Well, I have a poem for you to finish this talk. I like this poem very much. I probably told it to you the last time I was here, I don't know, but I'll tell it to you again anyway. This is a poem by a man named Derek Walcott. It's called Love After Love. Derek Walcott is from somewhere in the Caribbean. Excuse me. One day you will with elation greet yourself arriving. One day you will with elation greet yourself arriving at your own door, in your own mirror.

[01:10]

Each will smile at the other's greeting, saying, sit here, eat. You will love again the stranger who was yourself. Give wine, give bread, give back your heart to itself. To the stranger who's loved you all your life, whom you ignored, for another who knows you by heart. Take down the photographs from the bookcase, the desperate notes, peel your image back from the mirror, sit, feast. Feast on your life. One day, one day with elation you will greet yourself arriving at your own door, in your

[02:19]

own mirror. Each will smile at the other's greeting, saying, sit here, eat. You will love again the stranger who was yourself. Give wine, give bread, give back your heart to itself. To the stranger who's loved you all your life, whom you've ignored, for another who knows you by heart. Take down the photographs, the desperate notes, peel your image back from the mirror, sit and feast. Feast on your life. When we sit a day like this, you can't help feasting. That's what happens. So, thank you for your sincere effort. Apparently, we now have time for ... I'm willing to, I'm willing to entertain questions.

[03:26]

Question from the audience, is it helpful if people state their first name? Ed. Actually, I have a secret first name before the Ed, which I could reveal to you now if you really, you know, if you want to know. I have a Buddhist name too. But my secret first name is F.F. That's it. On my birth certificate, it's, and they're lowercase Fs, and there's no period. It's just two lowercase Fs, F.F., and then Edward. In my family, you know, Brown, it's considered to be a rather, you know, commonplace name.

[04:41]

So, my middle name is Espie, E-S-P-E, and that's to distinguish me from other Ed Browns. Just in case, this is what my father said. Well, Espie is a family name. It was my great-grandmother's maternal, you know, maiden name. So, it's also a way to preserve the feminine in my family's lineage, you know, since, you don't get too male-dominated. I get it in my name, you see. Anyway, that's enough of this. It's your turn. So, who's up? What's up? Yes? I'm Gabriel. Gabriel. If I have an unstable mind now, why don't I see it?

[05:43]

Aha! This is a famous question in Buddhism. Aha! Well, there's many kinds of answers to that kind of question, you know, many kinds. There's the famous poem is, the mind is like, the body is like a Bodhi tree. Do you know the Bodhi tree? The tree the Buddha sat under attained enlightenment. The body is like a Bodhi tree, the mind a mirror bright. Constantly strive to polish it, let no dust alight. So, you don't see it because of confusion, delusion. You know, you get, they say, oh, it's because you stick to objects. You know, you take what you see to be reality. But the other thing about unstained mind is, it can't be seen. Objects can be seen.

[06:47]

Mind is not a thing. So, how could you see mind? You know, what you can see is things. And there's your mind working so pristinely, perfectly well to see a cup and people and, you know, experience all these things. Everything is just, is a manifestation of unstained mind. And because your mind is unstained, it can't be seen. You know, if your mind was stained, it would mean you'd see me here, and then you'd turn around and I'd still be there. But no, I drop away, and then when you turn your head, and you see what's in front of your face. See, nothing sticks and stains your mind. And you have one day you're sad, and then the next day, just because you're sad one day, it doesn't stay there and stain your mind from then on. This is very nice, you see, and you didn't have to figure that out. So, the other poem, you know, so one idea of Buddhism is, well, you clean things up, wipe away the dust, and then you'll see unstained mind.

[07:51]

But the other idea is, then the sixth patriarch, you know, in the poetry contest, he said, the body is not a Bodhi tree. The mirror has no stand. From the first, not a thing is. Where could the dust alight? So, that was my other answer. You look here, you see me. You look over there, you see someone else. You look outside, you see the trees. You hear the sound of the plane, no problem. You know, so that's your unstained mind. If your mind could be stained, then something would happen, and then it would be stuck like that. Once you saw red, you know, then you could only see red, but that's not the way our mind works. So, anyway, what you can see is things and objects, and mind is not something we see, because mind is not a thing.

[08:52]

So, there's no, huh? Solipsistic, did you say? Anyway, another answer would be, you know, why can't I see it is, what makes you think you can't see it? How did you decide that? How do you know you're not seeing it? How do you know that not seeing it is seeing it? Not seeing it is also your unstained mind. Take my word for it. Suzuki Roshi used to say, big mind is always there. Big mind is like unstained mind. Big mind is always there. So, not seeing, seeing, big mind is there. Big mind is the same as small mind.

[09:57]

So, don't worry. If you don't see it, don't worry about it. It's not like you're seeing, you know, it's what, you know. Sometimes I feel, I mean, it's not as though, you know, seeing big mind would, you know, improve your bank account necessarily, or. It's not like it's good for anything. You know, it's not like you can capitalize on it. Some people have thought that, you know, of course you could capitalize on it, and that's one way of thinking, you know, and that's part of the problem that Zen in America has had, and not just Zen in America, but Buddhism in America. You know, because then you have people, you know, and I thought this, I thought when I first practiced Zen, I thought,

[11:01]

well, I'll get enlightened in a year or two, and then I can do what I want. Because then if anybody has a problem with what you're doing, then you just say, excuse me, but I'm enlightened, you're not, so end of discussion. You know, we don't have anything to talk about. I guess you just don't understand, do you? You know, you're not enlightened the way I am, so back off. You know, I'm just, you know, all this is just happening as a teaching for you, because you don't get it yet, and me, I just do what I want, because I got it now, you know. And that, you know, some people can handle that way of being enlightened, you know, and capitalize on it, they're really good at it. You know, Dov Fridson, he got nine wives, and, you know, oh, at least, oh, that's just the wives. Anyway. What else?

[12:01]

Yes. My name is Jackie. I want to get back to your statistics. It's kind of like the colon, colon I had, it was my understanding of what you said, that you, it seemed like you were making pretty good statistics, but they didn't match up to the concepts of those other statistics, or the other statistics that you had mentioned, and then when you let go of the concepts, you appreciated the statistics that you were making. Now, I wonder how that letting go of the concepts manifests in the real world, and what I mean by that is, we discern a lot, like what's a piece of junk car, and what's a good car, or, like at work, I have a concept of what's a good secretary,

[13:07]

and I drive them crazy a lot, and they drive me crazy. Ultimately, we like each other a lot, but, really, I do have a concept of what a good car is, and it helps, because it keeps me from buying a crappy car, and it keeps me from hiring someone that's really incompetent, so how do you then let go of a concept and still be practical? Well... This is part of the craft. This is called whatever, craft, or developing your capacity to be a human being, because you're absolutely right. We need to have concept, and it's called discrimination, and the problem is that most of us, and what Buddhism is pointing out is that

[14:07]

when you stick to discrimination, and you stay just in the world of discrimination, then, pretty soon, you can't like yourself. You can't like anybody else. Nothing measures up to the concept. So if you stay in that world, and you don't acknowledge the reality of any other world, the world of non-discrimination, then you're stuck. Then you'll be stuck. You'll be bound. You won't have awakening. You're just stuck, and within the world of concepts, nothing can change. There's no freedom in the world of concepts, because as soon as you improve, the model is, as you get to be a better cook, now you have to be an even better cook in the world of discrimination. So the standards keep changing. The standards keep going higher. So you'll always be a schmuck, or whatever, because within the world of discrimination,

[15:10]

nothing can shift. Nothing can change. There's no freedom. So we need the world of discrimination. We have to be able to discriminate, and then what Buddhism is saying, then also, though, recognize the world of non-discrimination, and you should be able to let go of discrimination, and see the ephemeral, or temporary, or tentative quality of discrimination at times, so that you actually can appreciate your life, and value your life in your basic inherent goodness, what the Dalai Lama calls your basic goodness, basic human goodness, good-heartedness. And to acknowledge your good-heartedness, you let go of the discrimination. And when it's useful to discriminate, you discriminate. And that's absolutely right. Some people say that wisdom, you know, point out that wisdom is discrimination.

[16:14]

Wisdom is discrimination-based, but it's discrimination based on non-discrimination. As opposed to, and what that, you know, what it means is that, you know, we say that the bodhisattva depends on the perfection of wisdom, and prajnaparamita is the perfection of wisdom. And so what is, but there's actually nothing to depend on. So you're depending on your own capacity to, and developing your capacity to discriminate, and to let go of discrimination, and to move in the world in different ways. If you never let go of the discriminations, then you, you know, we find we're stuck. There's no freedom. We're completely bound. In the world of non-discrimination, we're already awakened.

[17:17]

You know, we're already one with all beings. We're already unstained. And all the time we actually live in both those worlds. And so it's nice sometimes to, you know, remember that. That we're already one with all beings. We're already completely connected. And, you know, otherwise at some point, you know, having a lot of money means you're important. That's discrimination. And it can't, you know, but then,

[18:19]

but then, you know, not having any money must be important. You know, it's important to be poor. It's important not to depend on your money. We can say many things. So the, part of the idea of, in Buddhism, and especially in Zen, is to be, to be able to, you know, the technical expression is said to be, you know, the sword, the sword of discrimination is to kill and to give life freely. So it also means you can put down the sword of discrimination that cuts, you know, the sword of discrimination cuts this from that. This is good, that's bad. And when you, you know, put it down, and then you have, you know, oneness beyond two or one, or emptiness beyond. And, you know, we're at home in our world.

[19:23]

And then you have some freedom, because you can put it down, and then you pick it up, and you cut. And, you know, it's like, recently somebody, we're, I think about decisions, when you try to decide something. Recently somebody said to me that when they were in S, they didn't, they, you see, they used a technique, they didn't talk about making decisions, you always just chose something. And that was because the word decision implies you're weighing these things in that you actually could decide. But actually what we do in our life is we just choose. We choose to do something, and then we choose to do something else. And there's no way to say what would really be the right thing to do or the best thing to do. But over time, our capacity to move in our life, you know, if we're, as we're awake, and we notice how our discrimination

[20:31]

gets us into trouble. You know, we can take that into account. Or how our, how our, how our failure to discriminate, you know, can get us into trouble too. So we're not trying to become stupid and dumb and not, you know, not be able to discriminate. We want to be able to discriminate and not discriminate and discriminate and not discriminate. Yeah? I've got a question about pain. I haven't done a day sitting in a while and I forgot that it was painful. How could you forget? It must not have been that bad before. Well, and it seems that you want to escape from it. You want the bell to ring so it will stop.

[21:33]

Is there, is there, have you found better ways of dealing with it? How do you deal with pain in the city or in life? Oh, I just reach out and embrace it. Anthony and I were talking about this last night. You know, it's an interesting subject because now there's these, you know, Jon Kabat-Zinn, chronic pain clinics. And there are different approaches. And I've tried, you know, a lot of different approaches. And one of the wonderful things, of course, you know, pain is kind of a big thing. It's a big category, I mean, because there's physical pain and you're talking about physical pain, but then there's also emotional stuff and there's all kinds of things that one does not necessarily want in one's close company.

[22:41]

And this is, in a way, what I've been talking about today. Of course, too. Here are these experiences that come whether we invite them or not. They're like strangers. You know, meet yourself, reach yourself arriving at your own door, in your own mirror. This is the pain comes to meet you. You come to meet the pain. And how can you do that? And clearly some things are more difficult to meet than just to be with. So, one of the... There's, I think, probably several different levels. Or, you know, the first thing is, do you have a real wish? You know, this partly has to do with your understanding. Do you have a real wish to be with, you know, with the things of your life? Or is your wish

[23:50]

to live a life that is immune from these things? You know, what is it you really want? And do you see how being with the things of your life is your deep wish? So, you have to start by acknowledging your deep wish to be with the things of your life. And that is the way. That is the Buddhist path. In this case, you know, as Buddhists, that is the path. And your life already is the path. And confusion, if you're confused, that's the path. If you have pain, that's the path. Your life is the path. There's not some, you know, what I've been telling people lately, there's not some Buddhist freeway. People keep thinking they could practice and they could get on the Buddhist freeway. And then they just breeze by all those little towns called confusion, distraction, annoyance, frustration, anger, where there's all those stop signs and traffic and you have to stop and you're stuck there and the traffic in your car breaks down

[24:50]

and you can't go anywhere and you're there for three days. And you could just be on the freeway and breeze along. This is people's idea of Buddhism. Like, where's the freeway? I thought that I could just get on the Buddhist freeway by practicing this. So, this is really basic to your being with pain is to, at some level, you have to acknowledge this is my path, this is my way, this is what I want to do. I want to understand how to be with the things of my life and to be intimate with what life is, what my life is. And to not try to isolate myself from my experiences as a kind of safety place. As I said this morning, to not try to set up a place of safety. So, if you're clear about that, then you can figure out, you can keep trying to find out for yourself how to be with things. So, I can give you a little bit,

[25:51]

I can give you a few suggestions, but basically, nobody's really going to tell you how to do that. So that, say, well, I'll just do, I'll just follow these directions, because it comes down to you have to do it. So, you have to find out how you do it. But anyway, I will tell you a few things, given that is the background, right? And that it's basically up to you and that not, nobody else can really tell you. I can give you a few sort of tips or pointers. One kind of method, and this is what Anthony and I were talking about last night, is that you try to, you know, focus on the area of well-being in your life. So, if you have pain in your ankle, it's quite possible that your abdomen and your chest and your shoulders and your head are all fine. And, you know,

[26:54]

really you can, and so the thing about pain is it's very, it seems like it's really pivotally important. And I should give my attention to this. And in fact, the pain kind of grabs your attention and says, over here. And so then, if your awareness is completely full of the pain, it seems overwhelming, it can seem overwhelming. And then, and then you can get tight. And you're getting tight increases the pain. Like, I can't deal with this. Uh-oh, this is, and now I'm getting tight. Whereas if you, if you actually, you know, make this decision, you make a kind of decision. I'm going to really focus on my breath. And then you can have the breath. And in the area of your breath, it's all, and then the pain can be, instead of being the whole focus, the focus of attention, the pain is on the edge of your attention. So this is one basic kind of approach. That seems quite useful.

[27:59]

And you don't tend to get quite as agitated about the pain when you're focusing on the area of well-being. A second approach is that you go, you take your awareness directly to the pain. And you touch the pain as carefully as you can. Very gently, very carefully touch the pain with your awareness. This isn't always possible because our awareness is, you know, we don't just touch the pain with our awareness. We go, get out of here already with our awareness. That kind of touch with the awareness will tend to increase the pain. So at that time, it's better to go back to your breath. But when you're concentrated and you're calm and stable,

[29:02]

you can actually touch the pain directly with your awareness. And you touch it very carefully, very gently, and you're not trying to do anything. You're receiving the pain. And so, you know, you feel it. And you don't do anything to it. And just feel it. And then you notice that the pain is not a big, massive, solid entity, but these little discrete moments of experience. And there's actually dots of pain that flash on and off. And the pain is like dots, all these little dots that, you know, appearing and disappearing. And the pain is not solid. So the first, the way to approach this

[30:03]

is to, you know, this requires a soft mind, a subtle or supple mind. And, you know, the willingness of your mind to take the shape of the pain. And interestingly enough, that also means letting go of the conception of a body that is without pain. Because that, comparing the body you have to this pain-free body, makes the body you have seem really painful. It's just like the biscuits. Exactly. You know? So, when you can actually taste or touch the pain directly with some calmness, it's not what you thought it was. And you, but you can't do that if you're comparing. So you have to let go of,

[31:04]

you know, some imagined body. And, a part of our idea of our identity is, I want to, is we have a picture. We have a picture of a mind and body that is me. And it doesn't have pain. And it's free of pain. And it's this and it's that. And then reality keeps coming and saying, no it's not. We're sorry. You know? And you can't keep that picture. And then we struggle to keep the picture we have of a preferred self. The one without pain. The one that's beautiful. The one that's young. The one that's energetic. The one that's bright, lively, smiling. You know, all these things. We try to keep that picture and then recreate that person in a quarter of their picture. So you have to let go of that in order to just touch pain. And a third way, you know, which is a kind of

[32:05]

a combination of the two. You know, one of the most basic things actually to do with physical pain is to check and see if there's any breath in that area. Because usually what we're doing, as soon as there's pain in a part of the body, we try to, not to breathe in that area. Because if you breathe in that area you would feel the pain. But, it turns out to be a bad strategy because not breathing in that area increases the pain. So as soon as there's any tightness or pain or tension in your body, check to see if there's, is there a little breath there? And when there's a little breath there, that actually, that little breath there begins to relieve the pain. Because that's like touching the pain with your breath. So when you touch the pain with your breath, then that tends to lessen the pain. So what seems to increase pain is to isolate yourself from it. Then there's the approach,

[33:09]

the third, fourth approach is anyway, you put your mind on your feet. That's a classic, traditional sort of approach. Hmm? Yeah, you can breathe through your body. Through your feet. It's a wonderful technique too if you, you know, if you, I don't know, you know, something else I do sometimes is, Thich Nhat Hanh suggested this. So it's a reel. I didn't just make it up. Thich Nhat Hanh said, if you want, when you inhale, you let your chest, your heart fill with compassion as you exhale, pour it over your head. And when you do that, you know, when you do that, you don't have to sit up straight. When the compassion is coming down on your head, you're just,

[34:10]

your head's just like, oh, that's so sweet. I better just, I'll just lift up a little bit there. Wow, that's sweet. Oh, that's nice. And he says, if you're someone who can't have compassion, you say like, well, how do I do that? I don't feel any compassion when I inhale. Can't you have, and then he says, can't you have some compassion for somebody who can't feel any compassion? Come on. So you let your chest fill, and if it's not filling with compassion, let it fill with light. And if it doesn't fill with light, well, just, just let it fill with warmth or, you know, whatever it's filling with and pour it over your head. You know, this, and then, and then he says, they have these little coconut shells with a handle and you dip it in the water in the summer and you pour it over your head. But whatever you, if it's this, you pour it over your head, it can be hot, cold, whatever temperature you want it to be, you pour it over your head. And then it comes down through your body and it pours, you know, down. And wherever it comes to, it just kind of softens things and soothes things. And, you know, and then you can, you know, your eyes soften and your cheeks soften

[35:11]

and your lips and your, you know, and pretty soon your whole body is, oh, you better watch out. Your body can disappear. Then where would you be? Uh-oh. Where am I? Have we talked enough yet? What time is it? Yeah, some people have to do things, yeah. Oh, we do, huh? Oh, okay. Thank you. Yeah, I hope we all live that long. Let's see what happens.

[36:01]

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