Good morning. There's some verse which I can't quite remember about the craziness of going out in the sun. I worked in the heat in San Rafael yesterday and had what I suppose is some kind of mild form of sunstroke. So, in the interest of supporting the carpooling effort here and not driving unnecessarily since I live a short walk from here, we walked up this morning, sunshade and all. By the time I got here I thought, I'm going to pass out. So please forgive me for being a little out of it this morning. I think those of us who live here on the coast are weekies when it comes to the sun.

[01:08]

I am anyway. There's a verse which I use as a dedication verse at the end of any time of doing various practices. And it is a form of reciting or citing what are called the four immeasurables. Immeasurable because these are the qualities which are boundless or limitless, both in effect for oneself and for the benefit to boundless numbers of beings. And the verse is, by the truth and virtue of this practice or these practices, may all beings have happiness and the causes of happiness. So this is the first immeasurable known as metta or loving-kindness.

[02:10]

May all beings be free from suffering and the causes of suffering. So this is the immeasurable known as karuna or compassion. May all never be separate from that sacred happiness which is devoid of suffering. So this is the quality known as upekka or, excuse me, mudita or joy. And the fourth line goes, may all never be separate, excuse me, I said that one, may all live in equanimity without too much attachment or too much aversion. Equanimity, upaka. These are the qualities which are essential, are critical in the cultivation of bodhicitta, that is, this capacity that we aspire to seeking enlightenment for the benefit of all beings.

[03:18]

Every time we here at Green Gulch recite the Four Vows, we are restating our commitment to the bodhisattva vow, to the cultivation of bodhicitta. I would this morning like to talk about the cultivation of equanimity, but in doing that I want to actually reference the specific influence, if you will, in cultivating loving-kindness, compassion, and joy as leading to equanimity. A few weeks ago, maybe a month ago, a friend of mine who is a Dharma teacher in Vipassana tradition sent me four letters which had come to him, I'm not sure how, but they were written by a young man who had been a practitioner at a big Zen center in the East and who, when one of the senior

[04:41]

teachers in that center left to form another center, he went with her. So he was writing these two letters out of his experience in two different but overlapping and related sanghas or practice communities. Very interesting letters and provocative and relevant to what I want to bring up for us to consider this morning. He spoke quite interestingly and, in my experience, powerfully in that he was speaking from his own experience and not afraid to describe specific situations with specific people. Hard to do in Buddhist communities, maybe hard to do in all kinds of human communities, to name names and cite instances which have led to some difficulty in one's practice.

[05:44]

But what he brought up for consideration was the tendency to idealize a practice center, a community of practitioners, one's teacher, and how when we do that, how when we do that kind of idealizing so that it blocks us from being able to see things as they are. We begin editing ourselves. We begin editing particularly with reference to what arises, especially in our meditation practices, which may be unpleasant or unhappy material. I don't do that. I don't do greed. Or I don't do envy. I don't do fear. and how the minute we begin editing whatever arises, that process of editing, which is one of the potential hazards of over-idealizing a situation, can lead to a kind of obstacle in our practice because we then begin to do what we think we ought to be doing and not doing what we need to do in the moment.

[07:05]

And I think that this line about cultivating equanimity without too much aversion or too much attachment is a very useful instance of what I want to bring up for our consideration this morning. Because it is, of course, what we are possessive about, what we are attached to, what we cling to, that is usually very troublesome, leads to a lot of suffering. and also that which we respond to with aversion. Yuck! Go away! Both out in the world and what arises within us in our own mind stream. The curious thing about the four letters is that the person who was the author of these letters complaining about this tendency towards idealization

[08:06]

was arguing that there is a place in the way Buddhism is being practiced in the United States for some healthy and wholesome regard for therapeutic work, psychological work, as a way of working with some of the dark, unhappy stuff that arises in the mind stream. And ironically, the author idealizes psychology in very much the way he's complaining about people idealizing Buddhism. But we all have our blind sides and I found the letters provocative anyway. I would like to tell you the story of someone that I know quite well, a dear friend, someone that I've been practicing with for in a few years as an example of what I think the cultivation of the four immeasurables can lead to.

[09:16]

This is for me a story about liberation from suffering. But where the external forms of the path that this person has followed I don't necessarily look like what we call having a practice. My friend has had for most of her life the obstacles in the cultivation of loving-kindness and compassion and joy and equanimity. They're almost lifetime habits of self-loathing, judgment about just about everything, but particularly about herself. Very practiced at editing and for something like 27 years of very intense pattern of eating disorders, among other things.

[10:28]

So about a year and a half or two years ago, she began to work with noticing instances of judgment, which was initially, I think, frightening and appalling to her. She then began to practice the cultivation of of loving-kindness, specifically with herself, and took on the practice of speaking kindly to herself and to others. And she just stayed with that for about a year and a half, all the while saying, but I'm not really practicing because I'm not doing a sitting practice very much. What I'm doing doesn't count. As she began to have some access to some of the underbelly of her acting harmfully to herself, sitting meditation became not only difficult but inappropriate for her to do.

[11:50]

So she has done a lot of walking meditation, but somehow that's not quite as legitimate in her mind. Real practice is cross-legged sitting, at five in the morning with everybody else. So part of our ongoing conversation has been a little argument about whether what she does is what we call practice or just some lazy, almost heretical side event. And she's had, of course, fundamentally great doubt about Is this really following the Buddha's way? But of course, the consequences of the cultivation of loving kindness and kind speaking was very quickly so apparent to her that she was willing to stay with honing and attending to those qualities of response as much as possible.

[12:58]

And slowly, over the last year and a half or so, there has been a softening and a lessening of judging and self-loathing. And she has been able to do increasingly more attending to physical body sensation and breath, as she understands it from having been doing zazen for a while, even though she hasn't been sitting very much for a couple of years, she understood that the specific detail of body sensation and breath was a place she could always return to. So she gradually began to be able to practice mindful awareness in many different situations. I saw my friend for the first time since January, a little while ago. Although we speak every week, I haven't seen her for these months.

[14:06]

And as I listened to her the other day and saw her looking very well, looking very well, she's gained some weight and she has some color and she has some softness and sweetness which I know is her deepest capacity. But what was most wonderful was that she also can see that her sweetness is her deepest capacity. And she no longer doubts that what she is doing is so-called real practice. And that one day she will be able to do cross-legged sitting meditation again, but not for a while. One of the things she described to me, which was really the impetus for me in what I wanted to talk about this morning, was her ability to stay present no matter what she is doing, even in the midst of self-destructive behavior around eating.

[15:23]

She said, you know, I've started doing prayers. I do prayers before I start to go on one of these binging episodes and I even do them in the midst of the activity. So I know that there is a way in which I don't quite abandon myself the way I used to. I'm actually able to stay present even in the midst of this behavior which frightens me and is so destructive. And so I know that something is changing it just isn't changing very quickly. I was amazed to listen to her description of this cultivating capacity to be present in the midst of what has historically been behavior where her response has been aversion and

[16:28]

It's a particular display called Checking Out. For this person to be able to calmly and quietly and calmly tell me about what is so with her meant that, among other things, she was beginning to find a ground for trusting herself and trusting me to listen to her without judging her. Something she couldn't imagine until she could begin to stop judging herself. She's told me periodically over the last year about how specifically as a consequence of practicing loving-kindness and compassion with herself she's had these flashes of joy arise. An upwelling of a kind of joyful mind, very brief, but a quality of mind which she noticed and was unable to forget, having a kind of taste of joy.

[17:48]

So what I find interesting in considering the four immeasurables is how, if we can begin with loving-kindness loving-kindness leads to compassion. Sometimes I think when we look at these endless lists which are so characteristic of Buddhism We think, oh, well, I'm going to do step one and then I'm going to master step one and then I'm going to go to step two. And I think what's happening much more accurately is something more like the ooze effect. That if we can begin with the cultivation of loving-kindness, for example, we discover, we come to a kind of allowing of the upwelling of a capacity for compassion which we can intentionally cultivate but which we can also allow to arise.

[19:05]

We as Americans have such a compulsion for doing. So this area of cultivation that has to do with allowing certain qualities of mind to arise especially if the surround is appropriate, is sometimes hard for us to imagine, much less allow. To begin to meet whatever pattern of the mindstream each of us has that we respond to with, ugh, with kindness and with compassion is a critical, critical step. And of course, in my experience anyway, what I've discovered is that when I can replace aversion with a more neutral response, when I can allow the possibility of loving-kindness, kind of sympathetic quality, then gradually, but very, very palpably, a kind of fear begins to fade.

[20:29]

because what I discover is that I don't need to be afraid of whatever arises. I have some capacity to be present with whatever it is. If I'm editing, if I'm trying to be perfect, if I'm trying to be perfect, if I'm trying to look good, whatever that means, Whatever idea I have about what does a good Zen student look like, I'm going to be that. I'm inevitably going to be leaving some part of myself outside the door. I've been spending a lot of time with compost this last week. We've been turning some enormous compost piles in the garden. We have three little dogs, black dogs, they're barge dogs, and they are by breeding and inclination hunters, especially for rats and mice and wolves and dead-smelling, rotten, anything they can find.

[21:48]

So turning the compost pile is a time of enormous joy for them, and they present a mouthful of the most foul-smelling matter. Stuff I didn't even know we had in the garden. Right now we are in the second round of baby barn swallows. This is the second. The second sitting has hatched. And, as often happens, there are one or two more birds than the nest quite will hold, especially after they begin to grow. So, of course, one of the dogs presented me yesterday with a particularly fetid, rotting baby barn swallow. Of course, for the dog, the dog's response is not aversion at all. The dog's response is, oh goody, look what I found.

[22:51]

Let me roll around in it so you can smell it on me for a few days. Here, let me stick it in your nose so you too can enjoy it. Just try and take it away from me. I'm going to clamp my teeth down here. Anyway, we have these fights with these little dogs trying to extract this whatever it is they found. I think the compost pile is a very good place to study aversion. Because, of course, what goes in doesn't look so terrific, does it? But what comes out is just sweet-smelling gold, gardener's gold. It's entirely the demonstration about transformation. which is of course what I'm describing having seen, having had this glimpse of with my friend.

[23:56]

What I notice with my friend is that she is no longer afraid of what may surface in her mind stream. She's no longer afraid of what she may remember. She's not even any longer afraid of what may come up in terms of a kind of a response to something that happens. And as she has developed this ability to be present with whatever arises, just noticing, staying with the breath, being as kindly and soft as possible, kindly not in the way of clutching or commiserating, just tenderly present. What she has discovered is a kind of stability of mind.

[25:03]

And I think that for any of us who are practicing sitting and walking meditation on any kind of regular basis, we come to appreciate how important stability of mind is. Jung has given us the language of the shadow. So what I'm talking about is all that stuff that comes up. Yesterday I saw a bumper sticker that said, shit happens. Maybe we could say shit arises in the mind. But it also fades. How often am I afraid? How often am I disturbed? How often am I argumentative because I forget, oh, well, if it's risen, it'll also fade. Even the line, may all know equanimity without too much aversion and too much attachment, is itself a statement with great kindness in it.

[26:18]

It doesn't say with no aversion and no attachment. There's a little room there for a little bit. We can kind of ease our way into gradually smaller and smaller containers of attachments and aversions, if you will. As we cultivate these four qualities of the mind stream, we can then slowly be grateful for life as it is, for whatever arises in any moment. And it seems to me that in the midst of that increasing capacity to be present with things as they are, we can begin to experience the perfection of the world.

[27:19]

There's an ancient text, meditation manual, if you will, called the Vissudhimagga. And it's big, you know, it's like, makes the Manhattan phone book look like a relative. And I'm continually swiping the copy from my husband's desk, so he, in his kindness, got me my own copy. I'm sure there's a certain amount of self-care there involved, but... Chapter 9 in the Vasudhi Maga has a lot of text and commentary on the four immeasurables, or abodes, as they're called. The section on loving-kindness is vast. and the language is very careful and very particular.

[28:29]

And what I realized early this morning as I was looking at some of the sections on loving-kindness in the Vissudhimagga, there's no way one can cultivate these qualities quickly. We must be patient and willing to work slowly and thoroughly over a long period of time. So here's another place where we as Americans may run into ourselves because most of us, especially these days, are very practiced at going fast, doing a lot and going fast. So here's an opportunity to be with ourselves a little differently than we may be used to, slowly. taking as much time as we need to take in the cultivation of our inner life. A gardener friend of mine came to look at some trees that have lost branches and looked like they were in some trouble.

[29:46]

And we sat in the backyard in the early morning light on a Friday morning talking and visiting. And he said, you know, what I've discovered is the more stupid I am, the better off I am. He said, you know, when I'm working in somebody's garden and I don't know what's going on and I just say, I just don't know what's happening here, this big space opens up. In a way, what Suzuki Roshi talks about when he talks about beginner's mind. Of course, what makes my friend so good at working with trees, especially trees that are in trouble, is that he spends a long time looking at the particular tree and he asks whoever happens to be living with the tree to do the same thing.

[30:54]

And he resists vehemently generalizations about what you do with trees. All crabapple trees should never have any water on their trunks." He said, well, that's true for some crabapple trees, but it's not true for others. So here it was again, his telling me about letting me see his willingness to be present in each situation with what is so. and telling me a little bit about the consequence of working that way in terms of his own interior life, life of the Spirit. Exactly the quality of mind that my friend was telling me about when I saw her earlier in the week. Being able to, in the midst of very self-destructive eating behavior,

[32:01]

to stay present in a way that allows her to begin to be interested in, now when did the first inclination begin? What do I notice in terms of emotion as this behavior is beginning to take on a life of its own? And already, barely into this way of being present with herself in the midst of this most difficult time in her life. She has a certain confidence that she will, in time, discover whatever she needs to discover that allows her to gradually and slowly stop hurting herself and increase her capacity to take care of herself. which is completely what is the foundation for her saying, I now have the confidence that what I'm doing, the kinds of mindfulness practices in little tiny details throughout the day is real practice and that I will, in time, be able to join you again, you and my friends, in sitting and in doing retreats.

[33:27]

I know that that time will come. It just isn't now." So that she no longer is describing herself as a bad student, a bad practitioner, but sees herself as being on this path with limitless numbers of people who have gone before us and who are on the path with us now. and hopefully will come after us. In the Buddhist dictionary, the four immeasurables are called the Brahma-vihara. And one of the translations for this term may be sublime or divine. the cultivation of qualities that are sublime or divine.

[34:32]

How many of us think that the cultivation of sublime or divine is for someone else? That's not on the screen for me. I think that Shakyamuni Buddha's great teaching is that the qualities, the capacity for the sublime, the divine, are indeed possible for each of us. That's his teaching by example. A human being who lived at a particular time and followed a particular path, cultivating what he came to be described after him as the Middle Way, having explored and tried all of the practices in vogue in North India at the time of his life, being an ascetic, which he plumbed deeply and carefully for a long time, and then after a while saw that

[35:58]

he kept having to go back to eating and resting and taking care of himself to have the life that allowed him to do practices. So that this pendulum swing between taking care of himself and asceticism to the point of near death was maybe swinging too wide. Some great wisdom in being in balance not too much or too little on either side. He showed us a path to realization, to full awakeness that is a possibility for every one of us. Seems perhaps more remote in the world that we live in and also perhaps more necessary.

[37:00]

So I would commend to you the cultivation of the four immeasurables to let yourself be who you are and how you are in each moment so that you can come to know your mindstream very well. It is out of that deep and accurate knowing that we can begin to see exactly what leads to suffering and what does not lead to suffering what leads to happiness, what leads to joy what leads to equanimity. My experience is that that seeing, that capacity for seeing things as they are, seeing my own mind stream as it is, not as I have a press release about how it is, depends on my doing the looking with kindness.

[38:20]

The last couple of months, a group of people that I have some pretty close connection with have been doing traditional loving-kindness meditation, specifically one on forgiveness and one on loving-kindness. And during a recent retreat, which lasted for eight days, we spent the entire retreat focusing on forgiveness and loving-kindness as a ground for awareness of the breath. This is all we're going to do for a week. This and be silent. So, you know, the first three days is a certain amount of flopping around. Let me out of here. You mean I paid to be here? Can't I find something to distract myself? And then, as we settled, came kind of what I call depth charges.

[39:37]

At the end of the week, I felt so moved by people's willingness to see themselves accurately even when, in a certain way, they weren't thrilled with what they were seeing. For most people, there was also some realization that, I have to see what is so if I'm going to change what I need to change. And of course, I think for any of us who are really committed to waking up One of the first things we discover is how little we need to do, how much happens simply from seeing clearly. I realize that this has been a kind of theme every time I've spoken in the last six months or a year, but I continually feel a kind of amazement at how little I need to do in the usual sense.

[40:53]

as long as I can be present. That the being present is where my work is. Not going for editing or pretending something isn't a certain way. A friend of mine has some houses that she rents and to the people that she rents her houses for are on welfare. And there was a whole series of miscommunications between this woman and her tenants, one tenant in particular, who registered all of her complaints through the housing authority and not directly to her landlord. And after about six weeks of real agony and acrimony and You have to move and all sorts of stuff.

[41:58]

They sat down together and talked. My friend called and said, mostly what we had was a communication problem. What I was saying, she wasn't hearing, and what she was saying, I wasn't hearing. And once we could sit down and talk and listen, we didn't have much difficulty. How often is that true for us in our conversation with ourselves? Where one part of the mind is like the landlord and one part of the mind is like the tenant, afraid of being evicted. The great practitioner and translator and commentator, Nyanamuli, talks about how trying to get rid of some voice in our own mind stream is a kind of violence. How often all we have to do is just listen.

[43:10]

That might be one of the first opportunities for the cultivation of loving-kindness. So I would commend to you the Four Immeasurables as a path for the cultivation of being awake. So if you would please join me, I'll do this dedication in dedicating our sitting together, considering these practices and whatever practices we've done earlier this morning, sitting and walking meditation, cultivation of mindfulness in whatever way each of you may have been doing. May the truth and virtue of these practices, by the truth and virtue of these practices, may all beings have happiness and the causes of happiness.

[44:23]

May all be free from suffering and the causes of suffering. May all never be separate from that sacred happiness which is devoid of suffering. May all know equanimity without too much attachment or too much aversion. And may all live believing in the equality of all that lives.

[44:50]

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