This is three days in a row we have had sun in the morning and no fog. For those of you who come from the sun, I know that's not a marvel. So for those of you who haven't been here before, I'd like to welcome you. What I'd like to talk about this morning is an aspect of beginner's mind. That mind cultivated to meet each person, each being, each experience, each moment as though for the first time. Which I think we in our culture have a conditioning to not appreciate. Our conditioning is much more to look like an expert, to look like we know what we're doing, and if we don't, to cover it up.

[01:09]

So it's another one of those revolutionary ideas that comes out of the tradition of Buddhism that comes directly from the Buddha's teaching. to consider that there may be some enormous benefit in the mind of don't know, the mind of a real beginner, the mind of an amateur. That is the mind that is filled with enthusiasm and curiosity and interest and most of all equanimity, that is not too much attraction and not too much aversion. that old hook. So the aspect that I would like to talk about this morning has to do with what arises for each of us when we make a mistake. Favorite thing for some of us.

[02:15]

And the impetus for this theme this morning is an article in the New York Times recently. I love reading the New York Times as a source of Dharma teachings. It's a way of plowing through the paper with a certain focus so I don't get submerged in the overabundance of bad news. And it's also a way not to get caught with reading the newspaper as a distraction, which is another temptation, isn't it? At least it is for me. So the article that I read was in the Sunday Magazine section a couple of weeks ago, a week or two ago, was about some stories about incidents in the medical field where people made mistakes, and big mistakes, big in the sense of very significant, serious repercussions, consequences.

[03:35]

Not repercussions, consequences. In one case, a little boy was given some medicine, and he was supposed to have been given 0.09 of whatever it was, and he was given 0.9, and he died. By the time the nurse who administered the medicine realized that he was having a very dangerous a reaction and that she needed to get the antidote. She couldn't do it fast enough. And in the article there's a story about a doctor who amputated the right leg and he was supposed to amputate the left and another doctor who did surgery on the right side of the brain and he was supposed to have done it on the left side of the brain. What was so interesting to me in this article was that the author worked through, peeled away layers having to do with these stories.

[04:49]

First of all, the layer of the story as we've gotten it at the level of rumor, which doesn't include a lot of the detailed information that makes the mistake somehow understandable, somehow possible to imagine yourself in the same situation having made the same mistake. where the person being operated on for an amputation of a leg is a person with diabetes and both legs are in terrible condition and have a lot of the signs that would indicate that it's appropriate to amputate. The story that is examined in the article most closely is the one about the little boy who was given the medicine where the decimal wasn't noticed.

[05:54]

That's one of them, only one of the pieces of the story. There is a systems-oriented kind of troubleshooting organization that has worked in different fields and is now beginning to work with different hospitals and clinics in the medical field, trying to introduce a new approach to what happens when a mistake has been made. The distinction being made between blaming, finding the person to blame, and finding out with as much detail as possible how did this mistake happen so that we can learn something to allow us to put additional safety measures in place so that this is a mistake that is less likely for any of us to make again.

[07:03]

turns out to be a very significant and important distinction. And of course one of the factors that makes this shift particularly challenging for doctors is the threat of lawsuit for malpractice. which makes a certain kind of record keeping and a certain kind of acknowledgement of making mistakes leads one to being significantly more vulnerable to being sued. So there's a kind of tension there that is important to notice. So just to give you a little example of some of the things that happened. The resident who was working with the doctor in writing out the order for the medication wrote down point nine, showed it to the doctor after he'd written up the order, and the supervising doctor

[08:29]

didn't notice that the decimal point was in the wrong place. The resident had written 0.9 instead of .09. He then faxed the order, somehow got the order to the pharmacist. The pharmacist had the initial reaction, this is too big a dose, sent an inquiry, is this really the dosage you want, to the resident, but didn't know that the resident had gone home and so didn't get the facts of inquiry. Didn't hear from him in a certain period of time and so filled the order as it was written. Later, when he was asked, He didn't remember that he had initially questioned the dosage. The nurse, when she got the medication and looked at the bottle, thought, oh, this is too high a dosage, and asked the supervising doctor who was on duty at that point,

[09:51]

Again, whoever that was missed noticing the crucial placement of the decimal point. In this inquiry about how did this happen, there was also quite a bit of attention to what was happening in the lives of each of the people who were involved directly or indirectly. what was happening in that unit in the hospital that particular day. And you began, as this story unfolds, as the description of how did this happen began to unfold, you could see very clearly that there were a number of people who might have noticed, it would have been appropriate in their function for them to have noticed, oh, this doesn't make sense, and didn't notice, and some sense of how that not noticing might have occurred.

[10:58]

and a very real appreciation for the impact, of course, for the child and for his parents, but also for all of the medical people who were involved, who had in any way, no matter how distant, some responsibility for what had happened in the events that led to the death of this child. Interestingly, the hospital in question subsequently received a commendation for the thoroughness of their inquiry and the rigor of their efforts to put safeguards in place that could only have happened based on really thoroughly understanding what had contributed to this happening.

[12:02]

including people being on duty for too long, not having enough breaks or being rested. It was like a series of concentric circles. I found the article quite moving. I think the person who wrote it did an exceptionally careful and attentive job of describing this particular situation, but also describing the issue. How do I react or respond when I realize I've made a mistake or I have contributed to some mistake that has led to some harm? Now, I think I may be particularly sensitive to this issue these days because I found myself over the last couple of months in a position of having myself

[13:14]

gone asleep in a situation which led to some, maybe in the long run not harm, but in the short run looked like harm and a lot of suffering for somebody. So it's a subject that's right in my face, right, these days. So I know that that's, that background in my own inquiry with respect to my own process led to a kind of heightened response to this particular article. But I also know that for many, many people, the issue of mistakes and our approach or attitude about making mistakes is pretty fraught with a lot of negative thinking a lot of hiding and a lot of fear. Exactly the opposite of what is being proposed by the various people involved in the stories in this article, which is, you know, exactly what is in the Buddhist teachings about investigation and analysis, inquiry, description.

[14:40]

what is so, no matter how hard it is to look at what is so. How often do we act as though we're afraid somebody is going to sue us for malpractice, or some version of that? How infrequently do we have a first thought and we then turn away from it? Where that first thought actually has some on-the-mark intuition about, what? Oh, couldn't be. We kind of downplay it or say, oh, how silly.

[15:42]

How many times when I sit and listen to people Do I hear people say something or ask a question and then put it down, put themselves down? Oh, this is a dumb question, but, and then, you know, they'll ask the question, but they've already set themselves up to disrespect the question they're asking. And my experience is that very often, almost without exception, the question is an important question for the individual asking it. We have these little teaching verses up here. It takes as long as it takes, and do not say too late. And maybe we need to put up sansanims, keep the mind of don't know. They kind of work together. Recently, I've been

[16:51]

in a situation where I've been having a meal with someone, where someone at the dinner table used a word the person didn't know, but was ashamed or afraid to say, what's that mean? Somebody we know's family, the rule, was it yours? The rule was you were in big trouble if you A word was used at dinner, and you didn't ask, what's it mean? Does that ring a bell? Yeah, Huxley. The Huxleys. Is that it? It's great training. Yes, yes, yes, yes.

[17:58]

You've been speaking in Greek and Latin lately, and I really don't know what it means. Last night, coming back from dinner with some friends who were visiting us, all three of my car mates speak French. I was just too tired to say, what did you just say? But I realized, you know, from a mind training standpoint, It's very important for me to acknowledge, oh, I just didn't understand that little exchange. What keeps us from being able to acknowledge that? And the answer will be different for each of us. And the answer is often different at different times. How much energy do we put into trying to cover up our stupidity? How much do we not celebrate the benefits of being stupid?

[19:03]

When something doesn't make sense, and I say, huh? And I later realize, that's right, it didn't make sense. I was in a situation where what was going on doesn't make a certain kind of sense. And here I am working hard figure it all out when all I have to know is I don't get it. I don't get what's going on. It's one of the great advantages to getting older, I notice. You know, I can't see very well. I don't remember things, certain kinds of things I don't seem to remember. I think my hearing is all right, but I'm saying, huh, more often. And there's a crucial not caring about what other people think about me, which I understand goes with getting older, being willing to be a little eccentric or a little odd or a little out of it or whatever it is.

[20:17]

My daughter said to me recently, you're not getting eccentric. You've been eccentric for a long time. But what's the difference? I mean, how did I keep this secret from myself? It's that impulse to somehow appear in the way in which we think we're expected to be from one moment to another. And of course, this question comes up a lot for people around meditation practice. Oh, I'm afraid to come into the meditation hall because I don't know what to do. I don't know how to enter or leave or what the rules are. I can kind of feel that there's some rules, but what are they? What am I going to have to go through to find out? It can be pretty daunting. And what happens if you put on, you did a good as if for 10 or 15 years, and you're ordained as a priest, and you get a brown robe, and then you're called a teacher, and you actually, in your heart of hearts, in the dark of the night, have to say, I don't actually know what I'm doing when I'm meditating.

[21:50]

What on earth, who do you say that to at that point? where you feel safe enough to be able to say, I actually have shied away from teaching because I don't have confidence that I know what I'm doing. How heartbreaking. Because, of course, our willingness to be taught by whoever or whatever happens in our lives, whatever encounters we have, means that we are continually receiving gifts. We're continually receiving some opportunity for understanding something that in the previous moment I didn't know or understand. And I can begin to experience the world as abundant. Because of course, what I need to know, I will stumble into as I need it.

[22:55]

I've been particularly struck this year by the abundance of the plant world. We've got plants showing up that I happen to know nobody planted. No human being gardener type planted. You know, some bird shat a seed or the seed blew around or you know, whatever mysterious ways in which plants suddenly just show up. Agrimony and valerian and bindweed, all kinds of dock, all kinds of things I don't know the names of are just everywhere. And some of the things that have just shown up gratuitously are very beautiful. I don't need to be safe in the world by reinforcing my effort to control everything and keep looking good.

[24:08]

I can relax. I can cultivate ease that goes with a really honoring and respecting and appreciating the mind of don't know. I don't know. In that don't know that's free of judging and blaming, there is a kind of attention, a kind of alertness to the possibility of learning something that is a real treasure. I think for many of us making mistakes, that whole territory where we've done something that someone says, oh, that's wrong. You did it wrong. Or there are consequences that are not the consequences that I want to be an agent for, where there's harming. But one of the aspects that that whole territory brings up has to do with the fact of limitation.

[25:20]

We have a limited amount of time and energy and intelligence and experience, all kinds of things. What is my understanding about limitation? Particularly given that we live in a culture where we have less and less daily reminder about limitations and more and more reminder about the illusion of doing what we want, when we want to do it, wherever we want to do it. My favorite example being making a phone call. We don't any longer need to be tied to a telephone line. I'm just stunned when I go out in the world and there are people walking down the street and walking around the airport and sitting in restaurants and sitting in their cars and just standing on street corners talking on the phone. That feeds the illusion that we can do whatever we want whenever we want to.

[26:28]

And I don't think it's wholesome for us to have that training, actually. Because there are situations in our lives where that isn't so. And if we don't have any training for the appreciation of boundaries and limits, we're in trouble. One of my favorite examples, one that I just thought of, came up actually in a conversation I had with someone a few days ago, is a great national treasure potter from Japan whose name is Hamada. Now deceased, but a great potter. He was teaching a master's class at San Jose State a number of years ago for one summer, and I went down every day and sat in the corner of the room and watched him. He was by that time old enough so he had an assistant who prepared the clay for him every day.

[27:33]

And one of the decisions he made very early in his life was that he would not work, he would not try to find the clay that was the best clay. He would not find the the minerals and the elements that he needed to make glazes that would be from all over the world. He would work with the clay and the glazes he could make from the valley he lived in, where there was a big clay bank, but it was kind of mediocre clay. It was not the best, of And that was the clay he worked with his entire life. And so he forced himself by that decision to stay present where he was with what was right in front of him.

[28:38]

And he made extraordinarily beautiful pots. Pots that are in museums in Japan. And his work, of course, led to his being designated at some point in his life as a national treasure. Someone I know who is a potter, a sometime potter who lives here in California and studied with him for a long time, was so impressed by the beauty of Hamada's pots that he decided that in the pots that he makes, he would only work with three colors. And he makes, every year he makes some plates of different sizes, but usually fairly small plates. And so he sets a certain amount of time aside each year to do that work. And I have some of them.

[29:42]

It's very interesting to see what he has created, again, with that sense of limitation. I think that decision rests on some understanding that if I don't know what to do next, but I stay present with the not knowing, I will discover where to put my foot or my hand or my mind. Maybe not in the next big steps, but in the next tiny step. And I do want to acknowledge that to do what I'm talking about takes at least initially some courage, some willingness to be in a certain way that is likely to include a certain amount of fear or apprehension because you're going against conditioning and habits.

[30:58]

I've been really struck by the process of making decisions about how to organize this room. We've done a lot of hauling furniture back and forth. My back and Bill's back and our friend's back all doing a certain amount of screaming as testimony to the amount of schlepping back and forth. But what I realized was I couldn't figure it out in my head. I had to put something in place and step back and sit with it and walk around and see, well, does that feel right? What alters need to go in what part of the room? What's the energy that is present with certain combinations of images?

[32:10]

Completely not an intellectual process. I've been very struck by that. Very interesting. Because of course the space itself Intelligence is a field. All the ideas I had about how this room would be arranged have just gone out the window. How does the kitchen work? We got a little bit of a taste about how the kitchen works by doing a weekend retreat and figuring it out one meal at a time. We still haven't figured out where to put our shoes. If we get on the deck here, but we want to go over here to get a cup glass of water, it'll take a while. Fortunately, we probably won't have rain for a few months, so we'll be able to figure it out.

[33:17]

So what I'm advocating is that mind of don't know, that willingness for don't know, but also listening without judging. because in the questions are the answers. If we respect what comes up about, I don't understand this, my very acknowledgement of what I don't understand or what I've done, how did I get to here from here? That question of how did I get from here to here will lead me to some answers about how I got from here to here. but not if I have any criticizing or blaming energy present in the process. So, that's what's on my mind. So let's adjourn to the kitchen for a cup of tea.

[34:26]

Anything up for anybody? None of you has any issue with mistakes at all. what I know, like this depth and strength and consistency of my faith.

[35:44]

And then there are the particulars. I work with, I help people cope with illness and death and loss. And I am constantly faced with situations that I never faced before. And one of the things I've been really as I'm settling into the job more now, is trying to figure out in which situations do I actually, when is it okay to just say, gee, this is new to me, I'm going to need to I spoke with a young man who was really distraught.

[36:46]

He witnessed a death of a woman related to a freeway accident. He had stayed with her as she was dying. It was very intense for him. He was left with a lot of the trauma that comes after that. And I wanted to be of support to him and did my best. But you're bringing up actually some crucial aspects of this whole business about how we meet mistakes, specifically expectations, my own and others. And particularly when you're in a position where by virtue of your role or your job description or whatever, you not only have expectations of yourself in that context, but so do other people.

[37:50]

And yeah, I think it's very challenging to be in that situation. I mean, that's the dilemma of, somebody who's ordained and acknowledged as a teacher in a meditation tradition and who in the privacy of a safe place says, I don't know that I understand much about meditation. And yet, when we tolerate that kind of gap for very long, we atrophy in a certain way what under other circumstances would be a real growing edge. It's a dilemma. I've noticed, and I think it's just because I'm getting a little more comfortable in the job, I've noticed that lately on a number of occasions I've acknowledged I don't know. Including with a client who I began working with when I first started the job.

[38:54]

I might have been able to prevent a widening of a gap between her and her congregational rabbi. But I didn't know how to approach him without him feeling like it was judgment to try to help him figure out how to be more supportive. And I was talking to her, and I apologized for that. And at some point, I'm going to need to talk to him. This is just how it is. And there's something that feels right about just being able to acknowledge that. But I don't know what the con... I mean, there may be consequences. Well, I'd like to make a suggestion. We're all in some version of the same boat. I mean, the details may be different, but we're all in some version of struggling with what I'm talking about and what you're talking about.

[40:01]

And one of the things I can do is to be authentic about what I'm doing and how I work with I don't know, or I made a mistake here. And if I develop some sense about how to meet that in my own life, That's potentially of some use to someone else, just by virtue of modeling that as a possibility. Because what we're talking about is a more process-oriented way of being in our lives. Because mistakes are inevitable. Unless we stay home and keep the door closed and the windows barred, and even then, mistakes are inevitable. They go with being alive. You know, it's like, as we were driving out the driveway last night, there was two flocks of quail with babies at different ages.

[41:02]

And one of the males seems to be an adult quail with one leg. You know, he probably made a mistake. Somewhere along the line, maybe not. Maybe he was just born with one leg, but it's completely possible he lingered too long around our orange cat, and he now has one leg. I mean, it doesn't matter whether we're human beings or other kind of sentient being. Mistakes go with being alive. So if I myself have a sense that what I'm engaged in is a process, I can't teach that to someone else, but I can express that possibility because it's what I'm doing. of the organization ultimately does not share this process orientation.

[42:18]

Yeah. This or anything else. Sure. As near as I can tell. But that's the dilemma that was addressed in this article, where in the medical profession, historically, to admit your mistakes, to keep records in which you analyze what went wrong, is not the usual mode. And in fact, there's some risk involved. So I think that, you know, there are all kinds of examples of being in a situation where somebody who has a great deal of power and a potential impact on my life and what I can and can't do may not see things from this perspective at all. I have a student who works at a one of the colleges in the state community college system, where the whole organization is being run from a very conservative, authoritarian perspective.

[43:26]

And she's very much somebody working from a process and systems standpoint. She bangs her head up against a brick wall about that all the time. does she give up on what in her heart she has confidence in? I don't think she can do that. It's too costly. And if I stay with the particular situation, I may find openings, which if I generalize, I'm not going to see. Laurie? keep the mind of don't know. Revising that, so to be willing to stay in don't know involves accepting the risk that goes with that.

[44:28]

And it can have consequences real, consequences, and you can have the personal consequences. And as a psychotherapist, I come up against this all the time. And I'm sure there's a parallel. And when I have problems with clients and I get lots of supervision and consultation, it turns out that almost always that there are places that I am unwilling to go with the client because I don't know where we're going. And that it always comes back to the various aspects of the need for control and knowing that you're going to be safe.

[45:33]

And so this is a precious teaching and you get to learn it over and over again. Well, I've been noticing, I've been focusing quite specifically on paying attention to what is my reaction to doing something unfamiliar. And I've been tracking that now for the last couple of months. Now, small things, it's not such a big deal, and I kind of move through that. But what I'm noticing is that my reaction is fundamentally the same, whether the unfamiliar is big and complicated or not. That was very useful. What are you chuckling about? A side of me which I think neither my husband nor my stepson had experienced before emerged as we went to hear teachings with His Holiness the Dalai Lama in Los Angeles a week or two ago.

[47:00]

A somewhat daring and wild side of me came out, especially in the U-turned part. But you know, that was a situation where I, it was a situation in which I was trusting my first thought and just acting. Because to do anything other than that struck me as dangerous. I mean, as we drove into Los Angeles, and the slowest we could go was 75, I thought, oh my goodness, I'm in a different driving league than I'm used to. It helped when I translated the cars into Buffalo. Well, it was that one conversion of a left turn into a right turn that was brilliant.

[48:01]

Well, see, what was going for me in that situation was I was pretty relaxed. And that's often absent. in doing something I haven't done before and having some more clutching reaction. It's not always the case. Years ago, when I was the secretary for the San Francisco Zen Center, I ended up doing the immigration work when various and sundry people would be coming mostly from Japan. I would do all the immigration stuff with getting visas, etc.

[49:09]

And I would look at these forms to fill out and my eyes would cross and my brain would get kind of blurry and I would just feel completely stupid. And what I early on realized was that I could probably find someone behind one of those windows in the immigration department who would take pity on me and help me out. which is what happened, and I got pretty good at it. But it was mostly because I was really... I didn't feel like I had any choice but to acknowledge that I don't know even how to fill this thing out. Will you help me? But what about the situations where I don't feel like I can do that? For some reason, I have to cover the fact that I don't know. That's where I get into trouble and I think it's where many of us get into trouble when we somehow cover consciously or unconsciously what we don't know or what we're afraid of making a mistake about.

[50:20]

I wanted to say that that kind of happened for me. I was having a series of interactions with a friend that finally got to a point where I had a lot of reaction. I thought my own mind will wait till I can calm down, till I can get clear so that I can speak in my clearer place. And what ended up happening finally when we did talk was that I realized that I thought I was afraid of making a mistake. I was afraid of saying something incorrect or blowing it. And we had interactions before where she'd really come at me very intensely when we had spoken and I wasn't very clear. So I was waiting to get clear. And when we did finally talk, You know, and just really looking at that, what that was about. Was I really trying to do it for myself? What was my intention, really, in waiting so long? And it was a really good discussion.

[51:23]

I realized that I had a lot more feeling about it that I hadn't even been in touch with until I was able to talk about it. So that a lot more came, and just how long I waited, I guess, was, you know, I was still unclear about that. But I'm not sure about that. I'm still... You see, there's the window, there's the edge. I'm not sure about that. That's a potential point for curiosity. Speaking as a doctor who likes to hide mistakes, I got to see the Dalai Lama after you saw him when he came to San Francisco during the violence prevention conference for three days.

[52:37]

And it was really an amazing process. He spoke twice a day for three days. And people were asking all these very pointed and poignant questions of him about solving violence at every level. Family violence, street violence, urban violence, school violence. And early on, I got it that one of his most wonderful answers was, I don't know. In fact, he would turn to the teenagers in the audience, there was a large contingency of them, and turn to them and say, we don't know, so you must learn, because you are our teachers and we're all here to learn together. And I've gone for a lot of reasons, but one of them was to learn more about how I work with families more. basically in San Francisco. And I've been trying out this answer of, I don't know.

[53:42]

And I'm a person who evokes difficult questions from families because I have this problem of asking open-ended questions in an exam room, which you're not supposed to do anymore. This is my time. in the past thinking that's the wrong answer, they're not getting, you know, there's something ineffective, there's something defective in me if I don't have an answer for these impossible questions. I don't know what these families should do. Sure. And so watching him and then translating it to my own little life, what I was noticing While you were talking, what I'm doing is sitting with, I don't know, with these families, and finding these little sort of open spaces, like someone opened a window in the room, and not even really noticing what that was about.

[54:45]

And the best I can do, a lot of the time, is just sit there with myself, with I don't know and how painful that is, and sit with them with, boy, yeah, that's tough, and I'll sit here with you with, we don't know together. And in that, we don't know together, there can be some mutually supportive inquiry and investigation and discovery about what's possible, which no one party has the ownership of. But together, maybe something begins to arise. Yes, there's so much strength. I mean, all of a sudden we have three people, which I don't know, struggling, looking. It's wonderful stuff. Good stuff. Yes, you're right. His Holiness is a great model for a willingness to not know and a willingness to be taught by whoever or whatever is around him.

[55:53]

He's wonderfully curious. Patricia? Yes, I had an experience this week. I went to the graduation from fifth grade of the last class I had in kindergarten. And there was a parent that I had had a problem with. And I noticed myself avoiding her. I mean, she didn't come up to me and I didn't speak, but I could feel myself resisting her, and I realized what an old pattern that was, and it didn't feel good. It didn't feel good? Resisting, pushing away didn't feel good. It's like erasing. Who was feeling the not feeling good? I was. I thought you'd never get there.

[56:54]

I realized that when you were talking about beginner's mind, with her I had a lot of baggage. I wasn't seeing her that day. So I decided that I wanted to go up and talk to her and then I couldn't find her. She left. But the process was interesting for me because I just saw and felt that very deep you know, pushing away of someone who I feel has threatened my well-being or my looking good. And that it was that I didn't want that anymore, it wasn't comfortable. So... You could call her up. very quickly.

[58:17]

I was realizing listening to you talk that one of my biggest sources of psychological suffering through my life has been just this worry that I would make a mistake and that other people would see me make a mistake and that somehow that was terrifying enough to be tantamount to some you know, annihilation. I mean, not really, I didn't think that, but that was how strong the fear was, you know, how painful it was. And it's been a big enough problem in a lot of ways. It promoted mistakes because I was so anxious and fearful of acting, you know, like being on the freeway and needing to make a U-turn. As I've gotten older, for whatever reasons, that's loosened its grip on me a lot. I mean, you know from our talk that it's still a big issue for me. But compared to when I was younger, most of the time I'm free of at least obsessing about it.

[59:32]

Most of the time I'm free to go about my life and enjoy myself and have other preoccupations. And it's helped me realize what a relief that is. It just reminded me how much more I'm able to enjoy my life and feel satisfied with my life that I don't have to do that. I think there's a kind of prison that we create for ourselves out of this fear about mistakes. And of course, as you know, it's so important to try to unpack for ourselves the ground that has led to this kind of conditioning, to recognize the habit of it, but to also have some sense about the history of it. And at some point just find inspiration to

[60:35]

take on a different mode, as if it for a while. There's another great practice, which is leaving no traces. So I want to ask all of you, before you leave, to leave your seat the way you found it. put the little support cushions back in the basket, et cetera. And those of you who would like to stay and have lunch in the garden or eat in here, you're certainly welcome to. There's some tables there, but you can also eat out in the garden. The wind has not come up yet, so it's quite nice outside. I'm glad to see you all. Our next half day sitting is July 12th, which is a Saturday. And we have an eight-day coming up in July, on July... 18th?

[61:42]

Is that right? 17th. No, it's eight days. An eight-day retreat. Huh? An eight-day retreat. It starts on, anyway, whatever is that Friday. I think it's the 18th to the 26th. And by that time, actually by, within the next ten days, I have been encouraged to believe that we'll have a calendar. Anybody else have anything you want to bring up before we disband? Nice to see you all. And yesterday, after some while of kind of putting off a number of things that I need to do to prep for school, I decided Saturday's the day.

[62:53]

And I put in a new desk and set up my computer and had everything organized and I cleaned as long as I could. And I turned the computer on and the pointer didn't move at all. And I turned it on and off a lot. And read all the manuals a lot. And really hit the wall about what I know and don't know. immediately, and I was watching my day ticking away, set aside for this work that I couldn't do, I couldn't access what I had already done. And it was, my computer has been crashing a fair amount, so this frozen pointer is not unusual, and I did, one of the things that I'm realizing is that I don't retain particular troubleshooting patterns very well.

[64:04]

through this series of 15 steps to solve the problem. And that process is quite mysterious to me. It looks like magic. And I'm so grateful that someone else has done this. So I went through what I thought was the same process that someone had helped me the last time the pointer froze and nothing happened. myself for not knowing and felt like I ought to have been able to figure it out and what was wrong with me that I can't retain this information, all of that stuff. So I phoned the fellow who helped me the last time and he came over and it was very useful watching how he solved the problem. Because one of the things that he did was to not go back to the same pattern.

[65:10]

I'm going, well, here it is. I did what you did. It's not my own kind of panic. And he sat down, and he was trying to boot up from the CD, and he held down the C key. And he said, oh, well, it's not responding. So the message isn't getting from the keyboard to the computer. So it's something with the keyboard. Well, it turned out that when I moved things around and I plugged the keyboard in again, I had bent one of the little prongs and indeed the message wasn't getting to the computer and it wasn't a crash, it was just that the prong had been bent. This is kind of a long tale and I'm not sure exactly where I'm going with this information except that I know that I have some expectation about what I feel I ought to know about the computer, especially as I anticipate teaching in the computer lab again for the first time in a year.

[66:14]

So I have 25 expectations about what I ought to know in the computer lab. And my relationship with myself around not knowing what I'm doing to the degree I think I ought to. Well, you're also describing the kind of tensing up and clutching that happens with fear and not knowing what to do. So certain kinds of just common sense about, well, what could I try? None of that is going to be available if you're in that constricted mode. I think maybe that's why we have computers in our lives, is to help us remember that. I mean, I watched you just go through the misery. Whatever I do, my computer responds with perfect equanimity or not. It doesn't respond, it has perfect equanimity responding and not responding, whether I curse, scream,

[67:24]

I thought you were going to take a hammer to the monitor the other day. It went to slot with equanimity. It would not react. Unless it electrocuted you. That would be electrocution arising in me. But I think that your description of that clutching, constricting part, which gets intensified with the judging and the expectations, is really useful to pay attention to. Yeah, I think this is very good territory. Well, what I'm appreciating about it, when I'm not frantic with the computer, is that this is fairly neutral territory. Yes. It's me and my computer working out The computer and I are one. If I go fast, it goes fast. Well, let me just share something with you that might be useful. I have a very kind computer techie who's helping me.

[68:39]

There's something happening with my computer where every time I go to print a document, the computer can't find the printer. So one day on the phone, he has a printer, it's right there, I can see it. One day I called my friend and he walked me through it and sure enough, the computer found the printer. But I hadn't written down one step I wasn't clear about. So three days later I'm in exactly the same situation again, I probably said, Brendan, what did you do? And I realized it was one step that I hadn't written out clearly enough because I thought it was so obvious I would remember it. So what I learned was, I don't care how obvious the step is, if I'm frightened or upset or panicked because I have to have this thing printed in five minutes, I won't remember.

[69:42]

And of course, once I did that, I could then get him to walk me through the steps that I could then do on my own, and I then thought, oh, well, that makes sense. But that insight about, oh, that makes sense, didn't come to me until I had that place of some ease that was completely not accessible in the state you're talking about that has to do with expectations and judging and all the rest of it. Well, there's this edge that I'm playing also of teaching in the computer lab. and this is something I know and I understand but I forget is that sometimes my not knowing is useful in the context of teaching because the computer brings up a lot of panic with people who are just learning and I'm closer to that place than people realize so I have some understanding and

[70:43]

compassion, especially to people who are coming into the lab for the first time and feeling very intimidated by this technology. I have some sense that I may be a little irritating to people who are with kids, but, you know, they don't need me as much. Right, yeah, I think that makes sense to me. Great, thank you. Yeah. Okay, good to see you all.

[71:12]

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