I'd like to extend my apologies for the paths being full of schmutz. We have about 30 quail in the garden, and they're very busy fluffing it all up in case there's something to eat, or bathing, or whatever it is they do with dust. What I'd like to talk about this morning is something I've been paying attention to recently, periodically, which is a kind of pointing out that shows up in dedication verse that I am fond of. And the line goes, may I live without too much attraction or too much aversion.

[01:09]

So what I want to bring up for our consideration this morning is that continuum of attraction and aversion as though they were different. I'd actually propose that Aversion is a kind of negative attraction, if you will. This pointing out statement is not made casually. It's made because this is where so many of us get stuck. with what I like and what I don't like. Wanting to get rid of what I don't like.

[02:11]

Wanting to keep and have continuously what I like. And of course at the attraction end, in terms of what's pointed out in the 12 links, what we can very easily get to is clinging or grasping, holding on to what I want, what I like. And in a certain way, we also can hang on to, but in this way, hang on to the I don't want heap or heaps. In one of the study groups where we're working with the meditations on impermanence, what has surfaced, not at all surprisingly, is anger.

[03:19]

Anger in the face of impermanence, change. And so we've, done this little side trip into looking at anger. And as people have been writing to me about what's been coming up for them in this hanging out with anger, cool, lukewarm, warm, hot, off the charts, is that people are noticing how much it's the attraction-aversion dyad, if you will, that stimulates the arising of frustration, irritability, et cetera. Now, as I think some of you

[04:32]

have experienced if you hang out in the meditation world for very long, there gets to be a kind of veneer of me want anything, I don't want anything. Which I think is often a kind of veneer for attraction and aversion, in the spirit of looking good. But when we encounter some experience, some situation, some circumstance where what arises is either this grabbing, holding on to, or uh-uh. aversion. We can get quite caught.

[05:37]

I do think there's a category of having preferences that we could enjoy called having a slight preference. But that category of preference, designated as slight, hopefully isn't going to have a whole lot of grasping to it. It can help us get to noticing what's actually arising in the mind, not what we think is supposed to be arising in the mind, how much the situations in our lives where there's a kind of stickiness in our relationship to experience, it really falls into this category of attraction aversion.

[06:57]

I've been thinking a lot since Thursday night. I started a class in the yoga room and someone brought up a strong preference for being right. The territory of suffering, if ever there was one. But I think recognizing and being able to acknowledge, I have this strong preference for being right. And to ask myself, what am I turning away from? What is that strong preference in the face up? And how often is it aversion with respect to being wrong? And often fear that arises. about being judged.

[08:10]

And as I think many of you know, I feel like a kind of first class member of the habitual judging group. And I know I have a lot of company. Particularly those of us who grew up with a parent or parents with a strong judging habit. Where we get it in a certain way with our mother's milk. That conditioned habit can feel like something I can't do anything about. That it's in charge. The habit is in charge. And I would respect and honor that feeling tone, but I'd question it.

[09:18]

Is it really true that any conditioned pattern cannot be changed, cannot be dismantled? So far, I haven't found one that cannot be dismantled, may not take as short a time as I would hope, but if one is persistent and consistent and determined and dogged and clear about your willingness to change and our capacity to change, which is not to cultivate aversion to a pattern, that's just as stuck a place as an attraction to a pattern. There's so much in the Buddhist tradition that seems somewhat counterintuitive.

[10:32]

Turn toward the arising of anger. Turn toward I want to be right. or I don't want to be wrong. Turn toward, I want to be famous. Fill in the blank. But that's of course what we're asked to do, is to cultivate the willingness to be present with whatever arises. The willingness to turn toward what we're used to turning away from. what we're used to wanting to get rid of or hold on to. I'm going to be meeting on this Wednesday with a group of people who are in a teacher training program.

[11:37]

And one of the questions I was asked to address was, what causes people to change? And I've been just sitting with that question since it was posed to me about a week ago. The jury is still out, but what's come up so far for me has to do with my own recognition in myself, but also in working with other people, is the cultivation of the willingness to change. Dragged kicking and screaming sometimes. Or maybe not kicking and screaming, but just hanging out on that border where there's a certain arising of the I don't want to mind resistance.

[12:41]

And I cannot recommend enough the benefit of curiosity and interest. To be curious about some conditioning, some pattern. To be curious and to be patient. Recently I guess it must have been during the summer retreat. Somebody, during the work period, asked somebody to clip the yellow flowers that come with chamomile. A kind of acid-y yellow.

[13:54]

And I very much appreciate the color of the chamomile. But when it's covered with this yellow blossoming, the experience of that planting is quite different. So I asked this person to clip the yellow flowers off. And she didn't want to. I said, it doesn't matter if you want to. So as I looked over at the chamomile as I was walking this morning, I thought, hmm. The garden's a great teacher for attraction and aversion. You know, what's a weed in this garden is a wonderful native somewhere over the fence.

[15:04]

I showed Carolyn a flower on a plant that's in a gray pot on the way to the bathroom, right on the corner of the house. I recommend that you look at it. It's a completely terrifying blossom. It's a giant Dutchman's pipe. And it's really quite terrific. I mean, beautiful in a way, but maybe it's an acquired sense of beauty. What was the word? Sinister. Sinister. The blossom is described in the Royal Horticultural Dictionary as sinister looking. I was sitting with a friend yesterday whose beloved canary had just died.

[16:16]

She's only got, I don't know, 20 or so in a big aviary. And this bird was six or seven or eight years old, elderly for a canary. And she found him. His name is Jake. And she found him on the floor of the cage in the morning arrived at her workplace, and I said, well, where is he? He's in the freezer, along with all the other dead canaries. She and I had some discussions about these dead canaries, and she said, would you bury them for me? And I said, do I have to? I'd be glad to take them, but I don't know that I want to bury them. There was another woman sitting there having coffee with us. So I then was invited to talk about what I do with the dead birds, which of course some of you know about.

[17:18]

The two people I was talking to were not readily persuaded that the corpse of a bird, or any corpse for that matter, could be beautiful. And we had this very, to me, quite interesting conversation about what we experience as beautiful, or even what we experience as interesting. Oh. Hmm. The territory of like, don't like, attraction, aversion. And I wonder, how often does attraction and aversion arise out of the territory of fear? Fear of being left on a desert island with nothing but sand.

[18:32]

Or being bored. Fear of losing something that I don't want to lose. Wanting to hold on to a moment of some wonderful experience. Bill and I were recently on an island, Saturna Island, which is off the coast of Vancouver in British Columbia, an extraordinarily quiet island where we got to see orca whales and bald eagles and pileated woodpeckers and harbor seals and otter and all kinds of different kinds of gulls

[19:43]

So I sent a rather enthusiastic description of where we were to my son and he said, take pictures. But of course I didn't take a camera. Some while ago I decided to stop taking pictures. because I recognized that it actually came up some years ago when this rose that's on the fence out here, Reve d'or, was enthusiastically in bloom and during a retreat somebody picked a bouquet of Reve d'or and put it in this white milk pitcher that's on the altar. And I immediately went to get my camera to take a picture of the flower arrangement I wanted to kind of freeze it.

[20:52]

And of course, the minute I did that, I realized, oh, caught. And it was at that point that I decided to stop taking pictures. But don't you want some way to remember where you were or the experience of that flower arrangement? Is having a picture the only way I might have the experience arise at a later time? I think getting interested in and beginning to notice the specific moment where there's this or this

[21:55]

hanging on or pushing away can be very fruitful. Quite interesting. And revealing about the, what I call the Velcro mind, the place where there's some sticky hanging on, which is of course, so much the territory for our suffering. A number of years ago, I was sitting with someone as she was dying. And I think she died in March, early March. February or March, and there was a big storm during part of the time that I was sitting with this person.

[23:05]

And I remember quite vividly looking out the window and seeing these big fat drops of rain hanging on the bare branches of a tree right outside her bedroom window, catching the first light. these glimmering jewels. And knowing vividly that there was no way I could freeze dry them, couldn't put them in the freezer. The very beauty of the light caught by the raindrops was inseparable from their fragility. And what's interesting is that I can see the light caught in the drops now.

[24:10]

Sometime, I can't remember if it was, must have been in the early 90s, I'd been in India for a retreat and came back. It was at a time when the monks from the Gyoto Monastery were staying with us a little three month overnight. And they were going to New York. I think I came back in February. And they were going to New York to do a big butter sculpture at the Museum of Natural History. 25 feet wide and 15 feet tall. These individual butter sculptures that then eventually got mounted on these big kind of support boards. And it took them the better part of a month to make the butter sculpture.

[25:23]

And there were thousands of people who came to see them while they were making the sculpture, out of colored, you know, ghee. And the museum turned off the heat in the particular gallery where the butter sculpture was being made and piped in the cold air from outside the building. And, you know, there are the monks with their bare shoulder, with their hands in ice water, making these, the elements of the sculpture. Everybody else bundled up. And I ended up acting as a kind of docent for this whole event while I was there. And the question that I was most often asked was, what's going to happen after they make it?

[26:29]

And I said, well, I think the plan is to take it out to Golden Gate Park, I mean Central Park, and let the birds have it. What? Is there any way I could take one of the pieces home? And then what would you do? Put it in my freezer. But the whole point of making a sculpture out of butter is as a meditation on impermanence. Oh, no, [...] no. It's too beautiful. We don't want that. I subsequently did read about a butter sculpture that was sprayed with something or other to make it permanent. What arises in the mind when you open your closet and find your favorite wool dress with a big moth hole in it?

[27:45]

I mean, the instances are endless. Anyway, I want to encourage, invite, your interest and curiosity about your own experience in your own mind about the arising of attraction and aversion. And just hang out. Notice what you notice. See whether the attraction is on a continuum of slight to very strong. Same with aversion. And begin to notice the relationship between the two.

[28:48]

For example, during a sitting meditation, your foot falls asleep. Aversion arises. Just hang out for a few moments, not for the whole period, unless you're developing some shifting relationship with discomfort. Just initially, don't move, but just notice what's arising in the mind. Get rid of the discomfort. aversion. I hate this, I love that. I think because we live in a culture where there is so much encouragement to

[30:04]

If you are in a situation you don't like, change it, get rid of it. If you have a headache, take an aspirin. Which leaves us ill-prepared for those situations where whatever circumstances arising, the only thing I can work with is my state of mind. My reaction or response to the moment. And over and over again, even for those of you who are long-time meditators, what I hear is aversion to this, aversion to this. There's some place where wanting to get rid of comes up. So, that's what's on my mind this morning.

[31:09]

I wonder if there's anything in this territory that might be up for any of you. I consider it, pulls me into intellectual analysis, into a thinking response, so quickly that I neglect to take

[32:33]

By taking the time to consider those things, I have a different response and become aware of the pull and can reset myself. Now, would you say a little bit more about what you mean by inadvertently? That smells like as though having a life of its own. Inattentively. Unconsciously. Habitually. Okay, that's helpful. Well, you see, I think even that judgment of the question as wanting smells of thinking about it. And I'm perfectly happy to just sit with the question. And in fact, I'd recommend sitting with the question. And I think for us in this society and in this culture, we have such strong conditioning for finding an answer and not so much training for just allowing the question, just sitting with, being present with the question.

[34:15]

And of course, you know, In Zen, especially in those lines where there's a use of koans, that's exactly what's going on, a kind of puzzling question that's posed, which you can't figure out intellectually. All you can do is to sit with, on the breath. And of course, what I've noticed with this consideration about what are the causes and conditions for change in a human being. And this is partially, I think, the consequence of practicing just sitting with a question, is wanting to allow noticing change without any agenda about finding an answer.

[35:29]

How different just to sit with a question without any of that pull to finding an answer. And I don't think that's culturally all that easy to do. Karen. I just lost something. When you were talking about... That may come back if I don't go for it. When you were speaking of this whole idea of aversion and attraction, last night His Holiness said something about... Somebody asked a question, wrote a question and said, How in this materialistic society can there possibly be any hope? And he answered it in many different ways, talking about inner richness and so on. And then in the end, he cracked himself up, as he often does, by saying, well, we Tibetans don't have this problem.

[36:34]

We are just refugees. We have nothing to lose. And I think that applies to both those fields that you're talking about, because Later on, or just now, I thought, what he really was talking about was having the freedom. By having nothing to lose, he's free. So not only not wanting something, but not needing to push something away, is a whole kind of openness. And in a way, I think it's the same relationship that you just described to the question. As soon as I look for the answer, and then when I look for the answer, it goes the next way. Is this the right answer? So it's a free, prompt thing. if I'm not seeking anything, but just sitting with it, there's kind of such a spaciousness around that. And it's very new, I mean, I don't quite... But it feels quite... quite promising as a way to go, correct? Well, of course, you know, we spend a certain part of our lives accumulating,

[37:40]

And then if we're lucky, we spend a certain part of our lives getting rid of what we've been accumulating. And if we're really lucky, we may actually have some life left where I don't have anything somebody else wants. And... I have to laugh because... Somebody recently described some of those refugee monks in one of the monasteries in India having fancy wristwatches, very high-end tennis shoes, even in some cases cars, computers. I am just a homeless monk. I want to say one other thing about His Holiness that is part of this in terms of understanding change.

[38:49]

Last night for the first time I was struck by a sense of his vulnerability. He seemed somewhat fragile yesterday. And for me that was the beginning of really letting go of the great celebration I have of sharing the space in this world with him and knowing just some sense of his mortality and of his impermanence. And I really realized that I had never accepted that before because he is such a significant person in the world. And so to see him physically somewhat fragile was both heart-rendering and also very instructive. Somebody on the air had their hand up. Karen? I've been very caught in clinging and aversion today. And what I've been looking at is, and I don't know if I'm just making up a story about it, but really existential isolation.

[39:58]

Rather than coming from fear, which is what I usually think I do, feeling very inherently alone and I'm wanting, clinging to have connection. It's just a different place from here. Well, you know, this is where the pointing out about the sense of self is so crucial and you know there's this inextricably oneness of no inherent self-existence and the other side that's the statement about what isn't the statement about what is is the nature of reality is inherently relational.

[41:05]

So how much of that, what you call existential aloneness, is more the consequence of a kind of covering over through our conditioning of that, that the nature of things is relational and interdependent? I know that. I couldn't be here if someone hadn't made my car and brought the gas to the station and had a job to pay for. I mean, I had breakfast. I mean, yes, there's something about that. I think what I'm really clinging to is the impermanent self. me, [...]

[42:40]

experiencing that moment, the promise is some liberation. Meanwhile, we're hanging on for dear life. My other suggestion in those moments where that sense of isolation or aloneness arises is to watch out for generalizing. and have the sense, the experience of relatedness, relationality, right on the bottoms of my feet, my butt in a chair. Be as specific in the moment as I can. Oh, yes.

[43:57]

You know, I think that often in training the mind, what we come up against is, not so much against, but begin to have some access to some place where what I see is a reaction, a pattern, conditioning. And I get to see how I don't want to get rid of this. And drama is right in there in the mix. I'm enjoying the drama. Will all the color drain out of the day if I give up drama? I know a poet who didn't want to do therapy I mean, it struck me as absurd when she said that, but I know that place in my heart.

[45:02]

Yeah. Garrett? This aversion attraction discussion reminds me of two things. One is that I've signed up for Ken's retreat in October, which is a retreat on compassion and Chenrezig. And he has suggested that everybody coming to the retreat should read a little book by book on Rinpoche, which I have managed to get through. It's very complicated. I've had a number of reactions to even reading the book. I'm thinking, oh, I don't know if I can handle this retreat.

[46:06]

I've at once decided that I'm going to cancel out. I can't go to Mt Baldy and do this. May I stop you for a moment? Yeah? Be a little interested in the thought, I can't. I can't? Oh, yes. No, I'm quite wrong. Unpack the I can't. I don't want to. I don't want to. I don't have to. You can't let me. I can scream it, but I'm afraid I can't do it. I'm going through this, OK? It sort of came to a little bit of a head this morning on the way over here, and partly with what you've been saying. Oh, it might be interesting.

[47:12]

I mean, that's how I'm floating around this. it will bring some things up. He's promising that it will in his emails to us all, which is fine. The second item is that, you know, we have moved to Nevada County and the soil there is very poor. I mean, it's clay after about this much topsoil. I mean, we have a lot of plants. And there are little holes all around about the area that's planted where plants used to be.

[48:15]

And there are sprinkler heads there which are all calcified. And so I'm going around and I'm plugging up the ones that are calcified, right? Because I just want to try to keep the plants alive that are there. We've lost one birch tree, small birch tree within two weeks. We've lost junipers, we've lost barberry, some kind of a holly, and they keep dying. And my wife says, what are we gonna do about keeping them from dying, Campbell? And I look at this plant, you know, it's yellow and brown, you know, it's this juniper limb, and there's a juniper right beside it that's green and beautiful, and it's like, You can't keep them from all dying, because they're all, they're gone. And the little fir tree we planted is dying, it just died, look at it, see, it's dead. And I was just standing there, I'm seeing all these plants in my mind, and this morning, as we were talking about this aversion, aversions of the death of our plants, we just don't want them to die.

[49:31]

They're going to, well, I don't think they have any choice in the matter. And I've just decided that we're going to watch this. And we'll plant some other plants there. Probably some of the same ones, but they're going to get, I mean, the ground is so hard. And I've just, I've come to the conclusion Just don't screw with it. Maybe someone could live. Several are doing beautifully. You know, particularly making a garden can be an enormously interesting study in the mind. And in the kind of landscape that you're living in,

[50:33]

the challenge to be patient and watchful, it sounds like it's right up there. And I think of my old dear friend, Harry Roberts, who took a group of us on trips once a month around the year for several years, crisscrossing the coast range from here the Oregon border. And a lot of what we did was to study soil and to see what kind of soil there is and what lives there, flora and fauna. But the place of attachment is the place of superimposing my idea of what I want. which isn't or may not be particularly relational.

[51:43]

I want to go back to what you were saying about your impending, if I could use the word, retreat. It will be interesting. I'm very curious about what the it is. My experience. Well, my strong invitation is the interesting part has to do with your own mindstream, a situation, an environment, a whole program in which you will have this wonderful opportunity to study the mind. And we can push that process outside of ourselves and miss the chance. For some reason, what just flashed in my mind was Bodh Gaya in northern India in Bihar state with over 100,000,

[53:01]

well, one retreat, 200,000 people, as far as you could see. And the teachings in the morning would go on for at least four hours. So going to the toilet posed a particular challenge. Attraction and aversion manifesting significantly. And I learned a practice, actually, that I never imagined I'd learn, called, what the Tibetans call, rolling it up. You just sort of inhale, and you don't go to the bathroom, you don't move. We put ourselves, if we're lucky, we allow ourselves to be in situations where we'll come up against our conditioning, what's familiar in particular.

[54:07]

And I think that the catch is how interested am I able to be? How much interest and curiosity can I bring to whatever arises, not just what I like? Am I just as interested in aversion as I am in attraction? I think uncovering some answers to that question can be quite informative. I will have the opportunity. Keep me posted. When you were talking about sucking it up or rolling it up in Bodh Gaya, I flashed on sitting with pain this last couple of months ago, and my attraction to doing it right, and I was suffering a great deal of pain, but I can sit with pain, and I did myself in sitting with pain, and that balance, finding the balance of

[55:33]

because it was something I was totally unfamiliar with. Do I question the authority that's telling me I'm having gas pains and sitting with this pain and ending up with abdominal surgery because I sat so long with the pain? So, it's a real difficult one to... I certainly had aversion to the pain, but I had more of an attraction to being a good girl and being a good patient and not bothering them. It was a very interesting process. One time, Steven Levine was in the hospital for gallstones. Yes. And, I don't know, the nurse said something about, I thought you were a meditator. What do you want pain relief for? He said, because I'm a human being passing call stones, that's why.

[56:37]

I thought that was pretty great. The hell with the press release. Help me out. Yeah, well, whatever those little messages we carry around about, you know, being good or doing it right, Conditioning. Yes, Bill. People would have swallowed their hat.

[57:56]

OK. Anything else? I'd like to dedicate our practices this morning to the safe passing over of a young man who just committed suicide this week. Brilliant. Young man who, as my friend who knew him said, saw things very clearly. saw the world very clearly. And as she described him, he was a young man who had some, I think she used the language, some gay tendencies. 16. And anyway, whatever the causes and conditions, I would like to

[59:05]

hold his safe passing over and dedicate the energy, positive energy from our time of practice together to his safe passing over. And I'd also like to invite all of you to hold His Holiness in your hearts. He's, these trips that he takes, take a lot out of him. He is for the Tibetans, among other things, a kind of cash cow. So in addition to the teachings that he does, which I think really feed him, he's up late at night meeting this person and that person and doing whatever he can to help his people. But I agree with you, Karen. I think that the world is blessed with having him in it for however long that's possible.

[60:14]

Good to see you all. Our next half day sitting is at the end of the month on the 28th and take care of yourselves in the meantime.

[60:24]

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