We're initiating a remote broadcast of our talks to the community room. I don't know if there's anybody actually in the community room, but if there is, they can hear it. So hello in there and out there in radio land. We've been inviting our kids to come to a talk a month, I think, and this is the day when they are in our clutches. Right. So be good. You too. gonna use this as an excuse to sing a song and talk to them a little and maybe talk to you a little and then we'll proceed on to kind of the broader points but maybe you don't actually you don't ever really need an excuse to sing a song but sometimes it feels like that and in here we don't do it so much you know usually we sing like

[01:15]

one note, which almost invariably goes flat. But I was thinking about the song for the kids' lecture. It's a song written by a woman named Rosalie Sorrell, who some of you may know of and know her great singing and her great songs. And this is one that she wrote, I think, when she was dealing with her kids as they were young. The song is called I'm Gonna Tell. Do any of you know this song? Any of you know this song? Okay. And it's about, well, you'll see. And I invite you to sing. The chorus goes like this. I'm gonna tell. I'm gonna tell. I'm gonna holler and I'm gonna yell. I'll get you in trouble for everything you do.

[02:20]

I'm gonna tell on you. You can kind of think of it as American foreign policy towards Iraq. Try singing it. I'm gonna tell I'm gonna tell I'm gonna holler and I'm gonna yell I'll get you in trouble for everything you do I'm gonna tell on you I'm gonna tell how you broke the plate I'm gonna tell about all those bananas you ate I'll tell on you one time, I'll tell on you two, I'm gonna tell on you. I'm gonna tell, I'm gonna tell, I'm gonna holler and I'm gonna yell.

[03:21]

I'll get you in trouble for everything you do I'm gonna tell on you I'm gonna tell where you hid your gum And I'm gonna tell that you still suck your thumb I'm gonna tell mom about the cat and the glue. I'm gonna tell on you. I'm gonna tell. I'm gonna tell. I'm gonna holler and I'm gonna yell. I'll get you in trouble for everything you do I'm gonna tell on you I'm gonna tell where you hid the broom So you wouldn't have to clean up your room And when mama finds out she'll sweep it up with you I'm gonna tell on you I'm gonna tell, I'm gonna tell I'm gonna holler and I'm gonna yell I've got you in trouble for everything you do I'm gonna tell on you

[04:45]

I'm gonna tell how you punched me and you bit me. I'm gonna tell how you socked me and you hit me. But I'm not gonna tell Mama what I did to you. I'm just gonna tell on you. I'm gonna tell. I'm gonna tell. I'm gonna holler and I'm gonna yell. I'll tempt you in trouble for everything you do. I'm going to tell on you. I'm going to holler and I'm going to bawl. This is the non-PC verse. Don't do this with your own children. I'm gonna holler and I'm gonna bawl And mama's gonna smash you all over the wall And when he comes home I will tell daddy too I'm gonna tell on you I'm gonna tell, I'm gonna tell I'm gonna holler and I'm gonna yell

[05:58]

I'll get you in trouble for everything you do. I'm going to tell on you. I was so tempted to go on and sing more songs. That'd be much easier. So have you guys, have you ever told on your brother or your sister? They told on who? And why do you think they do that? I bet you have some idea. How do you feel when they do that? You don't like it? How come? You don't know why you don't like it?

[07:00]

You just don't like it? Alice, have you ever told on Malcolm? Uh, yeah, tons of times. And why do you do that terrible thing? Um, because he does terrible things to me. Oh, wow. So it's just, you're getting back at him? Yeah. And does it feel good when you do that? Um, sort of. Hmm, wrong answer. Malcolm, how does it feel when she tells on you? Do you ever tell on Alice? No, because you're such a good boy, right? Alex, do you ever tell on Sylvia? You know the answer to that? I know, but this is like public confession here. Yes? And why do you do it?

[08:04]

Because she punches me. She doesn't punch you. Sometimes. And what do you do when she punches you? I tell mom. And what does mom do? What did you do to her? Oh, such a good answer. She gets the strokes. And does it feel better when you tell her? Yep. Okay, we're getting something basic here. And Keiko, do you ever have this experience? No? Nobody tells on you and you don't tell on anybody? Does it make you, does it feel good because then you kind of feel a little above the other person?

[09:10]

Yes. Yes. And how do you think that makes the other person feel? So, do you want that person to feel bad? Sometimes, sometimes not. What about in school? Has it ever happened in school? No. Not usually. No, it's a problem, because when you want somebody to feel bad and you make them feel bad, then their response is often to react to you and want to make you feel bad, right? Huh?

[10:11]

You just ignore it? You mean you just kind of let it go by? That's pretty good. It's good not to get caught in kind of this cycle of you tell on me and I tell on you and you tell back on me. This is actually the way wars start. Not necessarily in your family, but actually sometimes in your family. There are things that can happen in a family between brothers and sisters that hang on for a lot of years. So this is why we take care in what we say about each other. Does that make some sense? Yes. But it sounds like you've had a very bad experience. This is, uh... My son, the bedding therapist.

[11:25]

Well, it's true. I did have bad experience, but what actually feels worse to me was that when I was a kid, sometimes I would do that to my brothers and sisters or others, and they had a bad experience. And that's kind of worse, because my own bad experience, I can sort of fix. I can take responsibility for it. I can do like you were saying and just kind of let it go by. If I've hurt somebody else's feelings, I can't undo that. You know what I mean? Does that make sense to you guys? You can apologize, but once you've said this, the hurt is already done. So that's why we'd be very careful about what we tell on. Sometimes people are doing dangerous things and we need to inform somebody else, which is not the same as telling on.

[12:28]

But telling on, when the feeling is you want to hurt them, that's something you should really watch in yourself, okay? Anyhow, I think we're going to let you guys go off and play. But I'd like to thank you for listening and for singing the song, OK? Thanks. Oh, and Dad? Yes? One time you said, I'm going to take you in trouble for everything you do. You mean I made a mistake singing the song? You were telling all these people that I made a mistake singing the song? Yeah. Boy, I'm gonna get you later. You watch out. You better get out of here now. Goodbye, guys. Thank you. I've been thinking about that song, which doesn't exactly fit what I wanted to talk with, but it's pretty close and connected.

[14:21]

I sort of had this experience in Rohatsu Sesshin. where I had a conversation with Sojin. I know we're not supposed to talk about Doksan, but sometimes the general features of it, it's okay. I believe you. We had a discussion about impatience, my impatience, which is a hindrance and a difficulty for me. And it was, you know, it was kind of painful to have that reflected back, but it also felt I just sort of, I did sort of sit with it and not, and try not to push it away. And in that day, in the, that same day I realized that I had gotten incredibly irritated and impatient on sort of four or five separate occasions.

[15:35]

with things that are happening in the Zendo or things that are happening both. There was actually no distinction in a way between what happens kind of externally with people and what happens internally. My irritation, I can't quite remember all the details right now, but My irritation was with others and with myself, and as the time goes on, I can't quite make the distinction so easily. But the gist of it is, why are they doing that to me? And when one would look at it, one would find in here, almost everything that happens, everything that happens, it's not done in relation to you or to me. It's not like this person is breathing too hard or this person is being, listen to how they're ringing the bell or something like that.

[16:40]

That's not too, that's just what they're doing. The part, the impatience part was my resistance to taking that as just that person's action and my personalizing it, my self-centeredness. And so I've really been looking at that and also at the the kind of habitual behavior of then wanting to blame them. You know, blame them for their shortcomings or blame them for their rudeness or their unmindfulness or their noisiness or whatever. And so directing the pain that I was feeling outward

[17:41]

There's a Buddhist teacher, I mean, I probably have said this before, a man by the name of Ken MacLeod, who is a very long-time Tibetan practitioner, and he's been kind of reshaping Dharma in terms that Westerners can work with that are really accessible. And his his rendering of the second noble truth. The first noble truth is that there is suffering. And the second noble truth is the truth of the cause of suffering. And what he identifies as the cause of suffering, which really resonates with me, at least of It's not the entirety of suffering, but one principle thing that we have to deal with and that's relevant here, what I was talking about, is the cause of suffering is emotional reactivity.

[18:43]

It's a kind of self-centered reactivity. It's not the emotion itself, because that's not necessarily something that we can control. that just emotions come up, you know, and they drift through like clouds or they, you know, they linger like a big storm over the ocean. But our reactivity to it, what it leads us to do in reaction to that suffering, to that pain, is that's what he was identifying as the cause of suffering. So I was reading in I guess in December after Sashin, I got a newsletter from the Human Kindness Foundation, which is an organization in North Carolina run by Bo and Sita Lazov, who for 30 years have been taking basically a Hindu practice into the American prison systems.

[19:52]

And they're very neat people. I know them. And their work is very close to work that we've been trying to do at Buddhist Peace Fellowship. And we learn a lot from them. They really are teachers. And in that newsletter was a little piece on a practice. And This made a lot of sense to me. I'm going to let you read it to you. And actually, I made a bunch of copies. And if anyone wants one, I'll leave it out on the bulletin board rack afterwards. And this is about the practice of abandoning blame. So let me read this to you. And I'll say a little more, and then we can talk about it. Abandoning blame. This practice can be a powerful tool for letting go of false beliefs about who or what controls our moods.

[20:58]

We recommend that you try this vow for at least one month and repeat it aloud at the beginning of each day. If possible, let a few friends know about your practice so that they can help remind you if you seem to be slipping. And the practice is these two sentences. I pledge to stop blaming others for my negative states of mind. I pledge to stop blaming circumstances for my negative states of mind. So again, I pledge to stop blaming others for my negative states of mind. And I pledge to stop blaming circumstances for my negative states of mind. Throughout the period of your practice, notice any irritability, anger, depression, bitterness that may arise in you and look honestly at what you claim to be the source of it, which is usually someone else or something happening around you or to you.

[22:09]

Remember your pledge and discard your false belief that such and such is bumming you out. Such and such does not have the power to bum you out. Take 100% responsibility for your negativity. And if you continue to be sad or mad after letting others off the hook, that's okay. At least you know it belongs to you and not to them. It's okay to have a down day. Just know that it is your own personal thing, not anyone else's. And strongly resist the temptation to make any important or dramatic decisions on that sort of day. Your life will change tremendously if you sincerely work with this vow for a while. Stop yourself in mid-sentence, if need be, but stop blaming anyone or anything for whatever may be going on inside of you.

[23:16]

You'll be amazed by how much peace and power are gained by abandoning all blame. So I just thought this was real nuts and bolts stuff. And I've been trying to do it and I recommend it. The context is important also. It's powerful that this is a teaching that in a newsletter that's directed to prisoners. Any of you who have been in the prison system or have encountered the prison system or the criminal justice system know that this is a very difficult spiritual position to maintain in those circumstances. So we began a discussion. I lead a group in the women's prison in Dublin, federal prison. And we're beginning to talk about this.

[24:20]

And there's a level in which they understand and accept it and take it in, and a level in which they and all of us want to say, well, yes, but. But this is a radical spiritual position. And it's important to, I think, to hear it and reflect on it and try it, use it. It's very close to... There's a quotation I found from the sixth ancestor, Winung. He who treads the path in earnest, sees not the mistakes of the world. If we find fault with others, we ourselves are also in the wrong. When other people are in the wrong, we should ignore it, for it is wrong for us to find fault. By getting rid of this habit of fault-finding, we cut off a source of defilement.

[25:24]

When neither hatred nor love disturb our mind, serenely we sleep. And in the Dhammapada, the Buddha says, it's easy to see the errors of others, but hard to see your own. You carefully collect the errors of others, but conceal your own. If you focus on the errors of others, constantly finding fault, your sorrows will flourish, and you are far from their ending. So this blaming is, this is a difficult and very subtle habit for us to kind of unpack for ourselves. It also, it makes me think of a story that you probably heard. The story of a man who's rowing his boat downstream in kind of foggy, foggy evening on the river.

[26:29]

And he sees just dimly another boat headed towards him. And he starts yelling at this other boat, because it's going to crash into him, to turn away, to veer off. And there's no response. And finally, his boat is hit. And this infuriates him. And he just is shouting and railing at the boat, at the other boat that's running to him. And he discovers there's nobody in it. It's just, you know, it's cut loose from its mooring and it's just kind of floating about. So who is there to be angry at? You know, now our blaming mind could say, well, who left this untied? But it's really just an empty boat.

[27:33]

And the spiritual position is that actually all of us are empty boats. We're just a constantly changing collection of physical and mental states that's always capable of change and transformation. And the miracle is that we actually have the power ourselves to make that change. Although we often don't see that. So, this is a very difficult spiritual practice. To see that each of us is actually an empty boat and not to blame. One of the points that I think Bo makes in this piece that I wanted to just also focus in on is essentially what the act of not blaming is not blaming another or not blaming circumstances for one's state of mind.

[28:54]

So there's a distinction made between states of mind. States of mind are things that we can clearly and essentially take responsibility for. It's not blaming anyone for anything or not holding anyone responsible for anything. There is responsibility. That's why, you know, that's why we have loss. The lawyers here can excuse my simplistic, I hope they'll excuse my simplistic view, but I see the law as a set of socially agreed upon, mutually agreed upon rules for assigning responsibility.

[29:57]

for making and applying the laws so that we can, in an imperfect way, attain some kind of balance. That's what justice is, is trying to find this balance, is trying to see where responsibility for actual material acts in the world, where that lies, and trying to make some correction, making a judgment about that, finding a balance. And that's a worldly approach. It's also not apart from the spiritual approach because, as you've probably heard many times, this practice is about not one and not two.

[30:59]

So we don't just exist in this absolute realm, we also exist in the realm where we do things Harm may be done. It has to be addressed in one way or another. And we sort of collectively make agreements. That's what's going on. You know, that's what's being sort of hashed out at the United Nations right now. They're trying to figure out what agreements, what wrong has been done, say, in the situation of Iraq, and what agreements do we want to make about that, and what enforcement do we want to have? You know, it's not a spiritual position, but it's necessary, perhaps, in the world. And some of the problem comes not with the separation of these two, but sometimes with the confusion of them, where they're conflated.

[32:02]

This may be a digression, but what troubles me is when religion is used for the assignment of blame, where people and nations are designated as evil. This is not about finding balance. This is about invoking the absolute, you know, in support of one's view. And frankly, that's what I see our leaders doing. I mean, I think it's really what's scary to me is that I think we have a government that's really being run on fundamentalist Christian principles, which is it doesn't work. Nor, to my mind, does a Jewish state work.

[33:08]

Nor, to my mind, does an Islamic state work. That, you know, national states being founded on religious principles is the most destructive thing to those religions. And it also is destructive to all the peoples within them. Anyway, that's maybe a digression. You know, what's wonderful about, there is a place where this worldly process and this spiritual process intersect. For example, and I don't want to romanticize this, said the Truth and Reconciliation process in South Africa. This was not a flawless process, and it was not universally satisfying, and it wasn't complete, because nothing's complete in our world. Our lives aren't complete, they just end, you know, and that's it. But that process was an attempt to surface

[34:14]

basically to do storytelling and acts of confession and repentance where possible. And, you know, the incomplete part is even an apology is not going to bring somebody back from the dead. But the mysterious thing is that That kind of balance, which is actually often called restorative justice, can set a process, an internal process in motion for people who have experienced harm that can allow non-blaming and forgiveness to unfold. It's a mysterious process because it is exactly where the world and spirit intersect. So, when you can't do it, you maybe can't do one without the other.

[35:27]

But again, just to come back, what I'm suggesting we look at in our relationships with each other, in our relationships with ourselves, because that blaming, and there's no distinction there. Often, I find that I'll blame myself for something, for a state of mind. I'm in a certain state of mind, I'm irritable, or I'm depressed, or angry, and I will blame myself for that, which essentially just kind of continues the spiral. Instead of essentially just saying, hmm, I don't feel good now, what should I do? not to get rid of it, but to experience it and maybe not to let it leak on Lori or on my kids or the people I'm working with or the people I'm sitting with, but just to own that as this is how I feel right now and I can apply the practice of, rather than the practice of impatience, the practice of patience.

[36:46]

and endure it with some faith that it will move, it will change, it will not stay locked down in this place. So I just want to read you. I want to read you this pledge once more, and invite you to pick up copies of this sheet if you like, outside on the bulletin board, and then open up for questions. So the vow is, I pledge to stop blaming others for my negative states of mind, and I pledge to stop blaming circumstances for my negative states of mind. And so I'd like to thank you and open up for questions. Thank you very much for a lovely talk. The experience that I have about not projecting the blame outside of myself is

[37:53]

a feeling of almost intolerable pain inside myself. And that's part of the motivation for projecting it out than when I analyze my own experience. So while I hear the comment in the longer commentary that you read, just own it. I agree with the principle, but it's not that easy all the time to just own your own feelings. Rationally, I can understand and I can practice it, especially when I'm cool, but when I'm hot, you know, owning it is very difficult. And there needs to be, it seems to me, in my experience, is a process that I can go through to not just sit with it, which I agree with, but, you know, how to tolerate, and that's what I can use. Tolerate the sometimes overwhelming amount of emotion that's triggered off, or the thoughts, or the guilt, or the whatever combination of things, and it feels to me like if I could take, you know, a day at a time, or steps, or something, that I recognize that I am

[39:09]

reintegrating that feeling into myself and that will settle me. Because it's just too, I don't know, not easy, but it's habitual, you know, to get rid of it. I don't know if you have any thoughts. Well, I have thoughts, but I don't have any real advice, because you have to do the work, and each of us, you know, has a different, It's like each of us has a different pain threshold. And some of us are more fiery and some of us are cooler. But the framing for me is in the Paramita, the Bodhisattva practice of Kshanti, of patience. And patience really means, the translation of the word Kshanti is, it's really We use it as patience, but it's really like endurance or forbearance.

[40:15]

What? Tolerance. Tolerance. Yeah, but tolerance has a different flavor, I think, in our culture. It's really enduring. It's being able to bear, in fact, what's unbearable or seemingly unbearable. And so one thing that one can do is keep that practice in mind And then figuring out, well, how do I do that practice? How do I, each of us has a different way of doing it. How do you do it? But when it comes up in the heat of it, to use the heat as a reminder, oh, I have a practice for meeting the heat. Reminds me of having a baby, the feeling of that unendurable pain for a short while. But you know somewhere this is going to stop and it's going to have a positive outcome most likely. So anything, anything to change is possible.

[41:16]

Right. So you have to be open to, you have to be open to, you have to remember in the practice of patients it's important to remember the unavoidability of change. That it's going to change. Thank you. Yeah, Janet. Thank you very much. I think, of course, not blaming is a practice that I have to learn to do over and over and over again personally. But the question that comes up for me as I listen to you, I notice that the way that I hear you talking about states of mind sounds to me very individualistic and privatized. And so I have a question about systems, you know, I'm sort of the eternal sociologist, and I have two examples come to mind. One is I've had some recent experience of being in an environment, in a kind of a group culture, that really triggered for me a lot of feelings of shame and self-hatred.

[42:29]

Not my shame and self-hatred, but I then put myself in an environment that tends to encourage me to feel some confidence and ease. And I think about, for example, you know, recent brain research has discovered that our limbic brain, which controls our emotions, actually regulate, you know, we regulate one another. limbically and we affect one another biologically limbically you know so I wonder you know about regarding states of mind as being completely sort of individual and privatized and the other example that comes to mind is racism. You know, institutionalized systems that repeatedly humiliate and invisibilize and denigrate people, it's, you know, it seems a little glib to say, well, don't blame anybody else for your state of mind when you operate, when you're living in that kind of a system. So that's what comes up for me. That's why it's a difficult spiritual practice.

[43:32]

You know, I'm not saying that it's only your individual state of mind because there's no you. You know, there's us, of which each of us is functionally and fluidly a piece. So in a way, taking responsibility for one's own state of mind is also taking responsibility for the whole system. And taking responsibility for the system is also the way of taking responsibility for your own state of mind. And we have to be very careful because there can be distortions in any direction. You know, of course I agree with you. And I do not, for a moment, think that there aren't oppressive systems. And the notion of this kind of limbic resonance is, that really makes sense to me.

[44:36]

And it's true, as well, that these systems, the whole system has to be changed and each individual within it, each you know, temporarily constructed individual has to take responsibility for that whole system. So it works. This is why I actually believe in, this is, I think, the essence of, say, socially engaged Buddhism, which believes at the same time, it's the interpenetration of systemic suffering and individual suffering and responsibility. You know, sometimes you work on one, sometimes you work on the other. There's no cut and dry. Judy. Hi, thank you very much. And I just wanted to say, I was a few weeks, maybe a month or so ago, I was interested in this idea of, you know, we talk about the self and it's not real and all that, and yet we all know we get

[45:47]

every day overwhelmed with feelings of irritation from somebody else and I find that coming up in work a lot. And I just stumbled across the following, which was very useful for me. When somebody would do something irritating, it's little things like sniffing. And I noticed that I do that myself. I mean, I also have become very aware that the things that most trigger my irritation, if I really notice, I find I'm doing them to my great shock myself, but anyway, leaving that aside, what I would do when that powerful irritation would come over me, I would just say, I would pretend that that other person was me. Now, that may sound crazy, but it's very easy to do. I just would pretend they were me, and I would suddenly feel much kinder towards them, and kind of understand why they were doing it. And it works.

[46:50]

You know, so I just suggest that as a, you know, as a little way to kind of cut through the powerful. Yeah. Yeah, I think that that's a helpful technique. But I wanted to just something you said in sort of preface. The Buddha never would say whether the self was he never said the self was not real, nor would he say it was real. So I don't want to get caught on that. And I don't either. What I found was that this was useful for not reifying this powerful feeling of the other and me and they're wrong and they're irritating me, that kind of, you know, rather than pushing that or reifying it and getting caught up in it, I just would say, you know, pretend the other person was me Thank you. Ross? Thank you for your presentation with the children.

[47:54]

It was really nice and natural teaching going on there. It was really great to be here for that. You were telling the pledges, reciting the pledges, reminded me of the koan about the fellow who I'm wondering how you work with these prisoners where that middle way of not blaming causing conditions or people for their suffering and at the same time not ignoring that and how they kind of work with that spot. Right. Well, I'm pretty honest with them about what I think, you know. And in a general way, we've had conversations about this. I think they're caught in a screwed up system. And they're caught there usually because they've done something. Some people are in there actually for reasons that I admire, which is one of the kind of more remarkable things about that particular prison.

[49:02]

There are political prisoners in there, you know, who took positions. There was a woman in there last, there was a woman in there a couple months ago who was arrested by the federal government because she was supplying marijuana to medical patients and she did this as a political and personal act. There was another woman who was in there because she was She had done civil disobedience against the School of the Americas. And then there are a lot of people who are in there for drug charges, you know. Some of them because they had the wrong boyfriend, or some of them because they were trying to make money, and some of them because they were doing stock swindles. You know, so they're all in there for different reasons. And the system itself, even the chaplain there says, you know, this is a screwed up system. You know, and he apologizes for what he can't do. that this is the system that they're in. And what's pretty remarkable is that we have this meditation class in there.

[50:08]

And it's a great value to them. And there's a way to look, oh, I've got this meditation class, which is something that in my life outside I may not have encountered. We look at the systemic stuff and at the personal stuff, although I never ask anybody. I don't know what most of these people are in for. You don't ask about their particular conviction, although sometimes it comes out. So do they see some effect from their meditation practice, where they kind of see how the whole thing is played out, and maybe the blaming is not as intense as the societal stuff? Yeah. Yeah, they really do. But the test, of course, will be what happens when they go back. One more. Sherry? To me, the kind of dynamic tension is when something happens, I have my own reaction.

[51:11]

Right. And I can separate, when I'm in good shape, separate from the activity outside that's caused it and be with that and even let go of it. On the other hand, sometimes I can do too good a job of that and then not make changes that need to be made. And so there's stuff out there that really does need to be done. I feel like the real tension, the real challenge is being able to separate enough from your own emotional reactions to kind of address those things in a kind of matter-of-fact centered way. And then it becomes more powerful to try and make changes. Right, so there's separation and there's splitting off. Yeah. you know, splitting off, not so good. Because then what we're really experiencing is hidden from us. Separation, the separation I'm talking about is just like seeing practice as a kind of wedge that can be lightly tapped in place so that there's a gap between your experience, your inner experience, and your reaction.

[52:28]

Your experience is for experience. You know, it's, uh, you can't control that. Your reaction is where the wedge can apply. Anyhow, this is a glorious day, and, uh, we can go outside, have tea, and enjoy it. Thank you.

[52:47]

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