It's a nice challenge to be up here. And in fact, I thought of Debra yesterday because after the last two Women's Sessions, we fell into conversations that, the end of which Debra would say, well, you should say that in the Zendo, you should say that in the Zendo. And yesterday I couldn't remember what it was. So if you remember, remind me because I don't think, that this is about that. There are a lot of issues with practice that I would love to talk about. And after practicing for nine years, I feel like I'd like to be able to pull things from the sutras and the masters and sort of weave things together really well. And this being a women's sitting, I'd also like to address women's issues and our particular challenges with practice.

[01:14]

But what I feel is that I'm a beginner. I really feel like a beginner. And I can't even brag that I have beginner's mind. I feel like I can't even offer you that. And to get up here and try to express my experience feels really difficult because experience is so nonverbal. So being up here, how am I? Like right now, what is my experience right now? How do we arrive in the moment without wiggling out of it? And is it enough? And can I let it be enough? I think of the Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara with a thousand arms and a thousand eyes reaching out to

[02:21]

respond to the world of suffering with compassion. And for me, there's a dark side of those thousand arms and thousand eyes being greedy with desire. There's a book by David Kalupahana. It's called The Principles of Buddhist Psychology. It's a really excellent book that I can't find anymore. In it, he compares the psychological studies of William James to the teaching of the Buddha. And they both agree that this world is the world of countless possibilities. There's just lots and lots to choose from, but it's also the world of selection. And we're required by the form of this world and by our karma to make selections. And this is an endless source of grief for me. So I work at a public school and I teach science and I'm new at it.

[03:31]

And so of course I want to be really, really excellent at it right now. So I have this goal of reaching children and improving their lives and also making education really exciting so that my goals could be virtuous or even altruistic. Used to, but no longer obscures the fact that I have a greedy desire to shine right now. So It's not just shining in front of others so that you'll think I'm great. But shining in a way that means I've arrived at a full development without having to go through the steps. As I've been uncovering this need for excellence and seeing it as a desire has sort of woken up something about my suffering, my real suffering. So the truth is I'm really struggling in my job.

[04:35]

The actual activity of teaching and then also all the lesson planning and all the anxiety it brings up for me. And what it's teaching me is that my practice right now is to suffer. And it seems like it's been that way a lot in my life. But it's been cloaked, actually. And I don't mean to glorify suffering, but actually I think I do glorify suffering. And I mean to. Because suffering isn't good enough for me. I'm really driven to enhance it or embellish it or make it more terrifying than it actually is. So my question is, how is it that I can suffer and desire that I don't suffer and then choose to make it worse? So as most of you know, the Four Noble Truths are life is suffering.

[05:45]

There is a cause to suffering. There's an end to suffering. and the Eightfold Path is the life to end suffering. Reb once gave a lecture where he was very impassioned, he was very emphatic that the First Noble Truth was not in fact life is suffering, but the translation was actually attachment to life is suffering. And I really like that because it meant that life itself wasn't suffering. It meant that I was doing something, we were doing something, or there was karmic effect. There was something that could be fixed. And so there was this sort of freedom of, well, life's not really suffering. Well, life really is suffering. It's not that he was wrong. It's just that our attachment is a condition of our life, and we can't escape that, so we can't escape suffering. Kadagiri Roshi says that suffering is the first of the four holy truths.

[06:51]

Suffering is not merely pain or the lack of pleasure. It's actually a holy truth of existence. So what he says, the first holy truth is suffering. This is a very important point. Suffering is not merely suffering as opposed to pleasure. Suffering is a holy truth. This means that it is one aspect of human life from which no one can escape. It is completely beyond what one likes or dislikes. You have to face it directly because your life is right in the midst of suffering. You cannot ignore it. If you ignore suffering, it becomes monstrous. And he goes on to talk about three kinds of suffering, physical suffering, mental suffering, and my favorite, the third suffering, which is radical suffering. And so I want to read just a bit of it, and then I'll go on.

[07:55]

Very basic or fundamental suffering. Radical suffering is the suffering produced by the transiency of phenomena. Realization of this suffering is something you can experience through deep practice or through deep understanding of the total picture of human life as it interrelates with all sentient beings. In other words, through deep practice of Buddhism, you can understand and experience radical suffering. When your mind is busy and noisy, it is very difficult to have this experience. Only when your practice is moving along very deeply will you experience this kind of suffering. This suffering is very calm, very still and very silent, but still it is there. It is very difficult to be free from radical suffering. When your practice is very deep and your body and mind are very calm, you understand human feelings. You understand the feelings of the bird, the feelings of the tree. You understand everything.

[09:00]

Still there is suffering that is very calm and silent. It is a kind of fear. a very deep fear coming from the bottom of the human mind and body. You cannot explain it, but it is always there. You have to face this suffering too." He goes on to speak of the causes of suffering and various other things, but I really can't get past just this first holy truth of suffering, especially this inescapable radical kind. After all this time, it's basically all I can handle right now. And I cannot say that I've accepted that life is suffering. This is what I found out. Life is suffering. I'm going to say it a lot so you can get used to it.

[10:02]

There's not much more to it than that. It's all embellishment. But I add on all this extra stuff. I say it over and over in a kind of amazement. No one escapes pain, disappointment, loss, longing, struggle. I don't escape it, none of us do. But instead of this being a truth of life or my life, I've taken it to be an indication that I'm messing up. So it's a holy truth from the ages, but for me, it's not a holy truth, it's an indication that I'm messing up. So the medicine of practice is offered to me. How can I use it when I'm fighting the fact that I'm even ill? You take the medicine, my cells are in denial, so they can't take the medicine. It feels like I'm sick, but I have so much reaction that this holy truth has happened to me.

[11:05]

I have an illness that we all have. I don't say this from a place of being a victim or being powerless. I'm ill. I suffer from wrong views. and my wrong views increase the suffering. I believe that I am somebody and that this somebody must perform in a really incredible way and thereby be exempt from this truth of suffering. So when I sit down to write my lesson plans, I'm not just coming up with a few interesting science activities for kids to keep them interested or learn something. No. I'm inventing and conjuring all science and all curriculum for all kids for all time. So I have to master the past, the present, and the future in these few moments at my desk.

[12:11]

And you can imagine the expectation is a little daunting. And so I have this healthy dose of anxiety that arises. So at this point I've already added a layer or so to just the natural suffering. And now enters the judge. Now, does the judge enter here? I wrote that. I wrote, enter the judge. And then my first question was, does the judge enter here or has she been here all along? I mean. Where is she working? Who's setting up water around here? Does she actually initiate the holy truth of suffering? Or is she Meili's golden whip in the little blue bag? Meili talked about this woman who had a little blue bag and took out a golden whip to whip up her champagne. Champagne wasn't good enough. She had to sort of emphasize the fact. Well, you can do that with champagne. You can probably also do that with other substances like suffering.

[13:15]

So I feel like I have a little blue, maybe a big blue bag with a big golden whip. There's a person and there's a task and then there's some resistance to the task. Then there's a reaction to the fact that there's resistance. then there's a judgment about the reaction, then there's shame, and it's just piling up. So I'm just curious why someone as smart as myself would have to oblige herself to suffer this whole humiliating process. Basically, When I back up, I see I don't wish to experience the suffering of the task or the suffering of the resistance to the task. This is not suffering equal to a holy truth. It's too ordinary and there's no cure for it.

[14:19]

I mean, it's very deep radical suffering because it has no end. It's an endless cycle to be endured. I'll always be presented with disagreeable tasks. And I'll always maybe encounter some resistance. I mean, this is sort of the cycle of our life. It's not always the case that every task is disagreeable, but I'll probably always have disagreeable tasks. This is the experience. As it is, this is just it. I and the judge are in some sort of mysterious psychological cahoots, and we feel like much more is called for than just that. So there's all this critical response. So now the disagreeable task is the disagreeable me. All of a sudden, I'm not great, I'm having a negative experience, and that's not okay. And so this heaping just starts.

[15:22]

Judgment, recrimination, shame, more judgment. For years, I couldn't even catch this process until I was positively seething with unfocused fear, dread, self-loathing, a lot of anxious crying, and a really bitter hopelessness. And by this point, it's completely beyond control and endurance, you know, it's past the point Now that's suffering, right? So why should it occur to me that I haven't faced my suffering? I'm in it big time. It hasn't occurred to me I'm not suffering. Because I'm really suffering.

[16:24]

All these processes are really compelling to me. I really enjoy the psychology and the mythology of sorting out the dimensions of this. I like to believe there's a structure which, you know, on a relative level there is. There's this structure called me. I've built it so I feel like it could be solved and rearranged and healed. And it's actually very instructive to sort of sort through my habits and my tendencies, and all the contents of this drama. Now our Buddhist tradition urges us to sit still and observe what's happening as it's happening. And not to interpret it, but just to observe it, experience it, and let it go. And return to the breathing for the next moment.

[17:38]

And I have practiced diligently in this way, and I wanted to alleviate my suffering, and I've tried to alleviate my suffering. And the more I saw my suffering remain, the more I suffered about that. So of course we're supposed to sit just to sit, not to improve. But the benefits of sitting, even if you've only been sitting a short time, are really unmistakable. There are benefits. And since for most of us it requires, you know, unremitting pain and suffering to even get us here in the first place, once we get going, if it gets worse, there's something questionable about that. So I would drop this stuff, but they would get, you know, I would drop pride or anger or just your sort of common, ordinary, everyday suffering, I would drop it and it would get into this tangle that I was an expert at doing. And they wouldn't get dropped.

[18:45]

And so when they would re-arise, they would be sort of armed with like more ammunition, because they'd been through this cycle and the judge has sort of added this stuff. Shame and frustration in particular. The shame of returning suffering becomes even a bigger problem than the problem itself. So I felt, and I often continue to feel, that I had to enter these dark realms and sort out the contents and look at the structure and get really intimate with all this passion, all this craziness. And I had to enter in, evaluate what I thought was going on, deconstruct it and rebuild it. And that probably sounds a lot like therapy to most of you. And that's what I've done.

[19:46]

I've done a lot of therapy. And I ask, what is this to do with practice? So the main thing is, it's the understanding that I'm not admitting life is suffering. That I am suffering, life is suffering. I mean, it's like backing up to the very beginning. Life is this experience of suffering, and I excel at inflaming the suffering and really feeling suffering, but not actually suffering. And I could not locate my resistance to all of this. I didn't know I was resisting it. I thought I was truly suffering the grand suffering. I couldn't find the place where I was just mad that I had to do a lesson plan, or I was mad I had to get up early. I couldn't find that resistance. I could only find the heat. I craft things so that the high drama and reaction obscure simple, straightforward, radical suffering.

[20:54]

I add on so much judgment, self-loathing, loneliness, and vulnerability, and get all this fantastic, delicious, interesting, psycho stuff that I couldn't endure simple suffering. But there I was, suffering, and the wash of emotions I liken to floods of water gushing over me, feelings of drowning, nothing to stand on or hold on to, just water swirling and you're nothing there. Sitting becomes a vessel to contain all this strong emotion. It's very rooted, it's very physical. Particularly Sashin, would help me to build a container for that which I feel like I can't endure, I can't understand, nor could I release. It was just the way to tolerate my existence. So, it's getting to know the judge, becoming intimate with her, well first her methods,

[22:10]

and then later on her motivation. I had to trace back my experience through this voice. So I now must enter the familiar and wild terrain of hysteria, helplessness, with an eye of dispassion and compassion. And this for me is nearly impossible because the judge is so convincing I couldn't separate myself from her. Diminishing her negative power requires the light of awareness, which means I have to be able to see her shine a light. So with an eye to observe and be present with the experience of her and resist diving into this soup that she's cooking up. So I ask her,

[23:12]

Well, what do you need? What does she need? What do you want that you're helping me to make this so much harder? I asked the direct question. I thought I would just get a direct answer, you know, like, oh, well, here, it's like that. vision that you go into therapy and you're going to have that one final sort of breakthrough where everything's going to fall into place. You're going to have the one memory that sort of realigns everything and you're going to be cured. It's going to feel like a cure and you're going to know, ah, here's the source of my suffering. I've exposed it. It's realigned just through my exposure and it's fine. It's been really difficult for me to see that it, well, for me, it doesn't happen that way. It's taken me lifetimes, and particularly this lifetime, to build this very fixed, solid structure of my personality.

[24:14]

It's complete with a really hardworking judge, and it won't dissolve and rearrange itself just because I've decided it's not good enough for me anymore. So it's a sort of rolling up the sleeves and having to slowly, beam by beam, deconstruct and reconstruct my house, the self. I mean, forget the fact that we're doing Buddhist practice and we're trying to drop the self. I mean, we're talking pre-Buddhism here. I'm getting a self together so I can drop it. I was telling Grace on the phone one day, I'm really getting this self just the way I want it so that when I drop it, it will be the supreme offering. It's like, I'm just not dropping this neurotic sort of, no, I'm gonna drop the best self ever. But maybe drop the self that is just doing the basic essential suffering.

[25:22]

One of the practices I've taken up is actually a dangerous one to sort of offer in the context of Buddhist practice. It's thinking. You know, we're all so troubled by our thinking and I am as well. A lot of my pain comes from wrong thinking and how it sort of elicits emotion. But practicing clear thinking has been like airing out a soggy mess. If all this experience has been real watery and full of just damp, soggy, that sort of swampy feeling, air sort of lets in the element that's missing for me. Ideas, concepts, all the isms and the ologies, all those, I love that stuff, and it actually calms me down. They're very soothing to all this panic and paralysis that I feel that's actually very overtired, you know?

[26:25]

And I don't think, for me, it's been like false systems that are gonna fix me because as I've been waking up to the fact that there's not going to be just sort of one thing that fixes me if I could just find what it is, I've allowed analysis and study and thinking to provide insights about my condition and my tendencies and to see that I have needs and that they're allowed And then I begin to look at the judge in a way that has some distance and dispassion. And I see that her agenda is not necessarily nor entirely evil. In fact, it's actually quite useful when she's not beating me up with it. In other words, could it be that she's trying to tell me something about my basic radical suffering?

[27:31]

Is she making my experience so severe because I'm ignoring the more moderate fundamental messages of suffering? And do I make the mistake over and over again of falling for her content? self-loathing, manic effort, all the symptoms of psychological distress. And am I missing her red flag of the truth? So now she's a little bit separate from me. She's actually somebody in here who's trying to actually work with me and I've internalized her in some weird way. And now I'm actually asking her, is this who you are? I offer her some curiosity and also some kindness. Like, what is it? How can I help you? As if she were my baby sister. As if she actually needed something also.

[28:37]

So in this little crack of separation is my big chance. And having a little distance provides just even a little bit of calmness. and some separation. And this is where separation is also our truth. We're one, but we're also separate. Well, it's also true of our experience. We're one with our experience, but we're also just a container for these experiences that are coming through us. So, as I practice like with clear thinking, as well as this physical effort of sitting down and breathing, And also with the help of all of you talking with me and sitting with me, the traps begin to clarify. So how has this helped? You know, insight alone, I believe, for me is insufficient.

[29:41]

It's insufficient just to know what's going on. And that was a big disappointment to me. It's that thing I mentioned before, that I want that one memory from childhood to come and save me. I want insight that will fix things. Well, without it, we're lost. This is true. And insight and sort of rearranging my thinking disciplines my mind, which helps sort of air out and lighten up this heavy load of emotion. It's a very rigorous retraining for me. There's a bumper sticker that says, if you can't change your mind, are you sure you still have one? Dogen says, I believe, to change the mind of a sentient being is difficult indeed.

[30:46]

Is it equally difficult to recognize that the mind, when we don't interfere with it, will change on its own? And can we allow that? For me, that's almost more difficult to stay out of the way. The mind will change. Things will drop. It's already happening. I'm just suffering. I don't have to suffer more and then be the hero. That lets it go. And this seems more in keeping the idea that the mind changes of its own, that our experience changes on its own, is in keeping with our practice, what the teaching is. And it offers the most freedom. So clear thinking has helped me sort through a real parade of suffering and emotions and construct new selves.

[31:52]

I mean, like waking up in the morning and thinking I could actually be a different person. I could try one new thing. I mean, this was unavailable to me. And I realize I'm still in the realm of building, you know. And if our practice is in the realm of freedom and letting go or recognizing all these constructions are delusions, that's helpful when I'm ready for it. But I'm sometimes not even ready for it. I'm still mucking around in the structure. And I need the structure. I need the security. to have this self, to be this self. But it's only sitting, the actual physical effort of attention to breathing and experience that offers daily practice at getting better at the acceptance of life as it is.

[32:55]

I mean, I could talk to you about it. We could talk about we're accepting life as it is. But usually I'm lying to you. I'm saying it, but I'm really wanting it to be different. And only when I sit and cast my eyes downward and stay here do I even get the chance to practice letting it be the way it is. Life is suffering, and that really, really was not okay with me. So I made it suffering with a capital S, you know. And that was more gratifying to my ego. The more pain I went through, the more redemptive, the more redemption I thought I would earn. And actually it was a cloak for allowing me to indulge my desires even more. I was suffering so much that I didn't realize I had so many desires, so I would get to indulge them, because I thought I deserved it.

[33:58]

So analysis has been my painstaking attempt to live all of this suffering and expose it to myself and to other people. And call out all these characters and name them and be really familiar with the play. I mean, I'm writing it after all. But I would say that sitting is my expression of faith that it's okay to suffer. and that life is suffering. And the fact of suffering doesn't mean that I've screwed up and that I needn't whip up my suffering to punish myself or anybody else. I have this poem that I want to read that I don't exactly know if it fits, but it fits for me. It's kind of a poem of gratitude. It gave me strength for a lot of years and I didn't even know how.

[35:03]

It's by Anna Akhmatova and I don't even know the title of it. If all who have begged help from me in this world, all the holy innocents, the broken wives and cripples, the imprisoned, the suicidal. If they had sent me one Kopeck, I'd be richer than all Egypt. But they did not send me Kopecks. Instead, they shared with me their strength. So that nothing in the world is stronger than I. And I can bear anything, even this. Wow, so we have some time.

[36:10]

It went a little longer than I thought, but not so bad. By the way, this watch I got from the last Women Says Sheen, so if it belongs to any of you, it's really not my style, but I've been wearing it. And we have some time, and I really hope we'll respond. Good, that's good. You know, I was listening to all of your characters, and it reminded me of a baseball team. And either you or the suffering was evolving from one to the other. But I haven't given up on a cure. So my cure is, who's watching the game? I once asked that question to someone who's watching.

[37:15]

Who is it? And thought, that's the person I want to identify with. And the response was, yes, the question is who's watching. But then drop the who and just watching and even no identity. But that's the right way for me to go. Yeah, who's watching? is that your talk felt like a labyrinth. And I was partly feeling like running over there and giving you a hug and saying, let her rip, Karen. Or staying here and keeping myself separate from your suffering. And wanting to say, life is definitely suffering. Now I wanted to like, I have so much problem with staying with just that, because it isn't just that for me.

[38:25]

But what your talk also brought up to me was how does one, how do we endure the unendurable? And last night I, I have a very dear friend who is a multiple, and I spent time last night talking to several people who are victims of ritual abuse and who are multiples. And I've never spent an evening like that with people who have endured the unendurable and whose egos and analytical stuff has been completely, as far as I can tell, burnout. It's gone. And what's left is incredible presence and spontaneity and vulnerability in the best sense, without all these heads that we hold on to.

[39:42]

They had no choice. They would die if they held on. So whatever person was there, whether it was the best person, who knows what it would have been. But it's gone. And what's left was an incredible essence of all heart. Peter last week was so moving to me, is that his name? God, I thought about it all week. When you asked him, how do you deal, I'll just paraphrase it, with what would you say today about your suffering and how to cope with it? And he just immediately said, with all my heart. And I just, so, I'm just gonna show you. Yeah, I think that there is a lot more.

[40:43]

If I sit down to do lesson plans and I go through anxiety, you can imagine how I was when I sat down to do this talk. The actual experience was right there in front of me that I wanted to talk about, and so I had to practice this process of separation. There's so much more to life. And those of you who know me know that I enjoy things quite a bit, you know. It was just really important for me to see that life is suffering, but it's not more than that. I mean, the suffering is not more than the suffering. It's just that suffering. And seeing that I suffer so much more for all these, you know, it's extra. And there's also joy, and there's also liberation. Life is completely mysterious and amazing. But I'm interested in my suffering. And I'm interested in getting out of my suffering.

[41:47]

But I've been making it worse. So I've just been tackling this one problem, but acting like I was a victim of the unbearable. When in fact it's, you know... I don't want to take up too much time, but I just have a lot to say about this. Grace said, um, who's watching? And I just felt like saying, who beat you up? Well, that would be my psychology talk, you know? And that's really interesting to me. You know? The point is, I'm now beating myself up. who beat you up for this? Right. That stuff's all very interesting to me. And, you know, there's lots of stories to tell about that. And it's not just who beat me up, but how the beating happened and the craziness our psyche can get into. And that's part of how we keep ourselves enslaved.

[42:49]

So for me, it was important to go in and see the circuitry. I had to see it because it was operating all the time. I don't say everybody has to do that. Some people are able to just sit and admit that it's messed up and practice dropping it. But I got worse. So I had to go in and look at it and shine the light on it. And I couldn't do it by myself on the cushion. That's what Peter called, he said, you have to untangle the tangles. So that's what I did and it requires a lot of help and it's very interesting to me. It actually calms me down to tell the story, to make a myth out of it, to let it be psychological. But all of it's been in service so I can get back on the cushion and face the wall and die the great death, you know, but these are where steps and stages serve me rather than, you know, rather than be a way to avoid the great matter.

[43:51]

So I don't feel like I'm really speaking to the largeness of your question or your comment. But yeah, who beat me up? And who am I beating up? I know some third graders I'm beating up and I do, I'm really mean to them and I watch that come out and it really makes me suffer. You know? Because life is so much in the moment, you really can't control it. Anyway, I... Do you believe that? Not, no, not yet. That I'm working with that. Hi, Ellen. Thank you very much. And I was glad you just made the comment that you know that you really enjoy yourself. So this was, it gave you a depth to hear about the struggle.

[44:55]

But also, I've always been fascinated by, this is going to be a simplistic way of saying a complex thing, but people who have suffered the most often have the most incredible sense of humor and liveliness. I don't know if you have anything that you can say about that, but it's certainly, I mean, all that you've said I know is true for you, and yet, you know what, just to the extent that I know you, I feel like you've given me so much in this endo of your humor, which some people here don't have. And maybe you can say, I mean, that's not just a defense. I know who's humor is a defense, yours is not. It's a very deep heart and an enjoyment. Right.

[45:59]

Well, how I developed it, I think, would be another good talk. I'd love to, you know, the family dynamics are just really interesting to me. But, you know, in my family, I was, well, we were all a bunch of cut-ups, but I was, I just, it was a survival thing and an attention thing and all that. But I also have a natural sense of humor. I mean, things are really funny. And I also like to be, I like attention, but I never would admit that, of course. I don't really need attention, but I love attention. I love attention, and I love to be funny, and I love to make people laugh. And I think there's a side of it that is really pure, that is like when people are laughing, they're enlightened. And so, to get people to laugh is giving them a great gift, and I love to give gifts. Not just to be liked, although I'm sure that's in there, but because it's so much pleasure, just to make people laugh. It's also, it saved my life. It just saves my life, it's just, it's really allowed me a little bit of distance, you know, it really does.

[47:03]

We're getting on time to close, but yeah, I really believe it, for me, it's also not a defense. In fact, I wish I had some more defenses sometimes, you know, because I really suffered from not being able even to contain all this, but that all of you know when I'm going through something, because it's not so easy for me to, to hide what I'm feeling. But, you know, there are worse things, so I don't mind so much.

[47:31]

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