Good morning. Good morning. Do you have enough volume back there? No. Is it on? Is it on? Yeah. It's not hot. I don't get it. Let's see, is the amplifier on? I can't see because the cover. As soon as you tapped it when you first sat down, it worked. I can sort of hear it, but dimly. There's only two lights. I can't see. We can hear you. Yeah, well, one, two, three. It needs to come up on the master, I believe. The Zen master? No, the amplifier master. The Zen master is leaning over and he has to turn that up, perhaps very slightly. There we go. Now. Is it now? Can you hear now? Very distorted. Very distorted. Can you hear it now? Oh, interesting.

[01:02]

That's strange. I could probably make it work, but I don't want to get up. Can you hear me? All right. If I do, I need a marathon. Good morning. I'm sorry for the technological challenges. But actually, it's good. It fits in with what my talk is going to be about. A few weeks ago, I gave a talk about the practice of saying yes, saying yes to the circumstances as they arise, and making that a practice in our life as it is really in Zazen, as we're saying yes to each thought that arises, each sensation, and letting it go. It's really a way that saying yes is really a way of appreciating our life.

[02:13]

As I was looking around this week, I found popped up several times an expression of Suzuki Roshi's, or ascribed to him, where he says, sometimes just to be alive is enough. So to say yes to being alive, not to resist it, not to resist our circumstances. So where I'd like to go today is to talk about a practice that is articulated very clearly in the Tibetan mind training practices, the tradition of Lojong. Lojong is a series of disciplines that has evolved from, it began when the great teacher

[03:26]

Atisha, in the 10th century, he actually journeyed to Indonesia and received those teachings there from an early Buddhist teacher Dharmaraksita, and then he brought these teachings back to China, and then to Tibet, where he ultimately settled. And then in Tibetan tradition, they were developed. And there are seven points of mind training, and within those points there are various slogans or verses. And the verse that I want to talk about today is, from the general point, is the transformation of bad circumstances into the way of enlightenment. And so there's a series of verses.

[04:28]

Verse 11 says, when the world is filled with evil, transform all mishaps into the path of bodhi. The 12th verse, which is where I want to focus, says, drive all blames into one. And then the 13th verse, which really goes along with the other two is, be grateful to everyone. So today, what I'd like to do is to talk a little bit about blame, and what often arises with blame, either in reaction to it or in replacement for it, shame. They seem to me to go together in a naturally perverse way.

[05:37]

But the first thing we're going to do is sing a song, if that's okay. And I was thinking, this is a song that I have rewritten it, but it gets at it from another cultural tradition. From the blues tradition, southern American. The song itself was the first recording, which was already an established song in the gospel repertoire. First recording was by Blind Willie Johnson in 1927. And the version that I learned was from the Staples singers, Pop Staples and his daughters. And then I just discovered, I guess a version of this was recorded by Led Zeppelin, who I guess I was supposed to have listened to, but I never did.

[06:42]

I like the old stuff. So the song is called Nobody's Fault But Mine. And let me just tell you the lyrics, because they're not too hard. Nobody's fault but mine. Nobody's fault but mine. If I can't see my own true face, it's nobody's fault but mine. Those are, I rewrote it. Those Christians, they don't talk about your true face. But it's not so different. It's really not so different. Take the microphone off, it's just... It's distorting, huh? So could it be that it's on too high now that you've adjusted the bottom? No. Well, can you hear me? Yeah. So this is the chorus.

[07:52]

Nobody's fault but mine. Nobody's fault but mine. If I can't see my own true face, it's nobody's fault but mine. Want to try that? Well, nobody's fault but mine. Nobody's fault but mine. If I can't see my own true face, it's nobody's fault but mine. Pretty good. I know right from wrong. I know right from wrong. But if I don't know about cause and effect, it's nobody's fault but mine. No, nobody's fault but mine. Nobody's fault but mine. If I can't see my own true face, it's nobody's fault but mine. Well, I've got trouble in mind. I've got trouble in my mind.

[08:59]

If I blame another and deny myself, it's nobody's fault but mine. Well, nobody's fault but mine. Nobody's fault but mine. If I can't see my own true face, it's nobody's fault but mine. There's a wheel in the middle of the air, turning in the middle of the air. If I'm reborn on that wheel of life, it's nobody's fault but mine. Nobody's fault but mine. No, nobody's fault but mine. If I can't see my own true face, it's nobody's fault but mine. Patience is the key. Patience is the key. If I can't accept my life, well, it's nobody's fault but mine.

[10:03]

Nobody's fault but mine. Nobody's fault but mine. If I can't see my own true face, it's nobody's fault but mine. Good. So, I mean, actually, I could do a commentary on that song, which would get us to the same place. But this Lojahn verse is really interesting, and it's challenging. Drive all blames into one. To me, this is a stance of taking complete responsibility. Responsibility for oneself, but also responsibility for everything that is happening in the world.

[11:06]

It's the stance of practice. It's the stance of zazen. And it's living by vow. And it's very tricky, because we see in our life, it's very easy to fall into a place of blame. When we are in a difficult circumstance, we tend to look around to try to understand what causes. And if we're not practicing, the places that we look, where our gaze goes and where our mind goes, is to externals. I think it's important to recognize it's not that there aren't externals.

[12:09]

It's not that there aren't causes, but that how we choose to meet those causes is completely our responsibility. So, there's something really seductive about blaming. I was reading, I know Sokin has talked about this book in the past, and it's really excellent, Forgive for Good, by Fred Luskin. And, you know, so early on in the book, he talks about blame. And what he says, you know, and he's not coming from an overtly, or maybe even for him, an implicitly Buddhist perspective, but we can understand it.

[13:16]

When we blame someone for our troubles, we remain stuck in the past and extend the pain. So, that stuck in the past means one feels someone did something to me, and that happened at one point of time. We create this story and we carry it forward as something that defines our present reality. In Buddhist terms, in terms of the Yogacara tradition that we've been studying, the mind-only school that some of us have been studying, and that's a fundamental in our Buddhist understanding.

[14:17]

When you blame someone, you're planting a seed. You create a seed from your thoughts or your words or your actions, and you place it in what's called, I don't want to go into this in detail, what's called the storehouse consciousness. And that seed is there, it's very durable. And when conditions in the present water that seed, it arises. So, that blame will arise. Often, we're critical of the things that we feel our parents did or didn't do for us, our teachers did or didn't do for us, and others, our partners, our friends.

[15:21]

And when we create that way of looking at things, then we plant the seed. And the next time something happens that has any resonance of that set of circumstances, then that seed flowers. And then you have something on top of the reality itself in the moment to deal with. You've got to deal with the past because you've made the past coterminous with the present. So, it's very difficult. And it's also tricky because when something happens, when someone insults us, when someone does something that we feel is annoying or threatening in the near term,

[16:26]

this is also something that Luskin says, let me just read it for you. He says, the beguiling thing about the blame game is that at first, you may feel better. You may feel short-term relief because the hurt that you feel is somebody else's responsibility, at least the way you're framing it. Over the long run, however, the good feelings fade and you are left feeling helpless and vulnerable. You're left feeling hopeless and vulnerable because in that act of ascribing blame, you've given cause and you've given power to someone else, not to yourself. Everything that we encounter as we are sitting and facing the wall,

[17:29]

we're told and we learn over and over again the process of taking responsibility for it, not lingering on it, not creating seeds, but just recognizing, oh, this is just the working of our mind. So this perspective of driving all blames into one, it's a radical perspective. And as I've said many times, and it's important, I think, to remember this, the Buddha is offering this as medicine. He's not offering it as food. It's offered as medicine in the sense that if you can hold this practice and this perspective in mind, when I can do that, it brings me back into balance. It doesn't mean that there isn't responsibility beyond myself.

[18:41]

It just means the most productive practice for me is to take responsibility in a deep way. And if I take responsibility, then it creates an atmosphere in which others can take responsibility for themselves. So you don't throw out all kinds of discernment. It's not self-centered in the sense that I am the whole world, but it is practicing in a way that you feel connected to the world, in a sense that what you do makes a difference, or can make a difference. It means, I think, to have, you look at a situation,

[19:44]

instead of an inclination, a habitual inclination, one might have to blame someone for a difficulty or for something that seemed wrong or inappropriate, that in the light of discriminative thinking, we're capable of seeing the strengths and the weaknesses of that person, the strengths and the weaknesses of that situation, the good and the bad, that they're in some kind of relationship to each other. It's not all one way or the other. And then to look at it from the angle of the deepest truth, you come back to, just to be alive is enough.

[20:55]

Just to be alive means that you, me, and each person that we are encountering, has the potentiality and the possibility of transforming, that one has the possibility of waking up as a Buddha. The sixth ancestor in his last verse in the Platform Sutra says, when you can see the truth of all things, then you are Buddha. When you can allow them to be as they are, when you can allow them to change, then you are born as Buddha.

[21:58]

When you fall into your habits, you fall into delusion, then you're born as a sentient being. And he doesn't make, it's interesting, he doesn't talk about a kind of final state, that once you're Buddha, once a Buddha, always a Buddha. Once a Buddha, the possibility of delusion doesn't exist. So maybe my perspective is a little heretical, but what seems to me implied by this verse is, when you're awake, when you're taking full responsibility, you are practicing as a Buddha. When you fall into delusion, which means greed, hatred, and delusion,

[23:02]

delusive thinking, then you are an ordinary being. But in essence, all it takes is the practice of taking full responsibility and seeing what's in front of you to wake up. At any moment that can happen. That can happen for each of us. So the other side that I wanted to touch on is the side of shame. It seems to me that these are both aspects of a kind of unproductive or not useful projection. Blame is an external projection, and shame is an internal projection,

[24:13]

projecting the fault on oneself. So the nobody's fault but mine, which we were singing about, doesn't mean that you should be ashamed, doesn't mean that you should blame yourself. It means being free to take responsibility for the circumstances that arise. And also recognizing just in a kind of general way, quite aside from right or wrong, failure or inadequacy on our part, people don't really want to be around people who are blaming others.

[25:16]

It's not pleasant to be around. Nor, for that matter, are we comfortable being around people who one feels are carrying some terrific burden of shame. And there's a quotation from William James, Henry James' brother, in Luskin's book. It's pretty stark language. William James writes, This attitude of unhappiness is not only painful, it's also mean and ugly. What can be more base and unworthy than the pining, puling, mumping mood? What does he really feel?

[26:19]

No matter by what outward ills it may have been engendered. What is more injurious to others? What's less helpful to others as a way out of difficulty? It but fastens and perpetuates the trouble which occasioned it and increases the total evil of the situation. Very strong language. We know this in our heart. And the question is, how do we not fall into this? One thing I would like to suggest, in the song says patience is the key. In one of the verses, early verse from the Buddhist teachings, he says that patience is the incinerator of defilements. So it means just to bear the pain of the situation that we may be in

[27:24]

allows it to be fully digested and transformed. It becomes ash. The firewood of your defilement becomes something else that never returns to firewood. But that was last week's lecture. The question to me in patience is, patience is one side. But what the patience means to me is turning towards the difficulty. Instead of blaming, how do I turn towards the person that I wish to project on? In terms of shaming, how do I turn towards myself? So we always have a choice. And the choice in the Dharma is to connect or to separate.

[28:30]

I believe in this epigram from E.M. Forster, only connect. That separation of ourself from ourself, separation of ourself from others, is one of the essential qualities of suffering. The whole point of sitting, Katagiri Roshi used to say, settle the self on the self, is to connect with oneself, with whatever one is experiencing. Allow that to happen whether it's comfortable or uncomfortable. So one more story, which you've probably heard, and then I'd like to open for questions.

[29:35]

Much more that could be said. But this is a famous story that I'm sure many of you heard, but it's relevant to this. It's a story from the great Japanese Zen master Hakuin, who lived from 1686 to 1768. I think the first version of this was in Paul Rep's book. What was the book? Zen Flesh Zen Bones. Yeah, Zen Flesh Zen Bones. So an unmarried girl who lived near Hakuin's temple was found to be pregnant. Her outraged parents demanded to know the father of the baby. The girl wanted to protect her lover, so she accused Hakuin, who was at that time an old man, of seducing her. When the baby was born,

[30:36]

the parents confronted Hakuin. They demanded that he take care of the child since he was the child's father. Is that so? Was all Hakuin said. But he took care of the baby for several months. Then the embarrassed girl confessed that the father was a young man in the village. The girl's parents went to Hakuin and asked to have the baby back. Hakuin gave them the baby. Is that so? Was all he said. In that question, is that so, there's an entire universe. It doesn't... This story is a story of action and it's a story that raises a question for us. And part of that question is,

[31:37]

well, what was Hakuin thinking? How did he feel? And how did he act? He acted in an even way. And when he asked to take the greatest responsibility one could be asked to have, like to raise, to take this child and raise it, he said yes. He didn't say it wasn't me. He didn't deny responsibility. He was able to... He was receiving the blame and receiving it into himself and taking responsibility for what the situation was that he was confronted with. It's a very powerful moving story to me. And I don't presume that... It's not like he was this... I don't think about it in the sense that he was

[32:38]

enlightened beyond all emotion. If that were the case, he would actually make a terrible father. But he was... His awakening was because he saw the totality of suffering and he saw the opportunity of relieving suffering and he just said yes. He didn't... And what he offered back was, is that so? He wanted to offer back at least a question for the young woman and her parents. Not a denial that would shut something down, but a question that opens things up. So I really encourage us to ask questions of each other

[33:48]

when we're uncomfortable, to open things up and ask those questions of ourselves. How do you make the circumstance be my teacher? How do you allow every circumstance, pleasant or unpleasant, what is the teaching in that? That's where I think I'd like to stop and I see a question over here. On that story, I think the version that you read maybe is not quite as... It's a little compressed. When we say is that so in English, there's a little nuance of sarcasm. Is that so? And the original Japanese, I'm sure, is Asoka, which has no connotation like that. It's completely bland.

[34:50]

It's like somebody tells you something and it's just like, Oh, is that right? You don't say. It's completely accepting. I think that's right. There's no... Literally, it's a question. It's literally, is that right? You don't... But it's... And he's answering in that thing. It's not just saying here's the baby and he's saying, is that so? It's like you were the... We know that you were the father of this baby. They were blaming him. Yeah. So it's a response to that in this very accepting way. So there is a question in there, but there's no hint of sarcasm. It's just like, oh, whatever. Well, I think they were clearly accusing and blaming him. And he was practicing this.

[35:50]

He was allowing that blame to be placed on him without commenting on it, but just acting, seeing where the primary responsibility was in that case, with the child. And then in the end of the story, when they came and said, we're so sorry. But we realize you aren't the father. Oh, is that so? Yeah. He's not saying, fine. It was really okay. Whatever. Peter. Thank you. It was illuminating to recognize in what you were saying, how shame and blame walk hand in hand with feelings of utter powerlessness. And how often we feel that we have no...

[36:52]

Whatever we think or do doesn't matter because we have given that power away by blaming. Right. And we give our own power away by shaming. Yes. Our own power away, but also our own power away by blaming because we feel that we have no influence on it. Yeah, I think they're very closely related. It reminded me of consideration of how institutionally embedded some stories we have about blame are in, for instance, the whole institution of so-called criminal justice. There's a story that somebody has to be wrong. Somebody has to be blamed. And we kind of have a really strong cycle of generating that pattern. I don't know if you want to comment on that or not. Well, it's complicated. I could comment, but I don't want to comment much. First of all, we have, in essence, a retributive system of justice

[37:55]

as opposed to what people are working with now, a restorative justice. Restorative justice means, it implies realizing there are two people in that system. And then there could be a wider frame of justice which looks at the systems of oppression under which people grow up. But I think it's another discussion. I'm going to go a few minutes more, Lisa. Yeah, thank you, Alan. I have a question about Lojong. Can you say a little more about that? There's an excellent book by Chogyong Trungpa. Actually, it's at the heart of Pema Chodron's teachings. So if you look at Pema's books, she explains it very well.

[38:58]

And I think there's at least one book that... What's the name of it? What? Start Where You Are has the Lojong teachings in it. Comfortable with Uncertainty. That's another... Lojong. Okay. But anyway, it's a discipline. It's a system of mind training, of practices. So, you know, it's worth looking at. The slogans are really good, the verses. Is it the same thing as dependent origination? No. Dependent origination is the motor at the heart of it. I have a question about that. So you said that this is a series of practices to transform bad circumstances.

[40:00]

Well, that's only one part of it. So one of the antidotes to blame is patience. Yes. Which is sort of the ability to not demand that the moment be different than it is. Right. So what is the action that gets you to the transformation of the mind? What is the action? Well... If you're sitting with the moment patiently and not asking it to be different. You have to... The action is actually not jumping out of your skin. You know, is really staying there and looking. I mean, I can tell you from examples. So, you know, there was a conflict I was in with somebody and it got complicated. There was something that person was saying that I found very hurtful.

[41:06]

There was something that person was saying that I knew on an intuitive level was true and correct. The hurtful part, you know, I noticed I wanted to keep coming back to the hurt. Thinking, oh, this person is hurting me. This is unjust. This is not right, etc. But the practice side, the patient side was saying, there's something for me to learn here. There's something. Right. So instead of pushing that away from me because it was hurtful and because it felt unjust, it was actually more pulling it as close as I could to find out what can I learn here. There's something that's... If I look past my immediate pain and wish to push it away, I could see there's something true about what this person's perception is.

[42:12]

And if I can find that, then actually this conflict is helpful. And actually that's what I did and we did. But it took, you know, it took months. So it's a wise discernment. Yeah, it's a discernment not to move. This is the essence of the practice that we have is you sit in one place. Don't move. Circumstance makes you want to jump out of your skin or run away. React. Yeah, react or flee or whatever. But if you can just not move with an understanding that if I sit still, the universe is always moving. And if I can sit still, I can allow for those circumstances to change and I might actually have an awareness or learn something.

[43:18]

Just before we end, I wanted to ask if you had any comments. Thank you for your talk. You know, in the Pali sutras, it says shame and remorse. Oh yeah, in the Pali sutras, it says shame and remorse are the guardians. So we have to be careful that we don't throw them out with the baby. But at the same time, we should be careful that we don't let them dominate us. This is what you're talking about. Yeah. It's not that they're not valuable. They are valuable because they show you where you're at. They show you where your feelings are. But forgiveness is the way to deal with them. When you feel shame, then you ask for forgiveness and remorse.

[44:22]

You know, we should feel remorse, we should feel shame, but we should go on. Go on, yeah, not get caught in that. I think we have to end here because it's getting late, but that looks like an urgent question, perhaps. I'd like to share my personal experience. It was my personal challenge with accepting the time that I'm in. I found that I have lots of fear that's coming from the mind game that starts building up about the future. And those future pictures could be a variety of scary pictures. And I found that my problem is that when something happens, instead of being there and dealing with whatever it is,

[45:30]

and being welcoming to that and not pushing it out, it's because of all those pictures which come to my mind later on. And when I start to just stop there and not let all those future pictures come and challenge me, it was much easier for me. Thank you. Yeah, it involves, when we're not sitting still, we're liable to be seduced by a story about the past or a story about the future. And instead of just watching the story that is passing through moment by moment, both, again, to get back to the last lectures, continuously and discontinuously. And we will stop there.

[46:29]

@Text_v004
@Score_JJ