So today, I'm very happy to welcome and introduce my dharma sister, Yehoshua Baikon, maybe a Pratt. She spent quite a long time as a resident here, beginning in 1987, and had pre-stored nation from Dharma Transmission from Milan Grace Shearson at Empty Nest Zen Dojo. And in recent years, Vika, for quite a while, has been the founder and she's the teacher at the Mount Diablo Zen Group. She works directing hospice volunteers at Kaiser Oakland. And not so long ago, She got married to her partner, Jeff Keaton, who is the founder of the Crosses of Lafayette, which some of you may know, and she's been working out there for many years.

[01:07]

So she's quite steeped in the Dharma, and I'm happy to have her here. It's nice to see everyone. I'd like to dedicate this talk to the memory of my mother. I was able to lay ordain her when she was 80 years old in November of 2012 and her Dharma name is Doryo Junin which means

[02:27]

a journey or a life of saving others. Obviously I miss her. Anyway, sorry to cry in public. I always do. Okay. So she passed away in August last year. And I think in Mount Diablo Zen group, I said, I hope this is the last time I'm going to say this. But last year was one heck of a year. Jeff and I, my husband and I, both lost parents. And a number of things, I'm not going to list them anymore, happened last year. I don't know how I got through it. Some people said, well, Zazen, of course.

[03:47]

I don't know. I don't know if it was Zazen, but last year I got to come in very close contact with the Four Noble Truths and develop a practice around that. So I wanted to talk to you about that today. The Buddha had his experience and he only came to understand based on his own personal experience of his existence on the planet Earth. It's nothing any of us can experience outside of this body.

[04:52]

It's not an out-of-body experience. Sometimes it's a shame to feel like an out-of-body experience. What I went through last year, even talking about it now, as you can see, I have this memory in my body of that experience. I feel my belly and my throat kind of closing up. I feel tearful. I still have it. So, that's what we're dealing with. I've rewritten the Four Noble Truths for myself.

[05:58]

So when I practiced here, how I heard the Four Noble Truths was, life is suffering. And when I first came here, that was undoubtedly true. I was suffering when I got here. And the origin of suffering is due to clinging to self or impermanence, the ever-changing world, grasping at things, the self becoming, wanting to be or not to be. There is an end to suffering, and the end to suffering is through this practice of the Eightfold Path, right thought, right view, right livelihood, effort, mindfulness, action, and concentration and meditation. So that was my reference point was this list and my the way it

[07:15]

and for my practice was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay. I get it, you know, life is suffering, da, da, da, da. I wasn't so in touch with it, actually. And last year, I realized what a wonderful teaching tool it actually is if we pay attention to these four points. And this is how I went about using the Four Noble Truths to help me through last year. Suffering is a part of the human condition. So the Buddha really, you know, life is suffering. When you say that to people you know about Buddhism, they say, oh, I don't, you know, that doesn't sound so good. Suffering, but he just meant suffering is part of the human condition. I think we can all agree on that. everybody in this room anyway. Suffering is part of the human condition and a gateway to awakening.

[08:21]

If I look closely and keep looking closely, the cause will become clear. Suffering has transformative power. I'm able to heal. I'm able to heal when I do the work. The problem is with understanding that, or not really understanding that suffering is part of the human condition and you can't escape it, the tendency is to try to avoid it. And we avoid it in various ways, which have also arisen down here. Let me see if I can find my list. Dishonesty with myself and others. Holding fast to beliefs.

[09:28]

I'm talking about myself here. Holding fast to beliefs and points of view. Being aggressive. Chronically negative and irritable. Not enough self-care. Maybe I need to take a nap or skip some of these wonderful things I have on my list of things to do. too much time on TV, electronics, games, texting, isolating, not enough contact with people, not enough events that give me pleasure, doing too much, playing the victim, and what happens in this, even this list, is probably some of you, I know I do this, We're thinking, yeah, you know, Joe Bob could really work on that. So you start thinking about other people.

[10:30]

Oh, yeah, God, I wish Susie was here right now. She really needs to hear this talk. It's true, right? That's why we're laughing. It's true. Somebody else needs to work on this. So let me see if I finished this. That's just for starters. One thing that Lori Sanaki Sensei told me one time a long time ago is it's not up for us to judge or even think about what somebody else should be doing or they should be in practice or where they need to develop themselves. So we do look outside of ourselves and blame others and think, you know, or at least for me, I used to think, yeah, it's too bad they couldn't come to some place where they really wanted to develop themselves.

[11:52]

It's a kind of arrogance. I didn't mean it that way. Or that somehow this Buddhist community and what we do here is special. It's special to us, but not to the rest of the world. Everybody else on their planet or in their community is doing something special too. So it's not that we want people to do this. So, life or suffering is part of the human condition and I think we get stuck in not looking closely, not spending enough time with, what is my source of suffering?

[13:08]

So we can say, ultimately, generally, the source of suffering is impermanence or clinging to things. But what does that mean for us? So the Buddha understood this based on his experience. So what is our experience exactly? So in Zazen, we are developing, hopefully, not that you should do this, possibly, through Zazen, we are developing our mind of inquiry, mind of self-reflection. So we can look and look, instead of reacting, we can keep looking and looking and looking and peeling down the layers to see what is our personal source of suffering. And really spend time with it.

[14:09]

Really spend time with it. Often our... Something happens to us when we're young. For a lot of us, something has happened when we were young. The thing is, what I also discovered is that something happened to me when I was young, and my suffering in this moment is due to the fact that this thing is affecting how I cope with it, whatever the situation is. The way I cope with it has been affected by something that happened to me. So if I was walking down the street and my friend Ross jumped out of the alleyway and went, boom! I would go, oh, that's so funny. However, if I was attacked five years ago by some guy, I might never speak to him again if he knew that had happened to me because of the trauma.

[15:17]

So if that is what happened to me, and I want to be happy and want to be clear-headed and have beginner's mind, I have to do something about that incident. And there's a lot of things that we can, in this area, avail ourselves to. So many resources, so many things to do. So many things we can do. neurofeedback and EMDR and LEMS, all sorts of things we can do to help us become clear because I don't see how we can really feel settled and awaken to the sense of oneness when a lot of the time we're dealing with

[16:25]

a lot of stress. So I don't know, I mean, in the Buddhist time, he was stressed. But what we're doing now, I mean, he was, I'm thinking, wandering, you know, in beautiful fields and the water buffalo or wandering around, and he was stressed. Like, come on now. So I think in this day and age, there's really a whole lot more we need to do. Some of us, not everybody, but there's really a whole lot more we need to do and find a path to healing. So here we have the Eightfold Path of these various there's things, right, right is not really the right word, it's more like, I like balanced, right livelihood, right action, right effort, right mindfulness, more like balanced or true, what works?

[17:47]

What works for you? So what is your personal experience of right effort? What is your eightfold path? With that said, I want to be clear that I'm not saying, you know, come here and do Zen practice and kind of do what you want. If you, Sojourn always says, follow something, and he makes his hand like this, follow something through to the end. I think that's true. I think that's a good way to go. Because if you're doing a little something here, a little something there, a little something there, you never get anywhere. It's all surface stuff. So find something that works and follow through to the end. so it's like if you go to the doctor and he says I'm sorry you have this infection you have to take these 10 pills to get better you better take those 10 pills to get better if you choose to take medication you say well I'll take this vitamin and I'll take a pill you probably won't get better

[19:19]

So whatever it is you choose to do, take the whole prescription, even though it might taste terrible sometimes. My mom started meditating at 80 years old. And when she passed away, she was still in this wonderful honeymoon phase of loving meditation. She never kind of got to the hard part, even though she was totally, totally mellowed out, you know. She really struggled with her, you know, she had a kind of personality thing. I don't know what it was. I don't want to know. But in the end, she just mellowed out and she loves meditating and ringing the bells for Satsang. I was so happy for her that she was full of that wonderful joy. So there are these practice places.

[20:23]

Hopefully it's like this. But it's often kind of not like that. Practice highs and lows. So if you've been practicing for some time and you're not mellowing out, you might consider trying something else. Seriously. If it doesn't work for you, don't do it. There's so many things to do. So many different practices to do. It's amazing in this area. There's so much out there. But be careful, because there's a lot of kooky people hanging out their shingles. So you have to be careful of that, too. So if you go someplace and find a teacher, whether it's yoga or qigong or zazen, You know, check their credentials. That's really smart. Take care of yourself, but check their credentials.

[21:25]

Let me look at my notes, excuse me. There's more. Oh, yeah, so... Longer sittings. I highly recommend longer sittings. So if you can attend Sashin, even a day, You can really settle and clear a lot of stuff out.

[22:31]

So then you have kind of a touchstone. Oh, I see. I get it. Sometimes we call this deepening our practice. But I also think that deepening our practice is peeling away the layers and looking really closely. And then do something about it. So if you're still struggling, if you're irritable, if you're getting into little fights with people, if you feel competitive, crotchety, tired, like you're doing too much, do something about it. Enjoy your life. It should be enjoyable. Practice should be really enjoyable. Even the hard stuff. It's like, oh god, it's so hard. And then you can kind of share your grief and your sadness and your having a terrible time with your psalmic friends.

[23:39]

Somebody wrote me recently an email and his salutation was, greetings fellow sufferers. And that made me so happy because I realized he got it. When I read that, it was as if I had been living in a foreign land and having to speak another language. So we were speaking the same language. And that's how it is with Sangha. We might have a lot of strife, but we speak the same language, so we feel good when we see each other. Even if we don't see each other for some time when we see each other, it's like we saw each other yesterday. It's so nice, so nice to be here, see everybody. Years, some of you in years, some of you not so long ago. So to experience this oneness, I think

[24:53]

based on my research last year, to experience this oneness, I think we really have to clear out a lot of stuff, because the self is overactive, easily activated, when it's all raw, Of course, I realize this is all kind of in relative terms. I know that. Anyway, we never know when something difficult is going to come our way. And if you want to be happy, you know, it's good to really do the work.

[25:57]

So you can be free. Walk about on planet Earth and enjoy it. And be free from all this stuff. Anyway, so, just a suggestion. What you do is your business. But I'm just telling you my story to be helpful if I can be a little helpful. And I think that's all I have. Thank you. Do you want to take questions? Sure. Yeah. People have questions. Kika. I really enjoyed the music that you were sharing with us today. And you used this phrase, play the victim. And we hear this a lot, you know?

[27:00]

I know what it means. But give me an example of how you play the victim and how kind of the... If you're playing the victim, what should you do with it? I don't know what... I don't know what... I know what I do. I don't know what you should do. So, do you want to ask that question again? Well, it manifests itself in many ways. Blaming people, I think, is one thing. I mean, things change all the time, and you want to stick to, OK, I was doing this, but now it's changed, and wait a minute, I'm still on this track here. But everything's changed, and you still are kind of blaming the environment. Uh-huh. Blaming. You're blaming. So Kika tends to blame her environment and things happening around you.

[28:00]

Is that what you're saying? This happens. Yeah. So if you want to apply some practical practice to that, what do you do? Well, what I do is I just have a practice of waking up to that. So, the problem is suffering is part of the human condition and we tend to avoid it. So, the way we avoid it is, blah, [...] blah. That's not me. Or something's happening here and I'm falling into confusion. So, once you gather that data, I would say, Yay! I have this data. This is what I do. Not, this is what you do. This is what I do. This is what Kika does. This is what I do. I fall into confusion when something doesn't feel good to me.

[29:04]

So when that happens, I wake up. So when that happens, that's what you do. But it takes some practice. You have to kind of... Because... Okay, in here is called the brain. I work a lot with the brain. I'm very interested in all the brain science. So in your brain there are all these neural pathways. So that's where you're going to go. I guess in Buddhism we say there would be seeds, and pretty soon you're filled with that tendency. So you have to let those seeds go dormant and plant something else. So you have to find a way of not doing that and doing something else.

[30:13]

Or not. But it sounds like you're suffering and you'd like to change that. So that's the thing. You can change this. You can change it. Even if you still go there, you might go, oh, and you're done with it. Yes, except don't allow yourself to be there. I wouldn't do that. No, I would say, I mean, we don't need to get on ourselves. We have some habit. Let's just use you as an example. You've fallen into being a victim about something. Wake up. But don't say, oh, there I go again, and you bad person. Just say, just wake up. OK, moving right along. Bring yourself back. Right, even without the judgment, the terrible self-judgment. Yeah, and I really, one of my points I want to make is I think people say, oh, there I go again.

[31:15]

Oh, there I go again. Oh, there I go again. Then they're out of deathbed saying, oh, there I go again. So wake up. Get over it. Yeah. You can change this behavior. You can heal yourself. All this trouble you're having, you can change it. If I can do it, you can do it. Peter. Linda first, then Peter. So I wonder if the problem is the word victim. There's some situations in which actually either social conditions, structural things, or individual acts of harm, cause suffering, which should be addressed. And it shouldn't just be addressed by saying, don't blame anybody, it's all you. So maybe we should clarify that we shouldn't also blame the victim.

[32:20]

We shouldn't just jettison the word victim and sort of think in a different way, but still notice that there are situations where people are suffering not because of things they did to themselves. That's true. And victim is kind of a loaded word. Nelson Mandela spent a long time in jail. And you're saying he didn't blame... I think he found a way to not feel like a victim. True, but he really struggled against injustice, even to the point of having armed resistance to that system and so on. So he recognized that you actually need to act on behalf of victims, or should we find another word?

[33:27]

What I'm trying to say is Nelson Mandela spent a long time in jail and he didn't spend a lot of time in jail saying I'm a victim and be mowed over by it. He did something. He took action. So that's all I'm saying. This practice is a practice of action, social action. It's not a practice of It's not a passive practice. That's what I'm saying, basically. Whether we say victim and all this, we could talk about that for hours. So is that a little better? Yeah. Do you know what I was trying to sort of prevent from happening? I was trying to prevent from happening by what I said. Yeah. I'm not so sure we need to worry about that so much. I mean, I'm not sure that's what I'm talking about. There are perpetrators. And there are victims of perpetrators. There are things to stand up to. That's not really what I'm talking about, though.

[34:34]

That's kind of a whole separate, very important subject, and I'm really glad you brought it up. But I can't, you know, here I can't. I'd love to mix it up with you though, Linda, and talk more about that later. Yeah. Thank you. It's about forgiveness. My question about forgiveness is, if I'm forgiving somebody, is that for me, or is that for the other person? Well, I would say it's for you. Is it my way of letting go of my story? I don't know. Why are you asking me? I don't know what your story is. Is it? Could be. I heard a story once about a woman who arrived on the scene of an accident where her son was severely, severely injured and died on the way to the hospital.

[35:43]

And as she was leaving, the teenager who was driving the car that hit her son was in the police car. And as she was leaving, she said to the policeman, please take good care of the children as the ambulance is leaving with your son. And the doctor and the policeman said, oh, don't worry. We'll get him to the hospital as soon as possible. She said, no, I don't mean that boy. I mean this boy. So who's that for? Is that for that boy? Or is that for her? Is that for all of us? All I can say is that if you want to be happy, you have to find your way, your way, not something else out there.

[36:47]

So to forgive somebody is so you can feel better. That's all. We don't do it for that person. They're just, they're doing their own thing. Maybe we're not so separate. No, of course not. Maybe I release both of us. Yeah, and we can only take care of ourselves, right? In a way. So if you are I think, but you know, I don't know, I'm just a person. I think that when we're on our path, when we're awake, everyone else is awake. That's what I think. But you know, you're welcome. It kind of comes and goes. Thank you for your... So these, I want to point out these two stories of real life

[37:56]

things. These two stories happen and we never know when things like this are going to happen and they're very tragic. And I want to say that, I think Diane Rossetto says, at a kitchen sink level, that's what I'm talking about today. Basic stuff. Basic ways we don't get on with each other. Basic ways we fall into being competitive. Basic ways we our giving of ourselves, or our worldly possessions, that's what I'm talking about. So, and that's I think where we need to start. And then when something like this happens, we know what to do, because we're already doing it. And that would be what we call an appropriate response. Anyway, I love all this stuff, I could go on forever. I see the striker waving.

[38:58]

Okay, thank you very much.

[38:59]

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