Anything Is Possible

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the boy my proclivities speakers is
yeah so viewership every a thatch
yeah so for you should is are dominating it's healing source drag part off and faculty of have enough coverage to
experience both of those accused the fantasy here for quite awhile and or andrews a medical doctor and she's priest your berkley said center and a habit stooped of the target surgery and
one of one of our senior citizens here
has been heads to evoke for a practice period so we look forward to i look forward to say thank you know
morning everyone is is this volume of the volume for people in the back and not of this this this i'm talking can you hear me okay i get nods in the back so i think walking
i wanted to make a suggestion for this talk in particular ah normally one we've listened to talk me off to it out of our in
so i think maybe this topic will continue the particularly i couldn't talk to practice just sitting and allowing the words to enter without connecting so much with your colonizing mind to just throw on p with that i
i'm willing to share a number of quotes from teachers and and says putting this together gave me a lot of joy
for they said western europe also i hope that you'll be able to access a woman of that yourselves
so the title of his talk is something like anything is possible the true nature of repents
and i've been thinking a lot on by both of those topics about how they relate to each other
how are small lives become big and how and accepting ourselves we find true freedom
we just got through to and modi sarkar monthly bodhisattva ceremony here which is the ceremony about repentance and vow and creating possibilities in our lives in the lives of others as we move out into the world
not long ago i was walking in one of my favorite places which is not a view cemetery and i ran into a woman who was doing one of my favorite of his ah occupations there which is reading the gravestones she had been looking for a friend of hers who had died
i'd bought sometimes back and he was buried up the hill on another part of the cemetery with thought she was still reading the gravestones so we got into a conversation about him and he'd she spoke about how much he admired his courage and his kindness he had been a holocaust survivor
and as she talked about the atrocities the unspeakable
accident he had borne witness to
there was something about how she didn't that i recognize the were far outside of her experience
and naturally i said to her what i know to be true for myself which is
i know that i'm capable of those things too
about a month ago your friends fail came here and gave a very lovely direct encouraging talk about
which from ordinary mind with which we reach in and touch and removed the barb that's it our heart
and if maybe ordinary at some point i don't know but i do think it's a natural impulse to want to remove the bar that's in our hearts that i don't think it's always so easy sometimes we don't see it for it might be painful to pull it out for we don't we
want to because we don't know what our allies would be like without it
but with close attention and awareness he may be difficult for first it becomes more of a natural impulse it's like when you first sit retrieved for your first long period of saw sam
your first machine that pain in the knee that won't go away that always comes back that so agonizing and you want to move and you're twisting and squirming and eventually with time you find actually that if you just with than tinkling or the warmth for the aid for what
however it is that it dissolves and becomes something else
i think that's really true of everything
the stories of outrage or jealousy or victimization that we have initially slowly turned back to ourselves and we find a response in our own life
we find the loneliness for unworthiness for whatever they are and we recognize how changing those things are changing the movie reel is that gets played in our mind and will become less father invited we realize that were complex and unknowable maybe unfathomable
it's not a cycle analyzer figure out layers but to meet the experienced directly without complications prompting storyline slowly we see ourselves more and more clearly and drop into some fun tonight for core that we share with everyone
how do we do there
well in the caravan and tradition and the horror of our tradition first fair mindfulness bear attention being aware of the hindrances of the five commonly occurring themes that all of us has usually one more than another whether it's anger version
anxiety or warrior flurry doubt stupor or desire just being aware of those and bringing attention to them the external manifestation is different but maybe fear underlies them all doesn't matter it's just being with what is
from the saudi baton and foundations of mindfulness on the hindrances the buddha says how does one live contemplating mental objects of the five hindrances herein when anger is present she knows there is anger in me and one anger is not present he knows
but there is no anger in me
she knows how the arising of the nano terrorism anger comes to be he knows how the abandoning of the arisen anger and comes to be and she knows how the non arising in the future of the abandoned ever comes to be so there's a recognition of the feeling in the moment there's a recognition of the
the impulse to the halls with a tendency there's a recognition of what extinguishes it and one it extinguishes all of that file an ever deepening ability to be aware and have stability with the sensation as it arises
the same is true for all the sense desires slot to for agitation scruples and out
this is in summary what are some practices about suzuki roshi said that our practice of asceticism is not the sparseness of our dress or simplicity of our lives it is our willingness to look at ourselves to not embellished to make excuses when to look directly at ourselves
vw's
we do that in sauce and salsa is opening the hand of thought as uchiyama roshi says we open up to the idea of what is of who is and we completely let go of the why is allowing thought emotion to arise that mm
might be very powerful but we just take care of our saas them particularly we just take care of the opera
don't know what the what there is no story line just an opening just curiosity in saw then we just sit and that just sit has an attitude and curiosity and investigation without actively doing so you just sit and you aren't any one
category roshi so she's swim in your buddha nature
the whole universe and the whole universe supports us when we like ghosts than anything is possible any want is possible just this moment materializes is no one in particular
and as we can bear our own suffering we can open to the suffering of others and so he began to deepen our faith in our lives and have a deeper connection with others
we looked deeply and we see where all likeness there's the story of his sorta gamay who is one of the early women ancestors whose names we chat who goes to the buddha
in despair of the death of her child and begs the boot and a half help her resolve it and he says to her go to a house and find a mustard seed where there's been no trouble and no loss and i will be able to cure you
and so she goes from door to door throughout every home in the town and she finds that no one has not born walls and in that she's found her salvation
when were intimate with our own suffering we can be intimate with the suffering of others in my early years as a doctor i work primarily in an urgent care clinic and i get that and large part because i couldn't bear the difficulty other people had so i'm not just little our fossil but and then i
could run away
but over time as i've had more stability and acceptance of my own life by finds the container of being able to be present even to those personality traits could are too close to mind of either have been comfortable all the time has gone quite wide
it's not a burden but because i have faith in my own life and have learned to have faith in my own resiliency i have trust the people will find that for themselves to and that i can be a presence to them and a way that helps them know that for themself that's the definition of
of compassion it's to be willing to suffer will not suffer for it to suffer with them and that naturally arises out of the connection that we have with people in there
is the gift of fearlessness fearlessness is one of the three main gifts to the bodies far from and basically it doesn't mean that you don't feel worry or anxiety or fear that means that you're willing to face up to your own life and when you're willing to face off here
your own life in paris the massive encouragement for other people you know the story that took not hands house without other sinking ship for the pirates are invaded if just one person just one person is able to maintain their calm and their presence of blog it's upheld to everyone on that sink in
i'm sure it's that very idea
so our experiences of places where i live has felt damage or limited shifts not long ago very recently i was thinking about my own tendency to be mean spirited which is very much a part of my personality
and i was thinking about how much it actually is what my father was like in the same kind of where i don't think he meant to be mean but he actually willing was and as i saw that in a sense of stasis spaciousness because i really am
except him and i understand where
the it became possible for me to have a water container for myself for it's just that it's just that i just learned that it's not inherently me that's just meanness and i don't conduct don't confuse it i'm not saying that being mean as okay but i am saying oh
wow it's just that it's not need it has the possibility like the pain in the name just a open and drop away and i saw that happened for myself and i saw that happen for my father to even though he's been dead for for thirteen years on
is there at once
so there's a deepening a pre of appreciation for our lot we understand and we turn it over and over like the precious tool than it is and we can really see its luminosity we also see the interconnections to all things that co-created this moment and we can embrace
all of it
we have so trust horizons raider trust and greater faith in this
for meeting ourselves and accepting ourselves we no longer hide nor we hidden we can come to trust ourselves because we no longer fool ourselves and we have confidence that lifelong for us for others won't for us so we can meet them more directly
this is what allows us to deepen our vow and to live by val but not harm
haram means not allowing your condition self to be what pulls you around vow means responding to the deepest aspirations that you have that yearning that you've have for holiness but we all have been treated was of years
not long ago clients say about a year ago and started me on this talk was about a year ago when i had something happen and i tapped into a place of rage i have no idea existed in myself and out of that came our moments of fear i
i had no idea existed for herself and after i spent about half an hour in those wildly strong places creating parma
i stopped and i went into i picked up the phone and i call my teacher and confessed
there's a story like that from the jataka tales the tail kings to for vasa and the elephant him so this is one of shock and mooney's lives before it became the buddha when he was a king named super lhasa and one day said to his elephant trainer i'd like to ride with
the white elephant bring it to me and the trainer said i'm so sorry thing but for he's run off it's okay he'll come back is well trained
the king flew into a rage outrage that the elephant wasn't there be rated in the little is from elephant tamer and fired him
the next day that elephant handler came to the king's door and knock and said which you like to arrive the white elephant he came back he was well trained we've broken his wild and and of untamed ways and the king was chagrined he felt true remote
course he said here i am a king holding power over others and yet i fail to control its closest
that was the origin of shock ammonia searching for the way as the same realization that gives us the energy to studied and practice more diligently
so in our body soft as ceremony we opened the ceremony by chanting all my ancient tangled pharma from beginning was freed hate and delusion
boundary penance of the same side so different side of same things that i was our deepest aspirations it's rare that impulse to pull the barb out of the heart comes from
repentance is the clarity by which we take action to do that
repentance means to make a chain for the better as a result of remorse or contraction that's the same remorse which is considered to be one of the wholesome mine states and the buddhist psychology the oven karma
what is this in our soto zen practice repentance has three aspects to it the first his form is the way we normally think of repentance to recognize that we've strayed from how we intend to after the world in some way this unwholesome
we're outside the spirit of the precepts swim in our lineage it's only when you have taken the precepts that you can truly the panthers you know we know that we can they can without haven't received the precepts
we make some statement or action read my response to our misstep a confession an apology we replace or repair what we've done it's one aspect of what we do have a bodhisattva ceremony that's what we're all familiar with was make amends
then there's the formless aspect of repentance the former's aspect that means for awakened to the total interpenetrating reality beyond the separation between sell for other the process that i'm talking about when never talk about how we work with are mine
perhaps some experience to access to set conditions to have some experience of that manifest and as what we do in our saw sam
surgeon says such roshi says that repentance is turning around and going the other way
says that repentance is not a preliminary stage to enter buddhist world or to become a good person but it is to lead us to be present right in the middle of peace and harmony it is the perfect openness of our hearts that allows us to hear the voice of the universe beyond the irritation of our conscious
business
beautiful what may reset again repentance is the perfect openness of our hearts that allows us to hear the voice of the universe beyond the irritation of our own consciousness
boca moreau she says that it's life washington cloth before you die of certain codes yeah
it's also an acknowledgement of are inherently limited view
the basic formulas definition of repentance that acknowledgement of are inherently limited few for had a quote okamura here
repentance means that although i think it's the best thing to do in a situation i recognize it might be a mistake it might even be harmful to others and to me we don't know we live only with the support of all beings but recognize we may harm some even when we
live as well as we possibly can we still need to repent
so this reflection and repentance of our own incompleteness is repentance
it's like the words from the body software ceremony from beginning list greed hate and delusion born through body speech and mind when you really think about that beginning on us
body speech and mind every thing that we do you realize that it's almost impossible not to make a mistake not to cause some injury in some way when we take a vow not to kill for example it's impossible because even to wash your bodies for to pull off a care up from the
round to eat it instead of take life
welcome row she tells a story about when he was a young man in western massachusetts he was helping to build a dharma center and that men breaking ground and killing the earth and making construction and killing plants and insects and worms to do that
one time he was digging a well made a big hole one night and filled with water during the storm in the next morning he came out and found the discomfort died in that
so here he is doing what he thinks is his grave how helpful purpose to build a dharma center and with it can text the life
have an animal
we don't know
we can't know the effects of our actions we may and ten ruin
category roshi she says an unfit or read again because it's really beautiful says the most people think of repentance is apologizing for something that we do wrong but this kind of understanding is like stagnant water
we stay where we are in relation to our behavior in our karma and we get stuck repentance is not like this it doesn't mean something to feel bad about or to apologize for to make repentance is to start a new it's to turn around and go the other way as sojourn where she
he says so what is this we don't make repairs to buddha or before a buddha as something outside of ourselves this is dualistic and it's not the spirit of repentance buddha is me and good at issues
repentance history pant of yourself to buddha directly to your buddha nature to offer yourself your karmic life to boot up all of it give it up to buddha to do this means eternal possibilities to understand to do this to give up your karma to up and offer it
after buddha let's go of all your ideas of who you are what's your life is and what other people's lives are just offer it off anything's possible
this is what's meant in the phrase give yourself to yourself
which is i think a phrase from logan
give a small ideas speeches actions up to whom is your pick herself and this is what creates possibility
so who is this person what is this person what right now what
repentance has to see ourselves completely clearly and that were made of exactly the same stuff as everyone else was doing the very best the can doing exactly this than their own way through the phone time for as best they can
repentance is to understand that were limited that we can't completely see even our own selves and our own lives it's like we're always living inside the mountain and trying to get an idea what the mountain range looks like that's impossible you're in one part of the mountain that last one way or another part of your life
life it looks another way we can't know
what else can you do but be humble
duggan's are ten dawkins k say some shaky the form of mountains and the sound of valley streams he talks about repentance he starts by saying it's most important to have a sincere heart to counteract our laziness and what he means by
laziness as our tendency always to separate subject from object me from you so we see our lives in our welfare as outside of everyone and everything else that's the basic delusion that's our basic sovereign this to see ourselves and our lives outside
everyone else and everything else
sorry that repentance means to become one with buddha to be one with our himself
he concludes that fascicle of the shogun kenzo a former mountains been surrounded valleys frames with a section that's often taken out and recited into in such as then literature they do it in san francisco based on silent a very commonly in japan has called the a coastal hostile go along its
also quite beautiful i've extracted a couple of pieces that like you just to be worth as i say them
although i passed evil karma has greatly accumulated indeed being always a condition of obstacle and practicing the way may all buddhists have ancestors who retain the boot away and be compassionate to us and free us from karmic effects allowing us to press the way without hindrance
quietly explore the farthest reaches of these causes and conditions as this practice is the exact transmission of a verified buddha confessing and repenting in this way one never fails to receive profound health from buddhas and ancestors that's from your own buddha nature that's not from somewhere
and of their or someone in history that's your own light come shining forth
by revealing and disclosing our lack of faith a half his people the food as can melt away the root of transgressions by the power of our confession and repentance this is the pure and simple color of to practice of the true might have faith of the true body of faith
and so we've come naturally factor our vous vous sometimes as a charge more for people so i just want to say that the original translation is from the sanskrit product donna which means a strong wish your aspiration for something we probably can all relate
wait to a prayer harm inflexible determination which is what it takes to do is practice
and it is also that vow or inflexible determination or strong aspiration that
does the impetus for us to want to reach him naturally and pull out the bar from our hard
so you've talked about the form and the form was part of repentance the third part is the formal part of repentance dazzling
our together that's when we do ritual together to repair like we just fit the body sought the ceremony
so when we have found state are specific confession with others were in enacting the steep feeling would end with others and enrichment we feel and intimacy of this aspiration we feel it not in our heads but in our whole body and we become one with our desperation
so when you bow you just completely bow you completely give yourself up
there sometimes in one of our retreats here we do a ten minute session of bowing we just foul and foul and foul and when you do that raising your hands up to live the baby buddha's feet to lift your own buddha nature of off over and over again
activity as one of us intention
so when we repent we know who we are this is humility
humility means knowing our place in our animal world that's true humility not the false kind the enemy the near enemy of arrogance for yourself of facing but don't really mean it it's when you really recognize that you and everything else
our horizontal to sing we see our ignorance and we accept this and we see ourselves reflected in the face of buddha so horizontal doesn't mean love it doesn't mean high but it doesn't not mean that it contains everything
so we stand up on delusion what does it mean to stand up on delusion we need delusion to actualized or enlistments are very ignorance it's are very problem if are seeing that were a part of everything in our humanity and working that through allows us to stand up
to rise back up and embrace our full life we need these things to stand up on our our delusion to find enlightenment from our ignorance we find the freedom
so that's sitting with days of anger and fear it took me two weeks after that episode of sitting and digesting to really come to terms with law
to have space to hold all of it the story line behind it wasn't important but the immensity of feel life i was there and ah how shared that is because everyone was very important
so as not to turn away from the places that are damaged and inflict pain and create expensive karma sucks setting myself and that accepting myself and bowing down and and deep knowing that in this life in this person anything is possible great evil
and great compassion
this is human life
this one is not better or worse than any other
category says we must ask buddhist compassion but i would say that we can't help finance lives with his compassion that arises naturally that it is indeed ordinary mind
and that one it arises we see that were already forgiven for isn't something that we talk a lot about and sends a maybe because we are so we don't have to
and see our karmic nature and offering it up we end the cycle of the creation of carmel the buddhist and ancestors receiver receive us and we give ourselves to ourselves so we can receive everything in every one we understand that all sent he and beings everyone and everything should be a
allowed to live for what they are from the beginning and end their lives in the world are of value and and wholeness whatever is has some good reason why it exists whether it's evil or whether it's good and everything is entitled to live in this role beyond our judgment and avail
education everything is buddha
so we understand me on the states no mistakes good or bad right or wrong or work is just to meet and accept them there's nothing to forgive there is only clearly see and respond
wisdom and compassion boundary repentance anything is possible
i'd like to end by telling a little story reading a poem of lou hartman's for those of you who don't know who was for a long long long time zen student of surgeon roche's originally and practitioner at san francisco zen center died at the age of ninety
eighty five ninety five earlier this year
he wanted his on poems is called epitaph
he did not kill his mother
he did not kill himself
he did not go crazy all on all a successful life
which the flange for me recently that literally was a very small boy who had a great experience of we'd call it an enlightenment experience an enormous opening where he saw the sense of connection and no separation that really
informed his wife that he was a boy and his mother was cold and hard and difficult and didn't understand where what was inside lou and one night little found himself at her bedroom door with an axe
finish his hand
when he said his
woke up he sought said to himself what am i doing here
simply them
i did not he did not kill his mother he did not feel himself he does not go crazy all and all we all can have a successful one
thank you very much for listening before i open up the question of we have any time i'd like to ask if so if rocio head and he thanked election
he said

walter
who is it is to your cook
ah i think it's both our karmic selves said doing it but we're doing it along with an insufferably with our
for myself with our total self was a council
ah
the eagle western part of rv david
the parts of believes in me that at once that doesn't see it's connection to others
hopefully
nina
i love the definition of laziness which would be great again

can find that otherwise i'll have to paraphrase it
so laziness as our tendency to separate the subject from object to see our lives as well far as outside of everyone and everything around us
did that have meaning for you
it's a very fresh
issue as is africa look for every
it's the wake-up call isn't it though i'm not paying attention when i'm when i get caught up in me i'm just not paying attention on

dr dr dr seuss brewery
but to a refrigerator
because you're young footer
he exerts manifestation of rehearsal room
since the meteorite
oh sorry
yeah i think that's exactly right
your questions are always very cheap so i'm not sure if i can collect them and replace them you're looking to but i think becoming one with buddha is a willingness to see is a willingness to see you both are suffering is things heart of a human condition that were always incomplete
we're always gonna miss it somehow that we're always gonna mess up on some level somehow and that we offer that to our large herself we offer that to our complete perfect self a few world
so we with forgive herself we we know that is inherently part of what is always happening within ourselves
but there's a wide
please which is at the river from of
oh
purpose in desperation which is suing
prison was just so it was good
fifty one
sure
what you're saying see there

i think that's exactly right
could you repeat
yeah haha
alfred
i surf
hand and to enquire whether when faced with your own particular manifestation of suffering as a dark place
what you know our exits ah
become one with that
is
because one can find that that that is not none other than four
that suffering is none of simple

some for the of surfers on that question ah
it's easy sometimes to hear
becoming fine with buddha has ah
it has the danger of idealization and what i wonder is what you think of what was the buddhist repentance
how did the poorer with faith and work for

i'm just so and i don't know all the details of his life
but i i have to think that
we penances constant because you know that even when you do your best to offer good medicine that sometimes it's not good medicine
maybe you hesitate to get up and teach and you spend you're not happy with the sell on what's on your i have no question for the i think i think that's right as or what i have concerns about decide to find his absence completely in the literature
i certainly the early literature just do not fear it
the guess that's just a question in there would be something i are just asking you
yeah i just think if i have a feeling that was inherent in in in what he did
i just think he was with the kind of awareness of of
i'm trying to save without using jargon but the way in which everything comes everything is totally dependent upon each other
and his own lacking even being the buddha that he couldn't help of knowing that to have a sense of repentance and what it is i think this and because were true and humility has its roots
bob
responding there are my sister told me she went to a meeting of the a teachers was headed by jack kornfield
and after hearing is he asked everyone to repent for they're teaching their students
anthropologist to their students and everyone said oh that's very nice and then it if you don't understand i'm serious
and
i had the sixty would be nice if with had apologised
for
leaving us with all this
a contract with a wonderful
but it also requires an apology i find really i've i've realized that i really agree or not getting of surgeon has to go has to say something about say what i remember video live
hello
emphasize as go from there
when a flu shot using left home he said six uses message apologizing for don't know apologize that scrutinizing
rather than anything go by there were false
this redresses nobody anything false go by recognizing everything is false
then
the returned to do is lay down he was my great race today
the replay the other people fear
the always the safest
the senate practices as a kind of
off because repentance but reviews
producer to earth against than
and it's a competitive penitence who says that six she's doing her
really
i think we are forever with that
this is best way to get a bullet because he realized what the essence of like this through his repentance letting go of whatever few false any those recruiters just i go everything that both hope was new to turn going to the way

thank you decision do we have turned around here
first he decided to thank you for forgiving all my mistakes please wash your now
washington's fashion is
wash my mother
a