I'm trying to, the refining process in terms of making the whole compound work is going along. As you can tell, we have a little geek house, which you can't get into because there's this giant rock in the way, which is too big for any two of us to move. I've been considering recently the importance of two things coming from the Lord Buddha's teachings and the polishing and refining and amplifying and cultivation by many great practitioners after him.

[01:19]

One is the significance in his teaching that you don't take anything on his word. That you take into consideration the teachings of any of the great spiritual teachers, but you take responsibility for checking it all out. Having been raised in a tradition which, at least in the way in which I was exposed to it, was based on a kind of authority which one should not question. In a spiritual tradition which was based on a belief system which, to be a member of that religious or spiritual tradition, one must accept.

[02:22]

And seeing the downside of that emphasis, when I first encountered Buddhism, one of the aspects of the teachings that really inspired me was this encouragement, and in fact nearly insistence, that we bring our common sense and appreciate and pay attention to our actual experience, and that we don't take anything as true until we have checked it out for ourselves thoroughly and completely, as much as we can. Which is not to say that we may not, because we have learned to trust a great teacher, a great practitioner, that we might not be inclined to think there's a good chance, because I've had other experience with the teachings from this person or group of people, that this may be true. It's not that I just hold the teachings entirely with skepticism, but that I don't forego the process of finding out for myself, from my own experience, is this what I experience?

[03:44]

And if it isn't, is it something about my conditioning that affects my perception? Or is it that I don't understand the teaching thoroughly enough, or that somehow the teaching is, with what we know now, not exactly accurate. I was really struck by this quality of almost scientific investigative mind. when I spent time with His Holiness the Dalai Lama in the context of some meetings a group of us as Western teachers had with him over some few days on three different occasions. And how consistently I saw him open to new understandings, new evidence coming from Western science about the nature of things that would then

[04:47]

reflect on some traditional teachings and cast some doubt as to their validity. In some way, what I realized was that he didn't have any so-called sacred cows. There wasn't could not and must not be examined over and over again. So in a conversation that Bill and I were having the other day, he got very excited about this point, almost jumping up and down. This is very important. And of course, I think he was saying that out of his own experience, but also because over and over again, both of us see people who are very sincere Dharma practitioners getting into kind of dead ends or blind canyons, if you will, because they haven't kept

[06:06]

the vitality of their own investigative, exploring, questioning, examining mind. Over and over again, we want someone else to do the work for us, a kind of wanting to be the children and have the parents tell us what's so. And although that possibility is very seductive, it doesn't fit, at least not for this group of us, because we're not any longer children, at least not in that sense. So part of what I'm bringing up has to do with understanding the source of the veracity of the teachings in Buddhism, coming from the Buddha himself, but also coming from this vast, remarkable stream of practitioners over centuries.

[07:22]

And how over and over and over again, many practitioners have contributed to the teachings as we understand them. so that gradually the conditioning of a particular culture, a particular time, a particular place gets sanded away to a more vital and inclusive and accurate refined teaching. And that the authority for the description of what is so has to include our own authority out of our own experience. So I think that this point that I'm making is extremely important, particularly when we are practicing with some of the really foundational teachings about the nature of things.

[08:27]

that in fact those teachings, almost like a book sitting on a shelf in the library, stay on the shelf, unopened and unread. If we just say, oh, that's the way things are, without having checked for ourselves, investigated for ourselves, and come to discover that a description about the nature of things is in fact aligned with my experience over and over and over again. So the particular description about the nature of things that I've been thinking about and actually want to spend this year looking at and encourage each of you to spend this year looking at, even though you may say, oh, but I did that. That's like going back to preschool. Do I have to go back to the beginning? You don't have to, but I recommend it.

[09:30]

The teachings about the nature of things being continually changing. The teaching that points out that everything changes. Is pointing to a characteristic, what's called classically one of the three marks. that everything has this mark of impermanence. And if I really know that, out of my actual experience, an enormous amount of suffering fades. Almost every time I sit down and listen to someone tell me about their suffering, embedded in what they're telling me is some amnesia about everything has the mark of impermanence. And then I'm reminded of the coyote's great line in so many of the coyote stories that the Native American people tell, where he says, after the old wise woman tells him whatever is the pithy observation in the situation, and he stamps his foot and

[10:51]

So, you know, particularly in this period that we've just somehow survived called the holiday season, and the turning to the dark part of the year, a lot of people suffer a lot this time of year. And part of the suffering comes from forgetting that even our emotional states, the way we feel about whatever, has the mark of impermanence. The weather has the mark of impermanence. That's easy, but even with the weather, we can get caught with what we like and don't like. We can savor the day as it is. If it's sunny or raining or cloudy or clear or whatever, more deeply, in my experience, when we remember that the day has the mark of impermanence.

[12:15]

And there are some hard situations, hard in terms of kind of nodding that I think a lot of us experience. For example, around the impermanence of our precious human lives. Most of us are not thrilled with our mortality. And for some of us, we're very much not thrilled with the mortality of the ones we love. I've mentioned this before, so for those of you who've heard me talk about this, forgive me. But I've been asked to do a session with museum staff who are struggling with change.

[13:27]

This particular group of people working together for a long time have the change that one of the senior members of the staff, much loved and highly regarded, is leaving to go to another position in another institution. And a very senior member of the staff And the very building in which the museum lives has been found by current, much more updated earthquake standards, is described as poor. So they've got impermanence right in their faces on all three camps. I've also been asked to do some work with the Women's Caucus of the American Association of Museum Directors at the end of the month.

[14:42]

The theme of the museum directors meeting this year is managing change. Of course, the title of their four or five day meeting suggests the dilemma immediately. But I also think that the very profession that this group of people is engaged in is part of the problem because museum directors and curators and restorers are all the people who are trying to get things to be the same. They're trying to protect. It's about collecting and saving and keeping. There's a tension there. a bunch of rescuers. I'm looking forward to our sessions a lot. I just can't wait to get my hands on them.

[15:45]

And in the process, since I was invited to do this and laying about a bit these days and not doing a whole lot, I've been thinking about this theme. It's really what brought me back to or at least one of the reasons that I came back to reconsidering the centrality of this teaching about the mark of impermanence. Remembering how somehow, I have no idea how I stumbled onto this practice, but very early in my meditation practice, I took on for over a year asking myself, can I find anything that doesn't have this mark of impermanence about it? And I have been enormously grateful that I did that. It was the luck of the foolish and the beginner. Because in many situations where I would realize, oh, I'm stuck, I could see, oh, I'm stuck because I'm acting as though this situation, this moment, this emotional state, this state of mind, this relationship, this piece of work, this weather,

[17:05]

whatever was the one thing in the world that was permanent. Oops, I forgot. I think that there are so many ways of meditating on the impermanent nature of all things and beings. Such a rich stream of focuses in the Buddhist meditation tradition. The five remembrances that we read, particularly during retreats, describing the nature of things, is really a teaching about impermanence. What happens if I say the five remembrances every day? Maybe even four or five times a day? What if I just take one of them, the one that's particularly challenging?

[18:09]

The impermanence verse about birth will end in death. Youth will end in old age. Wealth will end in loss. Meetings will end in separation. All things in cyclic existence are transient, are impermanent. Let whatever line from that verse shouts at you be the one that you work with. Over and over and over again. As I've told you before, the line from that verse that's the hook for me is the one about meetings will end in separation. And recognizing that, having the direct experience of how much that's the place where I get caught, has helped me see then doing some little verse, some little mantra every time there is the occasion of reading in the morning or at the beginning of the day or the first reading of the day, whatever it is.

[19:31]

And of course, so many people feel that a practice like this is so dark and so ghoulish. But that's because they're looking at it through the store window. If you actually do the practice, you discover the joy of being present and not putting things off until later. You discover the joy of savoring the relationship, the meeting that I have in this moment, that includes the fact that there will be separation. It's an enormous kick, if you will, to finishing business, to not ever leaving anything unsaid or unresolved to the best of one's ability. And so becomes a kind of kick toward being increasingly more and more present in the moment. That's a remarkable and invaluable consequence.

[20:45]

I was thinking about You know, this wonderful museum building that's made of concrete. At the time it was built, built with the latest high-tech ideas about earthquakes. Well, we now know there are different kinds of earthquakes. We now know, after the Northridge and Kobe earthquakes, that earthquakes not only do this, this kind of wave action, but some of them are very sharp and have this energy that's going up and down. So a building that is made to withstand the wave action kind of earthquake may not be appropriate for the kind of earthquake that has these sudden vertical shock waves. I remember I don't know now which earthquake it was, but there was some earthquake within the last, you know, 10 or 15 years, which we experienced at Green Gulch rather dramatically.

[22:10]

And Wendy Johnson, who's been the gardener at Green Gulch forever, was out in the garden, and she said, all of a sudden, the ground began to move in waves. It was as though I was standing on jello, And she said it didn't last for very long, but it seemed like an eternity. And her perception that the earth was solid and trustworthy suddenly got thrown up in the air. Slide Ranch, which is just up the road from us, which runs the place that is literally sliding into the ocean, and where there's quite a wonderful program for environmental education, for inner city kids. I haven't been there for a while, but for a long time they had a small museum room with photographs of this part of the coast, particularly just after the big 1906 earthquake.

[23:15]

One of the most alarming and fascinating pictures shows a big opening in one of the fields on the San Andreas Fault. It just opened and a cow fell into it and then it closed. So all that's left is this poor cow's tail sticking up out of the crack after it came together again. Wow. These are the kinds of things which if we dwell on them very long, we can start worrying and we can get into a real worry frenzy. Oh my goodness, can I walk from here to the car? Will I be able to get home? So there's some skill in letting ourselves imagine whatever is the worst picture we can imagine. And not doing it in a way that leads us to sink into worry and fear.

[24:24]

but to also let ourselves have these very brief and grounded remindings about, oh, this also has the mark of impermanence. Most of us don't think of cement as being impermanent, but it is. I learned that when I had a conversation with somebody in the process of pouring a new foundation underneath that end of the send-up, because the foundation we had was too small, and that whole end of the building was just dropping. I remember we used to have a sliding glass door here, and over the course of a couple of months, suddenly there's a space about an inch and a half under the sliding glass door. It was a fairly striking comment on the foundation. And in the process One of the things I learned was that there are all different kinds of cement, and cement which is going to be in the ground with a high water table has to have certain characteristics if it's going to last a little longer than cement that doesn't have those qualities.

[25:42]

Cement is not just cement. There are lots of different recipes. And intuitively, I know that from having been in India, where cement is not cement here, right? In Asia, cement is a much more fragile and clearly impermanent material than it is in the United States. Oh, how interesting. birth will end in death. And there are so many opportunities to just know that's how things are. But the difference between having it as an intellectual understanding and having it much more experiential is vast. And the only one who can have that be the experience, the only one who can lead you to experiencing

[26:54]

the validity of this teaching is you. I can talk about it, you can read about it in books, you can hear it from a gazillion great and famous teachers. The bottom line is if you don't take the book off the shelf and look at it and consider it and investigate it, including asking yourself, is there anything I can discover that doesn't have this mark? To really take that as a serious focus over some period of time means that you don't ever taste the benefits that come from seeing things clearly and accurately and as they are. It means staying in that place of deep suffering where we keep holding on to and grasping for things as we want them to be, not as they are. Bill and I last night had a conversation about a very dear old friend of ours whose life has been full of suffering.

[28:04]

And it's almost entirely because he clings consistently to things as he wishes they will be. And his wish, the gap between things as they are and things as he wishes them to be is big. And it's the same gap over and over and over again. Very tempting to get into our ambulances and drive off to the rescue. But that won't help our friend. What will help our friend is if we do not abandon him. if we stay present and we take care of our own respective gaps. That's really all we can do. The fact that there are so many pointers in the traditional teachings to the fact of impermanence is not an accident.

[29:41]

The pointing is because this is so fundamental. The other two marks or that of unsatisfactoriness and of selflessness are in many ways, I think, more challenging to understand and equally important. But the place to begin is with the mark of impermanence. And out of that, we will come to see more accurately, experientially, the other marks. Some very crucial shift happens when I can taste and savor something delicious. I still can remember the roses on the rose bush there on the fence last summer during a retreat.

[30:46]

I was in a kind of swoon over the roses. I think at one point I said, when I die, cover me with those roses, please. Chris, the next thing I noticed, a vase full of them showed up on the table. It was just more than I could stand. And what I noticed was, quick, get the camera, take a picture, try to freeze the beauty of this bouquet of roses so I can hold on to it. Something happens when we can savor the deliciousness of the rose. of the particular blossom that includes the whole cycle, including its decay. And to begin to see, oh, yes, there is this cycle of existence. Such a useful and important teaching.

[31:53]

But it's really about the characteristics of change and about the causes and conditions that lead to existence, which is the aspect of this teaching on impermanence that is so challenging for all of us. I got an email yesterday from Jenny. I think those of you who are part of the email chain probably got the same message, which is all our email addresses and no message. Because she couldn't, somehow the attachment didn't work. But when I saw her yesterday, I said, what's this message that you sent but I didn't get? And she said, well, the night before, she had gotten something from a doctor somewhere was taking care of a seven-year-old child who has a brain tumor.

[32:55]

And it was his describing the situation apparently and exhorting all of us to treasure each moment, to live fully in the moment. And the request to send this little story to everybody the recipient could think of. So I suggested to Jenny she might fax me the story and then we'd see what we could do to have someone who's a little more computer literate figure out how to spread the word. But I don't have time. How many of us get caught because we think that the only people who should die, the only beings who should die, are the ones who are old? Remember the Buddhist story when the mother comes to him carrying the corpse of her baby, pleading with him to bring her baby back to life.

[34:04]

And he says, I'll help you, but only after you go around the village and see if you can find any family that hasn't had someone die before they should have. And she went and knocked on every door. And she couldn't find a household that had not been touched by the fact of impermanence. The meetings will end in separation. I think this focus is challenging for many of us, if not all of us. Very challenging. And yet I know, from my own experience, the benefit of taking it, picking it up.

[35:09]

Along with our sorrow and our sense of loss, when there is this separation, from those we love comes the capacity to savor and taste and treasure and appreciate in each moment what sits in the hand, whether it's a flower or a dear pet or someone we love, our soulmate, our dear one, our parent, our dearest friend. We can't separate out the ending from the meeting. And when we come to know that, when we come to accept that's in the nature of things, some different quality of joy becomes possible because it isn't blind.

[36:16]

One of the best teachers I have on this particular point is my mother, who is now in her 90s, and who has not yet given up on trying to control everything. Literally. And the scope of her territory has become much smaller. It now has to do with, you know, cups and pencils and things like that. But really what she's fighting is her fear of loss. And I've learned an enormous amount watching her and watching her suffering. And how what she most yearns for is a whisper away. Just a whisper away. And the big question for her is, will she be able to risk letting go long enough to know that before she dies?

[37:37]

I don't know. I hope so, but I really don't know. What I can do is to accept the teaching that I received from her experience, from her example. So she's, I really, I've worried about her in recent years and I'm grateful that she's released from suffering and I really feel her passing. This particular, I guess it's a magnolia, a small one that was in the garden just outside her room at Green Gulch. And she particularly loved the plant as a source of flowers for tea.

[38:40]

So Wendy Johnson, one evening we did a little memorial tea. We had whisked tea. We dragged out all my precious tea bowls and we whisked some green tea and told stories about her. And what was so great but together as we did this storytelling about her. Something I meant to mention in my talk, and before we open it up for some discussion, I want to include, because it's been an important experience for me. Last weekend, 18 of us who are disciples of Suzuki Roshi got together with each other or the afternoon, Saturday afternoon and evening, and all day Sunday. And as some of you know, some of us don't feel great about each other. There's a fair bit of dis-ease among the disciples.

[39:45]

So, this is the first time we've all been together since, let me think, I think it's the first time we've all been together since Suzuki Hiroshi died. And it's the first time many of us have been together since the great, as we say, shit hit the fan at the Zen Center in 1983. So just being together was pretty remarkable. The three of us who organized the meeting decided that it was time enough. And since nobody official, I don't know who that would have been, had conjured us together, we figured maybe the three of us together could conjure us together and see what happened. And we spent Saturday afternoon just talking. We each spoke for about

[40:50]

in recent years, and a little bit about what we're doing now. And then we had dinner together, Saturday night. And then on Sunday, we spent the day telling stories about Tsukuroshi, which is, of course, the ground that we share, that we could stand on together, no matter what else. And what was so interesting to me was the sense of among the people gathered, Richard Baker came. And he's been such a lightning rod when he's been present for various centenary gatherings. There was a fair bit of tension about how it would go meeting with him. And I think on his part, he looked pretty uncomfortable much of Saturday. But one of the things I've argued for a long if we could all be in the same room at the same time and stay in the room for some period of time, even if we didn't talk, if we were just together and found a way to sit together and to practice listening, that there would be the beginning of some easing and softening

[42:19]

around this great gaping wound that has been in the Zen Center for all these years. And that's exactly what happened. There was, by Sunday, an appreciable softening. Still very small, but nevertheless, some softening. And what was particularly interesting was that as we told stories about Suzuki Roshi, someone would say something somewhat authoritatively, but then three other people would say, oh, well, you know, like, at one point, Dick Baker said Suzuki Roshi absolutely didn't want Sense Internet to have anything to do with Soto School headquarters. But then two or three other people had specific instances in which Suzuki Roshi asked one or the other of us to make up a list of his ordained students with ordination dates in order to submit the information to Soto headquarters.

[43:30]

So we began to have shared together more nuanced and complex pictures of this person who we all revere and treasure so deeply. But more than anything else, what struck me was that sense of, probably at some level for every one of us, some sense of having positions with each other and how much the the more we were allowing ourselves to be affected by some process of being together, the positions began to soften. So it was one of those situations. It was a very interesting experience.

[44:39]

And particularly encouraging because there was a unanimity about wanting to meet again. Which in itself was great. So I just wanted to say that in the context of this focus on pushing it. So I wonder if there are some things that you would like to talk about. Any. I'm glad that you brought up what you just did because it's useful in terms of the territory I'm working right now. I've been working with some conflict with a colleague of mine for some while. Someone who's new to the department and I have been this person's mentor and for this last semester also her evaluator among some other people on a team.

[45:51]

And there were a number of pretty difficult situations that had come up over this past semester with difficulties with other faculty members with whom we shared a computer lab and difficulties with instructional aides that work in the computer lab. In my mind, there were some ways that I felt that she handled these particular conflicts. That would be okay. So as part of the evaluation process, I wrote all my commendations and included a paragraph in which I laid out what I thought were some of my concerns. And we had a very difficult meeting, a lot of tears and emotion and difficulty and all the papers were signed and then she called and asked me if I

[47:02]

And I told her that I couldn't make that decision immediately, that I needed to sit with it. And that's something that you've mentioned a number of times and I'm really grateful because sitting with this for a couple of weeks was really useful. And I kept going over this either-or kind of situation that was set up and felt like whatever decision I made, it was a lose-lose. decision and that I needed to come to another way of making the decision. So after the holidays, I proposed to her that we have a rather long conversation and go over everything and what was her responsibility and what was my responsibility in terms of these conflicts and how might we find a way to come together and work together more effectively.

[48:11]

Because one of the outcomes of all of this was that she, in a very significant way, no longer trusted me. And so we went over each incident. And she was much more frank and candid than I had expected, which was useful and humbling. And I decided to delete the last paragraph and rewrite in more descriptive terms what happened and describe what was my part in terms of what came up as difficult and what I perceived as her part. And I felt a tremendous sense of relief after having written this revised version. And I think particularly in terms of owning my own responsibility in what came up.

[49:12]

And a big piece of it was my inability to listen deeply. And the way in which I made some distance from her so that it was more possible for me to keep a sense of conflict going. And that's what I was hearing. in what you were saying that was so useful. Now, in the immediate terms, what's up is that I emailed her this provision and I'm waiting for her response. And I'm watching how I have an expectation and an aim for some sense of permanent resolution. And that's where I'm getting caught with this desire to have this conflict be done and let's move on.

[50:13]

It may be in the nature of both my colleague and my relationship with her that we may not get to have an easy resolution and there may be continuing conflict that we have to work through. I don't know, but I'm watching that this is what I want, some relief from this discomfort that I'm calling conflict. Well, it may be that you will come to reconsider your relationship with conflict. That may be part of the opportunity in this situation because, you know, that's part of what's up with the Suzuki Roshi Disciples group, which has to do with how do we hold ourselves in relationship, including real differences and some conflict around those differences. I mean, it's just fear and aversion with respect to conflict has a whole lot of trouble.

[51:21]

I would recommend to any of you who can find it that you look in the November issue of the Smithsonian Magazine. for a description of a meeting facilitated by Bob Urey, who's Roger Fisher's colleague in negotiation theory in their school at Harvard. Getting to Guess and Getting Together are the two books that articulate this whole focus on process rather than outcome, which is really what you're talking about. But it's a description of a meeting that Yuri facilitated between representatives from Moscow, from Russia, and leaders from Chechnya. And it's entirely about positions and the consequences of not listening to each other and the obstacles that present themselves to keep us from listening to ourselves and to the other.

[52:32]

It's a very interesting, quite useful description of this session they went through, which turned out radically different from what any of them dared hope for. The Chechens didn't even arrive, I think, for the first two days or three days. So everybody else had a chance to get really nervous and uptight and oh my goodness. And they learned how to sit in a room and not say anything and listen to each other kind of blow off steam and yell and holler and complain and carry on and just listen. It's really interesting. I had a similar experience with somebody who sent me a very chastising letter. And I wrote a fairly tough response. But then, you know, after I wrote it, I felt better, and somehow the letter got buried on my desk, and I never mailed it.

[53:35]

So I didn't get around to talking to this person until, you know, six weeks after the letter that I didn't mail, you know, all that. And in this situation, I had the same experience of being very glad that the letter had gotten buried on my desk and that at some level we could have a conversation about some things that didn't have to get into this, you know, nose-to-nose argument and that there was something unrealistic on my part in thinking I could respond to this particular person and have what I had to say even make sense. I had to kind of look at that again. Am I shoving a certain point of view down the other person's throat? Now one of the factors in working with impermanence, which is a kind of paradox, is the constancy with which you attend to impermanence.

[54:43]

Because what I'm talking about doesn't bear any fruit unless you keep coming back to this focus quite regularly. So I want to argue in favor of doing the focusing and attending to the mark of impermanence as much as you can with a certain degree of constancy in the focusing. One of the things that I've been noticing in this whole saga is how impermanent is my perception of this other person. And depending a great deal on how recently we have spoken or seen each other. Beware of email. It makes it easy to have the delusion of contact. And it's very safe to stay distant in ways that I think are quite important.

[55:49]

So much of our communication with each other is multifaceted when it's in person. And then there are layers. But I think I notice a very high degree of consistency in People who are the most comfortable with email are the least comfortable with a certain kind of intimacy. At the same time, there's a certain illusion of, you know, that, oh, we're really talking to each other. Sometimes it's what's skillful. The very distance is useful. I think there's a place for it. I think in this situation where I have a sense that both she and I have some significant fear around conflict that gets exacerbated by lack of contact and by the kind of avoidance that both of us tend to practice when we feel afraid.

[56:51]

Well, one thing that happens with one's enemies is that the less direct contact we have with the enemy, the enemy gets bigger. then I have to include a whole lot of information that immediately modulates my picture of who that person is. So. It's very juicy. Yeah, sounds like it. Anne? Yeah, the talk about impermanence opened a new little gate in my head, so some of my thoughts would be kind of scattered, but it was interesting. I've had a lot of So it was in my face, impermanence was in my face from when I was about eight years old. But I didn't learn, but what I learned from impermanence has really formed my life, but it was different from what you're talking about, about impermanence.

[57:57]

So there was something about the experience of impermanence was there, but the message of impermanence was not with any kind of knowledge of impermanence. It was a message of mistrust, Don't ever get close. It was a sort of an anti-clinging. Clinging to anti-clinging. Yes, yes, yes. And that it's been probably the central message of my life because of my experience of impermanence. And so it's so interesting to think of revisiting the experience of impermanence with a different set of glasses on. Yes. And when our reaction to the fact of impermanence is fear-based, we often then don't stay present long enough to have that more broadened capacity for right view, that is, seeing clearly things as they are.

[59:05]

that somehow, maybe that's where the vital importance of teachers comes in, of that hope of getting some balance and understanding. Well, I actually think that, you know, it depends on whether your teacher has some degree of understanding. That helps. But I also think that there is the shared experience that arises from those of us who practice together that is equally important in having a felt sense of support for doing this particular work. And because we live in a culture that is so shy about, at least in this century, has been so shy about mortality.

[60:20]

And to the degree that we've kind of entombed, if you were part of the expression, the whole part of our lives that has to do with dying, we can feel quite isolated. Extremely isolated. And isolation around the experience of loss is exactly what we don't need. It's exactly that moment when What we need is that sense of connection and being held by those around us. It's exactly why I have to start having tea with Sangha members after my experience of my mother's death, knowing that I would not get the support from just you anywhere else in my life. It's exactly Well, I want to encourage you to look at the statement, I would never.

[61:27]

What did I say? I would never, how did you put it? Get that support. I did not feel that support. Correction? Well, the minute I have the word never come into my mind, I've fixated on something that doesn't have the mark of impermanence. That's a shame. And when you said that, what came up for me immediately was the experience I had with the surgeon who operated on me last Monday, who is quite curious about what I'm up to, and said, after he'd examined me, I imagine this experience of going through this surgery and diagnosis and all that will make you more skillful in the work you do with people. And he then, you know, the good old 98% rule, proceeded to tell me about how many years ago he and his wife had a newborn infant die, crib death.

[62:38]

And the effect on him of that experience in terms of his way of being with especially his women patients when they had a baby die. And he said, I could never have imagined what that experience is like other than having the experience. And he said, I know it made a huge difference in the kind of doctor I can be. Now, I would have said after the first couple of appointments I had with him, I could have been tempted to put him in the never category because he was this very skeptical, super scientific guy. So anyway, I just want to flag the arising and presence of the word never. Even more accurately, I feared for my state of mind without the Well, I think that that kind of motivation for support from the people you practice with is totally appropriate and comes from some recognition that we do have some shared ground that makes support, when any of us needs it, possible.

[64:05]

And your story about the Suzuki Roshi disciples group just brought something back up to me. My father died about a year and a half ago. And during the process of his dying, very close to the time of death and afterwards, two of my sisters and I have become estranged. And fairly shortly after my father died, And the thought was there about never, ever, [...] you know, talking to them again and it's all, blah, [...] So I gradually, maybe I prayed in a way for the willingness to even begin to examine, well, my part certainly, and in a way where they were coming from.

[65:43]

And I don't have it resolved. I can just say it's in process to begin to understand their suffering to the best of my ability. I want to take a position that never, never, but to just find some middle ground to have some peace and just let the process kind of unfold as it unfolds. We'll see what happens. You know the quote that I love from the Ashley book of knots about how to untangle a knot? You allow the tangle to loosen itself. It's a great quote. It's, I think, not 114, should you want to look it up.

[66:45]

I hear two things in what you're saying. One is some recognition about the consequences of continuously recreating the scene of the Quran, so to speak. I think that's a very important insight. And the other is the practice of putting yourself in the other person's shoes. Do you know the practice that I sometimes teach on the cultivation of sympathetic joy? Have we ever talked about that? Okay. Well, it's a very interesting sequence of practices. And what really, part of the work is seeing the degree to which when I'm competitive or jealous or angry with somebody, how often it has to do with self-clinging. How often it has to do with, how could they treat me that way? A lot of that kind of, how could they?

[67:47]

And one of the steps in the process, you begin with just bare noting self-clinging, which is a piece of work in itself, not a thrill. but at some point being able to put yourself in the other person's shoes, which I think is actually a practice in the cultivation of listening. It's not listening in the sense that we usually imagine it, but it is a kind of interior, developing an interior capacity to imagine what's so for the other person in that kind of listening mode that's a real practice, to listen without judgment, and reaction, which it sounds like that's a piece of what is happening for you. And of course, this is exactly why in the Shantideva teaching, he makes this wonderful argument that our so-called enemies are our teachers. I mean, what you're talking about and what you brought up with his colleague that you've had some struggle with.

[68:55]

In both cases, these situations are situations in which you have the opportunity to come to know much more accurately what's so about your mind stream. And you may not love it, but that's something you can build on because it is so fruitful. Of course, this teaching is embedded in the chapter on the cultivation of patience. That's right on the mark, absolutely. I obtained a copy of a new book by the Dalai Lama about dealing with anger. Some place here in the subtitle of the preface, it has to do with patience. Yeah, it's his teaching on this chapter. Yeah, exactly. It's specifically the teaching that he did on the patience chapter when he taught in Arizona. It's a wonderful teaching. extraordinary teacher. To begin to see, to begin to be willing to give some distance or allow some distance between what happened and begin to look at my position.

[70:07]

I usually want things done now. I want it, I want it, I want it. And to learn to cultivate some patience. Now this would be a very timely time for you to rent Rashomon, which I think we should all watch once a year. You know, it's a story of what happened from five different points of view. It's really marvelous. It's based on a story, a Japanese story, but Kurosawa did this film, which you can rent in the video store. It's really marvelous. Quite wonderful. And it's, you know, you can do a little remembrance honoring the passing of Toshiro Mifune, who's in it splendidly. But it's right on the mark in terms of what you're working with. And, you know, the other thing I want to commend to you is noticing how costly what this all is for you is also extremely important.

[71:13]

I mean, very often when we're upset to the kind of harming that's going on within ourselves. You know, I think of William Shawn's statement after he was fired from the New Yorker after working there for 30 years. And he said, bitterness is too expensive. Came directly out of his understanding I wanted to speak to what you said about your experience of the teaching of impermanence, because I had that also, that it was a very negative experience of it from childhood. So I was sitting there, and I was just starting to understand something I think that I've never gotten, which I was thinking about Pim and Children's talking about giving up hope.

[72:26]

And I don't know if I can get this, but I was having this conversation with my brother, and I was trying to talk to him about that somehow, what I was thinking. And he said, oh, I don't have If you give up hope, you also have to give up hopelessness. This has to do, for me, with the teaching of impermanence, because the teaching of impermanence points me towards being in the moment, no matter how painful. And what you're moving towards then is the cultivation of the quality of equanimity and other related qualities. But it's like we're not even on the playing field when we're struggling between hope and hopelessness, which is the territory for many people that's basically fear-based.

[73:38]

Well, that's usually where I am. Usually I'm planning to head to something hopeful Well, you know, one of the big lessons for me, it's a lesson that I know from other situations, but I got it so dramatically when I was going through surgery, having elected to be as present as possible and consequently getting to feel, you know, clipping, cutting, tugging, hand me the knife, no, the longer one, that kind of thing. What I discovered so palpably was if I pay any attention to thoughts, which are almost, in that circumstance, were almost entirely about the future, you know, five minutes from now, or when will this be over, or what if they discover cancer, blah, blah, blah, that that was the territory of fear.

[74:52]

And as long as I stayed with long inhalation and mindfulness of sensation, I was able to sustain a remarkable degree of ease. And the experience of deep sustained ease is amazing. And the real question is, dare we risk finding that out? In a lot of ways, I found doing what I was doing in that situation easier than doing it in meditation practice. Because I had such palpable material to work with. It was just much easier. The territory we're attending most of the time is much more subtle, but totally worth it. I'm working very closely these days with a member of my family who keeps getting caught by thoughts that takes this person immediately to a place of fear.

[76:08]

It's just paralyzing. And right there, absolutely right there, And there's a way in which, I think this is partially our conditioning as Americans, to say, oh, caught in thought. Because we do respect and value the mind and thinking about things, and I think that's appropriate. But there's a certain kind of thinking that is just trouble. And it's the kind of thinking that we do when we're just walking around, blah, blah, blah, blah. Anyway, I think you're right, that this territory, particularly related to hope and hopelessness, is very hazardous. I think it's pretty hazardous. Good luck. Karen. Yeah. Well, on the Indian concrete story, I have to add,

[77:13]

And I didn't realize it then, it was a big question, and today it finally sort of made sense to me. When I first went, which was like 12 years ago to India, and I stayed in a hotel in New Delhi, and I looked out of my window, which was so dirty, it was hard to see, and I looked down at another roof of this building, it was built in a very tall, like 15 stories, which is very big, and it had many different levels, so I looked out on a roof scape, which was filled with cracked cinder blocks and big pieces, slabs of cement, and it looked like a blitz. It looked like it was a war zone. And I said to somebody, when was this hotel built? And they said to me, it's not quite finished yet. And I thought, they built in its own rot and destruction before they even got done with it. And I couldn't I could not fathom, you know, what that was about. And it makes sense to me today in some way, about a different way of looking at having to have things happen, or maybe wanting to, but not being able to have things happen, have some solidity and continuation.

[78:23]

But then when you were talking, and I was thinking of my travels and so on, and I thought, from the opposite side, the people in the Indonesian culture who make art that they put outdoors on a day like this so that the wind and the rain or in the summer the sun will destroy it immediately so they can make another piece. And they laughed when the Dutch came to Bali and took all of these works of art and these wooden sculptures and moved them to air-conditioned museums in Amsterdam to preserve them. And the Balinese couldn't understand why they did. It's like the monks, the Tibetan monks, making the butter sculpture at the National History Museum, and people wanting to take pieces of the sculpture home and put it in their freezer to keep it, not understanding you don't make a sculpture out of butter if you want to keep it. I mean, you know, it's just not in the car. It's such a funny example. I mean, people were bargaining heavily with me.

[79:31]

After we're all done and it's time to put it out for the birds to eat it, could you slip me a little piece of it? I promise I'll take good care of it, and I'll keep it forever. It's like you with the camera and the roses. Yeah. Well, and I'm in the middle of the retreat, madly taking the picture, and I suddenly realized what I was doing, and I just cracked. There's another part, I mean, for me it then brought up, and I think people have been, or I said, remember on New Year's Eve day when we were talking about our intentions, and I said my intention was to lose my mind, and what I really think I meant by that was, or one of the things I meant by that, besides emptying, was the fact that That's the trap, and I suppose everybody's been saying it, but I need to say it because it makes sense to me in some kind of gut way, that I can understand if I drop the cup, it's going to smash and it's gone. I have no problem, or my body changes, or the tree leaves will drop off.

[80:35]

It's easy outside of my self or my physical self, but I realize that I have a hold on whatever thought's there, it's the one of the moment and how I how I have a kind of caging of my mind sometimes, that as if it's the only place that I trust that I have some substantiality, and it's the least substantial. And I'm just sort of, I don't know. That's exactly what I was pointing to when I said the attention on the mark of impermanence will segue into experiences of the mark of selflessness and unsatisfactoriness. Exactly in the way you just described. And I think it's one of the ways, I mean, I think it's wise starting with really attending over some long period of time so that you really drop down into it.

[81:39]

Attending to this mark of impermanence, it really opens a lot that's crucial. Still kind of fun. Birth will end in death? Yeah. Do you still have any of those? Yes, I do. I realized. Along with figuring out how to get into the Zendo dry without our shoes on, I also have to figure out where to put the little cart with things like that. Anyway, maybe by the next half day sitting I will have figured it out. I'm hoping actually to, maybe the next half day is the end of this month. And I think maybe by then we'll have figured out which Buddhas and Thangkas are available. So maybe we'll put all that stuff out. But yes, we do have some more of those things. So we have time to purchase some. Yeah. We can have a yard sale, an indoor yard sale. about the future, like putting money in a retirement account.

[82:56]

What's the difference? Well, you know, is there something from the Sufis about trusting to Allah but tie your camel to the post? There's a wonderful, I mean, I think one of the responses that comes up for me in response to your question comes from a wonderful on instructions to the cook in which he talks about planning the night before you get everything ready for breakfast and you understand that there may be an earthquake and there will be no breakfast or you may die. You do both. They're not separatable. It's not one or the other. I mean, part of what we're talking about is this struggle we have with how do we bring together what we know in the realm of what is called the absolute and the realm of what we call the relative.

[84:03]

So if I plan for the future, but I'm not so fixated on understanding impermanence, my relationship to the plan is different than if it's something that is going to happen no matter what. You know, that kind of mind. Okay? And I do want to note your disrespect for your question, which I hope you will give up. because my experience is that consistently people disparage a question which is valid and legitimate and appropriate far more often than that it's in fact a dumb question or an inappropriate question or, you know, whatever. It's one of those things about listening.

[85:09]

Anyway, excuse me. Couldn't resist. Margo? strikes me that there's a way in which what they do is based on a really profound respect for impermanence. That they're slowing the process as opposed to trying to, I mean, maybe depending who they are, but there's a way in which that's true, that the museums exist because of impermanence. Well, I think that's true and I think that the variations, that the ground that's very rich and that I'm really looking forward to with this group of people is that the suffering that they experience comes from not having thought carefully and clearly and observed carefully and clearly about what is so. So there's a lot of unexamined habit that has to do with conditioning

[86:16]

of the sort, I mean, this is a group of people who describe themselves as ambulance drivers of one sort or another, rescuing, particularly the women, a kind of reactive and defended stance against change that is initiated outside of you or outside of your institution, those kinds of things. So what they're really bringing up and asking me to work with them about is the suffering that arises as a consequence of change, and are there some different ways of relating to change than the ones that they bring to that focus out of their own conditioning and habit? Well, I think that the distress around losing their building, which I can really relate to, I'm really into where it is I live. Right. It's a huge measure to preserve the collection. But it also has to do with, and I know this, just being a frustrated builder, or not very frustrated builder.

[87:29]

The latest building I've designed is called the Moon Silo. I'm more into it than I am. Wow, the worm turns. There's a way in which the process of creating and using and living in or working in a space, the building in this case is a live being for the people who work in it. And they love it. I mean, it really has to do with meetings, well-ended separation. That's where there's the hook. That's where there's the suffering. And of course, at the time that the building was built, it was absolutely the latest answer to an earthquake-proof building.

[88:31]

And in the years since then, just these recent years, we've got more information about earthquakes than we had when this building was built. But I really think it has to do with possessiveness and clinging, grasping. And it comes up with what we love. Doesn't matter what that is. Okay, we should stop. Before we do...

[88:59]

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