So, good evening. This is an iconographically rich room. I enjoy being here very much because the iconographic expressions are not just what you usually would associate with a Chinese meditation place, but there's a lot of Tantra embedded in the iconography here. This gesture is called the threat gesture. And I noticed over here, with these beautiful Chinese Kwan Yins. The first one and the third one are, oh, and the fourth one are all doing the threat gesture.

[01:05]

This is all is well, don't be afraid. This is, of course, generosity. This is Manjushri, this figure here, the painting and the statue, with a particularly fine lion, and holding the Heart Sutra, the actual text. And what's interesting about this particular iconography is that, oh no, this is not, Oh, how interesting. He's not holding the heart suture. He's holding a teaching staff, which in ancient times was a mushroom on a stem. And the teaching staff, which we have now, is a kind of modified version of that mushroom, a hallucinogenic mushroom, I might add. And this is shining practice. This is Samantabhadra.

[02:08]

I couldn't tell you. It was before my time. I have a stick that is a version of this that I got at Gump's in a stand of things that they didn't know what to do with, and it cost me all of $5. I thought, well, okay, pretty good. Anyway, the iconographic expressions here are quite wonderful. and more mixed than one might ordinarily find in a traditional Chinese Zen monastery. Anyway, I like it all. And I've studied the iconographic system largely through the good fortune of studying with a Tibetan teacher who I was very close to until he died. And then my husband and I raised his reincarnation until he was four.

[03:15]

And then he had to go back into a more formal, not such amusing environment. I think His Holiness was afraid he'd never get him back if he didn't get him while he was still pretty little. Anyway, as you can tell, I have had a rather eclectic background. My first teacher was Shinryu Suzuki Roshi, the teacher around whom the San Francisco Zen Center formed. I had in some ways an almost domestic relationship with him. I was his secretary after Tassajara was started. I drove him to and from Tassajara and the city center. And I took care of him while he was dying of metastasized gallbladder cancer. And that experience is what really started me keeping people company while they die. I learned an enormous amount just being with him as he was dying.

[04:17]

He had a very young and quite nervous doctor who was certain that if he had metastasized gallbladder cancer, he must be in terrible pain. And so he gave Suzuki Roshi some medicine for his terrible pain. And I gave the pill, as directed, to Suzuki Roshi with a glass of water. And four hours later, he said, Yvonne, don't give me any of those again. Can you discreetly get rid of it so that the doctor's feelings won't be hurt? But I don't like what happened to my state of mind. So I polluted the sewer system of the San Francisco municipality. I don't think I'd get rid of it quite that way anymore, although I'm not quite sure what I would do. But anyway, it was very clear his state of mind was more important to him than some what he considered minor degree of discomfort. I've been very fortunate to have had really extraordinary teachers, both in the Zen tradition and in Vajrayana, and I've also had several quite, for me, very important Theravadan teachers.

[05:34]

In Soto Zen, which is the particular school of Zen that's home path for me, there is a lot of influence from the Theravadan tradition. and particularly in terms of the understanding about different forms. And I remember when I went on a pilgrimage to temples in Japan, I was startled when I went into the Buddha Hall where ceremonies would take place. I thought a Tibetan Lama would feel right at home in this environment. Being in this room where the different traditions kind of swirl together, I feel very much at home and I hope you do too. The monks here are very generous and sympathetic to those of us who are on the path, whatever particular form our path happens to take.

[06:37]

What I want to talk about, I want to talk about the first step in the Buddha's first public teaching on change, on impermanence. I'm convinced, and I really did learn this from Suzuki Roshi, that as long as I'm sitting in the teaching seat, I must also regularly sit in the student seat. And the minute I go for more than six months without taking the student seat, I will stop teaching until I do. And I've made that promise to myself a number of years ago and I am very grateful that I had the wits to make that agreement with myself. And I have made it with the teachers that I've studied with. But it was Suzuki Roshi who really was my inspiration because during a retreat one time He said during one of his talks, it is true, he was sitting, you know, like where you are.

[07:43]

We were this close to each other. It was like he was burrowing into me with his statement. It is true that sometimes I am the teacher and you are the student. It is also true that sometimes you are the teacher and I am the student. And he really demonstrated that he was quite at ease and not clinging to wanting to be special, wanting to be in some elevated relationship to the people he was practicing with. So I think it's important that we practice with other people. I think it's important that we practice meditation in all of its variations, because there are lots of different aspects of meditation practices. that we practice with other people and that we sit in the student seat, and if we are given some responsibility by way of guidance, that we do that, carry that mantle, if you will, lightly.

[08:48]

Because to do otherwise can be quite seductive and potentially quite dangerous. For some reason, my husband and I moved six years ago from Marin County to Mendocino County. So I got to enjoy, I use the term somewhat ironically, the traffic between here and where I live in the Anderson Valley. And as I was particularly on the road 128 that comes from the coast through the Anderson Valley out to 101, I can get very cranky with respect to the way the other people are driving.

[09:50]

A lot of tailgating, a lot of honking, a lot of cutting corners and passing on blind curves. So my practice as I go in and out of the valley is whenever there's anybody coming along at a galloping speed behind me to at the first possible safe turnout to get out of the way and let that person go by. And of course to add insult to injury, a Caltrans is repairing the road. So we also get to just stop. in the sun with a big red stoplight while they're, you know, paving something or other. It will, in the end, I think, be quite an improvement on the road. But it's a great opportunity for studying the mind. Somebody I've been practicing with for a number of years writes me what he and I call weather reports. And they're almost always, his weather reports are almost always reports on his cranky mind when he gets on the freeway.

[10:57]

And he is so easily outraged by the way other people drive. And he gets very excited and doesn't notice how excited and reactive he gets. And so I've been thinking a lot about this first teaching of the Buddha about everything has the mark of change. Everything has the mark of impermanence. And that includes the states of mind that we like, And it also includes, although not maybe fast enough, the states of mind we don't like. We want, at least some of us, want unfortunate or unattractive or aversive states of mind to be gone quickly. And I think the habit of wanting to get rid of what we don't like, what we find leads to discomfort, we get very practiced at that reaction of, I wanna get rid of this.

[12:00]

And I wanna propose that another possibility is transformation. So for example, in the habit of judgment, habitual judgment, not the judgment that's conscious and appropriate, but what is a kind of habit that's so familiar we don't recognize that that's what's arising, unless we get quite determined to notice when we slip into a thought that would be in this category of judgment. And then the antidote practice or the transformative transformation practice is quick, 10 things I'm grateful for. So it's a matter of picking up my attention from what is familiar but leads to suffering and placing my attention on what is a kind of a counterbalance so that I begin to work as deep a groove that would be labeled appreciation as the groove of the habit of judgment.

[13:08]

And for some people, aversion of one kind or another is very familiar. And we can go to some form of aversion and it's so familiar, we slip into that so easily that we aren't aware that that's what's going on. I have another friend who has a very strong habit of judgment, learned at her mother's knee, as far as I can tell. But right on the heels of the habit of judgment is the habit of storytelling. And she sends me stories about her story. She sends me the storytelling stories. And she can be gone for days, and all of a sudden realize, where was I? How did I get on this track? Her capacity for the cultivation of patience, the cultivation of appreciation, the cultivation of noting and coming back to alignment, centered, ground, breath in, breath out, vanishes.

[14:27]

I want to invite all of us, myself included, to be as patient as you can be in cultivating what may not be as familiar as some of the more familiar conditioned grooves. And pick one, don't try to transform more than one thing at a time, and be willing to take as long as it takes. This is where the gesture of generosity is very useful. That quality of generous heart-mind towards oneself is necessary if I'm going to cultivate that capacity with respect to my relationship with others. I have to start here. And what I noticed, this spring I did a retreat, a class at the yoga room on the theme of words matter.

[15:32]

I'm actually writing a book based on practices for studying the mind by studying the language that we use so readily that we may not even be conscious of how quickly we slip into certain thoughts, clusters of thoughts, certain words that I put on the notice and then come back to a more clean way of speaking and thinking. So first person active voice rather than it They, why, always and never, for example. Those are some examples of some words that can lead to suffering. What's so interesting to me is how

[16:39]

For all that I've been studying the teachings of the Buddhas and ancestors for, well, I started when I was in university. I still can't figure out how I ended up doing this, but I studied Chinese Buddhism in the 20th century because the professors that I wanted to study with, that was their field. And I then, that really laid a kind of groundwork for later, let's see, nine years later when I met Suzuki Roshi, I realized, oh, here is somebody who's actually teaching what was being pointed out in that class, year-long class that I took when I was in college. And what was so helpful in practicing with Suzuki Roshi is that he was willing to be present warts and all.

[17:57]

He wasn't aiming to be perfect or an example of how to do it right. He was willing to have us keep each other company. And one time when we were going into Tassajari, he had an incredible love of fiddlehead fern fronds, which you only get for a few weeks in the spring. And we passed a very heavily underlay with big oak trees of fiddlehead fern grove. But between us and the ferns was a big barbed wire fence with lots of no trespassing signs. And Suzuki Roshi said, Yvonne, I want you to go in there and I want you to take this paper bag and I want you to get as much of those ferns as you can.

[19:00]

And I said, okay. And then I Went in, I came back and I said, what about this sign? He said, never mind the sign, just get the ferns. We then drove as quickly as possible to the kitchen at Tassajara where he disappeared into the pots and pans making fiddlehead fern soup, which made him very happy. And I thought, well, I guess there are times when we can suspend the rules. He was not trying to be discreet or secretive about what was going on at all. So, um, it was one of those, uh, experiences that really has stayed with me since, uh, since he, since this all happened, which was in the, in the sixties that, um, that willingness to be completely transparent, to be seen, to not get caught by trying to look good or be somebody, be a certain way.

[20:12]

That's not the way you actually are. And I'm deeply grateful to him for that because I think that we can get caught in wanting to be perfect. We can get caught in wanting to look good. We can get caught in wanting others to think well of us. We can get caught in wanting the changes we're happy with and turn away from, have a certain amount of aversion with those changes we'd rather not pay attention to. Does that make sense to you? benefits you all have in being able to meditate together and receive teachings and participate in conversations, discussions, and various activities together is you get to have not just hierarchical relationships, but side-by-side relationships.

[21:26]

And I think having both is very important, extremely important. And the teachers that I have had that I've learned the most from have all been willing to have the side-by-side relationship, not just always be the chief dog, if you will. I live with a lot of dogs, so the word dog comes up in my teaching sometimes surprisingly often. So I wonder if there's some things that are up for any of you that you'd like to bring up or wonder about. Yes, please. Oh, you're really recording all this? OK. It's your call. So I'm interested in what would be some other examples of the, you mentioned there's, you could have 10 sort of words or new paths of transformation, appreciation, I guess would be one, gratitude.

[22:42]

Quick, 10 things you're grateful for as an antidote to the habit of judgment. Um, I would not, go to gratitude in general. I think you want to be, in my experience, as specific as possible. And I find working with those more positive qualities in conjunction with what's the aversive trigger, keeping the field of aversion in mind, I find quite useful. Otherwise, what happens is we pretty soon don't notice aversion. Or if we notice aversion, it's projected out onto others. we see what we find disagreeable in another person.

[23:43]

Or we hear from somebody else what they find disagreeable in yet another person, often who's not in the room, for example. In the Buddhist teaching about everything has the mark of change, I think what's quite useful is to keep in mind that that means everything, not just what I want to have change, what I'd like to have stick around for as long as possible, even that has the mark of change, whatever that might be. I'm getting ready to teach a class on aging. So I've been paying attention to my own experience with aging, spots on the skin and wrinkles and sagging and extra rolls here and there that I would actually rather not have.

[24:50]

Nothing like looking directly into the mirror with no clothes on if you want to look at where you get caught. And one of the benefits in having some company is that you're more likely to, not because other people in your companionable group are gonna point things out to you, but I know I'm more likely to notice what's coming up within my own mind stream when I'm practicing with other people. For a few years, one of the things that's gone for me is my once quite reliable memory. I do seem to remember Dharma teachings better than where I left my glasses, for example. Anyway, some number of years ago, for about three years, there was a group of ten of us who met every Friday morning at a congregational church that gave us a room to use, and we would

[26:05]

meet and meditate together and then we would pick a practice that we would all do and then we'd go around the circle when we would meet on Friday mornings and as people were ready to say about what had shown up, doing whatever practice we were doing. So for example, Why in the precepts, the grave precepts, is it that the statement is a disciple of Buddha does not lie. Now I've seen some versions that put it in the positive. A disciple of Buddha tells the truth. But what's true in one context in another context may not be true at all. This is why I think we should all watch Rashomon Kurosawa's film at least every other year because it's about five people all had, were somewhere at the same time but they had five dramatically different experiences.

[27:11]

Some years ago, I was doing a women's retreat at Omega in upstate New York. And for a variety of reasons that are not interesting enough for me to go into, I was teaching in the mornings. And then in the evening, we had in this five-day retreat four different teachers. And it got very confusing. And somewhere like around Wednesday morning, I decided that I proposed, and the group went along with me, that there were 92 of us, that we sit in a big circle, and we all describe as briefly as possible what was up for us. And the deal was nobody would give advice or help.

[28:20]

It was just listening. And at the end of our last meeting, we went around the room again and people were able in one sentence to say what they had found helpful, useful in the week. And with two exceptions, So 90 out of 92 people said they found the experience of feeling listened to as they talked about what was coming up for them quite valuable. That they found themselves hearing what they were saying in a way that wasn't so often the case when we just are going blah, blah, blah, whether somebody's listening to us or not. It's one of those experiences that has stayed with me these few decades since that happened. So cultivating, I think the grave precepts are, I value the 10 grave precepts.

[29:31]

A disciple of Buddha does not, intentionally harm or kill. Conventionally, disciple of Buddha does not kill, but it's sometimes articulated as intentionally harm. A disciple of Buddha does not take what is not given. A disciple of Buddha does not lie. A disciple of Buddha does not intoxicate mind or body of self or other. So what's the fifth one? Ah, yes, how could I forget? A disciple of Buddha does not engage in sexual or sensual misconduct. And then in those systems where there are 10 grave precepts, the remaining five are more kind of opening up the first five. And what I find quite interesting is that of those 10, there are six that have to do with what comes out of our mouths or the language we use in our thoughts, in our speaking and in our thoughts.

[30:39]

So I have for quite a long time focused a lot on, not a lot, often. It's closer to the bone. paying attention to the language that I hear in thoughts and I hear coming out of my mouth. And I also do five minute timed writing, where I'll start, when I sit in this seat, and then I keep my hand moving until the egg timer goes ding, I don't worry about spelling or punctuation. I just keep my hand moving. And consistently in the years since I've been doing that practice, it's a way of studying the mind. And what I observe is going way out and then coming back to the way I started when I first began writing.

[31:45]

It's a practice that I find quite useful and I've suggested it to a number of different people and pretty consistently the feedback I hear is, oh, this is another way to study the mind. Periods of silence can be very useful because among other things what happens is it's almost as though the volume button got turned up in terms of whatever thought patterns we get caught into. One of my children is a struggling poet and she described to me going swimming with her partner in a freezing cold pond with garrulous geese. And I thought, oh, because she's been really sweating over her writing.

[32:57]

But in this case, there was no sweat. It just went bloop, writing to me, reporting about the morning swim in the cold pond near where she and her partner are spending the month of September. Garrulous geese. I thought, hmm. I don't seem to be forgetting that particular piece of the email that I got 24 hours ago. So pay attention to what you hear when you eavesdrop. That's one of the things I love about writing on public transportation. You get to eavesdrop and nobody will notice. But there are lots of situations where you can eavesdrop and get a certain sense about what language patterns are likely to lead to suffering and what are the language patterns that are likely to lead to a capacity for being present with whatever is so.

[34:12]

I find working with language in this way has helped me notice what I would otherwise be not so likely to notice. The other thing that helps is being married to the same person for 30 years who is quite observant. and has come to the point where he feels invited to give me feedback. And it's legitimate. I want his feedback. So he recently called to my attention a habit of expectation, particularly expectation of what the worst thing I could imagine might be that is likely to happen. And it took me a few days to kind of get what he was talking about, pointing out.

[35:19]

And then it took another maybe a month for me to realize, well, of course I have that habit. I know exactly who I learned it from, who I grew up with listening to that negative anticipatory habit. And in uncovering a pattern like that, that you may not be thrilled by, but the very recognition you can be enthusiastic about, oh, huh, this is something I could begin to pay more attention to. So greeting whatever you uncover, with appreciation, I find quite useful. So, does this trigger any inquiries from any of you?

[36:21]

If you're gonna speak, you have to speak into the, oh, you're waiting to give it to somebody, ah. You're the mic traveler, that's great. Thank you. I wanted to hear more about what you were saying about kind of being willing to sort of be yourself, warts and all, and I guess like a desire to sort of model good behavior or something, whatever that means. But I mean, I guess I'm thinking like the sort of feeling of wanting to, you know, be a good person and wanting to sort of try to live up to some sort of expectation. And I don't know, there seems to me to be a bit of a contradiction sometimes, at least for me. And so I'm trying to wrap my head around that.

[37:27]

Well, first of all, I don't have much regard for the word good. It's a little bit like fun. I don't have a clue what you mean, and if I use the word, I don't know what I mean. So I'd start there. The practice that has helped me in terms of efficacy is the process of setting a clear intention. And I have, where we live now, in a hall in the back part of the house, I painted one wall with blackboard paint. Where we lived when we lived in Marin County, in my office, on the inside of the office door, I painted that in blackboard paint. And that was how I started with this clear intention business because I could set a clear intention and then write down what began to show up as obstacles or hindrances or forgetfulness.

[38:43]

And, um, so I could begin to go from that generalization with respect to an intention to, um, not engage in the speech, the grave precepts that have to do with speech. Well, then pretty soon I thought, well, why don't I just pick one? I'm going to pick one. And then in what I began to uncover was the importance, the usefulness of not only noticing when I kept my intention, but how important it was for me to be willing to notice when I didn't keep my intention, because that's where I had some cultivation that I would benefit from. and to generate the willingness to see those moments. And initially, that meant noticing sometimes way after the fact.

[39:49]

So am I willing to have some lag time between what I do and when I notice what I do or when I don't do what I said I was going to do, and then I notice that not doing it three days later? Respecting, I'll see what I see when I see it and not, you know, self-flagellating, um, I think is, is, um, crucial because I can get caught in kind of suffocating with a big wet blanket what it is I don't want to see. Um, I remember, um, Bear with me, those of you who've heard this. I'm sure I've told this story here. I went to a conference on women in Buddhism at the Mercy Center on the peninsula. And there was a monk, a Theravadan monk, who did a kind of a workshop before the actual meeting started.

[41:04]

on working with anger. And I remember talking to my husband on the phone saying, I think I'm not gonna stay for this conference, because all the presenters are men. What are they doing, a conference on women and Buddhism and all the presenters are, And he said, and what else are you doing? And I said, well, there's this preliminary event with Usul and Anda on anger. And he said, it sounds like you've got just the perfect material to work with. Just stay there. And I don't want you to come home for a week, which wasn't quite true, but it was what he said anyway. And I actually, I learned an enormous amount from Ussi Linanda about how to work with a strong, highly energized, negative emotional state like anger.

[42:09]

He guided me through an hour long guided meditation on bringing attention to the manifestation of anger. I was appalled and informed. It was very, very useful, very useful. So, one's press releases can be useful as long as one can notice them. So, for whatever that's worth. I want to make a couple of observations, if I may, about meditation posture. I'm not quite sure what to do with this thing. I guess I put it, oh, it'll fall down. Never mind. If you have your hands placed on your legs this far out, then it means your elbows are not underneath your shoulders.

[43:11]

And you are more likely, if you sit for very long, to have quite a bit of discomfort across the middle of your back. You want to, whatever you do with your hands, whether you're using a traditional meditation mudra or not, you want your elbows to be underneath your shoulders, underneath the ear. So you could draw a line from your ear, your shoulder, your elbow, your hip. That will have you in alignment. This, will lead to suffering in the middle region of your back. The benefit of the classical meditation mudra is that you have the tips of your thumbs touching just enough to hold a thin piece of tissue paper. And of course, this is what happens when you start thinking, right?

[44:16]

You see? Ouch. And this is what happens when you start to fall asleep. Your hands collapse, your posture collapses, pretty soon you're snoring or leaning into the person next to you or falling over, which of course leads to waking up. If It's you're meditating in an environment that you find quite cold. This is where a shawl can be quite helpful, but also doing this. You maximize the amount of contact. and then put your hands against your belly. And you want this part of the hand, or if you're making a fist like this, to be below the navel. So the tanden, which is the center for spiritual strength and stability, is about four fingers below the navel.

[45:22]

So that's where, if you've got your hands in the classical mudra, you want the back of the hands to be there, and that means then the thumbs will be about at the navel. You want to have your face come back. You don't want to do this because that'll cut off your breathing here in the throat. You want to come back this way. With the tongue resting on the roof of the mouth, with the tip of the tongue behind the upper teeth. It's a great way to interrupt thinking. Okay, I think that's enough detail. And of course, this alignment of the head center balanced on the shoulders. In alignment, the head center for perceptions, the heart center for emotions, the tanden for spiritual strength and stability.

[46:29]

If those three centers just in front of the spine, on top of the spine, in front of the spine, in front of the spine, lined up with each other, and then you're aligned and grounded. Think little roots coming out of the bottoms of your feet going into the, through the floor, through the basement, all the books, boxes of books down there, et cetera, through the cement into the ground. Okay. And, um, by periodically scanning your posture, you can tell a lot about what's going on with your mind. This is what goes with thinking. So during retreats, when I start doing meetings with people individually during retreats, which I usually don't do until we've suffered together for three days, how did you know I was thinking? Well, that's how I know. Because body and mind are one.

[47:31]

And we keep thinking that if we're thinking and we keep quiet, nobody will know we're thinking. Well, maybe, maybe not. So pay attention to where the chin is. OK? All right, those are the tips from Mendocino County. Yes, please. Oh, yes, the microphone. This is an extraordinarily basic question, but I'm really interested to know what kind of language you're going to use to describe that. What kind of language to describe what? What kind of language you'll use to describe what I'm going to ask, which is it as you sit and meditate and thoughts come into your mind, what do you do with them? Um, I would recommend not doing anything with them, letting them just float in and float out. And there will be times when there's some usefulness in doing the practice of bare noting.

[48:40]

Oh, thinking. Come back to alignment of the head center, the heart center, the belly center, a sense of groundedness, breath in, breath out. So I'll note thinking, and then I'll come back to physical body, alignment and groundedness and the breath. If the thoughts persist. Well, how many years have you been thinking? And how much energy is there in particular thought patterns? that might give you a clue about the amount of energy in the attention you bring to noting and abandoning those grooves. This is not quick. It's why the historic Buddha placed such strong emphasis on the importance of persistence and patience.

[49:48]

And I would say courage. I think it takes courage to be willing to actually study the mind one has, the mental patterns and habits, because at least initially we may not be thrilled. But I can't change what I don't see. I can't see, oh, this particular pattern leads to suffering. And if I don't know how to work with that pattern, that's where having somebody you have confidence in who has some more training than I do is the person who might have a suggestion. I've been focusing on bringing, for myself, bringing attention to the language that arises in thoughts and speaking for close to 50 years.

[51:06]

And Most of the time, the conditioned patterning that I learned from the family I grew up in has most of the time transformed. There are moments when there'll be a little familiar bloop. And I have some alternatives. I can be hard on myself or I can be interested in, oh, I know that. do whatever the appropriate antidote practice is. I also have found setting a very big field that is the container in which I stand doing a practice in the way that I'm talking about. The bigger the field, the more patience I can muster in working with what is really highly energized.

[52:16]

So by that I mean, for example, five acres up, five acres down, five acres this way, five acres that way, five acres that way, five acres that way. That's what I call a somewhat sufficient field. My capacity to pay attention to what I'm experiencing increases the bigger the field. especially patterning that has some baggage to it. And in time, that sense of baggage begins to begin to transform and we begin to have more confidence in our ability for transformation. I'm not talking about getting rid of, I'm talking about transformation. Big difference, I think. I have now run over time by four minutes. Thank you very much for your patience.

[53:19]

Nice to see you all. What did I do with my glasses? Somebody else is going to have to lead the dedication. Well, I can do my version of it. May we dedicate whatever positive and wholesome energy arises from our practices together this evening, from our being together with our intention to cultivate the heart-mind, to bring about ease and the transformation of suffering, not only our own, but that of those we know, those we don't know, those we have heard about, those we don't know about, not yet.

[54:25]

May the energy that we bring from our spiritual practice bring about some easing of the suffering of the world, which seems to be so manifesting. May we not be disheartened, but continue to generate open and kind heartedness to whatever beings present themselves in front of us. Thank you very much. Nice to spend the evening with you, especially in this quite wonderful mudra-drenched room. Thank you.

[55:06]

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