mean, if someone is going to be totally overwhelmed... And then, yeah, and they're totally overwhelmed and afraid, and do you feel any fear about that? Yeah. Yeah. So then you show her that you're willing to be with her which means be with your fear of what might happen to her. Show her that you're afraid and that you're able to be friendly to your fear. And also you'll be able to be friendly to her when she's overwhelmed. And you're not trying to get yourself to not be afraid of her being overwhelmed. So you can break up with somebody, quotes, break up, and still stay close to them You know, breaking up from a relationship where you're helping her avoid facing what's going on with her. Break up with a new one, which you may give more energy to than the old one.

[77:45]

So don't, you know, break up with her means break up that old pattern and give a new one, which is, I'm going to be with you while you're who you are. Yeah. Thank you. And that's what I tried to articulate. The thing is, you know... But you have to prove it. You have to prove that you're willing to be with her in this condition, which she is not so sure she can stand to be with. So she may not know how to do it, and you can be with her, and also you can... Because you have a lot of strong feelings when you see her being that way, and you also have additional strong feelings when she's having trouble being with herself. If she could be with herself, your feelings would still be strong, but you'd feel more at ease. You'd say, oh, she's having a hard time, but she's actually sitting there quietly, upright, being free from pain. This is really good. And I'm not sort of, what do you call it, colluding colluding has the root of playing together i'm not playing along with this avoiding her pain thing anymore and i'm also not trying to avoid my pain by helping her avoid her by telling her that i'm going to get her away from her fear so that i don't feel it i'm feeling mine and i'm with you

[79:06]

and we're doing this together, and still it's going to take her a while for her maybe to learn that and give it a try. But if you keep offering this love, she will learn it. But if you're in a hurry for her to learn it, she's going to wait until you're not in a hurry anymore. Because she's also in a hurry to learn it. But she's got to do it at the rate, she's got to be honest about what she's going through. And that's painful for both. It's a good pain that you feel pain about her pain. That's a good pain. But still, even if it's a good pain, you still might try to run away from it. Right? Pushed away. Yeah. Or be pushed. No, pushed away is not a problem. Not for me. Not for her, you mean. Her push you away. For you. It's a problem for her, right? And you have to show her that you can be pushed away. Hey, push me, man. I'm totally here for you to push.

[80:10]

It's painful, but hey, I'm here for you to hurt. I'm here to be upright and quiet under the tree, not knowing I'm helping. If you've got to know you're helping, you're not studying yourself fully. You want to know you're helping, that's normal. but towards rather than something to indulge in. Thanks. You're welcome. What's your name? Louie. Louie. Oh, yeah. Hi, Louie. Hi. You look so different. Yeah. He used to have a thin face. Yeah. I look jollier this way. Wow. That's amazing change. You're good-humored about your situation. That's very good. Yes, would you like to come? Please? Do you want to come up?

[81:11]

Please, come. What's your name? Michel. Michel. I don't know if I heard this correctly. I think I'll try and paraphrase. The Buddha said that cruelty is not reality. Nonviolence is reality. Right. Is that what you said? Well, I don't know. He didn't speak English, but basically that's his message, that cruelty and opposition is an illusion. Reality is that we're working together. Okay. I guess the question, maybe this is too literal, but the question came from if you see a place of convergence between studying cruelty and confronting cruelty. Same thing. But confronting in a friendly way. We can also confront cruelty with cruelty. We can meet violence. Brutal force with brutal force.

[82:14]

That's usually not what I mean by friendliness. It could be under some special circumstances. The intention really was friendliness. It's possible. But basically confronting, and I think you could say that confronting can be a friendly study. I'm thinking specifically cruelty to the helpless children, animals. Beings that do not have power over cruelty that's inflicted upon them? Yeah. How do we confront that with friendliness, with openness? I would add to your list, the Buddhas don't have any power to control cruelty towards them. They've given that up. However, they've learned, which some children have not learned, and some animals have not learned, they've learned how to meet the thing that they can't control. They've given up trying to control it.

[83:15]

They've learned to meet it with friendliness. So if you see someone who doesn't know how, who can't control the violence that they're being exposed to, like a Buddha can't control it, but doesn't know how to meet it with friendliness, you can go and meet it with friendliness and teach them how. And some of the people who can't control them are very violent people. So you teach the person who's being violent because they can't control the violence towards them, but are trying to by violence, you teach them how to be friendly to that violence and their own violence. So then the child or the sick person or old person or Buddha They see you showing this way of meeting this violence and meeting this cruelty with friendliness, fearlessness, flexibility, patience, generosity, all these magical powers of reality.

[84:17]

They see that. Also, the person who is maybe being cruel towards them sees it too. And they get to see the effect on the person who's doing this who's possibly doing it. They get to see how that works there. And then they get to learn to try it themselves. And again, the person who you're teaching might be a violent person who's not a child. Children are sometimes violent, like my grandson. Not so much anymore, but when he was little, around 7.30, 8 at night, his whole world would start falling apart. He'd lose control of his world. And he'd become terrified of his world. and become violent. His mother learned that before this time came to start doing these things called brushing teeth, getting pajamas on, having a snack, getting in bed. And then when he falls apart in bed, it's easier for him just to go to sleep rather than become violent. If you're standing up and walking around when your world falls apart, you're more likely to become frightened.

[85:24]

But if you're lying down and you already have your pajamas on, perhaps I should say PJs, you're already lying down and your mother and father are sitting next to you, then when the world falls apart, they can just say, go to sleep. Just go to sleep. But if you're standing up with your video games... and the world starts to fall apart, you get terrified. And then people start to try to say, it's time to go to bed. So these people who love you are monsters. And you start lashing out at them and even throwing your video game at them. If you throw that, I'm not going to buy you another one. You waited too long. This little creature who can't control the falling apart of their world is becoming terrified and violent. So then one of the ways you teach them is by getting them, reminding them at night and saying, you don't want to go there, right? Let's do this before you have this meltdown. Let's get ready for the meltdown so you're in a nice stable situation so when the meltdown comes, you know, it isn't so frightening because you're already in a safe position in a bed and then you can just melt down and just flip.

[86:39]

You teach them that every night and then so on. This is what we can do for ourselves and others. Learn to cope with this tremendous change and the fear that comes up. Get ourselves in position so we can lie down or sit down with it and go with it. And maybe I'll wear pajamas. Our meditation clothes are kind of like pajamas. They're comfy. Lots of flexibility. You can cross your legs and roll around in them. So we can basically, in Zen, we can just let everything drop away. You're in a position where you're not afraid for it all just to drop away. Your body says, okay, let it go. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. Did you say Michelle? Yeah.

[87:43]

Yes, yes, yes, and yes. What time is it? 25 to 1. 25 to 1. Okay. Just before, if there's one more question, a little bit a wonderful Buddhist film out there called Diving Bell and Butterfly. If you see it on DVD, don't miss the 20-minute interview of Schnabel, the director, who acknowledges that it is a Buddhist film. And in honor of Arbor Day, the book called Well, he thinks so. Is it a Buddhist book? It was a Buddhist, very Buddhist book, for the reason of... Does the author think it's a Buddhist book? The author thinks it's a Buddhist book, a boot. Great. In fact, the author, Alasdair Gonzo, he died. Right. I mean, he thought it was a Buddhist book from the wonderful help that he was getting from other people to write.

[88:48]

Right, wow. And as to Arbor Day, the book called Invention of Air, in honor of the wonderful scientist from 1780, Joseph Priestley, a man in Leeds, England, who, through a very elegant experiment, put a mouse in a closed container. And up until that time, the mouse would die in the closed container. But he put a large enough mint plant in with the mouse And guess what? The mouse lived. So the relationship, let's call him, he was a great friend of Benjamin Franklin. And you can read there 250 letters. Was he a Buddhist too, Benjamin Franklin? Good question. Franklin came to say, don't cut down the trees near your house. He's fresh in the air. So these were among the first scientific ecologists. I think you could argue that Buddha was an intuitive ecologist.

[89:49]

Whoever wants to come next can come. I left on Tuesday, and then on Thursday I acquired a 16-year-old grandson. So I heard what you just answered about the fallout. I'm trying to translate it. into 16-year-olds, speak, and, you know, in advance of the, well, not in advance, but, yeah, just taking care of right now. So how is it with a 16-year-old? You do, I know.

[91:02]

I always feel like I'm one step ahead of you on this one. So he spends time with you. How lucky for you. I am very lucky, yes. Great. So what's happening? Oh, it's terrifying. Is he driving cars? No, don't do that. We're not driving cars. We're riding, what are they called, fixed-wheel bicycles? What do I know about this stuff? Nothing, absolutely nothing. Nothing yet? Nothing yet. I'm learning. I'm calling. I really get it that the universe is supporting me to do this. I do understand that. Every place I turn, every direction. But I don't, you know, I want to be there for them. And I also see how scared I get to see it, you know, to see their hurt.

[92:09]

Maybe that's all I want to say. Yeah, if you can be with your pain and without trying to do anything with your pain, then he can see, oh, he isn't really necessarily consciously aware of this, but he sees that you're in pain and you're not running away from your pain and you're not running away from his pain. And then he has a chance to learn how to not... But he hasn't had as many years, so he's not going to learn it. Well, maybe he'll learn a little faster than you did, because maybe his grandmother is going to show him something. Did your grandmother teach you this? No. So maybe he has a little bit of a chance of not taking what you've had taken to learn how to stay with his fear. But somebody has to teach him, and you have a chance to be one of the people to teach him, to teach him that He's afraid, that hurts you, and you tend to be afraid that he's going to get hurt, but you're not running away from your fear and the pain.

[93:19]

He gets to see that you're not trying to get him to be a different grandson who doesn't have problems. You don't want him to have problems, but when he's got them, you love this particular grandson at this moment, and he can hardly believe that that's the case because he doesn't believe it about himself. He doesn't believe he can do that with himself, so how could you? But you can show him that it's possible. And then he can, when you're not looking, he can try it on himself. Because he probably won't try to do it right while you're looking. Like, actually try to actually accept that he's who he is, not while you're watching. But he's going to be watching you to see, can you really accept me having all this? Because I sure can't. And I haven't even started to figure out the many ways to get away from him that I haven't learned yet. But before he even learns, you can start teaching him that he doesn't have to be a good boy for you to love him. So he doesn't have to be a good boy to love himself. Yes, you got that?

[94:23]

My other external memory, my memory drive over there. Do you get to be with him too? Yeah. Great. He's got three of us. Yeah, well... My grandson's moving back to the Bay Area, so I'll be able to maybe... Okay, we'll do it. Do this. This is amazing. Good for you. Thank you. Thank you. That was... Well, I think Green Gulch wants us to stop now, right? Is that right? It's not necessary? There's not a big request for us to stop right now? Okay, during the intensive there is, all right. Well, you said you hadn't heard about it well. Okay, next question.

[95:25]

So when those demonic and I don't feel like the Buddha sitting under the tree, there's an impulse to want to control them because I might, A, people might not like me, and B, I might do damage. So I want to control it. And it seems to me like a little bit of control at that point It's like I need to give it a time out. If the impulse to control is there, it's necessary that the impulse to control be there. That's the current opportunity. There's an impulse to control. There it is. That's something to be kind towards. So here's this thing, whatever, and now instead of being met with friendliness... There's no friendliness. There's just this thing. So instead of friendliness, now we have impulse to control, which isn't really friendly. But there's another thing to be friendly with.

[96:37]

So you can be friendly with this. Maybe you can't be controlled with that, but maybe you can be friendly with the impulse to control this thing. But friendly doesn't mean like. Friendly means sit still with it. Welcome it. So I can't welcome this monster, but I can welcome the impulse to control the monster. Then so you can work up your welcoming exercise with the impulse to control the things that you don't welcome. And then say, okay, I'm ready to welcome this thing I couldn't welcome before. So sometimes, someplace, you have to start welcoming and being friendly with something and then transfer it to the things you can't be friendly with. So here's some few people here you can be friendly with. Practice friendliness with them.

[97:38]

Some people you can't be friendly with, well, don't, because you can't. And be friendly with your inability to be friendly. And then gradually, the friendliness will grow. And you will learn to be friendly with You will learn to be friendly with absolutely everything in the universe. But it takes a little practice. Just kidding. What I think I get from that impulse to control is I'm able to give myself a little breather. I'm somehow looking for a mechanism to have that. A mechanism to have breathing space. Fine. So it's okay to control to get breathing space? Yeah, sure, it's fine. I'm going to be friendly to that. I'm going to be friendly to that.

[98:41]

Good. But friendly doesn't mean necessarily I say okay. It just means more like welcome. I'm not really judging. I'm just saying, okay, I'm here with you. Impulse to control. Can I change your name? To what? Impulse to control. No. I wouldn't like that. Okay. Just an idea, just a little suggestion. Yes? Did you want to say something? Yes. I've been reminded that the request is to get everybody to lunch on time. Okay. She got, she received a request. Where did it come from? Yes, one more or not? Up to you. Now you know. Okay, ready, Sonia. I'm dealing with my fear with a lot of

[99:59]

Dealing with fear? Yes. I have a lot of fears because of situations happening. It's coming to me. But I feel a lot of freedom in this fear. And sitting on the tree, but my faith is... It just never had that faith to miracle. So I don't know what is... I know miracle, you have to be patient. I'm not to have to be patient. It's one of the ingredients. Yeah. Patience is a miracle. And then putting more energy and good thoughts is cutting from my freedom and I feel that moment of flying is coming, but I'm waiting for big judges as everything is against me.

[101:03]

But I don't know, I never felt happy just like this ever in my life. Oh, great. I mean, excuse me for judging you. I know. So is this miracle something? It's above my practice? It's above my belief system? I don't know. It gives me a lot of freedom. I never felt that ever in my life. Congratulations. Thank you. May I have it? Yes. Would you please give it to me? No. You're not going to give me your freedom?

[102:10]

I do. You do give it to me? No, I don't. No, I'm going to keep it. You're going to keep it? Because I know you have a lot. That's wonderful. Thank you for keeping it, not sharing your freedom with me. I appreciate that. It's much more interesting than giving it to me. Okay, is that enough for today? Thank you very much. Thank you.

[102:46]

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