I vow to taste the truth of the Pathagata's words. Good morning. Good morning. I'm living proof that there is such a thing as impermanence of the body. Before I came into the Zen Do, I was admiring the painting in Cloud Hall of the Zen teacher in the manifestation of skeleton. It's a great preparation. I have some difficulty with my left hip, so I am relegated to sitting in a chair or standing, and I thought I'd stand because I can see you more clearly. What I would like to talk about this morning has to do with the cultivation of self-confidence and the importance of self-confidence in spiritual practice.

[01:16]

But what I want to do is to consider with you some of the ground that we need to, will have to consider if we are in fact going to cultivate self-confidence. Some years ago, I was leading a retreat up in Alaska, and the site for the retreat was an old Boy Scout camp, and the only way in and out was on foot. And when we walked in with all our provisions for the retreat, it was dusk and we were pretty intent in getting in before it was completely dark. So I didn't really see the landscape that we were going through so clearly until we were ready to leave at the end of the retreat. And as we walked out, I kept seeing marvelous rocks.

[02:19]

I had everybody walking with me with rocks in their pockets. Rock greed. One of the rocks that I brought back, I still have on the altar in the meditation room where I practice. It's a small, quite beautiful rock, and the top of the rock is completely covered with barnacles. So if you look at the top of the rock, all you can see are the barnacles. And what I realized when I looked at the rock is that there are some days when I think of myself as that heap of barnacles and forget about the stone that is underneath them. So I've kept that rock there all these years as a reminder not to confuse barnacles for stones. And of course, when you look at barnacles and pick away at them, you realize that they can be dissolved and chipped away.

[03:22]

So what are the barnacles that keep us from seeing clearly the nature of mind, our essential nature, Buddha nature? Doubt and questioning arises often. And what's interesting to me is that no matter how long we practice, we may find ourselves periodically having some wave of doubt or questioning about what we're doing. We may, after a period of meditation when we feel like our mind was like a rabbit skittering around, or to use the more classical image, like a monkey darting around, Someone in a class I taught yesterday was bemoaning the fact that often when he meditates, his mind is so busy, so full of the events of the day that he feels very discouraged.

[04:32]

But what he had failed to notice and what I think we can often fail to notice is that after such a period of meditation, we may actually have some calmness, some clarity. In the cultivation of awareness, we can't relegate awareness to what we like to see, what we like to be aware of. The whole path is about cultivating our willingness for awareness with whatever arises, with whatever is so. One of the interesting things to me in practicing not only with my own mind stream but with others is how often when we have questions we disregard or ignore or diminish our questions.

[05:44]

Often, often, often, I listen to the people that I practice with ask a question which they immediately disregard, and I can see how much the question holds exactly the focus that is important for them to look at. And I'm really struck by how easily we disregard our own questions to the point where sometimes we don't even recognize what those questions are. There is a quote by James Stevens that I'm particularly fond of. He says that a well-packed question carries its answer on its back as a snail carries its shell. And my experience is that that's a very accurate description, actually. If we don't try too hard to figure out the answer, if we don't try too hard to get rid of doubt, if we are willing to keep bringing a strong quality of attention and awareness to whatever arises, insight will come.

[07:09]

And in the process, a certain kind of dissolving of those barnacles, conditioned reactive emotions, reactive patterns in the mind. And whether we are beginners or long-time practitioners, the qualities of our practice that are necessary remain the same. That is constancy. Constancy. continually practicing showing up. This morning, my husband offered an image which I find quite helpful, that it's a bit like being on a stable chase, steeple chase, whatever it is, you know, where you're on the horse jumping hurdles. And our conditioned reactive emotions and mental habits are those hurdles.

[08:16]

So the challenge is to cultivate attention and awareness that has at least slightly more energy than the emotional pattern or the mental habit itself has. Otherwise, we sag when we meet the energy of anger or aversion or of confusion or of clinging and grasping or of fear. The list of obstacles will be similar and different with each one of us. I think if you stop and think about the naughty places in your experience, you'll see the patterns. You'll see what the emotional patterns and mental patterns are for you. One of the most difficult patterns to work with is that of the critic, the critical mind, the nagging, grouchy,

[09:28]

running commentary about what isn't or what should be. There's a lot of energy in that particular habit. What's interesting is that if we bring at least as much energy and even better, slightly more energy in the quality of awareness to that cranky critical mind, there is in time a kind of dissolving of the pattern. And to the degree that that habit continues, it begins to be more like a kind of whisper and not in the driver's seat. And it is at that moment then that the quality of joy can arise. And out of that, the qualities of loving-kindness and compassion and equanimity. But that process does not drop from the sky like rain, unfortunately.

[10:39]

much as we wish that was the way it works, much as we wish that if we keep sitting on our cushion or our chair, we keep showing up in the zendo, the dissolution of these unwholesome and negative patterns will take place somehow magically. And my experience is that that is in fact not so. That what we are able to do, and if we trust ourselves, discover our capacity for, is to keep bringing attention, keep bringing energy to whatever arises, including what we would rather turn away from. And I think that there is required in that process real courage. What is so interesting to me is that when we in fact turn toward what we have a tendency to want to turn away from, we discover capacities we didn't know we had.

[11:57]

So if you think about this process of riding on a horse across the country, periodically jumping over fences and barriers of various sorts, it's clear that in the process of going over each hurdle, there is a particular kind of energy that's required for that lift and to clear the barrier. That's the quality in our attention that we need to cultivate. And constancy makes a huge difference. My dear friend and teacher, the late Tartulku, one time during a retreat said, shaking his head, so many of you think that you are going to start a fire by rubbing the fire sticks together and then stopping, and then rubbing them together and then stopping, and then rubbing them together and then stopping.

[13:00]

And he said, what are you getting? You are continually getting no fire. The only way you will have some spark which can then ignite the tinder, which can then start a fire, is with the constancy of rubbing the sticks together. Which is why if we have some kind of daily practice and we actually do it every day, whether we feel like it or not, we develop a quality of energy in our attention that arises from that constant practice. But we discourage ourselves when we take on a practice which is too big a bite, if you will. Particularly, I think this is true when people are practicing by themselves. It's much easier to stretch in one's daily practice when one has company, when one is practicing in a center where there are others doing the same thing.

[14:13]

But what happens when we're on our own? when we would rather not leave a cozy, warm bed in the morning. Now, what I'm about to say on this matter may be a heresy here in this meditation hall, but I'll risk it. It is possible to develop a base in one's spiritual practice by beginning modestly. In fact, if one begins with practicing sitting down for five minutes, whatever shape and form of the practice you are committed to, that you experience as absolutely doable, and you then do it no matter what, what arises is a sense of mastery, of capacity, which you can then build on And it's not so hard then to begin, for example, with sitting going from five minutes to ten minutes.

[15:24]

I teach an introductory class at the University of California Extension several times a year. And virtually everyone who comes to those classes is coming with some version of how do I survive my life More and more I can count on the issue of stress and pace being the issues that bring people to those classes. And for them the idea of sitting down, making time to sit down and pay attention to posture and breath seems huge. The idea of actually sitting down and eating lunch and not at the same time talking on the telephone and writing notes or being in a meeting for some people seems rather daunting. If we begin with what is doable and we practice whatever the practice is that we're doing, that we've picked up, and we do it with constancy, we are building self-confidence.

[16:42]

When we say after our particularly inspiring lecture or retreat or workshop, I'm going to get up at 5 in the morning and meditate for an hour, and we might sustain it for a little while, and then there'll be some period of time when we don't get up at 5 in the morning and sit for an hour, and we feel quite badly. My experience is that that is one of the ways in which we undermine ourselves and erode whatever capacity we have for self-confidence. One of the wonderful thing about the basket of practices in the mindfulness tradition is that we can take a practice that may be very brief and small and do it in the midst of our day five or six times a day for the space of one or two or three breaths and be surprised that we experience some cultivating of awareness.

[17:49]

I remember one time when I decided to focus on awareness or mindfulness of standing. And I was really surprised at how easily I noticed standing in the course of the day, having not consciously been aware of standing before. And how from that very simple practice in doing it five or six or eight or ten times a day, some quality of attention or awareness began to develop that was extended beyond those moments of standing. So I want to encourage each of us to consider what it is we're doing in our practice, our spiritual life, that is the core or the thread that we will stay with no matter what, that we be very clear what that practice is that will be the baseline.

[19:04]

Some years ago, an old student of Suzuki Roshi's who went away and discovered that he was an alcoholic and went to AA and went to graduate school and became a professor. He said through many years he stopped meditating, but he always, every day, lit a stick of incense at the altar in his room through all those years of wandering away from meditation practices. And he told me some years later that that practice of offering a stick of incense, of being present in that moment, having that intention which he actually held to all those years, was the access, the doorway through which he was able in time to return to other kinds of meditation practices. So what I'm asking you to consider is starting every day with some awareness of what is doable, what you absolutely are confident you will do and really doing it and practicing with this quality of constancy.

[20:33]

Let me say a few words about working with questions. I think for many of us, the questions that arise, especially in the context of our experience in our spiritual life, are questions we may not even notice. One of the great advantages in having a spiritual friend is that someone else may hear a question that is arising that I'm expressing that I'm not hearing and can help me hear it. But I also think that some willingness to pay attention to our questions can help us hear them when they arise. And to notice when you dismiss or say, oh, well, excuse me for asking this question. It's a stupid question, but it's the question I have, that kind of undermining of the question, to notice that and be willing to bring it up and ask it anyway.

[21:47]

to take on with some clear intention, respecting questions as they arise. And be patient with ourselves so that we don't rush to try to find an answer. But just allow the question to be there, to cook us. There's a way in which our questions cook us. Some years ago, someone I know who was a lawyer spent a year or longer asking this question, can a real estate lawyer practice the Eightfold Path? It's interesting to me how when people start meditating, very often what comes up pretty quickly is some questioning about one's livelihood, one's means of livelihood.

[22:56]

Because, of course, that's where we often have a kind of gap between our press release and what is so. Or, not to be cynical, between what we would like to be so about ourselves and what's actually so. And what was so interesting to me was that over some extended period of time, a year or so, maybe longer, somehow just holding that question, just allowing the question to be there as a kind of reference point, the question changed for this person to, how does a real estate lawyer follow the Eightfold Path? And that's not always what happens. What you come to is, I need to find another kind of work. But sometimes we make those kinds of decisions out of our discomfort with sitting with the question.

[24:01]

And I think there's great benefit in not trying to figure out what to do so quickly. We, as Americans, have a lot of conditioning around the doing side of things. And so we need to bring a certain kind of energy and attention to just staying with what's arising without acting from that right away. This past summer I led a three-week retreat in which we were working with reactive emotional patterns. People were not thrilled at the beginning of the retreat. Somehow I hadn't announced the theme until we all got there. And I wasn't really meaning to trick anybody, but... In hindsight, I realized that I probably would have been sitting alone if I had announced the focus.

[25:11]

So for three weeks, we did practices that had to do with developing our capacity to be aware of negative emotional reactive patterns. And of course, everyone... easily knew what the patterns were. That was not the issue. The issue had to do with the willingness to turn towards and actually experience the territory, not think about it, but to actually experience it, and to at the same time be cultivating the ground of attention and awareness that is stable and strong, that in time develops with enough energy to meet anger or fear or whatever. This is, of course, what happens when we practice zazen.

[26:18]

Out of some... regular attention brought to posture and following the breath, awareness of the physical body in this aspect called posture and breath. We are developing stable, clear attention. There were two people in the retreat who in one case almost in spite of this person, stayed with or kept coming back to the territory And at the end of the retreat, what I saw was, particularly for one person, the experience of confidence in her capacity to be with this very territory in her life that she had tried to avoid for 60 years.

[27:24]

And such joy and lightness arose in her and has continued. I feel quite inspired to see someone stay with this kind of focus and have that experience, which is of course what we mean when we talk about liberation from suffering. Right now I'm living with a young Tibetan boy, he's four and a half, who lives with us with his monk attendant. And they've been with us since the end of January. And the plan is that they will stay with us for two years. And we've been together long enough now so that the honeymoon is over.

[28:27]

And I see more clearly some of the characteristics of his training and life as it is happening now and will happen for a long time. And I feel enormous grief and sadness for what I see in front of him. And I notice arising some tendency in me to send them back home. Am I willing to stay present with the suffering that I see already in this child's life and to continue being with him in the ways that I can? Or will I say it's too much? It doesn't have anything to do with him or his circumstance.

[29:36]

It has to do with my own capacity to be present with my own suffering. And unless we're willing to be with our own suffering, unless we're willing to be with our own grief, unless we're willing to be with our own stuff that is the fallout of patterning and conditioning, we will never discover our remarkable and extraordinary capacity to not only be present but to have the dissolving of what is unwholesome. And it is only when we can be present with our own suffering that we can be present for the suffering of others. They aren't separate.

[30:42]

One of the things that I find very interesting is that the kind of courage and commitment that authentic spiritual life is about isn't instead of fear or dis-ease or that arising of wanting to turn away. There is this paradoxical possibility of all of it together. For a long time, especially when I was young, I thought that courage was instead of fear. And I was so startled to find myself in situations where I was quite frightened and was able to have some quality of courage also. It's that way with joy and sadness also. They actually in some remarkable way go together.

[31:56]

So in respecting questions and doubts in a way what I'm suggesting is this is the opportunity to be present with what is so in the process of discovering more of the whole picture. That when I'm present with or discomfort or suffering within myself, I am also then more open to joy. It isn't at all either or. The piece that I guess we don't want to say because maybe we're afraid everybody will go away is that it's hard work. We want it to be easy, but it's also hard, at least initially.

[33:02]

And then after a while, some lightness comes. As we see our own limitations and those of others, there is a capacity not only to see but to laugh. So my friend, who was in the retreat this summer, who emerged liberated from some suffering she had packed around with her for decades, has a kind of self-confidence in herself and her spiritual practice that I've never seen in her before, and she tells me she hasn't either. Not puffed up. not puffed up at all, quite authentic, because she knows herself.

[34:06]

And she's able to not get caught up by thinking that the person who has this behavior that comes from conditioning is her authentic self. She sees that's the barnacles. That's the barnacles. And after a while, you even get to think barnacles are beautiful. Not so you keep building more, but as the possibility or opportunity for the erosion, the dissolving, the fading away of aversion. There's a dedication verse which I'm very fond of. It's actually a statement about the wish for the four immeasurables for all beings. And there's one line, may all live in equanimity without too much aversion or too much attraction.

[35:13]

And what I appreciate about that statement is it's not saying without any aversion or any attraction. Somehow it seems more possible if we can start with less. So I'd like to ask you to join me in dedicating whatever is wholesome and useful and positive from our spiritual practices this morning. particularly to hold in our hearts the people who are suffering so extraordinarily right now in Central America and in the Balkans and throughout the world. So may we dedicate this energy that all beings may have happiness and the causes of happiness, that all may be free from suffering and the causes of suffering, that all may never be separate from the sacred happiness devoid of suffering, that all may live in equanimity without too much attraction or too much aversion, and that all may live believing in the equality of all who live.

[36:32]

Thank you very much. May our intentions equally misunderstand the teachings to suggest that we should forget about ourselves in order to be of service to others, in order to be available to others, etc. And in fact, I think if you look closely at the Buddha's teachings and at the whole tradition, we are not authentically acting with generosity or patience or compassion or loving kindness or joy if we aren't doing what we do in a way that includes ourselves. And at least for people growing up in this culture, not everyone of course, but for many people, we had some early training about don't be selfish.

[37:35]

And so we have some very deep and early conditioning that can make it easy to misunderstand how important it is to begin, for example, with the cultivation of generosity with oneself. The difference is that the long-term intention is in order to develop an authentic capacity for generosity with all beings. But we have to start with ourselves. And my experience in doing various versions of loving kindness or generosity practice with people is that often people have a much harder time developing these qualities in relationship with oneself than with others. That what gets excavated is a lot of negative, what might be technically called negative self-clinging.

[38:38]

A clinging to a sense of self that is negative. which is at least as problematic as clinging to a sense of self which is positive. I mean, clinging to me, [...] me as the center of everything is at a very deep level the source of a lot of our suffering. But we often don't think of negative relationship with ourselves as a form of clinging to self. And when you start doing practice on the cultivation of generosity, for example, or the cultivation of loving kindness, those obstacles begin to show themselves. So it's not a matter of... there being anything wrong with taking care of yourself, especially in circumstances where you've had some injury or some physical limitation or condition, what often comes up in that situation is the challenge of being on the receiving end of help when you're used to being the helper.

[39:48]

For any of us who are longtime helpers, being helpless is a big teaching, big challenge. I was diagnosed with a cancer last year and had surgery and am fine, but I got to visit that territory of being on the receiving end of being helped, on the receiving end of people doing prayers for me. And it was very powerful and challenging. I mean, I've been out there driving my ambulance for years, and I'm good at it, and I have a really good ambulance. But it's out of balance if there isn't also some openness to being the one who has helped, who has prayed for, who has held. So I wouldn't pose it between being compassionate and being the victim. Yes. I am originally from Chile.

[40:52]

And I have various friends and also brothers that... They were initially Catholic, but they're no longer Catholic. And they are in very much suffering. And I've been practicing meditation, and I'm a Zen student now for four or five years. And they have seen some positive energy going in the right direction. So they asked me for help. And hearing you talking about doing like five minutes or ten minutes, it sort of gave me the idea that maybe I can tell them just to sit, you know, trying to follow their breath. And I was thinking also of maybe translating to Spanish some thoughts of Suzuki Roshi or Zen Master Dogen, etc. So they can read after that. Is that a good idea?

[41:56]

And also the next question is, can they practice without a sangha? You know, can they do it individually? Yeah. It's hard. What's most important is the absence of some guide or spiritual friend. And I think that you can get a lot from books, but I don't think it's all of it because so much of the teaching that is transmitted is basically coming out of an oral and body-based teaching. So even if you look at the instructions for Zazen, at the beginning of Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, which is translated into Spanish, there's something missing that you get when you actually sit with the teacher and see how the teacher is sitting. There's some communication that is nonverbal and is not just in the mind, but is more heart-to-heart and mind-body communication.

[42:56]

So I think it's difficult, but not impossible. There are, I'd be a little surprised if there isn't someone in Chile. I know there are Buddhist teachers in Brazil. There are some Tibetan people that they do practice meditation by chanting, continuously chanting. Mantra. Correct. It's not just mantra, though. It's also visualization. It's a combination. It's much more a heart-centered practice. There's a young woman lama in Buenos Aires... Well, I don't know if she's in Buenos... She's near Buenos Aires, who is down there, who is, I think, a good teacher. I don't know any Zen people down there, but I can't believe that there aren't... There isn't somebody. I'll have to think about how you might ferret out such a person.

[44:01]

But start with Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind in Spanish. There are a couple of other books that are commentaries on the Mindfulness Sutra. And what you might do is I'll write, if you want, I'll write out the titles and you might see if any of them are translated into Spanish. I bet they are. There was one book that was translated, Living Christ, Living Buddha, Living Christ by Dignahan was translated there. And my mother read it all and she was very happy with it. I think that the Theravadan texts, if you're going to be learning meditation through a book, the Theravadan texts and commentaries are more accessible as a teacher, as a teaching guide. In Zen, particularly in Japanese Zen, We're told as little as possible, and then we're kind of thrown out there into the ocean to figure out how to swim.

[45:09]

And I think Westerners actually do better with a little more coaching and a little more mapped territory. And when you get that mapping from the Theravadan tradition, it goes with Zen practice very nicely, but in a way that kind of fills in some holes. And there are a number of really fine text commentaries. There's one that I've been studying now for a while that's written by a man who teaches in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His name is Larry Rosenberg. That's a commentary on the Sutra on mindfulness with breathing in and with breathing out called Breath by Breath. It is superb. And it basically lays out the practices that the historical Buddha did leading to his enlightenment. It's a brilliant commentary. Yes. Breath by breath. Pretty easy. And the author's name is Larry Rosenberg.

[46:14]

Larry Rosenberg. Yes. Music to the heart. Yes. I don't think it's possible to speak a little bit about Tibetan Buddhism. The two teachers that I've studied with primarily have been the late Tara Tulkha whom I mentioned and His Holiness the Dalai Lama. And Tara Rinpoche used to describe the Tibetan tradition as the Baroque part, but basically loving-kindness meditations because all the deity practices are really loving-kindness practices. receiving and sending. So you do these very elaborate visualizations of these different, the emanation of these qualities of compassion or purification or wisdom or whatever. And then you do this, sustain this visualization of an archetypal emanation of the quality

[47:18]

with a mantra, receiving the energy that's in the practice from the emanation to your heart and then from your heart to the hearts of others. And there's so much to do that it's a way of developing concentration and focus. Your mind can't wander if you're doing a visualization, a mantra, a recitation, ringing a bell and a drum. So for people who are used to a lot of distraction, it's a way of kind of roping the mind. And the practices, the really authentic practices are quite potent. For example, the meditation on the Buddha in his manifestation as a healer, where you are visualizing the Buddha with his body, the color of lapis lazuli. And with healing energy coming from his heart to your heart in this stream of lapis, the color of lapis lazuli, and then from your heart to the hearts of others.

[48:25]

It's extraordinary. So when I was going through the surgery, I went through this just a year ago. Most of the time, I was very fortunate. I got the medical team to be willing not to sedate me because I wanted to do practices. So they numbed the surgical area. So I was doing a breath practice. It really comes out of this sutra that I just mentioned to you. For maybe 40 minutes, I would do this focus on mindfulness of body sensation with long inhalation and long exhalation. And then I'd do about 10 minutes of the Medicine Buddha practice, visualizing everything that was being done to me in the surgical theater as in this stream of blue light. And then I sent it from my heart to the hearts of everybody else in the hospital. And what was interesting to me was that the breath practice, I got very deep and very concentrated and very relaxed.

[49:28]

The anesthesiologist was just, she said, I had no idea it was possible to control heart rate, respiration, blood pressure, all the vital signs. She said, I just, I didn't know that. But then what would happen when I did the Medicine Buddha practice was a kind of expanding of the mind. So my mind felt very broad and spacious. So the two practices together were extraordinary, very powerful. Now, I know a doctor who works a lot with people who have conditions that the medical profession says, ìWe canít do anything.î And he's just followed his intuition in developing visualization practices for people to do. And what he does when he works with someone is he asks them to tell him, what color do you associate with healing?

[50:30]

And different people have different colors. Then the next week, the person comes back and the color's changed. Then the third week they come back and the color's a little different. Eventually, everybody comes to blue. Isn't that interesting? So the meditation on compassion can be with different aspects of Avalokiteshvara, the Bodhisattva of compassion, of which Jizo is one form that we find in Japan. But one of the most beloved forms of compassion is the female Buddha Tara. 21 different varieties of Tara with different emphases. And it's a very beautiful practice. Some years ago, one of my students, instead of making one of these small robes when she did the Bodhisattva ceremony, she put the practice that she does with the Tara visualization and mantra to music.

[51:41]

And then she sang all the parts. It takes about 20 minutes. Just listening to it, your heart opens. So there's a very wonderful practice for purification. It's the practice visualizing Vajrasattva. And long before I knew anything about Buddhism, a friend of mine introduced me to a drug dealer who was importing Buddha figures filled with drugs. And he had all these figures that he was a little nervous about. So my friend took me to look at them, and I gave him what for, for what he was doing. And I said, in particular, the figures you're using are particularly dangerous for you to be doing this. You are messing with some very, very, very difficult energy. Scared the living Jesus out of him, which was my intention. So I dragged home this beautiful image of Vajrasattva.

[52:43]

I had no clue what the figure was about. I didn't know anything about the iconographic system. Only later, when I studied the iconography of Tibetan Buddhism, which is the most consistent in Buddhist sacred art and quite powerful, I realized this is exactly the practice that was wholesome for me to do, and it's about purification. And it's extremely powerful, especially for people who've had terrible experiences for purifying the kind of imprinting that happens to us when we've had really unwholesome experiences. And it's the practice in Tibetan Buddhism that you do before you start any other practice. You start with honoring the ancestors, taking the refuges, and then you do this purification practice. So it's the way you kind of clear the ground.

[53:44]

Now, the other dimension that interests me a lot as a practitioner in the Soto Zen tradition is that there's a lot of tantra in Soto Zen. which I would not have understood, would not have seen, had I not had some training in Tantra, particularly with Tara Rinpoche. And to the degree that I want to understand my home path, I'm very grateful for having some illumination about that. Now, I'll give you an example. When we sit, when we're sitting in Zazen, We are manifesting as Buddha. We are taking the body-mind of awakened, the awakened one. That's completely a tantric practice, where you manifest yourself as some emanation of awakeness or compassion or wisdom, either fierce or peaceful, etc., So particularly Keizan, who did a lot of the ritual and ceremony side in the development or founding of Soto Zen with Dogen, both of them actually came out of traditions which were heavily influenced in Japan by Tibetan Buddhism.

[55:03]

And I'm very interested in understanding all those streams as they come together because I'm also interested in ferreting out what in Zen is Buddhist and what is cultural because we're not Japanese. And being able to make a distinction between what's cultural and what's Buddha Dharma is something that I'm very drawn to. So that's a small but longer answer than maybe you were interested in. And the Zenda where I teach doesn't look like this. There are Buddhas all over it, and there are paintings all over it, because I find them very inspiring and quite beautiful. And in some particular cases, I will actually suggest to one of my students, you might be interested in looking into this particular Vajrayana practice as a way of opening up something that's not opening up for you in Zazen practice.

[56:06]

Okay. So I particularly selectively use some of the practices, in particular the healing Buddha meditation, the purification practice with Vajrasattva, and the Tara practice. But I also occasionally will teach someone meditation on the Buddha, on the emanation of wisdom, Manjushri, and Avalokiteshvara in a more classical mode. And those are all... iconographic reference points in Zen, they're just not amplified so much. The heart-oriented practices are implied in Zen. And I think we need to do more than imply compassion, imply open-heartedness. We need to do more than imply warm, friendly, open-heartedness.

[57:06]

Zen folk can be a little on the chilly side. We have to be a little careful about that. Okay. Yes, hi. I particularly appreciated your statement about starting modestly. And I started modestly, but I'm still there. I've attempted it today to calibrate. I mean, I've been doing that for five, six years. Do a retreat. I have no problem coming here, which I do every Sunday, and sitting for the 25 minutes or whatever it is. But at home, I don't seem to be able to do that. And then every now and again here they'll announce, oh, we've got a one-day sitting next Sunday, and a voice says, you really ought to do that. You should move beyond this. And I have great resistance. No, I can't do that. Let alone, you know, I couldn't do a day, let alone a week or a... But you don't know.

[58:08]

And I would suspect that can't for you means either I don't want to or I don't know how. And in either case, I think it's very useful to respect both. I don't want to. And to just keep that I don't want to right here. So I don't let it out of my sight, but I'm not forcing. But I also think anybody can do a long retreat if they feel safe to listen to some inner voice about when to move. to be realistic about the length of time you sit, to feel safe to, say, move from a cushion to a chair. I mean, our meditation hall looks like a hospital ward. You know, I'm in a chair and somebody else is lying down. But, you know, one of the things that was so mind-boggling to me was when I said in the meditation room one day at the beginning of a retreat, please don't not move because you're afraid of what I will think of you.

[59:22]

You have to be the authority for when it's appropriate for you to move. Now, I interrupted you. You were going somewhere else. Excuse me, but I just couldn't resist. Questions. The two voices in my head say, it's fine to just meditate 10 minutes a day. It is. Better than nothing a day. So don't push it. The answer is, I don't want to do a day of retreat. Don't do it. Am I a worse person because I'm not doing a day of retreat? I don't think so. I'm wanting your approval of my staying in 10 minutes a day. Well, I say that because for me... The boundaries that I have always drawn much too close in in terms of my capacities get re-articulated in retreats.

[60:27]

And I discover capacities I had no idea I had. And I see that happening to other people. Capacities for what? Capacities for staying with something. Difficult. But I also am a great believer in not everybody wants... Meditation isn't everybody's dish. And there are many ways of practicing the teachings of the Buddha other than breath-oriented meditation practices. You know, there's a wonderful Burmese teacher named Dr. Tin Tin who's starting a center up in Sebastopol area. And she's written a marvelous book on mindfulness practices in daily life. And she periodically goes to places like Spirit Rock and gives these lectures in which she says, you know, you can become fully awakened without ever sitting at all. And, of course, people who have been committed to sitting for 20 years go, oh, she can't be speaking the truth.

[61:29]

You know, she is upsetting every apple cart there was when she says that. But there are lots, you know, this strange expression, there are lots of ways to skin a cat. And this is where I think working with the ten perfections or working with the six or ten perfections or paramitas, working with the precepts, working with mindfulness practices in the midst of one's day, those are all ways of training the mind, right? in much the way that we can do in more formal meditation practices that are quite viable. There are some people whose path is that of being a scholar. And in the United States, maybe in the West, the only true Dharma practice is cross-legged sitting. And cross-legged sitting has gotten to be a bit of a tyrant.

[62:30]

It's not the only way to train the mind. It's a very effective way. Very, very effective, but it's not the only way. This is heresy in this very spot, but I'm convinced that that's so. I think my practice is gardening. Because when I think of a one-day retreat, I'd say, I'd just much rather be in my garden. If I'm gardening, I'm totally mindful, I'm totally present, anxiety goes away, all those things, but I'm just totally there. I'm just so happy and fulfilled. Well, I guess I'll just keep gardening. The one question that comes up for me has to do with, am I in some kind of a feedback system? Because I can delude myself about the qualities or conditions of my mind. And having a good friend, someone that I can check in with, can be enormously helpful in having some sense about the side alleys that I'm not seeing.

[63:42]

I think that would be the one piece I would be very interested in cultivating. But there are lots of ways of doing that. I mean, I have a couple of students who practically never come to retreats, but we meet on a regular basis, and I see significant changes in their lives and in the degree to which they know themselves. And their work is very much in the midst of their daily lives. One woman in particular I can think of whose life has changed dramatically, and her focus is around the places where she gets caught, the obstacles that arise in her work. She has a very challenging job, and she's turned 180 degrees in five or six years of really attending to what shows up. I don't think she could have done that all by herself. She has benefited, I think, she's told me this, from the dialogue that we have in which I can reflect back to her what I observe when she describes something and to make a suggestion about a focus that she can then put in front of herself in the midst of her daily life.

[65:05]

And I do think that in the Buddhist tradition, this isn't true across the board, but it's certainly true in Zen, we tend to not emphasize the importance of having a teacher or a spiritual friend as though it were a secret. And in fact, I think we need that kind of company, someone who has more experience as a kind of guide and companion and a person with whom I can... I present my practice to myself differently when I have a witness than when I don't have a witness. Winnicott talks about this in his very seminal work in child psychology, that so much in the development of a child has to do with, does the child have a witness for what the child is doing, is learning? And I think that's true in our spiritual lives. We do present ourselves differently when we have a witness.

[66:08]

And in a lot of ways, that's really what a spiritual friend is for, is to be our kindly witness. Now, finding such a person is another task, but it's possible, especially in the Bay Area. Yes? I have a question about, if you could talk about your self-confidence and how, and sitting daily, and what it affects might be on dealing with anxiety and fear. Well, the self-confidence that I'm pointing to is the confidence that emerges from experience. So, for example, very early on in my own practice, I spent quite a long time, about a year, just working with the teaching that everything has the mark of impermanence.

[67:18]

But I picked it up with the question, is this really true? Can I find anything that is an exception to this? So I was doing that kind of testing. that the Buddha himself talks about. Don't take anything on the say-so of the elders and of the texts and of the local authorities. But only after you have checked and examined and looked into for yourself to find out if something is true and sound and of benefit to one and all, then pick it up. I think that my being drawn to the Buddha's teachings was really initially because of my response to that invitation to include my questions and doubts and my own common sense. That invitation I found very important. So I worked with this business about everything has the mark of impermanence for quite a long time, with the agenda that I wanted to test, is this accurate?

[68:30]

And at the end of a year or so, I was quite confident that this was an accurate description of things as they are. But that was experiential. It was not intellectual. Now, it included intellectual work, but not primarily. So what emerged for me was confidence in my own process and some beginning confidence in the Buddha's teachings. There's a very effective practice for working with fear that comes out of the Sutra on mindfulness with breathing in and breathing out. It's a kind of combination of some aspects of the meditations in that sutra and some Buddhist psychology. Where it's a five-step practice, and instead of turning away from fear, you turn towards and hold fear at the heart, at the heart chakra, on the breath, in and out.

[69:38]

Even if it's just for one inhalation. And you only need the experience of being able to do that in the face of emotion that you're used to experiencing as overwhelming, I can't stand this, helpless, falling apart. You have that one experience of your capacity to be with what you didn't, up until now, believe you could be with. That's the beginning of the ground of self-confidence. The confidence that even fear, I can be present even with fear. And whatever is your Waterloo emotionally, if you find a way to develop your capacity to stay present with the emotion experientially again, a certain kind of doubt and fear of the fear just dissolves. But you can't read about it.

[70:41]

The only way you can enter that territory is through your own actual practice. Liberation from fear of fear is, for those of us who are dominated by fear, is a huge liberation. Huge. Excuse me. You know, it's like, I'm still here. I didn't die. And it's so radical to think of holding fear at the heart chakra with the tenderness of a mother with her only newborn child. I mean, it's a very far-off thing to do, to do that with anger, to do that with anxiety. And if you can't do it sitting, get up and walk. Do walking meditation. You can still hold the anxiety at the heart chakra on the breath, in the breath out.

[71:50]

And you're not asking yourself to do it for very long. In the beginning, you just do it for what's doable, for just even an inhalation or an inhalation and an exhalation. And then you can just stop. Oh, I did it. Open it up a little bit. We live in a mind culture, and our dominant process is mental. We try to figure things out. And the Buddhist tradition comes out of much more body-based context. And there certainly is a very important place for thinking and the intellect. But... There is no substitute for the direct experience of whatever the conditioned reactive emotional stuff is, or the conditioned reactive mental patterns, you know, like that cranky critic.

[73:03]

Yes? I have a question. My first visit here, I see the basic commonality of the spiritual truth of who we really are. But what I'd like to know is, what does Buddha say about recognizing the Christ consciousness within you? It seems to me that that is a common pattern, a commonality of understanding who you are spiritually. and whether you can recognize it from a Christ consciousness level or from a Buddhist teaching, is what I'm really curious about. Where is the common thread there? Can you help me out? Well, there's a lot of resonance, resonance between the teachings of the Buddha and the teachings of Jesus. Enormous resonance. But there are also some very significant differences.

[74:10]

And in the Buddhist tradition, particularly the meditation traditions, you start with silence. And in Christianity, you start with the word. I think particularly in the esoteric streams of Buddhism, what we have really is not a religion. but much more an articulation about the nature of mind, the nature of reality, the nature of suffering, and an articulation of a path for the liberation from suffering, a kind of systematic, descriptive, how to live your life, The closest place where there's some resonating has to do with this pointing, hinting at our essential nature is virtuous and pure.

[75:14]

This pointing to Buddha nature. Or sometimes in the way that the essential quality of mind as clear, pristine, and spacious and boundless is probably where you have the most kind of resonating. But I think there's a significant difference when you have a kind of philosophical and psychological and scientific descriptive system that doesn't have any very clearly no discussion about creator or beginning and end. There's some very real differences between the two traditions. And we do a disservice to both. by not acknowledging and knowing what those differences are, the biggest, in terms of the world we live in now, the biggest resonating has to do with the incredible focus on the cultivation of compassion in both Christianity and Buddhism.

[76:20]

And His Holiness the Dalai Lama has been saying now for some time, that's what the world has to be focusing on. It's what we desperately need before we blow ourselves to smithereens. You might take a look at the book he's done on Buddhism and Christianity because he talks about some of this stuff very movingly. Yeah. Yes. Yeah, I... In my family right now, there are a number of people who are really suffering, mostly mentally. My parents are very old and evil. Actually, they're handling it the best, I think, but it's harder for the rest of us. I have a sister who's just really not doing well. and my children and it's the young people I think that I really am having the hardest time with.

[77:27]

I've gotten to a point of realizing I'm not totally responsible for their suffering, but as a mother it's still difficult. A lot of these things that you went over today I think are just extremely pertinent to them, but I have a very hard time other than just trying to sort of remain calm and listen, which with two of my children I can do. They'll talk to me. The other one won't. Figuring out how to help them. I mean, I don't want to just say, oh, well, they won't. They won't just come to a Buddhist thing with me or whatever. The mere mention of it makes them like, like that, but how to help them to understand some of these things. Now, I realize, too, you did mention that then you have to look in yourself and what you're dealing with.

[78:35]

how to interweave these things, or what can I do, what can't I do, what can I understand, what can't I understand, is at this point, especially in terms of my family, a constant question. Well, I think the question you bring up is one that touches a lot of people, that when we encounter our helplessness in the face of seeing the suffering of those we love, there's a there's a kind of bitter poignancy to that, and we fight it. In this wonderful teaching from the 9th century by Shantideva, in his teaching about the cultivation of patience, Verse 6, chapter 6, verse 10. Why be unhappy about what you can do something about? And why be unhappy about what you cannot do something about?

[79:42]

And many of us get caught, particularly with the ones we love, by wanting to mind someone else's mind. And the only mind you can mind is yours. The only mind I can mind is mine. My experience with my children is that what they notice is what they see happening in my life. The minute I open my mouth, you know, as Steven Levine said one time, his kids said, put it on tape. Unless you're invited for commentary, critique, advice. I mean, if you have any children who are interested in what you think about things, that's really nice. But, you know, after they're about a year and a half or two years old, you had your chance, and that's it. Yeah. And, of course, you probably are much wiser than you were when they were a year and a half or two.

[80:51]

So you then get to suffer with the long-term consequences of your own limitations when you were a young mother. And I think that can be quite painful. But I also think that the world we live in is really challenging for our young people. Somebody told me a story about an Indian tribe somewhere up off the coast of British Columbia, which has on the reservation a vast forest. And all the timber companies are interested in coming in and buying off the forest. a very disaffected community, very high suicide rate, very high alcoholism rate, and terrible suicide rate, especially among the young people. And I don't know where the impulse for this came from, but some of the elders in the tribe took the young people out on a wilderness trip

[82:01]

trip to reintroduce them to their heritage, if you will, just to go out with nothing and to find out how to survive in this vast forest, which is their inheritance. And it apparently turned what was happening for the young people 180 degrees around. So that the whole tribe has been mobilized with the energy from the young people to stop drinking and to reclaim their old ways. So I think what we have in front of us is an enormous challenge for creativity about how to work with our kids. And I think that many of us forget, or maybe we never knew, that we always can pray for them.

[83:05]

And that keeping our hearts open and praying for them can have some effect that we have no notion of. But I think the situation you're in is very painful. when we see our children suffer, and particularly when we have a sense about the things that might relieve their suffering, which they don't see, but which I, as an adult, as their parent, can see. It's very painful. I'll take a few more questions, but before I do, I want to just say, what time is lunch? Oh, great. I just want to mention this afternoon at 2, I'm going to do a ceremony for miscarried and aborted babies and babies who die, stillborn babies, which focuses on this emanation of compassion in Japan known as Jizo. And we sit together.

[84:08]

We're going to do it up at the yurt. And we sit together in silence, making a bib or a hat for any one of a number of figures I've brought that are different expressions of compassion. And then after we've sat together and made whatever we're going to make, then we do a simple ceremony, kind of a memorial ceremony, which includes an acknowledgement that there was a life, an acknowledgement of a dying, and a letting go of whatever holding there is around the particular being that is being remembered. So if any of you would like to join us, you're welcome to. So, yes. I'm really touched as I always am by your providing the opportunity for me to give myself permission to have my own reality of practice.

[85:08]

I want to thank you for that. And my question returns to the idea of a spiritual friend. Because this is something I've thought about over the years. And I don't feel like I've been willing or able or trusting enough or found the right person or whatever to make that step. But I agree with you. I feel like it's a really important thing. It's something that I feel is missing. And I wonder how to practice with that. At least do what you would do if you were going to buy a used car. Shop around. I'm serious. I'm absolutely serious. If you read the history of spiritual practice communities in the United States, it is a long history of our being duped by charlatans. And it's completely the consequence of not listening to our own experience.

[86:13]

I'm a great believer in what I call the sniff and stomach test. And you can go into the most established, beautiful practice center and you just feel like, doesn't smell right. And virtually no one trusts themselves when they do that. And I think it helps a lot to look around and get a sense of a fairly broad spectrum of teachers because you begin then to have a sense about what's possible. I also think that having some inner sense of attraction to work with somebody is trustworthy up to a point. The Tibetans are great about this. The advice in the traditional texts is you then work with the teacher that you've decided you're going to check out and you spy on them for 12 years to see if what they're teaching is what they're living.

[87:17]

Now, in meetings with Western Dharma teachers, with the Dalai Lama, we've talked about this issue. And he said, well, you know, everything is speeded up in this modern era, so maybe spy for three years. And I often have the experience of somebody coming and saying, oh, I want to be your student, and I'm not up for it. I say, okay, you can come and practice with me. You can come and join us in what we're doing. But I want you to check me out for some long time. And I make it very easy for people to spy on me. I'm really interested in people knowing exactly who they're getting into bed with, if you will. I don't mean that literally. But there is such a great intimacy in spiritual friendship. And it is very easy to have that relationship go awry. And when it does, it is devastating, especially for the student.

[88:23]

And I've given up on trying to educate my colleagues about how to conduct ourselves. So what I've decided is to try to educate the students about what to do to find a sound relationship in which you can do those trust falls that at some level your spiritual growth and development requires. There has to be some point at which you're willing to be obedient to a teacher. But you mustn't do that too soon. You have to be sure the teacher's reliable. And I have certain criteria. When I go to a center or am working with a teacher, are questions okay? Or do I feel like there's some taboo about asking questions? Does the teacher have a teacher? That's been very important for me for a long time. It really makes a difference if you're a teacher if you periodically and regularly sit in the student seat.

[89:29]

Because then you're in a feedback loop, which really makes a big difference. So, you know, at the same time that I'm saying that I think this spiritual friendship relationship is really crucial, I think we also need to pay attention and be intentional in the process of finding someone and also to be open to practicing with someone as one's spiritual friend for some while And at some point you may move on to another teacher or to a different circumstance. Your development will influence what you need. Does that open it up a little bit? It's a very important question. Thank you for asking it. Yes? Yes. Yes. Well, this is where the constancy of an awareness practice pays off.

[90:41]

Because it is with, you know, we use this word practice. If we keep practicing cultivating awareness, mindfulness is the ground. And as we are more mindful, for example, of posture and breath, awareness at times, not just when we're on the cushion, begins to be more stable, more reliable. There's a kind of energy in the quality of attention. And that builds. During this retreat that I was referring to earlier, one of the things that I was encouraging everyone to do was to have, say, an hour-long period when we would do 20 minutes of settling and primarily stabilizing awareness practice. Then we would do the focusing for about 20 minutes on whatever afflictive emotional pattern each person was working with. And then we would do another 20 minutes of a pretty straightforward awareness practice.

[91:48]

We were not hanging in there with the devil for an hour. Maybe in the space of a half an hour, you might do that focus on the afflictive emotional pattern for five minutes out of 30. Well, one person pushed and pushed and pushed and hung in there with the hell realm and just burnt out. She learned a great deal from that about how much she pushes And for any of us who have that tendency, pushing in the face of seeing where we need to do some work is probably not sound. There's got to be some balancing and continually establishing and cultivating awareness. And my experience is that this is where constancy pays off.

[92:51]

Some regular steady bringing myself to this ground of cultivating awareness. And you can really see the difference if you look at your capacity. Let's say you practice over a period of several years. If you don't compare your characteristics now with last week, But what qualities do I see having developed within me over now and say two years ago? I'm likely to have a much more realistic sense about where I am. But again, this is where having a spiritual friend is very helpful.

[93:39]

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