Good morning. As someone said to me last night, we're having some weather. I see all these signs in the world of plants and to some degree birds pressing for spring. And then we have this kind of arctic temperature system. Very interesting. Very interesting winter. I said to Bill earlier this morning that I wondered if I would drive you all away with continually talking about dying. What I actually notice is there aren't very many people who are willing to hang out with that particular fact about our lives and our experience.

[01:20]

What I want to talk about this morning is really in the context of understanding that Virtually anything I can say about dying has to do with living one way or another. The practices that I know from first sitting with Suzuki Roshi as he was dying and the practices that I have come to one way or another over the years that focus on impermanence in particular have, in my experience, the consequence of a more vivid, a capacity for a more vivid experience of being alive.

[02:33]

Someone came to see me earlier this week who was just been diagnosed with a recurrence of a very rare but extremely aggressive cancer. And I was struck by how immediately she got that the situation of her life is one of a great opportunity for training the mind. Recognizing how much her wanting to have fun going for known and identified distractions in the last several years and longer is not the way she wants to go with this particular chapter. And as we were sitting together and as I was listening to her, what I sensed was a real picking up of the possibility for wholeness, for wholesomeness, for healing in the widest and deepest sense.

[03:53]

This week, she understands, don't waste time. practice as though your head is on fire because, of course, she experiences. It's not a metaphor. It's an accurate description. Her head is on fire. So this is the context of what I want to say this morning. Partially, or at least as an entry point to acknowledge, to celebrate this individual's willingness to pick up this great opportunity. That willingness is not so easy to come to, especially in the world that we live in.

[05:03]

A number of us are and have been for a while doing a sequence, a kind of graduated path of meditations on impermanence. Such fundamental ground in the Buddhist path, the Buddhist curriculum if you will. And the focus in our meditation that is presented early on when we're beginners, but over and over again, no matter how advanced or developed or cultivated as a practitioner, there is always coming back to staying alive to the description about the nature of things, that everything changes, that everything has the mark of impermanence. What I'd like to talk about this morning is what has been for me a particularly challenging focus in the, you know, subcategory of the impermanence work, if you will, which some of you know from the one of the lines in the verse about birth will end in death.

[06:35]

Youth will end in old age. Meetings will end in separation. Wealth will end in loss. All things in cyclic existence are transient, are impermanent. The line about meetings will end in separation. Have the sequence wrong? I had the sequence wrong. I was just thinking of the Kafka. The what? The Kafka. Oh, yes. The Kafka. Bill starts muttering under his breath. It's a clue for me to pick up my piece of paper that he gave me. The quote from Franz Kafka, Prague, November 20th. There is no year. Any November 20th. Striking that it's November.

[07:38]

There is a coming and a going, a separation and often no seeing again. For those of us who had some time with Tenzin Palmo when she was visiting, I don't know, a couple, two or three years ago, English woman who's been a nun in the Tibetan tradition for a number of years and who is quite well-known because she went into a 12-year meditation in a cave in the Himalayas. And one of the things that was so striking for me in getting to know her and spending some time with her is that when she and I parted,

[08:39]

as she was preparing to go back to India, where she has been engaged in starting a nunnery and training center, especially for nuns from the Ladakh region, which is where she did her long meditation, where she feels a very strong commitment to supporting women practicing from that area. I had the very palpable sense that when Tenzin Pamo walked through the gate, got in the car, found the drive, I was no longer in her mind. And I didn't have a sense of that as something I regretted or that that was about me in particular, but more a sense that an inseparable aspect of her capacity to be quite present was that then when she was somewhere else, she was present in that somewhere else.

[09:54]

And that I was not part of the baggage she was dragging down the road to whatever her next stop was. My experience of that palpable separation was more by way of inspiration about what's possible. So I've been thinking, partially stimulated by this class I've been doing in Berkeley on suffering and the promise, if you will, or at least the description of the possibility of the end of suffering in the Buddhist teachings that I've been doing in Berkeley. We had our last class this last Thursday and I asked people to tell me about their

[11:00]

the suffering that they were quite familiar with or that was up in some strong way and this particular suffering that comes up around meetings will end in separation was one of the things that someone brought up. In many texts, ancient texts, I think particularly the one that comes to mind at the moment is the Shantideva teaching. There is this description about the suffering that comes from the person who has been my friend up until today is now my enemy. Or the person who has been my enemy is now my friend. But also all the stories about the passing over, the dying of one's loved one, partner, child, parent, many, many, many instances.

[12:16]

One person in the class who's had two very long marriages, I think she said 26 and 29 years each, She didn't look old enough to have had two such long marriages. And her husband died in, I think, last summer. Her second husband, or at least her last husband. I actually don't know about how many she had before that, but it sounded like she only had two. Her later husband died. And what she alluded to was how, I think without quite knowing what she was saying, the grief that's up for her with this passing of her husband this last summer carries with it kind of resonating with the passing of her former husband.

[13:24]

The losses stack up and resonate with each other. So, there's this kind of shimmering into our depths of that sense of loss. As some of you know, when my dear, dear teacher, the late Tartulku, died, I grieved for him in a way that was not an experience I'd had before that. And what I came to, and what I want to suggest again, is my own recognition that my grieving had everything to do with my holding on to what had passed over with his passing. all the things that we were going to do, the ways we were going to practice together, the retreat that he and I had talked about my doing in Bodh Gaya, actually across the river, in a tiny monastery that's situated at the site of an ancient, ancient meditation cave.

[14:54]

But many things. And I was, I remember at the time being so startled when I realized that what I was doing was practicing craving, grasping, clinging, hanging on for dear life to what was no more. Just recognizing that this is what was going on, this hanging on the recognition that this is what's going on was itself enormously liberating because I could actually then begin to experience the tension and discomfort and suffering in the clenched fist which had nothing in it. And it was not at all hard to just exhale

[15:59]

and open the hand, literally and figuratively. If we have some deep and close relationship with someone and then it comes to an end no matter how that relationship comes to an end or at least changes in the way that we might typically say, oh, it's ended, it's over. Particularly poignant with a lover. How much of that quality of heartache that may go on for a very long time has to do with some way of holding on of running down the driveway, waving.

[17:03]

Don't forget me. Write. Send a picture. Know that I'm thinking of you. Good old self-clinging manifests in such a poignant way. What happens if we take on what seems the most difficult practice to remind myself that the person or people who are the dearest to me, that even with them, those meetings will end in separation? In my experience, when I, every day, a number of times every day, remind myself, this meeting will end in separation.

[18:09]

This relationship will end in separation. If not, any one of a myriad of ways during a lifetime with one or the other of us dying, which we both will do. We do not know when or how. and we would rather not think about that or hold it in mind because of what arises with that recognition. And yet, if we are consistent with bringing that description, that reality, into the moment a number of times a day, what in time will begin to happen is an increase in presence now. I'm not putting off. I'm not waiting until the right time or the perfect time to be together.

[19:13]

We can, particularly with those we love, practice hanging on for dear life. Saying to ourselves, but I can't bear the thought of losing this loved one. But you know, you can begin to develop the capacity to bear the thought if you keep working with the possibility. We're afraid of a thought. We're afraid of the experience, the impending experience that rides with the thought. All of that keeps us from the savoring and treasuring and delight in any moment with ourselves and with another.

[20:27]

I've been spending some time with a friend who's just finished a pretty... I think the right word is terrible round of chemotherapy for leukemia where the program is to kill everything in the bone marrow and then keep the patient in a hermetically sealed environment until the body regenerates everything, in particular white blood cells, platelets, the whole thing. And for some few days I watched my friend in this kind of what you might call twilight zone after the round of chemotherapy had finished and the impact was occurring. And I watched and was present with my friend's suffering and that of the ones who love him.

[21:44]

And I watched the effect of all the drugs that he was being given. The effect on his mind was palpable. I watched fear and anxiety arise. I watched the disturbance of one's mind in hallucination or disorientation I sat with him when he was in the intensive care unit on a ventilator and watched and experienced with the machine corroborating what I'd been experiencing of what breath is like at the peak of fear.

[22:51]

I had a palpable experience of the difference between four breaths a minute and 67 breaths a minute. It's enormous. And two days later, I was sitting with my friend as he sat up for the first time for 40 minutes, and ate some slices of banana that I gave him and had a drink of pear juice. And then when he got back into bed, he wanted me to put on a Bach cantata. And first I played a CD that he had in his room of a recording of Yo-Yo Ma playing this particular cantata that had been transcribed for the cello.

[24:06]

And my friend kept singing the theme of this cantata and saying, but the voices, we need the voices. So I then fumbled around to try to find another recording. Of course, everything's in German. to find a recording that was with voices. And we spent, I don't know, four or five hours listening to Bach cantatas, which he could sing. And he'd say, you know this one? And he would sing it, and we'd search around to find it. My friend will go through more terrible treatment and who knows how it will go.

[25:08]

But those few hours together with his sharing with me his love of this piece of music and his knowing it so deeply so thoroughly, even without much energy, being quite weak, being so newly returned to the ordinary world, the energy that he had was available for this wonderful music. If we never saw each other again, that time and experience, I have confidence, will keep arising with the sweetness of it. We hang on to those experiences because we hope we will return to them.

[26:20]

And the very hanging on keeps us from being present for experience moment by moment. We get caught by those sweet experiences that we want more of, without understanding that our practice is the cultivation of being able to be present, to be in attention, for the whole works, as Kadagiri Roshi used to say. Everything. Not just the sweetness and joy, but also the fear, our anxiety, our feeling overwhelmed by this or that. Giving up, picking and choosing. Meetings will end in separation. the great paradox that if I don't hang on to the meeting part, or I don't terrify myself by focusing on the separation part, either hanging on to either end of the spectrum,

[27:48]

is a way of keeping myself from risking the suffering that comes out of our touching each other. Quite some while ago, someone said to me, I decided not to ever have children because I knew I couldn't bear the quality of vulnerability that I would go through. And I understand what she was telling me, but it strikes me as a huge price to pay for being safe from suffering. I think that for many of us, we're afraid of our own weakness.

[28:56]

We're afraid of our own, what we think will be our incapacity to be present with heartache or suffering. And so we try to close ourselves off. We try to protect ourselves, often in ways that are not so conscious. We retreat to a kind of defended position against suffering. But joy, sweetness, the connection in the heart is inseparable from sadness, from heartache, for one's own suffering and that of the other. They're inseparable. And we have vastly more capacity for the fullness that comes with being more and more present than most of us realize.

[30:05]

Sometimes we have these rather transcendent experiences, transcendent moments. And we have no notion that we have a capacity to cultivate what I call being accident-prone for more of those moments. Because of course we can't control how things are going to be. It's another defense strategy, which at a certain point in our lives the whole program is about giving up that particular defense strategy. Maybe some diagnosis of a life-threatening disease. Maybe simply what comes with aging. There's a certain point at which our own mortality is right there, irrefutably.

[31:16]

Doesn't seem to happen at 50. It happens at 60. Unless one is really cultivated in denial. But nevertheless. Do we see that as a kind of gift? That? Sudden palpability of our own mortality? I hope so. Because if we see that palpability of our own mortality, we have the chance to taste life fully. This is where the conversation about dying is everything about the qualities and characteristics of our lives. And of course, what I'm talking about is not work that anyone can do for me or for you.

[32:35]

It's up to each of us to pick up the practices that will lead to the cultivation of the heart-mind for openness, for presence, for attention The Buddhas cannot wash our sins away with water. They cannot remove our suffering with their hands. They cannot transfer their insights to us. All they can do is teach the Dharma. I am my own protector. No matter how much we long for someone else to do this process of uncovering, dismantling conditioning, beginning to allow the falling away of our conditioning, the ball is in each of our courts, so to speak.

[34:02]

I sometimes get caught by my wanting someone to see, oh, the ball's in my court. And of course, that's the thread that leads to minding someone else's mind stream. I have some impulse to want to jump up and down and scream and holler. Wake up! Don't wait! And then I remember that each person is doing the best they know how to do and that some of us are very slow, very late bloomers. It may take us a few lifetimes. And that my work is to respect those differences and to not be impatient.

[35:21]

So maybe that's enough. So if you'd like to. OK. Well, as you know, I have been translating So often, when I hang out with a word from a foreign language, the English word receives illumination. Let's use the same word to describe what you do when you stick a picture on the wall. Oh. Glue it up there. And when you take it off,

[36:43]

There's a little residue of mucilage on the wall and some paste strands like melted cheese on the picture. And I thought that as you were talking about the pens and pommel mode of separation, the clean break, the clean separation in contrast to the one where there are strands and sticky residue. And I thought about how Because she, and my sense is that a clean break doesn't exclude an appreciative memory or recollection of the event. How else could she have written her book if she hadn't had? She didn't write it. But she didn't write it. No? No. It's not an autobiography. It's a biography. Somewhere in there. of information. Oh no, she had a lot of memories.

[37:46]

Yes, yes, yes. No, I think that's, and I think one of the things that's interesting, I started some years ago paying attention to what's the motivation with taking pictures? And how much, I think it was in some way triggered by the kind of mania to get everything on videotape. So much so that the person who's doing the videotape or the picture taking may not be actually very present in the situation, but at least he or she has the pictures to remember the experience they didn't have. You know, one of the things that happened for me some years ago when I was the executor for Nancy Wilson Ross's estate, which was a big, complicated estate, involved two permanent households plus a temporary one.

[38:51]

Lots of stuff, including tons of photographs. and how if there isn't someone around who knows the stories that go with the pictures, they're just, you know, pictures that you'd find in a garage sale. Who are these people? What goes with this photograph? It's like you can use an old photograph you don't know any of the people and paste your own stories onto them, but how much of that is in this territory of grasping, clinging, you know, what I sometimes call the Velcro relationship. And of course what's interesting is that experience I had with Tenzin Pamo was very useful because the people who've been really significant in my life, it's not that I don't ever think about them, it's not that they don't, their presence in one way or another doesn't arise often.

[39:57]

Actually, the more relaxed and open I am, there's a kind of, you know, like fog coming and going. And out of being afraid that I'm going to lose or forget the person that I loved, that very constricting leads to, oh my gosh, I can't remember their face. So, yeah. And I was looking at half-dome and the sun was going down behind me and it was striking half-dome and it was just spectacular. It was pinks and oranges and I just had this moment of clinging and wanting to hold on to it.

[41:04]

And like I saw how clearly I created my suffering. It was very palpable and how I wanted to be there next Christmas. Yeah. So this is a very good, I think a very important point because we live as though we are in a repeatable universe. Only we're not. And we can get caught with oh well I want to do that again, I wasn't as present as I'd like to be or that was so good I want more. Then, you know, the so-called three poisons in the hub of the wheel of existence begins to make more sense. I want, I want, I want. This was so wonderful, I want it more. Understandable.

[42:09]

I mean, this is not, what I'm talking about is not free of poignancy or sadness or regret or fear or any of that. But, you know, what I'm interested in is naming the inseparable, the inseparability of what we're present with. If we're really going to practice cultivating attention, that means a willingness to be in attention with whatever arises. And most of us have some things that are, no, not that, that's usually in a pretty airtight container, so that then when that arises, we feel hit on the side of the head. That's why having somebody you talk to about what's coming up in your meditation practice is so useful because then, you know, somebody outside the situation said, oh, this isn't impermanent, this was an exception.

[43:27]

That kind of noticing can be very helpful at the point at which all our noticing faculty is, you know, taking a hike. It's been a very interesting and pleasant experience with noticing the problems, as usual. Practicing sort of what you said about the small losses in my life, I started taking a beginner's photography class. So all of our exercises are looking at light and the differences, you know, just really paying attention to all those little differences. And it's been spectacular. When I was looking for good pictures to take, I could see nothing. And then when I stopped looking so hard, I was amazed at the world I'm living in. It's spectacular. It's wonderful, it is. But last weekend, there was a day of just perfect light. It was just gorgeous, and I spent the whole day running around like a kid with this camera, shooting pictures, and everything was gorgeous and perfect, and I was just so excited with it all.

[44:38]

And then when I went to pick up my It was all black. I hadn't loaded the camera properly. And there was just this enormous sense of loss. And that realizing that there would never be that same light again on exactly those same things. And that this week I found myself going back to some of the places and trying to capture them again. But it was a gray week. It wasn't a bright light. And I was getting lousy pictures. And after a while, it was really sinking in how those particular things are gone. They will never, ever, ever be the same again. And that I didn't see anything very exciting this week because I kept going back and looking. Comparing. Comparing and wanting to recreate the ones that I'd lost that will never be there again. Right. And it was just a combination of just the glory of seeing my everyday life.

[45:41]

with new eyes and then wanting to freeze frame it and just knowing that I can't. Well, you know what your story reminds me of is when I was with the Gyuto monks when they were at the Natural History Museum in New York doing this big butter sculpture. It was 15 feet tall and 25 feet long and huge. And they had it in the gallery that's dedicated to oceanic birds, which has an outside wall. And the museum was pumping cold air in so that the whole thing wouldn't melt. And of course, thousands of people came through the museum to see the monks doing this. And as the sculpture began to be created, people would say, well, what's going to happen to it after this closes? You're gonna put it out in the park and let the birds eat it? What? Couldn't we put it in the freezer? Can we all have a piece and take it home and put it in the freezer?

[46:44]

But of course, the whole creation of this beautiful sculpture out of butter is a practice about impermanence. Put it in the freezer and keep it. And I've been having some very interesting conversations with people in the museum world because, of course, the whole notion of museums is about keeping and protecting and preserving and not allowing things to change. So I guess it was last year we saw the Chardin exhibit in New York, and there were a fair number of paintings that were all yellow and big paintings, very yellow. And the woman we were with is a professional museum person. And she said, these paintings, if you notice, these were all from a private collection.

[47:50]

I would bet they're all from the same private collection. And I would bet that the owner smoked. And what we're seeing is the film from cigarette and cigar and pipe smoking. There were some paintings... Well... I mean, the irony is so palpable, I can hardly believe it. When Chardin would finish a painting, then he would make an etching of the painting. And in the exhibit, they had the etchings of the paintings that were also hung. So you could see in certain paintings where there had originally been a background that was now almost completely gone from the paintings having been cleaned and taken care of in the various museums that they've been in in the subsequent centuries.

[48:56]

So our friend said, well, the irony is that we probably have better preservation with these paintings in the private collection that haven't been washed and tended to, because if we took all that layer off now, we'd have, you know, the original painting much more fully than what's been, you know, so-called preserved. It's so interesting. And apparently people who do conservation work in the museum world have a very hard time because they're continually fighting what is just in the nature of the material world. So, you had a big teaching there. That's great. And because it wasn't attached to a loved one or something that I had a lot of vocal with, And you did have the experience of the light that you had.

[50:10]

Yes, and that's still with me. Yes, it's probably not here. It might be here. Yeah. Thank you. That's very helpful. Anybody else have anything pithy that's up? attached to the idea of getting a T at that time. I wonder what comment you would have about the painting in that regard, like of things to come. Well, in this painting that's the Wheel of Existence, that's that poster there on the wall, this is the, in this outside circle, the so-called Twelve Links, the depiction of what's called dependent arising.

[51:24]

what you're describing is called Bhavana, becoming, where we have the mind already in the future. It's the classic thing that happens when people do a long retreat and sometime, you know, on the last day or maybe the evening before the last day, you start planning what you're going to have for dinner when you go home and the great sex you're going to have and maybe you'd like to go to the movies And you just have obliterated any quality of presence for the last day or two of the retreat, depending on how long it is. And I think particularly in our culture and time, But I also think this is just true historically for human beings in many different cultures and times. The tendency to live primarily in the past and the future instead of in the moment.

[52:32]

So that's a circumstance in which what you get to see is, oh, I really want that cup of tea. And what would happen if you got out there and all the thermoses were empty and there were no tea bags left? Would you, with that focus in hanging on to the outcome called having the cup of tea, set you up in such a way where you're setting yourself up in such a way that there's no tea, enormous disappointment, anger, what do you mean no tea? Suffering arises. And beginning to be awake to, I have to have that tea, I want that tea, it's important to me to have that tea, sets us up for suffering in the face of impermanence.

[53:35]

Maybe there'll be tea and maybe there won't. The confusion to me is that I'm not sure what I'm referring to. What I'm referring to is the joy of the moment of the anticipation. If I'm in that moment as I'm progressing along the line and I'm having this really sense of delight in the act of the waiting and of the thought of the teaching. and I feel like I'm in the present, I'm confused between is that a present moment or is that a moment? No, no, I think that's definitely being present. Again, however, the hazard is if our sense of presence is primarily with thoughts and emotions, we're climbing onto a roller coaster in a way that is quite different from being present grounded in physical

[54:36]

physical body sensation and breath and when our our ground is primarily physical body sensation and breath there may be an included this awareness or presence with delight the thought of the tea etc. It's not that that's not included but the focus on thought and emotion is is much more fragile and unreliable, much more peaks and valleys. And it's not either-or. I'm really arguing, and I think the tradition argues, cultivating the capacity for both-and, both present in the moment significantly grounded in physical body and breath, and delight with the tea that is coming, maybe.

[55:42]

The delight in the maybe tea. The metapa tea. I mean, you know, one of the wonderful things is to, during retreats, is to see all the things that you get caught with around what are we going to have for lunch. And then you're the last in the line. For a long time when we would serve ourselves, when we were doing meals, we'd serve ourselves and I would usually stand at the end of the line. Partially, it was always interesting to see, was there any food left? Did the first five people take such big portions that the rest of the line was impacted? But also, there's that whole play with, well, boy, does that look good. But then, you know, you get there and there's none left in the bowl. It's an incredibly useful moment for studying the mind.

[56:51]

which is much more important and interesting to me than whether I get that great, you know, tamale casserole or whatever it is that Betty made that I was looking forward to. So it depends a lot on what's my motivation. If I'm primarily going for clarity about what's so about my state of mind, those kinds of situations become extremely fruitful. If what I'm really riveted on is, I want my tea. You know, as my friend Lenore used to say, with her knife and fork, she'd sit in the kitchen, I want my dinner. You know, pretty interesting for a nearly 90-year-old woman pounding on the table. I want my dinner. Studying her state of mind was not what was on her agenda.

[57:54]

You're also bringing up, I think, the issue that comes up in Dharma practice, especially in Buddhist practice, is where we get caught when we're focused on outcome over against a focus on process. Anyway, I think what you're bringing up is very interesting. Okay. John? I have a quick question. In the process of dealing with... Does that mean it's not an important question? Yeah, it's in the category of unfinished business Yeah, I would say grieving is a kind of suffering and the options are between what's the difference between grieving and a sense of sadness or

[59:28]

missing someone or regret. I think there is in grieving this quality of holding on. I was thinking in terms of minor losses, certainly, but also major losses, the death of a parent or a loved one. out of your head in a way, or not get out on the ground. There's a period of dealing with maybe the psychological aspects or intellectual aspects of the loss, the physical sensation, the numbness sensation, and then you kind of gradually come to terms Well, I think that's true, but I also think that to the degree one is not taken by surprise when someone dies, whatever that cluster of what arises will be different in one case or another.

[60:47]

But I also think that one of the reasons we have periods of observance after someone has died is out of a kind of wisdom that this is a realm of experience in human life which benefits from some clear container in which we can allow ourselves to be present with whatever arises, including what we weren't expecting or feel a little surprised about. I mean, I remember When my mother died at a very old age, she was in her early 90s, and we had had an extremely difficult relationship literally from my birth, maybe even prior to that. She had been very sick and very close to dying a number of times over the, what,

[61:50]

14 or 15 years, her last 14 or 15 years. And I would not say that I was close to my mother in the usual sense. Significant relationship, but not a kind of warmth or heart connection particularly. And I was grateful for having a year to be with the fact of her passing. And even some years later, the thought will come, oh, I should call my mother. They're like these wisps that manifest as a thought or impulse to do something, and then I'll suddenly realize, what number will I call?

[62:52]

Only it's not a thought, it's really more body-based. And of course, part of this whole meditation on impermanence is allowing ourselves those periods of being present with whatever arises in our lives. And out of that we begin to have a whole different understanding about some of the teachings in Buddhism. There's a kind of, oh, I get it. I didn't understand that before. I mentioned earlier, my mother died two years ago. Periodically, there are thoughts. There are times I miss her terribly. But I also have a sense of myself hanging on at times. Instead of just acknowledging that the thought is there and it arises and passes away, I'll sometimes bring it on.

[64:00]

That's the it you're grabbing onto. I'll stay with the thought. That's where if you can come back grounding yourself in your physical body you may be able to drop into some more direct experience of the emotion that's arising in association with those thoughts and be present without this Well, it's the way we keep ourselves from experiencing the whole realm of emotion. It's a way of protecting ourselves. But there's a cost. It's a cost to doing that. It's kind of shielding ourselves from what we're afraid will be painful. But, you know, to miss your mother and the experience of that missing

[65:04]

You can go into grief where there's this or just missing and it begins to be more palpable, the sense of what's arising is more particular. And to notice, I don't want to go there, and notice that. Oh, resistance. Don't force. don't go to sleep either. There's a difference. Yeah. When you used the word shimmering, it really struck me the way you were talking about how one depth resonates with another depth and kind of compounds. And I know for me, I have fear and aversion around It's almost, it's like a form of conditioning from prior death, I think.

[66:14]

When my mom died when I was a teenager, I really fell apart physically in the initial shock of it, just sort of involuntarily. I was in the hospital, I was told something, I just passed out. I came back to a few minutes later, but then 24 hours later, there was a huge storm on it. It was this time of year, it was in the Midwest, I have such vivid memories now in my mind of laying in a bed and having 10 or 15 blankets because I couldn't stop shaking. It was a pretty empty experience and the person who was closest to me kept wanting to feed me aspirin and milk like this was going to make it better. I have such a, you know, the whole experience in that time was so visceral. For the next week, I was just very, you know, feeling everything physiologically.

[67:15]

And I've since learned that that seems to be pretty typical for me when I'm going through some loss. It's not been that intense since then, but whether it's been an animal or a person close to me, grieving just seems to entail a whole bunch of physical sensations. or loss, it seems to entail a whole bunch of physical sensations that I don't like. And I feel like I've been, a little headway had been made in the last round where I just surrendered to it. I said, I don't know why, this just is how my body does it when I go through this experience. And part of the trouble happens, I think, when I kind of join with the culture and not allowing myself enough protected space around it. And partly what happened when my mother died is I just tried to, it was my role in the family to just hop in there and cook those dinners and act like she hadn't left the house. My father wouldn't have to notice. And that there was something about that where my body couldn't lie.

[68:20]

The body doesn't lie. Well, there's also what I would caution you with is be careful that you're not practicing vowing. to repeat the response to what happens now in terms of how it's been up until now. This is how my body does it, has an incipient vow in it, which doesn't leave you open to some other possibility. But the other piece that I have observed is that If I return to what I'm still carrying over some loss and tend that experience, this is in the finishing business realm, then a dying doesn't keep resonating with all those earlier losses.

[69:21]

And so the whole practice of not leaving any track not leaving any trail, which is really big in the meditation path, begins to make sense in terms of what we're talking about. Because beginning to notice when we leave tracks, that in itself opens up a whole landscape. And a lot of fear comes up around, well, then who will I be if I'm not leaving any tracks, if there's no evidence that I've been here? A lot of very deep, very significant fear will begin to manifest with the practice. On the other hand, there's a way in which our capacity to begin to explore no tracks, no trail,

[70:25]

contributes to the quality of presence that we have a capacity for. At least that's been my experience. Could you unpack, I think I dropped a stitch somewhere in here, between the unfinished business piece, revisiting that and then if I go not leaving the tracks I understand in terms of practice just the talk part but can you connect those two for me? It may be obvious to everybody else. As long as whatever experience I mean in a way I could say this about all of our conditioning when we have an experience that resonates with some very early significant experience in terms of conditioning. There's a way in which until we go back into that foundational or primary experience and let ourselves experience it, not carry it instead,

[71:41]

then all kinds of situations that are remotely like that core experience, it's like we have this kind of like an earthquake aftershock that takes us back into that early territory. Well, I mean, you know that in terms of your professional work, but the same thing is absolutely palpably true around our experience of impermanence with respect to those we love. those we feel really strongly connected with. And that sense of loss that is bound up with, well, maybe I'll disappear. There's a kind of linkage there. So one of the ways to be really present with this dying is to have allowed myself to be fully present with the dyings that have proceeded.

[72:45]

It's one of the reasons why going back and doing a 49-day practice in those cases where one hasn't fully gone through that can be enormously helpful even, you know, years after someone has died. I've seen it happen over and over again around abortion. I've seen it happen over and over again around the death of a parent where there was a lot of unfinished stuff in the relationship with the parent. And we think, oh, well, I wish I'd known then what I know now. I can't go back there. It's done and gone. But I think that's not true. Rita? I'm struggling to be with doing what is the loving thing that I did. That's how I do want to behave. And also in the wisdom to know the difference with impermanence.

[73:50]

The difference between what and what? In the serenity prayer. Well, but specifically, you're struggling to do the loving thing. In regards to... Over against what? cranky, reactive thing? Over against the advice of my lawyer. Ah. Boundaries and limits, Rita. It's very easy to interpret the teachings in Buddhism about love and compassion as being a doormat. And I think it's a real misunderstanding of the Buddha's teachings. And you get caught in that kind of pull when you're in either, I either do this or I do that.

[74:51]

And when you begin to hold, what would be, what would this look like from the perspective of both and? How do I both have appropriate boundaries and limits and an open heart with this person, including knowing my audience. I always worry when I hear somebody wanting to be loving in a way that means not including taking care of themselves. is what I am about to do, including taking care of myself or instead of taking care of myself? Just let that question sit there on your shoulder. Okay, nice to see you all.

[75:58]

Thanks for coming out in the drizzly cold day in our weather. I'm glad you could come. You're looking like a nunk. This is the release from self-clinging. Well, if you take that on as an intention, if you pick it up, oh, it changes your relationship to your beautiful head. Anyway, take care of yourself. And for all of you, take care of yourselves. Bye.

[76:40]

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