Morning. For those of you who are wondering what this shrouded cage is doing meditation on, we have a pigeon hospital. One of the native pigeons, or maybe the native pigeon lives in this area, got attacked by, we think got attacked by a predator a few days ago, so we snagged him. And he's in there recovering quite nicely. What I'd like to talk about this morning is considering the consequences of assumptions and expectations and judgments. And as some of you know, I'm very interested in finding inspiration and resonance with the teachings of the Buddha coming out of our own culture.

[01:15]

So I look in wherever I can find such instances of resonance. The inspiration for this theme this morning is in this book by MFK Fisher called Long Ago in France. Let me say as an aside that, as some of you know, I am emphasizing, particularly as a way of unknitting the habitual language that carries judgment, what I'm encouraging myself and others to consider and look into is the benefits of descriptive language. And I think one of the ways of developing our taste for description is to read those people who write well, which is almost by definition a described well. And I think MFK Fisher is one of those people.

[02:16]

She can make a room or a meal so vivid that you can smell and see and taste what she's describing. She has a ratatouille recipe in here that will make your mouth water. Anyway, the passage that struck me in particular, I will read to you. In this book, she is talking about her first visit to France when she was young. She was about 20. She was newly married and young and going to school. So although the memoir is written in her older years, He said, on the corner of one of the streets that went down from the Place was Vanot's, the main bookstore of the town. It was the only one known to me then and it supplied all the university books.

[03:19]

Monsieur Vanot was a town character and was supposed to be the stingiest and most disagreeable man in Dijon, if not in the whole of France. But I did not know this. And I assumed that it was all right to treat him as if he were a polite and even generous person. I never bought much from him but textbooks because I had no extra money. But I often spent hours in his cluttered big shop looking at books and asking him things and sniffing the fine papers there. and even sitting, copying things from his books he would suggest I use at his work table, with his compliments and his ink, and often his paper. In other words, he was polite and generous to me, and I liked him.

[04:20]

When I told that to Georges and Henriette Kohn many years after I had stopped being a student, and after old Monsieur Venot had died, and left a lot of money to a host of people nobody even knew he would spit upon. They laughed with a tolerant, if amused, astonishment." Very interesting little vignette, I think. And what I want to suggest that we consider this morning is how frequently we make assumptions about someone or about ourselves and then act on those assumptions. And if the assumptions are positive, what are the consequences? And if the assumptions are negative or critical, what are the consequences?

[05:24]

What comes up for me as I've been thinking about this, I read this passage a week or so ago, and it's been kind of working in the back of my mind ever since. Thinking about how often I have an expectation of what I will do or how I will respond or how my mother will respond when I go to see her. I've known her for a while. And I have some expectation of what she will be like. And she very rarely surprises me. I had forgotten what a benefit our little dog, Balsha, is for my mother's state of mind. And I had taken her, she's been having some trouble with one of her eyes, and I've been taking her to the eye doctor, and she has been so difficult and so uncooperative, so full of negativity, that in the middle of the eye examination, the young woman who was the assistant in the office just got up and left the room.

[06:38]

and let us sit there for 45 minutes waiting until the doctor was ready to come and see her without the benefit of the preliminary examination because there was no point. What eye chart? There's nothing but a mirror and just a big no at every turn. So the last time, or the time before last, that I went to see her, to take her to the eye doctor, I took our little dog. And of course, her heart melts when she sees Balcha, because all Balcha is interested in doing is sitting in her lap and snuggling and licking her cheek and cooing at her. And of course, my mother immediately coos back. We didn't take the dog into the eye doctor's office, but we took the dog right up to the threshold of the eye doctor's office. And the difference in her state of mind during a visit with the eye doctor was quite striking.

[07:46]

The very car that she had been so critical of the previous two visits. Oh, such a long car. Why do you have such a long car? But this particular morning, oh, what a beautiful car. It's the same car. It's exactly the same mother. How often do I go into a situation and my response is, oh, I can't do that because I haven't been able to do whatever it is up until now. What about saying, Up until now I have found this activity difficult. That change in the way I speak to myself leaves a little doorway open to be surprised. Perhaps this time I will discover some capacity that I hadn't yet discovered. How

[08:54]

often are we even aware of the expectations we have of another person or of ourselves or of some situation or of the next moment. And based on that expectation I'm not even aware of having, I make a whole set of assumptions about how it's going to be and I then create the very thing that I've imagined. So over and over again, I recreate my suffering and my joy. And if I begin to have some sense that I actually have a capacity to choose, which it is, I will bring forth. Why not choose joy or happiness? Even if it's just for the space of an inhalation or an exhalation. Not even a whole breath. So MFK Fisher had this assumption that she might treat Monsieur Vennault as a generous and kindly person.

[10:08]

And isn't that interesting that he treated her with generosity and kindness? Here is a book for you to look at. Look at this passage. Here is a piece of paper and a pen and some ink to copy it down. Use my work table. This, the stingiest man in all of France, perhaps. But she hadn't heard about that description of Monsieur Venant. She went in without that negative expectation. You know, in the literature of Buddhist psychology, there is this description of aiming for seeing each thing, being in each moment as though for the first time. That's what Suzuki Roshi is referring to when he uses this phrase, beginner's mind. Cultivate beginner's mind.

[11:09]

Beginner's mind is free of habitual judging. Beginner's mind is about the cultivation of a completely clean slate. Anything can happen. I have no idea what this moment brings. We think because we've been breathing for 20 or 30 or 40 or 50 or 60 years that we know everything about breath. Most of us don't learn about breath until we have an asthma attack or are dying. Breath is this vast universe of change, of variety, of detail, one moment after another. A rich, vast landscape. I remember a few years ago when I was teaching an introductory day at UC Extension, and there was a rather elderly woman in the group that showed up this particular morning.

[12:21]

And as we broke for lunch, she was kind of huffing and puffing around the room, and she said, all this talk about the breath. I've been breathing just fine all my life, and I've never noticed one breath, and I'm not going to start now. She stomped out one moment. And I thought, on one hand, how great that she knows what she isn't interested in doing, doesn't want to do, doesn't interest her. but also what a loss. How often do I suffer because I had some expectation about what would happen, and then it isn't what happened. And even when what happened was wonderful or pleasantly surprising, I'm still disappointed because it's not what I expected. So I don't even see the joy that is there in the moment that actually has arrived.

[13:28]

It's the absolute curse of domestic coupling, expectation and assumption. Kiss of death when it comes to living with someone we love. Oh, I know that person. I know what he or she will behave like. I want to bet. When even we don't know that about ourselves, what we will be like in the next moment, what makes us think we're such an expert about somebody else? How often do we imprison ourselves and each other with our expectations and our assumptions? The consequences of really paying attention to the suffering that arises from assumption and expectation is an increase in the wonderment and treasuring of the craft, the art of listening.

[14:39]

Really listening. You were asking me about what is all this. noise I keep making about judgment. This is the territory of judgment. But what I mean by judgment when I refer to the troublesome judgment habit is that which is habitual and consequently largely unnoticed. That becomes a pattern, a pathway of the mind. I'm not talking about those times when we appropriately need to evaluate this or that. When you go to buy a car, even when you go to buy a melon at the grocery store, you look at this one and this one and you decide, well, I want the melon for lunch today, so I want to find one that's ripe. I want this melon for lunch in three days. I want one that isn't quite ripe. That's evaluating, analyzing, judging.

[15:42]

There's nothing wrong with that. But it's when we have this habit, this groove in the mind, where we are focusing on what's wrong, so we have this kind of continual inner dialogue, going yap, [...] about how terrible everything is. Often how terrible we are. And that pathway of judgment rests on a whole lot of assumptions who I am and what I'm like. And we tend to solidify the stories about who we are or who another person is. My mother is a very big teacher for me around this. I had a few years ago decided that she would die not ever having had the experience of being loved.

[16:44]

a kind of heartbreaking realization. Mostly for her. But of course I didn't reckon with what would happen when one of my children decided to take her on. I am not willing to let her die and not know she is loved. And she just worked on my mother continuously. over and over again, sometimes heckling her, sometimes teasing her, but always with great affection and care and tenderness and love. And it took her about a year before my mother finally cracked. But I think she got it. It's one of those wonderful things that can happen between grandparents and grandchildren. There isn't all that baggage of suitcases, steamer trunks of expectations and assumptions.

[17:56]

A little more of a beginner's mind between grandparents and grandchildren, if we're lucky. There's another passage in here, which actually, I think, is relevant to this theme. This is very early in the book, in the preface, and I thought, oh, this is not just about cooking. Whatever this woman is up to, it's promising. She's in the preface talking about what happened to her in these first three years in France. She said, it was there I now understand that I started to grow up, to study, to make love, to eat and drink, to be me and not what I was expected to be.

[19:04]

It was there that I learned it is blessed to receive as well as that every human being, no matter how base, is worthy of my respect and even my envy, because he or she knows something that I may never be old or wise or kind or tender enough to know. Isn't that nice? So what I would like to invite all of us, including myself, to take on is to consider how we can be respectful and willing to be surprised by ourselves and others. To take on, even if it's just for a few moments every day, some conscious intention to be present in the moment without

[20:07]

expectations and assumptions, or if we have them, to be willing to let ourselves know what they are. To notice the expectations and assumptions that we have is the step towards coming to each moment free of expectations and assumptions. That's how we begin. It's why the practice of bare noting is such a remarkable practice, to be willing to note whatever is so. Not what I want to be, not the way I want to be over there in the hazy distant future, three lifetimes from now, but to notice what is so in each moment. Because if I really see clearly what is so, that seeing which is free of judgment, I begin to also see the consequences of what I do, what I think, what I don't do, what I say or don't say, all of that.

[21:21]

And that's all I have to do is show up. Because all of us want to be happy. None of us will continually choose what leads to suffering if we see clearly, oh, this leads to this. That quality of seeing what is so is the critical factor. So simple and so elusive. We've been experimenting to see if parakeets are permissible in the meditation room. And I think we have now established firmly that they are not. There are two parakeets in the school where I have my sitting group in Berkeley.

[22:26]

And in one of the classrooms where I sometimes meet with people before our sitting group, And I have become quite fond of this particular pair of parakeets. They're very sweet, and they make these lovely kind of little burbling sounds. I didn't know about the other end of the range. And I kind of got to know it this morning, squawking and screaming. And I put the cover over them, because the bird guy said, well, they'll be quiet if you put the cover over them. Well, maybe they will and maybe they won't. How interesting the mind's response to this. You know, the other night in the obstacles class in Berkeley, some parrot was out flying around, went... But it's outside. And whatever it does is just some bird making a sound.

[23:30]

But when it's inside, that shouldn't be happening. All that, you know, aversion and attraction immediately springs forth. What are those damn noisy birds doing in here? That's a good question. Giving us something to work with. Oh, well, you picked exactly the right spot. You get to hear the cutthroats who have the softest burbling sound that you cannot hear unless you're very still and nearby. They would flutter their wings over my head. And it felt, I don't know, I felt like I became one with the sound of the wings. I've actually read descriptions of Chinese emperors kept

[24:30]

cool on a summer day with the fluttering of the wings of the birds. And I never could quite put that together until we started having enough birds in one spot to begin to have that sense of fluttering. Hi. Come on in. There's a seat over there if you want. So, I think this is Rich material, this territory of assumptions and expectations and judgment. At least it has been for me and those of you that I listen to, I hear about this once in a while. I observe in our human lives and in the lives of other creatures also. that expectations, especially when we aren't aware of having them, have a very big influence on how we view the world.

[25:40]

I'm struck as I listen As I come to this understanding about my auditory faculty, I realize that as my hearing has deteriorated, I believe, I believe through this course of deterioration, that I do hear everything.

[26:47]

So I have not been aware of what I haven't heard. And I orient my understanding of my experience on the premise, on the assumption, that I heard everything. This leads to misunderstanding. And worse. Some things that are amusing and to some experiences that are very painful. The aspect of baronoting which this touches on for me is noticing what is not present. I think the emphasis on the teaching is on seeing how things really are. I've thought about it so much in terms of Barinoni himself, that being fully cognizant of what is present includes an element of noticing what isn't present.

[28:13]

So it's important to me at this point to be conscious that what I hear may be fragmentary. Well, this is also where in the noting, which is broken down, observing, identifying, and naming, that I do that with a very clear sense of tentativeness that includes what you're bringing up, I think. That in the very posture of Maybe this is the right name, maybe this is the right label, but maybe it isn't. That softer quality of the mind is more likely to include that bigger range of awareness about what is and isn't arising in this moment.

[29:14]

to the point where the testimony of someone so trained is admissible as evidence without question. A fair witness is asked, what color is that house up on the hill? And the response is, it's yellow on two sides. I've actually been thinking about painting one of the buildings here the same color on two sides and then a different color on two other sides. The story that you read from MFK Fisher is interesting to me, having come back recently from France, and her positive expectation that was served, I know, I see that as she did, I assume that the French will be more unwelcoming and charming Well, I think that's a very interesting and useful question.

[30:48]

Could you repeat the question? The question that she's raising has to do with, is what we're aiming for having positive expectations and assumptions or not having any at all, having a more neutral field? And I think that it depends on what we're working with. So for example, if I have, because a lot of what we end up working with is the experience of being out of balance versus balance. So if what I observe about my mind stream is a habit for seeing what is wrong, I have a kind of impaired vision. It's not that what is wrong is not there, it isn't the whole picture. So in terms of what Bill is bringing up about this bare noting practice, if I see too strongly or too primarily what is wrong, I actually am not seeing, I don't register what is right, what is positive, what is effective or working, what is right in the sense of effective.

[32:03]

So in order to come back into balance, to be able to see the whole spectrum of what is so, I may have to exaggerate my focus on what is right for some time. Not instead of seeing what is wrong, but in a way that includes, is allowing of the whole spectrum. And in the course of practicing, doing this mind training program, if you will, which is what I understand meditation practice to be about, what we're seeking to do is to cultivate a capacity to see things as they are. That must include a much wider spectrum than most of us bring out of the realm of habitual suffering, for example. So they're very clear focuses for what we can see.

[33:09]

Being able to see the fact of unsatisfactoriness. Well, a lot of us do a lot to keep ourselves from seeing that. We are hell-bent on being satisfied with this or that. And we live in a culture where there's a very strong focus on not noticing the unsatisfactoriness of our lives. To cultivate a capacity to recognize, not to see when it isn't there, but to recognize the mark of impermanence, that everything changes. That includes noticing those moments when I hang on to, I want everything to change but this. Some friends of ours were here for dinner the other night and the woman is a nurse midwife and her husband saw the impermanence verse there on the altar and said, see this first line, birth will end in death.

[34:18]

And he was practically jumping up and down with glee. Tell them when they're born this line. Do they know this? Do we, when we celebrate the birth of a new baby, jump up and down and remind the mother and father and the baby about this birth will end in death? We certainly don't. We want to pretend that it's only birth. And a great deal of suffering comes from that. the mark of selflessness, that is that nothing has inherent self-existence. Much more difficult to see that, because especially for us as Westerners, we have so much conditioning around this is what's real, solid, I can feel it. You know, the I am habit. So I think your question is a very, very important one.

[35:23]

And the way I answer it will be different depending on what it is I'm working with. For me, the cultivation of enlarging my capacity to not only see what is wrong, but to see what is right and what is neither. That is the whole spectrum. And what interests me about MFK Fisher's story is that she's talking about some assumption that this man was a generous person. Well, I guess it's Shantideva, His Holiness the Dalai Lama quotes, and I think this quote is from Shantideva, have you ever known a generous man who was not happy? So maybe there are certain qualities of the mind that are beneficial to emphasize, to go for, because of what those qualities allow to come unknotted and unstitched and released.

[36:32]

You know, that makes so much sense. And then I think, because I'm speaking for myself, I expect so many things. It makes me think that I would be so given, and I guess am given, even when the expectations are positive, that they take a certain shape. So that, for example, if I have an expectation about the friendship that includes being funny, and they show up in a way that is wonderful but not funny, am I going to feel the disappointment and not truly experience what it is? Yes, and I think that's very important because sometimes we're so riveted on what we expect or want that we don't see this other wonderful and delightful arising because we're focused on what isn't. Yeah. When you start to do the Bear Notice,

[37:41]

And what happens is you start noting all the habitual judgment that's going on. Right. And you're trying not to judge the judge. Right. But it's pretty hard not to be very upset when you start doing this practice. Right. And it's confusing to me because it's very painful and it's exhausting. I think you're right, and I think that that is really the challenge, especially with noting habitual judgment. That if you haven't been aware of the pervasiveness of that pattern, what arises is a kind of grief. I can't believe that this is the way I talk to myself, and that recognition leaves one often with a kind of sinking heart. Oh my goodness. And the response very often is a kind of dismay because we feel overwhelmed.

[38:45]

Can I ever, there's this assumption, I won't ever be able to undo or change or release myself from the suffering of this pattern. And this is where I think for us to be able to hold that feeling but not believe the thought. Acknowledge and be tender with my response and the emotion that comes up, but not believe the thought, just note it. This is where the meditations on selflessness can be very, very helpful. I am not my body. I am not my emotions. I am not my thoughts. They just rise and fall, rise and fall, rise and fall. And after you've been meditating for a little while and you begin to get the slightest taste of observer mind, you're not quite entirely 100% caught by what you think.

[39:51]

And it's the beginning of the experience of liberation. When you observe yourself running yourself into the ground, but there's that part of the mind that isn't quite caught by it. That's the beginning of liberation. And I think it's one of the reasons why we need a good company in this process, is because we can so easily get discouraged, especially in those early stages of beginning to see what's really so mainstream. And being kind of appalled, like, oh, I can't believe this. This? is my inner landscape. I want to throw the painter, the canvas, the whole thing. Just slit my throat and let me out of it. And to be around other people who have gone through this before me helps me at least hold the possibility that, oh, even this will change.

[40:59]

It's why I think that the focus on paying attention to the truth of everything changes can be enormously helpful. And it doesn't help to read it in a book or have me say everything changes. It will only be a positive insight if you say, is that really true? I'm gonna check it out. And you spend a certain amount of time asking yourself about everything. Find, I'm after the one thing that isn't going to change. And until you are convinced that that's an accurate description of reality, that insight isn't going to be helpful to you. But when you are convinced that it really is an accurate description of things, Then you begin to be helped by that description because you remember, oh, even this thought, even this state of mind, even this emotional arising in me will change.

[42:06]

It's like what people say in Maine about the weather. If you don't like this, wait a minute. It's sort of like summer's here. On this topic, years ago, you recommended the book, Taming Your Gremlin, to us. And, you know, at first, when I first started this practice, I found the same thing. It was horrifying. But working in that book and working with other people who were kind of doing the same practice, it became hilarious. Yes. You know, one of the exercises in the book is to draw a picture. And I don't draw, but, you know, There's an assumption. I don't draw. Is that like, I won't draw? Up until now, I haven't drawn. I have a slight tendency to not draw what looks like what I'm drawing. There you go.

[43:13]

And because I draw what doesn't look like anything recognizable, My gremlin is a hilarious character. And one of the things that I did is I took a big piece of butcher block paper and I threw this hilarious gremlin. And then I wrote on it, and I kept it hung up on my wall for maybe a month. And I wrote down everything that my gremlin said. All the, I mean, it was amazing. I hope I still have that. When we moved, I don't know what I did, It was shocking, but shocking and hilarious. But also it sounds like it was information. It was good information and because I spent quite a bit of time doing this and I looked at it for a long time, it's like I began to get separate from the gremlin voice.

[44:14]

And this didn't happen overnight either, but it's something I've been working on And I now am not my gremlin, most of the time. Now you see, what you're describing then is that shift, which is not that the gremlin goes away, but you stop paying attention to what the gremlin is saying. You stop saying, oh, you must be right. I really am the creep you're telling me about. I recognize his voice. I recognize what he says to be gremlin chatter rather than the truth. But, you know, initially that takes a lot of, like, listening to the gremlin. Yes, yes, I think that's right. And even going so far as to write down what he's saying. Well, I think that the drawing process a person talks about in taming their gremlin, and I also think using the writing practice that Natalie Goldberg describes in Writing Down the Bones, are two ways of letting ourselves begin to know the detail of the habitual judging voice.

[45:17]

You know, in Miracle of Mindfulness, Thich Nhat Hanh talks about the meditation that reveals and heals. And the sequence is very important. I have to know what is so before I can begin to work with that pattern in a particular way. I can't heal a wound if I don't know I have one. Like the scrape on your arm the other day. Scrape? What scrape? I just got blood on the doorway from that wound. But you didn't even know you had. You can't put a band-aid over it if you don't know it's cut and bleeding all over everything, including the door. So I think both those practices of this kind of writing practice in drawing the picture. One weekend when I was working with judgment as the focus for the weekend, At a certain point in the weekend, we all started drawing pictures.

[46:22]

And, you know, there's one woman who's sort of like this. And she was not going to let anybody see what she had drawn. She never did let anybody see it. But after a few people got up and showed their pictures, And then a few more people described their pictures, and then she described what she had drawn, which was a box. She was inside a box, and there were all these very sharp knives going in from every direction. Very vivid picture. Another woman said, her picture was what she called her committee. I found her particular picture quite wonderful because they were all sitting at a long table with a tablecloth over it.

[47:27]

So you could see the bottoms of their legs and their feet and their shoes. And there was a group of men at a table all in kind of, you know, suits and ties and very proper. But by the time she got down to the lower legs and feet, she started fooling around. Her relationship to the committee had already begun to change in the process of drawing the picture. So by the time she got to the committee, in the process of drawing the picture, one woman who had been doing this exercise for a few weeks before this particular weekend drew her judge, her gremlin, as an opera singer. A fat, middle-aged opera singer. And there was something that was so right about that picture for me. It was like, I got it. I started running around the room singing in operatic voice.

[48:29]

It was like, wow. It's like when you get the right label for something. When you get the right picture, you kind of go, And there is in that naming, describing release, our relationship to what we're observing changes when we can name it or describe it in a certain way. Yes, Kim. I had a dramatic example of that recently. misnaming and then naming properly. I work for an organization where we all have been having to re-interview for jobs. And so we're sitting being judged about whether or not we're worthy to do what we're doing. And so I had my interview and then left with a friend for four days to go to Tahoe. And was completely and utterly obsessing. I didn't do a good interview. I'm not going to get the job. And at one point, She said, all you know is that you don't know and you're uncomfortable with the not knowing.

[49:37]

So why don't you stay with that? And I can't say that the anxiety all went away, but it dramatically shifted with what was true. What was true was I hated not knowing. And therefore created a world, that projected world. So what you are describing then is recognizing that something happened, you went through this interview process, you didn't know the outcome, and what arises is aversion to the not knowing. Yes, and I was naming it as pain about not doing well and therefore not getting the job. Now this is where I think the focusing process that Jenlyn talks about in his book, Focusing, can be very helpful in having a body sense about the label. Where you have a felt sense about, ah, that's it, that's the right label.

[50:42]

And if you are a little tentative with the labeling, you are open to the time when you get the naming that's right on the mark, and you feel it physically. It's very interesting. That process, I think, can be very, very helpful. When my daughter was about six, I took a workshop with Eve Soll, who's a young therapist. And she suggested that when children have nightmares, you know, who draw the monster. It would be helpful. And my daughter was having nightmares, and I used to just crawl in with her and hold her. And it takes a lot of will to turn the light on and get the crayons out. And I did right after that. And she drew the nightmares. And it was true in drawing. I mean, at first, there's the resistance, because she thought it would be more real. Right. But even for a six-year-old, drawing the nightmares, she didn't have them at home. Yeah. And our inclinations go like this instead of, you know,

[51:46]

And when I think about this, I keep being reminded about fairy tales, about how you tame the monster. You go to the mouth of the monster's cave and you yell in there and say, hey, monster, I know your name. Billy, or whatever. Interesting. Patricia? I continue to be surprised when people overstep my boundaries and I'm caught off guard, even though now I know that I have a right to boundaries and I want them. In the moment, I'm not always able to set my boundaries, and recently it happened. And what I'm experiencing now is the judge telling me that I don't know how to set boundaries, that I'll never know how, but that's why I have so much trouble with relationships.

[52:55]

And this evening I have to talk to this person who really violated my penalties. And that fear is there that I'm not going to say it correctly. You could sing a song, I know. Elvis Presley's Don't You Step on My Blue Spanish Shoes. I want to make a suggestion. This is where I think language can be very, very helpful. If I talk about my experience, I am on solid ground because that's what I'm an expert about. And if something happens and I feel violated or intruded on, nobody can tell me that I don't have that experience. When I start saying to somebody, you know, pronoun disorder, you did such and such,

[54:00]

Then I'm taking that stance of being an expert about what they did. What I can say is, when such and such happens, when you do such and such, for me what happens is I feel invaded or violated. The other thing that I don't know whether to bring up is, it's the person who stayed in my house when I was gone. And I couldn't figure out what made her suddenly start talking about what she was talking about with me. I mean, because it wasn't, it was totally out of context. And a few days, and I kept thinking, how did she talk about that? And a few days later, the thought came to me, she must have, you know, like read my journals or come across something very, I mean, because she was literally, in something so personal.

[55:04]

And I don't know how to, I mean, I don't want to accuse her of that. But that's why if you stay with describing your own experience, including what I want to say to you this evening, I'm afraid I won't be able to say well or effectively. That even that naming of what I'm not sure I know how to do, You know, if you give a, one of the rules, if you will, about giving a public talk, you stand up there and you're shaking, and you say, I'm really nervous, I'm feeling very nervous up here doing this. The naming of that nervousness, I kind of am with myself. Because what happens then is some alignment that's between the inner place I'm in and what I'm, saying out to an audience or another person. It's a completely honorable place to say, I think I may not be very good at saying what I want to try to say here, and I'm going to make my best shot at it.

[56:18]

I guess I'm uncomfortable saying my thoughts that somehow Well, I see I can imagine. When you said such and such, what I imagine is you read some of my personal stuff and that may not be what happened, but that's what I can imagine. I think that if we are careful about what we really do know, which is my experience. And all the rest of it is guessing. It's like braille, doing this. And if I know that I'm feeling around in the dark, I know, is this a pillow or is this an elephant's leg? We have some idea, some assumption, some expectation that we should

[57:27]

Spring forth like guinea pigs. We arrive fully clothed and knowing how to eat. I think most of us don't arrive like guinea pigs, already knowing how to do all those things. I think it's completely honorable to not know how to do something. It's one of the great exhortations from Sun Tzun Im with his students. Keep the mind of don't know. It's that mind that is free of a lot of expectations about how it's going to be or how it should be or whatever. You're sitting in front of a sick pigeon hospital. I was wondering, I'm just looking at it once a year. A sick pigeon. A maimed pigeon. Karen? While I'm getting some ideas through this discussion about really having a lousy feeling today and the patient says you know in fact I'm actually feeling kind of suicidal and he says you really kind of almost like to kill yourself and you know the story goes on and ends up with Carl Rogers leaning out the window and you know as the patient has already jumped and said you know you jumped you know.

[59:05]

So, one of the throwing issues for me is like, when is it right to say, you know, according to my values, according to what I have concluded about what has happened, and according to my value system, I'm saying that this is wrong, you know, and I'm going to take action, you know, against this. I mean, it's sort of like... But that's not what we're talking about. We're not talking about judgments that are consciously made. We're talking about what is habitual, what happens as though it had a life of its own. That's a very important distinction. Of course, there are many, many circumstances in our lives when we make judgments and that's appropriate and necessary to functioning in the ordinary phenomenal world. That is not the category of judgment that is the hindrance to being present. Well, it seems to me that even in, you know, even in cases where I make a conscious judgment, it really comes up at first unconsciously.

[60:21]

Something happens and I have an emotional reaction. You know, it's like, ooh, that doesn't Well, I don't think you're making as many decisions as you might. Well, in this sense, stuff happens and we have responses. To the degree that I study, that I come to know myself, this really has to do with the path of cultivating self-knowledge. To the degree that I begin to know something about my tendencies in the kinds of responses I have, I can begin to have some sense based on experience and cultivated analysis what responses are habitual and what responses arise out of cultivation.

[61:44]

There's a difference between reaction and response. And response includes a sense of a continuum of possibilities. And if we live primarily in the realm of reaction, we have the experience of It's almost as though the way I react to things has a life of its own. And I think that's a kind of developmental stage, if you will. I do think there's a difference. I think it is possible to cultivate considered response and not just reaction. And being able to begin to note the difference can be

[62:48]

Very informative. Tricky and complicated territory. Actually, in the story that was just told, I don't know who told it, but when I was listening to it, I thought, well, there's someone with a really positive outlook. She didn't block up her journey. I mean, if I were renting my house out and I had stuff that I didn't want people to see, then I would lock it up. But however, if she believed that someone had locked her to do doing this, then I think she's quite entitled to make judgments that this is not the kind of person she would like to relate to. So, as I've been listening to you, you've clarified it from a question of conscious decisions to habitual ones, I was thinking to myself, I have to make judgements because I have to respect all the things I'm interested in, all the people I'm interested in, or I could get anything done in my life.

[63:57]

So I make these judgements because I'm very consciously known that I don't go to ballet as much as I want, I go to the opera, but I can't keep going out. So there are lots and lots of things that we're doing, including people. But how often do I make a judgment about a person that's based on an assumption I haven't checked out? And that leads to an enormous amount of suffering in our lives. And what Patricia is talking about is considering entering into checking out some assumptions. And I hear a little nervousness down there at the end of the room in anticipation of that process. But this is what we're talking about, and I think it comes up as a very tender process, both in our relationships with others, but also, importantly, in our relationships with ourselves. It's like there's this whole series of interactions that just sort of happen, like those little sponges you get in Chinatown

[65:07]

You put in water and suddenly they bloom into a bouquet of flowers. How did that happen? When I wasn't even looking. Look what just bloomed. Okay? There are a couple of things that I wanted to bring up. In the discussion earlier about drawing the judge, it brought up a piece of sculpture that I made of my judge. In this process, I think, for the first time, I was able to extend some compassion towards that judging part of myself. I saw the suffering in the judging voice for the first time. So that shifted my relationship to that voice remarkably. And can you imagine that insight coming had you not turned towards that judging voice enough to be able to make a sculpture of it.

[66:14]

I think part of it was that the piece held both the judger and the judge. So the suffering was happening from both ends. And the other thing I wanted to bring up, I had an experience this week that has really shifted my point of view. And it came out of the Vajrasattva practice I've been doing. And there's a part in the practice where you visualize all beings as transforming into Vajrasattvas. And shortly after my practice, I had a rather irritable exchange with my partner. And I said, I'm like, would I speak to Vajrasattva like this? I don't think so. So that's been coming up for me a lot.

[67:18]

When I hear the sense of impatience or to make an assumption about what Jim's point of view is or what his intentions are, and I think, would I? would I think this about Vajrasatva? You're in big trouble, Betty. Very big trouble. It's been quite a remarkable trip. Yeah, yeah, I bet. So I apologize. I said, well, I was pretty irritable when I just said that. And Jim said, yes, you were. He doesn't have to agree with you so readily, does he? So wholeheartedly. Well, so much for trying to control somebody else.

[68:20]

It was something that really became is our practices is you know we we deal with the world so well, you know, that's the basis of this whole trip about the mind.

[69:42]

You know, just on and on and on about the mind, over and over and over again. Pay attention to what the mind is up to. This wonderful quote in there, in this wonderful book. The thought manifests as the word. The word manifests as the deed. The deed develops into habit and habit hardens into character. So watch the thought and its ways with care and let it spring from love or out of concern for all beings. So, you know, to go back to the thing that you were saying earlier about are we going for something in particular or a more neutral stance, I think that if you look deeply at the teachings of the Buddha, he is proposing, actually, a particular stance.

[70:51]

That is this stance arising from love and concern. Not exactly neutral. That brings up, I don't know if it's what this man was talking about, but something that came up in our Friday meditation group the other day about is, I mean, there's a place where noting isn't enough. I mean, there needs to be something more than noting. Maybe. I mean, I don't know. I hear Reb say things like, awareness transforms, don't push. But then, you know, we were talking about the Brahma-Viharas, of which loving-kindness is one. So, you know, at what point do you notice your unwholesome state of mind and then need to take some action, like, you know, consciously direct yourself to one of the Brahma-Viharas?

[71:58]

And I think that what in fact happens if you cultivate your capacity to note, that is bring attention or awareness free of judgment, you begin to see what you do and what the consequences are. And out of that arises, not going for it, but arises insight about, oh, I want to focus on the cultivation of loving kindness. I think that for us as Americans, because we have such a strong conditioning about doing, we don't spend enough time staying with the noting and allowing that cultivation to see clearly. We go to doing as a way of moving away from experiencing the emotional response to what we're seeing.

[73:00]

It becomes a way of distracting myself from the experience that's arising in the moment, which is, oh, or whatever. So when he says, don't push, that's what it means. It doesn't mean, don't ever go anywhere. Oh, not at all. Not at all. There are times when what is appropriate after you've noted long enough when it may be important to cut or to do an antidote practice. This is where, you know, this wonderful term that's used so often, skill, skillful means arises. And one of the things that I find very interesting is for us to pay attention to what are the hot issues that seem to be particular for us with our particular culture and our particular condition. One of the things that I find so interesting about Epstein's book, Thoughts Without a Thinker, because in that book he really is talking very clearly about what are the core issues for Asians different from the core issues for us as Americans or as Westerners.

[74:16]

Because the way we will use the traditional practices of Buddhism will be a little bit different because what we're struggling with, what's getting us is different from one set of conditions to another. And cultural conditioning is very powerful. So, I think it's very tricky if we get into trying to generalize with respect to practices. There are times when analyzing and investigating and seeing what's possible is very important to do. We don't just know. But if we don't have substantial experience with the beneficial consequences of awareness, we end up doing to the point of getting in our own way, tripping over ourselves. And I think most people work way harder than is effective.

[75:22]

Much more transforms out of allowing transformation than getting in there with our big stick and flashlight and beating it out of ourselves. Even the word allowing, it's like if I have that attitude and I notice a certain mind state And then the thought comes, like, oh, I'm really, I need to get out of this. For my own sake, I need to get out of this. It has a quality of allowing and to have some, like, practices or tools or something to do, other than run away or stay in that mind state. Yes. So it does have a quality of, like, spaciousness. Yes, I think that's right. And our particular culture doesn't emphasize cultivating a capacity to hang out. We emphasize doing and fixing activity. Well, it's the issue of balancing.

[76:26]

to note barely in the interest of seeing what is and is not actually present in order to perceive things as they actually are. This is in the interest of liberation. And I think most of the time I assume that if I can describe accurately what is so, I'll have a fair notion of what is so. So I emphasize being as precise and clear and exact in my wording as I can be. Yet the very instrument I use, language is itself flawed

[77:48]

to an accurate description. Well, it certainly is a conditioning factor. It's a medium which may impair reaching a higher or a deeper understanding of how things actually are. We talked, you know, it's my judgment loosen the personalizing hole our language so easily supports. Well, I have two observations, which is that there is experience which you can only hint at through language. So it isn't... I think that's important to keep in mind.

[78:58]

But the other... The other thing I wanna just flag is that we are talking about a tradition which is a path, which is gradual and cumulative. So what is appropriate to do at one stage of practice or cultivation will be different in some important ways at another stage. And I think that's part of what is coming up in terms of, if I understand, clearly or accurately what you're describing, what I would suggest to you to do at this stage of the game might be quite different than down the road apiece. And that this process of bare noting at an early stage of practice in service of coming to observe more accurately What is so about the patterns in my mind stream and the thoughts that arise is very, very important.

[80:05]

And that first stage of getting to know, self-knowledge, can be painful and tricky, but very important. And the practices that you do at that stage are quite different than they will be in the later stage of cultivation. I mean, the meditation path is definitely gradual and progressive and cumulative. I think it's important to, I mean, that also comes back to the point you were making, that what is the appropriate focus or practice in one circumstance may or may not be when you're at a different stage of cultivation. Yes. I just wanted to comment about how struck I was by the concepts of allowing, which came up in your discussion, and also permission.

[81:09]

And I'm wondering if in Patricia's situation, she isn't nervous because she doesn't know that she has permission to check out her intuitions, or even to have the intuitions of the person. Yeah. And the habit of judgment has the consequence, has the effect of, oh, I can't do that. That isn't okay. I'm breaking some rule. Whose rule? What rule? It's this territory, again, of a whole set of assumptions about what is permissible and what isn't. And of course societies have certain ground rules that allow us to interact in ways that make it possible for us to keep from killing each other.

[82:20]

But to what degree do I really examine and question and have conscious what those are? And then there's the sub-conditioning that has to do with the culture of our families. All the things we grew up being told were the way things are. And that depends on my mother's conditioning and mind stream, which I've learned is not entirely reliable as I used to think it was, when I was two or three or four. That if you don't watch out, You know, men are not to be trusted. They only have one thing on their minds. Well, as a world view, it's a flawed view. I've come to conclude. And then there's what I call freaking good girlism. It's not okay to question other people or to say what I think because I wouldn't be being a good girl

[83:26]

and that person might not like me. Even though that person may be somebody I don't really care that much about having a relationship with, I still am deathly afraid that they won't like me. Being good. Well, and so much of the inner process gets projected out onto other. And if my frame of reference has, for most of my life, been finding out where I am and how I'm doing on the basis of what others tell me, I haven't developed any inner sensing, self-regulating functions or processes. Ann?

[84:29]

Using the term intuition, I've been trying to formulate a comment, because I've been working with diminishing the lifelong pattern of judging and relying on assumptions. I've really enjoyed today's topic. At the same time, I've been trying to be less cerebral, which in my family was really overemphasized, allow my intuition to be in adhesion. But I find I've not done either enough yet to be able to distinguish sometimes when is this intuition or is this an assumption or a judgment. I've had fun with a couple of instances that have come up because I've been surprised that it was one rather than the other. You might enjoy doing a little bit of a focusing practice that Jenlyn talks about in his book, Focusing, because I think that what he's doing, I think of it as a kind of American mindfulness meditation, but he's also framing the practice in terms of what he calls the felt sense about something.

[85:48]

it's a way of bringing our awareness into body sensing and beginning to have some experience of how reliable our body sensing is, can be. And I think very much in service of increasing our awareness about when what is operating is a matter of intuition. It's a very interesting practice. It's quite a useful practice. And isn't that where checking it out comes in handy too at this point? Because that's a way to confirm what we're learning. And then there's also the circumstance where you have a sense of something, You check it out with the other person and they say, oh no, not at all. But you still may be sensing accurately. The great challenge.

[86:55]

Do I trust my sense? I mean, this is where I think MFK Fisher's story about her sense about the bookseller over against public opinion in Dijon, and she stayed with her sense of him. So what happens if my world tells me that the person I have a sense of as being unreliable is absolutely reliable? If our conditioning is other-oriented, I will say, oh, I must be wrong. They all must be right. It's tricky. The incident that really made me realize I couldn't jump to conclusions about which was which was signing in at Esalen and a woman at the counter just really listening and observing

[88:04]

really reacting very negatively to this person, coming up with all kinds of conclusions about what she was like. I thought I was being very intuitive. I might have even been there for an intuition workshop. Going back to my room, and lo and behold, not only is she a roommate, You know, I so limited myself by relying on that first impression. You know, she was phenomenally interesting and enhanced my weekend experience. And it wasn't intuition. There was something about her behavior that was pushing buttons that I wasn't aware of. It was fun to make that happen. I had a similar experience when I was up in Juneau, Alaska earlier this spring. And I had quite a specific response to a couple of people who, as I got to know them during the weekend, my response was totally out here somewhere.

[89:15]

And I was just struck again by how much I appreciate just holding those first responses and not taking them too seriously and just letting them sit there. Until a little more experience, a little more information, a little more possibility. You didn't allow your reaction to become your response. Yes. Well, I'm committed to that distinction, so I'm in big trouble if I don't do it. Yes, that's exactly what happened. One person in particular that I had a pretty strong sense of this person being very sour and negative. And about two-thirds of the way through the weekend, she said, could I meet with you privately for a few minutes?

[90:20]

And of course, what I discovered was going on with this person was completely different tone, emotional tone. Lots of suffering, but also wonderful heart. So, you know, her face was... But what was going on inside was just so touching. So much for that assumption. I hear that all the time. Don't read a book by its cover. I mean, I think that's what this story of... Thanks of your mother. I grew up hearing, voiced to me with equal authority, the instructions, you can tell a man by the way he dresses, and you can't tell a book by its cover. Well, occasionally the Dharma arises in unlikely places in close association

[91:27]

Well, I hope that our discussion stimulates a little examining for all of you. I found this, as I said, this little vignette from Ms. Fisher very stimulating, and I hope you will too. So, thank you all very much. It's nice to see you all. Those of you who would like to stay for lunch, we'll put the tables out. I have a copy of a limited edition of the Practice of Verse book that Patti Schneider and I have been working on for some time, and we're about to go into production. Not all the verses that will be in the book are in it now. They'll be all together about 60 pages. But if any of you are interested, we're going to do a somewhat expensive version with the handmade paper cover and a more modest version.

[92:36]

But you might take a look at it if any of you are interested. We already filled in the thing. Then you don't have to worry. Yes, I saw that. Thank you very much.

[92:47]

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