April 19th, 2008, Serial No. 01126

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numberless good morning good morning we're really happy to have you on ran here at berkeley exeter get quite a while
yvonne you may know her from her teaching at the yoga room here in berkeley and she's a teacher at go the road which is now transposed from erie county to the anderson valley
know gary
yvonne study and with very close with severe version from the nineteen sixties
ah she also has had the opportunity to study with many of the wonderful teachers of the modern era and or range of food is traditions from the exam but also in the patriotic traditions
arigato
and ah
in the course of those studies and those practices i feel if she gets herself become a traders tour
dharma or us and we're we're lucky to have her living nearby california yvonne it's a be the patriots he's also a mother
she's also married a gardener so we welcome hearing at the port what you have to go
thank you to rely
my heart is very full and being here again
and i think this is a remarkably wonderful and beautiful place for practice and my experience is that
beauty
is very useful and opening our hearts so to have a practice place that's been here as long as this place has been and developing every time i have come here i say some changes especially in the garden which i appreciate very much i'm kind of a
berserk gardener at this time of year i think anyone who is involved in the garden hose a little mad in the spring
so i'd like to wear begin by saying a few words to the younger members of the group
and i thought that what i would say to you is that the there's an emphasis in buddhist meditation on what is called mindful awareness and that is developing the ability
to be present with whatever you are experiencing moment by moment
and i'd like to suggest to you a practice that you might try
it's a practice that i've been doing for
several decades so i don't think about doing it anymore i just do it
and this is the practice when i go through a doorway i step over the threshold not on it
and i step over the threshold with the leg lifts closest to the hinge side of the door
i'm not quite sure what you'd do if you had a sliding door but most of our doors are hinged so going out this door the door opens this way i would step over the threshold with my right leg
but coming into the room i step over the threshold with my left leg
anyway you might try it
the big trick will be remembering the practice of but whenever you remember to do it do it and see what happened
sometimes especially as i have aged and my memory has declined rather seriously
i go through a doorway and i suddenly think oops
so when i notice i haven't done the practice i go back and go through the doorway again and i find that quite helpful so it means that you don't ever criticize yourself if you forget when you remember you do the practice
so i wish you well and i especially especially wish you well in not living in a community like this one that's dedicated to being awake rather than asleep so thank you very much and i hope you have a nice morning together

i make the water is dangerous
wives and either spilled or tripped over just about everything in the last two pics
just why i'm sitting like this i fail and sprained ligament
ah which has it's consequences
when i'd like to talk with you about this morning and try to keep an eye on a time so we have time for some questions and discussion
i'm in the context of what polls me away from the present moment
so while now been paying attention to the consequences of having expectations
and within the context of having expectations embedded often sanctions
and part of what i call the bundle is a habit of judgment and storytelling so that and of troublesome bundle like to invite you to consider
and as i sent to the children what is important is to not go to judgment because you had an assumption or an expectation about something and didn't notice that until later
i have hanging on the wall of of our meditation room up in the anderson valley a statement that suzuki roshi road out on a piece of paper for to of his students
some time in the sixties
and the message on the piece of paper like this do not say too late
and
as a kind of echo to that statement from suzuki roshi i also have a statement from william shawn
who was the editor of the new yorker from thirty years
and in one of the issues of the new yorker there was a collection of remembrances
i have him by the writers that he had trained and the one that really struck me was the one that was written by john mcphee who's a writer i admire a lot
and mcphee said that he was given an assignment by mr sean
to write a piece on basketball court floors
and every few days make fee would check in with them
mr sean as he was called mr sean would pull out his editors pencil read what makes he had written and do some adjusting and talked to him about one thing and another big fee would go away and rework the peace and come back and at a certain point he said to wear
mr sean mr sean
you are responsible for getting an issue of this magazine out once a week how can you possibly spend the amount of time you're spending with me on this article about basketball court floors
and mr sean's response was it takes as long as it takes
so i think those two statements
echo and support each other
so
i bring these two teachings up so that to encourage all of us to not be critical of ourselves when we don't recognize that we went into a situation with expectations
but rather to
on be willing to notice when we have expectations even when that noticing may be some time later
otherwise the noticing goes underground slips away and we lose an opportunity
for
being able to study the mind and train the mind
if we're not willing to notice a certain patterns that are hindrances in this whole process of presence of cultivating our capacity to be present
so the keep in mind of the possibility of noticing when you've had an assumption about how something was going to be an embedded in that assumption what were the expectations that you had
and if the situation
was not what you had expected or assumed would be so
do you notice some storytelling about what happened do you notice some assumptions about how it should have been
do you get caught in storytelling about how it should have been or why it went the way it did et cetera
this is one of the ways of beginning to bring increasingly over time a greater awareness of how much time we spend in the past and in the future
at the expense of the cultivation of our capacity to be present in the moment
and if were harsh in judging what we see as a kind of falling short of what we had expected of ourselves or of others
there's nothing but loss in my experience there's nothing but term
continuing to abide in the past and in the future
and we lose the opportunity to actually know
the characteristics the patterns and habits of are conditioned mind
in service of uncovering and discovering unconditioned mind
so that means am i really interested in my own conditioning
can i articulate to myself and to whoever sits as my witness in my working with my self with respect to studying mind
a to the degree that i can articulate with the tone of gentleness and kindness whatever i observe about conditioned patterns
then the very noticing weeds to the dismantling of those habits
now there are of course a host of practices for the dismantling the transforming a various conditioned patterns
but there's a lot that happens with our ability to see what so
there's a certain amount of change that happens when we are willing to see what is so

a few weeks ago and i am i fell down some stairs
and sprained ligament in my right leg
one of the reasons why i'm not joining you on the floor
and i i thought oh it's because my depth perception is gone or compromise somehow or another so i made an appointment to go have my eyes examined
which i did yesterday
only to be told that dead
there was nothing about my eyesight in terms of eyeglasses with respect to improved depth perception
so says sam
getting that information from the eye doctor i've been considering when one or the other factors in taking that fall
and what i realize with some discomfort is oh
out of attention
now i think there's also a way in which show as we age
going up and down stairs can become a more hazardous activity
but only because of the dulling of oh pay attention
and of course that's an issue no matter what her age
no matter what our condition
isn't it interesting how much we want to blame something or somebody for having taken a fall down some stairs
oh
out of attention

i have a one more embarrassment an embarrassment about out of attention and i'll share with you
the my husband because you'll understand why in a minute
i usually do not talk on the cell phone when i'm driving the car
but the drive home which is quite familiar to me but it's two and a half hours driving
and somewhere around geyserville i begin to think a
when will this drive be over so i was driving along talking to my daughter
cu i enjoy talking with
and i was not paying attention to the speed at which i was driving
until the highway patrolman started flashing his lights and pulled me over and he said lady do you know how fast you were going
and i said
no hope
he said i thought so
i was going seventy nine and sixty five mile an hour zone
i'm still waiting to find out what it's going to cost me i'm sure it'll be plenty
out of attention
so what i decided his turn the phone off the minute i get in the car
it's the first speeding ticket i've ever had in my life
so
it's i'm feeling the smart of the ticket
we'll see what happens when i go to talk to the judge pins for non not the inner judge a
the man or woman who sits there a pie on that bench

so i want to reiterate and then i i'd appreciate any questions or
conversation that we might have together and what i'm bringing up
i want to emphasize that seeing what so with respect to habits and patterns is a crucial important first step
change begins to occur with notice him there may be other ways in which i can dismantle habits that lead to suffering but the most important first step is to see the pattern
now i'm using the word pattern intentionally
i'm not so interested in encouraging any of us to pay attention to content
there's a big difference for example in noticing the habit of judgment and the content of the judging
i think that's a i hope a clear example of what i mean
so i think that's sufficient to from me and i wonder if any of you have questions or issues that you'd like to bring up for us to talk about together
yes please
so as your advice to
notice but category expect the type of let's work to do what's going on at the to this specific phenomenon like the particular will give me an example of those two categories that you think of so instead of never seen him
never say that i'm thinking about things that i should do i need to clean by the wind you to call it was person i should instead there is a type of mental activity areas which would be
shooting shooting
sounds like shooting
i'm
i also think that if if there's a list of things that you should be doing it keeps coming up
that may be the indication that
you might sit down and map out the list get the list and then map out what you want to do what you have an intention to do
that's realistic and of course you start out with an unrealistic intention and you pretty soon learn oh i thought i'd do in a week what probably will take me a month to do so am i willing to notice oh what i put down on my to-do list
this is an unrealistic list for a week but might not be so real unrealistic for a month or longer and if i'm willing to refine the process of setting intention i become gradually and this
this is where the refining it if the refining process is gentle i begin to be much more realistic about the list
i for a long time but when we lived in your beach on side of the door in and out of my office i painted the inside of the door with blackboard paint
and i have a box of colored truck and i would write whatever was i had on my to-do list
i also had a very good eraser that was quite helpful and so i saw what was on the list the large scale every time i left the room
and
in time i became considerably more realistic about how long it would take me to do one thing or another
but the other practice that i found extremely helpful is if that kind of thinking arises when you're meditating
the practice of not now
but not now isn't going to be effective if there isn't a now
so i'll i'll look at the makeup the list on thursday afternoon between four and four fifteen and any time up until thursday at four not now
i would also expand the focus not just on thinking but also on bot nation
there have been times in my life when i've felt some dis ease
and thinking going on a on a search with when i call my industrial strength flashlight and a big stick
wasn't particularly effective
i mean it wasn't effect of it are latch of a
and what i discovered was
by paying attention to a body sensation i remember one time in particular being aware of a tension and discomfort in my belly
and i was supposed to meet my husband on a street corner in downtown san francisco and it was pouring rain and i was on the other side of the city
i finally i kept getting caught and gridlocks yeah was a friday afternoon at five or whatever i finally pulled over
just so i could bring some attention to what was happening in the physical body and i realized oh this disc discomfort in the belly goes with anxiety with anxiousness
so i sat in the car and did some deep breathing for a few minutes
and realized that i'll get there when i get there
and it took me awhile to get to the coroner where my husband was waiting there he was with an umbrella reading a book
and quite at ease with waiting in the rain
that experience was very very useful for me
i think that particularly in our culture we are used to paying attention to what we experience from the neck up and that's where a lot of energy goes so my experiences that i need to keep bringing attention to
what i can notice from the neck down what i can notice that registering in the physical body because of course we talk as though we can separate states of mind
characteristics of the body characteristics of breath but they're inseparable
find my way into what i'm experiencing in those three inseparable aspects more reliably by checking first with what am i experiencing in the physical body
my experiences of the body doesn't lie
thinking
don't believe everything in thing
after that doesn't mean that we can't trust some of what we think but
it bears the i think what's useful is is the noticing we begin then to have some capacity for discrimination
yes hello
nice to see him nice to see all of you been so nice to see some of you i haven't seen for a long time yes
so the word judging
one of the things
the practice and was that the practice including suspending judgment something huge agony and still is less huge but still so i wondered ah
you know in a culture where criticism and judgment
i've asked this question papa bouba like academia where i want is so central
as seen
really hated the salad resulted in john peace with it you know
it's really tough to believe to suspect to let go of judgment but i have to evaluate criticised judge yesterday i was in a meeting or one professor response to another professors favorite and you know great charm and comfort
he just demolished the other guy
the other guy or the other guys paper paper well this
yeah actually dead
it's really hard to distinguish between what they're doing so anyway
this is still a source of gray
perplexity to be sure
well
this is where the practice of i call a ninety eight per cent role is very useful a listening practice just let me just to have it the thing that hardest for me is that i have to judge students graduate any it drives me crazy
the great it
it's a chapter in a book i'm writing actually on right speech
called the great it
i feel crazy when i am in this circumstance
the point i'm making is
i want not to give my power and authority away with respect to my state of mind
i am capable of developing the capacity
for studying
and managing if you will my states of mind
so for example
if i'm there is on the receiving end of criticism

do i take what the other person is saying personally
that then gets to become a generalized ancient ancient twisted suffering
the one i'm calling the ninety eight percent rule is a aware sinning so that i understand that what the person is saying
is what is arising in there
now i'm not talking about all month i mean you're talking being in an academic situation where you are called about part of your job is critique evaluation feedback those specific aspect
it's of what we call you judge the work of your students and other colleagues papers etc
there's a certain amount of judgment that is required to go to the grocery store come home with something for dinner you're judging about what you're judging and planning planning brilliant aspect of the of judging habitual judging anyway
so it's not that i'm not talking about all judgment i'm talking about what's habitual
and
i think that's a a a a significant distinction
and
the antidote the classical antidote for the habit of judgment is quick ten things you're grateful for
and what happens when you do that antidote practice i have the sensation that i've picked my mind up and put it on a different track and record
and the more i practice quick ten specific things i'm grateful for
the mores i have with oh appreciation
some of you've probably heard me and tell this story but
some years ago when my husband and i were living in your beach i could walk to what i called downtown green gulch in twelve minutes and i go through the lower the road i would take would go through the lower fields and a drizzled along the side of
the road where the glass coffee crops from the kitchen
and i would take as many as i could get on my tenth and curse and gramps my way up to the meeting i was so scheduled to go to this was every wednesday afternoon those of us who were
guiding people in their a meditation practice would meet and talk about how people were doing what was up etc the whole community would be on edge during the wednesday afternoon meetings
by the time i got to the meeting i was not a whole lot of fun to be quicker
including myself i wasn't so happy with my state of mind
and that was when i i kind of stumbled into the practice of
what do i appreciate
and on the heels of that what's possible
this particular day when i stumbled on what do i appreciate instead of looking at all that the dribble along the side of the road i looked over to the fields low fog so the colors of the
vegetables and planted area and the
shrubs and trees on the hillside the colors which are rather son or rather subtle were just so beautiful
and there were killed near i don't know if any of you know that burned but
they if you're near their nest they'd make nests in the ground and so if anybody comes near their nest they act as though they have a broken wing and they come and distract you away from their nest i looked over is this cute and
kill the are trying to figure out whether i'm riskier not and comes my way you know modeling the broken wing
but also what i saw was the beautiful subtle coloration of the landscape
and on the heels of that than what became more accessible was what's possible
and in in that a few moments i realize what's possible is to choose to focus on what i appreciate
understanding that there are times when judgment is appropriate
but the habit of judgment is a different category from judgment that's appropriate
and we can get lost in that habit
and my experience is that
habitual judgment is so closely associated
not always but often with having some expectations about how things are going to be
and lot of assumptions embedded in the expectations
yes please
so i'm going to say something it might sound like a gentleman and if so go ahead risk it i know that probably won't take it personally it will only revealed the way that my mind things
so i find what you're saying very helpful in terms of the very sort of practical date to date with either of our lives the way we experience our internal states and yet i'm having this problem because
i find that sometimes good practice this kind of presented as a way to improve ourselves somehow and if somehow i can become better at letting go of my judgment and being hyper attentive to and the is the what you're saying but you know if i can you know
so focus on the beauty instead of things that you know are making me irritable those are all very useful but the things that are making me irritable or the things that irritate me or however you want to say but i really want to stay with now i'm at my
point is is that the and i feel the need for
sort of a bigger picture here what what are we doing here you know what is this you know and and and flip it what it was really about i mean if we're living our ancient karma what is this that's learning is this just ancient karma that's living its way out and so the for
of my life is just to try this for to minimize the negativity of this ancient karma and it was little damage as possible and try to sort to get through my day in the okay or what what really is the point of office and i wonder what can happen them
showing up
presence with for
ah
what for how interesting
in those moments of presence i feel alive i feel connected
with myself and all bangs and things
i feel access to joy
and delight
i feel the consequence of peeling away those layers of conditioning
the family i grew up in a was as is true i'm sure for many of you an alcoholic family
so i learned a lot of what became habits as coping strategies that i in my adult life lead to suffering
not is not troy
not connectedness
but separation
so
you know there's a wonderful saying in in san
which i think it's having studied with her tantric lama for some time he really helped me see of the influence of a luxury on in soto zen and i think it really manifests in this understanding that when you sit you are boot
a
ah no
but this is when i'm sitting i'm in alignment
i have the possibility with having less distraction with activity and noise and music and conversation and blah blah blah i have the possibility of tasting a moment of presence
from which arises ah
possible
ah
i appreciate you know that verse about all my ancient twisted karma
or as you put it tangled liquids nice variant
but if that's all i'm focused on i'm just gonna be sinking
and

one of the distinction said though i find in bringing some other early renderings of the buddha's teachings is the distinction that the historical buddha is said to have made is that between having dust in our eyes
or seeing clearly
and
sitting still walking in silence
standing
with awareness of standing
lying down the so-called foreigner will postures
can i support my capacity to extend

ah what
this
these two energy centers the belly center and the heart center
i'm in a way where i begin in a secluded quiet environment with good company like minded company
in order to be able to be in the world with all the distractions and
what at some point in our lives maybe a distractions
i don't think that in practice is worth a whole lot and was until there's some extension some trickling into our everyday lives

i think the questionnaire asking is very important what is is for because if i don't know what
what's bringing me
to get up early in the morning and go down to the meditation room oh i forgot to turn on the heater last night so it's not only quiet it's also freezing cold
saying that i the
i just wanna know it
i don't trust what i think all that much
sometimes but
i'm
but i do trust what i experience from the neck man i have deep confidence in what i know in a body based way
and
i become through diligence
more quickly aware of conditioned patterns
so i don't suffer from them quite so long which is not to say that i don't still notice those patterns but natalie goldberg in writing down the bonds has one chapter that's about two thirds of a page long
on the editor
to say i think a nice way of designating the habitual judge
and as she suggests and it meant it fits my experience that at some point it's not that that voice disappears but it's kind of back there in the fields somewhere so that
i don't have the experience of that voice being in the driver's seat if you will
so what i'm recommending also is can i be kind to this condition this aspect of condition find can i practice generosity
with what i become aware of
i don't think it's any accident that generosity is the first of this of the perfections even before virtue
i think that's worth noticing

oh goodness sakes thank you
okay i guess we're done
thank you