For some time now, I have had the practice of focusing on the cultivation of generosity during this time of year, but with the intention of the cultivation of this quality of mind, of heart, in terms of our inner lives, and not so much in terms of the commercialization of generosity that is so familiar to this time of year. And I don't want to in any way suggest that I'm against presence. But I do think that we can become quite filled with sadness and grief when the obvious manifestations of generosity arise out of obligation, out of requirement, and come with many strings attached.

[01:18]

So to consider generosity and the other qualities that are under the generosity umbrella, if you will, the qualities of gratitude and kindness and care and tenderness that in the Buddhist tradition are described as the very ground from which all other cultivation may arise can be very reviving. I talked about this yesterday and so in a way what I want to talk about today is a kind of continuation of the inquiry I was suggesting in our retreat day yesterday. which is the cultivation of generosity beginning with ourselves. Because, of course, I think we all understand at some level that until we can have some generosity with ourselves our generosity with others will come with more difficulty.

[02:28]

We'll be shadowed by the strings that get attached. If I give my time or energy or a present, I want the recipient to like what I offer them. And I want them to thank me. And there is the very high potential for suffering, because of course, since none of us are very good mind readers, sometimes we give the gift that we would like and not what the recipient would like. Someone in this, I guess it was last week's New Yorker, at the back of the issue, there's a one-page little essay on the tyranny of thank-you notes. And the writer suggested that his gift of generosity this year would be to send a message to all his friends that they need not send him a thank-you note.

[03:34]

He even suggested how nice it would be if someone gives him a present if they would include the sales slip to make it easier to return the gift if it doesn't fit or whatever. Interesting idea. Fraught with danger, but still, I think possible. I think that for many of us the cultivation of generosity to begin with generosity with ourselves is especially challenging. For some people more challenging than kindness or tenderness or care or generosity with another at some level. So in considering generosity during this time between now and the end of the year, I would invite you to notice what arises for you as an obstacle or as a hindrance to generosity.

[04:38]

Sometimes what arises is some fear about being selfish. And I think that one of the possibilities that I would invite you to consider is that the difference between some focus on being generous with myself in a way that is not wholesome, doesn't lead to some great benefit for myself and for others, has everything to do with motivation. That if I understand that my cultivation of generosity in my relationship with myself is in service of this bigger intention of kindly and wholesome relationship with all beings in the world, that makes a significant difference. It takes me away from the hazards of becoming narcissistic, which is, of course, in our world all too easy. So that focus for the context of loving kindness or of generosity, which has in the long run our ability to be with every being and thing, with tenderness, with kindness, with care, with that template relationship of a mother with her only newborn child, takes on a different flavor.

[06:13]

So if in the beginning of this focus what comes up is a lot of fear about how I may be up to no good, can I be kindly and generous even with that kind of thought? There is a kind of kindness in just noting the thought rather than getting caught by the content of the story about what a creep I am. Bill and I were talking earlier today about what I think is very clearly a kind of generosity, which is that when my mind gets stuck, when the needle of my inner... I have to be careful here with my images. I'm displaying my age. The needle of my inner phonograph gets stuck in some groove of self-loathing.

[07:23]

which is of course a major obstacle in the cultivation of loving kindness, there are things that I can do. I can consciously choose to place my mind on some kindly and wholesome focus. It's of course the basis of the whole sacred art tradition in Tibetan Buddhism. This altar here on my right, which is filled with different expressions or emanations of compassion, are an example. I can focus on cultivating my ability to call up an image of compassion which I resonate with. And there are practices, in fact, that keep me so busy focusing on that expression of compassion that I don't have so much room for those thoughts that carry self-loathing. The specialty of Americans.

[08:29]

Our Asian Buddhist teachers come to the United States and are continually amazed at how thoroughly grounded in self-loathing we are. How often that arises as an obstacle for practitioners. During the retreat that we just finished last Saturday, marking the time of the historical Buddhist enlightenment, There were several people who didn't fix themselves on Tara, the emanation of compassion that's the main group of figures in this altar, but rather were willing and allowed themselves to be grabbed by Tara. There's a difference. It helps to begin with a figure or a painting that you find beautiful. One woman in the retreat said suddenly she had never had any particular interest in Tara and she said, one morning Tara started talking to me and telling me how much she loved me and how much she appreciated my effort in my meditation practice.

[09:51]

And she said, I felt completely overwhelmed with this tenderness and kindness and appreciation from Tara. And my response was, where have you been all this time when I've needed you? Not soon enough, Tara. And of course Tara in her great kindness responded with, don't you remember when you were a little girl and you were so fixated with Joan of Arc? That was me. Don't you remember that cat that you had when you were going through your divorce and you were suffering so intensely? And the cat was always there, ready to sit on your lap, rub up against your legs, have you in his mind. She said, that was me. It was so lovely for this woman to appreciate that compassion is not the prerogative of any one spiritual tradition, shows up, manifests in many forms, traditional and otherwise.

[11:06]

So there is this whole host of practices where I visualize some emanation of compassion and recite a mantra and work my beads and keep myself so busy that my mind can't go to all those thoughts that lead me to sink with sadness and grief or fear. What I consider the Baroque aspect of loving-kindness practice that the Tibetans have refined so wonderfully. You know, there's a painting there on the wall, the one the farthest this way, of White Tara. And the challenge is to study that painting. It's a technical aid to meditation. To study that painting until you can close your eyes and recreate every single detail in that painting. Well, that will keep us busy and distracted from negative thoughts for a while.

[12:14]

Unless, of course, we have the response of, oh, I couldn't do that. That's possible also. So I want to suggest another possibility, which is in the same genre, I think. One that Bill has practiced for a while, and I can see that the practice has been beneficial for him. And that is to memorize some poem. It's a great way to fix the mind on some chosen object rather than let it run off to some dismal corner that we know only too well. Before I give you a couple of examples, I want to say a couple of things about a trip that Bill and I just recently were on where we went to see the retrospective of Brancusi's sculpture in Philadelphia.

[13:20]

When I first realized that the collection of Brancusi's sculptures was being shown, I felt compelled to go and see them. This was a chance in a lifetime to see this work by a Western sculptor of great and exceptional skill and ability with a very deep spiritual dimension. So we decided to go and see the Brancusi exhibit and then to go to Washington to see the premier. Both wonderful experiences in seeing the expression of the deepest, most cultivated aspects of the heart coming out of our own Western and European traditions. Very heartening. At one point in Brankusi's career, he was invited by a Maharaja in India to make some pieces for a temple, which in the end was never built.

[14:29]

But Brankusi was clearly quite taken with the idea and the Indian Maharaja bought three of Brankusi's soaring birds one in bronze, and one in white marble, and one in black marble. And then there was an additional figure that Bram Gosi carved out of... He liked to take wood from buildings that were being torn down. And the wood in this one piece looks like it came from some other job. And he carved a Buddha with a wonderful lotus coming up out of the top of his head. I thought, how great a Buddha to arise out of the heart and mind of inspiration in a Westerner. I like to use poems and verses that come from the Buddhist tradition coming out of Asian cultures, but I also like to use poems and quotations that come out of our own culture base as well.

[15:43]

And I think that the more we find expressions out of our own culture that resonate with the insights that are carried in the Buddhist tradition, the more we find a way to strike a certain chord in the heart which goes deep and feels authentic. So one of the poems that I want to offer as a distraction from negative thinking, if you will, is Robert Frost's poem, Birches. It's long enough to keep you busy, and it's surprisingly easy to memorize. I often read this poem as part of memorial or funeral services because I think it's about going away and returning.

[16:46]

Some of us get very excited about the teachings on reincarnation, but this poem doesn't seem to get us quite so excited. When I see birches bend to left and right across the lines of straighter, darker trees, I like to think some boy's been swinging them. But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay. Ice storms do that. Often you must have seen them loaded with ice a sunny winter morning after a rain. They click upon themselves as the breeze rises and turn many colored as the stir cracks and crazes their enamel. Soon the sun's warmth makes them shed crystal shells, shattering and avalanching on the snow crust. Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away, you'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.

[17:54]

They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load, and they seem not to break, though once they are bowed so low for long, they never right themselves. You may see their trunks arching in the woods years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair before them over their heads to dry in the sun. But I was going to say, when truth broke in with all her matter of fact about the ice storm, I should prefer to have some boy bend them as he went out and in. to fetch the cows. Some boy too far from town to learn baseball, whose only play was what he found himself, summer or winter, and could play alone. One by one, he subdued his father's trees by writing them down over and over again until he took the stiffness out of them.

[19:01]

And not one but hung limp. Not one was left for him to conquer. He learned all there was to learn about not launching out too soon and so not carrying the tree away clear to the ground. He always kept his poise to the top branches, climbing carefully with the same pains you use to fill a cup up to the brim and even above the brim. Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish, kicking his way down through the air to the ground. So was I once myself a swinger of birches, and so I dream of going back to be. It's when I'm weary of considerations, and life is too much like a pathless wood, where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs broken across it, and one eye is weeping from a twig's having lashed across it open.

[20:02]

I'd like to get away from Earth a while and then come back to it and begin over. May no fate willfully misunderstand me and half grant what I wish and snatch me away, not to return. Earth's the right place for love. I don't know where it's likely to go better. I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree and climb black branches up a snow-white trunk toward heaven till the tree could bear no more but dipped its top and set me down again. That would be good both going and coming back. One could do worse than be a swinger of perches. There's another poem which I'm especially fond of, which I asked Bill if he would recite, that is, I think, particularly wholesome as an antidote to the cranky mind about the weather.

[21:12]

We were, of course, not here this last week and did not enjoy the wild winds and rains, although I'm quite struck to see the evidence. Someone told us the other night 500 trees were blown down in Mill Valley alone. So, would you recite the poem, Bill? A poem by Charles Dickens. Sunshine is delicious. Rain is refreshing. Snow is exhilarating. Tambors. It's a wonderful poem, I think.

[22:37]

It's the antidote to crankiness about the weather, about what we can't change. It's also a way to get some glimmer of the possibilities that come with describing rather than the generalizations that carry judgment so often. In both these poems, And in fact, in, I would argue, probably most, if not all poetry that is effective, there is the poet's expression of the particular. And something very expanding that becomes possible with that focus on describing something in particular. There's a koan in the Zen tradition, and the capping phrase is, lift one corner, lift four. And the koan is about discovering that when I do one thing thoroughly, when I know one thing thoroughly, that knowing deeply one thing allows me to know everything.

[23:51]

And I think that poetry can lead us to this experience, this insight. So there is a kind of interesting layering of mind training that comes with memorizing poetry. Initially, perhaps one's motivation may be to have something to do other than to keep listening to the cranky voice. But if I choose my poems carefully, I may also have some expanding, some educating, some enlarging of the heart. Shakespeare's sonnets, for example. Many, many, many possibilities. So what I'm suggesting is that we might think of how to let ourselves cultivate some generosity with what is so as it arises.

[25:02]

And that one of the ways we can do that is to give ourselves the gift of choosing what we focus the mind on with some conscious intention for a wholesome and happy mind. and that we can recite a poem until we know it, as we say, by heart and have the assistance, the help of the words that come from someone else's mind stream that help us expand our possibilities away from just those cranky, habitual patternings of the mind. There are, of course, many, many ways of working with the patterns in the mind that are obstacles to generosity, but this is one of them. Over many centuries of practicing the Buddha's way, there has for a very, very long time

[26:08]

been this reliance on learning things by heart. And of course, the whole tradition was carried orally for a long time. And I keep rediscovering the great benefit of learning things by heart. there's a way in which what I'm learning drops down into the physical body and arises with understanding in the mind a little differently than if I just try to think about whatever it is. We in our culture have some tendency, unless we are graced with having been an athlete or someone who has a physical craft, But for many of us, we have neglected the realm of the body. I think it's one of the reasons why meditation practice is so illuminating because we come back to the whole being that includes awareness of physical body.

[27:18]

Exercising the memory muscle can be very surprising. Think of it as exercising your memory muscle. You know, some of us go to the gym. This is a kind of gym activity. And in fact, you could take upon yourselves the memorizing of a poem while you're doing your, what, stair-stepping. People keep telling me about what they do on the stair-stepper. Why not memorize a poem? Do not take Bill's example. Fortunately, he stopped commuting, but he used to come back and tell me about how he was memorizing this or that as he was driving to work. It used to terrify me. Somehow he did it without getting into an accident. I had a very dear friend who still lives in my heart even though she's been gone now for some number of years.

[28:35]

A woman who some of you may know through her wonderful book on Buddhism called Buddhism, A Way of Life and Thought. Her name is Nancy Wilson Ross. She was of another era where it was in the natural course of things that she memorized everything. And as she was old and got closer and closer to her own passing over and had all kinds of dark states of mind visit her, her vast array of poems that she knew by heart were a great solace to her. She was sort of a kind of spouting poetry reciter. And I think that her very keen and alert mind until she was a very old woman was to some degree the consequence of her having so much activity with what she had memorized.

[29:39]

So that's my offering for the morning and for the season. What I'd like to suggest is that we can Be generous with your legs and if you'd like to have some tea, come into the kitchen and make a cup of tea. We also have some remarkably delicious cookies that someone brought yesterday. Her description was that they were ant bombs. They kind of explode powder sugar and goodness all over everything. So take a very large napkin and put it under you because the ants have indeed found us. But it would be a great kindness if you helped us eat them. Bill and I do not need to eat these baskets of cookies by ourselves. So let's have a cup of tea and then we can reconvene and have some discussion.

[30:41]

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