You know, a person at home. Yes, I think that's sort of the same thing, really, because the form it takes is that you believe your inner life is not as real as the outer world, and therefore you make yourself real by being useful. And you know, it's the source of workaholism, classically. Now it happened that I was lucky to be part of a movement that gave me life and that was connected to my life. It wasn't as if I was making widgets, you know, I care and continue to care deeply about what I was doing, but I was just, I had got totally out of balance, so that the internal, you know, it isn't, I think, that our internal life is more or less real, it's that it's as real as the external life, and I just was nowhere near close to realizing that. You don't want us to read your book as Gloria Steinem recants her dedication to the women's

[01:05]

movement. Oh, heavens no. She realizes she would have been better off with a traditional life. Oh my goodness, no, I mean, I would have been, you know, totally, no, the movement gave me life and continues to give me life, it's absolutely not. And I'm very grateful and very happy for very much of what I was able to be part of. On the contrary, the thing is, I think I would have been a more effective activist if I'd had better grounding in childhood or been able to go back and figure out why I didn't have a better grounding, because it made me, for instance, very scared of conflict, very likely to confuse motion with action, you know, just to keep going for the sake of going. It made me a less effective activist, and I hope and believe that when we look inward and strengthen ourselves, we get more effective on the outside.

[02:06]

Are there things that you feel women friends of yours have or have had that you now wish you had as well? For instance? Well, personal life type of things, marriage, children. Oh, no, no, because I mean, not in those forms. I mean, if you said to me, did I miss having a home? Yes, I did miss having a home, but... You mean physically a home? Physically a home, because a home is a kind of symbol of the self, and I think a lot of single women felt somewhere inside, I guess, that you were not supposed to make a home except unless you were making it for other people. And also, it was redoubled for me because I hadn't had a home when I was a child, so I didn't know how to do it. But I think the inner life, and home, and love, and closeness, and intimacy, we all need those things, but we all need them in particular and very different ways.

[03:11]

I mean, I had, thanks to the movement, been able to find chosen family, that is, people who shared values, mostly other women, but some men too, who became literally family because of the intensity of the work that we were doing together, and that was a great gift. I ask about, you know, if you changed your mind about marriage and children, because I think that for women a little younger than you, there are so few women to look around at and say, well, how do they feel? They've made the decision to either be single or to not have children. You know, as they get older, do they still think it was a good choice, or do they regret it? What's ahead when you look down the line? So that's why I'm asking you that. No, I understand that, and we're all looking at each other's lives to figure out how to live. And all I can say is that I feel great joy in this path that I've chosen. We don't have to give birth to someone to nurture them, and I'm happy with those choices.

[04:21]

If you're just joining us, my guest is Gloria Steinem. She's written a new book called Revolution from Within, a book of self-esteem. You were diagnosed with breast cancer in 1986. You had a lumpectomy, and that really did the trick. It never came back. Thank goodness. Yeah, so far I'm fine, and I have mixed feelings about it. I always feel I have to explain my experience with breast cancer, because so many other women have had so much more horrendous experiences than I have. And yet, when the word cancer comes into your life, in whatever form, it really does have a great impact. And it was very important to me, because it made me realize several things. One was, this may sound strange if I try to say it short, but that actually I was less afraid of dying than of aging, or not of aging exactly. I didn't know how to enter the last third of life, because there were so few role models. Because when I first heard this diagnosis, first I thought, ironically, oh, so that's

[05:27]

how it's going to end. And then I thought to myself, as if it was welling up from the deepest part of me, I've had a wonderful life. And I treasure that moment. It meant a lot to me. But on the other hand, it also made me realize that in this culture, women, we know how to be in the central plateau of life. And I'd been there a terrifically long time, because I'd become a grown-up too early, because my mother being an invalid. So from about 10 to 52 or so, I'd been in this central plateau. Now I was entering a whole new place. It was like falling off a cliff, because I couldn't see enough people ahead of me. In the last two or three years of really, how shall I say, of kind of paying more attention to my own inner life, I've realized that this aging in the last third of life or whatever is a new country. I now actually feel excited about it, because as Carolyn Heilbrunn has pointed out so brilliantly

[06:29]

in Writing a Woman's Life, women become ourselves after 50. We leave behind this female impersonator role and drop a lot of baggage and really become much more our true selves. You know what I find particularly interesting about hearing you thinking about the latter part of your life is that I think for a lot of women, it's the end of your life where you're supposed to be punished for the freedoms that you've taken during the first parts of your life. If you've decided to be independent or not be married or not have children or something, you're punished for that in the end, because you're supposed to look forward to an old age where you're lonely, you're alone, there's no one to be with, no one to take care of you. I think that's been really instilled in all of us. Yes, it's sort of the secular version of hell, I think. And like the religious version of hell, it has nothing to do with real life. That's always been clearly, to me, part of the backlash. I just don't believe that.

[07:30]

If you've done the best you can. What's so wonderful about being dependent in the last third of life when you're a grown-up, when it was difficult enough when you were a child? But I just think we need to think about what we want to do. It's suddenly ideas of dependency and being taken care of re-enter our heads because that's the only model for old age we have. But we're inventing new models. I remember that the late Tish Summers had a wonderful group called The Last Perch, which were older women, each of whom was part of a community and a kind of chosen family to grow old together. And I love the name, anyway, The Last Perch, I thought that was great. We need to let our imaginations roam in new ways.

[08:37]

Probably, we are on the edge of history. This may be the first time that there has been a very big age cohort, as the sociologists say, of women who have a tradition of independence and who are living longer. And since women grow more radical with age, as we know, our pattern of activism is the reverse of men's. I don't mean all men and all women, of course, I'm sure listeners understand that. But in general, because women lose power as they get older and men gain power, then the activism goes in the other direction. So I have this vision of an army of grey-haired women taking over the earth. This may become the kind of red-hot center of feminist revolution, precisely because there are more women with a tradition of independence, and greater in number, and living longer, who can take advantage of this fact of growing more radical with age.

[09:40]

An interesting vision. My guest is Gloria Steinem. She's written a new book called Revolution from Within, a book of self-esteem. We're going to take a short break, then we'll talk some more. This is Fresh Air. You're listening to the program Fresh Air with Terry Gross on KQED FM in San Francisco. Later in the program, book critic John Leonard will be along to review a collection of stories by the Russian author Tatyana Tostoya. Here's Terry. Gloria Steinem is my guest. In your new book, in the parts that are personal, you write a little bit about a relationship that you had in the 80s that didn't work out. You don't mention the name of the book, but I think a lot of people already know that it was with a real estate developer. No, I don't think they do know. Because I have never indicated who it was,

[10:42]

and if I'd wanted people to know who it was, I would have written it. There are two stories in that chapter, and I don't say who either one of them are. Okay, it's been mentioned in magazines, but you still... But that's their problem. Alright. As you write in the book, you fell in love with someone who you felt was obviously wrong for you. And you write in the book that you relied on your skill of getting a man to fall in love with you, but you got him to fall in love with the inauthentic you, so you had to keep on not being yourself in order to keep the relationship going. I was really wondering, what were the parts of your personality that rose to the surface that you saw as not being yourself during this relationship? Well, you know, just... That's a good question, because it's sort of hard to identify. I think it was really just resting, in a way. Not feeling that I had to be a caretaker. I felt at last here was somebody who was so strong that I didn't have to take care of him,

[11:49]

and it was at a moment in which I felt I was taking care of the earth. What I didn't realize was that I was looking for... I was missing strength in myself. I'd allowed myself to become very weakened, so I was projecting onto him, or looking to him for what I needed myself, and so I let go by all kinds of differences in values, which normally I would have understood was a problem for any friendship. The person who you were in a relationship with was very, very wealthy, and had a lot of business interests, and I was wondering if that relationship caused anyone close to you, or anyone who just knew you from your books and from your public work, if it made them question your politics because of your affiliation with them? And if so, what your reaction to that was? Yeah, I think it did. It probably made them question my... Nobody understood it, right? It made me defiant.

[12:49]

You know how it is when somebody questions a choice of yours, sometimes it makes you all the more determined? And I think it had that impact on me for a while. And I've read that you're not in a relationship now for the first time since you were 21, is that right? Yes, right. It shows you what a 50s person I am, even though... What do you like and not like about being single now? Or being not in a relationship? Well, I haven't come to the point yet where I find something that I don't like about it, which means that it's still a choice. I may come to the point at which I find something, but right now I feel like I'm doing something that I should have done when I was a teenager, or in my 20s. Because there's a kind of a joy and a freedom that comes from making your own schedule,

[13:51]

not worrying about somebody else's friends, not having to apologize because you have a deadline and you have to cancel something. It doesn't mean that I haven't in the past taken great pleasure and learned a great deal from the people I've been close to and loved. It's just that I'm experiencing a different kind of pleasure now. In your book, Revolution From Within, you write a little bit about your own self-image. In the book, you describe yourself as a Buddhaholic. You say your father was 300 pounds. You write, I'm not a thin woman, I'm a fat woman who's not fat at the moment. Do you see yourself as having an eating disorder? That's such a label now, it's hard to know. I think we're all, given the culture and what it does to our pictures of women's bodies, the eating disorders are a continuum. I was never bulimic in the sense of vomiting, I would never do that, nor was I ever anorexic in any way. I was enough addicted to food

[14:55]

so that I couldn't keep food in my house. I was especially addicted to sugar and so on. It's a continuum. If you feel a kind of emptiness inside, or if you feel unacceptable emotions welling up, anger and things that women aren't supposed to experience, you stuff it down with food. This is certainly the understanding of women who have come forth and helped each other in eating disorder groups. I think it's interesting for you as a feminist to say to other women that your thinness which so many women admire and envy comes out of something that you see as a problem. I think it's important to say that. The book was published in England first, and it was real hard to talk about all this in the land of the stiff upper lip, so I'm glad to be talking to you. But one woman actually said to me, as a leader, whatever that means,

[15:56]

of the women's movement, aren't you betraying other women by talking about your inner problems and processes? I didn't know what to say to her. Finally I said, well, in that case, all leaders should betray us. It doesn't do us any good to think that somebody else is another species and doesn't share the same experiences. In fact, I put Gandhi in this book as a personal story, a personal parable of his growing up and childhood and the first half of his life. Because I think seeing him as the saint he's portrayed doesn't help us. But because I lived in India, I got to realize that he had spent the first half of his life as this very, very insecure, imitative, conformist person who went to England to be trained as a barrister and wore pinstripe suits and wing collars and tried desperately to learn how to foxtrot

[16:59]

and play the violin and speak French. Until he finally realized that the bias against Indians on the part of the British in South Africa, in his case, was so complete that no amount of conformism to his false self was going to get him anywhere. He might as well be his true self. And that became his strength. Now, that makes me much better able to learn from him than I ever was before. I love the idea that he was once this gawky guy in a pinstripe suit trying to foxtrot. In trying to find more time for your private life, for yourself, what have you given up in terms of your more public life? Um... Well, I'm just beginning this book tour now and I think maybe what I've given up is a certain amount of ability to function on automatic pilot. It's like I feel I now have more nerve endings

[18:02]

than I did. I feel more. That means you feel both more pain and more joy to be corny about it, but it's true. So I may not be able to get back into that automatic pilot mode. I'm not sorry that I can't. I think it's progress, but it does mean you have to think differently and schedule yourself differently. Well, good luck on the road. Thank you so much for talking with us. My guest has been Gloria Steinem and she's written a new book called Revolution From Within, a book of self-esteem. I'm Terry Gross and this is Fresh Air. Major funding for Fresh Air

[19:21]

is provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Additional support comes from the listeners of WHYY in Philadelphia where Fresh Air is produced. This is NPR, National Public Radio. San Francisco educators describe their vision of education in San Francisco's schools on the program forum tonight at 10 o'clock here on KQED FM San Francisco. From Philadelphia, I'm Terry Gross with Fresh Air. Everett Quinton says even as a kid he knew he was a drag queen but he didn't know he was going to be performing in drag

[20:23]

in front of an audience and winning critical acclaim for it in the New York Times. Coming up, Everett Quinton on directing the ridiculous theatrical company in Manhattan. Tatiana Tolstoya is the great-grandniece of Russian writer Leo Tolstoy. John Leonard has a review of Tolstoya's new collection of short stories. And rock historian Ed Ward concludes his series on the past four decades with a survey of the music that was popular ten years ago. That's all coming up on Fresh Air. In these times of computer confusion finding information in your local library can sometimes present more of a technological challenge than programming your VCR. It's important to keep in mind that even though all people are created equal all computers are not.

[21:25]

Libraries frequently offer a variety of computer systems all of which contain different kinds of information. For example, many libraries now have their card catalogs on a computer. In general, this means that you can find books in the library by using a computer. It does not mean that you will find everything the library owns by looking it up on the computer. Libraries often have special collections that would not have been in the card catalog and are therefore not on the computer. For example, some libraries, especially state libraries have federal or state documents that are not on the computer. Many libraries have pamphlet files containing useful and up-to-date information. Both of these sources are very helpful but they are usually inaccessible through the library's computer. In addition to an online catalog many libraries have indexes to magazine articles These computers can help you tap into current information on a vast range of subjects but they are not all the same.

[22:26]

So if you're looking for a business article you may have to use a different computer or print index from the one you'd use to find information on the Clean Air Act. So remember this the next time you're on a fact-finding mission at the library if your informational quarry doesn't show up on the computer don't assume that it's not in the library just ask your librarian for a helping hand. I'm Jerry Newman for Check It Out the Library Program edited by Nina Schuhalter today's script by Sarah Amato Check It Out is a project of the Peninsula Library System of San Mateo, California made possible in part by a grant from the Viburnum Foundation. Areas of fog redeveloping tonight and becoming locally dense we've got a real fog warning out for the San Francisco Bay Area except over by the ocean, it'll be clear by the ocean this is a reversal of the usual pattern low temperatures tonight from the mid-30s to the low-40s and patchy, dense morning fog tomorrow morning otherwise sunny, that terrible haze that's been with us

[23:26]

for what feels like months will continue tomorrow highs tomorrow from the mid-40s to the mid-50s. Star Day, January 22nd The ancient Egyptians worshipped the sun god Ra a deity with the head of a hawk crowned with a solar disc today many people, especially teenagers are still devoted to at least one form of sun worship the search for the perfect tan beaches and tanning salons are crowded with people seeking that deep golden hue but that healthy glow really isn't healthy at all tanning is part of our body's defenses against the damaging effects of ultraviolet energy the sun, like all stars, radiates energy in many wavelengths we see some wavelengths, those that fall in a narrow band known as visible light and we feel infrared wavelengths as heat but we can't really tell much about ultraviolet wavelengths until they've already done their dirty work most of the ultraviolet radiation that strikes Earth is absorbed

[24:29]

by the ozone layer, which is high in our atmosphere but some sneaks by even brief exposure to these ultraviolet rays can cause the skin to burn longer exposure causes wrinkling and sagging other more serious problems can also develop skin cancers, including often fatal malignant melanomas can be triggered by excessive ultraviolet light much of this damage can be avoided or minimized by using sunscreens with a skin protection factor of 15 or higher dermatologists recommend the routine use of sunscreens beginning at an early age research has shown that adolescents who experience serious sunburns have double the risk of developing melanomas later in life for January 22nd, that's Stardate Stardate and Stardate Magazine are productions of the McDonald Observatory at the University of Texas at Austin and for the McDonald Observatory, I'm Sandy Wood Our community calendar now

[25:31]

events taking place tomorrow, the 23rd of January the South Berkeley Women's Health Center holds anonymous AIDS and HIV testing every Thursday the center is located at the South Berkeley Community Church 1802 Fairview Street in Berkeley hours are 1.30 to 3 p.m. Center Repertory Theater presents the British comedy thriller Corpse at the Walnut Creek Regional Arts Center Regional Center for the Arts, rather located at 1601 Civic Drive, performance time is 8 p.m. Now back to Fresh Air on Terry Gross This is Fresh Air During the height of perestroika at the Moscow Book Fair the American publishing company Knopp picked up a collection of short stories by the Russian writer Tatyana Tolstoya she's the great-grandniece of Leo Tolstoy That book, On the Golden Porch, was published here three years ago now Knopp has published a collection of Tolstoy's short stories written prior to the disintegration of the Soviet Union Our book critic John Leonard has a review of the new book

[26:32]

Sleepwalker in a Fog A couple of years ago I said we should stop comparing Tatyana Tolstoya to Chekhov and start thinking about other Russian writers with more of a taste for the extravagant like Bulgakov and Mandelstam and maybe Andrei Bily from the Silver Age Well here she is again, Leo Tolstoy's great-grandniece with another collection of stories and in almost every review I've seen they're still talking about Chekhov and it's silly Gogol maybe, with his addiction to the fantastic and Nabokov, who liked to levitate in this country Bernard Malamud, whose heart flew out of his mouth in Latin America, any one of the magical realists But Tolstoya is some kind of firebird a Sufi dervish dancing on a language jet stream up, up and away from the crowded communal apartments the locked rooms, foolish dreams, forgotten loves lost chances and missed connections of the Soviet quotidian Of course these stories are political One man with special privileges in the party hierarchy imagines he is an angel

[27:35]

untouchable Another, brain-damaged, wants to be a writer but the only word he can scrawl is knight A third, contemplating the land masses on his office globe disbelieves Australia and decides to abolish the erroneous continent A fourth, a poet, cohabits with a young African woman hoping to sire a new Pushkin A governess from pre-revolutionary days dies forgotten like liberal values, like childhood itself A survivor of the gulag tells a casual lie about an innocent stranger, and everyone chooses to believe him because it's easier than facing the truth about themselves A loveless teacher of geography dreams, as we are told, of the very bottom of the heavy round earth, where the blue string bag of the meridians tightens into a stiff knot and a frost-covered skier slowly wanders upside down among the delicate ice glades of Queen Maud land But in each story, mind itself is landlocked in a drab geography of bad poets, party hacks

[28:38]

the three spare parts of Marxism and the seventeen reasons for gradual transformation A delusional system where everybody runs in place like the three sisters on six legs who never got to Moscow A never-never land where owning two cows locates you in what is called dangerous proximity to kulak circles and people even steal your curtains Language, exuberant and surreal is the only agency of levitation available to these characters to get out of the drab By acrobatics of the word, they escape into alternative geographies from which they look down on Burma and Bombay on the Vatican in Rome and gondolas in Venice on a prince of Cambodia and an emperor of Japan on New Guinea, Antarctica, and all the way to Africa where we're told the equator curved like a morning rainbow melting in the sky Everything's possible, says one character Why not? Everything's exotic over there But here, nothing but nothing at all ever happens anywhere

[29:39]

anytime, anyhow But something did happen after Tolstoy wrote these splendid stories as if by magic, at what she calls the fairy tale restaurant, all of Russia levitated into the air and vertigo John Leonard is media critic for CBS Sunday Morning He reviewed Sleepwalker in a Fog New stories by Tatiana Tolstoya This is Fresh Air Music [...] Imagine a stage production of Camille with the Greta Garbo role played by a man in drag That's one of the productions that established

[30:42]

actor Charles Ludlam and his ridiculous theatrical company The company, based in Manhattan, is best known for its comedic, gender-bending reinterpretations of classic theater and film When Charles Ludlam died of AIDS in 1987 his fans feared they had lost not only a great actor but a wonderful company But the company has continued under the leadership of Everett Quinton who had performed with the company since the mid-70s and had been Ludlam's lover for as long After playing many of the roles Ludlam had originated Quinton started adapting his own material such as The Hunchback of Notre Dame and A Tale of Two Cities Next month, the company will have a 25th anniversary gala I asked Quinton if taking over the company was a difficult decision and if he had ever discussed the possibility with Ludlam Actually, we were being interviewed on National Public Radio a few years ago, a number of years ago and the question came up that if anything happened to Charles could the company continue? And because Charles was in the room, we all said, well, no, no

[31:44]

Nobody considered that he would die so it was not even an issue Strictly speaking there's no way you have to die Or, you know, you should die Any way to die, any way you die is okay It's the same point, isn't it? Any way you die is okay Every way of dying has still the quality of This is the summit of the mystic peak Any way you die is okay, so we could say any way you die It's the summit of the mystic peak People will be screaming or crying or you know, regretful or angry or denying or many things Any way you die is okay Isn't that nice?

[32:49]

To have that kind of permission and I thought You know, of all the times that people say about cooking Well, you should be, you know, especially in a monastery You're supposed to feel good and you're supposed to be kind and you're supposed to have good thoughts and it all goes into the food And I think it's pretty good just to be cooking And when I cook, I don't always feel, you know, like happy and how nice it is to be cooking and isn't this wonderful, you know I don't always feel that way when I'm cooking When you go to work or when you're with your family or your kids You don't always feel like the way you're supposed to feel Or, you know, what would be a nice way to feel or a good way to feel Right? So let's be real, folks Any way you die is okay Any way you cook is okay And so

[33:52]

it doesn't mean that that preciousness is not there or the inherent virtue or value of our life is missing or that we need to wait to until everything is taken care of and we have all the right feelings before we'll have some sense of this preciousness or value Sometimes you feel it you know, more, we feel it more when we have grief or sorrow or because it brings us down to where we are and we're not in such a hurry to get to somewhere else so we can be where we are and, you know, and then in our sorrow we hear the frog which we haven't been hearing

[34:56]

because we were so busy making a fine meal or doing the things that we should be doing to be a good person or a good parent or a good friend or blah, blah, blah All right Thank you Thank you

[36:05]

...that Iraq has to get out of Kuwait you know, it's not like that's out there in the world somewhere floating around, you know and then everybody looks up and goes, wow, yeah you know, so an accurate statement would be for him to say, I think this but of course if he says, I think this then other people go, well, I don't think that but you have a different kind of communication when, you know, if you if you make those kind of statements to yourself even if you make, it's another way of saying, you know tentatively speaking well, that's just what I thought another one of the workshops I went to we were practicing, you know, making visible statements which were included I noticed, I observed I then, you know, I noticed that you stepped on my foot and I, you know, I

[37:09]

I feel hurt, I feel angry I think that wasn't nice of you I think that was inappropriate behavior I would like you to stop, I would like you to be more careful in the future so there's these four parts of observing and, you know, I observe, I think, I feel, I want and oftentimes we just say what we think you stupid idiot and we don't even tell the person like what we noticed that they were doing and then a lot of the time we don't even tell them what we'd like them to do either but that's another way to be careful if you want to kind of examine your thinking is to reference it even if it's afterwards to say, oh, that's what I just thought and mindfulness practice is you know, it's abbreviated down to thinking you make a soft mental note when you think something

[38:12]

you make a mental note thinking and that way you give yourself a little bit of detachment from the thought and you don't immediately identify with the thought and you don't immediately believe the thought and take the thought's word for it and you can talk back to your thoughts You were saying something earlier about how your thoughts seem to follow your feelings and I had always thought that it was the other way around that my feelings came from what I was thinking that that was what triggered it But it also seems that

[39:30]

in some sense the thoughts tend to be generated out of our feeling or at least in the Buddhist understanding of cause and effect what's known as the twelve chains some night we'll talk about that but anyway, in that the feeling is in some way very fundamental and crucial and so if you're noticing you're thinking because it's not true that we agree with each of our thoughts and we start thinking something and sometimes we're thinking something we don't want to be thinking but the first level of noting is to note thinking and then if the thought still stays the next kind of noting to do is is it pleasurable or unpleasurable? So this is sort of following what you're saying that the thought has a kind of cause of the feelings

[40:34]

but is the thought pleasant or unpleasant? So some thoughts stay around and obsess us because they're pleasant and some stay around and obsess us because they're unpleasant the ones that are neutral kind of go on their way so then we can note pleasant or unpleasant or then we note liking, disliking and then generally speaking the ones that are pleasant it leads to us trying to keep them and hold on to them and the ones that are unpleasant it leads to us trying to push them away but either way, holding on to them or pushing them away is a kind of attachment which then leads us to get all wrapped up in the thoughts with some degree of anxiety and tension is this really going to be true? Is it not going to be true? What's going to happen here? How do I get rid of this thought? How do I keep this thought? And there's a kind of struggle so that's again to take it further

[41:36]

to notice the way in which that happens when you practice noting thinking and then if you note pleasant and unpleasant and grasping, averting then again it's a way to begin to not have quite the degree of identification with your thinking so that it becomes kind of obsessive and repetitive Anyway, it's probably true from both points of view but anyway, the point there is that they're certainly linked together and closely follow one on the other, generating each other And something somebody else said which I haven't been alert enough to see if it's true but somebody once said that when you think something really new you have about 30 seconds

[42:38]

to notice it and to really make a point of noticing it and either writing it down or in some way retaining it and that otherwise your new thought goes away very quickly And so it's the ones that are the ones that stay around are the troublesome ones the ones that we're either grasping or the ones that we're trying to keep away Well, I've had a fine evening with all of you it's been, I feel you know, it's always, I don't know there's something very nice about sitting with all of you and generally sitting with people

[43:40]

spending some time like this but it touches me very deeply to be here with you and to feel your you know, your effort and awareness and interest and to you know, however we describe it to sort out your life and to feel some of the preciousness of being a human being Thank you very much If anybody wants to see my pictures of you know, signs at the march Welcome to Are the lights on? Oh, there they go That's incredible

[44:42]

It felt like being in the dip suit I mean, in the beta breakers you know, everybody was costumes Little kids are still out selling lemonade on the corner Wonderful Yeah, all right Well, to start with, I wanted to talk a little bit more about mindfulness practice and to some extent my experience with it and also just generally speaking what the usefulness of mindfulness practice is And the particular form of mindfulness that I was introducing you to or some of you it was introducing you to and some of you have already been doing this practice of making a soft mental note And I would say that You know, in a very simple way, I've talked about this before

[45:47]

but in a very simple way, mindfulness practice has to do with beginning to relate to your state of mind instead of from it Normally, we're going about our life and we get angry and then we right away identify with being angry and then we are expressing anger or sorrow and as soon as we start thinking something we identify with the thought and we agree with it and we think, yep, that's right even though we don't necessarily think that's right or sometimes we argue with our own thoughts as though there was really somebody there to argue with Anyway, normally our state of mind colors our being and without our being aware that our being is our mind, our awareness is being colored this is also known as

[46:48]

you know, sometimes the word colored is used in various places in Buddhism for this kind of thing you know, it's otherwise, it's also used, the word is sometimes stained, our awareness becomes stained in the sense that there's thinking or feeling or various events are going on and it's sort of like and we're already right in the midst of it as though it was all quite real similar to the way in a dream we can be involved in a dream and think it's quite real and it's not as though it's exactly unreal but the point is that we're already involved in it as though it's real as though the thoughts are real, as though there's somebody there and we immediately start relating from that place So for instance, if we were

[47:49]

again, just to be very simple about it when we feel perhaps depressed or lonely then we look around who is going to comfort me, who is going to assuage my loneliness and it doesn't occur that I could be the one to do that usually so that's the difference between relating to what's happening rather than from what's happening if relating from your feeling then you start looking around for someone to comfort you or someone to befriend you or why aren't people more friendly whereas relating to the feeling then one understands that in a certain sense one has the capacity to befriend oneself To assuage

[48:51]

one can be in that sense present with one's experience rather than being, so to speak, absent or being so involved with the experience that we're no longer relating we lose our capacity to relate to it and in that sense then our awareness is stained by the experience so to speak. Does this make sense? So to practice mindfulness is to in a certain sense, this is sometimes described as taking a step back or a backward step where you're stepping in a certain sense stepping back from the experience and noticing that in fact this is some experience you're having and the very fact of observing it and noting it is establishing another place which is the new place which you're observing from or relating to your feelings and thoughts and physical sensations is a place that is undisturbed

[49:51]

because as soon as anything comes up it's something more to note so there's always a place that can note, oh, pain in a very simple way pain, loneliness, sorrow boredom, heat, cold and this is a presence then this is like someone well also this someone, but it's someone who is there or it's an awareness that's there with us there's this presence which is now in a certain sense doesn't immediately identify with thoughts, doesn't immediately identify with the feelings but has the capacity to just to be aware in a very simple way to note depressed or whatever it is so this is related to presence

[50:56]

it's also related then to this is a kind of then no longer immediately identifying with experience as mine to the extent that and so then in that sense we can we don't have to continue being quite so much the victim of experience all these things keep happening to me because there's also someone who's aware and noting the experience and the experience isn't happening any longer to there's not a me there for it to be happening to and it's partly then when you're practicing mindfulness it's important to in that sense that you don't if you note phenomena you don't and when you note phenomena you don't note

[51:57]

I, there's no such phenomena right the phenomena are physical sensations you can note a physical sensation you can note heat and cold pressure, softness pain you can note feelings, you can note thinking or thoughts and you can note sensory experiences such as seeing but there's no way that you can actually note an I or a me or a mine it's not a kind of it's not actually an experience right the I or me or mine so when we see something and we use this language when we see we see, but seeing something what we note then rather carefully in a certain sense or accurately is seeing

[53:00]

there's awareness of seeing we note seeing, we don't note I'm seeing because there's no that's not something that you can note just note seeing seeing is taking place so to simplify it we note seeing and in a certain sense we understand that seeing includes an awareness and seeing includes an object but what we note is just seeing we note hearing, we can note thinking and it's not actually then accurate in that sense to note I'm thinking, where did the I come in because when you note thinking then at that point you're noting thinking has already taken place but there isn't a time when you can really note an I or a me or a mine

[54:03]

which is obviously in a certain sense tends to at least at times cause a kind of discomfort in our lives because we can start thinking about what's going to happen to me how does this reflect on me what does this say about me what are other people thinking about me how can I be a different kind of person and we get sort of preoccupied with trying to produce a reality that has there's no reality to correspond to what we're trying to produce I don't know if I'm making sense now if you got that but anyway this is what happens now it's sort of like why do I have to have these thoughts or this sort of standard thing

[55:06]

why is this happening to me why me standard kind of expression why me which is just if you think why me then the function of mindfulness is to note thinking that was a thought why me so there's thinking and in that sense the function of mindfulness or this aspect of meditation is not so concerned about the content and sorting out the content because the content is endless and terribly intertwined and knotted up do you think there's ever any answer to the question why me I mean you could be like Proust

[56:07]

and write volumes about why me basically the answer to that there's various kinds of answers but you were born that's one kind of answer but the other kind of answer is like everything in the universe is the cause because nothing in the universe is preventing whatever is happening from happening to you so we'd have to talk about the entire universe as to why me or we could talk about chemistry or physics or any number of things and we would never answer this question so in this sense from a certain point of view and this is not to say that the content of thoughts is irrelevant but in order to look more carefully at the content of thought we need generally to have a little more stabilization in our life in our being

[57:08]

and the stabilization in that sense it's a stabilization practice mindfulness is a stabilizing practice so that we're not so immediately caught up in our thoughts why me and then this whole emotional sort of turmoil and so on and kind of going over and over it so just to be able to disengage from that ongoing and repetitive the nature of the suffering life so to speak which in Buddhism is known as samsara is not so much that well anyway the basic problem about it is that it's repetitive it's going over and over the same ground and it just keeps doing that you know so

[58:12]

if you're it has to do with the basic mode or basic way of going about things that is not working is not going any place it just keeps going over things the same way coming up with the same conclusions you know so then the next step in why me is oh it's because you know I'm this kind of a person or it's because I did such and such or there's some explanation that we tell ourselves you know it must be the answer then you have to do something about it right you have to try to be a better person so these kind of awful things don't happen to me so we try to do that then when will you be convinced that you're a better person when these bad things stop happening to you so we get involved in those kind of

[59:16]

ongoing cycles but obviously if that's your basic mode when that's our basic mode of going our way of going about things what happens you keep doing it endlessly and just the circumstances change so if you want to have you know so we all know we've heard about like temperamental movie stars right what happened to them people are pampering them and waiting on them what do they have to be so temperamental about if somebody waited on you like that would you be temperamental anymore oh no I wouldn't be temperamental if they were waiting on me like that but the fact is that when somebody waits on you like that then you still find the things to find a problem with that's no way to talk to me that's no way to look at me and so even in the circumstances where things are so much better you can still go about finding the problem

[60:18]

and then it's so and so's fault and then they should do better because the way that people are treating you is reflecting on the way that people treat you reflects on who they must think you are do you know who I am all of these things so mindfulness is a way to begin or to continue to establish an awareness a presence that is relating to phenomenon to the moment rather than from the experience relating to one's anger or sorrow or grief rather than from it and so whatever is coming up then mindfulness in a sense is touching it and noting it so there's some it's also at times then called

[61:21]

non-abandonment no longer abandoning oneself to this ongoing turmoil of experience you know there comes these various points where you know where we have some tendency at times to say well if this is what's going to happen I'm not going to have anything to do with you and we say it to ourself you know not just to our partner or somebody we work with we say such a thing to ourself and it's very painful then that our own awareness is not willing to be with the experience we're having so this is basic kind of effort in Buddhism fundamental the most in some sense is the most fundamental effort to make is just to have awareness moment after moment

[62:23]

this kind of awareness that's touching and noting which is not then identifying with I'm angry but just anger I think you're full of shit, thinking what's going to happen to me thinking, why me, thinking how do I get things to work better thinking and you can divide thinking up and this doesn't mean that you know thinking is not useful and at some point you have to get up from your cushion and do things but this is to begin or to continue to have some establish this awareness that no longer identifies immediately identifies with things non-abandonment and you can divide thinking up then into

[63:23]

if you want you can divide up thinking into remembering and planning and thinking and then another big category of thinking is judging so if you particularly have a lot of kind of judgmental thoughts about yourself or other people then you can note rather than just thinking you can note judging judging you know whether it's judging yourself judging somebody else just note judging you know judging because again there's no end to those kind of judgments as far as that goes when our basic way of going about things is make a judgment, find some problem you need to work on that, oh okay I need to work on that you start to work on that, some results come in you still need to work on that right, you find some problem you need to work on it, okay I'll work on it

[64:24]

you work on it, now you've improved but you still have something to work on and so on and then you're on this endless treadmill when do you ever arrive at some kind of well-being so we should be able to it's not a problem to work on oneself but we should be able at the same time to have some well-being to be able to arrive and be somewhere, be where we are with some well-being otherwise again this is kind of endless kind of rat race or what are those things treadmills yes one other point about this

[65:35]

before I say a few words about another topic I want to talk about tonight but one other thing about anything like this and I'll remind you again is that something like this is something you really if you're going to do it if you try this for five minutes and then you go well that doesn't make any difference to practice mindfulness or you try it for half an hour and you say well that doesn't make any difference it's up to any of these practices something that you have to learn how to make them useful in your own life just because I tell you that some practice like this may be useful and then you go oh that doesn't work but the point is that one practice or another you have to for yourself find out how to make it work in your own life and if it's going to work in your own life okay so I just want to say that because it's easy to try something out for a few minutes or for a week or two but to it's really something

[66:38]

any one of these particular kinds of practices again is something over time that you work with and then you may over time find it useful and at times you may find in fact quite powerful also kind of around the same subject is that if you're doing some practice like this and particularly in a fairly formal situation of meditation like we're doing tonight and if you find that the particular practice is kind of making you anxious I mean one thing to do in this case would be to note anxious you would be then using the practice to do the practice or to help you but the other kind of thing is that some practice like this sometimes is useful to

[67:40]

if you're sitting and you're doing this and somehow it seems to be making you agitated to do the practice you can also just sort of stop for a while and just breathe and sit there and then take it up again nobody says you have to do this practice all the time under every circumstance in fact it's kind of useful at times to be able to put a particular practice down and then when you're ready you pick it up again and because again that's part of you finding out for yourself how to make a practice work for you which is different than trying to do something that somebody told you would be good for you and I'll take his word for it and now I'm supposed to do this and now I'm supposed to do that and you tell yourself all the things you're supposed to do

[68:41]

so it's different that you pick it up you can put it down how you use it whether it's useful or if you can find some way to make it useful all that is part of your practice and not something that anybody will ever be able to tell you how to do and in that sense everybody learns although there's teaching of various kinds everybody learns each person has to learn to meditate for themselves because each of us is sort of the expert on one person the other thing I wanted to talk about tonight and I'll probably be fairly brief I think I mentioned here last week

[69:42]

that I felt I don't remember but I think I mentioned that I felt sort of ineloquent and I finally realized on Sunday what that was about I felt inarticulate or something and I finally realized Sunday what that was about which is that everything I say hasn't stopped the war yet no matter what I say and no matter what I've said for years they still go on bombing places and what do they care what I have to say so I'm trying to get the words out so that the war stops but anyway that's not what I was going to talk to you about that's a little aside but it sort of relates to the subject I was at Green Gulch on Sunday and I gave the talk Sunday morning and then there was the question and answer and afterwards I started thinking just generally about the question and answer and how that had gone and it seems like the main question that people ask there at Green Gulch

[70:44]

and the question and answer is how do I know that I'm doing the right thing and it's a little bit like saying well how do I know it's the right thing to get married I mean again this is an example probably of the way our thinking works as though there was really an answer to this kind of question when you get married you agree to get married even though you don't know what's going to happen and you agree to stay married anyway at least your vow is you're going to be married even though you don't know what will happen and only time will tell and then you don't have anything to compare it to what would have happened if I didn't get married and would it have been better or worse if I married somebody else and how could you possibly compare it we only live one life

[71:46]

we only live one life and there's no way to compare it to the other life we could have been living if we hadn't been living the life we're now living and yet people want to know am I doing the right thing compared to what and I'm like that I think am I doing the right thing and I'd like somebody I wish somebody would tell me for a while I used to call up this psychic friend of mine Psychic Bob I'll give you his phone number if anybody wants you can call him up but Psychic Bob started out he's even theoretically delivered homeopathic medicine to people psychopathically but anyway he used to do this with a little kind of crystal with a crystal and sort of like a pendulum and if you ask it a question

[72:51]

the pendulum a question and then if it answers you establish whether sometimes if it swings this way it's yes and if it swings this way it's no if it swings clockwise it's yes or counterclockwise no but you get a different response from the pendulum if it's yes or no should I do such and such and it'll swing yes or no and then he graduated to he's got a little chart yeah he's holding it I don't know it might be on a little thing well people probably do it differently I don't know the particular way that he was doing it I know a lot of people hold it but now he's got a little sort of chart and it's not just yes and no but 1 to 12 and so he'll with a little pencil sort of his hand will go over the 1 to the 12 so I asked him one time should I take this trip and he said oh that's a 12 out of 12

[73:53]

and I said what about if I stay home and he'd say that's a 12 out of 12 too it's sort of like some help you are it's sort of like well how do I know what to do then and he said you just decide so like how do I know the right thing or the thing that I get the most what you know the most out of it and I thought later on I had come across this I was looking at this calendar and I came across this thing where Tallulah Bankhead of all people Tallulah Bankhead said if I had to live my life over again I'd make all the same mistakes only sooner so I thought that was pretty good in terms of this like what would you

[74:53]

should I do this should I do that I have a hard terrible time making decisions I think most people actually make decisions easier than me and yet it does seem to be this ongoing thing how do I know that what I'm doing is the right thing to be doing or is there something better that I could be doing what's the Buddhist way to do it because then boy if anybody challenges me I can just tell them well it's the Buddhist thing to do and then it'll be okay I'll have some defense I'll have an authorization I'll be authorized to act the way I'm acting because it's the Buddhist way so over the years I've kind of looked into this and basically now I don't try to tell anybody what to do everybody wants to know what should I do

[75:56]

what's the thing to do in a certain way it seems to me pretty simple and yet it's only simple in a kind of intellectual sense but I think the it seems to me and I've talked over the weeks that we've been here I've talked at various points about in some way settling on or bringing out your fundamental intention or best wish or deep wish or inmost request and especially when we're in doubt about what to do it's important to acknowledge well what is my what is my deep wish what is my deep intention I was sitting next to him he was coming up to me oh you were sitting next to him

[77:00]

and I think what you told me was very helpful when you listened to him and you told him when you feel confused like that just go back to your breath and you know we hear that all the time but it was really meaningful for me to hear that again and that's kind of an answer because you're giving me the way back and I've done that this week even in all kinds of different ways just come back it was really concrete for me well that's good thank you because that kind of relates to the mindfulness part now I'm talking about assuming you have some stability and you want to look at things I think it's probably a little different stage or a little different aspect of this same process because that certainly helps to be in your body and come back to your breath and into your own being and feel where you're at with things and to acknowledge where you're at with things so that you're not

[78:05]

you're not just talking yourself into something or out of something or whatever so I think the important parts of it are to that kind of practice is important and to acknowledge your intention in the situation or your wish for things and then you can think about how to express it in the present situation and or whether or not you know sometimes you'll find in that if your intention is clear then you can think about how you express it and then if your intention isn't clear you clarify your intention and that's pretty that's pretty difficult sometimes and it's hard to sometimes to acknowledge what your real intention is but that's another part then of meditation practice and that mindfulness can help you come to is to

[79:09]

be able to sort that out and again it may be something that you sort out depending on the particular dilemma or question it may take some time to sort out what your deep intention is your best wish and then how to act on that and you try out we try out various ways to act on things and it doesn't get across to people and you know it's like trying to do the peace movement it's terribly difficult because as soon as you hold up a sign then people say you're not supporting the troops huh? who says? I thought I was, do I need to hold up that sign too? you know so somehow it's very difficult to get our intention our intention across, that part is not so easy and it takes a kind of we make one effort after another so anyway

[80:12]

I don't try to I haven't been able to talk myself you know too much so I certainly don't try to talk other people into things or try to tell people what is the Buddhist way because a lot of that just feeds our own it feeds into our own kind of I've told you before for instance being a fairly for me being a fairly contained person although I can be outgoing at times I'm a fairly I'm basically an inward kind of person rather than an extrovert I would say so it's perfect for me to find Zen right? then the way I am is Zen right? because Zen comes from Japan and that's the same kind of culture where no outward display of emotion and you know kind of keep things to yourself

[81:12]

perfect for me right? so then the way I am is Zen now isn't that wonderful? see? and that's what we tend to want to do is try to find something out there in the world that we can use to reinforce the way we already are but that wasn't really what Buddhist practice was supposed to be about it's supposed to be you know something actually much more profound than that just finding some rationale or authorization for behaving the way you're already behaving but in some way to help to help us sort out the way life works and have some clarity and some peace and well-being and in that sense then the whole question of what can I do that's the best thing to do or you know how can I at some point it's almost irrelevant it doesn't really matter we're back to what Lula Bankhead said

[82:17]

I do all the same things make all the same mistakes but only sooner because there is actually no way to say what the best way to do it is and the only question is is it out of your own sincerity is it out of your heart is it out of your own well-being and your whole heartedness and is it coming from is it coming out of that is there some way to bring out what's inside of you and in that sense of course in a certain way then it means we have to stop worrying about whether it's the best thing to do or not from all the other points of view that we might think about it and go ahead and bring out what we have to bring out into the world and see what happens and then do the next thing that's about all I have to say tonight

[83:29]

do you want me to leave this on for any questions that you might have no so do you have anything you want to talk about I have a question when you spoke earlier about stepping back mindfulness practice is that the same thing as Thich Nhat Hanh talked about taking refuge in the Dharma or refuge in Buddhism is that the same thing you take refuge and then you step back you know that sort of it's a little hard for me to say I wouldn't say it's exactly the same thing but they're certainly closely associated in a certain sense the taking refuge in the Dharma

[84:30]

the Dharma is a word for there's you know I can bring it in sometime but there's 7 or 8 or 9 definitions of what Dharma is but in a very simple and colloquial way Dharma is the way things are and the law of how things work so to take refuge in the Dharma is instead of being oppressed by reality or things moment after moment to find some refuge in the way things are rather than to find some disturbing in the way things are and so I would say that one aspect of being able to find refuge in the way things are would be stepping back a kind of a not to immediately identify with everything

[85:35]

because that's the aspect of and why me and being the victim of experience moment after moment these things come and go sometimes it seems very simple sometimes it's absolutely impossible yeah I agree totally and I'm exactly the same way sometimes I can find refuge and sometimes I can't find refuge and sometimes the fact of not finding refuge I have to and then find refuge in that a refugee Marge I'm not sure if this would be an example of taking refuge

[86:38]

or stepping back this morning I ran and as I ran down my street a dog joined me and I felt annoyed dog off the leash the dog would trip me up and he would not he ran in front of me and behind me and I had to kind of slow off and stop and I was irritated that's all the dharma go ahead and I thought how else could I look at this and so then I said well he's company and it's dark and that's nice to have company he reminds me of a dog I had once and that's sort of sweet to remember that

[87:40]

and then I thought you know you'll be able to detect the skunks that are hard for me to see at this dark time and they're very active around 5, 36 o'clock just going home I guess so as I ran along I was able to feel some gratefulness for the dog being there and all of a sudden I saw he was very busy and he was busy with skunks that I would have come quite close to I don't know if that I'm often accused when I do things like that of being Pollyanna of living in a dream world and not being very realistic after all dogs should be on leashes

[88:43]

and why do you have to turn things around like this and be grateful for the company is that anything close to what you're saying to sometimes in Zen or Dogen Zenji says sometimes you turn the Dharma sometimes the Dharma turns you and you should know that both of these are part of the Dharma so I was then in a way I was standing back from both I was looking at both yeah so you don't have to dismiss one as saying well that was the way to do it and this other one wasn't I get it in that sense it's just as important to have awareness

[89:51]

in our rather than thinking there's some way to practice and some way to be there's the importance of whether you're doing it the way you're supposed to or being the way you're supposed to be or stepping back or stepping forward there's awareness all the time because both are equally the Dharma and there's there's the eyes wide open Dharma and then there's where you're the falling asleep Dharma both are equally the Dharma there's a story that I like a lot it's not too long so I can briefly tell you there's one chapter in Dogen it's a chapter called One Bright Pearl and it concerns a story about a Zen teacher who used to say to his students over and over again all the universe is one bright pearl and so he said it so much of course

[90:53]

his students started repeating it so then one day he went up to his student and he said all the universe is one bright pearl how do you understand that and the monk said was it the other way around now anyway somewhere one of the monks said well what need is there to understand I guess and at that point I think he was repeating what the teacher had said somebody had asked the teacher you say all the universe is one bright pearl how should I understand that and the teacher said what need is there to understand so then later on he asked the monk all the universe is one bright pearl how do you understand that

[91:54]

and the monk repeated back what the teacher had said what need is there to understand and then the teacher said I thought so you're living in the black mountain cave of demons

[92:03]

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